[HN Gopher] Banning lead in gas worked. The proof is in our hair
___________________________________________________________________
Banning lead in gas worked. The proof is in our hair
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2525498123
Author : geox
Score : 307 points
Date : 2026-02-03 01:52 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (attheu.utah.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (attheu.utah.edu)
| wileydragonfly wrote:
| Explains a great deal, honestly.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| like what? are there more intelligent people? I've anecdotally
| heard this is a cause for crime reduction as people are less
| impulsive than they were, in conflict resolution? overall?
|
| don't really know what takeaway I'm supposed to know about
| nyc_data_geek wrote:
| Are you really calling into question the well documented
| developmental effects of lead in human cognition and behavior
| jackvalentine wrote:
| No, he's asking for someone to expand on their five word
| sentence that is so generic it can be interpreted to
| support almost any thesis you want.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I don't know anything about the effect of lead on human
| cognition and behavior, I'm asking you to tell me about it
|
| If that's even what their comment was about
|
| How does that effect work?
|
| your assumption wasn't a "lead free" response, am I doing
| it right?
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Lead exposure gives you brain damage:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_poisoning. If you
| damage your frontal lobes, you generally become more
| impulsive and less measured in your response to things.
| Ergo, chronic lead poisoning causes populations to become
| more aggressive and more likely to engage in crime.
| defrost wrote:
| The punchline being: The findings, which appear
| in PNAS, underscore the vital role of environmental regulations
| in protecting public health. The study notes lead
| rules are now being weakened by the Trump administration in a
| wide-ranging move to ease environmental protections.
| "We should not forget the lessons of history. And the lesson is
| those regulations have been very important,"
| russdill wrote:
| Hopefully next we can help fix mercury in fish, the number one
| contributor right now is burning coal. Seems like it would be a
| easy decision.
| vpShane wrote:
| We live in opposite-world where the way it is, is the exact
| opposite of how it should be
| epistasis wrote:
| Coal is mostly sticking around in the US because of federal
| overreach to keep unprofitable and ancient coal generators
| going long after anybody wants to pay for the high maintenance.
|
| Last week, a Colorado utility was "respectfully" asking to be
| able to close a plant:
|
| > TTri-State Generation and partner Platte River Power
| Authority had a "respectful" but emphatic response late
| Thursday to the Trump administration ordering them to keep
| Craig's Unit 1 coal-fired plant open past the New Year:
|
| > They don't need it, they don't want it, and their inflation-
| strapped consumers can't afford the higher bills. Plus, the
| federal order is unconstitutional.
|
| https://coloradosun.com/2026/01/30/craig-tri-state-petition-...
|
| TVA has also been begging to close a money losing coal plant
| for a while now, writing letters to FERC about it, but I can't
| find the link now.
|
| New coal is far too expensive to build anymore too. Handling
| big amounts of solid material is expensive, and big old
| unresponsive baseload is undesirable for achieving economic
| efficiency.
|
| Even China, which is still building new coal plants, is
| lessening their coal usage. Personally I think they'll keep
| some around to continue economic influence on Australia, which
| is one their primary countries for experimenting with methods
| to increase their soft power.
|
| There is no technical or economic reason to want coal power
| today.
| prodigycorp wrote:
| Thank you for such a thoughtful comment. There's politics
| that gets flagged on this site, and there's politics that
| makes me think about things with more clarity. Yours is
| obviously the latter.
| epistasis wrote:
| Collective decisions are unavoidably political, and grid
| electricity has to be a collective decision! My hope is
| that we can take the partisan aspect out of the politics,
| however, and reduce it to a discussion of the tradeoff of
| values: cost, reliability, climate, and any other values
| that we need to include. Fortunately I think that for
| nearly any value set, the answer is very similar.
| gwd wrote:
| > There is no technical or economic reason to want coal power
| today.
|
| For anyone wanting a slightly ranty but also informed
| description of why, I enjoyed this Hank Green video on the
| subject:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfvBx4D0Cms&pp=ygUPaGFuayBnc.
| ..
| darknavi wrote:
| Technology Connections also released a great rant on it
| (and more) recently.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtQ9nt2ZeGM
| prasadjoglekar wrote:
| > There is no technical or economic reason to want coal power
| today.
|
| A quick look at the PJM interconnect data would disagree with
| you. About a quarter of the live power is coal.
|
| https://www.pjm.com/markets-and-operations.aspx
|
| That serves 65+ Million people in the north east and is
| keeping them from dying of cold this past week, including
| today (Temp outside in the mid-hudson valley is 15F / -9C),
| and overnight will be 8F / -13C).
|
| Just for context - electricity somehow powers everything in
| most homes. Your oil or propane furnace needs a power hookup
| to ignite.
| ipdashc wrote:
| PJM probably isn't a great example, it's been famously slow
| to approve new generation, hasn't it? And the rates aren't
| exactly super cheap.
|
| We shouldn't get rid of coal without having something to
| replace it (ideally nuclear/solar/wind, but realistically
| probably gas), but I think the point was just that nobody
| would build a new coal plant today or keep them running for
| longer than they _need_ to. They 're inefficient and fairly
| expensive.
| tclancy wrote:
| As much as it is fun to imagine you believing the false
| dilemma you've presented, I don't think the OP was
| suggesting not providing another option.
| breakyerself wrote:
| Coal is the most expensive form of energy. We need the
| energy those coal plants are producing, but we don't need
| the energy to come from coal and the sooner we replace
| those coal plants the sooner the people getting that energy
| can get a break on energy costs. Assuming data centers
| don't offset the reductions via creating excessive demand.
| throw900912 wrote:
| > to keep unprofitable and ancient coal generators going long
| after anybody wants to pay for the high maintenance.
|
| In EU 90% of expenses of running coal plants are taxes, yet
| it can still compete with subsidized green energy! It would
| be in everybody best interest, to allow building modern coal
| plants, to replace toxic inefficient stuff from 1960ties.
|
| But with the overregulated and overtaxes industry, we have
| the worst from all options.
| epistasis wrote:
| In the US, natural gas is extremely cheap, far cheaper than
| in the EU, and it will remain that way as long as we are
| still extracting oil via fracking.
|
| Replacing existing coal with natural gas is better,
| cheaper, etc. etc. and it's just downright "dumb" to build
| coal as explained in a parallel comment that links to
| youtube.
|
| But even new natural gas is likely to end up as stranded
| capital. Solar and wind are cheaper already, and backing
| that with storage, today, is nipping at the cost of most
| new natural gas plants. And in 3, 5, 10 years? Price trends
| are going to make even the cheap cost of natural gas as a
| fuel more expensive than using solar and storage.
|
| I'd be very surprised if 90% of the expense of coal was
| tax, as that would make taxes 9x higher than fuel. Not
| surprised because it wouldn't make scientific sense, the
| negative externalities of coal are massive and any hard-
| nosed free marketer should be advocating for putting a
| price on those negative externalities, but surprised
| because the politics of Europe allow that!
|
| Also, if taxes on coal or >9x the cost of the fuel,
| wouldn't that start to make natural gas much more cost
| effective too, even in Europe? Or does natural gas have
| similar taxes?
| MengerSponge wrote:
| Burning coal is a huge and easy win. Artisinal and small scale
| gold mining should be high on the list too, even though it's a
| much harder problem:
|
| https://www.unep.org/globalmercurypartnership/what-we-do/art...
| Paracompact wrote:
| You do mean banning rather than burning, right?
| empyrrhicist wrote:
| I think they meant [Targeting the] burning [of] coal.
| hydrox24 wrote:
| I'm skeptical that it's easier. On the numbers alone,
| artisanal and small scale gold mining (apparently) accounts
| for 15-20% of global gold production. But coal accounts for
| 35% of total electricity generation.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Not with Captain Planet tier cartoon villains in power.
| dnautics wrote:
| you mean like the german environmentalists who singlehandedly
| kicked up german atmospheric mercury emissions?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Can you identify when exactly the German environmentalists
| did this thing you refer to? I'm assuming it's something
| coal related.
|
| Total and per capita coal usage for Germany and a few other
| peer nations:
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/coal-consumption-by-
| count...
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/coal-consumption-per-
| capi...
|
| I can see a bump in early 1980s but I see the same in other
| nations, possibly a response to oil embargoes, possibly
| just economic growth.
| adrianN wrote:
| Arguably Germany should have turned off a few lignite
| plants and kept their nuclear power a little bit longer.
| edm0nd wrote:
| Did you know that Captain Planet was straight up created to
| be pro environmentalist and anti-oil propaganda?
|
| >Captain Planet and the Planeteers (1990-1996) was a
| pioneering animated series designed by Ted Turner and
| producer Barbara Pyle as environmental, pro-social
| "edutainment" to influence children towards ecological
| activism. It aimed to combat pollution and encourage
| environmental stewardship, often using over-the-top,
| stereotypical villains to represent corporate greed and
| ecological destruction.
|
| Our parents let us get brainwashed by hippies and
| corporations as kids haha
| dyauspitr wrote:
| I wish we had more "propaganda" like this.
| jkubicek wrote:
| Sesame Street is still putting out new episodes. Turns
| out the "learn to count" and "be nice to your neighbors"
| industry wields a lot more power than anyone thought.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| That's good to hear. I was somehow under the impression
| that the show was cancelled.
| zahlman wrote:
| > Did you know that Captain Planet was straight up created
| to be pro environmentalist and anti-oil propaganda?
|
| Well, yes, it isn't subtle.
|
| It turns out that some propaganda is just _correct_ ,
| however.
| II2II wrote:
| Captain Planet always bothered me as a kid, even though I
| was (and continue to be) supportive of environmental
| protection. There was too much evil for the sake of evil.
| People don't destroy the environment because they want
| to. The destroy it because they don't care. They don't
| care because they are driven by greed, or some other
| motivation that is ultimately damaging to the
| environment, society, and civilization.
| zahlman wrote:
| Yes, that's an entirely fair criticism. Media for
| children often has this kind of non-realism, and I think
| it's mostly for the worse.
|
| Strangely enough, I was raised with quite a bit of
| environmental responsibility, but only a relatively dim
| awareness of the show existing.
| jajuuka wrote:
| It's a cartoon meant to sell merch. It wasn't exactly
| meant to be a nuanced reflection of reality.
| MisterTea wrote:
| This. Most cartoons produced on the 80's/90's were made
| to sell merch like toys. You can thank Gi-Joe. The irony
| here is a TV show about environmentalism generated
| pollution in the process of making plastic action figures
| and branded clothing which mostly wind up in the dump.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Brainwashing has the connotation of going through cult
| programming. Captain Planet doesn't involve the kind of
| tight control over your interpersonal relationships that
| requires. To the extent any of us were "brainwashed" it
| would have been because the people around us were largely
| in agreement with the messaging in that show. I submit that
| many people still are.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Also "brainwashing" generally implies an efficacy that we
| didn't see in real world results. The generation raised
| on shows like Captain Planet don't seem that much more
| "eco-conscious" than those before or after that period of
| children's programming. If anything, villains from that
| show being elected to the highest offices in the US
| decades later seems to directly refute that it was
| anything like "brainwashing".
|
| (ETA: Not to mention that the biggest takeaways from such
| shows was that individual action was sometimes more
| important than corporate or regulatory action, a message
| itself designed by the oil companies to avoid
| responsibility. If there was propaganda in those shows,
| it may not have been the heroes winning, but the idea
| that all we need are a few magic heroes rather than
| government regulations.)
| tclancy wrote:
| >Our parents let us get brainwashed by hippies and
| corporations as kids haha
|
| Yes, well the alternative, where the entire media system
| that might offer a cartoon like Captain Planet is owned by
| one side, is working out super well and in no way slants
| anyone's view of anything. Good God, my dad still fights
| weird battles like this tiny skirmish without ever being
| able to see the larger picture and how immaterial this is.
| breakyerself wrote:
| The only problem with captain planet was the lack of
| nuance. Most people driving environmental degredation
| aren't over the top villains. Just executives acting in the
| best interest of their shareholders, but in general
| influencing kids to care about the environment is a pretty
| positive/pro-social thing to do.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| I mean that's what I meant by my comment. The government
| now are literally cartoon villains like the over the top
| characters on Captain Planet.
| adrianN wrote:
| Next you tell me that teaching children not to piss in the
| pool is propaganda.
| UltraSane wrote:
| We could have and should have replaced all coal with nuclear
| but no, we couldn't do that.
| danlitt wrote:
| It could have been replaced by almost anything, there is
| nothing particularly special about nuclear in this context
| (except its extremely high price).
| UltraSane wrote:
| Coal and nuclear are both dispatchable electricity sources.
| It is much easier to replace a dispatchable source with
| another dispatchable source.
| vintermann wrote:
| > The Utah part of this is so interesting because of the way
| people keep track of their family history.
|
| Definitively interesting that they could get so many old hair
| samples with good provenance.
| munificent wrote:
| It's interesting that the paper doesn't mention this, but the
| answer here is Latter Day Saints. They have a very strong
| culture of genealogy and preserving family history. The study
| authors are all in Salt Lake City, which is the Mormon capital
| of the world.
| jmward01 wrote:
| I remember going to LA in the late 80's and my eyes watering (I
| also remember the pants-less man on the side of the strode but
| that is a different story). Environmental regulations are a win.
| Unfortunately there is a large segment of the population that
| doesn't believe something until it happens to them directly. That
| makes it a challenge to maintain environmental, or any
| regulations for that matter, over generations. It isn't
| practical, but it would be interesting to create 'pollution
| cities' where the regulations were loose so long as the entire
| company drew its workforce (including management) from the local
| population (like within a mile) and a significant portion of
| their drinking water and foods must also be sourced locally. Go
| ahead, pollute your own drinking water. I bet cities like this
| would be cleaner than ones with stricter regulations.
| gedy wrote:
| > Environmental regulations are a win. Unfortunately there is a
| large segment of the population that doesn't believe something
| ...
|
| You aren't wrong, but let's be honest that a lot of that is
| manufacturing just moved to China and moved the pollution.
| Specific to lead in gas, yes it's great we no longer do this.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Manufacturing output hit an all time high in the US in 2024.
|
| There's less manufacturing jobs and it's less of the total
| economy as other sectors grew but it would presumably need to
| be genuinely cleaner in order to offset that growth if
| industrial pollution just remained flat.
|
| The switch from coal to gas would be a major cleanup for any
| process that uses electricity, for example.
| gedy wrote:
| Related to the OP comment about LA, are you suggesting that
| moving manufacturing to China had little impact on
| manufacturing and pollution in the US?
| yellottyellott wrote:
| In Louisana there's a stretch around all the refineries
| nicknamed Cancer Alley. The locals work the plants. Everyone
| gets sick. And they vote for expansion because it brings in
| more jobs. You need the regulations.
| xp84 wrote:
| Yeah, but I bet the executives and lawyers don't live
| anywhere near there, and they probably visit those sites as
| little as possible. In the thought experiment that wouldn't
| be allowed.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| I live in Cancer Alley and people down here drink the
| koolaid. Cut to Midgely pouring TEL all over his hands.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Yeah, Thomas Midgley Jr., from Wikipedia [1]:
|
| "...played a major role in developing leaded gasoline and
| some of the first chlorofluorocarbons...; both products
| were later banned from common use due to their harmful
| impact on human health and the environment. He was
| granted more than 100 patents over the course of his
| career."
|
| As someone else said, this guy's work was so toxic to the
| planet we ought to ban everything else he ever invented--
| just in case.
|
| (And weirdly, one of his own machines took his life as
| well--whether by design or not.)
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.
| munificent wrote:
| I grew up in Cancer Alley. Here's my old neighborhood:
| https://maps.app.goo.gl/3DZbiz8Bgyx5tx7v9
|
| That wedge surrounded by green is a neighborhood that was
| created by landfilling a patch of swamp and building a
| levee around it. The northeast side of the wedge is the
| "nice" part of the neighborhood. You can see the houses are
| much bigger and there is a golf course running through it.
| There's a country club and lot of very nice houses. That's
| where a lot of upper level oil company employees live. (We
| lived here, my stepfather was a research chemist at
| DuPont.)
|
| The southwest side of the neighborhood (much of it
| literally on "the other side of the tracks") is the cheaper
| houses and some apartments where a lot of blue collar
| employees work.
|
| Zoom out a bit and you see Shell Norco to the northwest,
| the very heart of (and cause of) Cancer Alley. Ormond
| Estates was basically created to be a commuter neighborhood
| for Shell. Across the river is Dow Chemical. Look east and
| you see the IMTT St. Rose chemical plant. Keep going
| upriver and you get to DuPont and the Marathon Refinery.
|
| Most of the executives responsible for cancer here do live
| in the area. People of all stripes have an impressive
| ability to maintain cognitive dissonance and live in denial
| when they are incentivized to do so.
|
| Southern Louisiana is an intense microcosm of this. Seafood
| is one of the biggest industries there and you would think
| the local culture would be intensely protective of the
| environment, especially after the Deepwater Horizon
| disaster. But environmentalism is woven into liberal
| culture that is in opposition to the religious conservative
| culture of the area, so it often gets actively rejected
| even though poor people in Louisiana are the ones who
| suffer for their choice.
|
| "Strangers in Their Own Land" is an _excellent_ social
| science book if you want to know more about the area.
| zhshsha wrote:
| > You need the regulations.
|
| This is fixing the symptom instead of the problems. Elites
| are allowed to be rich because the cost of failure is
| supposed to be extremely (historically, their life) expensive
| to them. We got rid of the latter without the adjusting the
| former.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| In the bay area you can throw a rock from one super fund site
| and hit another yet it's full of libertarians saying 'stop
| over regulating'.
| 317070 wrote:
| > I bet cities like this would be cleaner than ones with
| stricter regulations.
|
| I would almost always take the opposite side of this bet. Once
| responsibility becomes diffuse enough, people would actively
| poison themselves as they see no alternative.
| cassepipe wrote:
| Did you intend to write "stroad" (street + road used to decry
| car-centric city design) ?
| jmward01 wrote:
| yep. If any city embodies the strode it is LA.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Yet, there are ample cases of the workers living near a factory
| and constantly getting cancer. PG&E in Hinckley, CA comes to
| mind as the most well known, due to the media/movie about Erin
| Brockovich.
| jmward01 wrote:
| But their CEOs don't live next to the factories. My,
| completely impossible, thought experiment would have all
| management living near the plant. I bet if the CEO lived with
| the water near the factory they would make sure it was clean.
| wat10000 wrote:
| There was a pretty substantial length of time between the
| beginning of the industrial revolution and the development of
| transportation infrastructure that allowed people to live far
| from where they worked, and get most of their food from distant
| lands. Your experiment was done many times. The result was not
| clean cities.
| t1234s wrote:
| You used to be able to buy leaded 110 gas as Sunoco in the early
| 2000's. It would make your exhaust tips turn white and had a sort
| of candy like smell when combusted.
| grubbs wrote:
| I remember people with various "tunes" at the racetrack would
| run this stuff. It definitely smelled like candy!
| Faaak wrote:
| AFAIK that's why leaded paint is bad for children: it tastes
| sweet so they continue licking it/eating the chips of paint
| that fall off the wall
| latexr wrote:
| You're conjuring an image of children licking walls, but just
| the dust from the flaking paint chips is harmful.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/lead-prevention/prevention/paint.html
| t1234s wrote:
| Water from lead pipes must have tasted amazing
| titzer wrote:
| Ancient Romans used lead as a sweetener.
|
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/sugar-of-
| lead-a-...
| ljlolel wrote:
| It's why they added it to wine
| myself248 wrote:
| Wait 'til you learn about avgas!
| bluedino wrote:
| You can buy it online from Sunoco
|
| https://petroleumservicecompany.com/sunoco-supreme-112-octan...
|
| I _think_ they only sell the unleaded race gas at the pumps now
| but I may be wrong.
| justin66 wrote:
| You can still buy the same stuff at an airport or race track.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| no one has mentioned "The Secret History of Lead" published by
| The Nation in March 2000. The long and detailed article exposed
| the deliberate and long-standing cover-up of leaded gasoline's
| dangers by major corporations. Villians include General Motors,
| Du Pont, and Standard Oil of New Jersey (now Exxon).
| cfiggers wrote:
| In my opinion it is obvious and should be uncontroversial that
| _some_ environmental regulations work and are great and should if
| anything be reinforced, while _other_ environmental regulations
| do more harm than good and need to be reigned in or eliminated.
|
| Turning "environmental regulation" into a unified bloc that must
| be either supported or opposed in totality is a manipulative
| political maneuver and it should be forcefully rejected.
|
| Regulations are not people, and they don't have rights. It is
| fair and reasonable to demand that environmental regulation
| justify its existence with hard, scientifically verifiable data
| or else get chopped. Clearly, banning leaded gasoline has that
| kind of justification, and therefore I'm strongly in favor of
| maintaining that ban and extending it wherever it isn't in place
| yet. The same reasonable standard should be applied to other
| regulations across the board.
| AdamN wrote:
| Basically everybody agrees with what you're saying which is
| what makes this an insidious comment.
|
| In general the pressure against regulation comes from narrow
| winners (oil industry for instance) whereas the pressure for
| regulations generally comes from people focused on the greater
| good (even if they are misled by other narrow winners, for
| instance compliance firms).
| gosub100 wrote:
| There are valid reasons to oppose regulations. They can be
| used to create barriers of entry for small businesses, for
| example. They constantly affect the poor more than the middle
| class.
| dfedbeef wrote:
| Protecting a small company's ability to pollute is not a
| valid reason.
| sunshinesnacks wrote:
| > They constantly affect the poor more than the middle
| class.
|
| That's a very broad statement. I expect there are many
| cases where that is not true.
| abfan1127 wrote:
| "greater good" is arguably the most broad statement with
| a large history of hurting many people based on the
| "greater good".
| sunshinesnacks wrote:
| Maybe. But the original context here is an article about
| removing lead from gasoline. Which I'm pretty sure that
| helped many people based on the "greater good".
|
| There's no copper sulfate in canned green beans or borax
| in beef. Those seem all around good.
|
| Let's agree that impacts of regulations are nuanced, and
| not try to condense it down to something overly
| simplistic like, "regulations hurt poor people".
| Braxton1980 wrote:
| For each instance did it help more than it hurt?
|
| Not to simplify but if you have to make a decision
| shouldn't you always decide to help the most people?
| lowdownbutter wrote:
| > shouldn't you always decide to help the most people?
|
| no.
| Braxton1980 wrote:
| Why?
| hilbert42 wrote:
| Hundreds of book on utilitarianism have been published
| since Bentham (ca 1800) first argued 'why'. They argue
| the matter from evey perspective ad nauseam.
|
| Check your public library.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| When left to their own cigaret companies tell congress
| cigarettes are safe and non addictive. Left alone
| companies pay in scrip only usable at the company store.
|
| The 'greater good' has arguably PREVENTED much more hurt
| of people than it has ever hurt. Meanwhile companies have
| PROVEN time and time again that they WILL hurt people
| when left to their own devices. In environmental
| policies. In pay policies. In employment policies. In
| EVERY aspect possible.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| This is the extreme, and it shows how far some (most?)
| people would go. There are many examples, and more being
| minted, it can be a drag.
|
| Yes, not just environmental, all kinds of money stuff.
| The more money can be how it gets on steroids.
|
| But this says a lot here:
|
| >not try to condense it down to something overly
| simplistic
|
| With greed involved you can follow the money to an
| extent, you find lobbyists on both sides of every
| controversy, sometimes chalking up wins, other times
| losses. But they stay in business and grow by
| compromising the greater good with as little profit loss
| from those paying them the most.
|
| They might switch _roles_ when they lobby in favor of
| ordinary citizens one time, and squarely against in a
| future campaign. But they never actually switch _sides_ ,
| the least costly thing to compromise is the "greater
| good", which ideally from their point of view is
| intangible, versus actual money, which their clients are
| usually counting before they have earned any.
|
| It's politics, all regulations are hard to pass, but as
| lobbying has increased, the difficulty of having good
| legislation in favor of the greater good is becoming less
| possible.
|
| It just costs too much to have a seat at the table.
|
| If people want to have good things, it might become
| completely dependent on older regulations which were in
| their favor before it got too expensive to do that any
| more.
| prmoustache wrote:
| That is usually the opposite because the absence of
| regulations usually put the smallest players in a state of
| dependence of some huge monopolistic groups.
|
| Think pesticides and genetically modified plants for
| example.
| LiquidSky wrote:
| We're talking about environmental regulations. It is no
| more good for a small business to pollute than a large one,
| and it's precisely the poor who are most harmed by
| environmental pollution.
| Braxton1980 wrote:
| There are valid reasons to oppose specific regulations not
| all.
|
| Imagine I open a auto repair center and I perform oil
| changes. It would cost me money to have used oil hauled
| away or I could dump it down the drain. You probably
| support a requirement that I pay for the service.
|
| I'm sure there are regulations that cause actual harm to
| small businesses that have little or no value but I wonder
| what percentage it would be of the total.
| convolvatron wrote:
| the largest unaccounted for victims of environmental
| degradation are our children and their children. given that
| we can't even keep from poisoning our own well water for
| our own uses today, it really does like on the whole we're
| failing to regulate sufficiently.
|
| which isn't to argue that they shouldn't make sense. or
| that they should be used to tilt the playing field due to
| corruption, but on the balance claiming that we are
| currently overregulated is pretty indefensible.
| busterarm wrote:
| Ah the old "it takes longer to learn how to cut hair than
| it does to become a cop".
| throwway120385 wrote:
| It's really easy to sit and demand evidence before regulating
| something. But consider that if we waited for hard evidence to
| accumulate before banning lead in gasoline, we likely never
| would have banned it because the hard evidence wouldn't exist.
|
| I also don't agree on the principle that regulations are
| "harmful" or "helpful." Rather, you have to define _who_ the
| regulation harms, and _who_ it helps. For example antitrust
| enforcement harms shareholders and some employees of very large
| firms, but it helps many employees and arguably improves the
| landscape for competition between many smaller firms. So
| whether a regulation is preferable comes down to values.
|
| In the case of leaded gas, it harms basically everybody, but it
| helps fuel companies, so it was an easy thing to change.
| rayiner wrote:
| We had research to support the EPA phase down of lead.
|
| Also, your assertion that lead "helps fuel companies" is
| fundamentally mistaken. Gasoline is a mass-produced
| commodity. Oil companies have single digit profit margins.
| These companies aren't making Big Tech profit margins where
| they can absorb higher costs without passing them along to
| consumers. Cost savings from things like gasoline additives
| accrue to consumers at the gas pump.
| jhallenworld wrote:
| Lead helped fuel company profits because it was cheaper
| than the other anti-knock additives, like ethanol.
| rayiner wrote:
| In an industry where everyone sells a completely fungible
| product such cost savings generally are passed on to
| consumers. Oil companies can profit in the short term due
| to fluctuations in the price of oil and things like that,
| but not from something like lead additives, which
| everyone had been using for decades.
| zug_zug wrote:
| I think you're missing the point -- the point is that
| gasoline companies KNEW ABOUT alternative lead-free
| substitutes for anti-knock (such as ethanol) and chose
| lead because they perceived it was less profitable. [1]
| Specifically because ethanol wasn't patentable and TEL
| was, and ultimately it WAS patented.
|
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/leaded-gas-
| poison-...
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| Ethanol has a propensity to suck up ambient moisture and
| is more demanding of rubbers and happily attacks
| aluminum.
|
| In an age of natural rubber components, poorly sealed
| fuel systems with steel tanks and aluminum carburetors
| pretty much anything other than ethanol is the "right
| choice".
|
| And once they ruled out ethanol they settled on lead
| because it was cheap/profitable. Obviously they chose
| wrong, they should've picked something more expensive but
| less terrible.
|
| These weren't cartoon villains with monocles twirling
| their mustaches. They were normal humans making pragmatic
| decisions based on the constraints they faced. Without
| knowing the details people cannot understand what future
| similar fact patterns may look like.
|
| That said, it should be no surprise to anyone that nobody
| wants to talk about "well we don't know how bad the harm
| of leaded exhaust is, we know it's not good, but it's
| diffuse and undefined so we'll round it to
| zero/negligible" type decision making, for that sort of
| unknown rounds to zero logic underpins in whole or part
| all manner of modern policy discourse.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| The kinda are/were
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| >Ethanol has a propensity to suck up ambient moisture and
| is more demanding of rubbers and happily attacks
| aluminum.
|
| Actually, moisture problems are from using things like
| homemade alcohol or alcohol from unknown sources, where
| the likelihood of it already containing a sizable
| percentage of water has been a problem since the Model T
| days.
|
| And if that water has a bit of an aggressive pH, it can
| have an effect on aluminum components.
|
| This is just not a problem with gasoline-alcohol blends
| from reputable suppliers unless there is serious failure
| in the supply chain after that, where any fuel would have
| been contaminated by water regardless. The fuel-grade
| alcohol is tested before it is added, then the finished
| gasoline fully analyzed afterward.
|
| Neither moisture nor corrosion is a problem with fuel
| ethanol or methanol, and when you see convincing
| information to the contrary (like from a pro mechanic) it
| often originates from misguided sources, "old wives'
| tales" for which actual evidence existed without being
| well-understood. But sometimes the most professional are
| the ones who don't take any chances, whether "common
| knowledge" is factual or not, if it doesn't hurt, no big
| deal.
|
| Miscellaneous polymer compounds were the real question
| for cars that were not originally made for modern alcohol
| mixtures.
|
| Ethanol just doesn't absorb moisture into your fuel tank
| by itself, even from a very humid environment.
|
| Not any more than plain hydrocarbon fuel. In old
| ventilated fuel tanks, extreme _temperature cycling_
| under very humid conditions draws moist air into the tank
| when the fuel shrinks or is consumed. Kilos of cold fuel
| and cold metal can continue to condense moisture from the
| air, when the dew point is greater than the temperature
| of the tank. After a while you can get grams or ounces of
| water rolling around in the bottom of the tank. This
| could build up and stall out the vehicle or keep it from
| starting.
|
| If it was only an ounce or two of water at the bottom of
| the tank full of all hydrocarbons, it would actually help
| to add a gallon of plain (good) alcohol to help dissolve
| the separated water into the gasoline so it can pass
| through harmlessly like it always has since gasoline has
| always had trace amounts of water anyway. Condensation is
| about as clean as rainwater so it's nothing the engine
| hasn't seen.
|
| When most mechanics see something like this it has
| already gotten way out of hand, and there have been waves
| of anti-alcohol propaganda disseminated through time
| which reinforce the superstitious component.
|
| Another problem from the '80's was when you do first
| start using alcohol-containing gasoline in an older car,
| it can break up varnish that has built up in the tank for
| years which never would come off until some alcohol came
| along. This could be a few grams, end up clogging the
| fuel filter, and the car stalls out no different than
| from water in the fuel line. Direct cause-and-effect
| relationship undeniably due to the use of alcohol, with
| many independent observations. Not a water problem, but
| who's keeping score.
|
| Just not any more of a problem in the 21st century,
| similar conditions are so rarely encountered now.
| bluGill wrote:
| It is more than that - lead and ethanol have other
| properties that engines that use them need to handle.
| Lead also acted as a lubricant and parts designed for
| engines that assumed lead fuel were designed with softer
| valve seats - switch to unleaded with otherwise equal
| octane and your will destroy the engine. (though
| experience shows that unless you were driving your car on
| a race trace most cars worked fine for longer than the
| car lasted). Ethanol will destroy some forms of rubber
| and so you need to use different seals in some parts.
|
| TEL was patentable, but those patents were long expired
| before there was a big push to eliminate leaded gas.
| rayiner wrote:
| Also, TEL being patented by Dow (which isn't an oil
| company) actually was a reason oil companies would want
| to use an alternative, if possible. Why would they want
| to pay Dow to use a patented product, all else being
| equal?
| loeg wrote:
| I think you're missing the point. Without a market-
| coordinating motivation (i.e., legislation), any company
| that adopted a more expensive anti-knock would be
| competed out of the market.
| rayiner wrote:
| They picked lead because it was the cheapest additive,
| not because it was more profitable for the industry as a
| whole. Those two things aren't the same. In the oil
| industry, the products are identical and companies
| compete only on price. If you use the $0.10 per gallon
| additive when everyone else is using the $0.05 per gallon
| additive, then your sales collapse because customers just
| cross the street to save $0.05 per gallon. But if every
| company switches to the $0.05 gallon additive, that
| doesn't mean the companies pocket the extra $0.05 per
| gallon. Most of that goes to the consumer, because,
| again, consumers can just cross the street to get the
| better price.
|
| It's really a collective action problem. Nobody wants
| their gasoline to be more expensive than other
| companies'. So everyone has the incentive to use the
| cheapest ingredient. If you ban that ingredient, prices
| go up. But since everyone's prices will go up, you remove
| the competitive disadvantage.
| jhallenworld wrote:
| If the end product ends up marginally cheaper, the
| company will be able to sell more of it, and this will
| lead to more profit. And sure, when you ignore the cost
| of the pollution, this certainly benefits the consumer,
| by allowing them to afford more energy and energy-based
| products (i.e., just about everything).
|
| But then we come back to ignoring the cost of the
| pollution. It certainly gets paid for eventually, but by
| who? Also, it's cheaper for everyone if the pollution is
| eliminated to begin with rather than being cleaned up
| later (which is certainly a more energy intensive
| endeavor).
| jabl wrote:
| That's true, and without any legislation or such
| prohibiting lead they would most likely have continued to
| use it as anyone who would have phased out lead would
| have been at a competitive disadvantage. But once it was
| banned, everybody was again on an even playing field, and
| as OP explained fuel is a commodity so the higher cost
| just flowed through to the end user prices, refinery
| margins stayed about where they were.
| empyrrhicist wrote:
| Until the price of gas starts to remotely reflect the
| medium to long term costs of climate change I basically
| always celebrate anything that increases gas or carbon-
| based energy prices. Like, it sucks... but there's lots of
| data that consumers respond to these prices in their
| choices.
|
| The way I think about it, the entirety of global
| civilization is massively, massively subsidizing carbon
| emission.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Do you know of any research or calculations of what that
| number ought to be?
| Cerium wrote:
| If you wanted to pay for direct air capture of CO2 to
| directly "undo" your climate effect of driving, the cost
| would currently be about $6 per gallon. Price comes from
| [1], found [2] looking for a second opinion on current
| direct air capture cost.
|
| [1] https://theclimatecapitalist.com/articles/gas-should-
| cost-13... [2]
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/phildeluna/2024/11/29/will-
| dire...
| adrianN wrote:
| I wonder whether those methods scale at those prices to
| the theoretical demand of undoing burning gasoline. I
| doubt it.
| rayiner wrote:
| I agree. I'm just addressing the notion raised in the
| post above that oil companies will bear cost increases in
| an industry where everyone sells an identical product and
| consumers can just cross the street to save $0.10 a
| gallon.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| tetra-ethyl lead helped significantly increase octane,
| allowing a lower-cost fuel to be used in gasoline engines.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| >It's really easy to sit and demand evidence before
| regulating something. But consider that if we waited for hard
| evidence to accumulate before banning lead in gasoline, we
| likely never would have banned it because the hard evidence
| wouldn't exist.
|
| We already knew lead was toxic before we started putting it
| in gasoline. Even the guy that invented it got sick from
| exposure and people died from exposure in their plants in the
| first years of operation. The problem is that we somehow
| require evidence that something is unsafe but don't require
| any evidence that its safe in the first place.
| colechristensen wrote:
| So we should legislate evidence free based on the vibes of
| whichever tribe is currently in power?
|
| We're doomed.
| mktk1001 wrote:
| Who is proposing for environment regulation without proper
| scientific evidence? You both sided the argument without giving
| any claims about environment regulation that turned out to be
| not helpful.
| lingrush4 wrote:
| Maybe ten comments below you there is someone stating
| "environmental regulations are a win."
|
| No qualifiers whatsoever. All environmental regulations are
| good as far as this person is concerned.
| nxm wrote:
| good but at what cost is the issue and who bears that cost
| andychase wrote:
| Note that the current administration closed its research and
| science office.
|
| https://www.science.org/content/article/blow-environment-epa...
| diego_moita wrote:
| > some environmental regulations work [...] while other [..] do
| more harm than good
|
| You are (deliberately?) overlooking the elephant in the room:
| lobbies with money can distort the discussion.
|
| Big tobacco knew for decades that smoking was bad but still
| managed to block restrictions in smoking. Oil companies knew
| lead was poisoning. Purdue knew Oxycontin was addicting.
| Facebook knows their product is toxic.
| rayiner wrote:
| Lead is a textbook example of a good regulation. It's something
| where the industry was doing something very harmful-
| aerosolizing lead and pumping it into the air--which had quite
| small economic benefits and was relatively easily replaced.
|
| Some regulation achieves this kind of improvement, and we're
| probably under regulated in those areas. Particulate matter,
| for example, is extremely harmful. But many regulations do not
| have such clear cut costs and benefits.
| cassepipe wrote:
| Can you tell more about particulate matter ? You mean small
| particles in the air right, so air pollution right ?
| empyrrhicist wrote:
| Yes, it's associated with cancer, heart disease, and
| dementia.
| stetrain wrote:
| Right but specifically solid particles in the air, not just
| gasses (CO2, NOX, etc.).
|
| For example smoke and soot from combustion or dust
| particles from tires and brakes.
| danlitt wrote:
| Particulate matter is relatively large particles, so far as
| air pollution goes. Think things like soot or smoke, rather
| than specific chemicals. Burning wood and coal produces far
| more particulates than, say, natural gas or gasoline-gas.
| freshpots wrote:
| They're not necessarily large, and the worst for humans
| is small particulate which gets into the bloodstream
| through lungs, PM2.5.
|
| https://www.health.ny.gov/environmental/indoors/air/pmq_a
| .ht...
|
| Breathing in unhealthy levels of PM2.5 can increase the
| risk of health problems like heart disease, asthma, and
| low birth weight. Unhealthy levels can also reduce
| visibility and cause the air to appear hazy.
|
| Outdoor sources include vehicle exhaust, burning wood,
| gas and other fuels, and fires. Particle pollution can
| also travel long distances from its source; for example
| from wildfires hundreds of miles away. Outdoor particle
| pollution levels are more likely to be higher on days
| with little or no wind or air mixing.
| danlitt wrote:
| I agree with everything you wrote. I meant to contrast
| them with "chemical" air pollution, and 2.5 mm is much
| larger than a molecule!
| rayiner wrote:
| Sibling comments are good. I'll add that the biggest
| concern is PM2.5 (particulates smaller than 2.5
| micrometers). They're thought to be responsible for 70,000
| excess deaths in the U.S. annually, more than homicides or
| drug overdoses: https://www.stateofglobalair.org/health/pm
| GeoAtreides wrote:
| >was relatively easily replaced.
|
| It wasn't easily replaced. For many decades there weren't any
| alternatives for anti-knock additives.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| _" ...there weren't any alternatives for anti-knock
| additives."_.
|
| Presumably, you mean there weren't any alternatives for
| anti-knock additives for around the same price as
| tetraethyllead.
|
| Octane ratings can be increased sans Pb if needed. Trouble
| is the extra refining and reduced yield increases costs
| which consumers weren't prepared to pay for.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Your tone suggests you think they are generally not based on
| science and given cost benefit analysis. Probably a reflection
| of your media intake.
|
| In 1981 Reagan made cost benefit analysis a requirement for
| EPA.
|
| For example in 1984: the EPA " estimates that the benefits of
| reducing lead in gasoline would exceed the costs by more than
| 300 percent.... These benefits include improved health of
| children and others"
|
| Trump has just scrapped the requirement to cost in human
| health.
|
| I wonder if removing lead would meet the new standard.
| FatherOfCurses wrote:
| It should be uncontroversial that introducing shit into an
| environment where it doesn't belong is a bad idea, yet many
| people remain unconvinced that dumping tons of carbon dioxide a
| year into the atmosphere or tons of fertilizer by-products into
| the oceans is a bad idea.
| nxm wrote:
| It's less that but rather the hypocrisy of promoting
| burdensome regulations and bans implemented in one county
| (e.g. Germany) which hurts domestic industry and raises costs
| for its citizens, all while being silent on countries like
| China and India continuing to massively build more and more
| coal fired power plants
| dlisboa wrote:
| Unfortunately there is hypocrisy to go around. Here's the
| argument China and India will use: "coal and fossil fuel
| always was for all its history and still is the largest
| portion of Germany's energy mix. It's hardly in a position
| to ask other countries to stop."
|
| "China and India have the right to industrialize themselves
| using the same tools Western countries have used. China is
| leading the world in alternative energy manufacturing
| making clean energy profitable and India is the 4th largest
| renewable energy producer."
| breakyerself wrote:
| 1. Germany industrialized 100 years before China. It's been
| burning large quantities of coal for far longer.
|
| 2. Germany or at least the EU can and should impose a
| carbon fee on imports related to a given nations carbon
| emissions/reductions.
|
| 3. Economically transitioning to renewables is better for a
| nations economy than continuing to burn fossil fuels
| anyway. Renewables are cheaper.
|
| Pointing to another bad actor as an excuse to continue to
| be a bad actor we learn is not a moral position somewhere
| around 5 years old.
| pixl97 wrote:
| I will say on point one, the rate which a country can
| scale usage throws this off. For example the first 50
| years of Germany's usage likely represents far less than
| a current Chinese year of usage.
| adrianN wrote:
| China is also building more renewables than everyone else
| combined.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| We saw this happen with the Montreal Protocol over
| CFCs/greehouse gases when everyone went mad and banned just
| about every fluorocarbon known to science.
|
| This was a case of zealotry and overregulation egged on by
| puritanical ideologs without full consideration of the
| consequences.
|
| We correctly banned fluorocarbons as refrigerants in
| systems where they would not be properly recycled, such as
| domestic refrigerators, air-conditioning systems incuding
| those in vehicles, and like. This made for good regulation,
| and it made sense.
|
| The volume of CFCs with other specislist applications was
| miniscule by comparison, and for most of these recovery,
| capture and recycle systems along with protocols for use
| could have been implemented.
|
| Instead, we stupidy put an outright ban on just about every
| CFC in sight, many of which have no direct equivalents that
| are anywhere near as effective as CFCs, and many are
| dangerous and inflammable and form explosive mixtures with
| air.
|
| Right, in one fell swoop we banned many of the most useful
| chemicals ever invented. Little wonder these's now a
| backlash to overregulation. If Montreal were to be repeated
| today the zealots would have to take more of a backseat.
| recursive wrote:
| You've just shifted the disagreement into a debate about
| whether the particular shit does or does not belong in the
| particular place.
| css_apologist wrote:
| give me an example of EPA regulation that needs to be
| eliminated
| breakyerself wrote:
| Almost every environmental regulation has come after it was
| already shown that there was some harm that needed to be
| mitigated.
|
| The worst environmental crisis in human history is going
| largely unchecked. I find it hard to take seriously any
| argument that environmental regulation has gone too far as
| opposed to not nearly far enough.
|
| If there's a specific regulation that can be shown to be doing
| more harm than good I'm cool with revisiting anything, but the
| common sense wisdom around environmental regulation has been
| corrupted by corporate public relations campaigns.
| davidw wrote:
| There's certainly _some_ "environmentalism" out there that's
| using the banner of the environment for other ends.
|
| Here's one example: https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/202
| 3-03-02/california-...
|
| I mostly agree with you, but it is worth paying attention to
| the details.
| bevr1337 wrote:
| This article doesn't speak to me. What I read is, "Won't
| someone think of the poor UC system?" But the UC system is
| _massive_
|
| > But Casa Joaquin's neighboring, overwhelmingly white
| homeowners could have used CEQA to demand costly studies
| and multiple hearings before Berkeley officials.
|
| Important to note that white people are well-represented at
| UC Berkley too. https://opa.berkeley.edu/campus-data/uc-
| berkeley-quick-facts
|
| > More recently, a series of court rulings that culminated
| last year nearly forced Berkeley to withhold admission of
| thousands of high school seniors...
|
| Graduating high-school seniors are also known as incoming
| freshman or legal adults.
|
| > ... because the state's judges agreed with NIMBY
| neighborhood groups that population growth is an inherent
| environmental impact under CEQA.
|
| Ok, let's see how big the UC school system is...
|
| > The University maintains approximately 6,000 buildings
| enclosing 137 million gross square feet on approximately
| 30,000 acres across its ten campuses, five medical centers,
| nine agricultural research and extension centers, and the
| Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
|
| https://accountability.universityofcalifornia.edu/2017/chap
| t...
|
| I'm not seeing evidence that protestors were primarily
| NIMBYs and pesky white homeowners. I can find several
| articles citing _student_ protests.
|
| > "It's students who set up People's Park in the first
| place, so it's our place to defend it," said Athena Davis,
| a first-year student at UC Berkeley who spoke at the rally.
| "It's up to students to reject the idea that our housing
| needs to come at the price of destroying green space and
| homes for the marginalized."
|
| https://www.berkeleyside.org/2021/01/30/protesters-tear-
| down...
| davidw wrote:
| They're talking about using environmental rules to block
| homes for people to live in, inside cities.
|
| Using land efficiently in walkable places is one of the
| most environmentally friendly things we can be doing, and
| supposed "environmentalists" sought to block it using
| "environmental" rules!
|
| If that's not NIMBYism to you, you have blinders on.
| bevr1337 wrote:
| I didn't say there was NO NIMBYs, but that this article
| suggests NIMBYs were the primary protestors. That doesn't
| seem truthful. Additionally, the UC system does have a
| large impact on the environment.
|
| I'm sure there are better examples to illustrate your
| point
|
| > homes for people to live in
|
| Student housing. Which likely means partially-furnished
| studios with shared bathrooms and a kitchenette at best.
| This isn't the useful housing folks are asking for.
| davidw wrote:
| It's pretty useful to the students!
|
| That kind of "wait, no, not THAT kind of housing, not
| HERE" is textbook NIMBYism.
|
| There may have been some student protestors, but the
| money behind the legal challenges were all wealthy local
| NIMBYs.
| breakyerself wrote:
| I would just say that NIMBYS that weaponize environmental
| regulation for purposes it wasn't written for aren't
| environmentalists.
| bevr1337 wrote:
| That's a great hypothetical, but it's not supported by
| the article. There are claims that NIMBYs are doing this
| or that, but follow the links to the supplementary
| articles and it's baseless. I only find evidence that
| students and homeless protested. Those aren't NIMBY
| homeowners.
|
| To me, it seems UC wants to bulldoze a park famous for
| homeless camps and replace it with student housing. Pro-
| development is trying to cast the UC expansion in the
| same light as folks asking for affordable housing. But,
| UC is not providing useful housing for residents of
| Berkley.
| davidw wrote:
| Fortunately, this egregious nonsense lead to the CEQA
| rules being modified so that NIMBYs like these can't
| weaponize them so easily in situations like this.
|
| https://calmatters.org/housing/2025/06/ceqa-urban-
| developmen...
| lacunary wrote:
| what kind of common sense wisdom are we talking about here,
| can you give an example? understanding the impact of
| regulation designed to impact both the environment and the
| economy, two incredibly complex systems our experts are only
| beginning to understand, isn't generally a matter of common
| sense
| breakyerself wrote:
| The common sense wisdom I'm referring to is that
| environmental regulation is in general bad or does more
| harm than good.
|
| That's an opinion I encounter constantly and it's a meme
| that was manufactured in PR company meeting rooms, right
| wing think tanks, and neo-classical economists theoretical
| models of how the world works.
| an_account wrote:
| CEQA in California is very often used to block apartments in
| existing urban areas.
|
| So, instead, California continues to mostly build single
| family housing sprawl into natural habitats.
|
| A clear example of environmental regulation hurting the
| environment and the climate. And of course the affordability
| of housing.
| busterarm wrote:
| And all of the harsh chemicals that get released when that
| new construction burns up in wildfires...
| breakyerself wrote:
| Yeah I'm not in favor of sprawl. It sounds like it needs to
| be amended, but do you want to go back to polluted air and
| water just because a small minority of regulations need to
| be repealed or amended? Wouldn't it make more sense to just
| revisit whatever regulations are having unintended
| consequences?
| derektank wrote:
| >do you want to go back to polluted air and water just
| because a small minority of regulations need to be
| repealed or amended?
|
| >Turning "environmental regulation" into a unified bloc
| that must be either supported or opposed in totality is a
| manipulative political maneuver and it should be
| forcefully rejected.
| breakyerself wrote:
| When I say they're mostly good, but we should fix what's
| broken and people start hitting me with examples of
| broken regulation I can only interpret that as an example
| for why environmental regulation should be opposed by
| default. So I respond accordingly.
|
| I've never said all environmental regulation is good.
| That would be stupid, but you should have evidence based
| reasons for wanting to repeal or modify a regulation.
|
| Existing regulation was put in place for a reason and
| those reasons likely still matter. Even if the regulation
| is falling short of having unintended consequences.
| spongebobstoes wrote:
| current environmental regulations act to slow progress on
| solar power installation
|
| we should either delete the regulations, or add
| exemptions for the infrastructure we need to build to
| avoid climate disaster
|
| this is a time sensitive issue for our environment. every
| day spent debating regulatory nuance is a day wasted
|
| at this point I prefer drastic decisive action over
| continued inaction: delete the regulations and re-
| introduce them
| mapt wrote:
| All of the regulations that are used to "limit sprawl" in
| the US functionally prohibit the construction of new
| dense city blocks even moreso, and this in turn forces
| suburban sprawl to occur.
| cyrialize wrote:
| Thank you for mentioning this, it was the first thing I
| thought of in this conversation thread!
| HowardStark wrote:
| CEQA itself is a mixed bag. I want to be clear that there
| are very important things the CEQA does to improve our
| environmental conditions[0]! The very real issue of CEQA
| being "weaponized"[1] stems from how environmental
| complaints have to be re-litigated in their entirety every
| time one is filed. Say there's a coalition of neighbors who
| do not want something built. They can each file a lawsuit
| alleging environmental issues and each will have to be
| handled in isolation
|
| *I am not going into immense detail here. It is admittedly
| a bit more complex than this, but this is a reasonable
| summary
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/TKN7Cl6finE?si=CR4SjVK5_ojk-OKq [1]
| https://www.planningreport.com/2015/12/21/new-ceqa-study-
| rev...
| petsfed wrote:
| I don't know if its still true, but I recall reading once
| that CEQA had never been used to actually prevent or even
| slow the building of a dam or a mine or something. It had
| only ever been used to hobble otherwise neutral
| development. Its a good idea in theory, but I feel like the
| plaintiff ought to be able to articulate what environmental
| impact they are concerned about and maybe require a study
| from them in support of that claim too.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| Government should be active and in charge of urban
| planning. It is a matter of the common good.
|
| One of the biggest problems today is that urban planning
| has basically evaporated. Local and state governments don't
| plan towns anymore. Things are left to developers who have
| no other concern than to run a street off a major road and
| plop a few houses down, sell, and move on to the next
| project. No thought is given to traffic or public services
| or walkability or public transportation. No care is given
| to integration with existing urban structures. Instead of
| mixed-use zoning or building houses around a common public
| space, which are historically the more common and sensible
| form of urban planning, we end up with car-dependent
| suburban dead zones, suburban sprawl.
|
| This should be receiving more attention from
| environmentalists, as urban planning is intimately related
| to environmental issues.
| wk_end wrote:
| I don't know where you live, and this _is_ going to be
| very dependent on where you live, but in most places that
| are experiencing these issues I think you actually have
| the problem backwards. For any given parcel of land,
| building upwards would be the more profitable move. Local
| governments deliberately legislate planning that
| prioritizes single-family homes, cars, and sprawl;
| developers are then forced to operate within these
| constraints. They 'd rather be building density!
| nokcha wrote:
| I'd argue that environmental regulations that impede building
| modern nuclear power plants to replace coal power plants are
| net harmful. Nuclear power safety has advanced a lot since
| Chernobyl.
| breakyerself wrote:
| Chernobyl design was never in use in the US, but nuclear
| went through a long period of near universal public
| opposition to its expansion because of the high profile
| disasters that it caused.
|
| Now the cost of solar and storage are dropping at a rate I
| doubt nuclear is ever going to make a significant comeback.
| I'm not opposed to it, but I wonder if the economics will
| ever be favorable even with regulatory reform.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| > Chernobyl design was never in use in the US
|
| Commercially. Several early test reactors were
| essentially just graphite moderated piles not unlike
| Chernobyl, but they were abandoned for a reason.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Graphite moderated reactors are broadly fine, the problem
| was with some technical specifics of _that specific_
| reactor design, and the operational culture that
| surrounded it. After Chernobyl, those flaws were
| corrected and operation of other RBMK reactors has
| continued to this very day, with no repeats.
| ch4s3 wrote:
| That's good additional clarification, I only meant to
| point out that graphite moderated, water cooled reactors
| had existed in the US and UK.
| mattmaroon wrote:
| It would. People are still building some natural gas
| plants even despite renewables being cheaper and nuclear
| is far cheaper over its lifecycle than that and, other
| than regulatory issues, is basically better in every way.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> nuclear is far cheaper over its lifecycle than that_
|
| That is the case for base load generation, where the
| plant can operate near 100% capacity all the time. But
| that isn't were gas is usually being deployed; it being
| used for reserve generation. The economics of nuclear
| isn't as favourable in that application as it costs more
| or less the same to run at partial generation, or even no
| generation, as it does when it is going full blast.
| prpl wrote:
| There will continue to be new gas plants as long as there
| are coal plants which will be converted, usually around
| the time a major overhaul would need to be taken anyway.
| jerlam wrote:
| Nuclear might be better and cheaper over it's entire
| lifecycle; but given that the starting costs are so high,
| the time to build is so long, and the US has serious
| problems with cost overruns in public projects, as well
| as the fickleness of both government and public opinion,
| I don't expect another plant to be built.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| Chernobyl may have done a lot to inflame cultural
| imagination of what could happen in the worst cases, but
| the US still had its own high profile disasters like
| Three Mile Island.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident
| patmorgan23 wrote:
| I would hesitate to call Three Mile Island a disaster, it
| was certainly a nuclear accident. A reactor was damaged,
| but no one was injured and an absolutely miniscule amount
| of radiation was released. The other units at the plant
| continued to operate until quite recently (and might
| actually be starting up again).
| epistasis wrote:
| The closest I've gotten to somebody finding environmental
| regulations that were driving up the cost of nuclear was
| with some of the latest stuff with people trying to get rid
| of the LNT model of how radiation affects people.
|
| Getting rid of LNT would allow higher doses to workers, and
| the way it makes nuclear cheaper is by having less
| shielding around the reactor.
|
| But if you look at how recent reactors like the AP1000
| failed, it's not so much because of the mere quantity of
| concrete. In fact, one of the big advantages of the AP1000
| is that it used a fraction of the concrete and steel of
| prior designs. The real problem at Vogtle were construction
| logistics, matching up design to constructible plans, and
| doing that all in an efficient manner.
|
| The construction process didn't run over budget and over
| timeline because of environmental regulations, that
| happened because we don't know how to build big things
| anymore, in combination with leadership asking for
| regulatory favors like starting construction before
| everything has been fully designed, which gave them more
| rope to hang themselves with.
|
| I don't know the specifics of why France forgot how to
| build, at Flamanville and Olkiluoto, but I imagine it's a
| similar tale as in the US. High labor costs, poor
| logistics, projects dragged out, and having to pay interest
| on the loan for years and years extra with every delay.
|
| If there's somebody with more specifics on how _unnecessary
| regulation_ is killing nuclear, I 'd love to see it. But
| after watching attentively and with great interest since
| ~2005, I've become so disillusioned with nuclear that I
| doubt we'll ever see it have success in the West again.
| Factories and manufacturing have seen productivity go
| through the roof over the past 50 years, while construction
| productivity is stagnant. Playing to our strengths, and
| using our very limited construction capacity on building
| factories rather than building generators, seems far wiser
| on the macroeconomic scale.
| slavik81 wrote:
| The PS700M (960M USD) spent on fish protection measures
| at Hinkley Point C would be a topical example [1]. It's
| expected to save an average of a few hundred twaite shad,
| six river lamprey, and eighteen allis shad per year, plus
| one salmon every twelve years, and a trout every thirty-
| six years.
|
| https://www.salmonbusiness.com/nuclear-plants-
| new-700-millio...
| busterarm wrote:
| How do you explain the bug up its ass that the EPA has about
| auto racing?
| breakyerself wrote:
| Congress should pass the RPM act and exempt race cars from
| the clean air act. I never said you can't cherry pick
| individual problems with environmental regulation.
|
| I just don't like the general attitude that because you can
| find something to disagree with that environmental
| regulation as a general rule is bad. It isn't.
|
| There are thousands and thousands of pages of environmental
| regulations. Obviously people are going to be able to find
| some things that need to be revisited, but don't throw the
| baby out with the bath water. Nothing should be repealed
| without evidence and in many cases amendments are more
| prudent than repeals.
| breakyerself wrote:
| At the same time I'm sick of people facing no consequences
| for modifying their diesel pickups to blow black clouds of
| smoke on their fellow citizens.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Bro I can't go out without some diesel pickup rolling coal.
| If anything auto standards need to be higher because people
| aren't adult enough to follow the 'not for public roads
| use' model.
| coob wrote:
| Nah some environmental regulation is batshit.
|
| Literally, in the UK you can't build if there's a protected
| bat species in the area.
| NicuCalcea wrote:
| Why do you think that is batshit?
| aaronblohowiak wrote:
| Guano
| __alexs wrote:
| This is not true, there is just a specific protocol you
| have follow to do the building work. Yes it increases
| costs, but it doesn't explicitly prevent them.
| loeg wrote:
| Except, you know, NEPA.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| CEQA is pretty universally considered a disaster.
|
| The alternative is not to have no environmental regulation.
| California could copy the regulations of any of the 49 other
| states and be much better off.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >California could copy the regulations of any of the 49
| other states and be much better off.
|
| Says whom?
|
| California has a huge population. California has a massive
| water shortage problem. California has wide areas
| vulnerable to wildfires. California has piles of small
| ecosystems that are fragile and can be easily wiped out.
|
| Saying California could copy some states like Iowas
| regulations makes negative sense.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The major problems with CEQA are:
|
| - the extreme cost and time spent on mandatory
| Environmental Impact Reports
|
| - it allows pretty much anyone to sue projects over just
| about anything, which can also add many years before
| projects can start
|
| None of this has anything to do with California specific
| environmental concerns
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > If there's a specific regulation that can be shown to be
| doing more harm than good
|
| In Massachusetts you can't clear shoreline. Specifically, if
| you buy waterfront property on a pond / lake, you can't clear
| the shoreline to make a beach in your backyard. You can only
| use what used to be there before the law was passed. There's
| even restrictions on building close to shorelines, so if you
| want to build, you need to find an existing building and
| renovate.
|
| Now, I'm not a wetland expert, so maybe someone will chime in
| and tell me why every inch of freshwater shoreline must be
| undisturbed. But I like freshwater swimming and suspect that
| we can allocate some space for human recreation.
| colechristensen wrote:
| >Almost every environmental regulation has come after it was
| already shown that there was some harm that needed to be
| mitigated.
|
| Ok, strong example here: the long term efforts to stop forest
| fires caused build up of fuel that should have burned up in
| small fires which then instead burned up ecosystems which
| evolved for small forest fires and instead were destroyed in
| large ones.
|
| That's a well intentioned environmental policy that had
| terrible effects.
|
| Fuel efficiency programs with the goal of reducing emissions
| with exceptions for work vehicles killed small trucks and
| meant a ton of people who do approximately 0 work drive
| around enormous vehicles that were designed big to match the
| exception criteria.
|
| That's another one.
|
| Ethanol to replace gasoline is also an enormous negative
| consequence waste that started as an environmental program.
|
| Things don't just work because you want them to and programs
| aren't automatically right because of what they intend to do.
|
| Far too many people argue for things they don't understand at
| all because of the surface intention of them and treat
| discussion about them blasphemy. (I chose uncontroversial
| negative examples because I don't want to get sidetracked
| into arguments about my examples with zealots)
| Braxton1980 wrote:
| >Turning "environmental regulation" into a unified bloc that
| must be either supported or opposed in totality is a
| manipulative political maneuver and it should be forcefully
| rejected.
|
| I'm aware of political parties and politicians who make
| statements similar to "We have too many regulations" or "stop
| big government" I'm not aware of opposite.
| cfiggers wrote:
| You've never heard a politician say, "When I'm
| Mayor/Governor/President, we're going to make [x]
| [stop/start] doing [y]"?
| soperj wrote:
| > while other environmental regulations do more harm than good
| and need to be reigned in or eliminated.
|
| Prove it.
| cfiggers wrote:
| I have proven it to my own satisfaction. It's a pretty
| trivial proof. I'm sure you could derive your own, if you
| tried.
|
| How's this: if, at some point, it seems to me that your
| agreement would benefit me or advance something I care about,
| I promise I'll consider trying to convince you.
| loeg wrote:
| Put more broadly, we should, you know, enact good laws and
| repeal bad ones. No major political party has a monopoly on
| good, or bad, legislation.
| jcattle wrote:
| > It is fair and reasonable to demand that environmental
| regulation justify its existence with hard, scientifically
| verifiable data or else get chopped
|
| Here is a strawman for you: studies for regulation A show that
| it is successfull in improving habitat for endangered species.
| Studies also show that the regulation increases tax burden and
| decreases competitiveness of national agriculture.
|
| Should the regulation be chopped?
| MisterTea wrote:
| > while other environmental regulations do more harm than good
| and need to be reigned in or eliminated.
|
| Which "other" regulations are harmful and what harm are they
| doing?
| wat10000 wrote:
| This sounds nice, but in the context of actual politics it's
| completely meaningless.
|
| It's like saying that _some_ people are dangerous criminals who
| need to be locked up, and _other_ people are upstanding
| citizens who should be free to live their lives. Everybody
| would agree with this. The disagreement is in how you sort
| people. What category encompasses someone who belongs to the
| opposing political party? That sort of thing.
|
| Regulation should definitely be justified by scientific data.
| Who gets to determine what's enough? Who gets to determine what
| counts? Leaded gasoline is a great example. It was pretty well
| understood when it was introduced that lead was hazardous and
| dumping a bunch of it into the atmosphere was unwise. But this
| was evaded, denied, and suppressed for decades.
|
| Even today, it's not settled. Lead is _still_ used in aviation
| gasoline in the US. It 's being phased out, but it's been in
| the process of phasing out for a couple of decades and there
| seems to be no urgency in it.
|
| You'll find plenty of people disagreeing with pretty clearly
| beneficial environmental regulations because in their view
| those regulations are not supported by the data. They would
| completely agree with your statement, while saying that
| pollution from coal power plants is no big deal, climate change
| is a myth, etc.
| tjohns wrote:
| There definitely is urgency to phase out leaded aviation
| gasoline. The FAA is proposing that we phase it out by 2030 -
| just 4 years from now - even though we still haven't agreed
| on which of the 3 competing gas blends to standardize on, the
| pumping infrastructure only exists at a small number of
| airports, and even though there's still open concerns about
| them causing engine damage.
|
| They just published a draft version of the transition plan
| here: https://www.faa.gov/aircraft/draft_docs/draft_unleaded_
| avgas...
| wat10000 wrote:
| Leaded gasoline for cars started phasing out 52 years ago.
| It was fully banned 30 years ago. If there was any urgency
| behind getting rid of leaded avgas it would have been gone
| in that timeframe.
|
| The FAA started looking at it 14 years ago. They planned to
| finish phasing it out in 2023. Three years after that,
| leaded avgas remains ubiquitous, and there's a plan to
| finish phasing it out in six years. (The 2030 date excludes
| Alaska, which is planned for 2032.) That's not what urgency
| looks like.
| tjohns wrote:
| Cars don't need high octane fuel, aircraft do. Outside of
| the absolute smallest aircraft, you can't get enough
| power out of automobile gasoline.
|
| They started looking at it 14 years ago, but there's been
| tons of bureaucratic roadblocks that have impeded
| progress. (Depending on who you ask, the petroleum
| companies were responsible for some of these.)
|
| Even today, there are reports that the new unleaded avgas
| formulations cause engine damage, and we don't entirely
| know why that's happening. So there's still technical
| issues to work out. (But it's important, so folks are
| trying to solve them as quickly as possible.)
| epistasis wrote:
| > In my opinion it is obvious and should be uncontroversial
| that some environmental regulations work and are great and
| should if anything be reinforced, while other environmental
| regulations do more harm than good and need to be reigned in or
| eliminated.
|
| This would be a reasonable centrist opinion, if there existed
| environmental regulations that do more harm than good!
|
| Actually, I do know of one, in California, that does both harm
| and good and the harmful parts need to be reigned in. CEQA in
| California was expanded by courts after it was passed to cover
| all sorts of things that weren't intended by the authors. CEQA
| is not so much an "environmental" law as it is a "perform some
| massive studies law" as it doesn't really regulate anything in
| particular.
|
| Mostly it serves as a route to use the courts to delay
| projects, largely housing in already-built-out areas. By
| delaying a project's approval with a court lawsuit for 2-3
| years, the preliminary financing runs out, the cost of owning
| land without doing anything with it runs out, so projects can
| be scuttled without the validity of the lawsuit every being
| evaluated by courts.
|
| Instead of this sort of legal courtroom process that takes long
| and indeterminate amounts of time, CEQA should be replaced with
| strict and very clear definitions of harm, or at least move the
| more subjective parts into a science-based regulatory body that
| provides answers an a short timeline that can not be dragged on
| indefinitely.
|
| > Regulations are not people, and they don't have rights.
|
| This is a very weird turn of the phrase "corporations aren't
| people," because there _actually are highly influential
| politicians that made the case that corporations are people._
| Nobody is saying that regulations are people. That 's silly.
|
| The regulations we need to get rid of are not "environmental"
| regulations, they are "rent seeking" regulations that allow
| entrenched interests to prevent disruption by smaller
| interests. CEQA is not a problem because its an environmental
| regulation, it's a problem because it's a tool NIMBYs use to
| get results that are worse for the environment.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| > It is fair and reasonable to demand that environmental
| regulation justify its existence with hard, scientifically
| verifiable data or else get chopped.
|
| This sounds good as a general default, but there are
| differences of approach. The US, for example, tends to be more
| permissive with new chemicals while the EU tends to take a more
| precautionary approach. Which is better on the whole, weighing
| the various competing goods, I don't know. I generally favor
| health over economic prowess, however.
|
| > a manipulative political maneuver
|
| Yes, under the pretext of concern for the environment. There
| are well-known cases where the political opposition will
| commission a bogus ecological studies to stifle construction
| projects they either don't agree with or as a petty way to
| simply make the ruling party appear less successful. And
| naturally, the ecological study will find _something_ , as
| virtually no major construction project will leave the
| environment unaltered, which is not to say seriously or
| irretrievable damaged.
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| That's why the people that would rather policy be based on
| their personal interests work so hard to discredit all data and
| the scientific method so that you can't even have that
| conversation.
| nayuki wrote:
| > some environmental regulations work and are great and should
| if anything be reinforced, while other environmental
| regulations do more harm than good and need to be reigned in or
| eliminated
|
| You're right. Off the top of my head, the stupidest
| environmental regulation I can think of right now is the
| banning of plastic straws. It's such a minuscule amount of
| plastic used compared to the mountains of bags and packaging
| used in general commerce and industry.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I'm all for protecting our environment. I
| just believe in evidence-based policy and setting priorities
| correctly. After all, money, labor, and attention are finite
| resources.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Aren't you just waving a flag for less regulation by rushing to
| align yourself with this inarguable example of regulatory
| success? Rather than discussing the issue of what impact lead
| had, or how we might apply this longitudinal method to other
| other problems (making hair archives into a general
| environmental data resource), or develop longitudinal methods
| in general, You've chosen to issue a clarion calla gainst 'bad
| regulation'.
|
| _Turning "environmental regulation" into a unified bloc that
| must be either supported or opposed in totality is a
| manipulative political maneuver and it should be forcefully
| rejected._
|
| ....nobody was arguing this. It's a classic straw man fallacy.
| Further, you're leveraging a lot of emotional terms while
| providing zero examples, inviting potential sympathetic readers
| to just project their feelings onto any regulations they happen
| to dislike rather than establish any sort of objective criteria
| or lay out any map/model of regulatory credibility that could
| be subject to challenge or criticism.
| ck2 wrote:
| unless you live next to an airport or even remotely close to it
|
| then lead is being sprayed all over you, your car and home, daily
|
| for THREE DECADES NOW
|
| no rush, not like it's poison or does permanent damage to your
| health/IQ
|
| https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/leaded-gas-wa...
| ryandrake wrote:
| Acknowledging that there is no safe amount of lead exposure,
| the amount of lead that "is being sprayed all over you" from a
| tiny handful of piston airplanes is minuscule compared to what
| we were all exposed to prior to the mid 70s. Like many orders
| of magnitude. I'd be concerned if I worked at the airport
| pumping gas or something.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Yeah it's absurd how aviation is somehow exempt from these
| rules, especially since piston engine aircraft carry virtually
| no vital role in anything except people flying them for fun.
| There have been viable alternatives for a long long time now.
|
| I guess people who have money for personal airplanes also have
| the money to lobby when it matters for their interests. Pricks,
| I hope they die of dementia.
| mfkp wrote:
| Wow, very angry and uninformed comment. No airplane owners
| are lobbying for lead. As a pilot with a personal airplane
| that runs on avgas, we all want lead to go away too. But it's
| a problem with FAA regulations, and an infrastructure problem
| where every airport nationwide needs to have separate fuel
| tanks/trucks with leaded fuel and the newer lead-free
| alternatives simultaneously, which is a massive expense.
| Plus, there is no consensus on which lead-free alternative is
| safest for old engines, so we're still waiting on data.
|
| California has a few airports that are stocking the lead-free
| alternatives, but that's about it.
|
| But yes, blame the small aircraft owners if it makes you feel
| better.
|
| > "piston engine aircraft carry virtually no vital role in
| anything except people flying them for fun"
|
| I guess we just shouldn't train new pilots then.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Yeah well, I'm sure you know what's also a massive expense
| in aviation? Everything. If a regulation was made that
| required it, people would do it regardless of how much it
| costs and it would finally become a reliable option if it
| was widely available. No regular car gas station would
| stock lead free if it wasn't mandated.
|
| And well it's fine by me if you want to literally breathe
| lead every time you fly, you do you, but who the fuck gives
| you the right to poison everyone else around you? Like if
| anyone did what you do they'd justifiably spend their life
| in prison.
|
| I find it horrid that there is even a debate around lead
| free alternatives. Oh woe is me, my 80s engine will last
| 100 hours less! Jesus fucking christ. You sound like a 3M
| lawyer advocating for PFAS. "The alternatives are
| inconvenient and expensive so we're gonna keep poisoning
| everyone until they aren't because we can."
|
| > I guess we just shouldn't train new pilots then.
|
| There are literally countless options man. There's even
| electrics now, you don't exactly need long range for
| training and small turboprop jet-a options for long hauls.
| I know the lead is making it hard to think, but for the
| sake of people breathing your exhaust please do try.
| tjohns wrote:
| Piston aircraft are vital to training new pilots. Without the
| piston fleet, you wouldn't have anybody flying anything
| larger.
|
| Not to mention they're frequently used for air ambulance
| flights, survey work, and law enforcement. The "satellite"
| view on most online mapping tools is recorded from a piston
| aircraft.
|
| Also, the current proposed plan is to migrate off of leaded
| gasoline for most of the country by 2030, which is actually
| quite ambitious given that acceptable alternative fuels
| didn't exist until literally a few years ago.
| moffkalast wrote:
| They can run in regular gas reliably enough for training,
| they can run on jet-a, they can run on batteries. Anything
| vital can run on jet-a without any barriers.
|
| Excuses are made because it requires retiring or refitting
| old aircraft, and people need to be forced to do it. Simple
| as. I will die on this hill.
|
| > The "satellite" view on most online mapping tools is
| recorded from a piston aircraft.
|
| It is not. You're thinking of lidar.
| filleduchaos wrote:
| Wait, you think workhorse aircraft today can run on
| _batteries_?
| moffkalast wrote:
| I know a Velis Electro can fly for an hour, that's plenty
| of time for flight school. I'm sure there's better
| options now too. If something needs to take longer than
| that and is worth doing, then do it with a turboprop.
|
| That's besides the fact that there are genuine certified
| unleaded alternative fuels for piston aircraft now.
| Fucking "we oh can't do it" lead apologists smh.
| filleduchaos wrote:
| "One hour is plenty of time for flight school" is not
| doing you any favours in coming across as knowing what
| you're talking about lol. Good freaking luck completing
| cross-country flights for an instrument rating with that
| endurance, never mind your certainty that there are
| "better options" as if the laws of physics have changed
| dramatically between 2020 and today.
|
| And I mentioned _workhorse_ aircraft for a reason,
| considering that the Velis Electro has a payload of...172
| kilograms. Turboprops (gas turbines in general) are far
| more expensive _and_ far less fuel efficient at low
| altitudes than their piston engine counterparts, which is
| precisely why piston engines still exist.
|
| The fact that alternative fuels _now_ exist for piston
| engines does not make the blatantly wrong nonsense you
| 've been throwing out any more correct, such as your
| suggestion that you can "just run" piston engines on
| Jet-A. That is something that anyone who actually knows
| anything about internal combustion engines can tell you
| for free causes regular piston engines to detonate/knock.
| Your assertion that piston-engine aircraft have virtually
| no vital role was similarly ignorant.
|
| And _that 's_ besides the fact that black-and-white "if
| you don't agree with whatever half-assed or plainly
| incorrect crap I say in support of The Cause(tm) you're
| an apologist" nonsense lost its efficacy years ago; you
| _might_ want to find a better soapboxing tactic for 2026.
| tjohns wrote:
| One hour really isn't enough time. You can spend 30-40
| minutes just getting in/out of busy terminal airspace,
| which would only leave 20-30 minutes for instruction -
| which is nothing. Most flight lessons are closer to 1.5
| hours for a reason.
|
| You're also legally required to maintain 30-45 minutes of
| emergency reserve, longer if you're flying IFR.
|
| And again, this isn't even touching on the "long" cross-
| country flights that are legally required for training.
| tjohns wrote:
| No, piston aircraft cannot run on Jet-A. That would cause
| detonation and the engine would quite literally self-
| destruct within minutes - likely during takeoff when the
| engine is at highest power.
|
| There's been some trials of battery-powered trainer
| aircraft. The last I checked, they still don't have
| enough range to do the "long" cross country that's
| legally required.
|
| And I assure you it's not because of old aircraft. Some
| flights schools have fleets of brand new 2025/26 models -
| all of them still run on leaded avgas.
| filleduchaos wrote:
| Piston-engine aircraft both have much more vital roles than
| people flying them for fun (for example they form practically
| all of "last mile" air service as well as pretty much all of
| ag flying) _and_ very much do not have viable alternatives as
| far as both cost and operational efficiency go.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| I really want to see elimination of lead (projectiles, lead
| styphnate primers, etc.) in firearms next.
|
| When I go to the range, every once in a while, I'll see one of
| the older marksmen who's there with his squirrel hunting rifle,
| chambered in .22 LR. I've noticed that he seems to have a tremor
| in his hands when he's loading his magazines. Essential tremor is
| linked to lead exposure [0]
|
| Most .22 LR projectiles are either just lead or have a copper
| "wash" over the lead, not a proper jacket like you see on other
| rounds.
|
| I wonder, if you shoot those loads for long enough, and breathe
| in enough gunsmoke, do you get that problem?
|
| As for the proof being in our hair... well, not mine. Chrome dome
| over here XD
|
| [0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1241711/
| bikelang wrote:
| I completely agree. I do everything I can to avoid leaded
| ammunition. I do not want lead touching the meat I harvest. It
| can be really tricky to find lead-free ammo of certain sizes. I
| mostly use waterfowl ammo for upland bird and rabbit - and it
| works fine. But even ordering ammo online it is quite hard to
| get .270 solid copper. And in a store? Forget about it
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Why would lead be in the gunsmoke? Everything leaded should be
| coming out the business end of the firearm, and it should be
| coming out with some gusto.
| jabl wrote:
| Because the heat and pressure from the propellant and rifling
| vaporizes or rubs off some of that lead. A very small
| percentage, granted, but still.
|
| Particularly for unjacketed bullets like 22LR. Even jacketed
| bullets tend to not be jacketed at the base.
| vel0city wrote:
| The material that burns in primers is often lead styphnate.
| This burns and sends lead particles throughout the air.
|
| With rounds that aren't well jacketed like those 22s that are
| just bare lead, you also get some of the round scraping in
| the barrels that comes off as dust.
|
| There's tons of lead in the air at shooting ranges.
| buildsjets wrote:
| Are you proposing that the base of the bullet which is
| exposed to the burning propellant magically remains at room
| temperature, and none of the lead in the base of the bullet
| is vaporized? What about the process of forcing the
| projectile into the barrel's spiral grooves at very high
| speed, leaving grooves in the side of the bullet. Where do
| you suppose that displaced and/or vaporized material ends up?
| What about the lead styphante that is combusted in the
| primer? I am not aware of any firearm that has a muzzle
| filter that removes primer residue from the combusted
| gunsmoke.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| I am directly questioning whether the .22LR bullet creates
| more lead vapor than any other round as per OP statement.
| justin66 wrote:
| I haven't measured this but all the ingredients are
| there: they're unjacketed or copper washed, and they are
| made from soft lead rather than a hard-cast alloy. You
| can get a polymer-coated or pure copper round but that's
| pretty unusual since it goes against the cheap plinking
| purpose most people are using the .22 for.
| justin66 wrote:
| The base of the bullet is lead (with jacketed pistol rounds,
| that's often true even if it's a "full metal jacket" and some
| brands are trying to draw a distinction there with "total
| metal jacket" branding) and it's exposed to the explosion
| when the round fires. There's some vaporized lead, most if it
| will move downrange and some of it won't. Airborne lead is
| potentially more of a problem at an indoor range.
|
| Copper, polymer-coated, or total metal jacket rounds will
| also result in less lead _on_ the firearm, I 'd think, and
| less on the user's hands. One old guy I know who had lead
| poisoning at one time believes the real risk is getting the
| lead on one's hands and then handling a cigarette.
| adrianN wrote:
| There was a big case in Berlin where policemen got sick after
| shooting at a range with insufficient ventilation.
| gambiting wrote:
| Fun fact - leaded petrol isn't actually banned in the UK, you can
| legally buy it and use it. The legislation at the time of bans
| just made it so that leaded petrol could only be a small % of
| overall petrol sales by any given fuel station, arguing that it
| allowed time for owners of unleaded-incompatible cars to purchase
| it.
|
| And....it worked pretty much exactly as designed - initially only
| the largest stations carried it because they could justify the
| storage costs, and eventually it disappeared from almost
| everywhere. Just before covid there were still 3 small garages
| selling leaded petrol by the drum, but afaik they all stopped
| doing so.
|
| And regardless - you can stil buy actual real Tetraethyl Lead
| fuel additive which turns your petrol into actual real 4-star
| leaded petrol, just like in the old days:
|
| https://www.demon-tweeks.com/tetraboost-e-guard-15-fuel-addi...
| jabl wrote:
| I recall there's one factory on the planet still producing TEL,
| so once they decide it's no longer profitable it's over.
|
| Aviation gasoline is probably the one market that still keeps
| it afloat, when/if piston aviation switches over the remaining
| market is small and insignificant.
| tjohns wrote:
| At least in the US, the current proposed plan is to phase out
| leaded avgas by 2030: https://www.faa.gov/aircraft/draft_docs
| /draft_unleaded_avgas...
| tim333 wrote:
| Light aircraft still run on leaded avgas.
|
| Sounds like the government is being lax. From the aircraft
| owners and pilots association:
|
| >So the Government's indifference is not going to help us in
| the UK if the *supply of leaded AVGAS is stopped, the UK CAA
| have not appoved new fuels, there is no infrastucture or supply
| chain in the UK. We keep beating the doors at the CAA and
| DfT...
| krunck wrote:
| Also: Preserved hair reveals just how bad lead exposure was in
| the 20th century (livescience.com) -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46872282
| lysace wrote:
| During the past year I have discovered that almost all retailers
| here in Sweden have voluntarily replaced their usual
| Teflon/polytetrafluoroethylene/PTFE frying pan coatings with
| something called 'ceramic'. (This includes IKEA globally, I
| assume.)
|
| The thing is - it's simply not as good. The worst case is
| probably frying frozen gyoza. They _will_ get stuck when they get
| gelatinous on that 'ceramic' surface.
|
| I ended up looking up some slightly offbrand stores to get the
| pan that I wanted.
| munificent wrote:
| Humans were able to successfully fry food for hundreds of years
| before Teflon was invented.
|
| I still like non-stick pans for eggs, but for almost everything
| else, I prefer stainless steel, cast iron, or enameled cast
| iron. You do have to pay a little more attention to technique
| (knowing what temperature to heat the pan to before you put
| food on, etc.), but the end result is just about as good as a
| non-stick pan with many advantages:
|
| * You don't have to be obsessive about never letting a metal
| utensil scratch the pan. (I hope you aren't using a metal
| spatula or fork with your non-stick!)
|
| * You can scrape the hell out of the pan while you cook and get
| all that delicious crispy fond into what you're making. If I'm
| doing a pan sauce, it's always in the Dutch oven so I can get
| that fond into the gravy.
|
| * They last a lot longer. Even if you are careful, a non-stick
| pan will lose its coating and need to be replaced after a
| handful of years. I got my cast iron skillet for $15 at an
| antique store. It's older than me and will outlive me.
|
| * You're not, you know, eating forever chemicals.
| lysace wrote:
| I remember seeing a bunch of research showing that any teflon
| you ate was just pooped out, so to speak.
|
| This ceramic pan I bought from IKEA lasted like 3-5 months
| until I was unhappy with it. Historically, the teflon pans I
| have bought from there have lasted 12-18 months easily.
| j45 wrote:
| The concerning thing is how lead, arsenic are being found in
| things they are not reported in or labelled as being safe.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| I wonder how big a factor this is in creating podcast bros/tech
| bros. Is there actually a pipeline from 'get guy to start
| working out' to becoming a dumb bro?
|
| https://www.consumerreports.org/lead/protein-powders-and-sha...
| j45 wrote:
| Seems to be a regularish occurrence far beyond the
| podcast/tech crowd in many areas.
|
| Blind doubting of things can be as bad as blindly believing
| they're safe, if we don't know who's, or if anyone is keeping
| the safety honest. Capitalism can too often lean towards
| optimizing profit.
|
| Testing for lead, etc can be done independently pretty easily
| and consistently enough to get a statistically high enough
| correlation of what's going on.
|
| I get the stereotypes - but consuming anything in an
| unbalanced way will lead to being out of balance. Food,
| caffiene, alcohol, supplements.
| WalterBright wrote:
| I am so grateful that much of my childhood was in a town rather
| than a city.
| chhxdjsj wrote:
| I wish someone would do a large RCT of water fluoridation in
| pregnant women looking at long term cognitive outcomes if
| fetuses. It would be an easy study to do (just randomize each
| group to receive free deliveries of either fluoridated or not
| fluoridated water) and then look at their offspring's scores on
| cognitive tests every few years. I think reputable scientists
| don't touch this because they're afraid of being labelled kooky.
| FlyingBears wrote:
| Don't worry, we can get our lead from spices and every food that
| includes them. Lead is cheaper to get than cinnamon and even
| cocoa, so it ends up being favored adulterant to increase weight
| at sale.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Considering what lead does to people, there should be jail time
| for everyone involved. Even store managers should do time if
| products on their shelves turn up positive.
| halamadrid wrote:
| If someone in the admin reads this, there is a chance this will
| be reversed and lead will be allowed in gas again :)
| accidentallfact wrote:
| That is expected. The problem is that people are not getting
| healthier, or more intelligent, quite the opposite.
|
| Obviously there is an absolutely massive problem that you're
| missing as you're congratulating yourself on "succeeding" with a
| massive effort with no clear result.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Good experiment... I guess turn the lead back on and we'll see!
| accidentallfact wrote:
| Well, at the very least you need to agree that its effect was
| smaller than the harm done by whatever the actual problem is.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| I would argue it worked, but not fast enough. I think the current
| American politics run by 50-80 year olds with significant lead
| poisoning.
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