This is how the LNG argument typically goes: if we build up LNG capacity, we can ship it to China who can use it to replace coal burning power plants which emit significantly more CO2 than LNG fired plants do.
That sounds nice — but do we have any_ commitments from China that this would actually happen? Or is it more likely that they’ll just build more LNG capacity on top of their existing coal capacity?
To me, the latter seems more likely than the former.
That if a racoon saw you swimming, it would swim out to you and sit on your head and drown you.
My fully adult mother actually feared this was something that could happen to her children, and she warned us of this “danger” every summer when we were young.
I know you weren’t directly questioning my assertion, but in case anyone else happens to think I’m just blowing smoke: Coloured Fuel | DriveSmart BC.
All time, probably the Cinesphere at Ontario place — one of the very first IMAX screens ever built, inside a geodesic sphere.
Currently (and closer to home) the IMAX theatre at our local museum. They show all sorts of IMAX formatted films (they have a full 4K Laser IMAX projection system), and their snack bar is hard to beat: excellent popcorn and hot dogs, lots of snack options, and the prices for which don’t break the bank (especially when compared to all the other theatres in our area). Last time I went (to see Oppenheimer) I got a large popcorn, large Coke, and a cup of gummy treats — and I think I spent a whole $12 (CAD).
And while I don’t have one, they have an annual pass available.
That I’m a handsome sex machine, with charisma to spare.
No idea who started that one. 🤷🏻♂️
Does this pump also dispense marked fuels through the same hose?
In my province of residence gas stations near farming communities often sell “marked fuel” (fuel with an added red dye in it) that are taxed less, and which are intended for farming machinery, road work equipment, boats, and other non-highway use only. If you’re caught with red-dyed fuel being used for any other purpose you can be charged with an offence, and levied fines or other penalties.
If you dispense a small amount of regular gasoline after another purchaser had bought marked gasoline, the dye in the fuel remaining in the lines likely isn’t diluted enough to tell the difference — and you could (hypothetically) then be charged with possessing marked fuel without the proper paperwork.
(Anywhere I’ve ever seen marked fuels sold usually has a separate hose for the marked fuel to be dispensed from to prevent this from happening — but I don’t know your gas station or where you live, so maybe they rely on dilution rather than separation to differentiate?)
I started back in the Wild West BBS days on the 80s; graduated to USENET in the 90s, website forums in the Web 1.0 days, /., Reddit, and now Lemmy. Yeah, I’ve been around. Been “Yaztromo” all that time too.
I don’t mind that “Eternal September” hasn’t infected this space yet — that’s a feature, not a bug!
A big reason for that programme was to try to take some of the most polluting vehicles off the road (either due to age or being in poor repair). There is no need for such a programme in a world of electric vehicles, so I doubt there would be any incentive for a government to run some a programme again.
It’s mostly improved chemistries and manufacturing processes. What we call “lithium ion batteries” aren’t the same today as they were even just in the 2010s. We have newer chemistries (lithium cobalt oxide, lithium manganese oxide, lithium iron phosphate, lithium manganese cobalt, lithium nickel cobalt aluminium oxide, etc.), newer solid state battery technologies, better cell packaging, and overall better manufacturing processes.
Will these cells still have 100% capacity after 15 years? Likely not — but even if they’re only at 80 - 90% of their original capacity that’s still quite a lot of driving capacity for most EVs.
Here is one non-peer reviewed study on Tesla battery deterioration, which shows that at the ~10 year mark, battery capacity loss is at around 17%. However, it’s worth noting that cars that hit the 8 through 10 year marks were more likely using older battery chemistry and construction techniques; newer cars at the 7 year mark only showed a roughly 7% battery capacity loss.
Time will tell, but the situation is significantly less bleak than naysayers (and the oil industry) want you to believe.
The batteries on modern EVs doesn’t wear anywhere near the rate that people think they do. A properly cared for battery (which doesn’t require much care other than keeping it charged properly) will easily last 15+ years — and likely beyond the lifetime of the car they were installed into. Manufacturers already offer 8+ year battery warranties on new EVs, because they know they can easily beat that (barring a manufacturing defect of some kind).
(In Japan, Nissan has been taking cells out of old Leafs that have at least 80% remaining capacity and are making them into home power packs. The Nissan Leaf was one of the first EVs and used an older battery chemistry — and even there, the batteries are typically outliving the cars they were originally installed into).
It’s a little difficult to say with certainty what the lifetime of an EV battery is going to be like right now, as EVs with modern chemistries aren’t yet 15 years old (they’re more like 5 to 7 years old at most). Anecdotally, those I know with EVs in that age range typically have less than 1% capacity loss (and ODB-II reader can typically check this for you, so it’s not difficult to determine).
Now of course it’s possible that someone has abused the hell out of their vehicle in ways that reduce the battery life (like routinely driving it to completely pull-over-to-the-side-of-the-road empty before recharging) — but as mentioned above an ODB-II reader will quickly show what the battery capacity is like. Hopefully used car sellers would check this themselves and provide it to buyers — but if not, ODB-II readers on Amazon aren’t terribly expensive to buy to check for oneself.
Battery wear concerns are going to be more for “classic” EV collectors in 30+ years time, and won’t be for your typical EV driver.
The levers available to the Federal Government in this area are few; the Provinces hold most of the cards when it comes to housing, and it disgusts me that all too many of my fellow Canadians have so little clue as to how the system works that they blame the Federal Government (and/or “Trudope”), while letting their Provincial leaders (the majority of which are Conservatives) off the hook.
Just today we’re seeing the Premiere of Alberta attempting to halt some of the Federal Governments deals with the municipalities to enhance housing supplies — purely because if they let the Feds provide assistance they won’t have a cudgel to hold against them anymore. It’s you don’t do enough to help and we won’t let you!
The only policy solution to the current housing woes is more housing supply. And that’s ultimately in the hands of the Provinces.
Truly “poor people” (to use your words) typically don’t buy a lot of new cars in the first place. People on the lower end of the income scale are the main drivers of the used vehicle market.
Incentivizing EV purchases and infrastructure ultimately helps everyone. It will bring efficiencies to the supply chain, and will drive investment into resources that should help drive prices down. At the same time, within the next 5 years or so you should see growth in the used EV market, which as more stock becomes available and used EVs become more normalized should make them more economical to purchase (as they’re already more economical to run and maintain).
More new EVs now means more used EVs down the road, which will allow people to get into a better car for less money.
That stat borders on being somewhat dishonest.
The three most populous Provinces in Canada (Ontario, Quebec, and British Columbia) each have over 90% green power generation, either via hydroelectricity or via nuclear power. Manitoba likewise produces 97% of its electricity from hydroelectric sources.
Those four Provinces have a population of roughly 31 million people. Canada has a total population of just over 39 million — meaning “most provinces actually” only accounts for 20% of Canadians. 80% of Canadians get their electricity from 85+% green sources. By total capacity, nearly 70% of all electrical generation in Canada is from green sources, and thus “electric heat” for the vast majority of Canadians is not from coal and natural gas.
Agreed — I think replacing coal with natural gas is just a half-step that mostly benefits those with natural gas to sell, and just delays the overall transition.
But of course the people arguing for natural gas don’t care about that, so it’s easier to challenge them on the fact that they’re also inventing some pipe dream without evidence that if we could get gas to China that they’d suddenly be all for converting (or shutting down) coal fired plants — when there is _no evidence for that anywhere, and where they could be doing that today if they really wanted to.
There is always more that can be done, but the effects of the carbon tax go well beyond it being a “tax on life”.
Take for example Algoma Steel in Sault Ste. Marie Ontario. They’ve been undergoing a major transformation from using constantly-burning coal to an Electric Arc Furnace — and they specifically call out carbon tax savings as one of the projects drivers.
That’s but one story of industry putting the investments into greener technologies to save from having to pay the carbon levy. I wish the media spent more time talking about such projects, because the levy is working.
You know what I love most about the levy? It’s effectively optional. I can’t opt out of making an income (not being born rich and not wanting to live under a vow of poverty), but I can opt out of generating carbon. We’ve been having the carbon discussion for 30 years now (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change came out in 1992!), and at least some of us were paying attention and made a plan to decarbonize our lifestyles during the last three decades. And for everyone who has, the Carbon Levy might as well not really exist. If you don’t burn, you don’t pay. Simple as that.
As I mentioned in another post on this topic, that “might” is doing a TON of heavy lifting in Higg’s argument.
AFAIK, no countries have stepped up to say they’d shut down coal fired plants if only they could get hold of more natural gas. China usually comes up in this conversation, but they already have a pipeline with Russia that supplies natural gas, and AFAIK it isn’t even at capacity yet. If China really wanted to replace coal with natural gas, they’d be doing it now with Russian gas, and wouldn’t have to wait the decade-plus it would take to get the infrastructure built to ship Canadian natural gas to them.
If Higgs draws a dick on his forehead I might give him $100. I probably won’t, and have never discussed any plans to do so, but who knows? I might!
I feel like they’re not going to outright kill it, but quill instead let it wither on the vine; aka die the death of a thousands cuts.
There will likely be more new functionality that won’t be backported. Things that work okay now will stop functioning correctly. They’ll just stop maintenance and wait for everyone to leave — when it does get shut down, it will happen with a whimper rather than a bang.
Truth being spoken here.
Yes, housing is expensive in Canada. The primary villain here? The Provincial governments. But they’re getting away with it scot-free while idiots blame “Trudope”.
Similar with the Climate levy. The biggest complaining Provinces have had years to put in their own carbon-pricing schemes to get out from under the Federal backstop, but decided to do nothing. Indeed, Alberta and Ontario had their own systems, but scrapped them because apparently they thought it was better to “blame Trudope” than to actually help their constituents by implementing carbon pricing schemes that would work for their needs.
And voters are letting the get away with it. And their lives won’t improve under Pollievre, because their Provincial leaders will keep pulling the same crap, and voters will continue to let them get away with it.
A day later, Higgs and Smith put forward similar ideas — arguing that if Canada exported more natural gas, it might be used to displace dirtier coal power in other countries.
That word might is doing a whole lot of heavy lifting here.
Do we have any actual evidence that China (or anyone else for that matter) would actually offset any coal plants with Canadian Natural Gas, instead of just burning that natural gas in addition to coal? Retrofitting a power plant for natural gas isn’t free, and China can already get lots of natural gas from Russia if they wanted (the Power of Siberia pipeline can handle 61 billion cubic meters per year, but only delivers about 23 bcm/year). Nothing is stopping China from moving from coal to natural gas — but there appears to be no real will to do so.
This argument from the two Prairie Premiers sounds a whole lot more like wishful thinking than actual policy.
They are, but you still need baseload. Solar and wind are great — when it’s daytime and/or the wind is blowing. Coal (and natural gas, hydro, and nuclear) can provide more scalable power on demand. These fill in the gaps for times when solar and wind production are lower.
But China isn’t likely to convert existing coal plants to natural gas. If they wanted to do that they could do it already — they have an LNG pipeline from Siberia. But instead of replacing existing coal power plants, China keeps approving new ones — it was reported last year they were approving two new coal fired plants per week. So even if they increased their LNG imports (they’re looking to open a second pipeline with Russia on the western side of the country), those coal plants aren’t going anywhere — with the rate they’re building new power plants, they’re not likely to be “upgrading” any coal plants to LNG anytime soon — they’ll just build additional LNG plants (and likely further coal plants) alongside those existing coal plants instead.