If you are talking about toxic to human, this is what the UL standard allows for indoor air: 30 ppm for up to 30 days 70 ppm for up to 4 hours 150 ppm for up to 50 minutes 400 ppm for up to 15 minutes It only takes a very small % of CO2 in indoor air to start being toxic to human. If you are talking about GW, as with how CO2 affect human, you can't just state a % and assume a low % means it's insignificant. You need to understand the underling mechanism on how it affects the climate.
You need some significant scale if you're going to destroy the planet. I don't think rich guys are going to be able to do it with their weekend cars. If you get middle class America using EVs as their commuter cars, then you'll have to resolve the battery issue. And, it's not just EVs, batteries are going to be in tons of things now. But I do expect we'll get better at it. It's definitely an issue to watch though.
Stretch - probably and likely but not definitively. Still not certain why warming is bad because it has been such an enormous benefit to human civilization - melting ice caps, increasing rainfall, increasing growing seasons, increasing arable land, etc. Can't answer the question because there is no way atmospheric CO2 reaches toxic levels. More gibberish fear-mongering.
The issue is you are subsidizing to a group that actually REALLY shouldn't have an EV. Yes batteries have been in tons of things for a while now. Which is why the subsidy isn't needed to push the technology. I would make much more money with a phone that lasts a week than a car that has a 300 mile range.
Global Warming (aka: climate change) is pretty great for plants, Canada and Siberia. We may exploit vast new wheat fields and feed the planet. The problems are: sea level rising, that will threaten to flood a vast percentage of existing human habitation and the increased severity of weather events, since more 'energy' is being retained within the atmosphere (ie. the reason global warming can result in more snow) Subsidizing alternative energy strategies is good public policy. It promotes invention and innovations that are not immediately profitable but can provide returns in the long run. And, for the long run it's a smart move for national security, freeing this country from dependence on vulnerable energy supplies from dubious trading partners.
I'm thinking about whether people should buy EVs, and it looks like you're thinking about whether the government should incentivize the purchase of EVs. I won't argue with you about the subsidies. They may or may not be necessary for the wider goal of EV adoption, but a rich friend of mine just got a BMW i3 with a government subsidy he certainly didn't need and that doesn't make me feel very good. I'm sure the subsidies will be gone by the time I'm in the market for an EV (otoh the infrastructure will be there).
It's merely borrowing from paul to pay peter, we're still starting off the wrong foot by using toxic energies in the first place. Thermal, Wind, Hydro, Solar etc, and absolutely most important of all, society making the decision to drastically CUT DOWN on our energy uses will be the only way to live green and preserve the environment. Nuclear power plants clean my ass, all will get old, many if not most will have meltdowns or faults, causing awful toxic problems like Fukushima and Chernobyl.
Those numbers are wrong, CO2 in the atmosphere already is at ~400 ppm. Those look more like levels for CO.
"Toxic" energies were used in the first place because they offer the highest energy densities needed to build up industry. Only relevant in tiny sections of the world. Even volcanic Iceland only gets <30% of electricity from geothermal. Intermittent, unreliable. Many of the best sites for wind are far away from inhabited areas, requiring vast transmission upgrades which are about as hard as pipelines to get built. Very useful, Canada gets over 60% of its electricity from it while Brazil is even higher, but requires specific geographical conditions, takes vast amounts of land and causes massive environmental damage and dislocations and many of the best spots are already being used. Intermittent, unreliable, essentially useless in higher latitudes areas. Any energy savings will be eaten by the rise of China to comparable living standards to the western world, let alone India, SE Asia, South America and Africa. There have been hundreds of reactors built so most do not end up like Fukushima and Chernobyl.
What your responding with is excuses for why everything is currently the way it is. Things can change, and develop. Toxic energies are currently the most efficient because that is what society has chosen to throw all of our time, technology and money into. No alternate energy has been given the the opportunity or developed big oil has. This needs to change. No alternate energy needs to be the sole supporter of the world, rather all should work together. When you take all the alternate energies, and you extensively research and develop them, adding new technology and many more power plants around the world, that's when you will the real potential green energy has to truly provide the worlds energy. If and when all the oil dries up, you will be absolutely amazed how much the next alternate energies at the time will be developed due to all the big oil companies switching to new energies, I promise. And cutting down on energy consumption doesn't have to be eaten by the rise of undeveloped countries energy use. Changes must take place. Again all of the power plants were built in the 60's - 80's, those power plants are getting old and will start to fall apart, time will tell how many fault and blow up in our faces, 3 have blown so far.
Not certain why sea-level rise is such a huge issue. There won't be a 3' rise in sea-level overnight; people will be able to see it happen and respond accordingly. The 3' mark is what the IPCC is forecasting over the next 100 years. A whopping 3' at most...maybe, they are also forecasting less.
Much like raw temperature numbers, raw sea rise numbers show no danger. All of the predictions above one foot rely on models for temperature rise to be true. Without that, we are likely to see sea level rise of 8-16 inches over the next century, just like the last. To give you some perspective on GW predictions and their success or lack thereof, global warming scientist / NASA scientist / activist James Hansen predicted that we'd see parts of NY City underwater by 2030, requiring 10-20 feet of sea level rise. The recorded rise since the prediction in 1988? 2.5 inches. I'm not saying that anthropogenic global warming is fake, or that there wasn't warming from approximately 1970 to 1988. I'm not saying that the climate doesn't change - it always does. What I am saying is that the alarmists have a poor record of seeing their predictions come true, and we haven't seen warming in the last 16 years. If you have studied the science behind global warming, you know that it all hinges on climate sensitivity - ie how much warming we expect per doubling of atmospheric CO2. I believe it is around 1.0 degrees, the most current report from the IPCC has it around 1.9 degrees, and most of the global climate models are using a factor of around 3.2 degrees. http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch8s8-6-2-3.html If you want to believe in a sensitivity that high, you also have to believe that almost all climate feedback loops are positive. This does not make sense as we've had temperatures higher than today and not melted down. (Most recently in the medieval warm period) On the contrary, most climate feedback tends to work to stabilize the climate, and if anything, tend to push us back towards an ice age.
Hybrids and plugin hybrids are probably the better solution cost wise and in the context of the original debate. Cradle to grave they still offer the least total emissions assuming one drives 100k miles in each car
