Discussion around limiting climate change primarily focusses on whether the best results can be gained by individuals changing how they act, or governments introducing new legislation.
Now though, University of Leeds academics Dr Rob Lawlor and Dr Helen Morley from the Inter-Disciplinary Ethics Applied Centre suggest engineering professionals could also play a pivotal role, and could provide a co-ordinated response helping to mitigate climate change.
Writing in the journal Science and Engineering Ethics, they say engineering professional institutions could take a stand in tackling climate change by developing a declaration imposing restrictions and requirements on members.
"A strong and coordinated action by the engineering profession could itself make a significant difference in how we respond to climate change," they said.
"We know many engineers and firms make great efforts to be as environmentally friendly as possible, and research is carried out and supported by the sector to help reduce its impact on the world. We're suggesting that concerted action could improve this process further."
Quoting 2014 research by Richard Heede from the Climate Accountability Institute, they say nearly two-thirds of historic carbon dioxide and methane emissions could be attributed to crude oil and natural gas producers, coal extractors, and cement producers. These are industries typically enabled by the engineering profession.
They're looking at you, VW engineers.
(Score: -1, Insightful) by garrulus on Saturday March 18 2017, @08:15PM (29 children)
it's getting annoying how much this site is pushing that religion.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by julian on Saturday March 18 2017, @08:41PM (12 children)
Anthropogenic climate change is real, unlike your grasp of reality.
The only people still doubting it at this time are idiot ideologues, shills, and religious imbeciles. [wikipedia.org]
I'm going to make a statistically informed guess that you're not a wealthy industrialist. This site skews towards atheists or at least agnostic so you're probably not overtly religious. Yikes, running out of options that don't bely a shocking lack of intellect or even honest curiosity.
But in case you're one of the few who might be reachable with some sense
(Score: 3, Informative) by julian on Saturday March 18 2017, @08:43PM (5 children)
...you can read this. [skepticalscience.com]
(always check for links, folks. I just got too heated. Like our climate!)
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 18 2017, @09:08PM
That link is rather old, I believe. More recent speculation on the part of climate change scientists is that sometimes, temperature has driven CO2 levels. See - the science isn't "settled". Science has a nice wad of facts, and some of those bright boys have made some educated guesses, but they don't have all the facts. Meanwhile, non-scientists have created a religion out of these half-understood facts and speculation.
You appear to be a believer. When anyone asks your religion, you should reply "climate changology, which is related to scientology."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 18 2017, @09:39PM
http://principia-scientific.org/climate-drives-carbon-dioxide-levels-not-the-other-way-round/ [principia-scientific.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 18 2017, @09:42PM
http://notrickszone.com/2016/08/04/non-existent-relationship-co2-temperature-correlation-only-15-of-last-165-years/ [notrickszone.com]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday March 18 2017, @09:44PM
https://skepticalscience.com/argument.php?a=7&p=11 [skepticalscience.com]
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @07:16AM
Why link to propaganda websites?
You guys never have links to a major site or a university with a reputation worth losing. Spare us the Koch.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 18 2017, @09:46PM
Anthropogenic climate change is real, unlike your grasp of reality.
In that case it also stands to reason that climate change is a function of population size. Therefore you should do your part and remove yourself from the population as soon as possible.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday March 19 2017, @12:01PM (4 children)
That's quite a "burn the heretic" inquisitional response for something that's supposedly not a religion, but obviously in practice is.
I find the argument hilarious given the usual response to creationism. Well, obviously something created the earth, and its not a signed legal statement in a court of law but we do have a book where some dude confessed to creating the earth in a week, along with some highly questionable documentation of methods and motives, anyway I see no particular reason to disagree with the written statement and we should probably be indoctrinating our public school kids with that particular story, I mean, whats the problem with that? A lot of really smart historical people believed in creationism. Certainly the authorities support(ed) creationism and they always have our best interests in mind so if the authorities say its right it must be right. The religious screeching against opposition and threats of punishment and demands of loyalty oaths and prayers/services are certainly the same between creationism and "climate change". Don't you care about your eternal soul or the soul of the planet? Lets go worship a tree together and bury our differences.
Its a fine line in that I like the environment more than most people for recreational reasons (not signalling reasons) so I dislike littering and toxic waste more than most people. Also I'm still somewhat social libertarian and I'm too tolerant of people who also live and let live, so if you want to hear lectures about creating the world in seven days or equally scientific lectures about climate change, I don't mind. But hey, call a spade, a spade, and climate change isn't about science anymore its purely religious in nature. The fact we agree on not wanting to ruin the planet does not imply they're not new age religion buffoons.
The problem is creation science turning into a religion, and the first thing that happens in an organized religion is always abandoning the original core message in favor of working real hard at creating an authoritarian hierarchy and enforcing an unchanging indoctrination and especially attacking the heretics and schisms. So nobody in the environmental movement cares about not having barrels dumped in my county hiking park, because its all about punishing the heretics and protesting Trump and whatever other BS. I would advise people who actually care about the environment to kiss up to the right / far right because we're the only people interested in listening. Nobody in climate change cares about facts or the climate or the environment, its all about how do we punish our enemies that we can, protest those we can't punish, indoctrinate the youth in order to control them via the usual religious cult control methods of gaslighting, mythology, and guilt, and squabble about authority and self importance. Just like in political speech or corporate speech what is said is often the opposite, so a group that takes John Muir's name in vain, for example, will make a big deal about speech supporting him while working against his original beliefs, thats just what political/corporate/religious speech is all about.
Meanwhile just like its easy to troll creationists or scientologists online, its really easy to troll religious acolytes of climate change. The point is that there's many things that are true but boring and no fun to point out, but its hilarious fun online to point out the truth of climate change being a religious belief system. Look just admit its no more scientific than dancing around a may pole or sacrificing burnt offerings (prototypical barbecue, I assume) and people will stop teasing.
I'll give them credit, for a religious belief system, aside from the usual human dysfunction about primate dominance rituals and punishing the outsider or nonbeliever and all that, its not the worst religion out there. Its as intolerant and close minded as most religions, but theres worse religions out there based on genocide or racial superiority or (historically) human sacrifice or martyrdom. So if the climate change religion can merely avoid dipping into those lower behaviors, I wouldn't mind them as neighbors or coworkers; although I'd still make fun of them of course, because most religions are pretty comical to the modern outside non-believer and climate change is certainly no exception.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Sunday March 19 2017, @01:09PM (1 child)
> some dude confessed to creating the earth in a week
They don't teach religion anymore at school, I guess?
Psalm 90
Before the mountains were born Or You gave birth to the earth and the world, Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God. You turn man back into dust And say, "Return, O children of men." For a thousand years in Your sight Are like yesterday when it passes by
2 Peter 3:8
Beloved, do not let this one thing escape your notice: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.
What does this do to your "one week" idea?
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @01:57PM
It means they upward adjusted their guess of the age of the earth by 7000 years, but still were way off.
(Score: 2) by julian on Sunday March 19 2017, @06:42PM (1 child)
Climate change is not, in any way, a religion. Your insistence that it is doesn't make you look like the "true" skeptic in the room. It makes you look like the smug teenager in a fedora who thinks he really knows what's going on because he watched the Zeitgeist video on Youtube and read some Ayn Rand.
As a plausible explanation of the world your wall of text is "not even wrong". [wikipedia.org]
Do better. Apply yourself.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday March 19 2017, @08:22PM
Climate change is not, in any way, a religion. Your insistence that it is
You make a fair point. I mean you completely fail to explain why I'm wrong other than you say so, but I did a pretty poor job explaining how one of many definitions of religions fit. In that constructive criticism you do me a service, thanks.
Lets have some Durkheim fun. Durkheim is always better after a couple bottles of hard cider and I rarely drink so this should be a fun one to write.
a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say things set apart and forbidden - beliefs and practises which unite into one single moral community called a church, all those who adhere to them
Well obviously he wrote that in hebrew or french but translation issues shouldn't matter as much as philosophical disagreements over the actual content. None the less:
"a unified system of beliefs and practices" That would be the whole climate change, um, issue, along with its rituals of struggle sessions like the red guards and massive greenwashing in marketing.
"relative to sacred things, that is to say things set apart and forbidden" That would be forbidden joys such as capitalism, industrialism, optimism, material prosperity, pretty much anything other than being hipster and anti-white.
"beliefs and practises which unite into one single moral community called a church" That would be blind faith in climate change, catastrophic change, end of the world class of change, the moral superiority of driving to ecology protests in one's SUV, social justice, veganism will save us all or whatever other form of ridiculous greenwashing.
"all those who adhere to them" Ah the good ole us vs them. Love it. Divide and conqueror, baby. We have some common cause in not wanting to F up my favorite hiking trails, but its more important to be divisive, to use vs them, to other, to argue over politics and in this case religion.
I didn't use the famous Stackhouse quote on purpose because its just too brutal but here it comes anyway. "accepted as binding because it is held to be in itself basically true and just even if all dimensions of it cannot be either fully confirmed or refuted" I mean that's practically the self definition of the climate change movement as provided by itself. It must be binding on all, right or wrong thinkers alike enforced in the style of Mohamed's sword if necessary, by definition its statement makes it true, if it's progressive left which it is then its morally just because its progressive, and certainly none of the claims can be confirmed or denied but plenty of conversions at the point of a sword to believe the right facts...
(Score: 2, Funny) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday March 18 2017, @09:13PM (4 children)
What was especially annoying was that the article proposed nothing that isn't already law -- if you engineer to the laws (say, emissions or structural integrity) and you cheat those laws, then you get busted and put your career in jeopardy or get fined or arrested.
Taking some kind of silly oath doesn't mean a goddamn thing, for example, look at all those "health professionals" who were involved in crafting and maintaining our torture programs.
Engineering is all about designing to cost, and that is often at odds with quality, so of course you're gonna keep get corners cut or product shipped before its fully-functional. Shit like this is why Dilbert is funny, and if you don't think Dilbert is funny then you're not one of us.
Instead of putting it on the engineers with feelgood bullshit buzzwords, they should make management agree to take an ethics course to spend the extra pennies to make a decent product as well as not be so goddamn pushy and make bullshit promises to customers.
Some motherfucker came up to me with a stack of "climate change responsibility" papers to sign I'd grab that stack and smack them in the mouth with it, then tell them to get the fuck out of my face and let me do my damn job.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Saturday March 18 2017, @09:27PM
Modded "funny" because you used "management" and "ethics" in the same sentence. I HOPE you weren't serious! I'd hate to think that EF were losing it!
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Saturday March 18 2017, @10:56PM
What word in planned obsolescence don't you understand, old man?
I will not be surprised when they'll start doing it for civil works. The most prone to "short cycle planned obsolescence" would be roadworks - the moment the Agent Orange decide to quickly create jobs in infrastructure and allocate budget for it, expect to see "rolling" highway repairs every one or two years in the same place (you don't expect the "flyover country" will be all fed from the "Great Wall of Mexico" project, do you?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by VLM on Sunday March 19 2017, @12:27PM (1 child)
Some motherfucker came up to me with a stack of "climate change responsibility" papers to sign
Oh ethanol fueled, never change ... however ... consider that diversity hires need something to do, and if they stop doing meaningless feel good stuff like "climate change responsibility" papers, they'll inevitably find something important to actively screw up. Do you want them changing the sign on the coffee maker from "black coffee" to "people of color coffee"? You know some shitlord will put up a sign "white coffee" next to the "people of color coffee" so at least its not all bad. Or changing hiring policy to only hire more folks like themselves, in other words useless? "I don't think a modern electrical engineering company would tolerate bias in the workplace, not even in their transistor circuits, so you're gonna have to reimplement that amplifier as a class D instead of class A topology." "Let me get this straight, this company is so racist that they wire every power outlet with the black color insulated wires that do all the real work and the white insulation color wires do nothing, why don't you racists issue us some fucking cotton to pick while you're at it, let me guess you pretend brown insulation color wires don't even exist, but I bet if you took all the brown insulation color wires out of the wall for a day the whole company would grind to a halt" "We have TRANS istors in our circuit schematics why can't we have TRANS bathrooms, I mean even if we don't have any trans employees its important to signal our progressiveness on facebook by posting pictures of our new bathroom sign for TRANS people" "When the bench techs in the VFD group talk about replacing 'blown transistors' I think they're sexually harassing trans employees because it implies being a blow-er is problematic and/or being trans(istor) is problematic or a combination, even though we don't have any trans employees, we all still need to post to twitter about how progressive we are, so we need to post signs around the company to make using the phrase 'blown transistor' a firing offense"
I never fail to be amazed at the wisdom of the ancients and stuff like "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin" is a useful war fighting technology in that you can moth-to-the-flame use it to attract the useless and weak to really stupid intellectual arguments, then deposit them in a nursery with padded walls where they can't hurt anyone, which means the village blacksmith can uninterrupted sharpen swords and the local artificer can work on greek fire and cannons without interruptions from the useless eaters.
This is an unfortunate outcome of the agricultural / green revolution combined with the automation and industrial production revolutions in that we have way too many people for way too few real jobs, and the fake jobs tend to get in the way an awful lot. Millennia ago useless eaters would have rightly starved to death and now they form an entire huge cultural group. Fictionally there were ways to deal with the problem involving the "B Ark" and the number 42 and so forth.
The good news is some day all the petroleum will be burned and the uranium will be fissioned and the useless eaters will, um, not be fed anymore. That world of the future a couple months later without useless eaters is a paradise we can all look forward to.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @04:30PM
I guess you totally missed Douglas Adams' follow up to the B ark. Everyone on the A ark ended up dying from a virus contracted from a dirty phone headset... I guess you're the type of idiot that would cheer on Rorschach from "Watchmen" too when in reality the author meant for him to be an absurd characterization that would make people recoil in horror from such a black and white application of "justice".
You're a closet fascist who is apparently pro-eugenics / genocide. Get a grip, if anyone is going to be thrown into confinement it will be the asshats that want to harm the rest of society because they think they're soooo smart. You deniers are blowing up this article in the most insane ways! I think the reason people accuse others of beings shills is because statements such as yours are just so far from reality that they hope it is due to an agenda and not an actual human opinion.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 18 2017, @09:16PM (2 children)
it's getting annoying how much this site is pushing that religion.
Awww, do you need a safe-space?
Or would a trigger warning on these stories be enough for you?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 18 2017, @09:30PM (1 child)
If all of you fuckface douchebags would just drop dead, there would be a lot of "safe space" around here. Has anyone ever told you that you have a kind face? What they meant was, you have the kind of face they'd like to fuck.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 18 2017, @10:44PM
Triggered!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 18 2017, @09:18PM
No, fuck you
(Score: 1) by bug1 on Saturday March 18 2017, @09:23PM (4 children)
If you dont believe the science you dont belong here.
Fuck off to your cave.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 18 2017, @09:31PM (3 children)
Right - and if you believe in "settled science", you don't belong here either. You need to run along to your Climatology Synagogue.
(Score: 0, Redundant) by bug1 on Saturday March 18 2017, @11:04PM (2 children)
Your a crazy person
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 18 2017, @11:55PM (1 child)
And you are clearly sub-literate, judging only on the brief sample size in this topic.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @07:31PM
I believe he meant to say that this must be your crazy person, since ours (Hi, Eth! Howzit, Runaway! Good Day, jmorris! Bueno Dias, khallow!) are all right here were we left them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @02:02AM
Thank you for posting, the inevitable responses calling out your ignorance really hits that emotional sweet spot!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @03:54AM
does "climate change" include antropogenic caused increase in "background" radiation?
oops we made the planet warmer everybody notices that because humans have a temperatur sense. instaed lets keep wasting one-way energy and dumpnthe waste as radiation instead. humans wont notice because they dont have radiation sense.
(Score: 0, Informative) by SparkyGSX on Saturday March 18 2017, @08:40PM (23 children)
The Volkswagon scandal was about fine particle emission, not about CO2. The emission of CO2 corresponds pretty much directly with fuel consumption; the "fixed" vehicles actually produce more CO2, since the fuel consumption was increased somewhat by the fix, if I recall correctly.
I think it's unlikely most engineers will be able to do anything about climate change; major decisions impacting such things are usually make at high levels in large organizations, by people who generally are not engineers.
If you do what you did, you'll get what you got
(Score: 2, Flamebait) by aristarchus on Saturday March 18 2017, @08:46PM (21 children)
The Volkswagon scandal was about fine particle emission, not about CO2.
When your first sentence is this wrong, there really is no point reading the rest of your comment. Sorry. (Oh, and there is no "fix" for VW diesels, yet.)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Unixnut on Saturday March 18 2017, @09:12PM (6 children)
> When your first sentence is this wrong, there really is no point reading the rest of your comment. Sorry. (Oh, and there is no "fix" for VW diesels, yet.)
Shame, because the second part is correct, and the first partially correct. However your sentence was wrong (there is a "fix" as such, read below).
It wasn't about CO2, it was about NOx and other leftovers from incomplete combustion. Diesels are more fuel efficient because they have no throttle plate, and can do a "lean burn" where they inject just enough fuel to provide the needed power. The problem is that because you are not combusting all the air in the cylinder, you get incomplete combustion in places. CO2 goes down, but NOX and other undesirable gases increase.
Injecting Urea into the engine cleans up all these gases (also, you can now say your car runs on gas and piss). VW never used this system, instead claiming their superior engineering and research resulted in the problem "solved", when in fact all they managed to do it cheat the test.
The "fix" is to fit an urea injection system into their diesel cars, but turns out the cost of doing this is more than cost of the cars are worth second hand, so they are willing to do a recall and exchange/refund. The other alternative is to reprogram the ECU so it doesn't do a "lean burn" and you get complete combustion every time. The side effect is fuel consumption and CO2 emissions goes up, and as most owners are not happy about that, most pick the refund/exchange option.
Nobody in Europe seems to care much (most people don't seem to care if their vehicle is blowing pure black smoke out the tailpipe, let alone anything more subtle like NOx/CO2 emissions) but this seems to have been a big deal in the USA, where VW was fined a good chunk of money and forced to fix the problem.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Saturday March 18 2017, @09:24PM (5 children)
The "fix" is to fit an urea injection system into their diesel cars, but turns out the cost of doing this is more than cost of the cars are worth second hand, so they are willing to do a recall and exchange/refund.
Yes, like I said, there is no approved "fix" yet. NOx is not particulate, and I am so happy that so many on SoylentNews have opinions on, stuffs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @12:48AM (4 children)
> Yes, like I said, there is no approved "fix" yet. NOx is not particulate, and I am so happy that so many on SoylentNews have opinions on, stuffs.
Remapping the ECU is the approved fix. However your inability to read entire sentences seems to be hampering your understanding of the above parents posts.
I would get that checked out by a doctor or something, such a reduction in cognitive function could cause long term damage.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Sunday March 19 2017, @10:09AM (3 children)
Remapping the ECU is the approved fix.
I can't tell you how I know, but this is factually incorrect. So evidently you do not know whereof thou speaks.
However your inability to read entire sentences seems to be hampering your understanding of the above parents posts.
And, oh font of misinformation Anonymous Coward, you fail at medical diagnosis even more severely than you do at automotive.
I would get that checked out by a doctor or something, such a reduction in cognitive function could cause long term damage.
There is only one cure for ignorance, and that is knowledge. Of course, in extreme cases, there can be other causes that lead to loss of cognitive function, but the loss itself is only a symptom, and never a causal factor. I suggest you get yourself to a educational institution, post haste, for there is hope for you.
A couple things about this discussion you should look into. NOx is not particulate. What is it? Second, what kinds of particulates do diesel engines produce, and how? We might even claim that diesels sequester carbon in its elemental form, reducing CO2 emissions! Third, familiarize yourself with the physics and chemistry of diesels, especially after that doozy about "lean burn" leaving residues of "incomplete combustion", it is the exact opposite, and it is the opposite of the particulate problem, and I think such an explanation could only have been offered by one whose only experience with diesels is having a switch in their cab that is labelled "Roll Coal". Facts, AC! Even in the Age of Trump, facts are better than a bunch of crap you read on the internets written by people who are totally ignorant.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Sunday March 19 2017, @02:37PM (2 children)
Wasn't sure whether to respond here or above, but this thread has gone a bit further down the line, although at a bit of a tangent.
> I can't tell you how I know, but this is factually incorrect. So evidently you do not know whereof thou speaks.
Right, so "somehow" you just know it isn't. If this was a religion I could understand that as the concept of "faith", but I can't accept that here. While I am not a VW employee I have talked to those who are, and they told me those were the two options available in some reasonable time frame and cost. However this is in Europe, maybe VW USA has other plans.
> A couple things about this discussion you should look into. NOx is not particulate.
Just to clarify, I am well aware of the fact it isn't.
> What is it?
http://www.alentecinc.com/papers/NOx/The%20formation%20of%20NOx_files/The%20formation%20of%20NOx.htm [alentecinc.com]
> Second, what kinds of particulates do diesel engines produce, and how?
Sooty ones, carbon deposits primarily afaik. I guess you can see it as sequestering carbon in its particulate filter as you put it, along with coating the rest of the engine in soot.
> third, familiarize yourself with the physics and chemistry of diesels, especially after that doozy about "lean burn" leaving residues of "incomplete combustion", it is the exact opposite, and it is the opposite of the particulate problem,
Well, I was the one who said that, so to respond:
"However, the lean-burning nature of diesel engines and the high temperatures and pressures of the combustion process result in significant production of gaseous nitrogen oxides (NOx), an air pollutant that constitutes a unique challenge with regard to their reduction." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_exhaust [wikipedia.org]
"NOx production is highest (B) at fuel-to-air combustion ratios of 5–7% O2 (25–45% excess air)." -- http://www.alentecinc.com/papers/NOx/The%20formation%20of%20NOx_files/The%20formation%20of%20NOx.htm [alentecinc.com]
Says right there. Lean burn does result in higher generation of NOx emissions. I am not sure if Diesels have higher combustion temps than petrols. Just that they have a higher CR due to using compression ignition (I suspect they would, but I haven't looked that closely).
Is particulate a problem? I thought the VW scandal was primarily about NOx emissions. Particulates from Diesel engines don't travel far, and are supposed to be filtered out by the filters.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Sunday March 19 2017, @07:18PM (1 child)
Looking back, you were not wrong, just unclear, Unixnut.
Well, I was the one who said that, so to respond:
"However, the lean-burning nature of diesel engines and the high temperatures and pressures of the combustion process result in significant production of gaseous nitrogen oxides (NOx), an air pollutant that constitutes a unique challenge with regard to their reduction." -- " rel="url2html-23525">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_exhaust
Yep, lean burn is the benefit, and the curse.
"NOx production is highest (B) at fuel-to-air combustion ratios of 5–7% O2 (25–45% excess air)." -- http://www.alentecinc.com/papers/NOx/The%20formation%20of%20NOx_files/The%20formation%20of%20NOx.htm [alentecinc.com]
Says right there. Lean burn does result in higher generation of NOx emissions. I am not sure if Diesels have higher combustion temps than petrols. Just that they have a higher CR due to using compression ignition (I suspect they would, but I haven't looked that closely).
Well, you seem to have a better grasp than some ACs here! But my nitpick was with your use of the term "incomplete combustion" by which I assumed you meant unburned or incompletely burned fuel. This is what typically produces particulates, namely, soot. (And this is "sequestered" even if it goes out the stack, ain't CO2, for sure!) But now I see that what you meant was incomplete combustion of the oxygen! Now that is what a lean burn is! Lean on fuel, excess O2. So what happens in that diesel engine cylinder at those high pressures and temps, when all the hydrocarbon is gone? We burn the air itself. Nitrogen burning! So you are right, Unixnut.
Now just think if all these ethical engineers, the ones who refuse to work for the Empire on Death Stars and such, could come up with an engine that could just run on air, an internal oxygenation process. We could call it, "breathing"!
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Tuesday March 21 2017, @10:58AM
It is quite alright. Yes I meant that for a volume of air, not all the Oxygen is consumed. My apologies for the miscommunication.
English is not my first language, and I do have situations like this where I don't use the correct terminology or otherwise say things in a way that can be misunderstood.
> Now just think if all these ethical engineers, the ones who refuse to work for the Empire on Death Stars and such, could come up with an engine that could just run on air, an internal oxygenation process. We could call it, "breathing"!
How does that work? Biology is an even weaker suit for me compared to engines, but we breathe in Oxygen, we do some oxidation reaction with fuel from food, and we expel CO2. It sounds just like when you burn fuel in an engine, just that an engine produces a lot more heat, and a lot more power, than we do.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 18 2017, @09:13PM
Oh shut up.
You are more wrong than he is.
His central thesis that the emissions cheating was not about CO2 is correct.
VW emissions cheating was about NOx emissions and NOx does amplify the harm caused by fine particulates. This fact is illustrated by the study predicting 60+ premature deaths [theguardian.com] as a result of VW's lawlessness, the majority of them caused by the resulting fine particulate pollution.
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday March 18 2017, @09:18PM
Modern VolksWagens are for virtue-signaling leftists who want to show you how righteous they are, and they believe owning a newer VW is better for the environment for some reason -- much like they believe that their Macs make them more altruistic even as the people in China manufacturing them often jump to their deaths because their labor conditions are so bad.
Now, the classic VWs are awesome, if rusty and temperamental and requiring constant maintenance -- but VWs have been pieces of shit ever since they rolled out their "boxes on wheels" line in the '80s and then released their "gayest bug ever" in the '90s.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday March 18 2017, @09:20PM (11 children)
https://www.chicagofed.org/~/media/publications/chicago-fed-letter/2016/cfl357-pdf.pdf [chicagofed.org]
It's all three - CO2, NOx, and particulates. If it were ONLY the CO2, the scandal would still have been a scandal, but it wouldn't be so damned big a scandal.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 18 2017, @09:28PM (9 children)
The link you provided does not assert that VW deliberately tried to cheat CO2 emissions standards. All it says is that diesel was attractive to auto manufacturers because burning diesel produces less CO2 than burning gasoline per mile.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday March 18 2017, @09:34PM (8 children)
Read it again - Yet, relative to gasoline engines, diesel engines tend to emit more nitro-gen oxide (NOx ) and particulate matter,3 which contribute to the for-mation of smog. VW pur-sued a “clean diesel” strategy rather aggressive-ly; but when some of its diesel engines could not meet the stringent tailpipe emissions standards in the U.S. and Europe with-out sacrificing on-road performance, the company installed “defeat devices,” which allowed its vehicles to circumvent lab tests.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 18 2017, @09:38PM (7 children)
What part of CO2 do you fail to understand?
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday March 18 2017, @09:47PM (6 children)
Which part of particulates and NOx do you not understand? As already stated, the CO2 alone was enough to create a scandal. All three pollutants combined made a scandal into a helluva big scandal. It isn't JUST the CO2. Do you remember "acid rain"?
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 18 2017, @10:01PM (4 children)
OK, Runaway, you are a complete idiot, but I am intrigued by your thought process: How does the fact that diesels have lower CO2 emissions constitute a scandal? Please explain. I thought this might be right up your alley, but you are lowering my estimate of the intelligence of truck drivers.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday March 18 2017, @10:06PM (3 children)
WTF is hard to understand here? VW cheated on the CO2, they cheated on the NOx, they cheated on the particulates. They cheated ALL of the emissions tests. They didn't ONLY cheat on the CO2. The original post, to which I responded, suggested that it was ALL ABOUT CO2, and CO2 alone.
If you need more information, do your own search. "Volkswagen particulate emissions" and "Volkswagen NOx emissions".
Cheating on any one of those pollutants would have been a scandal. In this case, they took deliberate steps to hide the extent of each of those pollutants.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 18 2017, @10:30PM
VW cheated on the CO2
The link you provided does not assert that VW deliberately tried to cheat CO2 emissions standards. All it says is that diesel was attractive to auto manufacturers because burning diesel produces less CO2 than burning gasoline per mile.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 18 2017, @10:39PM (1 child)
WTF is hard to understand here?
It is hard to understand why you keep saying things that are not true. Are you Donald Trump?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 18 2017, @10:46PM
It is hard to understand why you keep saying things that are not true.
Its the only way he can masturbate any more.
He puts on a burka, spouts bullshit, fingers his asshole and makes a mess on his keyboard.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Sunday March 19 2017, @03:09AM
Which part of particulates and NOx do you not understand? As already stated, the CO2 alone was enough to create a scandal. All three pollutants combined made a scandal into a helluva big scandal. It isn't JUST the CO2. Do you remember "acid rain"?
Acid fog [wikipedia.org] was even worse.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 18 2017, @09:30PM
Runaway! You should actually RTFL! You link says diesels have lower CO2 output, does not mention particulates, and does not provide any specifics on VW diesels. So thanks for the alternative information, bro!
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday March 19 2017, @12:34PM
major decisions impacting such things are usually make at
the consumer level, where marketing and sales droids, who ironically actually need moral and ethical guidance unlike engineers, convince ten citizens to buy a 5 mpg duallie pickup truck for every one hipster-mobile sold.
If the engineer designed a VW to piss fuel out on the street like a garden hose it would still cause less environmental damage than marketing did by convincing ten SWPL blonde trophy wives to buy a giant SUV to wait in drive thru line for 15 minutes at starbucks every morning.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 18 2017, @09:10PM (2 children)
Now with idiots like Trump and his minions at the helm, it's finally up to us people-- you know, the ones with brains-- to take matters into our own hands. It was just a matter of time until the means of saving the planet would be seized by the people! Score one for Science and collectivism!!
(Score: 1) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday March 18 2017, @11:13PM (1 child)
Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na Stick man! [imgur.com] Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @11:42AM
Your trolling is discriminating against people who don't do JavaScript!
(Score: 2) by Sulla on Saturday March 18 2017, @09:27PM (6 children)
Maybe engineers should look for more solutions that don't mean lifestyle changes. Hard to make people do lifestyle changes when the people telling them they must do it do not do it themselves (Al Gore). Instead look into ways we can cheat the system and get the environment how we want it.
Aluminum to block part of the sun, organisms better at getting rid of methane/CO2, doing this by chemical means, actually getting nuclear fussion.
As long as the solution is "just do as I say and not as I do" the average person will not change their ways.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 18 2017, @09:30PM (1 child)
> Hard to make people do lifestyle changes when the people telling them they must do it do not do it themselves (Al Gore).
The dude put his money where his mouth was by paying extra for carbon offsets.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 18 2017, @10:08PM
Gore should put something in his mouth - like a huge diseased donkey dick. Gore only established that the rules don't apply to rich bastards.
(Score: 2) by Alphatool on Sunday March 19 2017, @04:05AM (2 children)
It's pretty clear that any fix that requires a lifestyle change is never going to work, which means that active solutions are the only way to save the planet. Most options are either beyond our current capacity (like orbital sunshades) or have serious potential negatives, like adding iron to the ocean. I think that the most interesting and plausible engineering solution is to restore steppe ecosystems in the arctic, which servers to preserve permafrost and delay the release of massive quantities of methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. There is an active experiment [pleistocenepark.ru] testing this in Siberia at the moment, it's well worth a look.
It's only a partial solution to buy time rather than a permanent fix, but at the moment a little more time is a very valuable thing.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @04:42AM
Dude. No need for any of that crazy shit.
Renewable power is already the cheapest source of new power in the majority of countries and is expected to be the cheapest source of new power in every country by 2025. Save the money from that pie-in-sky stuff and spend it on converting existing infrastructure to renewables - because its the already-paid-for power-generation facilities that are holding us back. So deep-sixing them is going to require subsidies.
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Sunday March 19 2017, @06:16AM
Nuclear power with a Molten salt reactor can be a game-changer.
It becomes practical to synthesize jet fuel by pulling CO2 out of the oceans, for example.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @07:33AM
I've got a lifestyle change that many Americans can do. Stop getting healthcare - 24 million are signing up for that RIGHT NOW.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by turgid on Saturday March 18 2017, @09:31PM (6 children)
I'm going to build a house that can withstand high winds and rains, a good 25 metres above current sea level in a place with enough land to grow my own potatoes and somewhere to store water.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Funny) by mhajicek on Saturday March 18 2017, @10:31PM
Extremist prepper! Git'im boys!
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 18 2017, @10:52PM (4 children)
Good luck with that.
If civilization goes you are fucked anyway.
All it will take are a group of people stronger than you to take it and kick you out.
If you don't want to die, you should contribute to the solution rather than run away and wait for the problem to find you.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @07:35AM
Ah, where is "violently imposed monopoly" guy when you need him??! This will be the libertarian utopia he's dreaming of.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Sunday March 19 2017, @11:38AM
How can I contribute to the solution when most people appear to want to believe that there isn't even a problem? A few lowly individuals can't fix this. It requires organisation, a consensus of the majority, funding, research...
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Sunday March 19 2017, @12:44PM (1 child)
Basically he described the 99% of the USA landmass that voted for Trump. Its actually kinda funny when viewed that way. As a percentage of USA surface area roughly 1% of the acres of land voted for Hillary.
The problem with the "roving gang" theory is its always assumed a multicultural multilingual anti-gun group of coastie leftists will somehow be more organized than the rural unicultural farmers, after walking 1000 miles on foot all the way to Minnesota during the 90% of the year that its above 90F or below 0F outside, with a side dish of sure the odds of survival are merely 1e6 times higher for one group than the other but anything less than 100% means they shouldn't even try it, kinda like people shouldn't wear bicycle helmets because sometimes people wearing bicycle helmets die anyway so they should just not try at all.
Pragmatically voting by snout seems to give very poor results on long term average and voting by owned acre of land is an interesting idea to contemplate. That would likely be an enormously more successful civilization were it tried, all the virtues seem to align.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @10:14PM
> Pragmatically voting by snout seems to give very poor results on long term average and voting by owned acre of land is an interesting idea to contemplate.
Yeah, voting by only the land-owning gentry is the totally the best way to go.
Maybe you should just permanently move to that alternate universe you keep describing and leave reality to those equipped to deal with it.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 18 2017, @09:35PM
Right. At least get the shit straight. Or you'll start BSing about Ozone too.
Economy is NOT going to get decarbonized anytime soon. CO2 emissions will continue going up past 2050, easily. Most optimistically, they rate will not increase - almost doubled since 1990. The "green" lobby kind of guarantees failure to decarbonize by protesting every CO2-free nuclear power source, the only real base load power we have. But whatever, if I slap 200W of cells on roof of my car, then that will make it drive forever, right?
There are deniers that Global Warming is even real (just see idiots in the thread). Then there are "green" idiots that have same grasp of this problem as the deniers, just on the other side of the spectrum. And then there is reality. So wake the fuck up and smell all the carbon we are burning.
http://www.worldcoal.org/file_validate.php?file=Coal%20Facts%202015.pdf [worldcoal.org]
https://yearbook.enerdata.net/world-natural-gas-production.html [enerdata.net]
There is no silver bullet. No magic solution. +10C is where we are heading with our current policies.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 18 2017, @10:22PM (14 children)
This site is a man made global warming religion sprooking website if you believe the average unscientific and unskeptical articles appaearing here.
Scientists who say being skeptical is not being a scientist are not scientists. Science is based on skepticism - having faith is called religion.
Meanwhile its La Ninia again - droughts in Australia and flooding in South America. If you watch the news you'll see evidence of that solar event happening right now. Then when there is an El Ninio, floods in Australia, droughts in south america. Its like clockwork - yet these facts are missing from all UNIPCC FAR-5AR reports.
Can we stop trying to destroy capitolism and deny last year world wide record amounts of food were grown (where Greenpeace did not change the local market - economics does soylnet know that too?)
How much money does this website make from man made global warming advocacy?
I know I stopped donating - this an example of "news" (fake news) which wasnt around when we all first came here, back then, this site was worth bookmarking.
(Score: 4, Touché) by julian on Saturday March 18 2017, @10:34PM
It's not the sun [skepticalscience.com], but thanks for mouthing off about something you're ignorant about.
You can always leave this site if you don't like seeing your bullshit torn down every day. You won't be missed.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday March 18 2017, @10:35PM (5 children)
The flaw in your hypothesis is that you seem to think it can only get better from here.
Now, I actually majored in Earth Science, but managed to annoy a lot of people by stating agnosticism about just how much humans contribute to global warming--and make no mistake, the planet *is* getting hotter in the aggregate. That said, pretty much everything the people you idiots deride as "alarmists" are saying we should do is smart to do *anyway* for completely unrelated reasons.
I mean why the hell would it be a *bad* idea to get off using a fuel that gets us tangled up in tragic, self-defeating alliances? What the fuck is wrong with energy independence? Can someone tell me what's so all-fired horrible about making sure we don't run out of electricity, clean water, and edible vegetables?
Christ. The people hiding behind the excuse of "butbutbut we DON'T KNOWWWWW so DON'T HURT THE POOR CORPORATIONS!!!1111ONE" are so transparent it'd be laughable if it weren't so tragic. Get a clue: your attempts to reframe the subject fool no one except yourselves.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by VLM on Sunday March 19 2017, @01:04PM (4 children)
we should do is smart to do *anyway* for completely unrelated reasons.
The evils of authoritarianism .... setting up a culture oriented toward mindless belief in the supreme authorities where any statement from authorities beginning with "Jesus said ..." or "The Fuhrer said ..." is inherently true because of who said it and is mindlessly implemented, and it being a great idea even 99% of the time is really nice, HOWEVER inevitably historically seems to lead to serious issues during that 1% of the time they're wrong. Unless you're claiming in public that "Hitler did nothing wrong" in order to remain consistent with a belief in the doctrine of strict religious style authoritarianism.
"The climate change scientists said ..." is going to get abused, like that kind of thing has always been abused, and always will be abused. Even if its good almost all the time, history as its indoctrinated today shows that's not good enough and we're better off without it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @03:55PM
.... Your fear is so irrational it is kinda scary. "The big bad scientist is gonna tell me to sacrifice my first born child nooooo!" Are you just mad that trump is compared to Hitler therefore you'll try the same thing??? Crazy VLM, crazy.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday March 19 2017, @09:14PM (2 children)
What. The. Fuck. That is deranged. You're trying to couch this in terms of rational, well-deserved caution, but it came out sounding half like a petulant teenager and half like the crazy guy on the R train I used to run into who would tell all and sundry about the chip in his head.
Personally I don't think you said that in good faith. Which is to say, I don't think you're actually afraid of authoritarianism at all, but rather the authoritarianism that doesn't advance YOUR agenda. And I'm rather insulted you think I'm dumb enough to fall for that, let alone the average SN reader.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday March 20 2017, @01:50PM (1 child)
I admit I am greatly enjoying seeing you not countersignal your own authoritarian arguments even if it required a little mental gymnastics to get in position to see it.
And I'm rather insulted you think I'm dumb enough to fall for that, let alone the average SN reader.
I'm just pointing out what you wrote.... you could have at least accused me of misquoting you, or taking your comments way out of context. "U think I'm dum" wasn't much of a retort, wasn't unusually convincing that my argument was wrong. You can do better, probably.
I don't think you're actually afraid of authoritarianism at all
Once in awhile we do agree, nice to see that, and have a nice day.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday March 20 2017, @04:12PM
Go fuck yourself, VLM. You've disappeared so far up your own RWA asshole you eat every mean twice. How the hell did you get authoritarianism from "Gee let's get ourselves out of self-destructive alliances with the Middle East" anyway?
Seriously, get your head examined. Your responses are not sane, rational, proportional, or even on-topic. You sound like someone wrote a Markov bot and trained it on the chat logs of a bunch of alt-right IRC channels.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday March 18 2017, @11:29PM (4 children)
Let's ignore the ignorance too, not ignoring it may impede in BS peddling.
La Niña - rains in Australia [abc.net.au], dry in South America. And the other way around with El Niño.
Not that this cycle has any relevance in what's your discou... err, sorry, rambling I mean.
No, never!!! The US Capitol is better raised level - more esthetically pleasing - we should strive every day to destroy it.
A call to action here - if every true American would take only a teaspoon of capitol every morning (to shit it next day), the capitolism will disappear in no time. (granted, the waste recycling plans may have some troubles with the .... umm... processed capitolism; those sleazy bastards seems to be quite sticky).
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2, Troll) by aristarchus on Sunday March 19 2017, @07:41PM (3 children)
Can we stop trying to destroy capitolism...?
No, never!!! The US Capitol is better raised level - more esthetically pleasing - we should strive every day to destroy it.
The First Rule of SoylentNews is . . . . The SECOND Rule of SoylentNews is, when pendantically responding to a misspelling by an uneducated climate-denying moron, always throw in one of your own, to help the moron spell more dumbly in the future. That is the only way we can raze them to our level of discourse!
(Score: 3, Touché) by c0lo on Sunday March 19 2017, @09:32PM (2 children)
I'll keep that rule in mind, magister; if inadvertently I'm so successful, who knows what I can do on porpoise? (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday March 21 2017, @07:06AM (1 child)
Fly, my minions, or winged monkeys, or whatever! But get the hell off of that marine mammal! Just because there are "swim with the dolphins" programs where the dolphins seem like over V*aG3red Republican Senators, that is not reason to engage in inter-species Runaway1956 calling on line 4, please hold. Dolphins, you say?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday March 21 2017, @10:35AM
As uneducated climate-denying morons keep their head in the cloud of their ass and refuse to anchor their feed in the muddane reality, I though of enticing them with a marine presence. (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @02:07AM
Bleh, you are a pimple on this site. Science isn't about skepticism or faith, it is about following the facts. Right now the facts all point one way, but you "skeptics" (quotes cause you're actually the faith based one ignoring data) still won't admit theybare there. Shell, framing SHELL came out saying AGW is a thing that they tried to suppress!! For the love of pasta get a clue.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @06:17PM
You don't know what "skeptical" even means. You don't know what "wrong" means.
http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm [tufts.edu]
There are these people, called "climate scientists", who are paid to measure things and determine other things. And they kind of 95%+ agree that HUMANS are causing GLOBAL WARMING. So I don't know about you, but your child was sick and you visited 20 doctors, and 19 of them told you that your child needs this medicine or it will die, and 1 said "it's nothing", who would you listen to?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by caffeine on Sunday March 19 2017, @12:02AM (8 children)
The subject of this sounded interesting. Was excited to see discussions of engineering and scientific solutions to climate change. Then read "take a stand in tackling climate change by developing a declaration imposing restrictions and requirements on members." and realised it was the same hands tied behind the back ideas applied to engineers.
If the climate is changing and that is a problem regardless of ratio of natural and man made, we should be open to all engineering solutions to the problem. The greenie religious gaia BS that science is bad, so any scientific solutions must be bad, needs to be challenged head on.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @01:45AM (6 children)
realised it was the same hands tied behind the back ideas applied to engineers.
You realised that, huh?
Seems more like you failed at reading comprehension.
The article suggest no such thing. It says that engineers need to start paying attention to the impact their designs have on the climate. That it is unethical to ignore the full consequences of their work, just like it is unethical for medical researchers to ignore the full consequences of their work.
How you went from that to "greenie religious gaia BS" I don't know. But it sure as hell looks like you are the one with religious issues, not the authors of the article.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @07:52AM
As a medical researcher, the "full consequences" of using liquid He to diagnose your cancer is a lot of extra CO2 in the air. Not gonna do it, you'll have to walk it off.
(Score: 2) by caffeine on Sunday March 19 2017, @09:46AM (3 children)
I think you missed my point.
The article suggest no such thing. It says that engineers need to start paying attention to the impact their designs have on the climate. That it is unethical to ignore the full consequences of their work, just like it is unethical for medical researchers to ignore the full consequences of their work.
My point is that they are not talking about using engineering to tackle the problem head on, they are being asked to be less damaging when they solve other problems. Big difference.
I'm talking about climate engineering.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @04:01PM
Yaaa, that point was 100% lost in your original post.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @10:17PM (1 child)
Oh please.
Your post said nothing of the sort.
And your post-hoc rationalization doesn't even make sense - nothing the article suggests prevents anyone from "tackling the problem head on."
Just hang your head in shame for posting random idiocy and then trying to baffle us with bullshit instead of admitting your idiocy.
(Score: 2) by caffeine on Monday March 20 2017, @12:02AM
Perhaps you should reread my original post.
Was excited to see discussions of engineering and scientific solutions to climate change.
we should be open to all engineering solutions to the problem.
Seems clear to me that I was talking about engineering solutions to climate change. I guess I could have made it clearer by explaining that all solutions included climate engineering, not just mitigation.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday March 19 2017, @01:09PM
It says that engineers need to start paying attention to the impact their designs have on the climate
If you want a serious answer from engineering-land come back after marketing, sales, finance, and management all with higher impact on the problem than engineering, have signed it first. Otherwise it smells like "engineers are nerdy pushovers so we'll attack them first with this crap". Yeah um how bout a nice resounding "F no".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @06:34PM
Was excited to see discussions of engineering and scientific solutions to climate change.
The solution is known. Don't emit CO2. Now why would companies and people want to do that? Maybe if it costs money to emit, there would be an incentive not to. But for now, pollution is free, so why would any company or individual care except for their own personal beliefs?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @01:44AM (5 children)
The VW scandal was in part enabled by the anti-CO2 crowd. The lower CO2 emissions for diesel vs. gasoline became a selling point, while the fact that Diesel is otherwise much dirtier and bad for people's health was overlooked.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @01:54AM (2 children)
> the fact that Diesel is otherwise much dirtier and bad for people's health was overlooked.
Uh, no. The law required that VW specifically address that problem. VW broke the law, that is the scandal.
The only people who enabled VW to break the law were VW employees.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @11:31AM (1 child)
For many years, Diesel emissions standards in Europe were looser than for gasoline. Combine that with lax enforcement, and it's obvious that governments were giving Diesel a pass.
If you're an engineer who's priority is reducing CO2, Diesel looks good. If you care about health and air quality, it doesn't.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @10:09PM
> For many years, Diesel emissions standards in Europe were looser than for gasoline.
But that was not about CO2. That was about diesel being cheaper than gasoline.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @06:22PM (1 child)
The VW scandal was in part enabled by the anti-CO2 crowd.
Actually, more as a "quick fix" by stupid politicians. Diesel is terrible fuel for cars since it is guaranteed to pollute much more than gasoline. Gasoline is much cleaner and this was known back in 1950s. So some places thought that diesel would lower CO2 emissions.
But the scandal itself was created by few people inside VW itself. They couldn't get tests to pass, so they thought "what the hell, maybe no one will notice and I will get a bonus".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 19 2017, @07:45PM
Gasoline is much cleaner and this was known back in 1950s. So some places thought that diesel would lower CO2 emissions.
First: this makes no sense. Second: it is not true.