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Traffic and Pollution Plummet as U.S. Cities Shut Down

nytimes.com

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Re: Traffic and Pollution Plummet as U.S. Cities Shut Down

#171

Post by siruncledrew »

ciconia wrote: post #67

Despite the loss of human life, and the economic suffering of a great chunk of our species, a lot of good may come of the present pandemic. I believe this crisis has the potential to bring about a fundamental change in the way we relate to the world and to each other. It's as if humanity is at a crossroads: everything is possible, and we need to make a choice. I read this morning something that struck me as true: "We…

For all the bad that has happened, this has been an interesting time to reflect and gather a new perspective about some of the newfound good.

It’s like being thrown into a worldwide experiment that would otherwise never realistically happen. There’s so many understandings to gain from the results of our actions, habits, and lifestyles.

The world is changing before our eyes as a result of the changes in our behaviors. We can see how even when we slow down, the world keeps going. It’s an incredibly unique, enlightening circumstance.

Hopefully, as we move forward, we actually learn from the history unfolding today, and don’t just discredit it all to go back to the way things were for our own ego at the expense of the rest of the world.

Re: Traffic and Pollution Plummet as U.S. Cities Shut Down

#172

Post by nradov »

losteric wrote: post #166
nradov wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every long-term homeowner I know has done at least that much. Many have done larger home improvement and remodeling projects.

Yes, I'd assume home owners modify their house... but that doesn't really answer the question.

The US home ownership rate is 64%. So to answer your original question, that situation applies to nearly 64% of people.

Re: Traffic and Pollution Plummet as U.S. Cities Shut Down

#173

Post by adrianN »

vinniejames wrote: post #155
adrianN wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope you realize that working from home when possible is great for the climate but in no way solves the global warming problem. We need to go carbon negative in the next few decades. You don't achieve that by having some fraction of the office workers work from home.

You do by having the majority of the workforce doing so. No one said this would happen overnight

No, society doesn't become carbon negative even if everybody stays at home.

Re: Traffic and Pollution Plummet as U.S. Cities Shut Down

#174

Post by adrianN »

leetcrew wrote: post #168
adrianN wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Density is a function of taxes, zoning, jobs, commute costs and probably much more. It can be changed given enough time.

sure, anything can change in enough time. but for some places, we might be talking about decades. I visited a friend at her parents place once in prescott, arizona. maybe places like these don't matter so much for emissions (population 40k within the city limits), but I was struck by how totally dependent we were on having a car, even more than being in an east coast suburb. iirc, the closest place to go for a quick…

Of course we're talking about decades. It took three decades for Amsterdam to become as bike friendly as it is today and they're still far from done.

Re: Traffic and Pollution Plummet as U.S. Cities Shut Down

#175

Post by dzhiurgis »

Now is a great timing to implement obvious decisions people were waiting for decades:

- Close city centers for any traffic where possible (European downtowns are most suitable)

- Close city centers for non-electric cars (and double subsidies for purchasing them)

- Drastically expand bike lanes

- Drastically expand public transport (e-buses obvs)

- Ban sale/smoking of tobacco

- Drastically raise taxes on animal products (after all they are the sources of so many pandemics)

- Make contactless payments mandatory

- Implement contactless sign-in (I was just asked to sign in KFC using a pent that's been sitting there for days)

What else I am missing?

Re: Traffic and Pollution Plummet as U.S. Cities Shut Down

#176

Post by naasking »

This pandemic is now a grand experiment on so many levels, social, political, medical, economic, environmental, and more. These events will be studied for decades to come, and it will shape policy for longer still.

On the bright side, it will provide irrefutable evidence of anthropogenic climate change, and proof that drastic changes can produce immediate and drastic ecological improvements, and also the social and economic importance of vaccination. Hopefully science will be taken more seriously by the business minded that have been primarily driving policy.

Then again, we didn't learn much from the last crisis, so maybe I shouldn't get my hopes up that we can make a lot of positive global changes from this disaster.

Re: Traffic and Pollution Plummet as U.S. Cities Shut Down

#177

Post by fyfy18 »

twblalock wrote: post #126

This situation makes me more pessimistic about solving global climate change. The economic damage caused by "shelter in place" falls disproportionately on the poor and the lower middle class, who work in fields where working from home is not possible. Emission regulations and fuel taxes also fall disproportionately on the same people, because they can't afford newer cars which are more efficient. When the French gove…

> When the French government raised fuel taxes in order to ameliorate climate change, there were mass street protests

To be fair, in France protests are a pretty common occurrence. They often turn violent as well.

https://www.france24.com/en/20181207-france-yellow-vest-prot...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_incidents_of_civil_unr...

Re: Traffic and Pollution Plummet as U.S. Cities Shut Down

#178

Post by fyfy18 »

aledalgrande wrote: post #13
gdubs wrote: post #4

I’ve been thinking a lot about the next looming crisis: Climate Change. On Bloomberg radio a few weeks ago, an analyst / money manager was talking about how his firm was looking at satellite imagery of pollution in China to measure their economic recovery. More pollution == “better”. Something is clearly unsustainable with that formula. Like the virus, the longer we wait to take action, the more expensive it is and t…

I also have hope that this tragedy brings humanity forward. Not only with climate change, but a lot of other things. More contacts between people (video calls to friends and family far away). Doctors are increasing the use of video calling and sending prescriptions via email already. Bill Gates' 2015 TED now doesn't seem just a faraway prediction now, so hopefully governments will form a "health NATO". Seeing Venice…

Those photos of Venice having clean water were proven to be fake news. Technically the photos are part of the Venice district, but not the part people think of.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22619638

Re: Traffic and Pollution Plummet as U.S. Cities Shut Down

#179

Post by samatman »

masonic wrote: post #165
samatman wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Around Christmas in Michigan, the temperature hovers around 0C. The person you're replying to is describing about 30 miles of travel, at a rough estimate. So, there's your answer.

0C (32F) sounds high for anything but daytime high temperatures.

True when I was growing up, recently it's an over-under. Hard freeze isn't reliable until first week of January.

Re: Traffic and Pollution Plummet as U.S. Cities Shut Down

#180

Post by v8engine »

wffurr wrote: post #130
v8engine wrote: post #92

Can someone please tell me what the name for the technology used to create the graphics is? The text for the place names over the image is highlightable. I know you can handcraft these by having the text overlay over an exact X,Y on an image but that seems overblown for just these maps than having the text rastered into the image loaded. So, is there some tool like an SVG creator that helps create these with the resp…

There's some interesting HTML comments in the source. "ai2html" sounds like the source is Adobe Illustrator and probably refers to this tool: https://github.com/newsdev/ai2html Not sure what "freebird" is, some internal software. I can't find much about it with Google search.

Yup. ai2html seems to what I was looking for. Didn't spot that because of all the freebird comments.

As for freebird, my search led me to this. https://github.com/freebirdjs/freebird

Seems to be the NYT has an array of pollution sensor IOT across the cities and they are using Freebird to control them. Just my guess.

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