Ireland Declares Climate Emergency

[Ketron]

I think the ICE engine will eventually die when we reach the stage where we can efficiently generate electricity. At the moment I firmly believe electric cars are a total cod, yes they are warranted in large cities to reduce smog, pollutants etc. but its not fooling anyone on how that power is generated. Coal primarily (or worse turf in our case!), wind is great but the fact a generator has to be kept on standby (running not generating electricity) makes it seem a bit daft and wasteful. Gas powered turbines can circumvent this due to quick starting time (Germany is rolling out loads) but until we get to terms with nuclear power, I think half of this is an exercise in stupidity. For the consumer yes it's great due to tax reliefs, but from an environmental impact point of view it makes little difference.

As Dergside mentioned one of the primary causes of greenhouse gases is methane from agriculture. Maybe we should go vegan and drive V8s :P

[dergside]

Maybe we should go vegan and drive V8s :P

Could I not do the vegan bit, and offset it by running a straight or V 6?

[Peter-E36]

Could I not do the vegan bit, and offset it by running a straight or V 6?

What if I know a Vegan who doesn't own a car.... Can I have my straight 6 and a V8?

[dergside]

What if I know a Vegan who doesn't own a car....

I can see a whole new level of carbon credit trading taking off!

[Peter-E36]

Buying carbon credit on the dark web in order to put a V8 on the road in 2032

[318is-joe]

There are definitely things that we as a species are doing spectacularly wrong. Plastic is absolutely everywhere, comes from oil you know, so what is all the wrapping doing to the two courgettes you buy in a tray and wrapped in film doing to the carbon footprint of two courgettes?
The entire E vehicle thing for me is a complete crock, we could have windmills all day but where the hell does the power to charge these e-vehicles come from?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/03/...el-3-inventory
If you want to get technical about it, the laws of thermodynamics dictate that every time you convert one energy form to another, energy is constant, it cannot be lost. It can and does get converted into other forms depend on how it is transmitted - it's not for nothing that main power get's converted to high tension (still with losses associated with heat) and the phrase "cooking on gas" didn't come from nothing!
What I'm saying is, the closer you can harness the stoichiometric energy of a fuel the more efficient it is. If you burn Gas to create 2 KW's then transmit it from a power station on a HT transmission network it "could" lose .5Kw thats 25% loss before it ever has to trickle into a battery to be further depleted before being used - aside form the fact the carbon footprint of just making an e-vehicle exceed running a diesel for it's typical lifetime.
You could go nuclear and we probably are (even though we don't admit it in Ireland) that cable between wales and Ireland doesn't mean we are proponents for nuclear fission technology. they just do it in wales and uk. We're green!

[Big H]

aside form the fact the carbon footprint of just making an e-vehicle exceed running a diesel for it's typical lifetime.

Therin lies a big issue - mulltiple journalists investigting same have been stonewalled by the manufacturers. What is the end-to-end CO2 output from an electric vehicle ?

What is the carbon footprint from mining the lithium/other elements from the ground that go into e-car batteries, coupled with the manufacturing/assembly process ? Nobody truely knows and the vehicle manufacturers are certainly not going to/probably never will divulge this info.....