Another interesting Engineering Explained video..
(Hopefully this wasn't already posted)
(Hopefully this wasn't already posted)
Is Keeping Your Old Car Better For The Environment?
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Never any way to factor in cost $$$ to one of these arguments. Also, the examples of higher mileage cars available now is mostly a myth when you factor in that what people want is a new powerful pickup or RV. Also, no comparison to how much pollution coming from other sources, like thousands of massive commercial jets spewing kerosene combustion pollution into the atmosphere day in and day out.
A question here, before folks start piling on and getting the thread locked---I hear CO2 emissions talked about all the time. Now this only refers to the actual carbon dioxide emitted, correct? Or does increased C02 also mean increased pollution in the air as well? If you have more CO2, does that mean your car is emitting more gunk into the air also? Or is that an entirely different number, and a car emitting more C02 might also emit less gunk/pollutants into the air?
Nick1994
$100 site donor 2024
I didn't buy my Tesla for it's green-ness, so it's just a bonus. My break even point over the Genesis according to his calculations is about 2 years.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Excellent question! Short answer: Yes, this only refers to carbon dioxide, other emissions are separate.
This varies significantly by source. While catalysts and particulate filters reduce other emissions from gasoline and diesel engines, and scrubbers remove some of the particulate from coal power plants, they do not eliminate them and there are indeed other emissions that aren't accounted for like NOX for example. You can see these things on an e-test sheet.
Burning methane is quite clean in comparison to other fossil sources. The two byproducts are basically water and CO2. Coal has not only a much higher CO2 intensity, but it produces tons of other byproducts as well including radioactive fly ash and various carcinogens. Burning trees (biomass) is similar to coal, but it gets greenwashed as "renewable".
A comparison like this needs to be studied a bit more. Comparing a car with a commercial aircraft that is carrying dozens or hundreds of passengers plus the cargo that would otherwise be shipped in trucks is not a good comparison.
4wd
$50 site donor 2026
Who the heck would run P205’s anyway ?
Burning methane has always been cleaner than oil or coal. Historically natural gas is 10X cleaner than oil or diesel and 100X cleaner than coal. Recent advancements in US electricity production using natural gas have made that divide even wider. US/Canada currently has available the cleanest burning methane powered electricity production technology in all the world.
Ignoramus fake environmentalists are against natural gas/methane because raw unburned methane is a potent greenhouse gas. They act as though burning methane is equal to releasing unburned methane.
One must factor the energy required to make a new car, and there are a lot of variables at play. Here's an interesting article from the Sierra Club that cites an exhaustive study on the topic. In an example they use they conclude it would take about 9 years to reach "break even" to replace a current car with a more efficient model in a driving scenario of 3,200 miles annually. But with a annual driving of 13,000 miles annually that break even point reaches 10 months. They use a Prius as the example.
It becomes more complex when the variables of destructive strip mining for toxic metals, battery disposal, use of electricity (generated by coal and very dangerous nuclear energy and disposal of waste, etc.), is factored but that might be a wash versus drilling for oil and oil disasters like spilled tankers or the BP disaster, etc. Or the risks/costs of nuclear reactor problems? It's very difficult to say which is the worse environmental behavior.
And, there are other intangibles to factor. A new vehicle is always more expensive. Let's say that to "justify" the new vehicle or to pay for it, one has to get a 2nd job, or otherwise work more, and hence drive more to support the 2nd job or additional working shifts to pay for the car. So it becomes a self-licking ice cream cone. Now you have a more expensive car, and must drive more, thereby polluting more than you otherwise would, albeit polluting more efficiently.
IMO the best solution for the environment is to buy something used that has already been made, versus driving up demand for brand new products. The less you buy new (of anything) the better for the environment generally speaking. Stopping the "new" product demand curves is the best for mother nature and planet earth. Less packaging, less consumption, less transportation from A to B to C to D, etc.
https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/green-life/2013/10/ask-mr-green-how-much-energy-make-new-car
"Whether to replace depends on how much you drive. If your car gets 32 miles per gallon, then you’re putting on only 3,200 miles a year, as opposed to the ghastly national average of more than 13,000. So if you buy, say, a plug-in Prius, which gets about 50 miles per gallon and drive it the same distance, you'd be using 36 fewer gallons of gas a year than with your old car. So it would take 9 years before your Prius will have “caught up” with your old car and saved enough fuel to offset the energy needed to make it. After that, your 18 miles extra per gallon will be pure savings in energy and emissions. But if you were driving your old car that customary 13,000 miles a year, burning 406 gallons a year, it would only take about 10 months before you’d have burned up the amount of energy needed to create a road-worthy Prius. "
It becomes more complex when the variables of destructive strip mining for toxic metals, battery disposal, use of electricity (generated by coal and very dangerous nuclear energy and disposal of waste, etc.), is factored but that might be a wash versus drilling for oil and oil disasters like spilled tankers or the BP disaster, etc. Or the risks/costs of nuclear reactor problems? It's very difficult to say which is the worse environmental behavior.
And, there are other intangibles to factor. A new vehicle is always more expensive. Let's say that to "justify" the new vehicle or to pay for it, one has to get a 2nd job, or otherwise work more, and hence drive more to support the 2nd job or additional working shifts to pay for the car. So it becomes a self-licking ice cream cone. Now you have a more expensive car, and must drive more, thereby polluting more than you otherwise would, albeit polluting more efficiently.
IMO the best solution for the environment is to buy something used that has already been made, versus driving up demand for brand new products. The less you buy new (of anything) the better for the environment generally speaking. Stopping the "new" product demand curves is the best for mother nature and planet earth. Less packaging, less consumption, less transportation from A to B to C to D, etc.
https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/green-life/2013/10/ask-mr-green-how-much-energy-make-new-car
"Whether to replace depends on how much you drive. If your car gets 32 miles per gallon, then you’re putting on only 3,200 miles a year, as opposed to the ghastly national average of more than 13,000. So if you buy, say, a plug-in Prius, which gets about 50 miles per gallon and drive it the same distance, you'd be using 36 fewer gallons of gas a year than with your old car. So it would take 9 years before your Prius will have “caught up” with your old car and saved enough fuel to offset the energy needed to make it. After that, your 18 miles extra per gallon will be pure savings in energy and emissions. But if you were driving your old car that customary 13,000 miles a year, burning 406 gallons a year, it would only take about 10 months before you’d have burned up the amount of energy needed to create a road-worthy Prius. "
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It would give perspective. Advancements in clean technology for gasoline engines has improved exponentially in the last 40 years. Jet engine's burning kerosene have only gotten cleaner mostly due to the quality of kerosene used. Automotive exhaust is only a small fragment of the entire pollution problem. The war on car exhaust is merely a distraction from real pollution problems. Just by shutting down some coal fired powerplants and switching to natural gas, the US has dramatically cut our overall emissions. Sort of like a magician waving around his right hand so you don't notice what he's doing with his left hand.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Methane produces about 50% of the CO2 emissions of coal (f we are going by the IPCC figures), so if that's the metric we are going by, it isn't 10x or 100x cleaner, it's roughly twice as clean. However, as I pointed out, coal has quite a few other "nasties" in terms of emissions/pollution produced as part of its combustion process that make it much worse. And yes, methane is a potent GHG gas, so leakage should definitely be monitored.
Most of the emissions reductions seen in the US over the last 20 years have come not from wind and solar, but from the shift away from coal and towards methane.
Gas is an important fuel that the world has become extremely reliant on, since it is the most popular to prop up wind and solar. This has created issues with availability and supplies, particularly as of late as we are simultaneously pushing to restrict/curtail its production while pushing policy that results in greater dependence on it.
If you generate economic activity that money will get spent over and over down the chain until it's spent on energy.
If you save money on a car but go out to eat more that waitress will then take that trip the next state over she'd been putting off.
Gluttony is a sin, one not talked about much because it makes us Americans uncomfortable. Hopefully one's current car meets their needs without an overabundance of untapped performance. When it expires of natural causes is a great time to evaluate/ reevaluate how new vehicles on the market meet a person's needs.
If you save money on a car but go out to eat more that waitress will then take that trip the next state over she'd been putting off.
Gluttony is a sin, one not talked about much because it makes us Americans uncomfortable. Hopefully one's current car meets their needs without an overabundance of untapped performance. When it expires of natural causes is a great time to evaluate/ reevaluate how new vehicles on the market meet a person's needs.
Oh please.
Jet engines haven’t “only gotten cleaner mostly due to the quality of kerosene…”
Jet engines today make the same power on half the fuel.
The fuel specifications and quality have remained the same.
Engines have dramatically improved.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Oh, I would LOVE for you to expound on why nuclear is dangerous, and don't quote the Sierra Club, which is a vehemently anti-nuclear org along the same lines of GreenPeace.
Nuclear actually has the best safety record of any source (lowest number of deaths per TWh) and is the ONLY source that has to manage its total lifecycle waste stream.
Advances happen slowly. I know most people these days want to snap their fingers and have zero pollution. That won’t happen. The stress of societal change would be enormous.
If you are old enough to have lived through the 60’s-70’s or prior then you would know that we have made great changes in pollution levels.
If they ran jet engines on natural gas, like each and every one of them was designed around, I might agree. The only reason fuel efficiency has increased is they know now how to build the engines to hold up under leaner burn. Ground pollution is not much better.
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OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
The build-out of nuclear in both Ontario and France was extremely rapid. It's quite possible to, on the electricity front, go to a minimal fossil grid in about 20 years if the will and regulatory environment were conducive. The problem of course is that they aren't. We built 24 reactors in the span of about 30 years, yet it took almost a decade just to get the EA approved for Darlington B. The West is not setup to execute massive infrastructure projects efficiently anymore, the bureaucracy and red tape prohibit it.
This. You have to account for passenger-miles/gallon or the metric equivalent. If there were examples of individuals using a personal Boeing 787 for commuting, that would be most directly comparable to average vehicle use, which has just the driver on board. But you never have just one person in a 787 or other jetliner. The same thing applies to buses, trains, and other mass movers.
Downside of the Prius-at 9 years, you’re dangerously close to main battery EOL, and at new battery costs, it might be better to buy a NEW car & to start the whole lifecycle over again. My xB is a pretty good example-still going strong at 16 1/2 years old, if it were a Prius it would have needed a battery that likely would cost more than it was worth already, and would likely be nearing a THIRD one!
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