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

timharford.com

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

#81

Post by luckylion »

themitigating wrote: post #31
luckylion wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty much what environmentalists have done with dams, right? They buy them and then dismantle them to restore the natural flow of rivers. It's more effective than lobbying the government to pass legislation forcing the removal of the dam.

Has this happened frequently?

I don't know. It was a thing a few years ago, I believe I learned about it in the documentary Dam Nation (but I might be mistaken).

Google no longer works for me to find things again that I vaguely remember. What I do remember was that they had taken out multiple smaller dams on a river, and if memory serves me right, a group had bought them for a reasonably low amount as the previous owners had no more use for them.

Most of what I found with a quick search from what I remembered were public/private partnerships to remove obsolete dams (Riverkeeper seems to be a larger player).

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

#82

Post by speedgoose »

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…

Almost all affordable PHEV are not very good cars though.

They are basically shitty electric cars and a shitty fossil cars combined.

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

#83

Post by R0b0t1 »

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.

Plug-in hybrids are, in the US, at average car cost now, but this may be because of EV credits.

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

#84

Post by tshaddox »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #74
tw04 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

My Volt has 300lb/ft of torque and accelerates quite lovely. Sport mode is a fun drive. Much more pep than the VW diesel I used to have. And the car drives for 80-90km on battery without touching the ICE. I go months without filling. I drive 93% electric, only using gas for road trips. You've looked at the wrong PHEVs.

> You've looked at the wrong PHEVs.

You’re looking at a PHEV that no longer exists.

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

#85

Post by tshaddox »

chrisseaton wrote: post #53
tw04 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 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. How many people take their cars to race tracks to be able to tell the difference in performance? If it can get to 70 mph in some reasonable time, which almost any production car can, then what more is there to ask…

There’s a wide range of “reasonable times” a car can get to 70 mph and the differences can definitely be noticed by normal drivers on public roads.

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

#86

Post by [deleted] »

tshaddox wrote: post #85
chrisseaton wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. How many people take their cars to race tracks to be able to tell the difference in performance? If it can get to 70 mph in some reasonable time, which almost any production car can, then what more is there to ask…

There’s a wide range of “reasonable times” a car can get to 70 mph and the differences can definitely be noticed by normal drivers on public roads.

[deleted]

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

#87

Post by FooHentai »

bargle0 wrote: post #2

I don’t buy the queue argument. It would devolve in to a bunch of churn inevitably resulting in thrown hands and black eyes.

It has an obvious flaw, aside from being super annoying - just leave the queue and rejoin in front of the other person. Then they'll do the same to you. Get it going fast enough and perhaps the spin will generate free energy.

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

#88

Post by lucian1900 »

HideousKojima wrote: post #76
lucian1900 wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

>When some starve and others hoard food, is property more important than hunger? Yes, because destroying private property rights will lead to further famines. It's something called second-order effects, which Communists seem utterly incapable of understanding. >The famines were environmental, for centuries. None were ever on the scale of those caused by the Soviets, Mao, and others, so they clearly weren't just envir…

First order effects surely should not be ignored merely because second order effects exist. Starving because someone might be upset they are no longer a lord is illogical.

You should read some history books, you appear to have instead accepted western propaganda.

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

#89

Post by H8crilA »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #10
kansface wrote: post #9

If environmentalists made major impact shutting down mines, the price of coal would go up incentivizing new ones or at least to increase the output of existing ones - demand hasn’t changed. Just the same with buying gas stations and shutting them down, too.

That’s not how it works. If the price of coal goes up, other generation technologies outcompete it (renewables and natural gas). By disrupting the fossil fuel supply chain, you apply pressure to the point where coal generators are taken offline and demolished (lots of videos if you Google for coal plant demolition). This ensures you can’t go back, as the lead time is too long to build new coal and no one will finance…

FYI, coal is still absolutely huge: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_supply_and_cons...

Don't get fooled by stats from rich countries as those countries "cheat" by importing goods and materials with large entry footprints embedded into them.

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

#90

Post by alisonkisk »

chrisseaton wrote: post #53
tw04 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 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. How many people take their cars to race tracks to be able to tell the difference in performance? If it can get to 70 mph in some reasonable time, which almost any production car can, then what more is there to ask…

Doesn't matter. Consumers like the specs, and showing off how quick they can get to 40mph on a residential street.
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