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> overall both the article and the art piece itself seem to imply that this is a somewhat good idea Literally this is not the case, and should be evidenced by

> overall both the article and the art piece itself seem to imply that this is a somewhat good idea Literally this is not the case, and should be evidenced by the quotes I highlighted. It's more an intellectual deep dive on an interesting concept. It's not advocating that people ought to do this. To quote TFA: > Carbon emissions are not the only worry. Because of the chemicals added to plastic, burning it to make fuel creates a lot of nasty air pollution. Nobody in their right mind would propose a switch to cars fuelled by plastic waste. However, it is instructive to examine the motives behind this unanimous conclusion. Low-Tech Magazine's niche is low tech self-sufficiency, which is the main talking point of the article. Here from the first paragraph: > During the Second World War, many motorized vehicles in continental Europe were converted to drive on firewood. 1 That happened as a consequence of the rationing of fossil fuels. Wood gas vehicles were a not-so-elegant alternative to their petrol cousins, but their range was comparable to today’s electric vehicles. In Germany alone, around 500,000 wood gas cars, buses, and trucks were operated by the end of WWII. An even more cumbersome alternative was the gas bag vehicle.

tsimionescu 3y ago
> It’s unlikely that Schalkx will drive 12,000 km per year, and so, ultimately, he will produce less pollution than the drivers of more sustainable-looking cars that face none of these problems. > Somehow, the Dutch authorities, who are not known for their permissivity, officially approved the car after inspection. Schalkx drives tax-free and – thanks to his car being an oldtimer – can enter low-emission zones, where he parks alongside the latest electric SUV. Justice is not yet out of this world. To me this seems to be an overall endorsement of the project as an environmentally friendly idea.
- h0l0cube 3y ago
  It's a bit of a wild interpretation that the author claims that making driving unpleasant is an effective way of reducing carbon emissions. The second quote seems more a wry observation from someone who has disdain for wealthy people. And of course you can cherry pick the one or two positive notes from the article but then you'd have to ignore: > the CO2 emissions from fuel production and combustion are not praiseworthy > Nobody in their right mind would propose a switch to cars fuelled by plastic waste. > The car is not a pleasure to drive, at least not regularly. It is dirty. Its interior stinks of plastic, which cannot be healthy I'm not sure how this could be an overall endorsement.
paulmd 3y ago
Low-tech or traditional methods don’t mean they’re inherently better for the climate or environment though. The Victorian era coal smog was very low-tech and yet we can probably agree that it would be a bad idea to return to that. like if they called it “trash-burning monthly” it wouldn’t be surprising that you open the cover and find that’s exactly what’s inside, but it’s also not a good thing to encourage even in a hobby sense, really. And there is a lot of the world that has done some pretty awful things environmentally for a very long time. If it makes you feel better I have hobbies that are environmental disasters too. I don’t feel great about the knowledge that mercury/chromium/selenium intensifier or pyrocat exist, even plain old fixer isn’t great (although people will take it since it’s full of silver and worth recovering). https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/mercury-intensifier.74486/?amp=1 https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/mercury-intensifier.74... (Mmm mercury II chloride, if you don’t have any in your medicine cabinet just pop over to the barber and ask them for a scoop, very “traditional”!) https://www.ebay.com/itm/324458861037 https://www.ebay.com/itm/324458861037 (In film, this will bind to the un-fixed silver and help pull a little more in, or even strip the fixed silver and re-precipitate another metallic salt instead. Obviously takes a pretty aggressive reducing agent to bind to precipitated noble metals, so more aggressive the action the better it works… and those agents also love to bind to your nerves. So it’s pretty much literally “the better it works the more poisonous”. Mmm, organometallic chemistry, isn’t it grand?)
- h0l0cube 3y ago
  > Low-tech or traditional methods don’t mean they’re inherently better for the climate or environment though How is this in contradiction with what I'm saying? To quote my own post: > Low-Tech Magazine's niche is low tech self-sufficiency Neither I nor the writer of TFA think the venn diagram of low-tech self-sufficiency and environmentalism is a perfect circle, and that should be pretty obvious. > it’s also not a good thing to encourage even in a hobby sense That's not what TFA is doing. Do you really think there's going to be any consequential amount of people taking this up after reading the article? Maybe a few hackers will think it's fun, but the article spends a lot of time emphasizing how undesirable this idea is in practice.

tsimionescu 3y ago

> It’s unlikely that Schalkx will drive 12,000 km per year, and so, ultimately, he will produce less pollution than the drivers of more sustainable-looking cars that face none of these problems. > Somehow, the Dutch authorities, who are not known for their permissivity, officially approved the car after inspection. Schalkx drives tax-free and – thanks to his car being an oldtimer – can enter low-emission zones, where he parks alongside the latest electric SUV. Justice is not yet out of this world. To me this seems to be an overall endorsement of the project as an environmentally friendly idea.

h0l0cube 3y ago
It's a bit of a wild interpretation that the author claims that making driving unpleasant is an effective way of reducing carbon emissions. The second quote seems more a wry observation from someone who has disdain for wealthy people. And of course you can cherry pick the one or two positive notes from the article but then you'd have to ignore: > the CO2 emissions from fuel production and combustion are not praiseworthy > Nobody in their right mind would propose a switch to cars fuelled by plastic waste. > The car is not a pleasure to drive, at least not regularly. It is dirty. Its interior stinks of plastic, which cannot be healthy I'm not sure how this could be an overall endorsement.

paulmd 3y ago

Low-tech or traditional methods don’t mean they’re inherently better for the climate or environment though. The Victorian era coal smog was very low-tech and yet we can probably agree that it would be a bad idea to return to that. like if they called it “trash-burning monthly” it wouldn’t be surprising that you open the cover and find that’s exactly what’s inside, but it’s also not a good thing to encourage even in a hobby sense, really. And there is a lot of the world that has done some pretty awful things environmentally for a very long time. If it makes you feel better I have hobbies that are environmental disasters too. I don’t feel great about the knowledge that mercury/chromium/selenium intensifier or pyrocat exist, even plain old fixer isn’t great (although people will take it since it’s full of silver and worth recovering). https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/mercury-intensifier.74486/?amp=1 https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/mercury-intensifier.74... (Mmm mercury II chloride, if you don’t have any in your medicine cabinet just pop over to the barber and ask them for a scoop, very “traditional”!) https://www.ebay.com/itm/324458861037 https://www.ebay.com/itm/324458861037 (In film, this will bind to the un-fixed silver and help pull a little more in, or even strip the fixed silver and re-precipitate another metallic salt instead. Obviously takes a pretty aggressive reducing agent to bind to precipitated noble metals, so more aggressive the action the better it works… and those agents also love to bind to your nerves. So it’s pretty much literally “the better it works the more poisonous”. Mmm, organometallic chemistry, isn’t it grand?)

h0l0cube 3y ago
> Low-tech or traditional methods don’t mean they’re inherently better for the climate or environment though How is this in contradiction with what I'm saying? To quote my own post: > Low-Tech Magazine's niche is low tech self-sufficiency Neither I nor the writer of TFA think the venn diagram of low-tech self-sufficiency and environmentalism is a perfect circle, and that should be pretty obvious. > it’s also not a good thing to encourage even in a hobby sense That's not what TFA is doing. Do you really think there's going to be any consequential amount of people taking this up after reading the article? Maybe a few hackers will think it's fun, but the article spends a lot of time emphasizing how undesirable this idea is in practice.