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Post by aquaduct on Feb 22, 2024 8:48:47 GMT -5
skepticalscience.com/argument.phpThat's good to read. I noticed some time ago (when the internet became a thing and folks started "debating" therein) that lists defeat debate -- and not in the way intended. Create a list and have just one item wrong and the whole debate will then center around that. The list is extremely oversimplified and flawed. Exactly, John. But as it relates to my mini series (if anyone still cares I promise only 2 or maybe 3 more episodes to fully answer Russell's original query) I would encourage everyone to read through it. I'd particularly point to the very subtle changes in common word definitions and semantics. Even something as straightforward as "science" doesn't mean what it used to mean. My hope is to show how far down the road to totalitarianism we've managed to come. One of the effects of the internet is that these days everyone's an expert. Go deeper into the skeptical science site and look at who runs it. A bunch of folks who might have had a biology class in high school. Maybe. So please check it out and vet what I say against what skeptical science says. And ask questions. And more than anything remember, just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you. Literally.
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Post by james on Feb 22, 2024 9:26:54 GMT -5
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Post by millring on Feb 22, 2024 17:21:54 GMT -5
I guess I shouldn't assume (as I'm ashamed to admit I already have ... and started to write a response in that vein) that you don't know that your link isn't describing one side any better than it is the other? We all know the logic fallacies. If anyone doesn't, well, this must be their first day on the internet. And knowing them is as useful to me as the first time they were presented to me in jr high school. What appears to be most often missing from the list, however, is that the presence of logic fallacies doesn't prove anything either. If a person you know to be a regular liar tells you your shoe is untied, you have every good reason to doubt him. But it's still the better part of wisdom to look down and check your feet. If something doesn't sound reasonable to you, sometimes trusting your education and your experience is still a pretty good guide. Correlation doesn't equal causation, but coincidences are probably more rare than are correlatives. And as far as lists failing at their weakest point... No, it's not strictly logical. And it's darn frustrating when you're the one who decided to load the discussion with one too many debatable facts. You wish to heck you could back up, but it's too late. Most of the time misdirecting by picking the weakest argument is unfair. Unfortunately, however, many times the flaw in the list does call the rest of it in question for the very fact that if the person making the point doesn't know that that fly in the ointment is, in fact, a fly ... well then, what else among the list of unknowables is similarly flawed? Sometime you might consider entering a discussion with a thought, opinion, or idea of your own instead of a link that assumes present company to be intellectual dullards.
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Post by james on Feb 22, 2024 18:16:33 GMT -5
"Sometime you might consider entering a discussion with a thought, opinion, or idea of your own instead of a link that assumes present company to be intellectual dullards."
Sometime you might consider not talking such absolutely stupid f+cking shit about me and my contributions. I was merely trying to agree with and positively affirm your prior comment with the link.
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Post by aquaduct on Feb 22, 2024 22:19:58 GMT -5
Yeah, I'd heard something like that last night. But as is usually the case, Ars Technica has mangled the reporting so it's tough to tell what it means. Won't matter at all if Chevron is overturned in June though. EPA will be out of the game entirely at that point. Yeah, I get that. But if Chevron is overturned, doesn’t that kind remove the Supreme Court from the legislation game? Not that anyone on the court would act in their own self-interest or anything like that. Would they hang on to Chevron just to keep their hand in? For this installment I'd like to revisit this question from Dub and explain the confusion. The first CO2 regulation in the US were Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards implemented in 1975. The purpose of these was to reduce fuel consumption. This was at the time of the Arab oil embargoes. And to jog your memory of what cars were at that time I once bought a 1975 LTD station wagon. 'Nuff said. This was a Constitutionally proper regulation meaning it was authorized and controlled by Congress through legislation. The automakers were represented in Congress by the legendary John Dingell (D) from Detroit. Dingell was famous for being able to cap standards at a reasonable level, which is how the Founders envisioned it in the Constitution. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), a division of the Department of Transportation (DOT) administered the regulations. The way it works (it's still in force, at least in theory) is that every automaker after each model year reports how many vehicles they've sold and what their MPG is. If the average fuel economy for the fleet is above the Congressionally mandated standard, that automaker pays a fine for that year. Strictness of adherence to the standards was a simple matter of how much the automaker chose to afford. Typically Japanese companies complied completely. Europeans (typically with more expensive cars) didn't really care and paid the fines as a cost of doing business, and American companies negotiated different vehicle classifications to try to bin cars and avoid fines. The Ford Probe, for instance, was designed and built by Mazda in a factory in Flat rock, Michigan. Therefore it was classified as a "domestic" vehicle. The Crown Victoria on the other hand, was built in Canada and was therefore officially an "import". It's probably also helpful here to mention that on-road vehicles are classified by size by DOT. There are 8 weight classifications. Light duty- the vehicles covered by CAFE- are cars and trucks up to 13,999 Gross Vehicle Weight Rating (GVWR), basically up through an F350 or equivalent. Medium and Heavy duty goes up from there with Class 8 being above 67,000 GVWR. Class 8 is capable of hauling up to 250,000 lbs. However roads are limited to typically 80,000 lbs. except for Michigan where 120,000 lbs. is allowed. This little bit of trivia will become important later. EPA never regulated CO2 until 2009. They've only regulated pollutants before that (EPA was created in 1970). So how on earth did that work? Well, again, it's complicated. In my opinion deliberately. It helps hide what's actually happening. This is where I became personally involved in the story. I was a powertrain engineer in Volvo's engine plant in Hagerstown, MD working on at that time new exhaust aftertreatment (the diesel version of gasoline's catalytic convertors) systems in 2007. At that time both of the people in the Washington DC office quit the company at the same time. Volvo hired a guy who came from the EU in DC to head up the office as Vice President of Government Relations. He needed someone with a technical product background to work with him. I interviewed and already lived equidistant from both Hagerstown and the Volvo office on the 4th floor of the Swedish Embassy on the Georgetown waterfront. I got the job and became Director of Government Regulation. The next couple years were spent as a registered lobbyist. And one of the first turds that landed on my desk was the Supreme Court decision Massachusetts v EPA that granted EPA the right (duty actually, the way the decision was framed) to regulate CO2. At that point it was a brave new world that the entire town was struggling to get a handle on. In early 2009 my wife who was already a Fed ran across an ad for someone to work at NHTSA and develop new heavy duty CAFE standards that she felt would be a great fit for me. I felt just a twinge of hesitancy, but also felt some sense that I owed it to the industry I loved to actually do a fair, competent job and so I took the job. And remember, nobody at that time actually understood what was happening. It's in many ways so mind blowingly absurd that it defies rational analysis. I started on the first Monday in August and in July of 2010 we met with EPA. They proposed that they would develop the regs for both of us and we would merely copy their regs, change the units, and enact exactly the same standards. Nobody could think of a reason that wouldn't work so we all agreed. 3 weeks later on the last Friday of July I was called to human resources at noon and told I had a choice of quitting or being fired. No, I couldn't call anyone. Yes, we'll give you 45 minutes to clean out your desk and be escorted out of the building. After some hearty swearing I opted to quit, put my stuff in a box, and walked to the Metro which I took to the Vienna station where my wife picked me up after she left her work for an emergency. So when I read that story and they refer to MPG I'm pretty sure they mean g/mile of CO2. And it's about EPA. Biden promised in his campaign to ban ICE by 2035 so I'm pretty damn sure that the latest round of CO2 standards that are going to start in 2027 and ramp up to demanding 67% of new vehicles sold in 2032 be EVs has been altered. Mostly to just jigger the ramp up curve so maybe 55% EVs in 2032 and jam the other 45% in between 2032 and 2035. But that's just an educated guess. Won't know until the actual revisions come out. Next I promise to actually get an answer for Russell.
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Post by millring on Feb 23, 2024 6:48:28 GMT -5
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Post by aquaduct on Feb 23, 2024 8:58:36 GMT -5
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Post by millring on Feb 23, 2024 19:35:16 GMT -5
That is a horrible headline and a disgustingly slanted article. The human drive to survive will always trump any moral and ethical sense and I don't believe I will live to see the day that our government volunteers to divest itself of power. I don't care how the court rules, nothing will change.
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Post by aquaduct on Feb 23, 2024 21:34:19 GMT -5
That is a horrible headline and a disgustingly slanted article. The human drive to survive will always trump any moral and ethical sense and I don't believe I will live to see the day that our government volunteers to divest itself of power. I don't care how the court rules, nothing will change. Can't say I blame you. My wife is also convinced that shit's gotten so bad there's no real reason to live. Liberalism will do that to you by doing things that hype all the ways you can die so you'll look to them to solve everything. And I certainly can't say I blame either of you. But I still have faith, at least until I can't find a logical way out. When that happens, I guess I won't fight back and will just march myself to the gas chamber without a fight. God bless you buddy.
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Post by aquaduct on Feb 25, 2024 11:32:27 GMT -5
And I'm looking at how much work is required to accomplish a particular task. Like the task of moving a commuter (with or without briefcase) X miles to a destination in Y minutes. I suspect it requires less work than running an assembly line. So how did NHTSA's CAFE program work at reducing national fuel consumption? Not well at all. Being an averaging program, automakers started making small, fuel efficient glorified roller skates like the Ford Aspire (or Expire as we used to call it) and taking small loses for them. Because that let them build things like the Lincoln Mark VIIIs for a profit of $8000 apiece effectively allowing them to game the ratings. This leads to two car families, commuting further to work, suburban sprawl, increasing interest in trucks and vans particularly from women who appreciate being able to see over traffic in a heavy, safe vehicle while driving the kids to school while counting toward the lower CAFE standard for trucks, which leads to minivans and other small trucks, which leads to supercabs, which leads to crew cabs which can seat 5 or 6 adults, which then leads to trucks being the biggest sector and biggest selling vehicles in the country (crossed that line about 5 years ago) and the F150 being the best selling vehicle in the country followed by the 4 or 5 other companies competitive trucks as the best selling vehicles in the country, which leads people like me to be a 2 truck family with an F150 crew cab and a little Jeep Renegade to take the puppies out to the neighbor's property on the other side of the freeway. Which ultimately leads to generally increasing fuel consumption. Go figure. So now back to Mike's situation with nothing but EVs left to not tow his Airstream. The CAFE example would suggest he can bump up in vehicle class. And indeed, Ford has a Class 3 (> than 14,000 lbs. GVWR- bigger trailer!) that can be optioned out as nicely as the F150 with a whole range of big, beautiful diesel and gasoline engines which currently are not subject to CAFE standards. But wait! EPA CO2 standards are identical to CAFE standards but are not averaging. They are hard numbers each vehicle must meet or you can't sell the vehicle in this country. This effectively means that CAFE standards can't ever be violated. So what? Well, EPA regulates pollutants and, although CO2 is not a pollutant, it has to be treated like one. So every vehicle class needs to be regulated for CO2. So why not do heavy duty EVs? Heavy duty EVs really demonstrate the point about work. Tesla's new EV semi, for instance, has a range of 500 miles which is OK for applications like delivering potato chips or soda, which is exactly what Pepsi is trying out. But a standard diesel engined truck can be fitted with a 300 gallon tank, which is good for 2400 miles. Put 2 of those on the truck and you can drive the entire perimeter of the US without refueling. Which is what a lot of trucks do with husband and wife teams that take their puppies with them on an endless vacation. That's 10 times the range of the Tesla truck. And that same truck can be configured as a crane that can build a factory in the middle of 1000 acres of wilderness in the middle of Nebraska or Montana. And it can operate continuously for 5 years just by continually bringing in tank trucks of diesel and refueling the crane on the fly without shutting down the crane. No need to shut down to go to a charging station. Just work, work, work. Which leads to the critical and unresolvable absurdity. Light duty is regulated as a full chassis which allows measurements like MPG and g/mile. Every other class of vehicle is regulated as engine only by EPA. They have no MPG measure. Light duty is tested for emissions by the EPA as a vehicle on a dynamometer. It's run over a standardized government-mandated test cycle. Pollutants are measured as well as everything else, like water, CO2, and nitrogen, that comes out of the tailpipe. This is how NHTSA rates vehicles for MPG to use in the CAFE program. Every other class or type of vehicle (motorcycles, trains, planes, combines, pavers, lawn mowers, etc.) is regulated engine-only against work output as grams per brake horsepower-hour (g/bhp-hr). Measuring CO2 against work produces the same number every time (roughly 30% of what goes in). There's no feasible ramp in possible for a transition to EV trucks. And there's the inevitable rub of this nonsensical push towards EVs. There's no way to get there from here. So where do things stand at this moment? EPA has already published CO2 standards for the 2027-2032 timeframe for public comment that will ramp to requiring 67% of all new light duty vehicles be EVs. They are expected to publish the final version this summer, likely just revising the ramp up curve (still meeting Biden's stated policy goal to be ICE free by 2035). Chuck Schumer and several other Senators have also sent a letter to EPA wanting to know when we will see proposed heavy duty standards. My guess is that the poor person in EPA tasked with this turd is probably shitting themselves in anticipation of being forced to admit the truth in public on TV in a Senate hearing. And to be fair, EPA did say it can't be done. Massachusetts sued them to force them to do it and won. But EPA would probably welcome Chevron being overturned in June in order to avoid the whole thing. And if that happens, the focus will fall back to NHTSA's mandate and they may hire me back to do it. If so, I just have to spend some months (timer restarts) "exploring" the technical question only to determine it can't be done. And I no longer care if they drag me in front of a committee and make me explain why. As to the original post that got me started on this, the biggest competitor of cheap Chinese EVs is normal ICE vehicles. Tesla merely has a virtual monopoly on a small market segment. Should the effort to overturn Chevron fail, the auto industry itself will ultimately collapse from insanity and Tesla, if they can survive, will be killed by cheaper Chinese crap and the US and the rest of the West will be vassal states to China. Without firing a shot.
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Post by coachdoc on Feb 25, 2024 12:41:39 GMT -5
Don't know if this means anything, but I drove a Tesla the other day. Was first in line at a red light. Stepped on the gas as it turned green, and my head snapped back and I was shoved hard back into the chair. I was surprised and pleased. That was fun. That’s great news, Doc. For some reason, I thought you weren’t driving anymore. Ummm… the other day being a couple of years or many months perhaps.
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Post by epaul on Feb 25, 2024 13:49:23 GMT -5
...I drove a Tesla the other day. Was first in line at a red light. Stepped on the gas as it turned green, and my head snapped back and I was shoved hard back into the chair. I was surprised and pleased. That was fun. Fun... until you discover you need to buy a new set of tires every 6-7 thousand miles... at up to $450 per tire.
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Post by aquaduct on Feb 26, 2024 14:45:37 GMT -5
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Post by epaul on Feb 26, 2024 16:57:11 GMT -5
Ok, so the Lightning has a few towing shortcomings, you only have to shell out around $90,000 for a nice one, so, what's a few shortcomings like range, convenience, and cost per mile?
Plus, you can use it to power your home in the event of a power outage if you opt for Ford's "Home Charging" package, a mere $5,000 for the three box system plus installation... provided your garage has a box and is wired for 220, that is (if not, add another grand or two). Granted, you will be left with a dead pickup and no way to charge it if the outage lasts a couple days, but there is no reason to go anywhere if the power is out, no fun in that.
And if it doesn't work out, the resale value should be sky high, the internet is filled with positive owner reviews. For a twenty-mile trip, you just can't beat it!
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