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Comment by Eric_WVGG | Hacker News Reader

As a greenie, there are plenty of things that I think are kind of dumb and misguided (say, automobiles), but at least I understand the thinking behind them, and hope that some day better alternatives (public transit, self driving cars, bicycle and scooter sharing) will make them obsolete.

But leaf blowers are unique in that they're not only obnoxious and wasteful, but also stupid to begin with. You’re spending money and time and effort and polluting both the environment AND mental environment to avoid raking, just so the wind can undo your efforts??

Leaf blowers make me profoundly misanthropic.

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I will add to your burden of sadness: in some places with snow they pepper the beautiful snowy winter streets with grit so that the delicate automobiles are facilitated in their mad career. In the spring when it all melts they need to clean all this grit up... some of it is sweepable from the asphalt, but much has been displaced onto the margins and roadside lawns, so they need to rake it out. But what is this done with? Why, with nothing other than a horrible modified strimmer with four rubber blades which scrapes the debris into a pile. Like one of these: https://www.ebay.com/bhp/power-sweeper

If you think a leaf-blower is irritating you have never heard one of these f*s.

Leaf blowers are demonstrably faster than raking, though. So... I don't get your point.

Even more, it isn't like rakes don't have a horrible sound of their own, as soon as you get a single paved section involved.

When I saw Gardners using leaf blowers in SF, Pacific Heights, they mostly just blew the leafs onto the street.. how that's allowed is beyond me..

With a rake or broom you can remove the leafs/dust, a blower mostly just makes it someone else's problem.

I think it depends on the lot, but while you certainly can blow leaves into someone else's yard or the street it's definitely possible to control things enough to blow it into a pile or into the woods

Some cities collect leaves and all you need to do is rake them into the street. The city comes around and sucks them up. I know I've lived in at least one if not two that did this - one of those cities also offered free compost to people. I seem to recall them using a street sweeper vehicle to do this with. And honestly, if you already use the street sweepers, might as well do what you can with them especially if you were simply going to have people use special lawn refuse bags for their leaves anyway.

That's when you swap for a broom. It makes a beautiful sound.

We have different definitions of beauty. :)

That said, I definitely have a push broom I use to finish off the sidewalk. Have to first rake, though, as i am moving a lot of leaves over it.

"demonstrably"?

Please define your terms. I have seen the people wielding these monstrosties piss around for hours chasing one or two leaves or meaninglessly form pile of leaves that have no function other than to appear large so that the other inefficient human can stop only once to load them onto their gasoline chariot.

Most of this work could easily be either: 1) solved by refusing the scorched earth, anal standard of lawn care ; 2) good old fashioned, quiet wheel barrows and rakes operated by people paid a fair wage for manual labor instead of externalizing costs onto the rest of us.

If you want to really supercharge leaf collection, use a large tarp instead of a wheelbarrow, then carry your plunder like santa. Wheelbarrows are a waste of energy for carrying leaves.

I have seen the same with rakes. Done the same, truthfully.

Used even remotely competently, a blower beats a rake. Hands down.

Now, there is a solid argument that for small yards, a rake and broom are fine. And indeed, that is what I use when doing my yard. With a large yard, though, blower with bagging lawn mower could accomplish in one day and ten bags what would take three days and forty bags. Easy.

Companies are not going to give their employees lead blowers unless it is a lot more efficient.

> Even more, it isn't like rakes don't have a horrible sound of their own, as soon as you get a single paved section involved.

I can't hear your rake through my headphones two blocks and three stories up.

I’m glad that there are Morons like you in the worls to help skew down average intelligence.

My electric corded leaf blower would like to have a word

Your coal fired power station would like to have a word.

Your physics teacher would like to have a word about efficiency of two-stroke ICE vs electric engine + power station.

Fact: A completely coal-fired Tesla releases less emissions than an ICE car.

Not to mention an inefficient handheld 2-stroke motor

What's the ratio? How much better?

I can't find my own calculations but it was about 50% of an ICE car, even accounting for coal.

Here is a pretty interesting philosophical take on the hated leaf blower: http://julesboykoff.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Boykoff_L...

Oh, I have an example for you:

One of my neighbors used a leaf blower just hours before the expected arrival of a hurricane.

Explain that one.

In any large group of people, most of them are idiots.

"Never underestimate the poor taste of the public"

I had a neighbor who would swat flies outside.. There's a lot of crazy idiots around. I am no longer surprised by their disturbing frequency of appearance.

The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

The Unabomber advocated disbanding industrialized agriculture which would starve most of the worlds population to death

If most of the world's population starved to death then our climate change challenge would be behind us.

The total collapse of society based on climate change could arguably kill billions. The costs of inaction are mounting.

I heard someone on HN say to treat climate change like a war. If we did we would make more drastic changes required, which under normal logic would be "we can't do that it will kill the economy..."

I wonder if the planet will be habitable in 1000 years time by 'traditional' humans. We may need to transcode ourselves into computers, or at least get pretty damn bionic.

We're are a civilization of people that can't maintain proper tire pressure in cars. There really is no hope.

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