@gerrymcgovern @ClintonAnderson "When we created a battery/motor for an EV we mine toxic metals once, at the creation of the car, then it barely gives off anything toxic for 20 years, then the car dies and we can salvage some of the metal from body, but 90%+ of the battery can be recycled to create a new battery to go into a new car."

I paraphrased all this, but you get the idea.

And fossil fuel mining isn't exactly going great either, fracking pollutes local water, oil spills kill penguins.

@gerrymcgovern

Batteries are a faaaaar better, far cleaner, option than burning archaic single use fossil fuels.

@ClintonAnderson

Oh yeah? The day we're selling batteries as an environmental solution is the day we are surely doomed.

"Renewable" batteries:
Lithium
Nickel
Cobalt
PFAS forever chemicals
Volatile electrolytes

"Lithium-based batteries pose several health risks throughout their life cycle"

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092134492600114X

@gerrymcgovern

Aaaand they're still orders of magnitude more desirable than fossil fuels.

So, what's your solution, if not renewable energy sources and battery storage?

@gerrymcgovern @ClintonAnderson

Every solution to every problem bears its own costs and presents its own problems that have to be solved.

Batteries paired with solar and wind seem to offer the single most plausible mechanism for mitigating the existential threat of carbon fuel-driven environmental destruction.

@HeavenlyPossum @gerrymcgovern

Solar... Wind... Hydro.... Hell, I'm not even very opposed to nuclear as a carry over while we put Oil&Gas into its long overdue coffin and bolt it shut forever

@ClintonAnderson
Hydro is absolutely environmentally devastating. Hydro does multiple--multiple--environmental harms. It's just these harms are hidden in remote areas and where Indigenous live. Hydro is absolutely horrible for nature--and is a methane bomb factory

@HeavenlyPossum

@gerrymcgovern @HeavenlyPossum

Aaaaand it's still orders of magnitude more desirable than burning dinosaur shit

Not to mention it's far down list of preferable choices, after solar, after wind, I'd say even after nuclear

So, again, what's your solution?

@ClintonAnderson
Actually, no. I've seen studies that when the true and total costs of hydro were accounted for, it had just as big an impact as fossil fuels.

Hydro doesn't just devastate where the dam is built. It destroys river systems and related ecosystems. It destroys marine systems that the rivers used to flow into. etc etc. And it's a methane bomb as the vegetation that was covered by the dam rots

@HeavenlyPossum

@gerrymcgovern @HeavenlyPossum

I'm sorry, I cannot take the bullshit assertion that "hydro is just as bad as oil & gas" seriously.

Have better days, eh

I'm out.

@ClintonAnderson

Decades of research suggests that hydropower has a far greater climate impact than once thought. Now a growing chorus of scientists want to change the conversation about it.

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/14072023/todays-climate-hydropower-methane-clean-energy/

“Over the past 20 years, international studies of dams and their reservoirs confirmed in dozens of peer-reviewed research papers that dams and reservoirs are net contributors to climate change.”
https://www.patagonia.com/stories/what-is-the-future-of-dams-in-a-hot-chaotic-world/story-135155.html

@HeavenlyPossum

@gerrymcgovern @ClintonAnderson

Net contributors, at a vastly lower rate than oil and gas.

@gerrymcgovern @ClintonAnderson Mr Technology Connections mentions something like, "When you dig up and burn fossil fuels created millions of years ago, you get to burn it once and it creates toxic fumes, then on your next trip you need more fossil fuels which also give off toxic fumes, daily. When the car dies we can recycle some of the metal and the catalytic converter."
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQ9nt2ZeGM