The Contradictions of Battery Operated Vehicles | Graham Conway | TEDxSanAntonio

That's not necessarily true. It depends on how much you drive, the mileage your old car gets, and what you plan to replace it with.

I had a 1973 Plymouth Satellite that I kept 19 years and 236,000 miles; and later a 2000 Ford Taurus that I kept twelve years and 150,000 miles. I'm doing my part...

my 30yo Honda Civic is still fun to drive and reliable - my main problem (apart from the lack of airbags - I'm a safe driver) is the cost of registration and third-party insurance - nearly $1000pa for a car I only drove about 1000km last year
so local share cars I can rent for $10/hour look relatively attractive - except I had a huge fight over a $1500 charge for a fake/scam 'repair' from a major car rental firm - I got it refunded after 3 months of 20 emails and threats but I lost a lotta sleep - so that's put me off those kinda businesses

This argument is mostly used to encourage inaction.
The environmental impacts caused by each problem are not equal.
The pressing issue is atmospheric carbon. There is also an issue with waste recycling, landfill usage, etc but those are not as dangerous to the future of the planet even in the long term.
Don't take a 1 year old car off the road to replace it with electric. But don't drive it for 20 year either. We need most of the world to be on electric cars in about 20 years and for the grid to be mostly renewable in 30

@@NotMyActualName_ you ought to take a look at the total percentage of carbon emissions that come from passenger vehicles.

Unfortunately, under this current administration household budgets are stretched or worse. The objective of converting America to EV's and other alternatives is Biden's catch 22. With spending power gone, most people will reuse the old worn out vehicles and goods that are now less environmentally friendly out of necessity.

Making quality products that last long time & keeping them is big part of solution that is ignored. Better public transportation would also make bigger difference than EV cars.

The video is only about vehicles.

So right! Recycle, re-use and repurpose!

It's called "planned obsolescence" or pure greed...... they don't want you to own anything, they want your very existence to be a service they can charge you for......

Absolutely correct. Solar panels are made from toxic metals (the mining of which is monopolized by the Chinese), and end up in landfills once they go kaput, because they can't be recycled. The same is true for EV batteries. The people touting batteries and solar panels act like these things just magically appear out of nowhere and don't have any harmful costs/externalities. Green energy is dangerous fraud.

i too service and own a hybrid vehicle and yes some instance mine does start when its been sat in the 'READY' mode or a while... i think my petrol engine kicks in at 20mph but i would sooner have that than a all electric .... even the battery tech on mine is more stable that of the lithium cells

It doenst produce anything the vast amounts of CO2 and CH4 that increase and maintain the greenhouse effect

Old saying: "There is no such thing as a free lunch."

its only gonna be temporary though because once the required amount is built, no more will be needed so no more being built and no more emissions made from making them

@@grommitt1385Not true, solar panels and turbine blades wear out and need to be replaced regularly. Turbine blades in particular are literally just buried in massive landfills as they can't be feasibly recycled. Still better than a coal power plant? Surely, but nothing is perfect.

Do solar panels have to be produced every day that they're being used, like oil does? No. Try to actually use your brain.

Even pretending like solar and wind is 0 CO2 should be subjected to the same analysis to come to the same conclusion, merely a trade off. It’s said the CO2 in the concrete foundation of the windmill off-sets it’s benefit. Also, the life span of solar and wind hardware is limited and solar being heavily dependent on batteries for it’s greatest utility. There is indeed only trade-offs and a bunch of salesmen in-charge of mystifying the truth.

Well, I like the sentiment, but Sowell is a crackpot when it comes to economics.

@@peek5548 Selling the green dream. That’s what the environmentalists do. But by doing so altruism becomes avarice as they profit from it. We’re going too fast and derailment is imminent and the only solution.

@@Mike-vd2qt Says the... fill in the blank.

@@Mike-vd2qt says the Marxist. Lol, yeah, Marxist ends so well, doesn't it? I'm sure you consider everyone outside your group-think to be a crackpot. BTW, modern monetary theory doesn't work. Hence the reason we have Bidenflation.

They have made great strides. Lots of articles with updates.

Yes, without doing that analysis, the conclusions of his video do not make sense, I am afraid.

Every year, I see more wind farms and solar panel fields going up. They are eating up agricultural land and wildlife habitat. All this in an effort to meet an insatiable demand for electric power. Most of the solution needs to occur on the demand side. How much energy do we really need? No one talks very much about Fusion power, but truly it could be mankind's salvation. It could lead the way to viable fuel cells, ability to generate freshwater from salt, weaning the global shipping industry from carbon fuels.

the future is nuclear

@@colin591 the only future in fact but people are too scared because of a few incredibly rare incidents.

He also said that humans could not impact the environment.. but i believe that was deeep satire.

@@hickstylezhis math could also be said to be satire.
He claims that the average cumulative driving emissions for combustion non-hybrid is 30 tons. Over 180k miles that’s about 151g/co2 per mile. The official EPA emissions for a Toyota Camry non hybrid is about 280g/mile. For the hybrid variant about 170g/mile. He is showing data that is off by more than 80% compared to a sedan which isn’t even representative of what average people drive in the US. Take all the trucks and SUVs, the EPA estimates about 350-400g/mile for US average. That drastically changes his argument.

@williamhamer How true. And it comes out wildly in favor of RE & EVs.

@@J4Zonian How does it favor EVs? From what I understand, just mining Lithium for the batteries requires a lot of water.

@@roykowalski4125 Everything humans do has effects. The harm done by fuels is so phenomenally, extraordinarily, tremendously huge, that RE & EVs are a tiny fraction of it, & get smaller as more RE & EVs are added to the grid & to manufacturing. ICEVs only get worse, as EROEI gets smaller & fuels get farther, deeper, scarcer, & more diffuse, which they’ve been doing for a while.
People need to stop paying attention to the insane right wing climate-denying delayalist & ARF (anti-renewable fanatic) blogs & the politicians & media they own. They’re lying to you.

@@J4Zonian And people need to do there own homework and really analyze the data rather than paying attention to left wing climate and renewable energy fanatics. Look at California and Germany for example. The cost of renewable energy sources has come down (solar panels, turbines) yet the cost of electricity keeps rising. How come no one is talking about how many years we went backwards in "harm done" during covid lockdowns world wide, no one was driving. Reason is because there was no significant change to talk about. How come when when climate fanatics say things like "The earth hasn't been this hot in 3,000 years" no one asks the reason the earth was this hot 3,000 years ago? The problem is people either go all in left or all in right and have done zero research or are have the data to take either position. Partisan politics has gotten to the point where even science will be on one side or the other. Researchers don't get funding unless they lie on one side or the other.

How do they do it in Saudi? Local municipalities will NEVER allow desalinization, because they want total control over water production, but you will never hear this on the news.

@Andrew Earle I agree, but cumulative emissions are what matter now; we're at a moment when we have to leave all fossil fuel use behind as fast as possible. Ditching ICEVs now makes more sense than hanging onto them & emitting more GHGs & other pollution, then ditching them later. It's important to make sure they're recycled, not resold, unless they're still good, & go to people with the most polluting cars, which must get scrapped. Subsidies are important, & not just regressive measures like tax credits. We need to turn over the world's ICEV fleet as fast as possible, & replace them with BEVs to avoid perpetuating fossil fuel use.
EVs pay off the $, energy & carbon costs of their construction in an average of 2 years compared to ICEVS, & of course even old EVs keep getting cleaner as the grids that power them get cleaner, which they are, though too slowly. Transport emissions will only go down by retiring or not using ICEVs. The best ways to make that happen are staying put, walking, bicycling, & PUBLIC TRANSIT! (Including a state of the art national/international high speed rail network to replace flying & long distance driving.) But where vehicles are necessary, sharing, renting, or leasing EVs is smart so the valuable metals, time, & other resources of ICEVs can be better used right away.
One place durability is crucial is in wood use---buildings, furniture, recycling paper... not on just a personal level but with government policy making it easier, if not required, setting up processes & institutions... Whatever's needed.

When people watch something that already matches their beliefs; GL trying to change them.

No one makes a quality vehicle any longer, all plastic pieces of junk.

@@J4Zonian automobiles are not the primary polluter. Industry and power plants are the primary source of air Pollution

@@robertchiarizia9463 Climate catastrophe is an existential crisis. We have to eliminate GHG emissions as fast as humanly possible with a comprehensive emergency Green New Deal. That means renewablizing everything that burns fuels, which means electrifying almost all primary energy. That means electrifying transportation, the main source of GHGs & some other air pollutants in the US. Cleaning up power generation, transportation, industry, & buildings all at the same time yields synergistic effects.

Lou suSi - Clever.... lol !!!!!

It's been done. Robert Redford and Jane Fonda, 1979.

@@williamwingo4740 Wasn't that "The Electric Cowboy"?

@@BryanArd62 "Electric Horseman." Also with Willie Nelson, Valerie Perrine, Wilford Brimley, and John Saxon.
Also some great shots of Las Vegas before it got terminally overbuilt.
Willie Nelson has the line that brings down the house, but I won't repeat it here....

Ie such as an electric scooter or bicycle with range of 10-20 miles for scooters and 30-60 miles for the bike. Horse has about the same range as the scooter for the average horse and about the same range as the bike when accustomed to the riding but the human on the bike would have to be conditioned as well.

In this case this is better. This video is at least 2 Years old and complete BS. His sourced data is about 4-8 years old. Newer studies shows that including also the the full picture on combustion cars, these are less ecological than BEVs at the first driven mile.

@@muten861 Admiral your ship has been sunk

@@mochiebellina8190 I see rising numbers of EVs. Please explain me, where the sunken ship is located.

@@mochiebellina8190 Please

@Fritösen-Admiral you see rising numbers of EVs because that is what is being pushed. That doesn't support your argument and the video said we need more time to improve on the way EVs are made... data gets 'old' the minute it is released

I'm totally with you on the nuclear side. And hydro too but that is more geography specific. In some places it can be virtually impact free on nature while in others it does cause harm.

@@chrisbauer1925 Unfortunately it is not that simple. I am a big fan of nuclear, but for most countries around the world it is not economically possible to go fully nuclear. France, the nuclear superpower, is facing a huge issue having outdated reactors long after the end of life cycle, that will be super expesive to replace/renew, and they might be possibly shut down in near future. Hydro, as you mentioned, can be a local ecological disaster, and also produces co2 and methane due to a large standing body of water with stuff rotting inside, but still, it is one of the cleanest.
Just saying that no solution is easy, and it will take time to mitigate the issues. We should focus on all aspects, not just one. Make solar less toxic, make wind more efficient, nuclear cheaper, use hydro where safe, live less wasteful lives, vote for environmentally aware parties...
Yeah the last two are actually the hardest to achieve

They cause a bigger carbon footprint print then a combustion engine

yes !!!

Great points but Conway works for Southwest Research Institute which does a lot of work with oil and gas and has many patents related to fossil fuels.
He claims that the average cumulative driving emissions for combustion non-hybrid is 30 tons. Over 180k miles that’s about 151g/co2 per mile. The official EPA emissions for a Toyota Camry non hybrid is about 280g/mile. For the hybrid variant about 170g/mile. He is showing data that is off by more than 80% compared to a sedan which isn’t even representative of what average people drive in the US. Take all the trucks and SUVs, the EPA estimates about 350-400g/mile for US average. That drastically changes his argument.

HILARIOUS! As though creating renewable energy doesn't create C02. I'll just throw 2 fun facts (2 of MANY) about wind turbines. 1) Each turbine requires 750 YARDS of concrete! Hmmm... wonder what they did to conjure that up? 2) Each turbine blade has a serviceable life of about 15 years, after which they are removed, then BURIED (they're made of carbon-fiber and are not recyclable) in giant landfills where earthmoving machines carve out shallow graves for them - they are about 120 feet long.

But the same leftists that were screaming about nuclear in the 70's will start screaming again. How do you and Greta handle that?

In my VAST expertise! LOL. Maybe, we could actually get people in Congress that truly understand Neuclear Power and how Clean, Reliable, and Safe it is. Then use it as a "middle" ground between the left and the right????
Whether there truly is global warming and IF it is truly influenced by "Man," no of that matters. We can't depend on fossil fuels forever. There is a limited amount. IF we start to build nuclear power plants again AND continue to use ALL sources of energy until the plants are up and running.....we could be truly "energy independent " (making the right happy) AND truly "Green" (once the vast majority of our power is nuclear) thus making the left happy.
It would be a WIN/WIN.

@@patrickf7182 The carbon payback time of a turbine is generally under a year and for solar cells it's generally less than 3 years. Solar cells have service guarantees starting at 20 years now and I would expect roughly the same from turbines. If a turbine does indeed fail after 15 years, that's still >15x carbon savings. Recycling them is indeed a problem but there is no silver bullet and companies are working on recycling the resins and fiberglass blades.

@@Arkir24 Nuclear Reactors can effectively run in perpetuity. 20 years is not a long time. Not only have companies complained that they didn't last as long as stated, they're going to be replacing them every day.

True, but the total energy cost is still much less.

CO2 is not a pollutant and CO2 concentration is closer to plant starvation than over saturation.

Yes making them recyclable, right?

He also doesn't address what happens when there is no sun and wind? Neither has renewable energy come up with a way to produce enough consistent power to run industry, i.e. smelters & refineries, which product the components needed to make batteries and renewable energy components.

@@lautoka63 No way, the energy cost to produce a wind tower will never be recouped by the wind tower over it's life, not to mention ongoing maintenance, breakdowns and waste when it is decommisioned

Actually wind turbine never produce enough "green" electricity in it's life time to offset CO2 required to build the turbine at the first place

He tells us to view the EV as a whole yet he didn't account for Co2 emissions of processing a barrel of oil to gasoline. One barrel of oil to gas (42 gallons) produces 520 pounds of Co2 (237kg)

It is true to say that todays solar panels have a carbon footprint but as time goes by solar panels and wind etc will gradually replace all carbon emitting manufacturing processes, we have to start somewhere 🙂

@@daliborzak2485 Same thing with solar. Look into tellurium some time, and the whole mountainsides that China has to blow up to keep pace with the US' and Europe's demand for solar panels.

@@captainphoenix Stop cherry picking; stop with the false equivalency. Stop lying.
Total mining in the world will be drastically reduced as we switch to 100% renewable energy. The harm done by mining & other industrial processes would also be dramatically reduced by getting rid of capitalism & the Wetiko disease that causes it.

"Telecommuters work longer hours, have great quality and goof off less."
I absolutely believe in the much better QoL, but you might be an exception when it comes to longer hours (which would suggest *less* QoL, no?) and less goofing off.
I don't have any original data, but I've read that many companies -- including Elon's -- want people back in the office simply because too many apparently don't do quality at-home work. (There's also more meaningful team interaction, I understand, when face-to-face instead of zoom-ing.)

Sweet..

Ya know that Mister Mister lady? I think I killed her...

Telecommuting is a joke for most companies. Productivity falls through the floor.

@@kenalanvoices There are studies coming out about it now. Huge difference... Companies en masse are abandoning telecommuting for this very reason.

Oil production has all of the same problems without the benefit of resulting in carbon free energy.

Wind turbine blades only last 7 years, if that. The neseil which is the main component is 7 years. Depending on whether it's a 3-piece or a four-piece Tower each section is good for 20 years.

And one wind turbine produces barely enough to to power one home lol

@@NSWvet83 what kind of a home is using more than 6 million kwh in a year?

And is oil flying from the ground into the cars? It is shipped with millions of transportation in every possible form causing insane destruction. How many pumps, pipes, ships, trucks etc are built and used purely to transport oil? If we want to caunt in really everything (we must) the picture for oil will look much much worse. How many oil ship disasters have we seen? How many wars and kills for oil fields? I could list all the sh!t that comes with oil all day long..

if recycling were more resource-efficient, it woiuld reflect in prices. but there's no economic incentive to recycle, only political

Interesting observation

we literally just tip plastics collected in recycling trucks down mine shafts in Australia no other country will accept it and the Australian ones that were claiming to recycle were just stockpiling and then illegally dumping

@@JReklis suspicious fires break out in recycling plants from time to time

@@JReklis only use for plastics is to burn them to power recycling plants that can and will process other actually recyclable goods.

Or how much energy and waste it takes to make solar cells. And how that's pushed off to other countries so all the pollution is NIMBY.

@@A3Kr0n green believers don't have a problem polluting other parts of the world or they would demand they be built and manufactured in the U.S. which has strict laws. Of course, that will cost more and the is the crux of the problem. They want green, but it has to be cheap.

And the impact on the environment of old dead batteries. It is really startling to think that fossil fuels overall may be better, especially the cleaner kinds such as Natural Gas, etc. Our research keeps making us dumber...

@@davidlemons5650 plus combustion engines don’t necessarily have to be run on fossil fuels.

They are recycled like other valuable materials

Using recycled batteries is cheaper & better for the environment, but also, as the tech has moved on, you'll probably get much more range from the same amount of matetials.

Because it doesn’t feed greed …

@@m3photo726 what doesn’t feed greed and whose greed are you talking about?

@@johnoliver1207 Come on man use some imagination. Whose greed indeed… Try Exxon, Chevron, Shell, to name just a few.

The French are still using and building Nuclear power plants aren't they. So all is not lost.

Because nuclear is "scary". Chernobyl, 3 mile Island, Fukushima are still in people's minds. Though Fukushima only slightly elevated background radiation and 3 Mile Island wasn't really an accident.

There are studies that prove that the CO2 produced for manufacturing processes for cars with petrol/diesel engines versus battery operated cars are similar. So the CO2 produced is less with the electric car.

Excellent response to this video which has a very misleading & much too narrow perspective.

I get 6.5 to 7 L/100 with my Outback in Alberta by driving to conserve instead of 10 or 29 k above the limit.
This guy is correct, in the future for most people when tech is higher.

If only everything was true.

Its a bs steel man of ice vehicles and has no basis in reality... AI will be able to scan all this documentation and hold all these people responsible one day.

CO2 feeds all life. CO2 cannot heat anything.

Have people heard of bicycles. No one is above taking the bus or the Subway. Have you have seen how obese many people are. Tell me I am correct.

Probably right about the same like the "recycling" of wind turbines at their often far-earlier end of life than modelled...the glass-fibre parts get burned in waste incineration plants (or buried in the earth), the concrete foundations are simply covered up with soil (because they are not usable for more modern turbines) and the shaft of the turbines are the only thing that see a second life as raw material. Batteries up to this day can't be recycled without absurd amounts of new power, ruining every calculation at being "clean"...

MIT had a study. I don't know much about it but it gave the number 12X the energy to get rid of an electric vehicle. Furthermore, batteries need special storage because of the toxic chemicals they contain.

@@1s3ngr1m Well said and great points.

Not to mention outsourcing the mining and environmental damage to 3rd world developing countries, as well as national security issues when the resources are under Chinese/Russian direct or indirect control.

@@cliffc2546 and how many birds of prey these chopping fans kill every year and the ridiculous sound they make etc

@@urbanothepopeofdeath Statistics show that a vastly larger number of bird deaths are due to collisions with windows in buildings rather than the wind farms, UTPOD.

@@ljprep6250 so what you are saying is 300-500k birds are still killed by by wind farms, and buildings add another 500k + bird deaths a year.

@@gqrob28 "statistics"...

@John Dulio How much CO2 released in building a nuclear plant?

@John Dulio The only question that answers is the way we always did it.
Q: "Do we know if this new product will cause harm to the earth in the future?"
A: "No. We will have nuclear waste. It's dangerous and we don't know what to do with it exactly except store it for the next few years."
Q: "Do we care?"
A: "No, let's go!"

@@4nz-nl Nuclear waste can be used to produce many useful things like ammo and export products.

@@gabbymcgibson984 yes, many useful things, depleted uranium ammunition, nuclear weapons. The CO2 emissions from a limited nuclear exchange destroying, say, five cities, should probably factor into the equation.

@@seabirdsolar We must figure out a way to cycle it. Possibly trap it in a food supply aquaponic system.

I don’t know where you got these figures.The IEA reports that less than 4% of worldwide energy production comes from wind and solar.10% is energy still comes from wood.Your data is obviously inaccurate.
These “renewable “ numbers come after worldwide expenditures of around 10 trillion dollars.This entire artificial industry will lead to the economic destruction of the West if it’s allowed to continue unabated.China and India continue their coal plant expansion and play no part in our virtue signaling idiocy except the supplying of our toys ,wind and solar manufacturing,and flooding the market with BEV’s that can’t be given away.

LOL. no one is disputing that. The problem is, the claim that EV's are emissions free is an complete and utter lie. Now the question for you is, "How about the emissions from the TOTAL production of EV's". That includes everything required in the production of EV's.

You presume no local power, this is why many Tesla Superchargers have Solar arrays supplying them …

Nor did he mention the co2 produced in manufacturing solar panels and wind turbines which is enormous! And let's not get into having to replace them due to a short lifespan. Nor shall we mention their disposal impacts on the environment. He deliberately mislead his audience in the end!

@@chrisbraid2907 But the CO2 produced by producing your car is enormous and you would have to drive it well past the time you would probably own it to offset that.

Like the global infrastructure that needed to be built to support the gasoline industry (an infrastructure that will soon be useless as we run out of fossil fuels).
Electric stations should be standalone and solar powered, we know this can be done.

never mind half the human race doesn't even have electricity right now. how are they MAKING that electricity they are charging the cars with...? hrmm yep.

Just let the free market determine their progress. No government subsidies.

@@bluedog562: The Pilgrims Gov. Thomas Bradford discovered that principle in the 1620's! I.E. government playing God brought only death & disharmony ! Then ha switched to a Free Market economy, and the rest was history, tell today's back to the 1620's all over again like déjà vu!

@@bluedog562 OK. Let’s stop subsidizing oil then. Oil and gas receive faaar more money than EVs. You want the market to be free, yeah?

@@jonathanfields4ever absolutely. No corporate subsidies or bail outs.

@@bluedog562 Alright. I appreciate the consistency.

And no mention of the manufacturing costs of oil rigs. Your comment is utterly dishonest. Solar is often feasible - think deserts - where arable farming is not. Wind power production can be done in a manner that does not require taking land out of production. Not that you're biased or anything.

@@grahamnicholls6070dishonest? Here in Central Indiana we have thousands of windmills that sit on farmlands that once produced crops. Your response was not dishonest, but based on ignorance

@@grahamnicholls6070 good luck powering South America or Europe via desert sun. The cost, power loss and upkeep of sending the power back would far outweigh the potential benefits. Cleaning the vast array of cells that would be required power these places would also be another problem (regular dust storms in the desert). Nuclear (fission and fusion) is our only option.

they don’t TILL anymore haven’t for DECADES !

@@saugerriver5769 you are parsing words. Here in indiana farmers till their land and your reading comprehension is questionable.

well well well, how are the freakin batteries produced pal???

Hey mate, that's another important aspect to put into the equation. I would like to see a video where all aspects of production, maintenance, and end-of-life for these products are compared. By this, I mean all the money spent on research, extraction, etc., for battery materials, including all the associated ecological damage, and the same goes for the production of both electric and internal combustion engines. In short, with concrete data, which of the two is ultimately less polluting?@@wrends

yeah, and how about the energy loss on the power lines? and the maintenance, spare parts for the power lines?

@@RidwanRidwan-tq7rxyeah that’s another valid point! I would love to see a complete study about it! And how they produce the electricity, what’s the cost involved etc.

Yes. Ultimately it's is a cycle. Eventually the produced CO2 would get sequestered at the bottom of the ocean and deposited as new coal, oil etc. The problem is that this cycle is extremely long at least on our civilization scale (we are talking about 10 -100 million years).
We have been here as a species for a couple 100k. Some 10k since the end of Stone Age. We burned all fossil fuels so far in like 200 years.
The natural cycle is just too slow to be useful to us.

Because fossil fuels bring in long stored 'co2 deposits'. If you bring that in, you also need to get that back out in a similar way. Sure the planet itself can deal with such a long term cycle, but most current life (including us) can't. There are attempts at putting co2 back underground for long term storage similar to how the gas ,coal and oil was locked away, but these are very very expensive systems and not very efficient.

And oil extraction or construction of drilling equipment doesn't emit CO2?

@@Javaman21011 Of course oil extraction emits co2, just less than rare earth materials.

@@gordcross1266 you got data
to back that up?
Also, the oil extraction is constant for the life of the vehicle whereas the rare earth metals are only during production of the vehicle.

At around 8:15 he does address the mining of rare earth minerals.

@@sayeager5559 Fair enough. I think I missed that chart on first watch.

And the end-to-end costs of the use of fossil fuels, funny how you forget to mention those.

@@grahamnicholls6070 The point is not mutually exclusive as you appear to presume. Failure to mention the one should not necessarly lead to a conclusion that the poster was ignoring the other. In environmental engineering cradle-to-grave is a "GIVEN" and it's not defined by a person's (perceived) biases of winners or losers - it applies to all that is relevant to the topic.

People need to stop falling for the "OOOH, CO2 is a villain!" CO2 feeds everything on earth.

@@clivephillips4021 plant life is essential to feed animal life, if an animal doesn't eat plants it eats another animal that does, that's the food chain. Plants need CO2 as much as animals need oxygen. At times in the earth's history the CO2 level in the atmosphere was far higher than it is now, these periods saw very abundant growth of plant life and this is what reduced the atmospheric levels of CO2 to what we see now. It is very important that the tropical rain forests be preserved as these are the world's oxygen factory, this factor is not talked about in the global warming debate as these mostly third world countries would object. The warming crowd complains that the snows of Mt. Kilimanjaro in tropical Africa are disappearing, when the mountain was surrounded by a rain forest that supplied the waters to make the snow, that forest has been depleted by uncontrolled logging and the use of wood as a cooking fuel in Africa, bring the forest back and the snow will return, stay on the current path and the Sahara will get larger.

He tells us to view the EV as a whole yet he didn't account for Co2 emissions of processing a barrel of oil to gasoline. One barrel of oil to gas (42 gallons) produces 520 pounds of Co2 (237kg)

"There is also the consideration of generating electricity on large scale vs small scale usage of fuel"
There is also battery charging/discharging losses to consider.
The thermal problem with batteries needing their own cooling system is its own efficiency drain on electric cars - both the battery losses and the cooling system power + weight.
"I personally don't understand why more money isn't being put into geothermal and infra red energy harvesting"
1) Geothermal will get a boosted by a move to use gyrotrons (like magnetrons for megawatt power output) to increase drilling efficiency for reaching the much deeper super hot rock layer that most of the world (outside the active geological zones) needs for viable geothermal power - this drops the price of drilling to about $500k instead of $millions.
2) Infra red energy harvesting is already utilised in some variants of solar power, specifically thermophotovoltaic cells which have an extra layer of energy harvesting material to absort IR which is reflected back when the main PV cell heats up from absorbing bandwidths of light it cannot convert.

I like norways approach to using hydro. Sadly here the intent is on demolishing our dam systems. And everybody is afraid of nuclear, so we’re sold the idea that solar and wind are adequate. Nobody seems to be approaching reservoir or mass-based energy storage and only wants to talk about batteries. It’s like they think the sun and wind are always there and batteries just pop out of a factory with no environmental repercussions. I almost don’t even think it’s about clean energy anymore.

He also did not factor in the cost of building renewable generated power, or the cost of maintaining an electricity network, or the energy cost to transmit electricity, or the fact that the batteries currently being used in our electric cars will only last for around 60,000 miles.

@@mnomadvfx there was a company that had a working prototype IR panel about 10 years ago, using micro antennae. I haven't seen anything about it for a long time - it was shown on a program about transmitting energy wirelessly

I just wrote a comment on exactly the same problem.
And there's also the thing where he artifically inflated the CO2 costs of an electric vehicle by insisting that it needs to have a 400 mile range.

Nuclear energy is the obvious answer, send the waste to the moon or mars or China...

The first nuclear power plants were invented in the 1950’s. By the 1970’s the U.S.A. stopped building them, because they were dangerous (3 mile island). So, they stopped building them around 20 years from conception, won’t build new ones with technology and safety improvements made in the last 50 years, thus 70 years since inception. And they weren’t so bad that they tore them all down. I don’t see the logic. Yes existing plants have a had some improvements but that’s not at the same level as better designs from scratch. Proof in the pudding: France is mostly nuclear powered and has had no major incidents. Another topic is to make smaller nuclear plants that are much easier to manage in the event of an incident. It’s not like half the size is half the danger, I think it’s closer to exponential than 1:1. More smaller plants distributes generation, lesser affects of a plant going offline, shorter distances (which create loss), etc. I read an article on Wikipedia about micro nuke plants the size of a truck that can be operated remotely for underdeveloped countries. So, imho there is a lot of merit to your inquiry and a lot of information and technology developed in the last 50 out of 70 years.

Nuclear is the only alternative. Wind and solar don't work, because grid storage batteries don't exist.

@@chrisidema They exist it is just at that scale and the current level of tech are great big toxic waste bombs waiting to go off.

@@kenkoehler594 I often wonder if governments consider nuclear plants as easy, catastrophic targets during war, and therefore don't want to build them.

Absolutely! This part of the equation seems to be forgotten more than anything else.

It also doesn't take into account the amount of co2 created in the manufacture of every and their batteries.

@@ksteiger and the giant holes in the earth mining materials for this..

Yes, his analysis is flawed based on the omission of an assessment of the carbon generated drilling and distributing fossil fuels

That's assuming CO2 is bad. guess what plants need it to survive and at the preindustrial levels plants were starving for food (CO2) that's why commercial greenhouses BURN NATURAL GAS to pump CO2 into their greenhouses to make their plants grow better LOL. . Well about your argument how about the CO2 for all transporting digging up the rare earth minerals for the batteries... shipping the rare earth minerals to china to make the batteries , shipping the batteries somewhere to make the cars shipping the cars back to the US or wherever, transporting the let's say Teslas to the show room .... burning the coal to power the Tesla to drive on the asphalt made from oil, to use the stoplights, powered by coal , dug from the ground, shipped by train, using a diesel , to a coal fired power plant that Jack built, so that Elon can shoot rockets into the air for joyrides that produce untold amounts of CO2 AND pollutants, built on the kids in the Congo with cobalt lung. good day

Tell me that you have no experience in the auto/diesel industry without telling me that you have no experience in the field

@@jorgecabrera3694 hahahaha. If you only knew.

@@bobbycone2 I do know. I'm a mechanic with a background in auto/diesel and aviation.

@@jorgecabrera3694 I meant if you only knew about me.

The most efficient solar capture devices are plants (vegetation), and the efficiency would be increased if the CO2 levels were higher.

@John Dulio yup

Watch the documentary “ planet of the humans” .

Michael Shellenberger has a tedx talk on exactly that and lo and behold, they aren’t great either. Nuclear power is the answer

Nobody is stopping you except yourself.

😂

Interesting how he applied “inside the box” thinking to wind and solar. Totally agree with Sapper6N.

Yes, and all those metals that have to be mined,refined, machined, and transported to assembly plants to build the ICE based drive trains that require hundreds of parts.

@@makerspace533 Well said MakerSpace. I’d go a little further. Any man made thing has a negative environmental impact when it’s creation, use, support, maintenance and salvage are accounted for inside the box. Any “green” product description leaves me suspicious of motive.

Also renewable energy plants such as wind and solar do not last a long as traditional power plants. That being said conventional cars don't require power plants to fuel the car, only to manufacture. Conventional cars do however require fuel processing, but most of these drilling sites are already active. I would totally love to see another video comparing all of these other factors. Great video, lets keeps looking at all the factors before committing to electric. Others mentioned the impact on the ozone from the electric motor also.

@Colgateras Yes, in fact a study showed solar panels in places like Delhi are likely to increase output by 10-12% as fossil fuel use decreases.

Word salad

Waiting for u to debunk his facts

@@vrrnonorem4266 It’s actually uncountable and I’m gonna rush right now maybe I’ll get back to this later on but I’m tired of defending electric I’ve heard every damn argument there is about it pros and cons and I’m going electric.

We have the same argument in New Zealand but both our countries have some of the worst emissions per capita in the world.

Can't argue, except to say the polluting countries will not feel any pressure to "clean up" until clean becomes the norm. If no one takes the first step then the solution will never come.

Exactly

The TED speaker's information applies to an EV with a 125mile range. That means it isn't a Tesla. Every Tesla has 200mile+ range. Teslas have more efficient motors and batteries so they use a smaller battery to produce a longer range. This is true even 2 years ago when Conway made this speech and batteries have come a long way since then. The EV revolution is here. EVs are better than ICE cars in pretty much every way, except for long road trips where charging will take longer than filling up with gas. It doesn't matter who gets involved to speed up or slow down the transition to EVs. There are countless websites and videos on youtube where you can learn about the pros and cons of EVs.

don't rely on this guy! He doesn't know half of what is out there now, and is just trying to create a name for himself with his false claims!

@@Hardwaregeekx 200 mile range means bigger batteries more carbon to produce. tesla vehicles do not use any parts that are not used by other manufacturers. tesla hasn't created any new technology, thats just spin.

@@Hardwaregeekx tesla also recycles all their batteries at the end of life. Also his button hypothetical doesn’t make sense bc you can’t have the tech without the infrastructure. And the infrastructure enables technology to succeed. So if you can’t have one without the other then it’s a bad example. Id push that button every time.
Here’s a button changes all your horses into cars and then what? It doesn’t make sense. The competition driving evs now will make batteries more efficient through the need to sell vehicles. In 10 years newly manufactured ice cars will be exotics. Using California as a barometer, as the industry does, last year tesla took 2 of the top 5 slots for most cars sold losing just barely to Toyota. Electric vehicles are spreading so fast and nobody should be slowing them down based on his charts we should be speeding them up.
Oh and go nuclear. Get over the fear and just go nuclear asap. This whole anti nuclear thing has gone too far. It’s safer, cleaner, more efficient than any other form of generating electricity and it’s not used out of stupidity.

@@TaylerMade you’ve obviously never been in a Tesla or driven one to say that “they have created no new technology” that’s a statement born of ignorance.

INDEED

Instead of legislating the duration of durability, why not consider a model where the manufacturer of "durable" goods takes back and legally disposes of the product when it reaches the end of its useful like. One such model is where consumers would buy the service the product performs but not the product itself - the product would continued to be "owned" by the company that produced it. When it ceases to perform the service purchased that company would take it back and dispose of it.

How about you make these products yourself see how that works out. As you sit around your house or apartment surrounded by all the goods you own that were produced with the help of fossil fuels. Not to mention the grid that’s powering your computer , lights Tv, stove , fridge, etc., etc, etc, Thank You, John D. Rockefeller for providing us with cheap abundant fossil fuel.

Sure, make the " government" more of a baby sitter.

Or stop killing people who make engines that run on hydrogen.....

It isn't challenging at all recycling batteries uses less than 5% of the energy that mining the materials does and is a simple well understood process.

Can't these batteries be reused?

@@joshuarhoades5569 Yes, but its less expensive to landfill them. So what do you think happens to them?

@@robertportillo7723 Landfill them? Sounds like a problem

@@joshuarhoades5569 yes they can and they are

@@MyVideosDon I agree. Thank you. Efficiently is best for nuclear energy if we put politics aside. But we are not smart…we should study France versus Germany

He should put his CO2 model he uses for vehicles into the renewable generation. In other words, how long will a wind turbine have to run to offset the CO2 produced from its manufacture

There should be a massive box around the CO2 required to mine, refine, and transport the gasoline and oil required. The comparison is not apples to apples.

Biologically correct farming (Johnson, U of NM) could, just by itself, reverse overall CO2 flow.

Yes to be in balance the processes taken together are CO2 neutral. E.g. manufacturing hydrocarbons from CO2 and water, then burning them. The plants are always at work in any case, so just burning oil adds net CO2.
Increasing plants would decrease CO2.

The biggest emitters of C02 are people, maybe that's why Dims are trying to kill so many.

Yes and interestingly the combustion engine burns O2 when running....

@@McUser1965 combustion engines burns oxygen, not gasoline??? Not on this planet!!

More than anything, it's just that EVs aren't cost-effective yet. They still use much less energy to drive than ICE vehicles, and they're compatible with any energy source. That's the whole point. They have plenty of potential--but, it doesn't matter if there's no cost advantage. Better in any way doesn't matter if they cost too much.

​@@devilsoffspring5519 $20,000 more on average than an ICE. not too many people can justify that.

@@amorgan5844 Never mind justifying it, affording it is the more important issue. I'd love a Tesla or similar "normal" style electric car with a decent range, but £30k-£40k is just insanely unaffordable. My cars are usually bought used for around £6k and last another 5-7 years after I buy them. I think that is far more sustainable at the moment, both environmentally and financially on a personal level.

But the truth is, the US has the cleanest air in the world, and Gas Vehicles are no problem in the first place.

@@amorgan5844 Not many can justify the exorbitant price of many mainstream ICE cars, either. They buy them because they have no choice--they gotta get to work somehow.

I interviewed a top energy expert on my home page vid. A must watch interview. The expert warns that EV conversion will not happen and oil can never be replaced.

@@ChannelNews1 You should stop promoting people who either don’t know what they’re talking about or are lying because they have serious emotional problems. Why are you doing it?

Plus, what person not named Michael Jordan can afford a Tesla?

Funny enough, I rarely ever do 260 miles in one go 😂, I must rest every 180 miles or so

@@markusstevens9547 they're not that expensive, dude.

Your numbers are wrong. You don't loose that much range unless you drive like a maniac

Ford 150 Lightning EV range is down to only 90 miles while pulling a trailer.

I'd like to see the cost of the Middle East Wars and the CO2 released during them factored into the cost of the gasoline cars. Veterans benefits etc. You know, let be honest about it.

In addition, we should calculate the value of moving the pollution to more unpopulated areas. Better health for humans. All pollutants need to be included. not just CO2

Have you seen a gold mine? Or a coal mine? Talk about scorched earth.

Missing a ton of things actually, like what it takes to make 'renewables' like solar etc. Solar isn't actually a good thing at all in how we currently build them. Also those batteries in both solar systems and electric cars are not recyclable so no one is talking about the waste generated from them. All in all conventional cars and conventional energy are actually better for the environment than any of these 'renewable' and 'green' alternatives.

@@haitchteeceeeightnineeight5571 Nothing like lithium mining which takes 500,000 gallons of water to mine one metric ton of lithium. How long before all that leeches into soil and waterways?

@@pylotlight How many batteries (that are not recyclable) will a electric car need to make it on the roads 20 years? I have a 2000 lexus and a 2003 acura both still on the road to this day all original with 200k miles + lets see this from an electric vehicle

Cobalt (a necessary element for EVs) is a blood metal in the Congo, the world largest sourse of it. China owns the most mines in the DRC, by far. There's a YT video by WION.

@Fabien Heitz Yeah, I noticed that too.

He tells us to view the EV as a whole yet he didn't account for Co2 emissions of processing a barrel of oil to gasoline. One barrel of oil to gas (42 gallons) produces 520 pounds of Co2 (237kg)

He missed a lot out. This was a little biased, I felt.

Just like it has been left out the environmental costs of offshore oil platforms, tankers and massive refineries, imagine the co2 that went into building those?

@@jaytheblader6701 'Imagine'... Sure that sounds like some solid numbers you have there.

@@jaytheblader6701 oil is much more power dense that any renewable source. The only thing better is nuclear.

Change is hard, I know.

@@jaytheblader6701 and all of that has lead us to the point where we can pivot...a delicate point of balance of change...we need eclectic not electric...but we need to move away from oil.

It's not about E vs F anymore. We need to understand that we cannot afford the amount of personal transport we are using right now.

It is called recycling, it is up to 98% recovery of all minerals. Today, not down the line.

Ditto

@@MyUniversalUniversity exactly, but how many current batteries are recyclable?

It won’t be our problem .we out scource our problems nowadays .

Ride on , love horses 🐎, and I have ridden them .

Horses are one of the most dangers form of transportation on the planet.
You better look into it before getting a horse.

I don't want to go back to the time where the average life expectancy is 50. Where there is no such thing as online shopping. Where your best product is for own use and not for the whole world to enjoy.

If we abandoned motorized transport and tried to rely on horses at least half the population of the world would die of starvation.

Probably because he's a REAL scientist and not just yakking for political points.

@Aqua Fyre the 1st Prius I purchased in 2005 new and we loved it. Wife needed a car so we purchased a new 2021 Prius since we both worked in opposite directions. So poof, we have two Prius vehicles. One gets about 50mpg and the new Prius gets about 65mpg. Great vehicles, great miles per gallon.

@Aqua Fyre BTW: We lived in California and now live in Nevada, we live about 20 miles to most big box stores and there is no mass transit available in our area. 🤓

except no where near as high as coal and oil.

We are running out of coal and oil. Also, coal and oil, etc., are geopolitical as in Ukraine, and geopolitical energy creates conflict and wars.

If you do that, then count all the wars fought over oil and gas. And the consequences of the wars (e.g. starvation resulting from the Russian 'special operation'). Add in oil spills, air pollution, oil pipelines, etc.

@@chrismartin7579 Also take into account petroleum is used extensively in building and operating electric cars.

Increasing the atmospheric CO2 has always increased the biomass on Earth. Want larger forests and higher tree lines? Increasing the atmospheric CO2 will increase the size of forests as it has for 50 million years. This was proven in green houses and the Biosphere and the fossilized plankton beds.
Conversely, decreasing atmospheric CO2 decreases the Earth's biomass and at/below 200ppm everything dies off significantly.

Solar panel recycling is already done very well in Europe. So it is possible, no obstacle there.
Battery recycling is indeed much harder but there already are companies doing it. But most importantly, after EV batteries degrade enough to need replacing they still have enough capacity to be used for grid storage. So they can have a much longer lifespan then the car itself.

@@walterschwarz29 unfortunately recycling is a hoax as well as using old batteries for grid storage. It's a fantasy, not realistic, no rules or laws will change this. Electric vehicles have a place but they will not replace a diesel nor gas motor, with gas motors becoming more efficient, albeit more than an electric motor in some cases, and types of diesel becoming cleaner as well as electrics not having the range of diesel as well as making that electricity does and will produce pollution. Can't have it both ways and you're blind if you don't look at the WHOLE PICTURE.

@@walterschwarz29 recycling also uses lots of chemicals for leeching and separation and lots of energy as well. Recycling is not a green process.

1) The cells in the battery from an electric are still useful after it is no longer suitable for a car, those batteries can be repurposed such as in stationary storage. They do not need to be 'disposed'. 2) Over 90% of the materials in those batteries can be recovered and reused. And this can be done more cheaply than mining new materials. They do not need to be disposed. Please remind me how much of car exhaust can be recovered and reused.

But you are ignoring the fact that there is already solid state batteries being made by Toyota that get rid of the environmental impact almost all together.
the production of EV's will get cleaner while Petrol cars won't change much.
Also the battery life of an EV is far longer already then the general lifespan of a Petrol car. If we take the usual 300KM as write off point you can already fit 3 petrol cars in the distance of an EV.
so that changes the whole game a lot.

30 US Tons for 180.000 miles = 151 g/mile CO2 emission, for the "conventional car" (gasoline, non hybrid)
Find that car, average human...

Thank you for making this point.
His new box for measuring CO2 doesn’t include the resources needed to make, maintain, & replace “green” energy sources.
When you include those, there is no electric energy future and the eclectic one will likely include more horses. 😮

Steven you may well be correct when you say “…there is no electric energy future…” though when you also include the environmental damage and resources needed to make and maintain fossil fuel energy sources, then the suns energy effects are far less damaging in comparison.
Air pollution in Australia alone is estimated to cost $11billion/year and if you put a price on the estimated number of deaths caused by air pollution alone that figure doubles.

@dondevine
Also the end of life cycle (approx every 20 years) pollution of wind turbines and solar panels societal cost to recycle, demolish, landfill etc.
These costs are huge and are always left out of these discussions.

@@elrolo3711 No one has yet mentioned the environmental damage of disposing of the useless/old/'dead' battery. Building facilities that contain the seepage of chemicals from the battery into the soil?

@@elrolo3711 It's funny that the fossil fuel advocates so often point at the end-of-life costs of green technologies; but never at the externalities for fossil fuel generation. Of course, fossil fuel extraction has zero cost to the environment. Clearing up old coal mines is simple - just cover the hole with a lid, and we're done.
The old argument was "solar is expensive"; stay with fossil. Compare that with nuclear, which is the most expensive form of energy generation once development - and more importantly, cleanup and contingency - costs are factored in. Solar, after some development cost, is the cheapest form of generation. Offshore wind, and tidal need more investment, and also the creation of storage infrastructure, which will be expensive, of course, but what are we to do anyway when the oil runs out, and the planet is so hot that we expend ever more energy in simply moving heat energy from where it is undesirable? Simply crying that "renewable energy has externalities" is utterly disingenuous, or merely uninformed, but in either case is wrong.

U are right. However, there are many cities and places the government can't afford enough public transport to make sure citizens can travel from one place to another place as same as driving themselves. If the government can do that, there's no need to drive their own cars.

Battery storage would be enormous. Imagine the power to transport a vehicle and its contents between recharge either very short lived or enormous explosion hazards in any accidents.

your third sentence is confusing, I'm not really sure what your stance is lol. but the concept of the CO2 in horses being in a cycle that the CO2 from corvettes is not, is derived from the corvette CO2 coming from the ground, a closed system, but is now in the open atmosphere, increasing the overall amount of gasses filling our air and increasing the burden we put on plants to convert it to oxygen.

Additionally, a combustion engine releases Carbon MONOXIDE not Carbon Dioxide. CO = not good - CO² = Fourth building block of life itself.

@@isaacringling3823 A part is a reasoning that falls in the category of CO2 capturing. But CO2 only stays captured in the wooden parts of trees if we don't let the plants die and rot (that releases almost all the CO2!). So every year the amount of excess CO2 needs to be captured by new planted trees. Died trees should be shot to Mars (to there create a biosphere) in a CO2-free rocket 😄
The other part is that higher levels of CO2 give raise to plants absorbing more CO2 (larger plants). But as plants die, it doesn't help to reduce the effective CO2.

Unless heat and drought kill the plants…….

@@JohanHaspeslagh what are houses made from?

And ocean liners produce more pollution than anything.

Money is king, and unless or until that changes, nothing else will, - unless there is a lot of money to be made from it!

I think it'd be nice if more companies could would make the batteries easily disassemble-able...like the Leaf. Maybe the new 4680s will enable that. That being said, we're a long way from battery recycling being an issue. Used EV batteries still pull in quite a premium because of the diy market.

@@willburk you can always reuse the modules. It's the modules that are glued and welded. That's were the diy market comes in. The issue is that once those go you have no other choice but to try and take them apart to recycle. The pack is made up of many modules. For instance on a new SUV we used 2 layers increasing the storage from the standard ones which are anywhere from 80 to 140 kwh to 208 kwh. This is accomplished by just adding an additional layer of modules.

@@ericaarseth7811 OMG, I think you might be right! Have you contacted the media about this? If you could just get on the Ed Sullivan Show and explain it to America, we might be able to solve the problems. Elon Musk said he was going to fix the problems, but then he di'nt. I was very disappointed about that. But I really think you're onto something brilliant with the "money" angle. I heard one of those nice ladies on The View mention it, but she di'nt really go into detail. This story could really blow the lid off the Deep State! I'm not gonna be able to sleep tonight...

It is easy to talk about numbers, needs the facts to support it.

His numbers are totally exaggerated to help his claim, which is why you see no sources.

But before references he needs to talk about the CO2 created of drilling oil, transporting it, refining it, and transporting it again.

@@Sam-gf1eb yes! And the environmental damage of oil spills.

and then there's the total energy output required to mine, manufacture and maintain solar and wind farms.. not to mention what happens to these sources when they all degrade..

I can’t figure out what side this guy is on.