No. Valid argument. For the moment we are shifting emissions from one place to another. While that might change in the future, for the moment the environmental impact only happens somewhere else. This should not be forgotten, therefore those uncritical claqueurs are misplaced.
> For the moment we are shifting emissions from one place to another.
No, we aren't. There are lots of renewable energy sources already on the market, and more coming online every day. You just have to be willing to use them.
In Michigan, as one example, for just one extra cent per kilowatt/hour you can have 100% renewable electricity in your home right now. No new wires, no extra setup.
>> In Michigan, as one example, for just one extra cent per kilowatt/hour you can have 100% renewable electricity in your home right now. No new wires, no extra setup.
Not really. The electrons all go through through the same wires regardless of where they come from. I think the extra cent does in some way incentivize renewable power, but you don't literally get 100% renewable energy.
> you don't literally get 100% renewable energy. The electrons all go through through the same wires regardless
Yes, you actually do. Consumers Energy literally generates that amount of renewable energy instead of the equivalent from Natural Gas.
You are technically correct that my home does not get the specific "renewable electrons" that the wind farm itself generated, since the grid is all interconnected. But that doesn't change the fact that the power company burned less Natural Gas that month, for every user who opted instead for renewable energy.
But we're moving the emissions in a "more solvable" direction. By consolidating the emissions from millions of cars to hundreds (thousands?) of plants, we're making it a MUCH easier problem to address.
I am not sure about the US, but in Germany 40% of the electricity is already renewable. And most Tesla owners I know use a 100% renewable plan. It costs just a tiny little bit more, for example from here: https://www.greenpeace-energy.de/privatkunden/oekostrom.html (page in German)
Burning gasoline in a car is far less efficient than burning coal in a huge power plant. The gasoline refining process is also power-hungry. As an added bonus, it's also possible to capture at least some of the pollution from a power plant in ways that aren't possible when you have to shrink things down to car size.
An average EV charged off a coal plant still pollutes less than an average gasoline powered car.
Nope, still entirely invalid. Switching from combustion to electric in vehicles decouples emissions from energy consumption in transportation, which is step 1. From that point on, it's generally up to the larger players e.g. governing bodies, energy suppliers, etc. to make the switch -- but not entirely so. There's already enough funding/incentives on the table to encourage people to not just decouple emissions from transport, but to eliminate emissions entirely eg by powering via their own renewable energy setup. Prices have dropped by more than 60% in five years down to just over 3 dollars a watt, and if that trend maintains itself, we'll be under a buck fifty in the next five. The only way that trend keeps going is if everyone, large players and small, have access and incentive to keep buying and drive costs down.
But none of those trends sustain themselves if the necessary energy decoupling doesn't take place, and that's what electric cars are aiming to do in transportation.
hey, words have meanings. you didn’t invalidate the argument nor did you even argue against it. invalidating an argument would have been pointing out a structural deficiency in the logic. arguing against would be pointing out the falsity of one or more points with counterfactuals. you did neither.
it’s true that emissions are transferred from car to power plant, so that’s a valid argument (edit: because it’s logically sound, not just because it’s true). you accepted and built on that argument by saying it’s a good thing for a bunch of reasons. so your opening sentence was entirely unnecessary.
You are incorrect. The argument structure does not lead to the conclusion that the amount of emissions is necessarily higher. It's too ambiguous for that. It's possible to infer more than one argument structure from the writing. It was a series of questions and a statement, not a series of premises and a conclusion.
Different readers will infer different argument structures, but what I find interesting is that the assumed answers to the questions are conditioned on effort expended in becoming greener. So the questions are implicitly polarizing.
People with Tesla's who have taken steps to ensure zero emissions are more likely to respond no to each question. They are also more likely to do this, because they've invested significant resources toward producing an environment that doesn't have externalities. It isn't a random sampling. For someone who assumes no or for whom the assumption of no being possible is obvious, the implied argument is invalid. For others, it's easier to arrive at a yes to every question. Neither answer is correct though, because these questions are not able to be answered in a yes or no fashion. The actual answer is that this is conditioned on investment in green energy infrastructure. You'll notice many arguing in other comments to the effect that this is a boring argument, entirely on the basis of ongoing investment into green energy infrastructure. That doesn't happen randomly. They've thought through the implied argument structure and moved beyond it to the causally important factor on which the not quite an argument hinges.
And they call the argument boring; which it is, especially if you've ever bothered to consume any Tesla marketing since it tackles this question (spoiler alert: the efficiency gain is one of the reasons to buy a Tesla, not an argument against).
The argument implied as valid by your reply to the person who called it invalid was given several parents up. The chain was that comment, a person calling the argument boring, another person calling it valid, another person calling it invalid, a reassertion of invalidity, a negation of the claim of validity, and then your post re-asserting the arguments validity.
It was not a valid argument structure. The definition of valid is that an argument is valid if the argument structure is such that if the premises were true, the conclusion must be true. The stated conclusion of the post many parents is up is that the amount of emissions is higher. If you agree with me that this argument was not actually made, than you ought to agree with me that what was done must not be a valid argument: that conclusion is not reachable via the questions posed in the post, therefore, it is not a valid argument.
I'm a fan of syllogistic logic, so I shared your care for the definition of the word valid. Also, totally understandable to lose the context. This discussion is nested quite deeply. If I hadn't thought about the comment chain for an hour before giving my reply, I would have lost the context too.
This is a well-known argument called the Long Tailpipe Problem. It makes intuitive sense, but if we inspect the data from a comprehensive, well-to-wheel assessment, the answer is: "It depends."
The total systemic carbon footprint depends on the fuel and technology used for electricity generation in the particular country or region in question.
Electric cars’ carbon emissions can vary from similar to the average gasoline car (for countries with lots of dirty coal-fired plants) to less than half those of the best hybrids vehicles (in countries with lots of renewable power generation).
> For the moment we are shifting emissions from one place to another.
Well not exactly, we're replacing a product that will by necessity produce polluting emissions (and not only CO2, btw) from fossil fuels, with one that is able to use whatever source might be available, from coal and nuclear to solar and wind power. In programming terms, decoupling the responsibility of energy production from that of transportation, with all the flexibility that this entails. You become free to optimize energy production as a completely isolated problem from that of the vehicles that drive you around.
Thanks to regenerative braking, a Tesla gets the equivalent of 120 mpg, much better than any ICE car.
In fact the energy used in refining gasoline to drive an ICE car is a given distance approximately the same as the energy to drive an electric car the same. Which means that before you've accounted for turning the ICE car on, the electric car has already arrived at its destination.
In the medium/long term, the trend is towards renewable energy power.
In the short-term, these cars, whether running on renewable or dirt-power, mean that we, and our children, don't have to suck up exhaust fumes.
"Thank you" are the words you're looking for.