It uses the term “greenhouse gas” to refer to CO2 and uses the term “air pollution” to refer to what people traditionally think of as air pollution. For example, in one place of says: “Consequences of CO2 enrichment and climate change for natural terrestrial ecosystems could be modified by other environmental factors, both natural and man induced (e.g., by air pollution).” So that’s treating “CO2 enrichment” (emissions) as distinct from “air pollution.”
Did we call it “pollution” back then or something else? That is, did we lump CO2 conceptually into the same category as soot from coal plants and things like that?
Society uses labels to group things together so that we can treat similar things similarly for various purposes. For example, when we talk about “education” we usually mean teaching kids in schools or colleges. Of course, there’s lots of other things you can call “education.” But if the Department of Education comes in and says it’s going to regulate technical presentations at software conferences because that’s also “education,” then you’d say: “that’s not what people mean by the word education in this context.” That is, we have a consensus about what “education” encompasses and what it doesn’t for purposes of government regulation, and seminars at conferences falls outside that understanding.
Yes, labels matter; so let's take a step back and ask why you're fighting this argument? Why does it matter which of the harmful emissions from a smokestack count as "pollution"?
> Why does it matter which of the harmful emissions from a smokestack count as "pollution"?
Because society uses labels to delineate the boundaries between different legal regimes and sources of authority, and adhering to those boundaries is important. The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) can't point to the traffic on a fiber cable within a data center and say it falls within their jurisdiction because that's also "communications."
It's especially important in this context, because the half-century-old laws and regulations designed to control soot emissions from factory smokestacks is ill-suited to managing CO2 emissions. The fundamental premise of the Clean Air Act is that pollution can be controlled at the source with control technologies (RACT, BACT, etc.).
This focus on control technologies puts well-defined guardrails on the EPA. The EPA can't go around making big decisions about how factories work or what people produce. They can simply tell you to put the best reasonably available scrubbers on your factory. That approach completely breaks down when it comes to CO2, because there is no such thing as a "CO2 scrubber." Treating CO2 as a pollutant puts the EPA into a role of supervising the energy sector that the agency simply was never designed to do.
I think you miss rayiner's point. He's not disputing whether CO2 is a greenhouse gas. He's saying that doesn't make it a "pollutant" as the term was understood at the time, say, the EPA was created. There was no congressional legislation that said that it was something the EPA was empowered to regulate. Then the EPA decided to regulate it anyway (and, yes, won the court case about whether it could). But it was still shoehorned in, as it was not considered a pollutant in the way that NO2 or particulates or chlorine were.
Charging rate of 11 kW, with efficiency of about 90%, means that the charger sucks around 12.2 kW of power from the grid, of which 1.2 kW is continually lost*, and only 11 kW is effectively being stored in the battery at any point in time.
I don't understand the mention about battery capacity (80 kWh, which would translate to around 7½ hours of charging at 11 kW, if a battery could charge at a uniform rate) or where the "9 kW lost" figure comes from.
*Which is probably useful to melt snow above the device, when installed outdoors on cold climates.
The Cayenne seems to need about 315Wh / mile. I assume a substantial number of them are sold in California, where rates are often above $0.50/kw. I think $1.50 would get you about 9 miles.
I drive a more efficient PHEV and spend much more than $1.50/day.
Average cost of electricity is around 18¢/kWh. $2 of electricity at 18¢/kWh is about 11kWh. 11000 / 315 = 34.9. The average US driver does about 40 miles of driving a day. Its a pretty close gut-estimate figure to a median US driver paying an average price per kWh with this particular car.
> I drive a more efficient PHEV and spend much more than $1.50/day.
Cool story bro. I drive a more efficient EV and spend less than $1.50/day. Isn't it fun to share anecdotes?
Locomotive itself? Probably not. If you turned its abstract bounding box into real box - thin, negligible mass, enough strength not to break up - and evacuated the air inside, then yes, the box with locomotive in it should float.
Any "legally-binding, two-party transaction" between an individual and a large corporate conglomerate is a lost battle (or more precisely, a not-even-fought battle) for the vast majority of individuals.
80% of buyers of anything simply smash "Accept" (and watch through ads/spam) until their device shows the content they wanted to access. (Statistic is made up, but I think it's hard to refute.)
I'm talking of a world in which laws are strong and well written enough that people don't need to worry; they can mash that Accept button and not be getting screwed over.
We agree that most peopke aren't equipped to provide informed consent and "buyer beware" won't work. For these the government steps in - car & plane safety for example.
> Friedman [...] advocates a deal with Iran which would essentially allow it a secure sphere of influence in the region and an alliance with Turkey to counterbalance Iran and Israel.
That page is from 2002.
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Greenhouse_gas&ol...
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