Are electric cars the solution?

spicyayam

Well-Known Member
Jan 12, 2009
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C&P from Facebook, but I thought it would make for an interesting discussion...

Batteries, they do not make electricity – they store electricity produced elsewhere, primarily by coal, uranium, natural gas-powered plants, or diesel-fueled generators. So, to say an EV is a zero-emission vehicle is not at all valid.

Also, since forty percent of the electricity generated in the U.S. is from coal-fired plants, it follows that forty percent of the EVs on the road are coal-powered, do you see?"
But that is not half of it. For those of you excited about electric cars and a green revolution, I want you to take a closer look at batteries and also windmills and solar panels.
A typical EV battery weighs one thousand pounds, about the size of a travel trunk. It contains twenty-five pounds of lithium, sixty pounds of nickel, 44 pounds of manganese, 30 pounds cobalt, 200 pounds of copper, and 400 pounds of aluminum, steel, and plastic. Inside are over 6,000 individual lithium-ion cells.

To manufacture each EV auto battery, you must process 25,000 pounds of brine for the lithium, 30,000 pounds of ore for the cobalt, 5,000 pounds of ore for the nickel, and 25,000 pounds of ore for copper. All told, you dig up 500,000 pounds of the earth's crust for one battery."

The main problem with solar arrays is the chemicals needed to process silicate into the silicon used in the panels. To make pure enough silicon requires processing it with hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, nitric acid, hydrogen fluoride, trichloroethane, and acetone. In addition, they also need gallium, arsenide, copper-indium-gallium- diselenide, and cadmium-telluride, which also are highly toxic. Silicon dust is a hazard to the workers, and the panels cannot be recycled.

Windmills are the ultimate in embedded costs and environmental destruction. Each weighs 1688 tons (the equivalent of 23 houses) and contains 1300 tons of concrete, 295 tons of steel, 48 tons of iron, 24 tons of fiberglass, and the hard to extract rare earths neodymium, praseodymium, and dysprosium. Each blade weighs 81,000 pounds and will last 15 to 20 years, at which time it must be replaced. We cannot recycle used blades.

There may be a place for these technologies, but you must look beyond the myth of zero emissions.

"Going Green" may sound like the Utopian ideal but when you look at the hidden and embedded costs realistically with an open mind, you can see that Going Green is more destructive to the Earth's environment than meets the eye, for sure.

I'm not opposed to mining ,electric vehicles, wind or solar. But showing the reality of the situation.
 

Markit

Well-Known Member
Sep 3, 2007
9,317
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Karangasem, Bali
To get excited about this "disclosure" you first need to be a full on believer in anthropomorphic global warming and massively worried about what happens when the planet warms up some AND think coal, oil, diesel electricity generation is the least bad option.

I'm a triple NO on these.

Me I want an electric motorbike - 0 to 60 in 3 seconds! Wow that ring around your neck will actually be your asshole.
 

Balifrog

Well-Known Member
Dec 30, 2017
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Maybe before dramatizing about the causes of global warming, have a look....
2019-Revision-–-World-Population-Growth-1700-2100-772x550.png

images-1.png
And all of us expect AC, TV, internet and air plane travel....
 

SamD

Active Member
Sep 7, 2006
612
187
43
Seminyak
Maybe before dramatizing about the causes of global warming, have a look....
View attachment 3604

View attachment 3605
And all of us expect AC, TV, internet and air plane travel....
Yes.I do, and it is all possible and more if we use natural resources and our technological and scientific knowledge to adapt to a changing world. The greenies want an ideologically driven change to society, not a market driven change. They want to force you to buy an EV because that is their religious belief, not because it is better than a Petrol Landcruiser. Screw them is what I say.
 
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