Zero-emission vehicles, their batteries & subsidies/rebates for them.- No politics regarding the subsidies!

[j_j]

That smart meter nonsense is the dumbest thing I've ever heard since the last dumbest thing I've ever heard.

Oh yeah, but at the time it was all "covid vaccine kills you", "power lines cause cancer" and "smart meters will cause brain cancer", but all of these people are talking on cell phones. Well, except for one person who refuses to have WiFi in her house and insists that cell phone 'waves' only reach the walls of the house.

 

[Blumlein 88]

I've had 4 bird impacts in cars and one on a motorcycle (well actually it was my knee while on the motorcycle). In my case about one per decade. Some have more, but it is hard for me to believe drivers are averaging 2 per year. Which is what would be needed to meet those 340 million a year estimates. I would estimate on a couple of trips in rural areas in late spring I've killed 7 billion bugs and in one locust peak year about 1 million locusts.

I'm loath to express the idea, but if every form of wildlife is precious and necessary, and we worry about birds, then who is going to stand up for insects? Some kind of invertebrate prejudice it sounds like to me.

I also worked around a building once that had all glass on two opposing sides. Not all that large a building. It killed dozens of birds every year.

 

[beefkabob]

Around here it's FIRE DANGER CANCER STOP ELECTRICITY. There was a year-long battle about smart meters causing cancer.

Yeah, 10 milliwatts once every 4 hours emitted from a meter 30 feet away from the nearest person. But the beat goes on.

Good news: Stupid is fixable. It just takes a large rock coming down on the head.

I think the solution for those who hate smart meters is to permanently disconnect their electricity, water, and gas.

 

[beefkabob]

I rarely kill birds with my cars, but squirrels are another matter.

 

[ctrl]

Some have more, but it is hard for me to believe drivers are averaging 2 per year. Which is what would be needed to meet those 340 million a year estimates.

That's statistics! There are probably considerable error tolerances in all figures.
But if you make a rough estimate, the figure makes perfect sense.

According to data from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) of the United States Department of Transportation, there were approximately 281.3 million registered vehicles and 3.2 trillion vehicle miles traveled (VMT, on public and private roads) in the United States in 2020.
So you got 3.2 trillion Miles / 170 million Dead Birds (estimates from 89 to 340 millions) = 19000 VMT/DB

On average, this means one dead bird per 19000 miles driven. I think this is quite realistic. For trucks, the "hit rate" could be higher, for small city cars lower.
All in all, cars and trucks are weapons of mass destruction (for nature)

 

[Blumlein 88]

That's statistics! There are probably considerable error tolerances in all figures.
But if you make a rough estimate, the figure makes perfect sense.

According to data from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) of the United States Department of Transportation, there were approximately 281.3 million registered vehicles and 3.2 trillion vehicle miles traveled (VMT, on public and private roads) in the United States in 2020.
So you got 3.2 trillion Miles / 170 million Dead Birds (estimates from 89 to 340 millions) = 19000 VMT/DB

On average, this means one dead bird per 19000 miles driven. I think this is quite realistic. For trucks, the "hit rate" could be higher, for small city cars lower.
All in all, cars and trucks are weapons of mass destruction (for nature)

So how am I and people I know so particularly lucky? I've averaged around 19,000 miles driven. Less now, more in past years, but right about that. I average one bird strike every decade. When the topic has come up other people report it a few times, or a couple times. I don't know anyone who says anything like one per year. J_J did say 20 for him which I think it still less than 1 per year. Do trucks strike birds 10 times as often? They don't have good data or it would not cover a nearly 4 to 1 range. I'd doubt the low end of the estimate the upper end is not credible unless somehow people in other areas hit birds 10 times as much as around where I live.

One article from 2011 claimed 60 million a year. These numbers may not be wild ass guesses, but they are not clean data points. I can see why, because no one reports a bird strike except maybe when they get a broken windshield.

Besides maybe it is just developing a smarter bird by natural selection or unnatural selection. Birds with lower brain mass to body mass ratio struck more often.

Birds hit by cars are, well, bird-brained

What's the difference between birds that get killed by cars, and those that don't?

phys.org

Here is the source of those high numbers from a 2014 publication. Don't know of a non-paywalled version with the complete article, but this has the abstract.

https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jwmg.721

 

[Frank Dernie]

Wind turbine kill birds, pollute soil with lubricant, noise chase animals away. The way Americans propaganda works. Write thousand of article in office and present it as evidence. Mainstream medias opinion are even more important than facts and findings. Debate the hell of it. For more than a decade wind turbine is not an issue in other part of the world.

Back to birds, are you sure they have the body evidences and make it is killed by wind turbine. That is in thousands samples.

I asked our friends who have 4 wind turbines on their farm for over a decade now how many dead birds they have found and the answer was "none so far".

 

[ctrl]

I average one bird strike every decade. When the topic has come up other people report it a few times, or a couple times. I don't know anyone who says anything like one per year. J_J did say 20 for him which I think it still less than 1 per year.

Those are bird hits by car you perceived and that is the difference between individual experiences and statistically determined data. I often cycle past wind turbines and have never found a dead bird there - completely irrelevant individual experience (Unless you believe that this statistical data has been falsified for decades to make the wind turbines look good nowadays or that statisticians basically do not understand mathematics ).

But for the real discussion, the danger of Wind Turbines to bird life compared to what has been present so far in terms of danger to birds in the U.S. (or around the world) is ridiculously low.

For example, in addition to all the bird death traps listed so far, such as domestic cats (1.3 billion and 4 billion birds), window panes (365 million and 1 billion birds), and traffic (89 million to 340 million birds), 30 million migratory and upland birds are killed each year by hunting, and 12 to 64 million birds are killed each year in the US due to collisions with power lines and electrocutions ***.

Even if wind energy were to be massively expanded in the USA, this would not play any role at all with regard to the endangerment of birds (there are certainly individual cases where this can be different).

The discussion about this is a prime example of opinion manipulation by lobby groups. Depending on the survey, 39-44% of adults in the USA believe that wind turbines posed a moderate or high risk to bird populations.
In Germany there are surveys where even 60% of the adult population believe this.

*** the list could be continued by dead birds by trains, commuter trains and not to forget by the natural predators of birds.

 

[Frank Dernie]

I'm loath to express the idea, but if every form of wildlife is precious and necessary, and we worry about birds, then who is going to stand up for insects? Some kind of invertebrate prejudice it sounds like to me.

The very, very big change since I got my driving license here in the UK in 1967 is the number of insects around. Back then any drive in summer lead to a huge number of dead insects on the windscreen and frequent cleans. Now almost none. The difference is spectacularly big.

 

[Bob from Florida]

Interesting read on Golden Eagles and wind turbines. It seems the best places to put the wind farms in the Western United States are also prime habitat for Golden Eagles.

Wind Energy Boom and Golden Eagles Collide in the US West

www.voanews.com

If you read the link - and make the assumption it is somewhat accurate - it becomes clear that other sources of mortality are more significant than the turbines. The companies getting the permits to kill a finite number of eagles have to make "amends" for each kill. Making "amends" means doing something to mitigate future kills. Changing the design of power poles with greater spacing is one way to avoiding electrocuting Eagles - for example. Painting the turbine blades for visibility is another example.


Another read discussing a Harvard study into localized surface warming associated with wind turbines.

Wide-scale US wind power could cause significant warming – MIT Technology Review

www.technologyreview.com

One of the conclusions was to build more solar as the localized warming is significantly less than wind turbines.

Unfortunately, we won't really understand the effects of the transition to "clean energy" until well after it occurs. The majority of "claims" are based on various "models" that have yet to be verified for accuracy. Weather forecasting is based on modeling and it is nice when the model "gets it right". However, the local weather predictions - if you use them to plan outdoor adventures - seem to get it wrong more than expected.

 

[Bob from Florida]

The very, very big change since I got my driving license here in the UK in 1967 is the number of insects around. Back then any drive in summer lead to a huge number of dead insects on the windscreen and frequent cleans. Now almost none. The difference is spectacularly big.

Do you find the large reduction of insects worrisome?

 

[Suffolkhifinut]

The very, very big change since I got my driving license here in the UK in 1967 is the number of insects around. Back then any drive in summer lead to a huge number of dead insects on the windscreen and frequent cleans. Now almost none. The difference is spectacularly big.

It is worrying the decline is catastrophic, when we moved here in ‘94 Swifts nested around our house and it’s years since we have seen any, the food chain has gone. It coincided with a local farmer handing over the running of his farm to a commercial organisation. Their use of insecticides has killed most of the invertebrates off, plus they no longer maintain the drainage ditches and the road to the farm gets flooded running down into the village on a regular basis. This thread is irrelevant in saving the planet as irresponsible use of chemicals will see us off before climate change. Regularly walk my dog around the fields and apart from midges for a short period there aren’t any insects around.

 

[MediumRare]

​ ​

Thanks for reading Hyperdrive, Bloomberg’s newsletter on what’s reshaping the auto world. Today’s featured story is also on our website. If you’ve not already subscribed, sign up here. Kiss Combustion Goodbye​ There are growing signs that global auto sales will continue their comeback from the pandemic, chip shortage and other supply chain snarls. As the recovery takes shape, it’s becoming clearer that sales of internal combustion vehicles are unlikely to ever return to pre-pandemic levels. Calling peaks is generally a no-win endeavor. The call will either be correct but seem obvious after the fact, or wrong and cause for years of mockery. But with 2022 data now available, BNEF is confident the global market for internal combustion vehicles peaked in 2017 and is now in structural decline. This may seem self-evident to those watching the market closely, but is likely still jarring for others. Forecasts for oil demand issued just a few years ago still assumed steady growth in sales of these vehicles well into the 2030s. At the 2017 peak, 86 million internal combustion passenger vehicles were sold, including traditional hybrids like the Toyota Prius. Battery-electric and plug-in hybrid models were a tiny sliver of the market that year, accounting for just over 1 million vehicles combined. The picture was quite different in 2022. Combustion vehicle sales were down almost 20% from the peak, to 69 million, and plug-in vehicles jumped to 10.4 million. Even if we add plug-in hybrids to the internal combustion column, the picture doesn’t change much. The market still would have peaked in 2017, and global sales in 2022 would be 72 million, still 16% off the high from five years earlier. The trend in China is even more pronounced. Plug-in vehicles made up 26% of vehicle sales in 2022, while combustion models were 28% off the 2017 peak. BNEF is expecting plug-in models to be around a third of all passenger vehicles sold there this year. The story is similar in Europe, with internal combustion vehicle sales down significantly from their peak. In the US, EV sales are poised for a breakout year with support from the Inflation Reduction Act. It’s worth exploring if anything could reverse this trend. There’s a big gap in EV adoption between wealthy and emerging economies, for example. But while it’s tempting to think this could offset what’s happening in China, Europe and North America, it’s hard to see where the growth in combustion vehicle sales would come from. Southeast Asia is a growing car market, but even there, much of the expansion is poised to be taken up by EVs rather than gasoline models. Countries including Thailand and Indonesia are pushing to become hubs for battery and EV production. It’s a similar story in India, where EVs are on the ascent and the government has big ambitions to build up a domestic industry. Sales went from 15,000 in 2021 to almost 50,000 in 2022, and BNEF is expecting the strong growth to continue this year. New-vehicle sales in Brazil and Mexico are largely flat, and the numbers in Africa are still very small. Combustion vehicles may eke out a minor gain this year over 2022 levels, but global deliveries won’t come anywhere near the high of 2017. With respect to energy market implications, it’s the fleet that matters, and the changeover will take time. Pinning down the exact number of vehicles in the world is a tricky exercise, but BNEF expects the global combustion vehicle fleet to be relatively steady for the next three years before starting to decline in earnest from 2026 onward as the EV fleet swells. Once the fleet turns, it will be almost impossible to reverse, and that will have ramifications for oil demand and emissions. In BNEF’s models, overall oil demand from road transport is set to peak in 2027, just four years from now. Trucks are the next battleground, but the future is shifting quickly there, too. Already 7% of all commercial vehicle sales in China were electric last year. Even heavy truck sales — long viewed as the hardest to electrify — crossed 5% EV share there in December. Assuming combustion car sales did crest in 2017, another set of peaks won’t be far behind. — By Colin McKerracher

 

[Frank Dernie]

Do you find the large reduction of insects worrisome?

Extremely.

 

[j_j]

The very, very big change since I got my driving license here in the UK in 1967 is the number of insects around. Back then any drive in summer lead to a huge number of dead insects on the windscreen and frequent cleans. Now almost none. The difference is spectacularly big.

Part of it may be design of cars. The increase in aerodynamic flow has managed to blow most insects OVER the cars nowadays. There may also be less insects, but in fact the more laminar flow means less things clobbering your car's windshield.

 

[Chrispy]

Part of it may be design of cars. The increase in aerodynamic flow has managed to blow most insects OVER the cars nowadays. There may also be less insects, but in fact the more laminar flow means less things clobbering your car's windshield.

I've driven some really bad vehicles in terms of aerodynamics....definitely less bugs than there used to be when I clean up....just seems less bugs to hit in the first place these days. I assume its because pesticides work.

 

[j_j]

It is worrying the decline is catastrophic, when we moved here in ‘94 Swifts nested around our house and it’s years since we have seen any, the food chain has gone. It coincided with a local farmer handing over the running of his farm to a commercial organisation. Their use of insecticides has killed most of the invertebrates off, plus they no longer maintain the drainage ditches and the road to the farm gets flooded running down into the village on a regular basis. This thread is irrelevant in saving the planet as irresponsible use of chemicals will see us off before climate change. Regularly walk my dog around the fields and apart from midges for a short period there aren’t any insects around.

Now that is indeed disturbing for several reasons, not just the insecticide use. I manage to raise my vegetable garden without any 'cides, just yellow cards and red cards that attract pests who get stuck to them, but my stuff isn't "organic" because I use standard chemical fertilizers. So it goes. We eat most of it anyhow, and the folks who need stuff from the food bank seem to know how to disappear fresh garden produce in a flash.

 

[j_j]

I've driven some really bad vehicles in terms of aerodynamics....definitely less bugs than there used to be when I clean up....just seems less bugs to hit in the first place these days. I assume its because pesticides work.

Yes, and one always wonders what the other shoe will be, when it drops.

 

[thewas]

The better car aerodynamics surely play are role but not the main one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_populations

 

[j_j]

The better car aerodynamics surely play are role but not the main one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_in_insect_populations

That's not good.