Comments
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It's hilarious to watch people blame oil companies while using their services. Oil companies don't exist due to some evil lobbyist conspiracy, they exist because oil continues to be one of the single most valuable products on the planet, contributing to the production of jet fuel for planes, resins, plastics, asphalt, epoxies, and a whole host of other chemicals. This is on top of, of course, producing gasoline and diesel. I fully support alternative energy, electric cars, and other technologies to help reduce our carbon footprint, but in the meantime we will still need oil, and to think otherwise either shows an extreme idealism or a misunderstanding of the facts.
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@PottedPlant, this is referencing to a number of fraudulent studies that were published or funded by oil companies that try to cast doubt on human influence on climate change. They use cherry picked experiments with falsified data in order to support that notion to reduce their loss on market share due to concerns over the environment
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@PottedPlant, blaming people because they use the system we were born into is d1ck move. The problem is oil companies are preventing us from moving on when going renewable is completely feasible option. Oil companies new in the mid 1900’s what emissions were doing and started a campaign to fight knowledge.
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@Implicit88, The people who buy the products are responsible for keeping them in business. Full stop. If there was no demand, they wouldn't exist. The real issue however is just simply that we have no alternatives to jet fuel when running planes, electric cars have many issues that still need to be resolved, including cost of materials, charging time, issues with range in cold weather. Renewable power like wind and solar continue to require backup with natural gas and other fossil fuels due to intermittency issues, which is why even after going majority renewable countries like Germany still see an increase in fossil fuels. If you are concerned about climate change, your best best is nuclear power, such as what was done in France. Simply put, people don't have higher demand for renewables than fossil fuels due to lobbyist efforts and corruption, it's due to renewable energy and electric cars continually underperforming in cost, efficiency, and capability to the current fossil fuels.
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@PottedPlant, I mean you are right, it's not specifically big oils fault apart from their lobbying and misinformation spreading on the issue. Tbh I feel like the problem is with the price. The world revolves around money, make oil more expensive and suddenly there will be more funding for alternative fuel technology. Europe is already using less per capita due to the price there. Yes it sucks a lot in the short term especially for lower income brackets but its better than the alternative. That price is a government level thing though, not an company level one.
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@PottedPlant, how can it get better if no one lets it get better? The ic was created as a leader not as a follower. All the issues you state were there for the ic as well compared to a horse yet it prevailed. Nuclear power is even worse than emissions in the long term. Nuclear waste has a long shelf life. Renewable energy could be achieved if you look at alternative energy storage. Like closed circuit dams, regenerative breaking on trains going up a hill, and others.
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@PottedPlant, even so, you cant blame people for working within society to make it better. If you were to say no more oil, you literally could not eat or drink anything not naturally occurring because guess what?! Food and water are all results from oil. Machinery made a lot of infrastructure. That argument is truly a stupid one. You literally would not be able to use anything. I am grateful for oil, however, its life is up. Its time to be responsible and stop borrowing from future generations.
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@Implicit88, There's no oil conspiracy preventing renewables technology from advancing. Renewables continue to receive billions in subsidies every year and will continue to do so. The technology just isn't there yet. While there are some incidents of bad behavior in the past, oil companies as a whole are not keeping renewables down. And my argument was never along the lines that because renewables have issues we should stop using them or improving them, just that we should be honest about the reality of the situation. I already mentioned that we should continue to support renewable growth. Your comments regarding nuclear are patently false with regards to carbon emissions. Nuclear has less carbon emissions than renewables overall. Now if you are talking about nuclear waste, which doesn't affect climate change, then I would say you have a point, that is a concern, but that we should continue to do what we are doing with renewables and find new ways to deal with that waste.
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@Implicit88, It's been the policy of the US government and other Western nations for years to ignore the benefits of nuclear and give them no funding, and continuing to decommission plants. If you want to fight climate change, this is the exact opposite of what should be done. Honestly had no idea what you are talking about on your last comment. I'm not blaming people for working to make things better, far from it. What I am saying is that it is hypocritical to blame oil companies for climate change when you are a consumer who buys their products.
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@PottedPlant, nuclear waste is radioactive and is far worse for the overall environment is what i meant. Oil companies have for years made climate change a debate rather than fact. They tried to keep it hidden, not a conspiracy theory its fact. They do things like create a pipeline DAPL which has leaked hundreds of thousands of gallons already but news dont mention it. Then there ocean oil spills.
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@Implicit88, I would dispute that, given that if climate change projections are accurate, we are talking close to trillions of dollars worldwide. But I agree nuclear waste is an issue. Oil companies aren't a monolith though. There are bad actors and there are good actors, just like an industry and any corporation. With regards to DAPL, clearly leaking pipelines are bad, but people fail to realize that full cost benefit ratio of them. Hundreds of thousands of gallons is what the DAPL can produce in a day or less. The actual percentage of leaked volume vs volume of product that travels safely to it's destination out of DAPL will be something like 99.9% efficient. All while being orders of magnitude in safety vs other transportation methods like truck and rail. I will grant you ocean spills however. If we could avoid offshore drilling as a whole I think we would solve the majority of concerns that pipelines have toward their environment impact.
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@liberachi , You clearly didn't understand anything I said. I'm not saying you shouldn't criticize oil companies. Feel free. What I am saying is you can't blame oil companies for climate change without acknowledging that you are a part of the problem by buying their products. People like to shift all the blame to oil companies because then they never have to take responsibility for their actions. Humans cause climate change by existing. The fact is we still need oil products as a society, and to think otherwise is indeed idealistic or ignorant.
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@BlazingBowman, it also ignores the fact that humans solve problems with our environment, that’s probably THE defining characteristic of homo sapian, we stopped adapting to our environment and make it adapt to us. Not that we shouldn’t be good stewards of the planet, mind you, it just silly to think we won’t overcome our mistakes.
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@BlazingBowman, The technology is there and improving rapidly. It would be expensive to implement the tech as quickly as we need to, but it would be beneficial to the environment and economy in the long run. Alternative energy cannot replace oil 100% at the moment, but for what we can change we have to do it.
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@A Blunt Object, doesnt seem convineint if you know you dont have a garage. If youre able to afford the delux charger or if youre going on a trip thats longer than youre range so youre stoping every 2 hours and waiting 4 hours to charge up and go at a minimum. In a real situation where everyone driving electric cars and waiting 4 hours to charge their cars that line could be huge and long very easily. Then there the power difference i dont know but im going to assume theres a horse power difference so if you wanna haul anything good luck.
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@Homeless Gentleman, resident petroleum engineer turned risk analyst. This is a good conversation until you realize big oil is playing both sides so they come out on top. In Europe, big oil owns just about most of the solar panels now. Ultimately, oil companies will just become energy companies. The problem is the market for oil and gas is there. Shut down that market by a number of ways, ie only producing electric cars, then the industry will be forced to adapt and change. Now excuse me while I fly away on my on my magic unicorn powered by the screams of children
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@BlazingBowman, Like I said, it isnt viable to do a complete switch over, but cars arent the only concern. Transportation is actually on the lower side of greenhouse gas emissions from the major economic sectors. Industry, electricity and heat production, and agriculture produce the largest chunk of greenhouse gases.
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@BlazingBowman, Yeah those numbers seem about right for the United States and still fits with what I said. It makes up about 1/3 of the greenhouse gas emissions and unfortunately, the current solutions arent economically viable yet for most of the population. That doesnt mean we should just completely ignore the other 2/3 of emitters that do have more economically available solutions.
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@K1l, i feel like i remember one of the big three numbers being a 25% but its been like 6 months since ive seen those numbers. Speaking of the emiters i think if we went full solar damb winf and nyclear we could atleast negate like 1/3 and if we get electric cars more practical it could start clearing up that 1/3 but for production thats an entirely new subject. Specific for each product being produced that emits c02. Because i imagibe a process for lowering or removing co2 emmisions from like creating plastic might be different than say removing or reducing c02 emisions from making steel.
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@BlazingBowman, the problem is when oil companies are purposely stopping innovation and trying to keep a reliance on oil. If you look at other companies in asia (china, uae, saudis) they are shifting to renewable energy because they know its the future. Heavily investing in it. Meanwhile we have incredible stupid people who just want to hang onto oil.
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@BlazingBowman, yup and an IC engine used to have a 10 mile range. Your issue is that you’re looking at current, not what the technology will become. Just look at how your cellphone has evolved in a decade. Car ranges have improved, and if you’re at a supercharger it currently takes 30 minute to charge half a “tank”. Think of where it will be in 10 years...
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@Jdrawer, yeah see this is why people dont like environmentalists. Your elitist freaking attitude combined with your smugness and complete lack of touch with people in real life. Why the hell would i pay 60k to buy a toy car that cant haul sh!t cant drive more than a couple hundred miles without having to take a 4 hour pit stop best case scenario. Charging stations few and far between so if i miss one ill need a call a tow truck, and Probably handles like sh!t in poor weather conditions. You are so out of touch its not even funny.
Let's go nuclear!