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Cities Are Scolding Countries at UN Climate Conference To Cut Emissions (vice.com)
A reader shares a report: An alliance of major cities including New York, Toronto, and London challenged nation states attending the United Nations climate talks in Bonn, Germany this week "to kick dirty carbon to the curb" and immediately "commit and work straightaway towards carbon neutrality, 100 percent renewable energy, zero-waste and zero-carbon." The Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance is a new collaboration of 20 international cities (other members include Washington DC, San Francisco, Oslo, and Sydney). All are striving for carbon neutrality and cutting greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80 percent by 2050. "Dirty fuels and climate disruption are killing and displacing millions of citizens around the world," the Alliance stated in a strongly-worded letter sent to every country's delegation at climate talks, known as COP 23. "Cities are on the frontline of climate impacts. We see the urgency of climate action and need nation-states to be as committed as we are," Johanna Partin, the director of the Alliance and former advisor to the mayor of San Francisco, told Motherboard by phone.
With coal plants being discontinued, I prefer solar and wind to charge electric cars without heavy rare earth batteries (not fully rare earth free but going the right direction): http://fortune.com/2016/07/12/...
All those cities the TALL buildings should require the tall buildings to have windmills on them.
Then the power is generated close to where it is being used. Windmills in the countryside are and eyesore.
Perhaps photovoltaic window too.
Get the carbon out of YOUR city before you start trying to run mine.
The burden is only going to get higher and higher as the world gets more and more polluted, until it reaches a point where no amount of resources can fix it. Better to address it now, whatever the cost.
it's like Wesley Mouch at the Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources is writing these, backed up by Dr Stadler's science upon which everyone (everyone who's anyone) agrees.
Carbon dioxide emissions and pollution are not the same thing.
A recent study shows that they're still better than typical vehicles. https://electrek.co/2017/11/01/electric-cars-dirty-electricicty-coal-emission-cleaner-study/
Those cities are larger than some countries (and US States). Now that heavy manufacturing has been outsourced to the 3rd world, it's those cities that represent the real source of pollution.
This silliness reminded me of LA smog.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Coal plants are being discontinued. As grids become more efficient, switching to electric cars becomes even better. As for rare earth batteries, rare earths despite their name are not that rare https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/rare-earth-elements-not-rare-just-playing-hard-to-get-38812856/ and the technology to extract them has been getting massively better in the last few years. We've also just barely started recycling rare earth components- until recently there wasn't any economic incentive to do so. If components with them become more common, the amount of recycling will go up. As is usually the case with environmental problems, the solution will not be simply changes in personal behavior, or government regulation, or market incentives but a natural combination of all three. And, with the notable exception of the current US Presidential administration, most of the world is behind it.
This is why I'm not worried about the climate accord Trump pulled the US out of. Cities, states, and people are stepping up to take care of the environment on their own. An that is how it should be.
We need to breed a environmental conscious generation and no try to legislate one into existence.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
While you were busy trolling, you might have missed this: Electric cars emit 50% less greenhouse gas than diesel, study finds.
Surprisingly it works out to a net benefit. The large coal engine is more efficient than 10000 small gasoline engines.
An interesting thing about using solar power to charge electric cars is that electric cars inherently include storage. You can, in principle, choose to charge cars when the sun is shining.
This would require somewhat of a change in the timing of when you charge. Instead of going home and charging your car overnight, parking spaces would have solar panel roofs-- you'd charge your car in the daytime (which, for most of us, would mean: at work.)
But that's doable.
http://news.energysage.com/solar-canopy-installations-bring-shade-clean-energy-parking-lot/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/01/28/the-best-idea-in-a-long-time-covering-parking-lots-with-solar-panels/
http://solarbuildermag.com/news/costs-decline-solar-carports-will-spread-across-country/
https://www.borregosolar.com/news/the-design-basics-for-solar-parking-lots-you-need-to-know-2
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Then those cities should be paying "whatever the cost" instead of smugly telling others to pay for it.
If you read the article, instead of just the summary, you would see: they are.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
A recent study shows that they're still better than typical vehicles. https://electrek.co/2017/11/01...
But are they better than my 500cc Yamaha T-Max?
I commute on a scooter. Yes, that's right. A scooter. 28 miles one way, every day. I get to go on the carpool lane, and pass thousands of single-driver cars every day. I do 60mpg, with a bike that's not even 25% of the weight of a Tesla.
Who cares about electric cars. Get out of your damn car.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
I'm not sure a scooter could make it to the end of my road in its current condition, much less work. And then contend with both New England weather and New England drivers on a scooter? That's basically suicide.
We need three-wheeled electric vehicles with cabins to be protected from rain and snow. Think beefed-up electric tricycles. There's already plenty either on the market or in the works.
#DeleteFacebook
The article listed switching to LED lights as an example of some of the things these cities have done, that they consider “no brainers." Note the word "some".
The article also said
'“We’ve proven that cutting emissions is good for the economies of cities.' San Francisco has enjoyed a 78 percent economic gain while reducing greenhouse gas emissions 28 percent since 1990, she said. All of the 20 cities in the Alliance have seen similar results."
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Can you prove that is the Scientific Consensus?
Right now it's just as possible that the lukewarmers are right. E.g. as Matt Ridley put it
http://www.rationaloptimist.co...
I am a climate lukewarmer. That means I think recent global warming is real, mostly man-made and will continue but I no longer think it is likely to be dangerous and I think its slow and erratic progress so far is what we should expect in the future. That last year was the warmest yet, in some data sets, but only by a smidgen more than 2005, is precisely in line with such lukewarm thinking.
As he points out here the lukewarmer case - global warming is real but not catastrophic is compatible with the range of predictions the IPCC made. And in fact looking at satellite and surface data we find that warming has been slower than the best case predictions from models.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The climate models have so far failed to get global warming right. As the IPCC confirmed in its latest report for the period since 1998 - I quote - "111 of the 114 available climate models show a surface warming trend larger than the observations". In other words the models have overestimated warming. And here's a chart that illustrates that point.
https://imgur.com/a/ZNDbY
That is to say there is actually a consensus - if you like that word - that models are exaggerating the rate of global warming. The warming has so far resulting in no significant changes in the frequency or intensity of storms, tornadoes, floods, droughts or winter snow cover as I said. As two climate scientists, Richard McNider and John Christy put it "We might forgive these modelers if their forecasts had not been so consistently and spectacularly wrong. From the beginning of climate modeling in the 1980s, these forecasts have, on average, always overstated the degree to which the Earth is warming compared with what we see in the real climate. Back in 1990 the first IPCC assessment included this statement forecasting - no predicting - a temperature increase of 0.3 degrees C per decade with an uncertainty of 0.2 to 0.5 degrees C per decade. In fact, in the two and half decades since, even though emissions have risen faster than in the 'business as usual' scenario of that year the temperature has rise at an average rate of 0.15 degrees per decade based on surface measurements or 0.12 degrees based on satellite data. That is less than half as fast as expected and below the bottom of the uncertainty range.
That was a talk at the Royal Society, and as you can see he's quoting from the IPCC itself when he claims 111 of 114 - 97% - of models have had a best case warming prediction which exceeds what has been seen experimentally.
So you could say there's a 97% consensus that models have over estimated how bad warming will be in the past. Which would make me very sceptical that unless we pump billions into renewable energy the planet will turn into Venus.
Not to mention Germany did pump billions into renewables and didn't cut its CO2 emissions as he points out at 36:43.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
I'm not sure a scooter could make it to the end of my road in its current condition, much less work. And then contend with both New England weather and New England drivers on a scooter? That's basically suicide.
While I live in California now, I'm originally from Europe. I would ride my bike to work no matter what. Rine, snow or shine, I'll be fine. The one exception would be when the roads are iced over. But then again, cars don't drive then either.
And I had a different bike, an R1200GS, at the time. But the same thing still applies. Get out of your 5-person car if you only need a 1-person vehicle.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
But are they better than my 500cc Yamaha T-Max?
Yeah there are. Some of them are lots better. Did you know pound per pound your scooter probably pollutes more than my car does? You only get better gas mileage because of the weight, not because its necessary a more efficient vehicle. What your scooter lacks is the emission controls that modern cars have. So based on the efficiency for per gallon of gas burned my car has less emissions than you scooter does.
More mile per gallon doesn't necessarily mean less pollution.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
This. I used to have a 125cc scooter back in my college days. Very handy and efficient, to be sure, but it was also lacking in emissions controls. I think it had a very basic catalytic converter in the exhaust system, but nothing near as advanced as a standard car, and so the emissions were considerably greater.
My Honda generator which I use in emergencies is similar: it has no emissions control whatsoever, though it's exempted from even California's strict emissions-control regime because it's a very small, portable engine and is not intended for continuous use.
In the next few months I may be moving to California for work (if I get the job I've applied to, fingers crossed!) and am seriously looking at electric vehicles. They work well with my commute and my wife would have a standard gas-powered hybrid for longer-range trips that may be impractical for the EV (though my hope is charging infrastructure will improve in the next few years). The electric company there provides a power mix that's about 70% renewable or greenhouse-gas-free in terms of how it's generated: 12% large hydro, 24% nuclear, and 33% "renewable" (without additional details). The rest is a mix of natural gas (17%, and which is far cleaner-burning than gasoline), and "unspecified" (14%). That's not bad. In addition, as the power sources to the grid get cleaner, EVs automatically get cleaner.
Only downside: California electricity is considerably more expensive than in the rest of the country (though still cheaper than gasoline on a per-mile basis) unless I get a special time-of-use plan with cheap night-time charging rates. We'll see. I may end up being able to charge at work for free.
But are they better than my 500cc Yamaha T-Max?
Yeah there are. Some of them are lots better. Did you know pound per pound your scooter probably pollutes more than my car does?
But "pound per pound" is not the criterion. The appropriate criterion would be "pound of pollution per commuter mile".
You only get better gas mileage because of the weight
So? Does it matter why it gets better gas mileage? What matters is that it does get better gas mileage.
...
More mile per gallon doesn't necessarily mean less pollution.
Indeed, there are other forms of pollution. If you get better miles per gallon but worse particulates and carbon monoxide per mile, it's not a desireable trade-off.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
So based on the efficiency for per gallon of gas burned my car has less emissions than you scooter does.
Emissions per gallon is a pointless metric. What's important is emissions per person per mile. If you define efficiency according to how much mass gets moved per gallon, your car might outscore his scooter. But who cares? If you define efficiency according to the emissions from transporting the same number of people (1) the same distance (an obviously more useful metric), his scooter will outscore your car handily.
More mile per gallon doesn't necessarily mean less pollution.
In most situations, yes it does.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
The poor counties are not the problem. Its countries like the US and Australia that are causing the major problems.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
One of the interesting things is that modern appliances designed to reduce emissions use less energy, which drives down utility bills.
New buildings typically use 20-30 percent as much energy as the old buildings they replace. Running factories in the dark and using LED lighting and modern equipment cuts heat buildup, so you spend far far less on heating and cooling buildings. Building modern factories with solar roofs allows you to run ceiling fans, cuts maintenance, and makes you much more competitive than the slackers with old inefficient outmoded equipment and facilities.
Capitalism cares nothing for your failed energy intensive ideologies. Renewables and modern equipment and DC green data centers just plain outcompete your heavily tax-subsidized fossil fuel heat wasting methods.
Adapt.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Most of the West runs on renewables. If you drive across the Western States, you'll see solar panels and wind farms everywhere, in addition to abundant hydroelectric power.
Coal is more expensive. Renewables are cheaper.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
A recent study shows that they're still better than typical vehicles. https://electrek.co/2017/11/01...
But are they better than my 500cc Yamaha T-Max?
I commute on a scooter. Yes, that's right. A scooter. 28 miles one way, every day. I get to go on the carpool lane, and pass thousands of single-driver cars every day. I do 60mpg, with a bike that's not even 25% of the weight of a Tesla.
Who cares about electric cars. Get out of your damn car.
You do realize that there are electric scooters that will be way less polluting than your 500cc ...)
if you don't need the amenities of a car (multiple persons, large bagage, weather,
The problem with electric scooters is they don't have nearly as much range when the air conditioner is turned on.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
I thought Sharknado held that distinction.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Does anyone else find it strange that the United States is basically controlled by Washington DC, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago? And that the UK is controlled by London? And that France is controlled by Paris? And Germany by Berlin?
It's true for the UK, France and Germany. However it's not true of the US. The electoral college is designed so that it is impossible to be elected President without a majority of electoral college votes. Which means you can lose NY, CA and DC and still be POTUS so long as you pick up enough votes elsewhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The current incumbent lost NY, CA, DC and IL. Arguably the purpose of electoral college is to prevent one party monopolizing the presidency but gaining a majority of the votes in highly populated coastal states like NY and CA and then ignoring everywhere else.
To become POTUS you need to try to appeal all across the country.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
That sounds like a glowing recommendation.
The cost of compliance is trivial for those promoting this change, but is significant for those being pushed to accept it. Better to mine to the last rock, pump oil to the last drop, or split atoms to the last reaction. Anything else is less consistent.
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
Not in Finland or any other northern place. Winter charging is no charging.
I would consider Finland a poor latitude for use of electric cars, especially since batteries perform poorly at low temperatures. However, since Finland comprises 0.072% of the population of the world, I think we can survive with the Finns finding a different solution.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Yeah. I see your point. I actually see the flaws in my own post. What looks good on paper doesn't actually translate to the real world.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
Have you seen all those ads on your TV, where they show all those cars driving past windmills? They're usually shot in California, Oregon, Washington, and Idaho.
The future is now. We didn't wait for you.
Same goes for India.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Only due to edicts from environmentalists, especially those that are indifferent or hostile to those responsible for mining it.
Most environmentalists aren't hostile to such people, and whether they are hostile to miners or not has nothing to do with whether the environmentalists are correct.
most of the world is behind it.
Well, most of the world is behind jumping off a cliff. The US is not.
This is wrong at multiple levels. First, the rest of the world is trying to prevent us from going over the cliff of catastrophic global warming. Second, the only part of the US that is right now vocally against dealing with global warming are certain parts of the Republican Party (but certainly not even all of it), and the Trump administration. Most Americans are concerned about global warming http://news.gallup.com/poll/206030/global-warming-concern-three-decade-high.aspx. Facts matter.
Trump isn't for much of anything except himself. Trump is Yuge... to Trump.
Trump is a Republican? Trump is actually a RINO. The Republican party was a party of convenience for Trump.
The Trump presidency is little more than TrumpCorp. Trump reminds me (I speak of style only, not policy positions) of Hugo Chavez, or the Perons of Argentina. He is stylish, charismatic (to his followers) and can speak for hours, just as long as he can speak about himself and what he's "going to" do. Also Obama is bad.
Hahah, no. During the summer here I'd wind up going to the office covered in sweat. Not going to happen. and a "scooter" by definition isn't legal to take on a freeway at any time. It's not capable of the speed limit. Doesn't matter if there's a traffic jam, it doesn't fucking belong there.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
That's terrible if you're a energy company. What you want is for energy usage to go down but billing to go up. Here in California I feel like I use less energy each year but my power bill goes up a little bit more each year.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Burn coal to charge electric cars made with rare earth batteries.
The laws of thermodynamics don't apply to Electric Cars do they? ;)
They apply quite well. It's a shame you never learnt them.
Holy fuck. Why do you hate the environment so much. Get a car man, they are between 2 and 10 times better for the environment for carrying a single person depending on which emission you measure.
MPG does not in any way correlate to emissions.
Sidenote: WTF only 60mpg? That's not much better than what I get in my 10 year old 1.5T gasoline car. Not only do you drive a scooter farting out on the environment, but it sounds like you drive quite a shitty one too.
But "pound per pound" is not the criterion. The appropriate criterion would be "pound of pollution per commuter mile".
You'll be happy to know the GP was wrong. Scooters are far worse than cars per commuter mile too.
It's hard to tell from the article and their accompanying documents what exactly it means for a city to join this alliance. It could just be some bureaucrat in an obscure agency nobody heard of signing up for some nice conferences overseas. I doubt it has any significance beyond virtue signaling.
Better dress for the slide, not the ride.
Yes. Rain or shine, I'm wearing my gear. I'm not one of those dumb-ass organ donors line-splitting at 80mph in the summer wearing a t-shirt and shorts. Also, I have dashcams on all my vehicles. Cars and bikes.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
During the summer here I'd wind up going to the office covered in sweat.
I live in Norcal, can get pretty crispy here in the summer. We have showers at work. Most of the time, my mesh-jacket cools well enough.
Not going to happen. and a "scooter" by definition isn't legal to take on a freeway at any time. It's not capable of the speed limit. Doesn't matter if there's a traffic jam, it doesn't fucking belong there.
Depends on your definition of scooter. My "scooter" is a 500cc Yamaha T-Max which can do double the speed limit. My other bike is an R1200GS, for those complaining about a guy riding a scooter.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
If you define efficiency according to the emissions from transporting the same number of people (1) the same distance (an obviously more useful metric), his scooter will outscore your car handily.
I think you mean the same people and cargo. If it takes three or four trips to the store to carry a week's worth of groceries with the scooter, which the car could have carried in one trip, then that means several times the emissions. Even if the scooter emits half as much per trip it still loses when you consider the entire job, and given the efficiency of modern cars and their tighter emissions controls the margin is probably much smaller. Not every trip will be like that, of course, but it's common enough to make it impractical to ditch the car—and if you do take the scooter somewhere and later discover that you need the car, any gains you might have otherwise made are more than offset by the extra trip to switch vehicles. That isn't even considering the safety factor, or the risk of inclement weather. Better, IMHO, to have a single reasonably efficient (30+ MPG) enclosed passenger+cargo vehicle that can handle 99% of all trips.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
The one exception would be when the roads are iced over. But then again, cars don't drive then either.
You might be surprised to learn that in a significant portion of the U.S. the roads tend to be iced over for several months every winter—and people still need to travel despite the conditions. In warmer climates that rarely see snow and ice people may just stay home for a few days and wait it out, but that isn't practical everywhere.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Apparently the Internet yields the same answer as his colon:
California breaks energy record with 80% of state's power generated using renewable methods
Not the majority every day, perhaps, but we're getting there.
More mile per gallon doesn't necessarily mean less pollution.
It pretty much does mean that. As other people have pointed out: more pollution per pound of vehicle and more pollution per gallon of gas aren't particularly valuable metrics. What matters is what you can transport and how far you can transport it, relative to pollution.
If you're burning significantly more gas over the same distance, you're not going to make up for that with slightly more efficient combustion. Barring some extreme edge cases.
In 1960 I had a 125 cc Vespa two stroke. It gave me about 110 mpg. Many cars at that time only got six miles per gallon. So the cars might be burning 17 times as much fuel. If one compared the total pollution per mile driven the car might have looked pretty awful. There is a political reality that was never fairly addressed. Huge cars burn a lot more gas than tiny cars. If both use up to date pollution controls the smaller cars will win every time. But politics being what they are the US wanted the big car manufacturers to prosper. The reality is that restricting vehicle weight and size and engine power and size would have saved us from a tremendous amount of pollution. The same thinking prevails. The coal industry wants to burn coal. The excuse is investments and jobs. but what needs to be the only consideration is the effect the product has on the earth.
Nature doesn't care about countries. If you're going to go that route, then basing your measurements on countries is no good. You can either look at global emissions and nothing else, and hope that everyone together will recognize that they're too high and somehow fix it while singing kumbayaa or something. I guess that's one approach.
Or you can measure per-person, and realize that some people are polluting a whole lot more than others. Those high-polluters seem to congregate geographically...
It depends on the type of emissions you are looking at. Motorcycles (and I assume scooters) put out a lot more NOx than cars. AFAIK, this is because cars have much more stringent regulations. I don't know why motorcycles are allowed to pollute so much.
This is nothing to do with SJWs worried about which toilet you get to use or how many micro aggressions per day you have to put up with. This is about collapse of civilisation.
And if you think it's not about the potential global collapse of civilisation, you just aren't paying any attention.
We need to work harder than now just to avoid total world economic collapse. We need to work much harder than that to avoid major disruption. We need to work much, much harder than that to remain comfortable and secure.
That's the real issue here, not pettiness and name calling.
You might be surprised to learn that in a significant portion of the U.S. the roads tend to be iced over for several months every winterâ"and people still need to travel despite the conditions. In warmer climates that rarely see snow and ice people may just stay home for a few days and wait it out, but that isn't practical everywhere.
In those cases, I cannot blame someone choosing to enjoy a heated four-wheeled can over a 2-wheeled piece of frozen metal.
I'm not a complete idiot... Some parts are missing.
Yep. Down vote because you disagree with me. What a bunch of cowards. I cite facts yet I am a troll. Fuck You.
If you define efficiency according to the emissions from transporting the same number of people (1) the same distance (an obviously more useful metric), his scooter will outscore your car handily.
I think you mean the same people and cargo. If it takes three or four trips to the store to carry a week's worth of groceries with the scooter, which the car could have carried in one trip, then that means several times the emissions. Even if the scooter emits half as much per trip it still loses when you consider the entire job, and given the efficiency of modern cars and their tighter emissions controls the margin is probably much smaller. Not every trip will be like that, of course, but it's common enough to make it impractical to ditch the car—and if you do take the scooter somewhere and later discover that you need the car, any gains you might have otherwise made are more than offset by the extra trip to switch vehicles. That isn't even considering the safety factor, or the risk of inclement weather. Better, IMHO, to have a single reasonably efficient (30+ MPG) enclosed passenger+cargo vehicle that can handle 99% of all trips.
I wasn't trying to defend the scooter as the right idea. I was pointing out that it had lower total emissions than the car when used to commute 56 miles. Obviously, if your trip involves something the scooter isn't suited for, you wouldn't take the scooter.
...if you do take the scooter somewhere and later discover that you need the car, any gains you might have otherwise made are more than offset by the extra trip to switch vehicles...
I'm capable of planning the entire round trip when I leave home almost every time. If I need to run by the store on the way home, I can typically figure that out before I leave. If that's not the case for you, maybe a scooter isn't the right choice. The scooter's the wrong choice for me but for entirely different reasons.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Did you know pound per pound your scooter probably pollutes more than my car does?
I did but I don't ride 2000kg of scooters every day...
You'll be happy to know the GP was wrong. Scooters are far worse than cars per commuter mile too.
Depends on the car and scooter and what you define as pollution doesn't it?
I know my bike uses less fuel, less road space, causes less damage to the road so requires less maintenance and things it hits if I crash suffer less damage needing less repair etc etc I don't know if this means less net pollution but I'd be cautious about throwing around such claims without some numbers. I found this as a starter: https://rideapart.com/articles...
If it takes three or four trips to the store to carry a week's worth of groceries with the scooter, which the car could have carried in one trip, then that means several times the emissions.
In that one example of which there are literally thousands you haven't mentioned.
Not every trip will be like that, of course, but it's common enough
The most common journey is commuting to and from work. If every person driving to work rode a modern scooter CO2 would be halved overnight and congestion would disappear.
Not claiming this is practical, just making the point.
and later discover that you need the car, any gains you might have otherwise made are more than offset by the extra trip to switch vehicles.
What? I have a car and a bike. 99% of my journeys are on the bike, the small time I need to take more than one passenger, or pickup big things then I take the car. There is no going back to get the car, I know what I'm doing before I leave home.
That isn't even considering the safety factor, or the risk of inclement weather. Better, IMHO, to have a single reasonably efficient (30+ MPG) enclosed passenger+cargo vehicle that can handle 99% of all trips.
And contributes to most pollution, congestion and accidents. Again I'm not claiming scooters are for everyone, but most of the traffic/pollution/parking issues would disappear overnight if people could get past the FUD.
From TFA:
Itâ(TM)s a tired myth that there is a conflict between environmental protection and economic growth, Partin said.
If we want environmental protection without killing the economy then we need to take a list of what's "green" and what's cheap and see where they overlap, then use those.
What's low on CO2 output? Look here:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/u...
(Page 7 has a nice chart BTW)
What's cheap? Look here:
https://www.instituteforenergy...
(Charts and graphs near the bottom of the page.)
Looks to me like the winners are wind, hydro, and nuclear. Of course future developments will shift these numbers around so let's not stop the analysis there but now, today, those are our best three choices.
This is not hard people.
Oh, I almost forgot. I'm sure people will bring up issues of safety so let's have a look:
https://www.nextbigfuture.com/...
Look, still wind, hydro, and nuclear at the top. To those that think solar has any part to play in this I say look again at the costs, it's easily double or triple what we pay now for natural gas. Natural gas is so cheap now that it will be impossible to do away with it but even then it's got half the CO2 output per MWh compared to coal. If we have to choose between coal, natural gas, or our energy costs doubling then I choose natural gas. Wind, hydro, and nuclear are already cheaper than coal so that choice is obvious.
So, there's our solution, wind, hydro, nuclear, and some more natural gas until we can make the others cheaper. Anything else means more CO2 and/or much higher costs.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
1018 polled is not 320 million, but 1018 polled is a very decent sample size. I'm not going to bother going through the basic math explaining how sample size to get a given margin of error doesn't grow linearly with the population size, so instead I'll just point you to this margin of error calculator http://americanresearchgroup.com/moe.html, where if you put in 320 million and 1018, you'll see you get a margin of error of around 3%. In practice, one should due to issues with polling expect a margin that is about 1% larger, so that's around a 4% error, close enough to get the conclusion in question. So what is your objection?
Fuel, road space, and maintenance have nothing to do with pollution. Also by pollution you'd think so, but you'd be wrong on that two. On all metrics a car is better than a scooter, ranging from a bit better (CO2 emissions), to massively better (NOx, PM2.5)
but I'd be cautious about throwing around such claims without some numbers
If you're curious then google it. Due to the differences in regulations (which is primarily the cause here) and differences in comparison methods you'll get a bike being anywhere from 1.5x to 8x worse for the environment than a car depending on which article you read.
The easy way to do this is just end manufacturing. We can all move to the country and engage in subsistence farming. How're your farming skills?
Very true. They keep building crap we don't need like computers, power plants, stores, and stuff. Let's give that materialistic life up and move back to a more basic life. Personally I like the smell of dinner cooking over an open dung fire.
Fuel, road space, and maintenance have nothing to do with pollution.
Um ok. So fuel use creates no pollution? Building and maintaining roads creates zero pollution?
On all metrics a car is better than a scooter, ranging from a bit better (CO2 emissions),
I think you mean CO. CO2 is directly proportional to fuel burnt, and there's no way a 2 ton vehicles burns less fuel than a 120kg vehicle.
If you're curious then google it.
I did and posted a link. You obviously didn't even read it.
Um ok. So fuel use creates no pollution? Building and maintaining roads creates zero pollution?
I see you have a problem with causality so let me spell it out for you:
Fuel consumption is not correlated to fuel emissions and environmental damage. Set a litre of petrol on fire and you're close to 2 orders of magnitude worse in environmental emissions than burning a litre of petrol in a modern car engine.
Building and maintaining roads actually creates close to zero pollution. The majority of road materials are made of standard rock and then covered in a thick layer of a byproduct from gasoline refining. It is the fuel that creates the road. While we're at it and given that I've already postulated a scooter is worse than 1 car, why not extend that concept by putting 4 scooters in the same place since you're so freaked out by the environmental consequence of building a road.
You obviously didn't even read it.
I've read it before. It came up scattered among 20 other links backing up my conclusion. If you want them go through my post history, i'm not digging them all up again.
Fuel consumption is not correlated to fuel emissions and environmental damage.
CO2 emissions are, which is why I pointed out the difference. Catalytic converters might help with CO, HC and NOx but CO2 is pretty much proportional to fuel burnt.
Building and maintaining roads actually creates close to zero pollution. The majority of road materials are made of standard rock and then covered in a thick layer of a byproduct from gasoline refining. It is the fuel that creates the road.
Right so the truck that lays the asphalt or concrete doesn't use fossil fuel? The guys who fix roads driving to work don't use any? Transporting materials are all done with zero emission vehicles? You aren't really thinking this through.
While we're at it and given that I've already postulated a scooter is worse than 1 car, why not extend that concept by putting 4 scooters in the same place since you're so freaked out by the environmental consequence of building a road.
Again you're not thinking it through. My commute to work on my bike takes 30 minutes, the same journey in my car takes about 50-60 depending on traffic.
As I said originally, depending on the car or bike this makes a difference, since not all cars or bikes are new, and engine sizes vary considerably. Even if everything else were equal my engine is running half as long as the equivalent car since it's stuck in traffic. So the numbers aren't so clear cut.
It came up scattered among 20 other links backing up my conclusion
I read a bunch and they were mostly vague. A 1000cc sports-bike or 1600cc Harley will emit more than a 125cc scooter. As will a Honda Civic be more efficient than a 6.7litre F250. You also have to distinguish between the emissions as CO2 is far more of a contributor to climate change than NOx, HC or CO.
And mile for mile comparisons don't mean as much when you factor in traffic (ie engine on time) So my original point still stands. It depends.
And the environmental focus on emissions go far beyond CO2 which is why governments are focusing on reducing the numbers of scooters and diesels on the road. Still your tiny scooter has only a marginally better fuel efficiency than my 10 year old 1.4tonne car with a far larger co-eff of drag. So your awesome little scooter is actually quite the abomination when it comes to examples of efficient burning of fuel, even when looking at just CO2.
Right so the truck that lays the asphalt or concrete doesn't use fossil fuel?
Sure add some rounding errors in. It doesn't change the argument. May as well talk about the people doing the work farting while on the job. I am thinking this through in as much detail as is needed, the end result of the argument doesn't change, in terms of construction of roads, the emissions are virtually nothing compared with the refining of petroleum to get the ingredients, and they are already suck in the cost of producing the fuel you and I eject out of our tailpipes (evidently more unburnt in your case than in mine)
My commute to work on my bike takes 30 minutes, the same journey in my car takes about 50-60 depending on traffic.
There's an example of desperately clutching at anything that is available when you fundamentally change the units being talked about. We were talking about distance, now you're talking about time.
I read a bunch and they were mostly vague.
So you defer back to one with obvious bias by a pro bike group.
I don't blame you for this. Humans inherently defend their statements any way they can. They do so even more resolutely when the statements are about their own actions. It's the reason I'm not going to again scour the internet for links since you have already made up your mind based on one thing you read that vindicates you.
I knew this discussion was going to go nowhere before we even started.
Still your tiny scooter has only a marginally better fuel efficiency than my 10 year old 1.4tonne car with a far larger co-eff of drag.
Well that is horse shit. But keep make stuff up if it makes you feel better. Published figures average about 25mpg for a car, 100mpg for a scooter. So 4 x times more fuel efficient. Plus I'm on the road for only half the time due to not being stuck in traffic so we're looking at 6-8x more efficient overall.
There's an example of desperately clutching at anything that is available when you fundamentally change the units being talked about. We were talking about distance, now you're talking about time.
I'm talking about accurately measuring emissions. Time plays a part in that.
I knew this discussion was going to go nowhere before we even started.
Give up when the facts come out. We know the pattern...