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Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

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Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#311

Post by TedDoesntTalk »

SavantIdiot wrote: post #248
DenisM wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The term came from https://www.thecoddling.com/ but here I refer to a specific aspect: Suppose your reaction to discomfort is to retreat or isolate yourself from it. Having done so you will find that your calibration of comfort has changed and things you previously found at the fringe but normal now became clearly uncomfortable. If you repeat this process several times you will find that the field of acceptable thing…

> Suppose your reaction to discomfort is to retreat or isolate yourself from it. Why wouldn't that be my reaction? Seems a pretty normal reaction to most discomfort. I lean into discomfort only when necessary and avoid it otherwise at all costs, that strategy has gotten me pretty far in my half+ century. But even if we assume the proposition that people somehow become more withdrawn as they withdraw... what's the dow…

> Why wouldn't that be my reaction? Seems a pretty normal reaction to most discomfort. I lean into discomfort only when necessary and avoid it otherwise at all costs

That is a fairly common reaction. But accepting discomfort, without aversion to it, is powerful.

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#312

Post by throwawayboise »

muricula wrote: post #117
throwawayboise wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 50% of Americans don't hold stock in any form Maybe we should address that problem -- it's one of the best long term ways for anyone to build wealth. Why aren't we educating people about this in school?

Of that 50%, many have negative wealth due to eg credit card debt, many have zero wealth because they're poor, and many have all of their wealth tied up in houses or cars. It's probably not ignorance so much as lack of savings to invest.

You could buy a cheaper car, or a cheaper house, or cheaper clothes, and put the difference into an IRA.

Yes some people must spend all their income on food and shelter. And government assistance stupidly penalizes people who try to save. But many people, even lower income people, could save a little. I think they have never been shown what the power of compounding can do over time. It is not intuitive, because the gains in early years are small.

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#313

Post by adrianN »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #71
air7 wrote: post #6

> The most compelling option was actually ethanol. But from the perspective of GM, Kitman wrote, ethanol wasn’t an option. It couldn’t be patented and GM couldn’t control its production. And oil companies like Du Pont "hated it," he wrote, perceiving it to be a threat to their control of the internal combustion engine. I'm generally an avid beliver in free markets as an agent for positive change, so these types of "r…

Free markets work as long as there's competition. When companies become so big they can kill any nascent competitor on a whim, that's when it becomes an issue. That's why trust busting and regulations and governments are necessary.

Free markets need not only competition, but also regulation to price in externalities like poisoning the air or causing climate change.

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#314

Post by adrianN »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #85
HomeDeLaPot wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

... Regulation? Just ban lead in gas and let the free market find the next best solution.

It was banned and has been banned for almost 40 years? Obviously not in plane engines, which were a much smaller % of the pollution. You can't just ban it which in turn bans avgas. That's just dumb, it has to be phased out and alternatives developed. Sounds like those exist currently but aren't being pushed.

"Phasing it out" is the same as banning it some time in the future. Why should alternatives be developed if you can just keep using it indefinitely? R&D is not free.

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#315

Post by SavantIdiot »

MisterBastahrd wrote: post #229
SavantIdiot wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What nastiness are we subjecting ourselves to today? I'm gonna go with overfishing. Anyone who has been shopping since the 1990's has seen fish diversity decline and prices skyrocket beyond inflation (not to mention a sharp increase in farmed and faux-colored fish like salmon). Illegal fishing is impossible to combat. See China's illegal fleets: [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27412691 [2] https://twitter.…

My dad used to tell me stories about how when he was a kid, during the drive down to Grand Isle, you would see cars lined up on both sides of the highway for as far as the eye could see because families would park on the curb, set out some outdoor chairs, and fish for speckled trout, flounder, and redfish in the marsh. It was common when they were biting to bring home an ice chest of fish to eat. Commercial fishing a…

I had a laugh back in ~2000 when VP Cheney said humans weren't having an impact on the environment. I grew up on long island and we used to pull bivalves (steamers, mussels, perriwinkels (not a bivalve)) in the 60's and 70's. Then in the 90's everything was banned due to pollution. O.G. immigrants still harvested despite the bans, but it was sad to see the consequence of pollution.

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#316

Post by xyzzyz »

mschuster91 wrote: post #211
xyzzyz wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are few technical reasons, to be sure, but there are plenty of economic and business reasons. The most popular engines in general aviation are Continental/Lycoming ones, and these are based on what, 50+ years old basic designs? Automotive industry have developed significantly better piston engines in last few decades, in terms of power to weight ratio, fuel efficiency, MTBF and service interval. However, the na…

> but they are facing a lot of very real problems, for example, lack of maintenance infrastructure. Comprehensive government regulation would create such an infrastructure. When the government says "in 5 years we will disallow creation of new airframes that use leaded gas, and in 10 years there will be no more leaded gas sold, and in 15 years additives will be illegal", everyone knows what's on the horizon - and you…

> Comprehensive government regulation would create such an infrastructure.

Or, it would destroy small engine general aviation.

> and you can bet that there will be engine vendors selling modification kits and maintenance infrastructure, since now everyone knows that there will be a massive market coming up as everyone has to adapt to the new rules if they want to keep flying!

What if, you know, people can't adapt? What if people can't afford to replace their 40 years old aircrafts with sparkling new ones, costing 5-10 times much? Sure, some of them will, but there are many hobbyists who can afford loan payments and insurance on a plane worth $100k, but couldn't do the same on one worth $500k.

Yes, this would stop emissions of TEL, sure, but at tremendous cost. Is that cost worth it? To our (and FAA, and EPA) best knowledge, probably not, as lead emissions from GA have much different characteristic than the ones from cars.

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#317

Post by stephen_g »

ravenstine wrote: post #305
stephen_g wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the biggest takeaway from all the research I did is that not all fats are equal. Monounsaturated fats seem to be generally just good. Omega-3, also, seems good, and Omega-6 less so, but part of that could actually be more about the ratios of omega-6 to -3, which can be 15:1 in the Western diet but people have better health outcomes when they bring omega-6 consumption down and increase omega-3 to get the ratio…

> I think the biggest takeaway from all the research I did is that not all fats are equal. You can say that again... I was recently looking at the nutrition content of Wendy's cheeseburgers; they actually do a pretty good job at displaying nutrition facts and also scaling it with custom orders. Anyway, I noticed that a triple cheeseburger could have ~4g of trans fats. Wait a sec, is Wendy's ignoring regulations about…

Yeah, it's interesting, hey? I mentioned Conjugated Linoleic Acid (CLA) - that's another one that is technically a trans fat, but seems to be beneficial (although apparently supplementation doesn't seem to have the same benefits as getting it in food, so maybe there's another interaction, like how foods that contain CLA also often contain Vitamin K2 as well).

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#318

Post by Iv »

afavour wrote: post #140
paulkrush wrote: post #91

I guess we live on the shoulders of nastiness and things get better. So TEL was part of our boot sequence. What nastiness are we subjecting ourselves to today? BTW: The guy that invented TEL also invented CFCs! See Thomas Midgley Jr: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr . This guy who invents awesome working chemicals that are tragically bad for people on a worldwide scale manages to exit life dues to his…

> What nastiness are we subjecting ourselves to today? Maybe an overwrought comparison but I genuinely do feel like we’ll look back on this age of social media and disinformation in the same way we did leaded gas. The people making money knew exactly how dangerous it was and the problems it caused but they did everything in their power to cover it up in the name of profit. Originally it felt like a social annoyance a…

My bet is advertisement. We know it is detrimental to informed decision, to market efficiency and to mental health. This is just an opinion that can't be relayed on any outlet that depends on advertisement (90% of them maybe?)

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#319

Post by stephen_g »

photochemsyn wrote: post #86

Pure gasoline is not that great of a motor fuel because it knocks (explodes when it's not supposed to during the internal combustion engine cycle). This is a major problem with high-compression airplane engines. However, tetra-ethyl-lead (think one lead atom bonded to four ethanols minus the oxygen atoms) was never necessary to combat the problem. Ethanol's anti-knock properties at a blend of 85% gasoline 15% ethanol…

Apparently there are diesel prop engines that can run with Jet A1 (see [1]). This is apparently especially convenient given that at some airports Avgas isn't easily available compared to jet fuel (at least here in Australia, according to a pilot/aviation YouTuber that I was watching about this just yesterday).

1. https://newatlas.com/cessna-turbo-182-nxt/23465/

Re: Leaded gas was a known poison the day it was invented (2016)

#320

Post by colordrops »

afavour wrote: post #140
paulkrush wrote: post #91

I guess we live on the shoulders of nastiness and things get better. So TEL was part of our boot sequence. What nastiness are we subjecting ourselves to today? BTW: The guy that invented TEL also invented CFCs! See Thomas Midgley Jr: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr . This guy who invents awesome working chemicals that are tragically bad for people on a worldwide scale manages to exit life dues to his…

> What nastiness are we subjecting ourselves to today? Maybe an overwrought comparison but I genuinely do feel like we’ll look back on this age of social media and disinformation in the same way we did leaded gas. The people making money knew exactly how dangerous it was and the problems it caused but they did everything in their power to cover it up in the name of profit. Originally it felt like a social annoyance a…

Factory farms, polyunsaturated fats, refined grains (white wheat and rice), HFCS, human driven cars, and sitting desks will all be seen as barbaric or grossly unhealthy in the future.
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