4 ms·

I'm fairly certain after most the vehicles become electric we'll see a precipitous drop in all sorts of illnesses/mortalities. Future generations knowing that

I'm fairly certain after most the vehicles become electric we'll see a precipitous drop in all sorts of illnesses/mortalities. Future generations knowing that factual history will look back on the people of the combustion engines era as ridiculous, willfully self-poisoning rubes, driving around in noisy, stinky, slow, expensive to own operate and maintain turds.

megablast 5y ago
Cars will still kill 1 million people every year directly. Many more injured.
jhgb 5y ago
> ridiculous, willfully self-poisoning rubes, driving around in noisy, stinky, slow, expensive to own operate and maintain turds Maybe they'll look at similarly as we look at the people of the time of the Neolithic Revolution (and perhaps a long time afterwards), with their lifespans decreased due to poorer diets and zoonotic diseases from domesticated animals.
- jjtheblunt 5y ago
  Guns, Germs, and Steel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel) argues that proximity to domesticated animals is a win for all species for immunological reasons. The general idea is that similar virus strains exist across species, but only a fraction identically spread across species. So a human may be exposed to a similar but noninfectious virus from (for example) a dog or a cat, and will gain an immunological advantage compared to someone living apart from other species, because the human immune system will remember the foreign protein sequences to which it can react when exposed again.
  - jhgb 5y ago
    That's an interesting argument but we know that the transition to agriculture has been horrible to humans, health-wise. Even if there are some minor immunological upsides (which I'm not sure Diamond is the one to convince me about), that's not the whole picture. Also the page you linked says "immunity to diseases endemic in agricultural animals", which sounds like this being a solution to a self-inflicted problem.
    - jjtheblunt 5y ago
      I don't happen to know the reason transition to agriculture has been horrible to humans, health-wise. why is that said to be so?
      - jhgb 5y ago
        > why is that said to be so? Uh...because that's what the archeological findings are? For example, from https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1186&context=nebanthro https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1... : "Cities and other large settlements appeared for the first time during the Neolithic. Pathogens require a large host to thrive and these large, crowded populations provided a human host population that had not previously existed among hunter-gather societies (Armelagos et al. 1991:15). Now able to spread easily from person to person in the crowded conditions of cities, pathogens were able to exploit entire groups and reach endemic levels (Armelagos et al. 1991; Papathanasiou 2005). "Crowded conditions paired with human settlements in close proximity to animals also contributed to high rates of infectious disease. In many early agricultural communities, animals were kept both near to and inside of houses. This proximity allowed some zoonotic diseases to transfer from animals to humans (Armelagos et al. 1991; Eshed et al. 2010). Contaminated water sources and close contact with human waste also facilitated parasitic infection in both animals and humans (Armelagos et al. 1991; Larsen 2006; Papathanasiou 2005)." "The increase of infectious disease associated with the adoption of an agricultural lifestyle did not necessarily increase mortality (Eshed et al. 2010). Those most likely to suffer fatal infections would have been infants, young children, and the elderly. Individuals who reached reproductive age had likely developed a resistance to such diseases (Armelagos et al. 1991). However, it must be noted that nutritional deficiencies can reduce resistance to infections which can further contribute to nutritional deficiencies (Armelagos et al. 1991; Larsen 2006). This interplay between nutrition and disease can increase mortality in populations and inhibit an individual's ability to work and/or reproduce (Goodman 1993)." Basically until we learned about the implications of sedentary urban lifestyle with agriculture, and until we learned how to do something about it, we'd been unknowingly suffering from major quality of life issues.
        5y ago
jjtheblunt 5y ago
Or we will be able to see how much pollution asphalt rubbing against rubber tires contributes. (disclaimer: driver of EV for many years, so i think of that because tires still wear out)
_dain_ 5y ago
Electric vehicles are not that much quieter than ICE vehicles. At high speeds, the dominant noise component is from the tires against the roads, not the engine. At low speeds, they are intrinsically quiet, but many (all?) jurisdictions legally mandate a noise-making device so that pedestrians can hear them coming. They are comparably expensive to own and operate as ICE vehicles. It is also a myth that they do not emit unhealthy pollutants, see this paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S135223101630187X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13522... Then there's still the direct mortality from collisions with pedestrians and cyclists, and things like obesity from encouraging a sedentary lifestyle. I think future generations will look at car-dependency in general as ridiculous, whether ICE or electric.
- rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
  >I think future generations will look at car-dependency in general as ridiculous, whether ICE or electric. I hope future generations will be capable of nuances.
sva_ 5y ago
In some sense, you can already make this observation when looking at early industrialization, in which in particular coal smoke was a pollutant in places with factories. We look back at those times now, and think it to be ridiculous that people lived under such conditions, but surely (or rather, hopefully), people in the future will consider it ridiculous, that we lived our lives amidst combustion engines and their exhaust pollutants. In particular, I think people will find it absolutely ridiculous that we tolerated Diesel fumes in densely populated areas. So I agree with your point.
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  >We look back at those times now, and think it to be ridiculous that people lived under such conditions Honestly, I don't. I'm glad I'm alive now and not then, but it isn't too difficult to acknowledge that industrial pollution in urban areas (which absolutely did kill people both passively and during smogs) was a necessary evil for the era and helped us get to where we are today. I'm sure people will say the same thing about internal combustion engines in 50 years' time.
  - sva_ 5y ago
    I would claim that thinking those conditions to be ridiculous and considering them necessary are not mutually exclusive.
    - lostmsu 5y ago
      It is neither funny, nor foolish or absurd.
      - sva_ 5y ago
        Something that might at some point be considered foolish might later be considered absurd, by having new information that informs it to be (very) hazardous.
        5y ago
aqme28 5y ago
Don't cars only account for like 10% of pollution?
- pengaru 5y ago
  Car emissions inherently occur near where people are breathing. Even if you continued producing the electricity to charge EVs with fossil fuels, you'd be improving the human habitats by moving the emissions further away from the people while simultaneously using larger-scale optimized generators without vehicular constraints like compactness, weight, and wildly varying speeds/loads getting in the way of keeping the emissions clean.
sloreti 5y ago
Unfortunately, moving from ICE to EV isn't a silver bullet. Look up non-exhaust emissions (NEE). When car tires and brakes wear down, they spit out particulate matter pollution. The OECD estimates NEE will constitute the majority of road emissions by 2035 [1], and it already constitutes the majority of particulate matter emissions on the road today [2]. EVs even make the problem a bit harder to solve, by being heavier than similar sized ICE vehicles. [1] https://www.oecd.org/environment/non-exhaust-particulate-emissions-from-road-transport-4a4dc6ca-en.htm https://www.oecd.org/environment/non-exhaust-particulate-emi... [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S135223101630187X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13522...
post_from_work 5y ago
You were doing fine until you said "slow". It's trivially easy to tune a decent ICE[1] for ridiculous power. The speed differential between ICE and EV is even more severe over longer performance-driving distances; no one is setting Cannonball Run[2] or Nürburgring[3] records in a Tesla, for example. EVs are good at high altitude though.[4] [1]My personal favorites: turbocharged inline-6s ( BMW B58, Toyota 2JZ & 1JZ) and naturally aspirated V8s (GM aluminum small block family). [2]currently ~25h36m for an Audi S6 vs 42h17m for a Tesla Model S [3]currently 6m52s for a Lamborghini Huracan Performante vs 7m35s for a Tesla Model S Plaid [4]A Volkswagen EV holds the Pike's Peak Hill Climb record, and it is unlikely to lose it to an ICE vehicle due to the power loss caused by the thinner air at altitude.
- pengaru 5y ago
  Hilarious, EVs can deliver sub-3s 0-60 times in odor-free silence. Show me an ICE-powered car that does the same without exhibiting a petro-mechanical temper tantrum nobody sane wants to be near without wearing at least ear protection. Maybe the Bugatti Veyron? Even that mountain of money makes quite a ruckus judging from videos online. Basically any ICE vehicle that doesn't piss off your neighbors is slow. Even my stock 04 R1 which didn't have much weight to move would wake up the neighborhood idling, but it did manage sub-3s 0-60 times while disintegrating clutch discs.
  - post_from_work 5y ago
    >>>Show me an ICE-powered car that does the same without exhibiting a petro-mechanical temper tantrum nobody sane wants to be near without wearing at least ear protection. The mechanical cacophony is part of the fun. A good sound is almost as important as the power and speed. That's why many gearheads don't sing the praises of supercharged FA20 engines: they sound like shit. Motorcycles like the R1 with 11,000 RPM redlines are a glorious aural orgasm. I live close to a major thoroughfare with a tunnel, popular with all manner of racers late at night. I love hearing the drift cars scream by. The only thing that is annoying is the bosozoku with their low-speed engine revving: https://youtu.be/R6cSso-9iJU https://youtu.be/R6cSso-9iJU

megablast 5y ago

Cars will still kill 1 million people every year directly. Many more injured.

jhgb 5y ago

> ridiculous, willfully self-poisoning rubes, driving around in noisy, stinky, slow, expensive to own operate and maintain turds Maybe they'll look at similarly as we look at the people of the time of the Neolithic Revolution (and perhaps a long time afterwards), with their lifespans decreased due to poorer diets and zoonotic diseases from domesticated animals.

jjtheblunt 5y ago
Guns, Germs, and Steel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guns,_Germs,_and_Steel) argues that proximity to domesticated animals is a win for all species for immunological reasons. The general idea is that similar virus strains exist across species, but only a fraction identically spread across species. So a human may be exposed to a similar but noninfectious virus from (for example) a dog or a cat, and will gain an immunological advantage compared to someone living apart from other species, because the human immune system will remember the foreign protein sequences to which it can react when exposed again.
- jhgb 5y ago
  That's an interesting argument but we know that the transition to agriculture has been horrible to humans, health-wise. Even if there are some minor immunological upsides (which I'm not sure Diamond is the one to convince me about), that's not the whole picture. Also the page you linked says "immunity to diseases endemic in agricultural animals", which sounds like this being a solution to a self-inflicted problem.
  - jjtheblunt 5y ago
    I don't happen to know the reason transition to agriculture has been horrible to humans, health-wise. why is that said to be so?
    - jhgb 5y ago
      > why is that said to be so? Uh...because that's what the archeological findings are? For example, from https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1186&context=nebanthro https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1... : "Cities and other large settlements appeared for the first time during the Neolithic. Pathogens require a large host to thrive and these large, crowded populations provided a human host population that had not previously existed among hunter-gather societies (Armelagos et al. 1991:15). Now able to spread easily from person to person in the crowded conditions of cities, pathogens were able to exploit entire groups and reach endemic levels (Armelagos et al. 1991; Papathanasiou 2005). "Crowded conditions paired with human settlements in close proximity to animals also contributed to high rates of infectious disease. In many early agricultural communities, animals were kept both near to and inside of houses. This proximity allowed some zoonotic diseases to transfer from animals to humans (Armelagos et al. 1991; Eshed et al. 2010). Contaminated water sources and close contact with human waste also facilitated parasitic infection in both animals and humans (Armelagos et al. 1991; Larsen 2006; Papathanasiou 2005)." "The increase of infectious disease associated with the adoption of an agricultural lifestyle did not necessarily increase mortality (Eshed et al. 2010). Those most likely to suffer fatal infections would have been infants, young children, and the elderly. Individuals who reached reproductive age had likely developed a resistance to such diseases (Armelagos et al. 1991). However, it must be noted that nutritional deficiencies can reduce resistance to infections which can further contribute to nutritional deficiencies (Armelagos et al. 1991; Larsen 2006). This interplay between nutrition and disease can increase mortality in populations and inhibit an individual's ability to work and/or reproduce (Goodman 1993)." Basically until we learned about the implications of sedentary urban lifestyle with agriculture, and until we learned how to do something about it, we'd been unknowingly suffering from major quality of life issues.
      - 5y ago

jjtheblunt 5y ago

Or we will be able to see how much pollution asphalt rubbing against rubber tires contributes. (disclaimer: driver of EV for many years, so i think of that because tires still wear out)

_dain_ 5y ago

Electric vehicles are not that much quieter than ICE vehicles. At high speeds, the dominant noise component is from the tires against the roads, not the engine. At low speeds, they are intrinsically quiet, but many (all?) jurisdictions legally mandate a noise-making device so that pedestrians can hear them coming. They are comparably expensive to own and operate as ICE vehicles. It is also a myth that they do not emit unhealthy pollutants, see this paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S135223101630187X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13522... Then there's still the direct mortality from collisions with pedestrians and cyclists, and things like obesity from encouraging a sedentary lifestyle. I think future generations will look at car-dependency in general as ridiculous, whether ICE or electric.

rcMgD2BwE72F 5y ago
>I think future generations will look at car-dependency in general as ridiculous, whether ICE or electric. I hope future generations will be capable of nuances.

sva_ 5y ago

In some sense, you can already make this observation when looking at early industrialization, in which in particular coal smoke was a pollutant in places with factories. We look back at those times now, and think it to be ridiculous that people lived under such conditions, but surely (or rather, hopefully), people in the future will consider it ridiculous, that we lived our lives amidst combustion engines and their exhaust pollutants. In particular, I think people will find it absolutely ridiculous that we tolerated Diesel fumes in densely populated areas. So I agree with your point.

AussieWog93 5y ago
>We look back at those times now, and think it to be ridiculous that people lived under such conditions Honestly, I don't. I'm glad I'm alive now and not then, but it isn't too difficult to acknowledge that industrial pollution in urban areas (which absolutely did kill people both passively and during smogs) was a necessary evil for the era and helped us get to where we are today. I'm sure people will say the same thing about internal combustion engines in 50 years' time.
- sva_ 5y ago
  I would claim that thinking those conditions to be ridiculous and considering them necessary are not mutually exclusive.
  - lostmsu 5y ago
    It is neither funny, nor foolish or absurd.
    - sva_ 5y ago
      Something that might at some point be considered foolish might later be considered absurd, by having new information that informs it to be (very) hazardous.
      - 5y ago

aqme28 5y ago

Don't cars only account for like 10% of pollution?

pengaru 5y ago
Car emissions inherently occur near where people are breathing. Even if you continued producing the electricity to charge EVs with fossil fuels, you'd be improving the human habitats by moving the emissions further away from the people while simultaneously using larger-scale optimized generators without vehicular constraints like compactness, weight, and wildly varying speeds/loads getting in the way of keeping the emissions clean.

sloreti 5y ago

Unfortunately, moving from ICE to EV isn't a silver bullet. Look up non-exhaust emissions (NEE). When car tires and brakes wear down, they spit out particulate matter pollution. The OECD estimates NEE will constitute the majority of road emissions by 2035 [1], and it already constitutes the majority of particulate matter emissions on the road today [2]. EVs even make the problem a bit harder to solve, by being heavier than similar sized ICE vehicles. [1] https://www.oecd.org/environment/non-exhaust-particulate-emissions-from-road-transport-4a4dc6ca-en.htm https://www.oecd.org/environment/non-exhaust-particulate-emi... [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S135223101630187X https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13522...

post_from_work 5y ago

You were doing fine until you said "slow". It's trivially easy to tune a decent ICE[1] for ridiculous power. The speed differential between ICE and EV is even more severe over longer performance-driving distances; no one is setting Cannonball Run[2] or Nürburgring[3] records in a Tesla, for example. EVs are good at high altitude though.[4] [1]My personal favorites: turbocharged inline-6s ( BMW B58, Toyota 2JZ & 1JZ) and naturally aspirated V8s (GM aluminum small block family). [2]currently ~25h36m for an Audi S6 vs 42h17m for a Tesla Model S [3]currently 6m52s for a Lamborghini Huracan Performante vs 7m35s for a Tesla Model S Plaid [4]A Volkswagen EV holds the Pike's Peak Hill Climb record, and it is unlikely to lose it to an ICE vehicle due to the power loss caused by the thinner air at altitude.

pengaru 5y ago
Hilarious, EVs can deliver sub-3s 0-60 times in odor-free silence. Show me an ICE-powered car that does the same without exhibiting a petro-mechanical temper tantrum nobody sane wants to be near without wearing at least ear protection. Maybe the Bugatti Veyron? Even that mountain of money makes quite a ruckus judging from videos online. Basically any ICE vehicle that doesn't piss off your neighbors is slow. Even my stock 04 R1 which didn't have much weight to move would wake up the neighborhood idling, but it did manage sub-3s 0-60 times while disintegrating clutch discs.
- post_from_work 5y ago
  >>>Show me an ICE-powered car that does the same without exhibiting a petro-mechanical temper tantrum nobody sane wants to be near without wearing at least ear protection. The mechanical cacophony is part of the fun. A good sound is almost as important as the power and speed. That's why many gearheads don't sing the praises of supercharged FA20 engines: they sound like shit. Motorcycles like the R1 with 11,000 RPM redlines are a glorious aural orgasm. I live close to a major thoroughfare with a tunnel, popular with all manner of racers late at night. I love hearing the drift cars scream by. The only thing that is annoying is the bosozoku with their low-speed engine revving: https://youtu.be/R6cSso-9iJU https://youtu.be/R6cSso-9iJU