Today I stumbled upon an article by the BBC making a case that the recent Canada heatwave was ‘Virtually Impossible’ without the help of climate change, which is such a shame, honestly.
The horrid acceleration of rising temperatures accross the globe is taking a greater toll than expected and, as many times has been said, if nothing is done quick we can only expect worse and worse. Then, what to do?
A solid yet apparentely ‘insufficient’ proposal is the worldwide adoption of Electric Vehicles(EVs for short). And while certainly electric consumption is expected to go up(Getting to be some 300 times greater than that of 2016) and, of course, fossil fuel consumption to go down about as much, it is said that completely halting our fossil fuel consumption will, in fact, not do that much for the enviroment…
Well, let’s see about that:
- Fossil fuel consumption will be reduced by about 300 times.
- Then, electricity consumed by oil companies will diminish.
- Advancements in battery technology will have created a non-carbon dependent manufacturing process by then.
- Wind and solar farms will have to be multiplied, as electricity consumption would have been ramped up.
- Greater demand will incentivize tech development for wind turbines and solar panels.
This, especially the last point made, might exponentiate climate change mitigation as civilization becomes cleaner and cleaner. Couple that with more sane politics about agriculture and farming practices we might just get there.
There is something, though, that is not much talked about.
In electronics and everything electric there is something called resistivity; a measure of how much a material is opossed to electric current. The more resistivity, the less electrical charges go through a conductor.
Such data might seem trivial, but here’s the catch.
Some articles like this one have talked about Tesla’s EVs being much less efficient in cold climates. And while it might seem intuitive for some to use cold climates to make more electricity flow through a vehicle by reducing resistivity, well, here’s some news:
For anyone familiar with Ohm’s law, which states that I=V/R (‘I’ being electrical current, ‘V’ being voltage and ‘R’ being resistance) you know that with less resistance, electrical current increases, but then, logically, voltage decreases.
And voltage, dear readers, is what moves electrical charges from one place to another!
This Ohm’s Law situation is analoguous to that of a car’s battery when temperatures drop. Although, take into account, it is horribly simplified.
A car’s battery in freezing cold weathers cannot generate enough voltage to really power the whole vehicle, as with no voltage you may have enormous electrical current, but you will be unable to move the electrons through the circuitry anyways.
You can only incremet your batteries efficiency the further you rise average air temperatures. The only problems with doing so is that, one: you add resistivity to the vehicle’s circuits, making it consume more; and two: we don’t have many spare degrees to do that before using paviment to cook our lunches.
All this meaning that the current rising global temperatures might be perfect for EV’s as efficiency increases, and owning one will be in the not so long run much cheaper.
Maybe then, just maybe, we are now more than ever prepared to adopt EVs as our new global mobility, not only because we are pressured to do so, but because it’s convenient.
