
Schwarzenegger: I don’t give a damn if we agree about climate change - herbertlui
https://www.facebook.com/notes/arnold-schwarzenegger/i-dont-give-a-if-we-agree-about-climate-change/10153855713574658
======
merpnderp
I like that he makes it more about the economics of saving lives, which should
be the primary argument.

But that is a tricky problem since we have 4 million a year dying from indoor
cooking smoke, and millions more from other various aspects of extreme
poverty. Most of which would be a greater ameliorated by cheap coal plants.
Cheap coals plants are horrible polluters, but they are cheap, aren't as bad
as indoor pollution, and allow countries to pull themselves out of abject
poverty, thus saving lives immediately by fertilizing crops, making cheap
concrete, powering factories, all the things a richer society needs.

~~~
pavlov
With too much reliance on cheap coal for economic growth, you end up here:

[http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/7/9861174/beijing-
pollution-...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/7/9861174/beijing-pollution-
warning-severe-smog-china)

China's use of coal has probably peaked. Any developing country would do well
to follow China's lead and build renewables rather than coal, whatever its
short-term advantages.

~~~
adventured
China added 39 gigawatts of new coal power capacity in 2014. They issued
permits for at least 150 new coal plants in 2015. They're building a new coal
power plant every week, and issuing a new permit every two days. Just the new
permits issued for 2015 alone would be equal to 40%+ of all US coal power
plant output. While we're at it, let's remember to throw in the recent 14%
revision upward in their coal use.

Their coal use clearly hasn't even remotely peaked. All the plans on their
table right now call for building a lot more coal power plants.

[http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/11/12/world/asia/china-
coal-p...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/11/12/world/asia/china-coal-power-
energy-policy.html)

~~~
pavlov
Not everyone agrees. Greenpeace's analysis suggests that the new coal
capability isn't being used (yet), which has lead to a 4% drop in actual coal
consumption this year:

[http://energydesk.greenpeace.org/2015/11/09/2015-the-year-
gl...](http://energydesk.greenpeace.org/2015/11/09/2015-the-year-global-coal-
consumption-fell-off-a-cliff/)

Their analysts are working on the ground in China, whereas many other Western
agencies just look at official numbers... So the truth may be somewhere in
between, but Greenpeace's analysis can't be summarily discounted.

------
nmridul
The global warming brigade hijacked the pollution issue.

There always will be a debate on global warming. So keeping global warming as
the prime focus of fossil fuel usage kept people divided.

If pollution was the prime focus from day one, then more push would have been
given to renewable.

Maybe, Arnold is able to bring more people to think in this direction.

~~~
amalag
I agree with this. Amazing that we need AS to give people a dose of wisdom. I
have to agree with everything he said. I am not convinced about CO2 causing
global warming but I am 100% ok with our society pushing away from coal,
gasoline and fracking.

~~~
Daishiman
"I am not convinced about CO2 causing global warming"

Honestly, how convinced you are about it is only relevant because economic
interests have planted a seed of doubt about it.

Your position to question the science on climate change is about as good as it
is on a myriad other issues which no one seems keen on questioning. If there
weren't a lobby doing it, your uncertainty would be as much as what qualified
experts have.

~~~
smalldataguy
To be fair, opposing interests (the "green" movement) have also influenced
people based on economics.

Let's not look at who is on what side of the fight when making these
decisions. Both sides currently have entrenched economic interests, both sides
are turning it from a practical issue to one that is moral and identity
politics, ruining the conversation.

~~~
mikeash
What entrenched economic interests are on the "global warming is real" side?
There are a bunch of upstarts, of course, but nothing entrenched that I can
think of. Given that the whole movement only took off in the last few decades
I don't even see how it would be possible. Further, I frequently see companies
on that side making choices that are _against_ their own economic interests,
by spending more on electricity to ensure it's from renewable sources, using
more expensive but more recyclable packing, and similar.

~~~
smalldataguy
According to [0], private sector investment in clean energy in the US alone
was over $100 billion in the US. In 2012.

[0]
[http://www.acore.org/files/pdfs/ACORE_Outlook_for_RE_2014.pd...](http://www.acore.org/files/pdfs/ACORE_Outlook_for_RE_2014.pdf)

~~~
mikeash
How much of that is from "entrenched economic interests," and what's the
number for fossil energy?

~~~
smalldataguy
We may have to disagree at this point, but there are 100 billion worth of
dollars, which is going to create some pretty strong economic interests. Are
you using "entrenched" in a historical sense? I suppose I'm using it more as a
substitute for "heavyweight".

Anyhow, I don't think it's a stretch to believe that there are strong economic
powerhouses controlling billions of dollars trying to promote the green
movement.

I'm not totally sure if the other side of the coin is particularly relevant,
unless it's the case that politicians are all already bought and paid for by
fossil fuel interests, and thus not available to be bought by newer "green"
economic interests.

Regardless, what were we discussing?

------
steven2012
I absolutely don't believe that human-created CO2 emissions cause global
warming. However, I consider myself a staunch environmentalist.

I believe we should be doing whatever we can to control pollution. It sickens
me that factories pump out pollution, that we can barely eat fish anymore
because of all the garbage and poisons we pump into our oceans. I think we
need very strict controls on every form of pollution as well as garbage and
creating plastic waste (including microplastic particles in our oceans),
although I do believe CO2 pollution is on the bottom of the scale in terms of
importance. I believe that fines for factories that pollute the environment
should be material, ie. very heavy relative to yearly revenues. Personally, I
do my best to ensure that I create as little waste as possible, and that I do
my part in terms of recycling, composting, etc.

So I consider myself an environmentalist, I just don't believe that global
warming is caused by human activity, and CO2 pollution is the least critical
of the pollutions.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Can you explain your lack of belief when 97% of climate scientists (there's
conflicting data on this; some reports show as high as 99%) agree that human
activity is causing global warming?

EDIT: That's not rhetorical. I'll entertain any logical reasoning you have as
to why your reasoning is superior to those educated and practicing the subject
daily.

~~~
mrfusion
I'm sure a large majority of nutrition scientists supported a low fat diet 20
years ago. (Food for thought)

~~~
magicalist
> _I 'm sure a large majority of nutrition scientists supported a low fat diet
> 20 years ago. (Food for thought)_

Sure, and a large majority of physicists supported General Relativity 20 years
ago.

If your point is that vague analogies aren't helpful and specifics are needed,
I think that was precisely what toomuchtodo was getting at.

~~~
gus_massa
General relativity I much easier to test in simple systems, like planets
traveling in the vacuum, or to get more precision you can test it in the lab
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity)
. I'm not sure if this is the more accurate current test but from
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound%E2%80%93Rebka_experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pound%E2%80%93Rebka_experiment)
:

> _The result confirmed that the predictions of general relativity were borne
> out at the 10% level. This was later improved to better than the 1% level by
> Pound and Snider. Another test involving a space-borne hydrogen maser
> increased the accuracy of the measurement to about 10^−4 (0.01%)._

Nutrition and diets are more difficult to measure (you can't enclose a few
thousand persons in the lab for 20 years) and it's full of side effects and
interactions. IIRC a low fat diet is still recommended. I think that a better
example of the changes in nutrition is the butter vs margarine
recommendations, see for example
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-
news/1179683...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-
news/11796834/Butter-unlikely-to-harm-health-but-margarine-could-be-
deadly.html)

------
rybosome
When speaking with people who do not agree with me on the correctness or
urgency of global warming, this is the argument I traditionally make: let's
examine the worst-case scenarios. Regardless of whether or not you agree with
the science, taking it seriously is a logical choice.

The plausible worst-case scenario of charging ahead with measures to combat
climate change isn't actually that bad, not to mention the ancillary benefits
outlined by Schwarzenegger. Aggressively stimulating the renewables economy
would be a death knell for the fossil-fuel industry, which could harm the
overall economy (though renewables would also contribute positively). It would
be disruptive to sections of the country that are dependent upon the fossil-
fuel industry (coal country in Kentucky, for instance), which would be very
hard on the people living there. This is certainly bad and should not be done
lightly, but it's hardly apocalyptic.

The plausible worst-case scenario of failing to address climate change is
_really_ bad, ranging from property destruction all the way to civilizational
collapse or even potentially human extinction[1]. In a world with nuclear
weapons, large-scale destabilization resulting from famine, drought and loss
of land to flooding is a very dangerous thing. The Earth is the only home we
have, why even flirt with the possibility of disrupting our currently livable
climate?

...and that argument doesn't even take the scientific consensus on the
existence of human-cased global warming into account.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoxic_event#Atmospheric_effec...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoxic_event#Atmospheric_effects)

~~~
robk
Isn't this the same as Pascals Wager then? We should pray to God since the
upside result is worth the downside cost.

~~~
icanhackit
The problem with Pascal's Wager: which God and thus which set of rituals and
rules do you follow? You've got quite a selection to choose from. You go from
having a simple Yes/No choice to having thousands of choices.

In the case of action against climate change, the downsides of doing something
are minimal compared to the downsides of inaction. It's a much more binary
choice than what Pascal put forward.

~~~
SilasX
Not to criticize taxing CO2 emissions (which has a solid case), but there is
indeed an analogous dynamic here to Pascal's Wager: just as you ask "which
God", one could ask "which emergency?", sampled from the set of events that
respectable scientific movements have demanded immediate action on.

In the 70s, for example, one respected movement held that there would be an
overpopulation crisis that justified drastic measures to halt the birth rate.
There have been similar movements against nuclear power.

Alternatively, if we took immediate action on the crisis global poverty and
got everyone up to Western living standards, that would conflict with the goal
of reducing our environmental load. (Just as taking Pascal's Wager for God one
conflicts with God 2.)

~~~
icanhackit
_there is indeed an analogous dynamic here to Pascal 's Wager: just as you ask
"which God", one could ask "which emergency?"_

Is it an analogous dynamic if the cure for almost all of the emergencies in
the basket is reduction in harmful levels of pollution including inefficient
farming/manufacturing/transport methods, noting the associated benefits such
as food security that comes with unpolluted waterways in poor villages, not
acidifying oceans, not tainting arable land with heavy metals etc? Belief in a
certain God among many seems more variable than _reduce pollution, aim for
zero._

 _if we took immediate action on the crisis global poverty and got everyone up
to Western living standards, that would conflict with the goal of reducing our
environmental load_

You make an interesting point - the big one is India which needs cheap energy
to bring itself up from having no clean running water, no integrated sewerage
system and severe poverty to competing with Europe and the Americas who have
reaped the benefit of cheap [polluting] energy for a long time and before
emissions were taxed.

But I see it as a benefit, at least in the long term, to start from this
stage. Just as African countries have benefited from mobile networks and
services like M-Pesa money transfer and microfinancing, never having to deal
with maintaining an aging wired telecom infrastructure - India could reap the
benefits of starting with a peer-to-peer energy network using residential
solar, similar to what Germany has implemented. Of course this would need to
be supplemented, however using fewer base load power stations than if it were
purely centralized energy production.

~~~
SilasX
>Is it an analogous dynamic if the cure for almost all of the emergencies in
the basket is reduction in harmful levels of pollution including inefficient
farming/manufacturing/transport methods, noting the associated benefits such
as food security that comes with unpolluted waterways in poor villages, not
acidifying oceans, not tainting arable land with heavy metals etc? Belief in a
certain God among many seems more variable than reduce pollution, aim for
zero.

But what you really want is a method of weighing the harm of a given amount of
pollution against the benefit. "Reduce it" doesn't translate into a heuristic
for deciding which uses should be targeted first, and regresses to the
original problem of "for which crisis is it okay to emit an additional unit of
pollution to emit in service of fighting?"

------
ejcx
Lots of very partisan folks here. My mother is an avid believer that climate
change is a hoax and we don't need to take care of the planet. She says
'Mother earth knows how to take care of herself', but she deeply respects
Arnold as a businessman, politician, and self-made man.

This is the type of thing that can reach her and change people in her boat's
way of thinking. Way to go Arnold.

------
Claudus
1\. "WHO estimates indoor air pollution was linked to 4.3 million deaths in
2012 in households cooking over coal, wood and biomass stoves."

If the majority of the "7 million" die from indoor cooking, It seems like it
would be better to focus our resources on developing infrastructure in SE Asia
so that every household has electricity and modern cooking appliances.

~~~
Tepix
It's relatively easy to fix indoor cooking, but it's hard to fix CO2 once it's
out there.

------
thieving_magpie
Regarding the third question, it's a nice analogy there but is he suggesting
that electric power is predominantly clean?

Across the US, 37.4% of our electric power comes from coal. I don't want to
detract from the overall message because it is clear and accurate but I think
it's important to think about how electric power is currently generated.

Coal statistic pulled from:
[http://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-10/documents/...](http://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-10/documents/egrid2012_summarytables_0.pdf)

~~~
mmanfrin
Coal as a source of our electric power has _plummeted_ in a decade, being
taken up mostly by natural gas (but also in small part by solar/wind).
Additionally, there is no change needed for an end consumer if the power they
use is switched to a different source, whereas to switch a fuel for cars means
switching cars. The drive to get people on electric cars means that switching
everything off of fossil fuels is a matter of switching the power plants
(which we've seen is something that can be done quickly as with coal->natural
gas).

~~~
redblacktree
I would be very interested in an all-electric minivan with enough range for my
frequent 600-mile trips to my wife's home town. Sadly, this does not yet
exist.

~~~
lmm
You make a 10-hour-each-way trip frequently? Man, stop throwing away your life
like that. Downsize your house, take a pay cut, do whatever it is you have to
to move somewhere closer. I struggle to even begin to imagine the misery of
what you're doing.

~~~
michaelt
Many people choose their car based on their peak requirements, rather than
their average requirements.

I've seen people commute in a minivan every day because the space was useful
taking their kids' stuff back and forth to college a handful of times a year.
I've seen people buy SUVs because they tow a boat or a horse box once every
six months. I've seen people buying larger cars so they can transport five
adults in greater comfort - even though they only need to do that a handful of
times a year.

Now, it's possible that these people would be better served by one car for
their everyday needs, hiring different cars for these occasional needs - but
most car buyers aren't used to behaving that way at the moment.

~~~
redblacktree
> Many people choose their car based on their peak requirements

Exactly right. I don't want to pay for and maintain cars for different
purposes, so I buy based on peak requirements.

------
morsch
If it takes Arnold Schwarzenegger and a frankly preposterous "sealed room"
analogy in order to convince people to slow down on emissions, and recasting
the emissions issue as a pollution issue -- as if there was a difference -- in
order for them to safe face, so be it.

Of course those electric cars _still_ virtually emit CO2^Wpollution when you
refuel them using coal-generated power, so I guess we can go back to going
back and forth about the pros and cons of nuclear energy now.

------
benten10
Ohh man, does Hackernews bring out all the tinfoiled gentlemen from nuclear
apocalypse bunkers once in a while !

See: comments here.

------
pippy
I really enjoy when people take a fresh perspective on things. Climate change
has been cited by Pew Research Center as the top greatest threat, and putting
a different spin on things will always be nice to try and convince people.

The top reason to reduce carbon emissions is not to reduce global toxicity and
prevent climate change. Saving the planet is a bonus. Energy independence
creates a stable geo political environment, almost all wars have a root cause
of fighting over resources. There's little point in saving the planet if we're
going to kill ourselves by the time comes when need to save it.

------
joshuaheard
"California has some of the most revolutionary environmental laws in the
United States, we get 40% of our power from renewables, and we are 40% more
energy efficient than the rest of the country."

California also has the second highest energy costs in the continental United
States.

[https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cf...](https://www.eia.gov/electricity/monthly/epm_table_grapher.cfm?t=epmt_5_6_a)

~~~
magicalist
From that chart it appears a large reason for that is they charge Commercial
customers the same rates as Residential ones, unlike most states.

Also worth considering is economic activity per unit energy, where California
is placed third in efficiency, so it looks like those energy prices are doing
fine.

[http://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/state/analysis/pdf/...](http://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/state/analysis/pdf/table6.pdf)

------
msvan
I wonder why, in the debate about fossil fuels, we never bring up the point
that oil has been the cause of a lot of issues in the Middle East. Many guns
and bombs have gone off in order to get to the Middle Eastern oil, and much of
the funding behind ISIS comes from oil money in Saudi Arabia. Oil has had a
pretty steep moral price tag.

------
InclinedPlane
I believe that man-made CO2 emissions likely have a significant impact on the
climate, and we should do something about it, but even so the issue is a very
complex one and its politicization hasn't helped. Here's why it's not so easy:

1\. The data is crap. What you need is average temperatures and other data
(humidity, pressure, cloud cover, albedo, etc.) over the entire Earth down to
a fairly small scale. What we have is a mismash of horribly calibrated weather
station data near cities combined with limited satellite data and various
proxies, all of which has to be massaged a great deal to make it usable. Sea
level data has the same sort of problems, nearly impossible to properly
calibrate to sufficient precision. The fact that people have poured tons of
effort into collecting and attempting to calibrate data doesn't mean the data
is actually very good.

2\. The models are also crap. A century ago Svante Arrhenius came up with the
greenhouse effect theory and did some back of the envelope calculations on its
magnitude, coming up with a figure of climate sensitivity of about 2 deg. C
per CO2 doubling. Today all of our vaunted climate modelling hasn't managed to
come up with a more accurate figure than that. Current estimates are still
"maybe 2 deg. C per doubling, with some enormous error bars". Modern models
have several problems. The conceit is that climate models are de novo
elaborations from first principles and are as rock solid as our understanding
of the laws of physics. In practice all climate models contain multiple
"empirically determined" fudge factors. They _fit_ the data, they don't
_predict_ it. And that's assuming we even had enough good data to really run
good prediction checks, which is dubious at best.

3\. The climatology scientific community is very problematic. There is little
indication of sufficient rigor, and criticizing results is an easy way to get
effectively excommunicated from the community. Take, for example, the famed
"hockey stick" paper, which has now been thoroughly discredited, but all of
the discrediting happened effectively "behind the scenes" and quietly. Science
works best when it's open and boisterous. It's surprising that climatology
isn't in even worse state given how insular and political it is.

4\. Even if we assumed that man-made carbon emissions were going to cause a
huge degree of global warming there is still a huge gap between that fact and
figuring out what to do about it, which many folks simply skip over. The
actual damage (to the biosphere and to human activities) is just as difficult
to determine as the climate is to predict. The right course of action to take
depends a great deal on lots of different factors: sociological,
technological, and economic. Especially since a lot of the CO2 production of
the 21st century will come from economies that are climbing out of poverty and
into affluence. It may well be the smartest choice to simply continue
polluting until the world is richer and more technologically advanced and then
consider mitigation strategies.

4a. CO2 emissions may not be, and likely is not, the most important pollution
issue everywhere in the world currently. But it gets the most attention and
sometimes that makes it more difficult to get traction on other issues.

Meanwhile, there really are serious "climate change denialists" and some of
the folks on that side are absolutely terrible. Canadian PM Harper banned
government scientists from talking to the press, for example. But the answer
to science being perverted for political reasons isn't to simply pervert it in
the opposite direction to compensate.

It's just a complete shit-show across the board and I'm not happy with how any
of it is being handled at either the level of scientific inquiry or public
policy.

~~~
vlehto
I was skeptic until I studied the history of the subject. It's a sad state.
Nobody would expect to study lets say material science from historical
perspective.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_scie...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_climate_change_science#First_calculations_of_human-
induced_climate_change.2C_1896)

There could be some major breakthroughs since 1970, but the whole shebang is
so polarized, that I would not know that to believe.

From policy point of view human emotions have to be taken to account.
Motivations for denialism are often either "nah, it doesn't matter" or
alternatively "They say we all die! I don't want to believe that." I was in
the latter camp.

Prehistoric events show us that climate change is probably not the end of
humanity.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Therm...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum)

And on the other hand ask any farmer how he feels about unpredictable weather.
Agriculture is completely based on predictable seasons. It's very likely that
combating climate change could save millions of lives.

------
calinet6
Kind of proud that this man signed my diploma.

------
gsibble
Where does the 7 million figure come from?

~~~
woodchuck64
[http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/air-
pollut...](http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/air-
pollution/en/)

------
peterdelahunty
[http://www.cowspiracy.com/](http://www.cowspiracy.com/)

~~~
twiceaday
> the film that environmental organizations don't want you to see!

I despise this type of rhetoric.

------
ChrisArgyle
tl;dr Even climate change deniers must face that fossil fuels are polluting
our air and water and are eventually going to run out. Investing in clean
energy is just pragmatic and doesn't make you a tax-and-spend liberal.

~~~
tremols
the lie was not neccesary. climate change deniers are worried about the
government getting its nose into everything and destroying a country to favour
some bankers. if you started with the right arguments like arnold the story
would be different.. and its not late.

~~~
astrodust
Come on man. Not everything is a conspiracy of bankers.

------
vvanders
I was kinda hoping there would be a second message down the left side:

[http://www.wired.com/2009/10/schwarzenegger/](http://www.wired.com/2009/10/schwarzenegger/)

------
chejazi
Unrelated: Facebook notes look good. I wonder if it's a direct competitor to
to Medium / Svbtle.

~~~
jsprogrammer
You mean placing text in a rectangle? Looks like it.

~~~
chejazi
Reading this made me realize: it looks good read because there are no ads on
the page. It's crazy how obtrusive ads are these days..

------
xlm1717
Energy in general doesn't look like a good investment in the near future.

------
j-l-
I really wonder. So much money and freedom was spent and 7 millions of people
are still dying? Smart choice would be Termination, not Terminator.

------
saosebastiao
Door 2 is also likely fatal. Most electric motors produce ozone :)

~~~
stcredzero
You are most certainly technically incorrect, which is the worst kind of
incorrect. It would take very very high levels of ozone to be anywhere near as
promptly fatal as carbon monoxide poisoning from running a gasoline powered
car inside a closed garage. As far as I know, no one commits suicide by
running an electric motor in a closed room. Ozone causes oxidative damage to
tissues, including the delicate tissues of your lungs. Carbon monoxide shuts
down the oxygen carrying function your hemoglobin. You can be killed by
unnoticeable levels of carbon monoxide. It's highly unlikely you won't be able
to sense dangerous levels of ozone. In fact, it's likely to be unpleasant
enough to drive you from the room. Whereas CO makes you feel sleepy as you
slip down to unconsciousness forever.

(EDIT: That said, ozone in rather small amounts can be quite damaging to long
term health.)

~~~
saosebastiao
It is plainly obvious that CO and even CO2 from IC engines is drastically more
fatal than anything coming out of an electric motor...I thought the trolling
attempt was transparent, but apparently not. If I really wanted to provide a
counter to the article, pollution from battery manufacturing is far more
concerning than ozone (which has a half life measured in days) from brushed
electric motors. And even that appears to be far less of a problem than the
carbon economy.

That being said, ozone can be fatal over the long term, and researchers
regularly segment pollution death estimates to include ozone pollution [1].

[1]
[http://www.iop.org/news/13/jul/page_60518.html](http://www.iop.org/news/13/jul/page_60518.html)

------
kafkaesq
_There are two doors. Behind Door Number One is a completely sealed room, with
a regular, gasoline-fueled car. Behind Door Number Two is an identical,
completely sealed room, with an electric car. Both engines are running full
blast._

 _I want you to pick a door to open, and enter the room and shut the door
behind you. You have to stay in the room you choose for one hour. You cannot
turn off the engine. You do not get a gas mask._

 _I 'm guessing you chose the Door Number Two, with the electric car, right?
Door number one is a fatal choice - who would ever want to breathe those
fumes?_

 _This is the choice the world is making right now._

The choices aren't that simple, Arnold, and the analogy you're making isn't
valid, either. Does he not understand that that "clean" electric car requires
an energy grid to run on? And that this grid is very far from "clean", and
will be for quite some time? And that the process of creating (and
decomissioning) electric cars is very far from environmentally harmless, also?

I'm not saying that there's no positive trade-off in favor of electric cars;
most likely there is. But fear-driven arguments (even if pointed in the
"right" direction) don't help much, and have a similar effect on the brain as
carbon monoxide, over time.

~~~
astrodust
The point here is it's easier to control emissions at large-scale power
generation plants than it is on millions of individual vehicles. How many cars
would fail an inspection if exposed to one?

The same cannot be said about power plants.

There's also the renewable angle. Surplus wind power, as experienced in Spain,
would basically provide free power for recharging vehicles overnight. You
cannot do this with gasoline.

The sealed room is also a way of presenting what we're doing to our climate,
that the automobile emissions don't just go "into the air", but become part of
the environment.

~~~
kafkaesq
I don't dispute the electric cars are, overall, _clean_. Just that the image
that Arnold is promoting with his "Gedankenexperiment", per my quote above
(that electric cars are somehow 100% clean and environmentally harmless) is
simply false, anti-intellectual, and unscientific.

~~~
emmelaich
One of my thoughts was that if you enter the first room you're only poisoning
yourself. If you enter the second you've already polluted areas and/or people
that have no interested in your transport.

Bit of a silly analogy though, as many are. Would not say that is 'anti-
intellectual' though.

------
buckbova
If I believe your number:

> First - do you believe it is acceptable that 7 million people die every year
> from pollution?

Answer this, how many of that 7 million year over year die from carbon
dioxide?

This is the major issue with deniers. Carbon dioxide != pollution.

Edit:

I don't know anyone not in favor of clean energy. I know plenty who warn of
government overreaching using climate change scare tactics.

You want to take a stance on pollution, then do that. Don't rant about climate
change deniers.

~~~
Oletros
You're mixing pollution with green house gases

~~~
merpnderp
I think it's a valid point since the EPA labels CO2 as pollution.

[EDIT] Since I'm getting so many down votes, thought I'd link the EPA calling
CO2 pollution.
[http://www.epa.gov/cleanpowerplan](http://www.epa.gov/cleanpowerplan)

