this post was submitted on 28 May 2024
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Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world. About 1C of total warming. Second chart: about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability. Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases. About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

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Can Trump Really Slam the Brakes on Electric Vehicles? He has vowed to shred President Biden’s E.V. policies and has threatened that “You won’t be able to sell those cars.” (www.nytimes.com)
submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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While a Trump presidency couldn’t slam the brakes on the E.V. transition, it could throw enough sand in the gears to slow it down. And that might have significant consequences for the fight to stop global warming.

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[–] [email protected] -2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Do you think it will work that way?

The more people switch to EVs the cheaper fuel will be, which incentivised people to drive ICE vehicles.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Fossil fuel extraction is an extreme economy of scale. This is only true to a point.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

More people driving EVs won't make (oil-based) fuel cheaper. Every person getting off oil makes producing oil-based fuels more expensive, as the economies of scale are reduced.

Go to extremes if that helps picture it: imagine you're suddenly the only person on Earth driving an ICE car. How much would you be paying for a fill-up, which now involves finding, extracting, shipping and refining fuel just for you: more than today or less than today?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Fuel prices halved during covid when everyone stayed home.

All the infrastructure is in place, the fuel needs to be sold.

Reduced demand will only reduce production of fuel from more expensive wells, like where the oil is more difficult to reach.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Yeah but nobody retired a marginally profitable fuel refinery that became unprofitable during covid because they knew demand would return soon. The effect isn't instantaneous, but all the infrastructure has operation and maintenance costs. With fewer overall consumers all the overhead has to go somewhere eventually.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago

eventually

Yeah, but I think you might be waiting longer than you imagine.

There might be a long tail of barely profitable wells with low output, but I suspect the vast majority of current production can sustain a significant reduction in retail price and still be more profitable than simply capping the well.

Every person that switches to an EV increases the demand for electricity and reduces the demand for fuel.