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Diesel Caught Fire And Deniers Say It's Bad News For EVs, Despite No Evidence [1]

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Date: 2023-10-23  

Hey can someone remind us if diesel is flammable? Does it ever catch fire? We've been too busy playing Fortnite and huffing Shell brand gas to remember if the defining feature of the internal combustion engine is combustion.

We're wondering because of a recent JoNova post , in which the Aussie climate denial blogger points to a YouTuber named "Geoff Buys Cars" who desperately tried to blame electric vehicles for a huge fire in Luton, England that was actually caused by a diesel-powered vehicle , but came up empty in terms of evidence. Undeterred, he declared that because everyone was texting him to ask if EVs caused the disaster, this means that the fire at the Luton Airport "just KILLED the EV market."

Nova even prefaces the quotes from the video essentially blaming EVs with a sentence pointing out that "in the end officials say it was a diesel, and Geoff couldn't definitively show it was or wasn't an EV."

All but invoking the old 'jet fuel can't melt steel beams' line made famous by 9/11 conspiracy theories , JoNova quotes Geoff's amateur explosionology:

"...after the fire broke out it spread so quickly that soon, every floor was affected. …how the hell did the fire go downwards? The only way you’d breach the floor below was if there was some sort of ridiculously intense fuel that burns hotter than both diesel or petrol. What would that be? I don’t know, but a 400 kilo electric car battery would do the trick."

Yes, everyone knows that diesel fuel doesn't burn all that hot, right? And, of course, it's not like liquid fuels could possibly succumb to the little-known force called "gravity" and be pulled downward to the floor below, bringing the fire with it.

The reality is that combustion-powered vehicles are more likely to catch on fire than EVs, according to Swedish government research .

Unfortunately, if people like Geoff can successfully convince everyone that somehow internal combustion engine-powered cars are less combustion-prone than EVs, then he's right that it doesn't matter what the truth is because gullible people won't want to buy EVs.

This is, of course, exactly why so many climate deniers are pedal-to-the-metal when it comes to peddling EV disinfo.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/23/2201073/-Diesel-Caught-Fire-And-Deniers-Say-It-s-Bad-News-For-EVs-Despite-No-Evidence?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

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