... and, we wish to welcome you to munchinkin land!

your post makes me want to drink some gasoline, but i'll settle for a finger in the socket

 

could try comet, the song says it's a similar flavor

 

Source: Vintage Photos Show Los Angeles Before the EPA Regulated Pollution

• Los Angeles has had air pollution problems since before smog was a term.
• In 1943, people began to notice the smog when it covered Los Angeles so thickly that residents thought Japan had launched a chemical attack. The city continued to have smog problems for decades.
• President Richard Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency in 1970, which introduced air pollution regulations, and it was a major factor in combating the city's smog problem.

Been there, breathed that. There is a reason why China is leading EV adoption:


Hold your breath @asjoseph.

I see and smell one of these each week:


Bob Wilson

 

I mean, there's loads of other stuff I could pick you up on, but this one really stood out.

So you're saying that we shouldn't have EVs because they're too reliable?

Because these cars are reliable, they're going to put hard-working mechanics out of a job, and that's why they're a bad thing?

Let's take it a step further then. Priuses are famed for their reliability. I've spoken on here before about a taxi I got once in Darwin that had done 750,000km and all he'd done was replace the wiper blades and the brake pads and change various fluids. My Prius never missed a beat. So we should probably ban Priuses, because they've been putting mechanics out of work for years.

Actually, all Japanese cars. They're all very reliable. We should ban all of them. They've been costing the car-mechanic sector dearly since the 70s with their damned reliableness.

Might I suggest that we bring in new, job-saving legislation stating that we can only have petrol- and diesel-powered, ideally turbocharged, French, Italian, American and British cars in future? Nothing Japanese, nothing Korean, and probably nothing German either (except for maybe the Mk VIII Golf). That should keep all the current mechanics in their jobs, and probably create more mechanic jobs too!

 

But then if we get FCEVs, we can electrolyse all the water to make hydrogen, so there would be nothing to drive your boat on anyway!

 

Obviously I haven't been since the borders were closed. But I was there a lot before that.

I was in Beijing when it looked like that, and worse, in the mid-2000s. There were times you wouldn't see the sun for two or three weeks, even though it wasn't cloudy. When you blew your nose, the snot would be black. I'd always have a hacking cough after a few days there. It was miserable.

But my the mid-2010s, there were blue skies. Beijing people would get sunburnt again - something that just didn't happen in the mid-2000s. You could breathe. Snot was clear, or green. It was lovely (Beijing, not the snot).

Now this isn't just an ICE vs EV thing. A lot of this was down to the closure of steel factories and coal-fired power stations. Some of it was down to stricter vehicle regulation too, though. But the principle is the same as the ICE vs EV thing: stop burning filthy stuff and the air will be nicer. And by the time I was last there, just before the borders were closed, the proliferation of EVs was making things at street level even better.

-----

Actually, there's a thing that @asjoseph forgot about in his list of terrible things EVs would cause.

how about a medical wipe-out, tin man? -
... communities set to lose hundreds of local high paying jobs (e.g.,pulmonary specialists - doctors, nurses, surgeons, and the providers of breathing equipment, to name just a few)
​

I think I'm going to go and buy an 1980s Mercedes Moog for my daily commute, and get my mechanic to make the diesel mix a bit too rich. I have neighbours who are doctors, and I don't want to see them lose their jobs.

 

YES ALSO IF DISK BRAKES WERE EFFICIENT WE'D HAVE HAD THEM 80 YEARS AGO BUT WE DIDN'T DID WE NO SO THAT PROVES THEY ARE STUPID.

AND COLOUR TELEVISIONS. WE'D HAVE ALL HAD THEM 80 YEARS AGO IF THEY WERE ANY GOOD BUT WE DIDN'T DID WE NO SO THAT PROVES THEY ARE STUPID.

AND COVID VACCINATIONS AND MICROWAVE OVENS AND CREDIT CARDS AND JET PLANES AND SUN-DRIED TOMATOES AND MOBILE PHONES. EFFICIENT MARKET HYPOTHESIS: IF THEY WERE ANY GOOD WE'D HAVE ALREADY BEEN USING THEM 80 YEARS AGO.

 

Mercedes Unimog is a darned impressive vehicle. For a particular use niche but not beyond. Hurts to read it used as an example of petro-folly. With markets and streets crowded with better examples.

==
Early 20th century had a diversity of electric vehicles. Petro worked better than those low-tech electric motors and especially batteries of that time. Lithium batteries as now (see me avoiding the word 'current') are way better but still way below the power density of petro. Just the way it is. But if one figures in maintenance and emissions externalities, electrochemistry wins.

 

I agree. But they will run on pretty much anything, and if they're running on something unpleasant, we may be able to maintain the levels of pollution that @asjoseph wants us to have.

I was in Broken Hill over the weekend (I am now in the city that is sarcastically referred to by its denizens as "Radelaide"). That was what reminded me of the Unimog. I have a couple of friends who run the Mad Max Museum in nearby Silverton - Mad Max 2 was filmed around Broken Hill and Silverton, and they've just finished filming Mad Max Furiosa there.

I was visiting them one day a few months ago when a museum customer turned up in a Unimog that he'd converted into a campervan - which is pretty much ideal if you want to do camping any further North than Silverton. It was really very cool.

I agree there are far better examples of polluting vehicles, though.

bzzzzzzzzz

It's almost like the original claim that if they were any good we'd have been using them 80 years ago ignores the progress of technology.

But if, like @asjoseph , one figures in externalities of the employment of mechanics and pulmonary specialists....

 

Please stop using blunt tools against thread poster.

Mad Max Furiosa new movie? It must be polar opposite to Oz munchkinland,

"I haven't actually seen Fury Road" Yet again you surprise me.

 

Blunt tool vs...

Yes. I haven't actually seen Fury Road, but I have heard good things about it. Furiosa is coming out in 2024, but much of the location filming was done this winter (May-August), when it was cool enough to do all the filming.

 

Less blunt tools. It may not have been your experience here that screeds are informative in themselves, and sometimes stimulate more study. But it has been mine. It is well to oppose ignorance, but how?

 

Honestly, I'd disagree here.

Sometimes I see something really, deeply absurd and I enjoy ridiculing it.

Yes, it's great to learn and it's great to educate. But sometimes - and the original post here is a great example - things are so ridiculous that reason really goes out the window, and all one can do is have fun in one's own way.

For me - and I know this isn't very nice - ridiculing stupid stuff is one way I have fun. My work, like that of many other people, is complicated and takes a lot of thought, and something like this is a bit of a palate cleanser. It helps me refocus.

In other cases - and the CO2 thread is obviously one - there is a lot to learn. My mistakes in my first post have led me to learn a lot from you there.

 

"ridiculing stupid stuff is one way I have fun"

As you did, and I may not need to read about your other fun ways. But here's the thing - Internet allows everyone to go to the second level. First level is polite conversation. Third level is stabbing, bludgeoning or shooting your perceived opponents.

You sir strike me as one who would not feel constrained to avoid second level in direct personal conversations. Indeed that frankness may relate to your success. But many others (of us) 'hold back' on second level, on the chance that something useful might be learned. I'm sure you agree that level three is never a good plan. We only quibble about level two.

 

I am always amused/bewildered by those that think there will be a shortage of petroleum products if we quit just burning 90% of the petroleum. Read up on cracking petroleum, and realize we are currently taking good lubricants and converting them to fuel. cracking | chemical process | Britannica

 

Given the choice, it'd probably be better to read about them than to watch them....

We do. My online responses to aggression or stupidity tend to escalate things, and yours don't. In this case, I feel quite comfortable that I responded to the original post with the respect it deserved.

It may be that he is some sort of troll, or it may be that these are things he genuinely believes; I honestly don't care either way. It was an invitation for ridicule, and the polite thing to do was to respond to that invitation, as I did.

And while I'm doing this for fun here, doing the same in a broader, more public sense is important. In Britain, much has been made of the BBC's focus on "balance". Their view of balance is that different points of view must be given equal airtime. It's the dominant broadcaster in Britain, and it gives equal time to people who say anthropogenic climate change is or isn't real, or that Brexit would or would not make Britain richer, or that efforts should or should not be made to counter Covid.

The BBC is why lies about Brexit were given as much space and as much respect as the truth; the same goes for climate change and many other areas. And that is why Britain had Brexit, and why it had such a catastrophically high Covid death rate, and why its economy crashed, and why it's in the ridiculous chaos it's in now. The BBC had a duty to say, "no, this is a lie", and it abandoned that duty in the name of balance.

You let these people lie, (or repeat talking points they're unknowingly wrong about if I'm going to be very generous), and the lies take root and grow, and then they change the world, almost always for the worse.

Level two is important. It's often the last line of defence before level three. Because if we don't take the opportunities that come to us at Level two, these views are not challenged, and they become "facts" that drive policy and drive the way society develops. And once these people make it past level two, they always get their way. Because they're far happier to use violence and oppression and lies to get their way than we are. At the risk of this thread moving into oblivion, look at what's going to happen in the US next month. He Who Shall Not Be Named was given space to speak from 2014 onwards, and look what it's done to America.

It is irresponsible not to ridicule this s--t, because we know what happens when we don't. When people lie, or when they make s--t up, or when they copy and paste talking points that probably came from a Russian troll farm (as I suspect may be the case here), they have to be challenged. And challenging them with ridicule and sarcasm is one of the many ways in which this can be done.

 

My first response were photos of Chinese and some California air pollution that I had personal experience.

In 1972 I was driving in Riverside CA and could see the refinery flue gas flame in the distance. In the middle of a cloverleaf, my eyes suddenly teared up and I could barely see. Fortunately a dirty tee shirt and spit cleared one eye and I completed the curve. It was worse and more painful than Marine gas hut training a year before at Camp Pendleton.

The irony is success of the clean air laws means some youngsters missed the bad old days. It leads to silly postings like the first in this thread. Worse, VW/Bosh cheating diesel emissions. But they are not alone:

“You can’t fix stupid.”
You Can't Fix Stupid...

Bob Wilson

 

$1700 of electricity, at my local rates, will power a Prius Prime or Tesla Model 3 for 50,000 to 65,000 miles at EPA-label consumption, depending on rate tier. Or more, according various owners here.

That is a bit more than I can drive in a month. Or even several years.