Tire dust makes up the majority of ocean microplastics • Hacker News Board

Re: Tire dust makes up the majority of ocean microplastics

#451

Post by graywh » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 1:51 AM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #335

bmitc wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This sentiment is just contrarianism, I think. I really don't think it is. We're thrusting ourselves into just new problems. Yes, we move away from old problems that gas-powered cars have, but we move into new problems. For one, EVs perpetuate the idea of the car, which is perhaps the most dangerous part. Then, there's all sorts of new things like building out the infrastructure required for EVs and mining the new…

Cars are selling, despite their high economic price, because they're incredibly useful . Make competing modes of transit at least one of more useful at no more cost or no less utility but at a lower cost and people will switch incredibly quickly. That's a tall order, because the modern automobile is a wonder of transport speed, comfort, and convenience.

We've also engineered our society to make cars too convenient and necessary.

Re: Tire dust makes up the majority of ocean microplastics

#452

Post by throwaway892238 » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 1:59 AM UTC

kylebenzle wrote: post #398

crazygringo wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the solution is natural rubber, which costs slight more than synthetic rubber but lasts longer. So its better for consumers, cheaper all around, and 1,000x better for the environment Is it? I'm Googling but can't find any evidence for that. Natural rubber tires still produce tons of dust, I can't find any reference to it being less harmful in our lungs, and even natural tire rubber seems to biodegrade on the order…

One is a closed system, the other is dumping NEW carbon into the air. The simple accounting is: Plant a seed that grows to a dry weight of 1 lb. That is basically 1 lb of carbon. Turn that into 0.5 lb of rubber. Grind that rubber back down to carbon and we are back to where we started minus the waste.

Is the problem "net carbon", or is it "hey there is 100nm carbon particles entering my brain from my lungs" ? I feel like it's the latter ? And I'm not sure how natural rubber is gonna stop that ?

Re: Tire dust makes up the majority of ocean microplastics

#453

Post by thsksbd » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 2:00 AM UTC

There's a simple solution to this, known since WW2: slash speed limits and enforce them.

Just about every externality of the car scales super linearly with speed. Furthermore, in reality, except for the interstate, ETA does not scale inversely with speed limit, but a bit better (kids try this at home!). On top of that, traffic is bounded by the bandwidth-latency product just like network traffic is.

Re: Tire dust makes up the majority of ocean microplastics

#454

Post by woodruffw » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 2:00 AM UTC

listenallyall wrote: post #396

midasuni wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars have such a low price because the cost of them is not born by the person purchasing them.

Are there any large-scale public transportation systems that aren't reliant on huge government subsidies? London: 3.6b pounds https://www.google.com/search?q=london+tube+government+subsi... New York: $7.2 billion https://new.mta.info/budget/MTA-operating-budget-basics Amsterdam: 370m euros for 3 months service https://www.railjournal.com/financial/dutch-government-provi... . Ok, Hong Kong appears to turn a profit.

This is the wrong question: the right question is whether public transit is more subsidized per passenger-mile (or freight mile) than our road networks.

(Even more abstractly, it doesn’t matter whether or not public transit is highly subsidized, so long as the positive externalities of that subsidization are deemed worth it. You don’t get to the size and density (and corresponding economic output) of cities like NYC by allocating personal parking space for every resident.)

Re: Tire dust makes up the majority of ocean microplastics

#455

Post by wizofaus » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 2:01 AM UTC

geraldwhen wrote: post #450

rangledangle wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cars are only useful because America foolishly built and rebuilt around cars, instead of humans. There were even places that functioned perfectly fine with transit and walking, destroyed and replaced with infrastructure for cars. Undoing our mistake is always an option.

US public transit is ruled by homeless and criminals. Constant stabbing, sexual assault, robbery, and stalking. I will not take my kids on any transit where they might be assaulted by a naked homeless man. America will never have safe public transit because it lacks the will to handle the mentally ill and addicts.

If the city you live in has been entirely designed around private motor vehicles and lacks any decent transit network (LA being the obvious example), no amount of investment into helping the mentally ill and drug addicts is going to make transit an attractive option for more than a tiny percentage of the population.

Thankfully in Australia's biggest cities our public transport systems are generally clean and safe to use - but a) they're not always super reliable, despite some improvements in recent years b) they're often poorly interconnected, meaning I could potentially do 80% of the journey sitting in comfort on a train, but spend 3 times longer than it would take to drive trying to deal with getting to/from train stations and c) there are still huge areas of said cities that are fairly poorly served by trains, and buses will always be a second rate way of getting around. Oh and d) you can't carry v. large items or animals on most public transport (*). All solvable problems, some easier than others, but there's a distinct lack of real political will to do so.

(*) e.g. it'd be a 15 min train ride to take my dog to the beach from where I live, but she's not a service animal so wouldn't even be allowed on, despite taking up less space than a human.

Re: Tire dust makes up the majority of ocean microplastics

#456

Post by fuzzfactor » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 2:03 AM UTC

titzer wrote: post #449

mlsu wrote: 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…

Can confirm; lived about 300 yards away from the 10 freeway in Culver City for several years. The balcony would get coated in fine black dust in just a couple weeks' time. Literally no one would grow vegetables outside--that would be madness. I knew then it was brake dust and tires. Disappointing that this stuff turns out to be even more toxic than I thought.

In Nederland, Texas you're in a small community right in the middle between Beaumont, Port Arthur, and Orange, Texas, which are known as the "Golden Triangle". These have been major refining and petro-chemical centers dating back to the wild oil gusher known as Spindletop over 100 years ago which really made Texas known as an oil producing state.

Now each of the towns' refineries and chemical plants have grown in response to consumer demand for automotive fuel, but these are not really big cities and they don't have the number of cars you get in Dallas or Houston.

But you still get some fine particulates that build up after a while, like when you wake up and find a layer on your car after you just washed it the day before.

Even when it was black it wasn't tire dust, and sometimes there would be brown, white, grey, or yellow. You never knew what you were going to get and when. Depending on the wind it could be a discharge from Mobil in Beaumont, Texaco in Port Arthur, or DuPont in Orange.

This is what you get before the fuel even makes it into your tank, so that everyone can spread their tire dust all over the rest of the country.

I've also spent time near the 10 freeway, in Texas. A major cross-country thoroughfare for 18-wheelers.

Re: Tire dust makes up the majority of ocean microplastics

#457

Post by Gigachad » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 2:05 AM UTC

RGamma wrote: post #385

mlsu wrote: 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 recently had the pleasure to vacation on a car-free island (few thousand inhabitants including tourists). Only motorized vehicles allowed are a handfull small electric transporters for logistics (and construction vehicles, ambulance). Turns out the space gained from lack of car infrastructure increases space efficiency by a lot (not that that wasn't obvious from theory). It really was bliss and it makes me despise…

It's always this circular logic where "I need my car because the supermarket is an hour walk" but the supermarket is an hour walk because everyone drives.

It's mind boggling how much resources get poured in to cars and car infrastructure only to provide a slower, inefficient, more expensive, and toxic system. Feels like the next generation is seeing this now and things are slowly starting to change in some countries. Not sure how fast we can undo decades of damage and corporate brainwashing though.

Re: Tire dust makes up the majority of ocean microplastics

#458

Post by iancmceachern » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 2:05 AM UTC

brewdad wrote: post #441

downrightmike wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If we wait for the Boomers to die off to start making change, things might gain traction by the time GenZ runs things. We really have to start now because the gears of change grind slowly and reluctantly.

But then we'll be the boomers...

Re: Tire dust makes up the majority of ocean microplastics

#459

Post by walleeee » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 2:11 AM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #335

bmitc wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This sentiment is just contrarianism, I think. I really don't think it is. We're thrusting ourselves into just new problems. Yes, we move away from old problems that gas-powered cars have, but we move into new problems. For one, EVs perpetuate the idea of the car, which is perhaps the most dangerous part. Then, there's all sorts of new things like building out the infrastructure required for EVs and mining the new…

Cars are selling, despite their high economic price, because they're incredibly useful . Make competing modes of transit at least one of more useful at no more cost or no less utility but at a lower cost and people will switch incredibly quickly. That's a tall order, because the modern automobile is a wonder of transport speed, comfort, and convenience.

this framing, in making no reference to the thermodynamics of transportation, or of the human economy in general, mistakes mythology for reality

pursuit of convenience and immediate utility with scarcely a thought for consequences propels us toward hard physical limits at speed

Re: Tire dust makes up the majority of ocean microplastics

#460

Post by efreak » Mon, Oct 02, 2023, 2:11 AM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #335

bmitc wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This sentiment is just contrarianism, I think. I really don't think it is. We're thrusting ourselves into just new problems. Yes, we move away from old problems that gas-powered cars have, but we move into new problems. For one, EVs perpetuate the idea of the car, which is perhaps the most dangerous part. Then, there's all sorts of new things like building out the infrastructure required for EVs and mining the new…

Cars are selling, despite their high economic price, because they're incredibly useful . Make competing modes of transit at least one of more useful at no more cost or no less utility but at a lower cost and people will switch incredibly quickly. That's a tall order, because the modern automobile is a wonder of transport speed, comfort, and convenience.

Taking the bus is inconvenient, especially in Los Angeles. We do not have a great public transit system. However, it is far cheaper than car insurance. One bus ride is $1.75 these days, which is quite a bit--but it also includes transfers up to at least an hour after you get on. I usually get a ride to work, and I take the bus home daily, except on the rare occasion I manage to get a ride home with someone at work. *I pay $0 in car insurance, gas, maintenance*. I pay $1.75 for the bus on most days, while others might have to pay $3.5/day; A day pass is $5 if you need to make a third trip during the day, or go backwards for shopping (taking the same line in the opposite direction doesn't count for a transfer)