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Banning lead in gas worked. The proof is in our hair

attheu.utah.edu

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Re: Banning lead in gas worked. The proof is in our hair

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know a Velis Electro can fly for an hour, that's plenty of time for flight school. I'm sure there's better options now too. If something needs to take longer than that and is worth doing, then do it with a turboprop. That's besides the fact that there are genuine certified unleaded alternative fuels for piston aircraft now. Fucking "we oh can't do it" lead apologists smh.

"One hour is plenty of time for flight school" is not doing you any favours in coming across as knowing what you're talking about lol. Good freaking luck completing cross-country flights for an instrument rating with that endurance, never mind your certainty that there are "better options" as if the laws of physics have changed dramatically between 2020 and today. And I mentioned workhorse aircraft for a reason, cons…

It really doesn't matter if I don't know the paragraph eight of rule one hundred and thirty four, I know that if you can't do something without poisoning people you should not get to do it. That's as much as there is to it, and it's an argument you can't ever win without proving lead is harmless or something.

You can't just run piston engines on jet-a but you can run them on regular high octane from any regular gas station or any of the actual alternatives, my point was you can swap them for small turboprop powerplants and run the plane on jet-a. Afaik reducing knocking is not really the point of avgas either, which I'm sure you know, but vapor lock at high altitudes, which you can easily avoid by... not flying high, which by your own point is the main use case for piston aircraft. I guess we'll just spray lead over everyone instead, cause it's "safer".

Re: Banning lead in gas worked. The proof is in our hair

#282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree the problem has more than one aspect, but we made real progress that we are now backtracking on nationally. Local problems will always be local. Go to a town and they will likely be pro that industry but as a nation we recognized local pollution didn't stay local and created things like the EPA and implemented regulations that worked. Now we are backtracking because, I think, people haven't felt the problems…

Man, I honestly don't know. A big part of why I left Louisiana is because the culture there is so deeply broken that the best solution I could come up with is to escape.

I hope you found a place that feels like home!

Re: Banning lead in gas worked. The proof is in our hair

#283
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that environmental regulations that impede building modern nuclear power plants to replace coal power plants are net harmful. Nuclear power safety has advanced a lot since Chernobyl.

The closest I've gotten to somebody finding environmental regulations that were driving up the cost of nuclear was with some of the latest stuff with people trying to get rid of the LNT model of how radiation affects people. Getting rid of LNT would allow higher doses to workers, and the way it makes nuclear cheaper is by having less shielding around the reactor. But if you look at how recent reactors like the AP1000…

For France, I'd argue (just like in the US) that the break in construction of new reactors gutted the industry and institutional knowledge around the construction of reactor

Re: Banning lead in gas worked. The proof is in our hair

#284
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be uncontroversial that introducing shit into an environment where it doesn't belong is a bad idea, yet many people remain unconvinced that dumping tons of carbon dioxide a year into the atmosphere or tons of fertilizer by-products into the oceans is a bad idea.

It's less that but rather the hypocrisy of promoting burdensome regulations and bans implemented in one county (e.g. Germany) which hurts domestic industry and raises costs for its citizens, all while being silent on countries like China and India continuing to massively build more and more coal fired power plants

This is an excellent argument because it can be used to justify approximately any behavior.

Murder is bad? Well that's a bit hypocritical considering that the Golden State Killer killed 10 more people than I did!

I also think this pattern of critique is dismissible on its face once stated explicitly: "Oh you are spending your time trying to change things that are within the scope of your own political power, while ignoring similar things that are outside of the scope of your political power? Hypocritical!"

Re: Banning lead in gas worked. The proof is in our hair

#285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If there's a specific regulation that can be shown to be doing more harm than good In Massachusetts you can't clear shoreline. Specifically, if you buy waterfront property on a pond / lake, you can't clear the shoreline to make a beach in your backyard. You can only use what used to be there before the law was passed. There's even restrictions on building close to shorelines, so if you want to build, you need to fi…

> Now, I'm not a wetland expert, so maybe someone will chime in and tell me why every inch of freshwater shoreline must be undisturbed. But I like freshwater swimming and suspect that we can allocate some space for human recreation. Are you prevented from fresh water swimming because you can't fabricate a beach for yourself, even if you own the property next to it? Seems like a strange complaint

Crawling through brush to get to the water isn't fun.

Besides, half the fun of the "beach" is the clearing where you can sit and read a book or play in the sand.

Re: Banning lead in gas worked. The proof is in our hair

#286
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would. People are still building some natural gas plants even despite renewables being cheaper and nuclear is far cheaper over its lifecycle than that and, other than regulatory issues, is basically better in every way.

Nuclear might be better and cheaper over it's entire lifecycle; but given that the starting costs are so high, the time to build is so long, and the US has serious problems with cost overruns in public projects, as well as the fickleness of both government and public opinion, I don't expect another plant to be built.

Well we were speaking of costs in a hypothetical future in which regulations are sane. I don’t expect that to happen either but if it did, the economics would work.

Re: Banning lead in gas worked. The proof is in our hair

#287

In my opinion it is obvious and should be uncontroversial that some environmental regulations work and are great and should if anything be reinforced, while other environmental regulations do more harm than good and need to be reigned in or eliminated. Turning "environmental regulation" into a unified bloc that must be either supported or opposed in totality is a manipulative political maneuver and it should be force…

Aren't you just waving a flag for less regulation by rushing to align yourself with this inarguable example of regulatory success? Rather than discussing the issue of what impact lead had, or how we might apply this longitudinal method to other other problems (making hair archives into a general environmental data resource), or develop longitudinal methods in general, You've chosen to issue a clarion calla gainst 'ba…

I'm not rushing anywhere or arguing for or against anything at all in concrete detail. I'm trying to refuse the "all or nothing" fallacy that, yes, some people are arguing, and no, is not a straw man (you can see sincere examples of that viewpoint expressed in this very thread).

If I'm doing anything (and I'm self-consciously and intentionally doing next to nothing here), it is suggesting or reaffirming an extremely basic rational grid that, in my opinion, ought to apply across all aisles as universal, table-stakes context within which people who disagree with one another can try to reach rational, reality-informed compromise.

If I'm issuing any clarion call, it is this and only this:

Some environmental regulation is good, and some environmental regulation is bad, and we should use science to figure out which is which and then legislate based on the best good-faith interpretation of that science that we have access to.

That's it. Re-read my parent comment, if you don't believe me. That's literally all it says.

The reflexive contrary reaction, in this thread, against what I see as an extremely mild proposal justifies the (frankly quite minimal) effort I made in articulating it. This is not a universally accepted starting point for public policy discourse, though I think it should be (which is why I said so, in so many words).

Rational people, like both you and me I hope, have to voice this perspective and insist upon its acceptance and application if it is to survive the political polarization we're enduring as a society right now.

Re: Banning lead in gas worked. The proof is in our hair

#288
post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For comparison: * I don't know how old my cast iron skillet is because I literally bought it from an antique store but I've had it for over a decade and it's in better shape than ever. * My $60 Lodge Dutch oven is over a decade old and has been used hundreds of times. * My stainless steel All-Clad skillet is relatively new at 5-6 years but is no worse than the day I got it.

(I also used to default to comment in bullet lists, because that's how I think. I have realized most people don't do that, so I have worked on writing in a more fluent style in order to appear less rigid. :) ) I think my main complaint is with e.g. IKEA changing their default frying pan coating dramatically without clear communication.

I encourage you to write in whatever style feels most authentic to you.

* Tables are fine if you like them

* Some readers won't like them

* But the ones who do will like your real writing style

:)

Re: Banning lead in gas worked. The proof is in our hair

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, I honestly don't know. A big part of why I left Louisiana is because the culture there is so deeply broken that the best solution I could come up with is to escape.

I hope you found a place that feels like home!

I did! :D

Re: Banning lead in gas worked. The proof is in our hair

#290

In my opinion it is obvious and should be uncontroversial that some environmental regulations work and are great and should if anything be reinforced, while other environmental regulations do more harm than good and need to be reigned in or eliminated. Turning "environmental regulation" into a unified bloc that must be either supported or opposed in totality is a manipulative political maneuver and it should be force…

> It is fair and reasonable to demand that environmental regulation justify its existence with hard, scientifically verifiable data or else get chopped Here is a strawman for you: studies for regulation A show that it is successfull in improving habitat for endangered species. Studies also show that the regulation increases tax burden and decreases competitiveness of national agriculture. Should the regulation be cho…

Frankly, that's a question of values, not of process.

I'm not championing any particular set of values here (except, perhaps, that I'm implying the values of doing impartial science and of inclusive, rational public discourse).

I'm saying that public debate ought to be had to litigate that question, and that hard data should feature prominently in that debate. That is not something we'll do if we assume in either direction that "environmental regulation is always good" or "environmental regulation is always bad." I'm saying both kinds exist, and that apart from hard data we can't confidently know one from the other, which means we have to assess and re-assess. I'm not pre-registering an opinion on which side of any particular debate should win, or why I think that instead of the opposite.

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