Tesla car battery production releases as much CO2 as 8 years of gasoline driving

The Union of Concerned Scientists did the best and most rigorous assessment of the carbon footprint of Tesla's and other electric vehicles vs internal combustion vehicles including hybrids. They found that the manufacturing of a full-sized Tesla Model S rear-wheel drive car with an 85 KWH battery was equivalent to a full-sized internal combustion car except for the battery, which added 15% or one metric ton of CO2 emissions to the total manufacturing.

However, they found that this was trivial compared to the emissions avoided due to not burning fossil fuels to move the car. Before anyone says "But electricity is generated from coal!", they took that into account too, and it's included in the 53% overall reduction.

Reply to
ZZyXX
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There are over 6.13 bazillion killowatt-hours of solar energy striking the Earth each day...and we ignore it so that we can burn fossil fuels and pollute our planet.

WTF? Are we extraordinary idiots?

Reply to
bob

The Coal Museum uses solar to cut costs. John Oliver did a great piece on coal and jobs

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Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

Who cares? CO2 is not a pollutant and "climate change" is a natural phenomenon. I personally refuse to reduce my so-called "carbon footprint" and will continue to seek ways to increase it. Increased carbon == increased prosperity. (The "Union of Concerned Scientists" is nothing more than a lobbying group composed of left-wing political hacks.)

Truly the Left in this country needs to be completely and utterly obliterated. Oust the DemoCRATs and shed your chains!

Reply to
Roger Blake

On Thu, 22 Jun 2017 12:19:29 +0200, abelard wrote in

Twenty years from now, China will be what the U.S. was 50 years ago.

Reply to
CRNG

There has been and always will be natural climate change. It got us out of the Ice Age a few years back. Just my common sense opinion, when you burn millions of tons of fossil fuels, there will be a reaction. I don't know if is is as bad as some say, but what happens to all the heat and CO2? We do need a certain balance of gasses in the atmosphere too. Maybe all we have to do is plant more trees, but I think some change is man made.

To say you are going to look for ways to increase your carbon footprint just makes you look like an arrogant fool.

Reply to
Ed Pawlowski

The problem is that those bazillion kwatts are distributed across the entire surface of the earth. When you look at realistic sizes of solar arrays, the amount of energy isn't huge. A whole home southern exposure roof might generate 5KW for example. And that's when the sun is shining at full exposure.

Reply to
trader_4

But sadly that's where a lot of the right wingers are. Rush Limbaugh for example just proclaims that the earth is way to big for man to have any effect on it. That's the extent of his "science".

I agree with you. It's indisputable that CO2 has shot up dramatically, by about 100+ PPM since we started burning fossil fuels in large quantities 100 years ago. It's increased by a third and is now higher than it's been in hundreds of thousands of years. My approach to climate change has been that it makes sense to take steps to reduce C02 where there isn't a huge economic impact. Better energy efficiency with furnaces, AC, for example was smart. The earth's temp has been going sideways for the last 15 years or so, if it breaks out on the upside I'd be in favor of additional steps.

What seems particularly stupid is to be advocating coal at this point. Coal had severe problems even 40 years ago, eg acid rain. It costs a lot to clean it up, so much so that coal power plants are not competitive with alternatives like natural gas, which is cheap. King Trump of course, for political purposes, just rants about the jobs lost in coal production. He totally ignores all the jobs that are being created in production of nat gas, wind energy, solar, etc. It's like whining about the loss of jobs shoveling horse crap and ignoring all the new, better jobs that were created in the auto industry.

Reply to
trader_4

Anything can be a problem if it's concentration is higher than it should be . Water is not a pollutant, but if you drink enough of it, it will kill you . Co2 is higher now than its been in hundreds of thousands of years, with i t going up by over a third over just the last 100 years when man extracted fossil fuel and started burning it in accelerating amounts.

personally refuse to reduce my so-called "carbon footprint"

Nice.

Increased carbon == increased

Reply to
trader_4

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