The points being made are deceptive or misleading (based on what I can gather from the article), but they're much closer to opinions than traditional climate change denial. If someone says 2°C of...
The points being made are deceptive or misleading (based on what I can gather from the article), but they're much closer to opinions than traditional climate change denial. If someone says 2°C of warming won't be that bad for most people, I'm not sure that qualifies as misinformation or lying?
While I fully understand activists and scientists wanting people to take climate science seriously and align with the majority opinion, I'm not sure if YouTube should ban that kind of content. I'm fully aware there are well-financed messaging campaigns intended to slow the ongoing energy transition; I'm just cautious about policing incorrect opinions that don't align with the consensus.
First, where are you getting that "it won't be that bad" claim from this article? It doesn't mention that type of claim at all. What part of this is really opinion based? It's just deflecting away...
First, where are you getting that "it won't be that bad" claim from this article? It doesn't mention that type of claim at all.
It largely centers around deceptive messages that “climate solutions won’t work,” that the science backing those solutions is unreliable, or that global warming isn’t actually harmful.
New climate denial tactics may have already made an impression on young YouTube viewers. In a poll of more than 1,000 teenagers in the US between the ages of 13 and 17 conducted by market research company Survation for CCDH this month, a third of teenagers said “climate policies cause more harm than good.”
What part of this is really opinion based? It's just deflecting away from "250,000 will die a year because of climate change" to "making things more expensive is going to kill poor people!"
This is just hiding the solution behind a made-up problem that is only a problem because these people also support policies that prevent support from going to the impoverished.
I think there's a distinction to be made between "it won't be that bad" and "it isn't actually harmful" -- the latter is a stronger claim that is much better described as misinformation than the...
I think there's a distinction to be made between "it won't be that bad" and "it isn't actually harmful" -- the latter is a stronger claim that is much better described as misinformation than the former.
What bothers me most about some of the climate change messaging is the disproportionality and lack of logic of it, for those of us in cold climates. I live in Canada, which is calculated to emit...
What bothers me most about some of the climate change messaging is the disproportionality and lack of logic of it, for those of us in cold climates.
I live in Canada, which is calculated to emit about 1.8% of the world's GHG. Half of that is supposed to be from transportation, of which cars are also a subset, so maybe 0.5%? (aka a rounding error)
But our gov. wants to push people into EVs which, after just going through a stretch of -40c weather are NOT the best cars for Canadians to drive. Yes, most operate ok once running, if you're driving from plug in to plug in or a heated garage, but heaven help you if you leave one outside overnight at those temps and then try to charge. A stone cold Tesla at those temps will take almost 2 hours to charge up because it takes a considerable amount of that time to just warm the battery before it can start charging it (see recent youtube video by EV advocate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-c8AUeKs5c&ab_channel=OutofSpecReviews) something that would happen if you are going on a trip and parked at an airport, or live in a apartment that doesnt allow chargers.
That's not a minor issue in a place that gets this cold every winter. But the gov keeps pushing as if EVs are the answer. They are NOT the best choice for Canadians, a PHEV or Hybrid is much better, but they are rarely mentioned because they still burn fuel. And for most Canadians, just a plain old efficient gas vehicle is still going to be the most logical/cost effective option. Especially if range in this cold is an issue - my own small battery EV loses 40% of its range in winter, enough that it becomes impractical to make the 20 km commute into town and back in the coldest months, so it gets parked til the weather warms up. I love it in the summer, it sucks in the winter. I also have solar panels at my house that get covered in snow and produce zero electricity at that point. If I had to rely on them alone Id freeze. Again, great in summer, sucks in winter. NOT good for Canadians.
To say that EVs are going to save the planet, as a Canadian, is a very hard argument to make. If we want to 'save' the environment, there are far more reasonable ways to reduce pollution - like buying used goods instead of new, and getting them locally instead of shipping ALL of our goods from China and most of our food from the USA. Like keeping our old gas car running for another 5 years instead of buying a $80,000 new EV that someone else has to subsidize.
Our gov even wants us to quit using natural gas to heat our homes when there is NO other viable choice (heat pumps dont work at -40c) in this ridiculously cold weather. I can see why there are youtubes discounting the climate change message and spotlighting the impracticality of our gov proposals. Some of them just make little sense and they just arent practical for a lot of cold weather dwellers.
It gets pretty cold in Alberta's population centers, but it isn't consistently −40°C. In Edmonton, there were zero days in 2023 below −40°C; there were only two days below −30°C. In 2022, there...
Exemplary
It gets pretty cold in Alberta's population centers, but it isn't consistently −40°C. In Edmonton, there were zero days in 2023 below −40°C; there were only two days below −30°C. In 2022, there was one day below −40°C and 12 more days below −30°C. In 2021, there were three days below −40°C and 12 more days below −30°C. That is a total of 30/1095 days below −30°C, or 2.7% of days in three full years.
This is definitely a temperature range where electric machines become less efficient, but it's important to be realistic here... the practical and technical problems associated with a median winter air temperature of −40°C are enormously different than those with a minimum winter air temperature of −40°C. It makes sense for the government to incentivize more efficient and environmentally friendly choices like heat pumps 97.3% of the time, and have a generator backup or some electric fan heaters for those occasional days when a heat pump isn't efficient. They aren't banning alternatives. In a home, you also have the ability to dress extra warmly and heat a bed with an electric blanket. Cold spells don't require you to reject environmental sustainability. The fact that heat pumps are becoming more popular in very cold countries like Norway, Sweden, and Finland demonstrates real-world feasibility.
I agree that messaging around cars in places like Alberta should emphasize PHEVs more than EVs at this moment in time, with current technology.
heat pumps dont work at -40c
I think this is true in the sense that most heat pumps currently on the market aren't designed for cold conditions, but it's not true that ultra-cold climate heat pumps don't exist. They do exist and can be efficient. There are eventually physical limits on heat pump efficiency, but this is an active area of research and the literature suggests that efficiency can probably remain high even in temperatures potentially as low as −40°C.
In extreme cold climates, such as where the lowest temperatures approach −30°C, performance data have shown that heat pumps can provide heat at efficiencies up to double that of resistive heating; however, more analysis is required. Even though heat pump efficiency declines during the extreme cold and back-up heating may be required, air-source heat pumps can still provide significant energy system efficiency benefits on an instantaneous and annual basis compared with alternatives.
Some of the market-leading cold-climate air-source heat pumps were tested in Finland at very low temperatures. 9 Models from Mitsubishi and Toshiba both provided COPs above 2 even at temperatures as low as −20°C. At −30°C, COPs were still between 1.5 and 2 for the Mitsubishi model and 1 and 1.5 for the Toshiba model.
Field testing was also conducted in Alaska by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (US4) using a cold-climate air-source heat pump. These tests found that the COP remained relatively high, achieving 2.0 at −25°C and 1.8 at −35°C.
COP refers to the "coefficiency of performance," and you want a coefficient of more than 1 for the machines to be generally economic compared to a resistance heater. A COP of 1.8 at −35°C is economical. While this study doesn't explicitly cover temperatures below −35°C, the ten-degree delta between −25°C and −35°C only led to a COP reduction of 0.2. Linearly, you could extrapolate a COP of 1.6 at −45°C and 1.5 at −50°C (lower than the lowest temperature ever recorded in Edmonton in history). That's still more than a COP of 1. Empirically, based on Figure 2 from Gibb et al., heat pumps probably converge on a limit > 1.
Wan and Hwang 2023 have a similar takeaway. Figure 1 demonstrates a slowly decreasing efficiency that probably doesn't drop below 1 at temperatures of at least −30.5°C. In a study from 2008, a heat pump maintained a COP of 2.1 at an ambient temperature of −30.0°C. Wu et al. 2022 similarly find that some designs of heat pumps can operate efficiently at temperatures below −30°C (they report it in terms of primary energy efficiency, which is a broader metric than COP, but if PEE > 1 here then COP > 1).
Ji et al. 2021 further seem to report (from what I can ascertain in the search snippet) that hybrid heat pumps like those mentioned above can have efficiencies above 1 in temperatures below −40°C, but I can't access the full article to verify.
If you're talking about -40°, you don't need to add which scale you're referring to. That's the intersection point between Centigrade and Fahrenheit. Not a criticism, just a fun fact.
If you're talking about -40°, you don't need to add which scale you're referring to. That's the intersection point between Centigrade and Fahrenheit.
Frigid zone Canadians dont need a reliable heat source for 97.3% of the time. The single most important time to have a reliable heat source is exactly during that 2.7% of the time when...
Frigid zone Canadians dont need a reliable heat source for 97.3% of the time. The single most important time to have a reliable heat source is exactly during that 2.7% of the time when temperatures go to the extreme. And THAT'S the moment one wouldn't want to depend on a system that hasn't been used for 97.3% of the time to kick in and work.
I say that as someone whose sewer system froze up two days ago and had to spend quite a few hundred dollars getting two courageous men with a steam hose to crawl under his house and steam out the sewer line for hours. There's no way it makes sense to go with more expensive, more complicated, hybrid heating system that is LESS likely to handle extreme cold. It's a lovely exercise in academic thinking, but it's illogical.
I realize this isn't an unbiased source, but I just want to point out that ICE vehicles also tend to have issues when it's -40, and apparently in Norway they are failing a lot more than EVs:...
Not saying you don't have a point, and obviously your experience is real and valid, but I just wanted to mention this because I have a gas car and I've been unable to start it in the cold a couple times because the battery died.
I've never driven any car in −40°C so I have no clue about those temperatures for engines. I have had a gas engine die on a friend and I in a strip mall parking lot in maybe −10°C though. Felt a...
I've never driven any car in −40°C so I have no clue about those temperatures for engines. I have had a gas engine die on a friend and I in a strip mall parking lot in maybe −10°C though. Felt a lot worse with all the wind. And for what charge?! All we wanted was a simple meal! A succulent Chinese meal!
I wish that source linked to the actual dataset it's referring to. Related, Wikipedia has a whole page on cold starts... with no academic references. I guess it says words that I believe are probably mostly true. Also, I think it's just a little bit funny that gas-powered cars use electric starter motors to get the ICE running. :P
Anyway, I tried to find some quantitative data on the likelihood of an ICE startup failure in cold temperatures but have found nothing useful. I guess it's kind of hard to quantify. There's a glut of data on EV range but you have to go digging to find ICE data.
There is this from Alalo et al. 2022 on "Exergy and energy analysis during cold-start and warm-up engine operation" (for ICEs), citing older analysis:
It was shown that fuel consumption increased by 18% when the ambient temperature decreased from 31 °C to −2 °C.
High lubricant viscosity at lower temperatures results in higher frictional losses, reducing the indicated thermal efficiency of the engine further. Will et al. [5], [8] estimated that frictional losses in the engine during the early stages of warm-up (when the engine is in the region of 20 °C) can be up to 2.5 times higher than those observed when the lubricant is fully warm. If this temperature is reduced to a cold-start scenario of 0 °C, then Samhaber et al. [9] predicted increases in fuel consumption of up to 13.5%.
...and further that since most trips are pretty short, the cars often can't warm up enough to have higher efficiency, so most cold-weather ICE driving is also less efficient.
That's a ways off from reported ~30% losses in EV range in cold weather, but yes, it is still meaningful.
There is a reason the vehicles sold in Alberta and the Prairie provinces tend to come with a heater block you plug into your outlets so that your engine doesn't freeze over night. Growing up in...
There is a reason the vehicles sold in Alberta and the Prairie provinces tend to come with a heater block you plug into your outlets so that your engine doesn't freeze over night.
Growing up in Nova Scotia we didn't tend to get that cold, but days it was it took ages for the car to warm up and be drivable.
scroll_lock was much more informative than I would be on the topic of temperatures and heat pumps, so I would just like to focus on this: I have not verified your numbers, but I strongly disagree...
scroll_lock was much more informative than I would be on the topic of temperatures and heat pumps, so I would just like to focus on this:
I live in Canada, which is calculated to emit about 1.8% of the world's GHG. Half of that is supposed to be from transportation, of which cars are also a subset, so maybe 0.5%? (aka a rounding error)
I have not verified your numbers, but I strongly disagree that 0.5% of total emissions by approximately 0.5% of the world's population* —about a quarter of Canada's emissions — can be reasonably classified as a rounding error. Extrapolate that rate of emissions per capita to the entire world and we remain at current emission levels.
My contention that its a rounding error because ALL GHG emissions are computer based modelling estimates. There is no way anyone can declare definitively exactly how much CO2 comes from which...
My contention that its a rounding error because ALL GHG emissions are computer based modelling estimates. There is no way anyone can declare definitively exactly how much CO2 comes from which source in which country or how much is absorbed by how many plants and trees... it's all an educated guess based on estimates and calculations. And therefore being out by .005 is indeed a rounding error.
Clicking through to the study’s website, the first thing we should ask is what did they actually do? There are some examples in the report, though I don’t know if they’re representative. I can...
Clicking through to the study’s website, the first thing we should ask is what did they actually do?
This study centers on data analysis performed by an AI tool, CARDS, developed by academics Travis G. Coan, Constantine Boussalis, John Cook and Mirjam O. Nanko. The AI allowed us to quantify the frequency of different types of climate denialist claims in text. CCDH researchers identified the changing tactics of climate deniers on YouTube by analyzing thousands of hours of transcripts of videos on the platform from 96 channels dating back to 2018.
There are some examples in the report, though I don’t know if they’re representative.
I can certainly sympathize with not wanting to watch the videos yourself.
I'm an 80s style environmentalist, the values were inculcated in me then. The approaches taken in the 70s-90s were useless, because we didn't really understand how unreasonable the entrenched...
I'm an 80s style environmentalist, the values were inculcated in me then. The approaches taken in the 70s-90s were useless, because we didn't really understand how unreasonable the entrenched interests were, nor how insensitive political leadership was. Once we figured that out, science itself became corrupt, and identifying valid science has become much harder, and that's for well trained researchers. Showing why good science is good and important to folks in other fields, especially leadership, is nigh impossible these days.
But back then, we understood that the primary problem facing humanity was a kind of holistic collapse. Global warming, toxic exposure, habitat and biodiversity destruction. We thought we had licked the toxic exposure part when Nixon (!!) signed into existence the Clean water and air acts, but now there's a huge fake science industry to protect toxic tortfeasors (see, e.g., Dennis Paustenbach).
We also understood the real root of the problem was overconsumption. Everyone idealizes living on their own little castle, with their own two cars, 10 year remodels, bi-yearly exotic destination vacations, year-round fresh produce at a supermarket with enough space in the aisles for three carts to pass without anyone having to look at each other, surrounded by enough parking for an oversized SUV to dismount its Wall-E style hover chair. Preferably covered and air-conditioned.
Queue the Well in San Francisco. Those of us who were young then believed in the echoes of the hippie music we heard-love, connection to each other and the land, reduced capitalistic expansion. We thought scene coming out of that was going to help us integrate these exciting new communication technologies into that agrariaran utopia, and suddenly--magically--, most socioeconomic problems would be resolved.
Not true. Instead, we now have a totally capitalist technology growth industry where few with any power or influence have any notion of limiting over-consumption. I read recently a critique of the EFF (I cannot find it now, but I bet I saw it on Tildes) that pointed out how strongly they have focussed on preventing government overreach, but have not even provided lip-service to corporate overreach. They seem to promote more and better privately owned and deployed technology as a solution to every problem.
The study at the root of this article seems to me to be lying firmly in that camp. Electric cars eliminate pollution! No need to scale down! Drive More! Drive Bigger! It's All Good If It's Electric! I can find no research that establishes a conversion to electric cars, assuming the same number of miles driven and size of vehicles, will result in an overall improvement to our natural environment. Sure, it eliminates atmospheric loading of a certain kind, but it shifts that burdern other places. Even if we assume a near future where all electricity is generated from "renewable" resources, there's now a lot of extraction, production, and disposal of some very nasty materials. Electric vehicles are heavier, which means way more wear and tear on infrastructure, which means a lot more extraction, production, and disposal costs.
Note there's a real socio-economic cost to electric vehicle transitions, too. It requires a high degree of affluence to support electric vehicle adoption and infrastructure. So the affluent communities that can afford them are cleaning themselves, while dropping that pollution on communities much less empowered to stop it, or clean themselves.
Back to TFA, I suspect this opinion of mine would be well flagged by CCDH's "misinformation" sentinels. And that's a shame. They run up a Jordan Peterson flag, and any thoughtful and concerned human wants to reduce his influence. It makes it easier for them to dismiss any critique of their work. Surely you're not defending Peterson!
I'm not a free speech absolutist. There need to be some, perhaps even significant, guardrails around generally available information. And the easier that information is to access, the higher and narrower the guardrails need to be. But how and by whom can we equitably protect ourselves from those who would harm us with words and images? This is a hard question not easily addressed. If the majority would prefer to ignore the realities and die, should we let them? Should I just quit worrying and love the bomb?
Un answered question I have: can "the people" collectively discern credibility without having expertise themselves? I posit yes. I think Trump's popularity is driven in part by people who have reasonably discerned that they have been institutionally betrayed, and have made a decision that they are powerless over the effects of that betrayal, and concluded that the most important thing for them is to express their anger, a value judgment that they do get to make. The academy, and the Church, and the government all have become too self-centered, no longer kindly or beneficient. Trump and MAGA folks are the white privilege version of urban rioters.
Well, this has gone on long enough. Seems like there's a good essay in there somewhere, I'll holler when my TED talk gets scheduled.
I agree with much of what you said. Just a detail about this part: Yes but they really don't have to be, because are cars are usually way too big for their purpose, at least in the US. What would...
I agree with much of what you said.
Just a detail about this part:
Electric vehicles are heavier, which means way more wear and tear on infrastructure, which means a lot more extraction, production, and disposal costs.
Yes but they really don't have to be, because are cars are usually way too big for their purpose, at least in the US. What would be reasonable, and nice, is if we used the transition to electric cars to return to smaller cars like people bought during the gas crisis years. It's not just conspicuous consumption driving the huge car trends, it's also an arms race: It's hard to buy a small car because you are afraid to get crushed by a huge SUV driven by some distracted dumbass.
This is what happens when countries stop properly funding nationalized media: your people will be watching adverts from oil pushers and gold pushers and other grifts. That last paragraph on what...
This is what happens when countries stop properly funding nationalized media: your people will be watching adverts from oil pushers and gold pushers and other grifts.
That last paragraph on what it's doing to our youth is pretty terrifying.
Do people, particularly young people, not use social media in countries with nationalized media? It doesn't even require an algorithm, in India this kind of misinformation is in some ways even...
Do people, particularly young people, not use social media in countries with nationalized media? It doesn't even require an algorithm, in India this kind of misinformation is in some ways even worse, and that spreads through whatsapp groups "organically". Even in Russia, where absolutely all news is controlled by the government, people tend to get their news from telegram.
People will always prefer hearing from what they consider as "other people", rather than "news". The internet just allows that to happen on a mass scale, whereas the news would be what you get other than your circle of close associates in the past.
Speaking as an older person, we've gone well past the era of consuming mostly "official" media. The youth I know are heavily into short viral shares, watching streamers and basically consuming...
Speaking as an older person, we've gone well past the era of consuming mostly "official" media. The youth I know are heavily into short viral shares, watching streamers and basically consuming whatever the algorithms feeds them.
That's why I originally said "properly funding", not just having it exist in shambles with shoestring budget. It needs to fund local talent, to sponsor content and their creators that appeal to many different segments.
Right now, nearly all the videos I watch contain some kind of sponsorship segment, and many are asking for patreons from individual subscriptions: why shouldn't they be funded by our taxes instead?
Some of them are. PBS has a number of popular YouTube channels, for instance. You certainly won’t see climate denialism on PBS Space Time or PBS Eons. Like I said, you see the exact same phenomena...
Some of them are. PBS has a number of popular YouTube channels, for instance. You certainly won’t see climate denialism on PBS Space Time or PBS Eons.
Like I said, you see the exact same phenomena in WhatsApp groups in South Asia, zero algorithms required.
The government just isn’t going to outnumber of the amount of randos peddling what they think.
The points being made are deceptive or misleading (based on what I can gather from the article), but they're much closer to opinions than traditional climate change denial. If someone says 2°C of warming won't be that bad for most people, I'm not sure that qualifies as misinformation or lying?
While I fully understand activists and scientists wanting people to take climate science seriously and align with the majority opinion, I'm not sure if YouTube should ban that kind of content. I'm fully aware there are well-financed messaging campaigns intended to slow the ongoing energy transition; I'm just cautious about policing incorrect opinions that don't align with the consensus.
First, where are you getting that "it won't be that bad" claim from this article? It doesn't mention that type of claim at all.
What part of this is really opinion based? It's just deflecting away from "250,000 will die a year because of climate change" to "making things more expensive is going to kill poor people!"
This is just hiding the solution behind a made-up problem that is only a problem because these people also support policies that prevent support from going to the impoverished.
I think there's a distinction to be made between "it won't be that bad" and "it isn't actually harmful" -- the latter is a stronger claim that is much better described as misinformation than the former.
What bothers me most about some of the climate change messaging is the disproportionality and lack of logic of it, for those of us in cold climates.
I live in Canada, which is calculated to emit about 1.8% of the world's GHG. Half of that is supposed to be from transportation, of which cars are also a subset, so maybe 0.5%? (aka a rounding error)
But our gov. wants to push people into EVs which, after just going through a stretch of -40c weather are NOT the best cars for Canadians to drive. Yes, most operate ok once running, if you're driving from plug in to plug in or a heated garage, but heaven help you if you leave one outside overnight at those temps and then try to charge. A stone cold Tesla at those temps will take almost 2 hours to charge up because it takes a considerable amount of that time to just warm the battery before it can start charging it (see recent youtube video by EV advocate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-c8AUeKs5c&ab_channel=OutofSpecReviews) something that would happen if you are going on a trip and parked at an airport, or live in a apartment that doesnt allow chargers.
That's not a minor issue in a place that gets this cold every winter. But the gov keeps pushing as if EVs are the answer. They are NOT the best choice for Canadians, a PHEV or Hybrid is much better, but they are rarely mentioned because they still burn fuel. And for most Canadians, just a plain old efficient gas vehicle is still going to be the most logical/cost effective option. Especially if range in this cold is an issue - my own small battery EV loses 40% of its range in winter, enough that it becomes impractical to make the 20 km commute into town and back in the coldest months, so it gets parked til the weather warms up. I love it in the summer, it sucks in the winter. I also have solar panels at my house that get covered in snow and produce zero electricity at that point. If I had to rely on them alone Id freeze. Again, great in summer, sucks in winter. NOT good for Canadians.
To say that EVs are going to save the planet, as a Canadian, is a very hard argument to make. If we want to 'save' the environment, there are far more reasonable ways to reduce pollution - like buying used goods instead of new, and getting them locally instead of shipping ALL of our goods from China and most of our food from the USA. Like keeping our old gas car running for another 5 years instead of buying a $80,000 new EV that someone else has to subsidize.
Our gov even wants us to quit using natural gas to heat our homes when there is NO other viable choice (heat pumps dont work at -40c) in this ridiculously cold weather. I can see why there are youtubes discounting the climate change message and spotlighting the impracticality of our gov proposals. Some of them just make little sense and they just arent practical for a lot of cold weather dwellers.
It gets pretty cold in Alberta's population centers, but it isn't consistently −40°C. In Edmonton, there were zero days in 2023 below −40°C; there were only two days below −30°C. In 2022, there was one day below −40°C and 12 more days below −30°C. In 2021, there were three days below −40°C and 12 more days below −30°C. That is a total of 30/1095 days below −30°C, or 2.7% of days in three full years.
This is definitely a temperature range where electric machines become less efficient, but it's important to be realistic here... the practical and technical problems associated with a median winter air temperature of −40°C are enormously different than those with a minimum winter air temperature of −40°C. It makes sense for the government to incentivize more efficient and environmentally friendly choices like heat pumps 97.3% of the time, and have a generator backup or some electric fan heaters for those occasional days when a heat pump isn't efficient. They aren't banning alternatives. In a home, you also have the ability to dress extra warmly and heat a bed with an electric blanket. Cold spells don't require you to reject environmental sustainability. The fact that heat pumps are becoming more popular in very cold countries like Norway, Sweden, and Finland demonstrates real-world feasibility.
I agree that messaging around cars in places like Alberta should emphasize PHEVs more than EVs at this moment in time, with current technology.
I think this is true in the sense that most heat pumps currently on the market aren't designed for cold conditions, but it's not true that ultra-cold climate heat pumps don't exist. They do exist and can be efficient. There are eventually physical limits on heat pump efficiency, but this is an active area of research and the literature suggests that efficiency can probably remain high even in temperatures potentially as low as −40°C.
Gibb et al. 2023 (full text PDF):
COP refers to the "coefficiency of performance," and you want a coefficient of more than 1 for the machines to be generally economic compared to a resistance heater. A COP of 1.8 at −35°C is economical. While this study doesn't explicitly cover temperatures below −35°C, the ten-degree delta between −25°C and −35°C only led to a COP reduction of 0.2. Linearly, you could extrapolate a COP of 1.6 at −45°C and 1.5 at −50°C (lower than the lowest temperature ever recorded in Edmonton in history). That's still more than a COP of 1. Empirically, based on Figure 2 from Gibb et al., heat pumps probably converge on a limit > 1.
Wan and Hwang 2023 have a similar takeaway. Figure 1 demonstrates a slowly decreasing efficiency that probably doesn't drop below 1 at temperatures of at least −30.5°C. In a study from 2008, a heat pump maintained a COP of 2.1 at an ambient temperature of −30.0°C. Wu et al. 2022 similarly find that some designs of heat pumps can operate efficiently at temperatures below −30°C (they report it in terms of primary energy efficiency, which is a broader metric than COP, but if PEE > 1 here then COP > 1).
Ji et al. 2021 further seem to report (from what I can ascertain in the search snippet) that hybrid heat pumps like those mentioned above can have efficiencies above 1 in temperatures below −40°C, but I can't access the full article to verify.
If you're talking about -40°, you don't need to add which scale you're referring to. That's the intersection point between Centigrade and Fahrenheit.
Not a criticism, just a fun fact.
Frigid zone Canadians dont need a reliable heat source for 97.3% of the time. The single most important time to have a reliable heat source is exactly during that 2.7% of the time when temperatures go to the extreme. And THAT'S the moment one wouldn't want to depend on a system that hasn't been used for 97.3% of the time to kick in and work.
I say that as someone whose sewer system froze up two days ago and had to spend quite a few hundred dollars getting two courageous men with a steam hose to crawl under his house and steam out the sewer line for hours. There's no way it makes sense to go with more expensive, more complicated, hybrid heating system that is LESS likely to handle extreme cold. It's a lovely exercise in academic thinking, but it's illogical.
I realize this isn't an unbiased source, but I just want to point out that ICE vehicles also tend to have issues when it's -40, and apparently in Norway they are failing a lot more than EVs: https://electrek.co/2024/01/17/electric-vehicles-fail-lower-rate-than-gas-cars-extreme-cold/.
Not saying you don't have a point, and obviously your experience is real and valid, but I just wanted to mention this because I have a gas car and I've been unable to start it in the cold a couple times because the battery died.
I've never driven any car in −40°C so I have no clue about those temperatures for engines. I have had a gas engine die on a friend and I in a strip mall parking lot in maybe −10°C though. Felt a lot worse with all the wind. And for what charge?! All we wanted was a simple meal! A succulent Chinese meal!
I wish that source linked to the actual dataset it's referring to. Related, Wikipedia has a whole page on cold starts... with no academic references. I guess it says words that I believe are probably mostly true. Also, I think it's just a little bit funny that gas-powered cars use electric starter motors to get the ICE running. :P
Anyway, I tried to find some quantitative data on the likelihood of an ICE startup failure in cold temperatures but have found nothing useful. I guess it's kind of hard to quantify. There's a glut of data on EV range but you have to go digging to find ICE data.
There is this from Alalo et al. 2022 on "Exergy and energy analysis during cold-start and warm-up engine operation" (for ICEs), citing older analysis:
And Roberts et al. 2014:
...and further that since most trips are pretty short, the cars often can't warm up enough to have higher efficiency, so most cold-weather ICE driving is also less efficient.
That's a ways off from reported ~30% losses in EV range in cold weather, but yes, it is still meaningful.
There is a reason the vehicles sold in Alberta and the Prairie provinces tend to come with a heater block you plug into your outlets so that your engine doesn't freeze over night.
Growing up in Nova Scotia we didn't tend to get that cold, but days it was it took ages for the car to warm up and be drivable.
scroll_lock was much more informative than I would be on the topic of temperatures and heat pumps, so I would just like to focus on this:
I have not verified your numbers, but I strongly disagree that 0.5% of total emissions by approximately 0.5% of the world's population* —about a quarter of Canada's emissions — can be reasonably classified as a rounding error. Extrapolate that rate of emissions per capita to the entire world and we remain at current emission levels.
* ~39 million in Canada, ~8 billion worldwide
My contention that its a rounding error because ALL GHG emissions are computer based modelling estimates. There is no way anyone can declare definitively exactly how much CO2 comes from which source in which country or how much is absorbed by how many plants and trees... it's all an educated guess based on estimates and calculations. And therefore being out by .005 is indeed a rounding error.
I intend to promote the POEG-V, similar to POTS.
Can you elaborate on these acronyms and why you favor them?
Plain Old Efficient Gas Vehicle, Plain Old Telephone System.
Maybe Plain Old Edficient Diesel, too. POED-V.
Clicking through to the study’s website, the first thing we should ask is what did they actually do?
There are some examples in the report, though I don’t know if they’re representative.
I can certainly sympathize with not wanting to watch the videos yourself.
I'm an 80s style environmentalist, the values were inculcated in me then. The approaches taken in the 70s-90s were useless, because we didn't really understand how unreasonable the entrenched interests were, nor how insensitive political leadership was. Once we figured that out, science itself became corrupt, and identifying valid science has become much harder, and that's for well trained researchers. Showing why good science is good and important to folks in other fields, especially leadership, is nigh impossible these days.
But back then, we understood that the primary problem facing humanity was a kind of holistic collapse. Global warming, toxic exposure, habitat and biodiversity destruction. We thought we had licked the toxic exposure part when Nixon (!!) signed into existence the Clean water and air acts, but now there's a huge fake science industry to protect toxic tortfeasors (see, e.g., Dennis Paustenbach).
We also understood the real root of the problem was overconsumption. Everyone idealizes living on their own little castle, with their own two cars, 10 year remodels, bi-yearly exotic destination vacations, year-round fresh produce at a supermarket with enough space in the aisles for three carts to pass without anyone having to look at each other, surrounded by enough parking for an oversized SUV to dismount its Wall-E style hover chair. Preferably covered and air-conditioned.
Queue the Well in San Francisco. Those of us who were young then believed in the echoes of the hippie music we heard-love, connection to each other and the land, reduced capitalistic expansion. We thought scene coming out of that was going to help us integrate these exciting new communication technologies into that agrariaran utopia, and suddenly--magically--, most socioeconomic problems would be resolved.
Not true. Instead, we now have a totally capitalist technology growth industry where few with any power or influence have any notion of limiting over-consumption. I read recently a critique of the EFF (I cannot find it now, but I bet I saw it on Tildes) that pointed out how strongly they have focussed on preventing government overreach, but have not even provided lip-service to corporate overreach. They seem to promote more and better privately owned and deployed technology as a solution to every problem.
The study at the root of this article seems to me to be lying firmly in that camp. Electric cars eliminate pollution! No need to scale down! Drive More! Drive Bigger! It's All Good If It's Electric! I can find no research that establishes a conversion to electric cars, assuming the same number of miles driven and size of vehicles, will result in an overall improvement to our natural environment. Sure, it eliminates atmospheric loading of a certain kind, but it shifts that burdern other places. Even if we assume a near future where all electricity is generated from "renewable" resources, there's now a lot of extraction, production, and disposal of some very nasty materials. Electric vehicles are heavier, which means way more wear and tear on infrastructure, which means a lot more extraction, production, and disposal costs.
Note there's a real socio-economic cost to electric vehicle transitions, too. It requires a high degree of affluence to support electric vehicle adoption and infrastructure. So the affluent communities that can afford them are cleaning themselves, while dropping that pollution on communities much less empowered to stop it, or clean themselves.
Back to TFA, I suspect this opinion of mine would be well flagged by CCDH's "misinformation" sentinels. And that's a shame. They run up a Jordan Peterson flag, and any thoughtful and concerned human wants to reduce his influence. It makes it easier for them to dismiss any critique of their work. Surely you're not defending Peterson!
I'm not a free speech absolutist. There need to be some, perhaps even significant, guardrails around generally available information. And the easier that information is to access, the higher and narrower the guardrails need to be. But how and by whom can we equitably protect ourselves from those who would harm us with words and images? This is a hard question not easily addressed. If the majority would prefer to ignore the realities and die, should we let them? Should I just quit worrying and love the bomb?
Un answered question I have: can "the people" collectively discern credibility without having expertise themselves? I posit yes. I think Trump's popularity is driven in part by people who have reasonably discerned that they have been institutionally betrayed, and have made a decision that they are powerless over the effects of that betrayal, and concluded that the most important thing for them is to express their anger, a value judgment that they do get to make. The academy, and the Church, and the government all have become too self-centered, no longer kindly or beneficient. Trump and MAGA folks are the white privilege version of urban rioters.
Well, this has gone on long enough. Seems like there's a good essay in there somewhere, I'll holler when my TED talk gets scheduled.
Edit: styling
I agree with much of what you said.
Just a detail about this part:
Yes but they really don't have to be, because are cars are usually way too big for their purpose, at least in the US. What would be reasonable, and nice, is if we used the transition to electric cars to return to smaller cars like people bought during the gas crisis years. It's not just conspicuous consumption driving the huge car trends, it's also an arms race: It's hard to buy a small car because you are afraid to get crushed by a huge SUV driven by some distracted dumbass.
This is what happens when countries stop properly funding nationalized media: your people will be watching adverts from oil pushers and gold pushers and other grifts.
That last paragraph on what it's doing to our youth is pretty terrifying.
Do people, particularly young people, not use social media in countries with nationalized media? It doesn't even require an algorithm, in India this kind of misinformation is in some ways even worse, and that spreads through whatsapp groups "organically". Even in Russia, where absolutely all news is controlled by the government, people tend to get their news from telegram.
People will always prefer hearing from what they consider as "other people", rather than "news". The internet just allows that to happen on a mass scale, whereas the news would be what you get other than your circle of close associates in the past.
Speaking as an older person, we've gone well past the era of consuming mostly "official" media. The youth I know are heavily into short viral shares, watching streamers and basically consuming whatever the algorithms feeds them.
That's why I originally said "properly funding", not just having it exist in shambles with shoestring budget. It needs to fund local talent, to sponsor content and their creators that appeal to many different segments.
Right now, nearly all the videos I watch contain some kind of sponsorship segment, and many are asking for patreons from individual subscriptions: why shouldn't they be funded by our taxes instead?
Some of them are. PBS has a number of popular YouTube channels, for instance. You certainly won’t see climate denialism on PBS Space Time or PBS Eons.
Like I said, you see the exact same phenomena in WhatsApp groups in South Asia, zero algorithms required.
The government just isn’t going to outnumber of the amount of randos peddling what they think.