The Fake Factory That Pumped Out Real Money • Hacker News Board

Re: The Fake Factory That Pumped Out Real Money

#111

Post by crottypeter » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 3:35 PM UTC

ars wrote: post #106

crottypeter wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

> Unless I've really messed up my math,

You have.

The chart is in (g per 100 kcal)

>"magic math" and change them from 42 g/km to 229g/km.

42 is for production of the car 229 is for ‘well to wheel' emissions (i.e. exhaust-pipe plus those emitted to produce the petrol).

No "magic" required.

Re: The Fake Factory That Pumped Out Real Money

#112

Post by Retric » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 3:58 PM UTC

ars wrote: post #105

crottypeter wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Produce is expensive because it's minimally subsidized and it takes a lot of people, land, and care instead of a lot of energy. Dry corn is extremely hardy, fresh lettuce wilts.

At the extreme end, roses are not actually much plant matter, they are expensive in large part because you can't treat them like bricks. On that continuum Produce is closer to flower than grains.

Re: The Fake Factory That Pumped Out Real Money

#113

Post by hexane360 » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 6:13 PM UTC

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 really want to make something like this. I wonder if that would need a little agitator, or some temperature control, or valves, or what?

And then once you have the piping, you can get some automatic control, and some management software. . .

Re: The Fake Factory That Pumped Out Real Money

#114

Post by jessaustin » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 6:29 PM UTC

Dylan16807 wrote: post #77

jessaustin wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The consumer can't put the water in her tank and drive her car away. Since she has skin in the game, everyone upstream from her does too. It is reasonable to blame an "abstraction" that removes consumer interest entirely, and doesn't substitute some other control of equivalent strength. The minute I heard of "cap'n-trade", which was decades ago, I expected exactly this sort of scam. Those who designed this scheme, un…

The consumer gets 100% gasoline in either case. Forcing the oil companies to buy biodiesel does not force them to give it to consumers. The RID abstraction is a completely separate issue from whether anyone actually wants biodiesel.

Firms will be happy to buy a product wholesale that they cannot in turn distribute to consumers? What are they, farm-aid charities? Let's try to remain focused on the plausible.

Re: The Fake Factory That Pumped Out Real Money

#115

Post by crzwdjk » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 7:08 PM UTC

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

But are those UK or US gallons? Cars in the UK get 20% more miles per gallon simply because gallons in the UK are 20% bigger.

Re: The Fake Factory That Pumped Out Real Money

#116

Post by SilasX » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 7:14 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #52

Alex3917 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Cap and trade doesn't work the way you say. It isn't an auction. See the article. The initial credits can be allocated either through an auction, by giving them away to existing polluters, or through some combination. But after the initial allocation, credits are traded on the market. That's the 'trade' part in cap and trade.

And Coase theorem says it doesn't matter who gets the credits--they'll eventually find their way to the most efficient allocation.

The Coase Theorem says it wouldn't matter for purposes of optimal allocation if there weren't transaction costs.

The Coase Theorem doesn't guarantee the absence of transaction costs in practice (and they are likely to be huge here, since the dude who likes incandescent light is going to be very far removed from the high-volume market), and it does guarantee that initial allocation will affect the wealth distribution.

Re: The Fake Factory That Pumped Out Real Money

#117

Post by blaisio » Mon, Jul 18, 2016, 9:05 PM UTC

lmm wrote: post #96

blaisio wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you just don't understand how a cap and trade system works. You should try doing a google search to read up on it. It's confusing at first, but there's nothing inherently uncontrollable about it. The only reason these scams are allowed to happen is the EPA doesn't have enough manpower to constantly watch over every facility to make sure fuel is actually being produced.

How does producing a bunch of biofuel achieve anything? Why is that something we want to incentivize? If this was about credits for sequestering x tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere then I can see how that should be worth a credit, but I don't see how it makes sense to single out biofuel any more than anything else those crops could have been used for.

Again, I recommend reading up on what cap and trade systems are. The goal isn't to produce biofuel, it's to reduce the amount of oil being used. Using biofuel instead of oil results in the production of less pollution.

Re: The Fake Factory That Pumped Out Real Money

#118

Post by Dylan16807 » Tue, Jul 19, 2016, 2:41 AM UTC

jessaustin wrote: post #114

Dylan16807 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The consumer gets 100% gasoline in either case. Forcing the oil companies to buy biodiesel does not force them to give it to consumers. The RID abstraction is a completely separate issue from whether anyone actually wants biodiesel.

Firms will be happy to buy a product wholesale that they cannot in turn distribute to consumers? What are they, farm-aid charities? Let's try to remain focused on the plausible.

Who said anything about them being happy? But that has absolutely nothing to do with whether they are forced to buy gallons they don't want or RIDs they don't want.

Re: The Fake Factory That Pumped Out Real Money

#119

Post by lmm » Tue, Jul 19, 2016, 9:06 AM UTC

blaisio wrote: post #117

lmm wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does producing a bunch of biofuel achieve anything? Why is that something we want to incentivize? If this was about credits for sequestering x tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere then I can see how that should be worth a credit, but I don't see how it makes sense to single out biofuel any more than anything else those crops could have been used for.

Again, I recommend reading up on what cap and trade systems are. The goal isn't to produce biofuel, it's to reduce the amount of oil being used. Using biofuel instead of oil results in the production of less pollution.

But nothing actually ensures that the biofuel is used, or that less oil is used.

Re: The Fake Factory That Pumped Out Real Money

#120

Post by ljf » Tue, Jul 19, 2016, 10:29 AM UTC

crzwdjk wrote: post #115

ljf wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

But are those UK or US gallons? Cars in the UK get 20% more miles per gallon simply because gallons in the UK are 20% bigger.

Prius highway rating of 4.4 L/100 km (53 mpg-US / 64 mpg-imp) Volvo V50 highway rating: 3.8 L/100km - this is the 'extra economical' diesel, with start/stop, aero body and aero wheels, so a good match for the Prius - seems odd that all that extra tech wouldn't give them much improvement? I guess city driving it may be better but I don't have time to dig out the figures now.