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The Fake Factory That Pumped Out Real Money

bloomberg.com

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Re: The Fake Factory That Pumped Out Real Money

#101

Post by ljf »

lmm wrote: post #95
rayiner wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As California's attempts to tax mileage of hybrid and electric vehicles proves, if you create an additional source of revenue for the government, tax levels will bear no relation to the harm they're designed to compensate for. It becomes just another way for the government to raise taxes without admitting to doing so.

Hybrids aren't necessarily emitting substantially less.

I was always shocked by the 'good' mpg US hybrids get, compared to Uk/Euro diesels - (though some of the difference is down to different sizes in gallons between us, but still. My 12 year old volvo v70 (not a small car) got 53mpg easily

Re: The Fake Factory That Pumped Out Real Money

#102

Post by fit2rule »

> He kept a miniature, stainless-steel working model of it in his office. “I could put vegetable oil through it and get a cup of the most beautiful biodiesel you ever saw,” Harvey Greenwood, Green Diesel’s former director for engineering, says of the model.

The most interesting part of this whole story, imho. Doesn't anyone else want their own desktop vegetable-oil to perfect diesel machine?

Re: The Fake Factory That Pumped Out Real Money

#104

Post by AlgorithmicTime »

ljf wrote: post #101
lmm wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hybrids aren't necessarily emitting substantially less.

I was always shocked by the 'good' mpg US hybrids get, compared to Uk/Euro diesels - (though some of the difference is down to different sizes in gallons between us, but still. My 12 year old volvo v70 (not a small car) got 53mpg easily

We have stricter (non-CO2) emissions standards and differing safety standards which result in lower fuel efficiencies.

Re: The Fake Factory That Pumped Out Real Money

#105

Post by ars »

crottypeter wrote: post #98
ars wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's consumers driving cars that are polluting. Cars are not the problem, there is no one thing that is the problem. Simply being alive and doing things uses energy, there is no way around that. And BTW if you do the math a bicyclist (in the US, eating a typical US diet) emits more CO2 per mile than a small car. Assumptions: The bicyclist is riding in addition to any exercise, the riding is not exercise, and the bi…

What about CO2 emitted by the driver? They are respiring too. The real issue with emitted CO2 is not the quantity at the exhaust-pipe versus the quantity exhaled by a cyclist. The CO2 emitted by the cyclist was absorbed by plants in the preceding months. The CO2 emitted by the car was absorbed by plants in a previous era of the earth. The cyclist allows you to leave the oil in the ground keeping the contained carbon…

You misunderstand. It's not the CO2 of the plants that are eaten, but the heavy equipment necessary to grow the food, the tractors, and everything else involved in growing food.

That's why produce is so expensive - it takes a LOT of energy to grow it.

Re: The Fake Factory That Pumped Out Real Money

#106

Post by ars »

crottypeter wrote: post #99
emp_zealoth wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would be rather wary of bike endorsing studies posted on sites called "bikesomething" just as I would be wary of "rightwingnut.com" publishing studies on immigration or any other contentious issue.

In this case there isn't even a link to rightwingnut.com though. Just a claim that you need to do math. Parroting climate-denying, anti-intellectual nonsense is worth calling out.

The study EnigmaticLion linked is as bad as you might expect.

They have a chart showing CO2 per calories for different foods which goes from 11 to 1431.

But when they do the final result for a bicycle using some kind of global average food consumption they use the number .144!

Unless I've really messed up my math, the number for a bicycle should be around 200 to 1000 times higher than what they show.

Next they take car emissions, do some "magic math" and change them from 42 g/km to 229g/km.

Using their own numbers, but fixing their math shows a bicycle emitting more than a car.

Re: The Fake Factory That Pumped Out Real Money

#107

Post by Spooky23 »

fit2rule wrote: post #102

> He kept a miniature, stainless-steel working model of it in his office. “I could put vegetable oil through it and get a cup of the most beautiful biodiesel you ever saw,” Harvey Greenwood, Green Diesel’s former director for engineering, says of the model. The most interesting part of this whole story, imho. Doesn't anyone else want their own desktop vegetable-oil to perfect diesel machine?

I had exactly the same thought! This would be a great christmas gift for the mechanically inclined.

Re: The Fake Factory That Pumped Out Real Money

#108

Post by winstonewert »

aoeuasdf1 wrote: post #90
winstonewert wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The cost of administering a cap and trade system to the minor producers would be incredibly expensive - the legislation would instead focus on gouging the five major producers" Why is that different from the tax approach? Wouldn't taxing the 50,000 minor producers appropriate to their levels of pollution be equally as expensive?

No, if they're producing by buying oil or coal. Just tax the source.

I assumed in this scenario that the the producers being taxed are already the ones who extract the oil or coal. If there are 50,000 minor oil producers then taxing all of them will be a bit of a headache.

Re: The Fake Factory That Pumped Out Real Money

#109

Post by winstonewert »

icambron wrote: post #71
winstonewert wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"The cost of administering a cap and trade system to the minor producers would be incredibly expensive - the legislation would instead focus on gouging the five major producers" Why is that different from the tax approach? Wouldn't taxing the 50,000 minor producers appropriate to their levels of pollution be equally as expensive?

The key part of that is administering part. Cap and trade requires the producer participate in a market for cap allowances. It's that overhead that makes it more expensive.

Ok, yes, I see that there will be some extra expenses in tracking and trading the allowances. I would expect that to be neglible next to the cost of tracking the pollution by all those producers.

Re: The Fake Factory That Pumped Out Real Money

#110

Post by tomjen3 »

aoeuasdf1 wrote: post #91
tomjen3 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You still have to check if everybody has paid their emission tax. Also a tax has to be high enough to offset the average cost of lowering Co2 emissions (since you force everybody to lower their emissions), whereas in a cap-and-trade system the price will the the lowest cost to lower the emissions, since anybody who would pay a higher price will be better of buying the emission permissions and anybody who can save co2…

I think you're confused about the mathematics here - cap and trade for cap (C tons) is EXACTLY equivalent to some carbon tax (T dollars) in the behaviors it incentivizes.

No, I am not. See my other comment here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12110917
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