Weekly Update, 19 Dec 2022
Vehicle electrification tends to reduce emissions, while increasing vehicle size tends to increase emissions. What happens when the two trends overlap, as they do with increasing adoption of e-SUVs in Europe? Because of the larger batteries and larger electricity consumption of e-SUVs relative to smaller vehicles, it turns out that they do not necessarily reduce overall carbon dioxide emissions.
The picture may be different in the US, where SUV adoption is already widespread, as an e-SUV might displace a gasoline-powered SUV rather than a smaller car.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652622048685
I recently wrote about the tradeoffs between electric vehicles and hybrids, and research that found that hybrids were more carbon-efficient in many situations. More recent research concludes, not surprisingly, that actual driving conditions matter a lot. Hybrids are most carbon-efficient at low speeds with fully charged batteries, and much less efficient at high speeds or when their batteries are depleted. Actual emissions are likely to be much higher than official ratings, though still much less than a conventional power train. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652622017978
Oral traditions say that Indigenous groups have been managing the behavior of fire in ecosystems for a long time. Now, a study from Arizona and New Mexico puts some hard numbers behind those traditions. Data from tree rings and burn scars correlates fire behavior with known patterns of human land use.
https://www.science.org/content/article/indigenous-americans-broke-cycle-destructive-wildfires-here-s-how-they-did-it
