hey, words have meanings. you didn’t invalidate the argument nor did you even argue against it. invalidating an argument would have been pointing out a structural deficiency in the logic. arguing against would be pointing out the falsity of one or more points with counterfactuals. you did neither.
it’s true that emissions are transferred from car to power plant, so that’s a valid argument (edit: because it’s logically sound, not just because it’s true). you accepted and built on that argument by saying it’s a good thing for a bunch of reasons. so your opening sentence was entirely unnecessary.
Different readers will infer different argument structures, but what I find interesting is that the assumed answers to the questions are conditioned on effort expended in becoming greener. So the questions are implicitly polarizing.
People with Tesla's who have taken steps to ensure zero emissions are more likely to respond no to each question. They are also more likely to do this, because they've invested significant resources toward producing an environment that doesn't have externalities. It isn't a random sampling. For someone who assumes no or for whom the assumption of no being possible is obvious, the implied argument is invalid. For others, it's easier to arrive at a yes to every question. Neither answer is correct though, because these questions are not able to be answered in a yes or no fashion. The actual answer is that this is conditioned on investment in green energy infrastructure. You'll notice many arguing in other comments to the effect that this is a boring argument, entirely on the basis of ongoing investment into green energy infrastructure. That doesn't happen randomly. They've thought through the implied argument structure and moved beyond it to the causally important factor on which the not quite an argument hinges.
And they call the argument boring; which it is, especially if you've ever bothered to consume any Tesla marketing since it tackles this question (spoiler alert: the efficiency gain is one of the reasons to buy a Tesla, not an argument against).
yeah, nobody tried to argue that, so i'm not sure who you're arguing with.
It was not a valid argument structure. The definition of valid is that an argument is valid if the argument structure is such that if the premises were true, the conclusion must be true. The stated conclusion of the post many parents is up is that the amount of emissions is higher. If you agree with me that this argument was not actually made, than you ought to agree with me that what was done must not be a valid argument: that conclusion is not reachable via the questions posed in the post, therefore, it is not a valid argument.
I'm a fan of syllogistic logic, so I shared your care for the definition of the word valid. Also, totally understandable to lose the context. This discussion is nested quite deeply. If I hadn't thought about the comment chain for an hour before giving my reply, I would have lost the context too.
Nope, still entirely invalid. Switching from combustion to electric in vehicles decouples emissions from energy consumption in transportation, which is step 1. From that point on, it's generally up to the larger players e.g. governing bodies, energy suppliers, etc. to make the switch -- but not entirely so. There's already enough funding/incentives on the table to encourage people to not just decouple emissions from transport, but to eliminate emissions entirely eg by powering via their own renewable energy setup. Prices have dropped by more than 60% in five years down to just over 3 dollars a watt, and if that trend maintains itself, we'll be under a buck fifty in the next five. The only way that trend keeps going is if everyone, large players and small, have access and incentive to keep buying and drive costs down.
But none of those trends sustain themselves if the necessary energy decoupling doesn't take place, and that's what electric cars are aiming to do in transportation.