I was too optimistic about card payments when I went on vacation with my electric car in EU this summer. In some countries it worked perfectly but in other countries I had to scan a QR code, which usually ended up in an "sorry, there was an error" page. When I eventually started using a charging network the rest of the vacation was great.
From a quick skim of that response, it reads to me like Walker admits to and agrees with at least some of the criticism.
But it also looks like he ignores some of the more damning accusations, like cutting out parts of graphs that don't support his theories, being incorrect that the WHO has declared that we have a "sleep loss epidemic", and questions about where he actually earned his PhD (which he seems to continually misrepresent).
So yes, he seems to have responded to the criticism, but IMO not really addressed it to a satisfying degree.
It's also possible that someone who lies 99% of the time has something really important to say with the other 1% (if you can even separate it from the 99%), but I wouldn't consider that person trustworthy or even worth dealing with.
Not saying that perfectly describes Walker, but the evidence does seem to point in that direction.
If you still want to trust someone like that, I guess that's your prerogative, but... well, that sort of thing doesn't seem like a winning strategy in life.
IMO he has mostly satisfying answers. He agrees with some minor points and he doesn't address important stuff like cutting out parts of graphs, but I don't think the criticism is strong enough to conclude that the book is "riddled with scientific and factual errors".
Since the electricity produced in the EU is a part of the Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), one could argue that any electricity used will have no impact at all on the CO2 emissions. The reason is that in the ETS, there are a fixed amount of emission allowances. So if a coal power plant produces extra electricity, someone else will decide to emit less CO2.
And one would lose their argument because having quotas on emissions doesn't eliminate the impact (because otherwise they won't be quotas, they'd be a prohibition).
BKS argues that you cannot take solar panels on the roof of the battery factory into your calculations since "otherwise you just take away green electricity elsewhere". My point is that if you allow that reasoning (which I think is correct) then it also follows that using dirty electricity in the EU takes away dirty electricity elsewhere. Therefore, the calculated emission impact of electricity use should probably be much closer to zero.
And since diesel use in transportation is not included in ETS, there is an even bigger impact of switching from diesel to EV: you stop burning fossil fuel in your car and the electricity you use will crowd out emissions elsewhere.
I believe that a small minority could turn things around. If about 3 % of the population in the rich world would donate $100 per month, we could use that money to force the other to change. How? One example is to remove all coal power plants (which are responsible for 25 % of the greenhouse gas emissions) by building wind farms. This would drive the price of electricity down and make coal unprofitable.
Someone should build a meta video calling app: Make a normal phone call, and if the app detects that both parties have a common video calling app installed on their devices, the meta app notifies the caller ("Press * for video") and helps reconnect the call with the video calling app.
