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Clean water is fairly distinct from climate change. Greenhouse gasses are mostly harmless aside from their warming effect, and the stuff that makes air and wate
by mikeash 8y ago
Clean water is fairly distinct from climate change. Greenhouse gasses are mostly harmless aside from their warming effect, and the stuff that makes air and water unhealthy doesn’t warm the planet.
Sometimes these two things go together, such as when replacing coal power plants with renewables. But sometimes they’re in opposition. For example, the Volkswagen emissions scandal was that they increased particulate pollution in order to decrease greenhouse gas emissions. In diesel engines, there’s a tradeoff between CO2 emissions and other emissions.
- RaptorJ 8y agoOcean acidification is no small thing
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoErm, VW, decreased particulate emissions during testing in order to pass the testing and have the vehicles be higher powered (and more polluting) under normal use. They did it to sell cars and make profit; they weren't doing it to save the planet.
- mikeash 8y agoThey did it to meet fuel economy numbers. CO2 emitted scales pretty much with fuel burned.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoI may be misremembering, but AFAIR They artificially reduced diesel consumption figures by having the vehicles run different power curves during testing. Meaning they used more fuel, and made more particulate emissions than they claimed to. So they made it look like the cars would use less fuel than they actually did.
- mikeash 8y agoSome searching around reveals a lot of discussion about increased fuel consumption in fixed VWs. For example: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/jul/12/drivers-loss-of-power-vw-emissions-fix-class-action https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/jul/12/drivers-loss-o... VW disputes this but I don’t know if they can be believed.
- andrepd 8y ago>For example, the Volkswagen emissions scandal was that they increased particulate pollution in order to decrease greenhouse gas emissions. ? The scandal was that they did it in testing only, so it passed the standards and they could turn it up in normal use.
- mikeash 8y agoDuring pollution testing, the cars sacrificed fuel economy for better emissions. During normal driving, they polluted more but burned less fuel. Drivers notice fuel consumption but not pollution, so this made everyone happy until it was discovered.