http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1530-9290.2012....
The Op-Ed author is trying to claim that the article supports his thesis that EVs have a bigger environmental impact than ICE vehicles. To do this he must assume that an EV will only be driven for 50K miles in its lifetime: otherwise he bumps up against the article's main thesis, which is that even at 65K miles, with the article's very conservative assumptions, an EV has a carbon advantage over ICE. The advantage grows significantly with longer, and more realistic lifetimes.
I think this is typical of an WSJ Op-Ed. Anyway, here's the abstract of the cited article:
> Electric vehicles (EVs) coupled with low-carbon electricity sources offer the potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and exposure to tailpipe emissions from personal transportation. In considering these benefits, it is important to address concerns of problem-shifting. In addition, while many studies have focused on the use phase in comparing transportation options, vehicle production is also significant when comparing conventional and EVs. We develop and provide a transparent life cycle inventory of conventional and electric vehicles and apply our inventory to assess conventional and EVs over a range of impact categories. We find that EVs powered by the present European electricity mix offer a 10% to 24% decrease in global warming potential (GWP) relative to conventional diesel or gasoline vehicles assuming lifetimes of 150,000 km. However, EVs exhibit the potential for significant increases in human toxicity, freshwater eco-toxicity, freshwater eutrophication, and metal depletion impacts, largely emanating from the vehicle supply chain. Results are sensitive to assumptions regarding electricity source, use phase energy consumption, vehicle lifetime, and battery replacement schedules. Because production impacts are more significant for EVs than conventional vehicles, assuming a vehicle lifetime of 200,000 km exaggerates the GWP benefits of EVs to 27% to 29% relative to gasoline vehicles or 17% to 20% relative to diesel. An assumption of 100,000 km decreases the benefit of EVs to 9% to 14% with respect to gasoline vehicles and results in impacts indistinguishable from those of a diesel vehicle. Improving the environmental profile of EVs requires engagement around reducing vehicle production supply chain impacts and promoting clean electricity sources in decision making regarding electricity infrastructure.
Is this guy serious? The average car is driven 13.5k miles/year. So 50k is 3.7 years.
Why would anyone use a ridiculously low number unless they were just trying to prove a point they already made up their mind on?
http://business.time.com/2012/03/20/what-you-only-have-100k-...
And that's AVERAGE of cars still being driven
Did you read the rest of the article?
Quote: "To make matters worse, the batteries in electric cars fade with time, just as they do in a cellphone. Nissan estimates that after five years, the less effective batteries in a typical Leaf bring the range down to 55 miles. As the MIT Technology Review cautioned last year: "Don't Drive Your Nissan Leaf Too Much."
Electric cars have a shorter effective range than "the average car" and due to charging time are less suitable for long trips (or for purchase in places where long trips are the norm) so they're likely to get driven less. And the range gets shorter as time goes on so even if they're comparable in the first year they won't be in later years.
Anyway, the article gave TWO data points. He said "IF a typical electric car is driven 50,000 miles over its lifetime..." gave some conclusions, and then went on to talk about a better-case scenario of the car being driven 90,000 miles. Can you at least accept these as a bracket? The conclusion he reached from considering these two hypothetical data points was that electric cars might be worse than non-electrics in terms of CO2 impact or they might be better, but were unlikely to be a vast improvement and in any case the term "zero emissions" is a misnomer.
When doing a cost-benefit analysis at the end, Lomborgh used his optimistic estimate - 90,000 miles - to conclude that the government would be spending $7,500 in subsidies to save $44 (in the US) or $48 (in Europe) worth of carbon.
Two car household here --
46mo/old Prius - about 52k miles 37mo/old Jetta TDI - about 54k miles
Since we are both solo-commuters, this is fairly typical for the bay area. Probably in the realm measured, but ... a 50k lifetime is a bit of a joke.
Where by "denier" you presumably mean "person who thinks there might exist other important issues of concern in the world besides CO2 levels".
Or perhaps you mean "person who believes public policy proposals ought to be able to pass a cost-benefit analysis"?
Or do you mean, the sort of person who says stuff like: "Global warming is real and man-made, and it needs an effective response." ( Source: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/09/28/not_so_hot )
That claim appears to itself be a "myth" promulgated by people who don't like the guy's political conclusions.
The wikipedia page that made this inflammatory claim gave as its only reference a print-only newspaper article, from 1998, in Norwegian. (the ref was: Bjørn Lomborg, 'Det går bedre', newspaper article, Weekendavisen 13 March 1998)
So IF that article actually exists AND the claims made about it were valid, the best you'd be able to say is presumably that he said something once, 15 years ago, which when translated to English was taken to mean he suggested the "greenhouse effect" was a "myth". But given how much he's written on the subject in English in articles and reference sources that can actually be checked, the more likely assumption is that there was some amount of exaggeration/mistranslation going on. For instance, he might have been arguing that some claim about the greenhouse effect was "a myth", if that word was even used. Near as I can tell, all the google-able articles point back to that wikipedia page as a source, which - since it's been marked "citation needed" for more than 6 months - I've just fixed.
EVs make a certain type of person squirm, and I am really interested to try and understand why that is.