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Tire dust makes up the majority of ocean microplastics

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Re: Tire dust makes up the majority of ocean microplastics

#301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know where you live but everything is too far apart in American suburbs. How you would fix that without tearing it all down? And it's totally impractical for transporting a family around. Road tripping. Visiting far away family. Day at the lake or beach. Going camping. How do you convince people to give all of that up and just be content with whatever is 15min away.

Residents of American suburbs should have to pay for their full costs (infrastructure and maintenance, environmental, healthcare, services, ...), and if many people can't afford it, we should do a universal cash subsidy to every resident at the federal level to make up the difference so the transition is not so damaging, then let people decide if they really want to spend that whole amount on paying the actual costs…

This is an interesting theory, but I'm not sure you can prove it. What's a way in which the USA "subsidizes" suburbs?

Re: Tire dust makes up the majority of ocean microplastics

#302

I worked on a phd for 4 years looking into this problem indirectly and for a decade at Ohio State they have had working solutions to the tire dust issue but it is IMPOSSIBLE to get funding. A Billion dollar industry and NO ONE cares about cleaning it up if it means increasing costs by 5% or more. It has been WELL KNOWN for 50 years! We are basically aerosolizing carbon in MASSIVE amounts right where we live and work.…

If I want to buy a good-for-the environment tire, what should I buy? I don’t care about the price unless it’s insane

Steel wheels.

Re: Tire dust makes up the majority of ocean microplastics

#303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s probably mostly soot from the exhaust. I’m few blocks away to railroad (caltrain) and the windows facing the tracks have same black residue

Cars have fairly clean tailpipes these days. Older Diesel train engines still in service are disgusting. Construction vehicles are also pretty bad. The worst are large ocean going vessels burning bunker fuel in port which is illegal but very cheap.

I always assumed it was mostly from the soot of diesel rigs. I know they have gotten cleaner in recent years but diesel is still pretty dirty. I remember an apartment I had in SF near some of the muni lines that still ran diesel and it was absolutely disgusting outside the window.

Re: Tire dust makes up the majority of ocean microplastics

#304
post #166

Has anyone here ever lived near a freeway or even moderately busy road? I made the mistake of renting next to the freeway. Noise was perfectly tolerable, but I could not use my back porch, because after just a few weeks, everything had a fine coating of black dust. I could not keep my windows open in the summer. I was certainly breathing this vile shit the entire time I lived there. This doesn't surprise me in the le…

That's why so many people are cautious about "EVs to save us all", to put it mildly. We are so focused on climate change and greenhouse gases that we do not see a lot of other issues and may exacerbate some of them in the process of decarbonisation.

This sentiment is just contrarianism, I think. I've lived in Los Angeles my whole life and the difference that clean air standards make is obvious. The black dust isn't just tire and brake dust. It's also soot and it used to be much much worse.

Nothing is a silver bullet but I'll be much happier when we're done with ICE noise and exhaust.

Re: Tire dust makes up the majority of ocean microplastics

#305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every car already has a way to track its own mileage without requiring GPS

Not every state has inspections. So the infrastructure to check/validate odometer readings is lacking. Maybe some yearly assertion of mileage and random selection rate yearly would suffice.

All you need to do is require people to report their odometer reading when they renew their vehicle registration, and have huge penalties for willful mis-reporting. Traffic stops and service records at tire shops, oil change places, etc. provide plenty of evidence to prosecute someone, and if the penalties are severe enough, the threat of enforcement will be enough to keep most people honest.

Re: Tire dust makes up the majority of ocean microplastics

#306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just let’s please not require a government-approved mileage tracking device to make sure that each vehicle is charged it’s fair share. That’s one really nice property of gas taxes they will be hard to replace without going full dystopia, and there is a significant contingent that doesn’t give a shit about the privacy and security implications.

Every car already has a way to track its own mileage without requiring GPS

I remember replacing the worm gear on my odometer and wondering how many miles were "lost" from it while it wasn't turning during those 6 months or so that I was getting around to the project.

Not that I'm advocating a Orwellian tracking system be installed. Just saying I can see how existing systems could be argued against.

Re: Tire dust makes up the majority of ocean microplastics

#307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this is not an inherent property of cars. It is only true because we invested all our transit dollars in highways. Cars are not inherently better and roads are not free. If we invest more in public transit we can reduce our need for cars.

I'd like to know why you think cars are not inherently better as it seems very obvious that they are. That is why people overwhelmingly prefer to use them.

No mode of transportation is truly inherently better since they all have unique strong and weak points, but...

Cars as the main method of transportation are obviously not good. They're too inefficient, no matter how you look at them. Manufacturing, infrastructure requirements, footprint per person, energy use, impact on human health and the environment. Cars suck.

People use whatever's most convenient and that's realistically going to be whatever the government has invested in the most.

The more car dependent a society, the more degenerate it is. This is hard to understand due to how car-infested most of the world is. Watch some videos by the Not Just Bikes channel on youtube [1] to see what the world could look like instead. Here's some poignant examples (direct links): [2][3][4][5].

And here's an obscure video that exemplifies what's wrong with car culture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWi4gHm6pjQ. This is what a brainwashed society thinks like.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/@NotJustBikes

[2]: https://youtu.be/muPcHs-E4qc?t=464

[3]: https://youtu.be/AOc8ASeHYNw?t=204

[4]: https://youtu.be/oHlpmxLTxpw?t=361

[5]: https://youtu.be/c1l75QqRR48?t=290

Re: Tire dust makes up the majority of ocean microplastics

#308
post #166

Has anyone here ever lived near a freeway or even moderately busy road? I made the mistake of renting next to the freeway. Noise was perfectly tolerable, but I could not use my back porch, because after just a few weeks, everything had a fine coating of black dust. I could not keep my windows open in the summer. I was certainly breathing this vile shit the entire time I lived there. This doesn't surprise me in the le…

The only real solution is mandating light and heavy rail. California was hit hard by the car companies that bought out the rail and got replaced it with roads. And now we have even more reason to use rail everywhere we can. Maybe after the nimby boomers die off, we can actually made things make sense.

Re: Tire dust makes up the majority of ocean microplastics

#309
post #258

This is a strong a warning as any for people not to get too hang up on greenhouse gas emissions as the holy grail of sustainability. It creates the wrong mindset. What we have drifted into is a tech supported civilization that is covering the planet from corner to corner with myriad of footprints (emissions, particulate and chemical pollution of all types, habitat alteration or destruction etc). The story of ozon lay…

> Bold ideas are welcome. Burrying heads in the sand not an option. It's simple. It's more mobility options, especially safe active transportation. EVs are still cars. It's a change in the margin. What is really needed is people biking, walking for their daily errands instead of using a car. As for the safe part, it does not require anything special. The aspirational world of the future will be made real with bollard…

You're basically saying that you want to force everyone to live in a city - a super dense developed area where all your daily needs are within walking distance. Not everyone wants to live in a city!

Re: Tire dust makes up the majority of ocean microplastics

#310
post #166

Has anyone here ever lived near a freeway or even moderately busy road? I made the mistake of renting next to the freeway. Noise was perfectly tolerable, but I could not use my back porch, because after just a few weeks, everything had a fine coating of black dust. I could not keep my windows open in the summer. I was certainly breathing this vile shit the entire time I lived there. This doesn't surprise me in the le…

I lived near 880 in Oakland and always had massive amounts of this super fine sticky dust. They call that 880 corridor cancer corridor. My friends who lived next door who I was renting from, their son got leukemia and they think that had something to do with it.
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