Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

timharford.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 291 posts

Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

#61

Post by aomurphy »

Various environmentalists have tried this in the US. Here's a reason article about several attempts: https://reason.com/2019/11/18/why-dont-environmentalists-jus... Kind of frustrating the OP's article doesn't actually do any research on why it's hard to actually do this "clever" idea. There is an actual power structure that is opposed to these sorts of actions!

In general in the US it's very difficult to do this on state/federal land. You usually must make use of your rights or the leases will be revoked. Even when there is a state like Idaho where you can buy grazing rights and supposedly not use them, the state bureaucracy isn't interested in it.

I guess you could do this with coal rights but the coal markets have been so bad for the last decade it's hard to see this as worth doing.

Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

#62

Post by multjoy »

tw04 wrote: post #45
FriedPickles wrote: post #38

To further develop the idea of letting EVs go to people who will drive them the most, the true bottleneck is batteries . So, the problem is to get batteries on the road in a way that they will displace the most gas miles as soon as possible. This suggests a far more effective strategy of first replacing the fleet with plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), then in a second stage, replace those with full EVs. For most city vehicles…

>This suggests a far more effective strategy of first replacing the fleet with plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) The performance of pretty much every PHEV I've seen is abysmal. The people buying a Model 3 or Model S to replace their BMW or Mercedes aren't interested in something with the performance of a geo metro. So, while on paper a PHEV solution might look better, in the real world it would result in those people just goin…

The met police use a variety of PHEVs as response vehicles including BMWs and Mitsubishi. Performance is not an issue.

Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

#63

Post by rileyphone »

https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/sloan-school-of-management/15-98...

Im just learning about Jay Forrester, but he wrote the foundational paper on this kind of thinking. I also highly recommend Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows, which contains a lot of other wisdom like this.

Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

#64

Post by KptMarchewa »

hannob wrote: post #58
FriedPickles wrote: post #38

To further develop the idea of letting EVs go to people who will drive them the most, the true bottleneck is batteries . So, the problem is to get batteries on the road in a way that they will displace the most gas miles as soon as possible. This suggests a far more effective strategy of first replacing the fleet with plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), then in a second stage, replace those with full EVs. For most city vehicles…

> For most city vehicles, a PHEV will electrify the majority of the miles with a fraction of the battery capacity. There have been studies on how PHEVs are used in the real world and this is just not what's happening, see e.g.: https://theicct.org/publications/phev-real-world-usage-sept2...

On the other hand, the study proves that PHEVs with decent battery capacity actually do that, the average is just too low:

>. Most PHEVs have type-approval all-electric ranges of 30–60 km and electrify 5,000–10,000 km a year. PHEVs with high all-electric ranges of 80 km or more achieve 12,000–20,000 km mean annual electric mileages, which is comparable to the annual mileage of the car fleet in Germany and the United States.

Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

#65

Post by FartyMcFarter »

This kind of strategy ignores second order effects.

For example, by buying a gas guzzler and not using it much you might lower the emissions from that specific vehicle. But supply and demand rears its ugly head: you're contributing to the increase of similar gas guzzlers' value in the market, which means that other people are more likely to maintain those vehicles in working order and resell them, instead of scrapping them or leaving them unused.

Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

#66

Post by willcipriano »

gpm wrote: post #46
FriedPickles wrote: post #38

To further develop the idea of letting EVs go to people who will drive them the most, the true bottleneck is batteries . So, the problem is to get batteries on the road in a way that they will displace the most gas miles as soon as possible. This suggests a far more effective strategy of first replacing the fleet with plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), then in a second stage, replace those with full EVs. For most city vehicles…

Plug in electric hybrids strike me as insanely complex machines compared to Ev's. It strikes me as highly unlikely that from an environmental standpoint our (societies) time is better spent building them, than it is spent increasing the rate at which we can build batteries.

I'd expect EVs to be cheaper if they are actually simpler, last time I looked that wasn't really the case outside of cars produced in China that most western customers wouldn't buy.

Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

#67

Post by lucian1900 »

HideousKojima wrote: post #60
lucian1900 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We communists frequently argue against such programmes and instead for cheap and rational transportation for the working class, like trains, light rail and biofuel cars for rural areas. And kulaks had it coming, even my great-granddad. Destroying food during a famine is inhuman.

>And kulaks had it coming, even my great-granddad. Destroying food during a famine is inhuman. Don't take people's property by force and not expect them to fight back. And especially don't use their fighting back as an excuse to oppress and slaughter them, that's what's truly inhuman. And the famine was caused by collectivization policies in the first place, you're just blameshifting your failed policies onto the vic…

When some starve and others hoard food, is property more important than hunger?

The famines were environmental, for centuries. It was only collectivisation and industrialisation of agriculture that stopped the famines.

Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

#68

Post by scatters »

gumby wrote: post #51

> Here’s a thought: environmentalists should fight climate change by buying coal mines. Matt Levine wrote about this recently (unfortunately I could not find the reference but it was in the last month). One of the big bank tried to launch a fund for this but it was met with a hostile reception.

20 December newsletter:

> When you go to an ESG fund manager and say “hey wanna buy up all the coal mines” she is going to say “what no absolutely not.” And then you say “no hear me out, you are a better owner of coal mines than the alternative, this is better for the climate in the long run,” and you explain how, and she says “hmm yes your logic is impeccable,” and you say “so you’re in?” and she says “no absolutely not”.

The bank was Citi, and the fund was to have been called "Coal to Zero".

Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

#69

Post by becuzThrowaway »

londons_explore wrote: post #44
luckylion wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So people would only go to a stand if there's nobody being served, because being behind the person currently being served is discouraged. Essentially, you'd just move the queue: people would wait for a "spot" to open up (a stand with no customer) and then go there. If it's orderly, they kind of queue in the middle. If it's not, you'll have a large brawl as people try to get in front of each other.

I think you misunderstood the proposed queueing system.... The stand will never be 'open'. People who arrive join the front of the queue, and are either served next, or someone else joins in front of them, pushing them back. When they're position 2 in the queue, they will only be served if 2 people are served and 0 arrive (low probably). If another person arrives, they're now position 3 in the queue, so 3 need to be…

In practice, you would just replace the queue with a disorganized rabble of people standing around, where as soon as the person currently being served leaves, there is a mad dash at the one secure spot, which is at the very front.

Re: Buy a coal mine, drive a gas guzzler, and other uses of reverse logic

#70

Post by wlesieutre »

hannob wrote: post #58
FriedPickles wrote: post #38

To further develop the idea of letting EVs go to people who will drive them the most, the true bottleneck is batteries . So, the problem is to get batteries on the road in a way that they will displace the most gas miles as soon as possible. This suggests a far more effective strategy of first replacing the fleet with plug-in hybrids (PHEVs), then in a second stage, replace those with full EVs. For most city vehicles…

> For most city vehicles, a PHEV will electrify the majority of the miles with a fraction of the battery capacity. There have been studies on how PHEVs are used in the real world and this is just not what's happening, see e.g.: https://theicct.org/publications/phev-real-world-usage-sept2...

> For private cars, the average utility factor (UF)—the portion of kilometers driven on electric motor versus kilometers driven on combustion engine—is 69% for NEDC type approval but only around 37% for real-world driving

Not a majority, but 37% of your driving on electric is a significant chunk. Would

And to take a Prius Prime for an example, you can still have a very efficient vehicle when you're running in normal hybrid mode:

> C/D observed 75-mph highway driving (hybrid mode): 47 mpg / 49 mpg / 47 mpg

If you're trying to make the most difference with limited battery production, that's 8.8 kWh of batteries for a Prius Prime. You can make more than 6 of them with the batteries that go into a single "low range" Model 3 (54 kWh).

Six cars doing a bit over 1/3 of their miles in electric mode, or one car doing all of its miles in electric mode?

That's a relatively short electric range car, if 25 miles isn't doing enough for most people there's probably a good middle ground where you use half the batteries of a long range EV but cover 90% of your milage in EV mode.

This is of course ignoring that the Model 3 is a lot more fun to drive than a Prius Prime, but just to make the point about battery usage.

Post reply on HN