My wife and I saw the documentary film "Unearth" today.

[moniss]

1. There is nothing that is without costs and

carbon footprint including nuclear energy. There are only comparisons to alternatives. There is no "free lunch" no matter which way anybody goes. The electric vehicles as they continue to improve in efficiency etc. will move some of the numbers and will always be a better solution than the internal combustion engine.

From an engineering perspective there are usually no comparisons that are made that are truly cradle to grave for each thing being compared and therein lies a large problem. It is not typical that anybody truly goes all the way on figuring costs and for example the environmental costs of oil extraction along with the medical costs, lost earnings etc. of the cancer etc. associated with it is never really ever factored as a cost. Likewise for mining of coal or lithium. The disposal costs for the various things are usually not fully calculated because things like landfill impacts go on literally forever. Even if people point to steel recycling or lithium recycling they do not fully address the costs of those operations and rarely will you see anybody include the future retirement costs for the workers necessary for those industries for example even though it clearly is a cost.

My point as a technically trained person is that I see people usually doing cost evaluations that go part of the way but not all of the way and for each approach the proponents hold to "studies" that support their view and wish those like me who point out the shortfalls of their conclusion about costs would go away.