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Did you ever ask those questions for coal or gas or oil? Or is it only for solar panels that they seem suddenly relevant?
Seems like any small step towards cleaner power is a material improvement, if small. There's likely no single thing that can be done that will solve the issue in one fell swoop. Asking or hoping for that is ridiculous.
Suppose it emits 80 tons of CO2 to produce a given amount of solar when 80% of the power to build the solar farm comes from coal. Okay, but now you have solar farms generating 15% of your energy, so the next one only takes 65 tons of CO2 for the same amount of solar. Pretty obvious what happens when you stop burning fossil fuels entirely.
Granted, it would be better to have no car at all but on this front, the US is doomed.
My comment is that the lifespan of a car in the US is short (5 years, 10?) so ICE vs EV more or less evens out?
Considering old cars are exported to poor countries, that is another reason in favor of ICE since EV are a no go here.
The average car in the US is 12.6 years old, implying that the average car has a total lifespan of something like 25 years (because the average car will be average, i.e. currently at around half of its total lifespan).
> Considering old cars are exported to poor countries, that is another reason in favor of ICE since EV are a no go here.
I don't think anybody chooses a new car based on what kind of charging infrastructure might be available to third hand purchasers in other countries in 20 years.
Statistically, probably about ~1% of what an equivalent MW of coal takes, like the rest.
What are you basing this conclusion on? Your own fantasies? All of this is taken into consideration, you're just not willing to read any of it.
Solar is the best we got for a good price. And it's clean AF in comparison to the common alternatives.
Apparently your concern doesn't rise to any desire to seek out data which is readily available.
And reasonable too: there's a lot of green washing about, and it is better I think to be sceptical than to take the foaming press-releases of marketing departments (or superficial articles) at face value.
As for researching the minutae and coming up with a definite position on the issue: like many of us who live under capitalism, I don't have time. I've spent the last two weeks intermittantly planting about 200 tree seedlings, a much better use of time I feel.
I browse HN to relax, you know.
Funny how nobody asks that about coal plants, oil processing plants, oil well, fracked areas, etc