A former Chicago Tribune columnist used to complain about windfarms – how they were ugly and killed birds. I suppose he thought oil refineries and coal-burning power plants were beautiful, with no negative consequences for wildlife whatsoever.
Don’t forget, if you don’t have the ability to charge at home, you may be able to charge at work (as I do). It is a growing perk that some employers are offering to reduce emissions.
Ha!
Yes, this reminds me of another point by my Anti-EV friends:
Apparently, EV’s are terrible for the environment, because they actually are made from metals, that must be mined and then refined. This means they are terrible, terrible things.
(They must think gas-burning cars contain no metal parts)
I’m not looking up cites because this is the pit. If you don’t like my numbers make up your own.
Windfarms kill something on the order of tens of thousands of birds per year, while oil burning emissions kill millions (not even counting global warming), and cats kill millions, too. Just reducing the number of outdoor cats would offset the windfarm bird kill numbers.
There has also been research into things to make windfarms much less likely to kill birds. Painting stripes on the blades, or making them emit 5g radiation or something. Birds aren’t real anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.
Funny, that same columnist who hated windfarms also railed against cats for killing birds. He obviously had a thing about birds, but he was also a rightwing asshole, so windfarms were doubly triggering for him.
I can’t help but be reminded of this.
Another thing to keep in mind, especially WRT the grid collapsing, is that in 10 or 20 or 50 years there’s likely to be an entirely new technology that doesn’t rely (so heavily) on electricity.
I just keep thinking that almost all technology has had complete overhauls … but not batteries. I’m looking for a Whole New Way to store energy. A game-changing technology would mean less energy infrastructure needed.
Ooh, inventing a cold fusion car, or just basic anti-gravity… that’d help traditional transportation…
Sorry, I’ve been busy, maybe I should get going on those.
I don’t think that it’s necessarily that the people posting this stuff are Russian trolls or people being paid to do it on behalf of oil companies and such. It’s more that they’ve created an industry where they push a lot of average joes into service for them, getting them angry enough in certain places.
Where I noticed it was the comments on all vaccine related news online. There are always people there ready to gripe about all of it. I don’t think they’re all paid trolls. It’s more that the trolls create an atmosphere to let that loose. And they have other sites and videos and even TV shows to get those people riled up to go fight for them.
They’re already primed to want to believe that EVs are bad, so it’s not that hard to convince them. Just like people wanted to believe that COVID is a hoax/masks don’t work/etc.
Just had a new one that I had not seen before.
Dude telling me that he will never get “one of those toy cars.”
I let him know that EVs’ are actually quite good at performance and this is not exactly a big secret.
He scoffed some more about “those toy plastic cars”, and then…
And then said that he will never have an EV, because his hobby is going to the mountains with his 4X4 and off roading in a special park. He literally has a vehicle that he uses as a toy.
Lithium-ion was a huge step up from previous technologies (nickel-cadmium, nickel-metal hydride).
Okay. maybe not a total overhaul like going from horse-drawn carriages to automobiles, but a big upgrade.
A couple of decades ago I remember speculation that hydrogen fuel cells were just around the corner and would revolutionize the automobile industry, but, meh.
Conservatives are hateful morons and they believe stupid things. They are easily manipulated by greedy smart people to repeat hateful moronic things that are in the best interest of greedy smart people.
There maybe paid shills and trolls out there but I think there are a lot of people around who are more than ready to take a reflexive anti-EV stance. Many people see their car as closely associated with their identity and IC engines are something they have known and worshipped and worked on all their lives. They like the slightly “badass” nature of something powerful, loud, smelly and vibrating and associate it with their masculinity.
Lots of people do.
But he will eventually discover that other people have EV 4X4 toys that have more, and more controllable, torque and more ground clearance and can go up and down things he can’t. At that point he will quietly change his mind, or he will become part of a specialised hobbyist “antique 4x4 club”.
True, there are a lot of people around who are more than ready to take a reflexive anti-new-knowledge stance about pretty much anything. This is the smug contrarianism that leads many people to feel that simply by rejecting any “mainstream” narrative, such as “COVID vaccines are safe and effective”, or “voting fraud did not significantly affect the 2020 elections”, or “anthropogenic climate change is real”, etc., they are somehow being “skeptical” and “smart” and “thinking for themselves”.
The desire of many people to feel smart and knowledgeable is equaled only by their unwillingness to earn such feelings honestly by actually learning something.
That is true but not my point here, and not what I think the main driver of anti-EV and pro-IC views will be. I don’t think it will be driven by contrarianism - it will be driven by conservatism, fear of change and above all familiarity with an old technology (and to some people - way of life) that people don’t want to let go.
Which, y’know, fair enough, but I wish more such people had the courage to just say “well, I happen to like it the old way and I don’t think I’ll switch”. Rather than just repeating made-up nonsense about whatever it is they don’t want to switch to.
The solution is clear: Develop cat-burning vehicles.
I burning your cat
How many kilometers/cat do you get?
I was hoping for 1 cat per 100km but I only achieved 99.9km.
I missed my goal by a whisker