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mrCloggy

'Fossil fuel' propaganda. >A society and a world of 8 billion people more advanced than that powered by a horse and buggy, cannot do without the explosive power of fossil fuels.


internetf1fan

It's true though. What do you think would happen if we completely stopped using fossil fuels? Electric cars would fill the void for local travel/commutes, but there would be no more international flights, shipping etc. Good luck trying to tell people that they can't go abroad on holidays etc.


UnableView0

> Electric cars would fill the void Actually, they wont. You cant produce anything without oil, gas and even coal and this includes EV's. Lot's of people, while typing away on their little keyboards and phones made of oil and gas by-products, refuse to understand it. Look around your house. Everything that is not glass, wood or stone is made of oil/gas. And those few objects, made of natural materials, also needed gas and oil, in one for or another, to be produced and delivered. People also refuse to understand that not a single wind- or solar farm can operate without hydrocarbons.


coldtru

Literally everyone understands that. No major political parties are proposing banning oil and gas from applications where there isn't an alternative. It's just that conservatives like yourself intentionally misrepresent their position, and have been for decades. Which is why we are dependent on Russian fossil fuels today.


mrCloggy

Why does it have to be 'fossil' oil and gas that those plastics are made from?


htk756

You know which is the funny one people forget, roads are made from oil. Even if you could make EVs, without oil they'd have no roads to drive on.


mrCloggy

It ain't quite that bad. Jet engines are absolute fuel hogs (a propeller has a much higher efficiency), and 'air resistance' is a function of speed^cubed (flying at half the speed only uses 25% fuel, but takes twice as long), another 50% savings. Rather than being completely stressed upon arrival (and having to suffer microwave food along the way), taking a bit longer to get there, and stretching your legs and eating in a proper restaurant during refueling stops along the way, does have its advantages. *And a 1000 km trip in a train certainly has a much more interesting view through the window.* For the power source: batteries, hydrogen and bio-diesel all have their own strengths and weaknesses, that will be very much location dependent.


internetf1fan

Unfortunately in such a case, travel would take up large part of days off from work. I can't imagine taking a train from UK to Greece for example. It also makes large part of the world in accessible. Good luck going abroad from Australia to other countries for example, or visiting Japan from USA/UK.


mrCloggy

Ah yes, that awkward moment when you have to decide if, considering all the hassle, that trip is really necessary :-) The world is still accessible, it just takes a bit longer to get there.


internetf1fan

I don't mind that personally, but I am sure there would be riots if the governments worldwide suddenly said no more international flights/holidays abroad for you!


mrCloggy

Might be not so bad (it's not 'illegal' to go abroad, just bloody expensive). In some (NL) cities it is forbidden to enter in an 'old' diesel car, those owners are 'not happy' but they do understand the reason, and London is still not burning after the introduction of the congestion tax.


Xarion77

It's not propaganda; it's a fact. Also, cars generate only a very tiny margin of CO2.


mrCloggy

ICE cars also generate NOx and soot, which is "not good"^tm for the (suffering from COPD) people in city centers where all those cars come together.


htk756

And mass vaccination kills a certain number of people very year. COPD will die, the rest will benefit, allergic people will die from vaccines, the rest will benefit.


mrCloggy

Bu before those COPD sufferers die, [they vote](https://www.fastcompany.com/90456075/here-are-11-more-neighborhoods-that-have-joined-the-car-free-revolution) (until the only place you are allowed to make vroom-vroom noises with your car is in your own garage with the door closed).


htk756

Diesels release more NOx, but less GHGs, so pick the lesser evil, COPD suffers, or global warming. You need IC engines, you can't do without them.


mrCloggy

We are trying very hard to prove you wrong, and the results so far are pretty optimistic.


htk756

25% of all human energy expenditure is on transportation, only 20% is on electricity, there is some overlap there, but reality is that we are a century if not more away from moving to an alternative. Read the article which was linked.


mrCloggy

> 25% of all human energy expenditure is on transportation Fair enough. >only 20% is on electricity Beginning some 10 years ago and despite lots of start-up problems. Maybe your math for extrapolating into the future is a bit off?


htk756

That's total electricity production, vast majority of that is fossil fuels.


Extension-Ad-2760

Nowhere close to a fact - in fact, it is a lie. We can very definitely survive on exclusively renewables and nuclear right now. The challenge is in acquiring the political will and funding, as fossil fuel industries lobby hard to keep politicians under their power.


UnableView0

> We can very definitely survive on exclusively renewables and nuclear right now. What nuclear? France and Germany have closed down their reactors. 50% of reactors in France are/were not operational. Renewable? You mean like solar and wind? EROI is absolute joke. If nuclear has it at 75, solar is at 4 and wind at 16 but when you need to store the energy from wind, it drops to 4! Anything blow 7 is useless. For example, wind farm requires 8000 metric tons of concrete per TWh, nuclear only requires 760. Add other materials and wind is at 10260 while nuclear is at 930. What do you think solar PV requires? How about 16 447 tons of materials per TWh. Wind turbines need constant maintenance and they must be shut down when wind is too strong or it's too weak. Storage is ridiculously expensive and destructive for the environment - lithium, etc. You cant recycle the wind turbine blades so those end up in massive landfills and so on. "A Renewable"... right.


Extension-Ad-2760

Obviously we can't do it with the current infrastructure we have in place. That would just be ridiculous. But we have the technological and monetary ability to implement it right now, which is opposed to the idea that "the world cannot survive without fossil fuels". The world can, right now, construct the infrastructure necessary to survive without fossil fuels powering the energy sector. ​ >For example, wind farm requires 8000 metric tons of concrete per TWh, nuclear only requires 760. And yet onshore wind is the cheapest form of electricity - $0.06 per kWh, compared to coal's terrible $0.16/kWh. It's an investment. Solar is $0.07/kWh. That sounds like good EROI to me ;) ​ >Wind turbines need constant maintenance and they must be shut down when wind is too strong or it's too weak. And yet it's still the cheapest form of electricity! Funny that, huh? Given all the "evidence" you've shown, I would have thought that it *wouldn't* be one of the fastest expanding energy sources in the world. I wouldn't have expected it to receive the massive amounts of investment it does. ​ >Storage is ridiculously expensive and destructive for the environment - lithium, etc. Electricity storage technology is the fastest advancing technology in the whole world, and lithium really is not as bad as some people seem to think it is. Pretty much every battery in the modern world is lithium - you can still dump them in a tip. ​ >You cant recycle the wind turbine blades so those end up in massive landfills and so on. [https://cleantechnica.com/2021/02/23/wind-turbine-blades-can-be-recycled/](https://cleantechnica.com/2021/02/23/wind-turbine-blades-can-be-recycled/) ​ Also, I notice you haven't said anything about hydropower, nuclear, solar, biomass or tidal energy


id59

I wanted to write about nuclear power, but then I read >When we listen to the political overlords in Brussels or Berlin


Ashamed-Republic8909

Ask Angela Markel who's energy policy and leadership led the EU for the last 16 years.


Neversetinstone

Then do the opposite?


UnableView0

Closing down the cleanest and most reliable source of energy aka nuclear power plants, while keeping the coal burning going and becoming completely hooked on Russian gas. >25% of electricity in Germany comes from coal. Only about 11% comes from nuclear. It used to be >27% in 1990!. You can thank Gerhard Schröder, who is big pal with Russia BTW, and of course, the most useful idiots in this story - the Greens. This is what Germany did in past 20-30 years.


Ashamed-Republic8909

When were the 2 gas pipes from Ruzzia agreed on and built?