The space is saturated with anti-EV FUD.
“We used to have a river before that now doesn’t exist. There isn’t a drop of water,” says Rivera. “And not only here in Copiapó but in all of Chile, there are rivers and lakes that have disappeared—all because a company has a lot more right to water than we do as human beings or citizens of Chile.”
https://www.nrdc.org/stories/lithium-mining-leaving-chiles-i...
And this is in Chile, the second largest producer of lithium. Just because it goes against your views it being anti-EV, doesn't make it FUD. People have other types of grievances like the human cost of lithium mining, even for the amazing storage capability of lithium batteries.
> While Chile's plan to take control of its lithium industry has caused global shockwaves, state-led production of the metal used to make electric vehicle batteries is seen by analysts as likely years away given technical and political challenges.
~ Reuters
That's FUD, my dude.
Only if you explain it the way you just did.
The fact is, instead of restricting water usage related to lithium mining, they'd rather let the river run dry. While the drough is a major factor, so too is how the regulations allow the continued abuse of the limited resource.
These conversations are barely worth having unless you're willing to go into long chains of explaining the complexity behind the situations.
I find more and more that even within the NGO and environmentalist community people only care about how natural resources impact people in a utilitarian sense. I can respect that philosophical position, but it makes me equal parts angry and sad that it's taken as a given. I don't believe life on earth exists just to serve human needs.
In that respect, unless you believe over polluting the environment is an absolute necessity to avoid malnutrition, pointing at NK's economic policy issues in this discussion doesn't help us much.
One view is private vs public capitalism. USSR vs USA, respectively. Extreme wealth concentration at the expense of everyone else.
Both are anti-democratic.
And in this vein, we shouldn't forget Mao's "four pests campaign" in China under Mao which caused mass starvation by killing sparrows which had been eating insects, leaving them with a literal plague of locusts.
Mao would probably have murdered anyone who called him a capitalist: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalist_roader
But claiming it fits a bespoke definition of "capitalism" seemingly invented for this particular discussion, despite that being against literally everything they professed, seems a bit much.
They didn't end up with extreme wealth concentration by letting people freely exchange goods and services. That usually happens when people take control of who is able to exchange goods, whether via monopolies or government control.
I’m guessing the public capitalism / private capitalism has to do with where the ownership of property, concentration of human capital is, and there the market making prices are found. In that sense, the public/private dichotomy mostly works. Sure, Communists argue there is more virtue to their system than simply market making and state owned property, but those are effectively downstream / derived qualities.
And Mao murdered tons of people (both directly and the way a mob boss would have) for many different reasons. He probably was the kind of person who might murder someone because he woke up on the wrong side of the bed. I don’t think that matters much in this discussion and I don’t think we should self-censor our thoughts because the ghost of a terrible person might hear us.
Tragically, I biffed. USSR is public (as in the state is the owner) and USA is private (as in you and me).
I wish I could remember where I heard this taxonomy. James C Scott, Richard Wolfe, other? Sorry.
A quick search suggests "USSR is state capitalism" was one of Trotsky's (many) criticisms of the USSR. Wage labor, exploitation, yadda, yadda.
To quote "Both are anti-democratic". Which I don't understand. Is your claim that both systems (as practiced in the USSR and USA) led to extreme wealth concentration? Did the economy increase during this concentration? If so, do you still consider this "anti-democratic".
The entire argument about the US not having a democracy but a republic really stems (in modern times) from the John Birch Society.
Yes.
> The argument is that democracy ALWAYS leads to tyranny and collapse.
Rather than Plato's mob rule criticism, I'm using the more contemporary capitalism-vs-democracy (winner-takes-all) food fight.
The tension in USA, at least, has always been wealth vs democracy. The "liberal" in the traditional "liberal democracy" was a reference to our economic system of free enterprise. The aspiration was to balance winner-takes-all with will-of-the-people. Basically the formulation of modern Nordic "democratic socialism".
These outcomes, as the article alludes to, are due to the privatization of resource rights, which is a consequence of Pinochet government going all in on the policies Milton Friedman promoted [2].
Citizens of Chile are more victims of neoliberalism than they are of any particular industry.
Victims of neoliberalism you say?
> What we are now doing to the world... is new in the experience of the Earth. It is mankind and his activities that are changing the environment of our planet in damaging and dangerous ways. The result is that change in future is likely to be more fundamental and more widespread than anything we have known hitherto. Change to the sea around us, change to the atmosphere above, leading in turn to change in the world's climate, which could alter the way we live in the most fundamental way of all.
> The environmental challenge that confronts the whole world demands an equivalent response from the whole world. Every country will be affected and no one can opt out. Those countries who are industrialised must contribute more to help those who are not.
-The Baroness Thatcher
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)...
Argentina seems to be going bankrupt and drown in enormous inflation every couple of years. That isn't the case with Chile. Based on this factor alone, Chile and Argentina aren't peers.
I don't know enough about Uruguay to judge.
> GDP per capita is a very narrow indicator that does not come close to telling enough about the economic condition of a country.
In what was us GDP per capita deficient, and what criteria would you propose exactly?
However, if I were considering investment from my own pocket, political and economic stability would play a much higher role for my decision making than GDP per capita. And Argentina would therefore be a big no-no, while Chile might make the cut.
Would you make a different choice?
I understand that, you were the one who dismissed GDP per capita as an objective measurement of economic development.
The point I was making that the OECD exists to espouse a particular model of global economic organization and development, which is politically informed.
As to your question about investment, what might be beneficial to me as an investor isn’t necessarily the same as what is beneficial to a citizen of a particular country.
Yeah, OECD is very political. No disagreement about that.
But I would say that the correlation of "being attractive for FDI" and "having good standards of living among the general population" is rather high and given that FDI tends to predate said growth of standards of living, there actually may be causality.
Excluding resource-rich countries that grew fat on something that comes out of the earth, pretty much every country whose standards of living soared since, say, 1950, attracted a lot of FDI beforehand.
After all, the same things that attract investors (stability, low crime, high educational attainment, reliable electricity supply, rule of law) tend to be good for the citizens as well.
(And they aren't the same. Chile's is a lot higher at the moment.)
"Pinochet's economic policy is vastly overrated"
> Mining a bunch of copper, helping your cronies get rich, and pumping up land prices is not a "miracle".
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/pinochets-economic-policy-is-v...
> In the U.S., Pinochet is often a talking point in economics debates. He was a brutal dictator, who killed thousands and who tortured, imprisoned, and/or exiled tens of thousands more. It’s very understandable that Chileans would want to expunge any portion of his legacy. But in the U.S., it’s his economic policy that continues to be debated decades later. Some libertarians believe that despite the brutality of his regime, he implemented economic policies that were wildly successful in raising Chilean living standards.
There is the horseshoe theory that says that either extremes have more in common with each other then they have with the center [1].
If I we’re to connect neoliberalism with Soviet communism, I’d say that both ideologies are examples of high modernism, which is the idea that leaders can optimize on a metric and ignore all other factors that contribute to their countries success. This never has positive outcomes for the people living in those countries.
It’s more likely that climate change was responsible for this problem.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/04/21/chile-lithium-reserves-...
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35762026 and marked it off topic.
Incidentally, bogus generalizations about HN are one of the lowest-quality forms of this. Please avoid that.
The community is divided on most topics, especially the divisive ones—this is neither surprising nor interesting, and perceptions about what's "saturated" are driven by people's passions on $topic.
It's crazy out there right now - massive political pressure with tax breaks, climate anxiety marketing for EVs, mass confusion about energy supply chains and pollution whether oil or electric, a lack of clarity about battery ingredients and lifecycles from extraction to disposal.
1) Wok cooking, can’t use a round bottomed wok easily or create “wok hei”. Though you can also do it with a blowtorch: https://www.seriouseats.com/hei-now-youre-a-wok-star-a-fiery...
2) Causing childhood asthma. Gotta employ all those healthcare workers somehow…
Previous Serious Eats articles about it even cited the lack of performance from gas stoves and recommended modifying one with a Wok Mon, but even then the results weren't perfect.
Edit: For some reason I feel the need to clarify that this isn't a comment in support of, or against, gas stoves. I just like cooking and am aware of how hard it is to achieve quality wok hei at home.
Tabletop induction burners that use standard outlets are way more cost effective than induction ranges, too. That thing is $200, which didn’t even pay the electrician bill to put in the 240V 50A outlet and circuit for my range.
The Bosch one probably would have worked fine but for whatever reason it wasn't the look the spouse wanted.
Even though I was fully onboard I could see the specific pan thing annoying some dedicated gas people.
I’m back to gas and no longer have people boiling water so I can boil water.
Once you've tried induction, going back to gas feels absolutely primitive.
Induction is amazing for some things, but for some other things I prefer gas.
Given the choice, I'd have some kind of combination of gas and induction. Maybe half and half?
If I had a choice I wouldn’t use gas for a few reasons. Air quality, the amount of water that gets released and fire hazard. Seen too many buildings explode on tv lol.
Induction only works when the pan is on it by definition.
But they do not work well (or at all) when a pad is moved around a lot, or it has a rounded bottom like a Wok or Karahi. At least the ones ive used don't. You are also reliant on the designers to give enough heat levels to actually cook properly and to provide a generally usable device that is fit for purpose. None of these things are an issue with even the cheapest gas stoves.
Having a both would be perfect. Just one or two gas burners for frying would be fine.
Most of the world does that.
Of course, what actually serious chefs find is that once the subsidy for gas is removed (by removing legislation requiring utilities and buildings to provide piped natural gas), not only are induction stoves much more effective, cook faster, etc., they also keep their kitchens incredibly cool and make them much better work environments than having a bunch of gas burners around.
For the restaurants that need woks they can use a gas stove and have a gas cylinder shipped in every morning.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10473289.1992.10...
Edit: why am I being downvoted? Is it not a legitimate question to ask why not go all the way with converting to electric when appliances exist for all three use cases? Do my farts stink too bad?
Stoves don't matter in the big picture here, they are secondary to whatever people are already doing for heat.
Also this isn't about replacing a working stove in an existing building it's about substituting electric versions for gas versions if there are no gas lines, so I think you missed the entire context of the thread.
The fact that NY’s decision to ban gas hookups in new buildings is being framed as banning gas stoves is in itself the result of gas industry propaganda. In fact, Gas stoves are the one thing that can easily be continued because people can use gas cylinders.
Huge win for whom?
> but the gas industry spends heavily on propaganda to convince people otherwise:
Propaganda goes both ways.
I'm guessing you have some other view from your comment, please explain.
Us. We can make electricity from lots of things and turns out in about 10 years a lot of it will be made from renewables in most countries, and the trend is only going one way.
There's a reason there is a push to electrify everything.
Most people would understand those two phrases to mean the same thing.
Is there any other kind of propaganda?
Ever heard of "the status quo"?
If my stuff is dominant, I either say nothing or make it so that any other proposal looks like it's new and risky or crazy. You know, FUD.
Propaganda has a lifecycle. Not every kind of propaganda is the same or as obvious.
And you're falling for the fossil fuel one, good job!
Yeah, it's weird, right? Why _are_ people so invested in burning natgas and coal and other hydrocarbons for large-scale power generation when a plethora of proven near-zero-emissions alternatives exist?
From a climate-change perspective, banning natgas cookstoves is a few pennies saved on like a thousand dollar expenditure. It's similar to the performative "charging for plastic takeaway bags" and "not bringing out table water" nonsense that California likes to do from time to time... it's way easier than making a real dent in the underlying problem, it inconveniences a ton of people (so they know you're doing something), and because "something" has been done, enough of those people don't bother finding out about and loudly and continually agitating for making a real dent in the underlying problem.
One way or the other, it needs to go away. It's not performative, it's necessary for achieving long-term emissions goals, and it's low-hanging fruit.
Sure, agreed.
> It's not performative...
Right now it very much is because, as you say:
> ...it's low-hanging fruit.
As I said:
> ...banning natgas cookstoves is a few pennies saved on like a thousand dollar expenditure.
and
> [Low-impact, high-visibility stuff like that is done because] it's way easier than making a real dent in the underlying problem
If you'll pardon the mixed metaphors: When it comes to environmental stuff, a lot of the time, the low-hanging fruit isn't worth picking because the high-hanging fruit is the thing that's the immediate wildfire hazard.
Your argument basically boils down to “I’m in debt and need to start spending thousands of dollars less. Cutting out this completely unnecessary expenditure will only save me a few dollars so I shouldn’t cut out this completely unnecessary expense because it won’t save me all the thousands I need to save”.
Sure it's good you have less debt but while you were resolving the small loan you were racking up massive interest on the big one
Precluding new residential infrastructure is high-hanging fruit. It precludes leaky infrastructure.
It is still good to fix if it contributes to a significant amount of warming, but it isn't cumulative like CO2: it eventually degrades in the atmosphere.
...into CO2
In theory they are supposed to be reusable but in practice I think they are going to wind up being single-use for most people. Maybe we'll start using them as garbage bags as they accumulate around the house.
That's the part I struggle with.
Also, if you order groceries for delivery, they bring your order in reusable bags. Which you then keep.
My point is these re-usable bags have a tendency to accumulate over time. Maybe not at the same rate as plastic bags would otherwise, but once you have dozens of these bags at home it starts to be tempting to just use them as bin liners and toss them, just like we did with plastic bags
Which sort of defeats the whole purpose, right? The ideal is people would buy as many as they need and use them for years.
But that isn't going to happen any time soon imo. If ever.
My biggest problem is feeling awkward when I take a bag from store X into store Y.
(When paper bags aren't available. I've always preferred paper.)
Product packaging probably generates 1-2 orders of magnitude more waste than the bags holding the product.
And banning natural gas piped infrastructure is an easy win.
1. No one is banning natural gas stoves. You can still use a natural gas stove. You just need to bring your own cylinder like most of the world and half the food YouTubers already do.
2. Natural gas stoves have significant indoor pollution impact. It’s a huge benefit even outside the climate change side.
3. Natural gas infrastructure is expensive, dangerous and unnecessary. Cities will benefit from the removal of all those pipes from under their streets even if climate change wasn’t a thing.
Banning gas hookups is such an obvious win (again, for those who want, gas stoves are still available with a cylinder), it’s remarkable to see the level of status quo bias that exists.
EDIT: would probably be a political nightmare to implement though…
It’s been used and operated safely for hundreds of years in cities on the East Coast. The idea that it’s dangerous is simply FUD to scare people into spending $1000 on a future piece of e-waste to cook their food.
Although the right to repair movement seems to be making some headway recently, so maybe all is not lost. Touch screens (with no alternative), and subscription service shoehorns need the same treatment, ban them.
But, coil-based electric tops are an embarassment for anyone that sells them, installs them, and "uses" them.
I expect natural gas for heating will be the long pole of greenhouse gas emissions. Eventually we'll have to disassemble what we already have. For some areas, it may make sense to do that soon.
Boston, for example, has old and leaky natural gas pipes that have been found to be leaking tons of methane into the atmosphere and causing occasional explosions. The city will probably have to invest billions of dollars into repairing its natural gas distribution pipes in the next 10-20 years, which would remain in use for 50-60 years more.
Or, they could spend a bit more money, convert everyone to induction cooktops and heat pumps, and get rid of the natural gas altogether.
Resistive or induction?
How much of that makes it into the pan, and how much is waste heat?
The practical effect is food spends less time steaming, so for example, a stir fry doesn’t come out soggy and unappetizing.
I do not have the problem you are describing.
> Gas is superior to all forms of electric in recovery time.
This is really going to be dependent on which stoves we are comparing, along with the type of pan being used.
> There simply is /more energy/ in a cubic foot of gas compared to what a home electric circuit can deliver in the same time frame. It’s science, plain and simple.
Science as I alluded to in my previous comment, would account for waste heat. Which is where a significant amount of the energy of a gas stove goes.
We’re talking about appliances here, OP was comparing a high end gas stove’s output to electric. My point is that my couple hundred dollar unit can replicate many of the things OP was claiming you’d need to buy a $5,000-$10,000 gas stove for (though I am in no way suggesting that these are equivalent in functionality to each other).
But the thing about a cheap gas stove is that it performs as well as a high end one, at least for a one person household like mine. If I'd invest in induction it would all get much more expensive to get the same performance.
Edit: Look, I don’t mean to come across as though I have an issue with your budget or choices, but you’re derailing a conversation that was in response to someone claiming that electric was inferior specifically in comparison to high end gas stoves. Your $300 range isn’t going to put out the 15-25k Btus that OP was talking about, which was why I made the comparison to a relatively less expensive induction device. I personally use that device for a significant amount of my cooking as I rent a unit that only has an underpowered 2 burned stove.
Meanwhile most of the energy from my electric stove actually makes it into my pan instead of out a vent or into my kitchen.
Also the power goes out at my house about 2x a year when we have windstorms. The stove still works, induction doesn't. So I can still cook and make coffee. My other option would be to use my grill in that situation. I like having backups.
It's not some conspiracy with me, I just didn't like it as much. There are dozens of us.
I also ran an experiment a few years back with some particulate sensors. I noticed when measuring during wild fire smoke the particulates went way up when I cooked bacon. So I did it again on a hot plate not gas. Same thing. The bacon grease and cooking itself was giving off a ton of particulates. To me the lesson was maybe cook outdoors. Or figure out how to plumb a vent through an upstairs living space attic and roof to vent outside.
I've also been hesitant on electric cars. My friend has an original roadster that I've driven several times. It's great even tho I can't even get out of it because of my size. However I go out to ski and road trip a lot. I constantly am evaluating if an ev is ready for that use, it's getting closer but not yet. The ski hills I go to are near range for a EV and the charging spots are all taken as are all the spots so that's a risk. Camping and backpacking is more iffy. There was charging at Yellowstone in a few spots but I doubt they ran it to mowich lake yet.
But the kicker is I just have several old cars (08) that are in great shape and I hate all the shit on new cars when I rent them. There's a few features that are great like the anti-tbone feature, and some backup cameras. But he'll they used to beep whenever someone was near you, or they freak out when your 5 feet from a hedge when parking moving .2 mph and slam on the brakes, or the infotainment system is slow, crashes, and has no buttons. So I'll just hold while those bugs are worked out. I think these cars may all get to 20 years easily.
I’m guessing this might be a temperature dependent issue. I enjoy using a cast iron to brown meats, but I really dial it back in homes without true range hoods (e.g. they vent back indoors). If I go for maybe 25% browning, I can massively reduce the smoke. It feels a shame to not do a steak to perfection, but when I’ll prefer that to venting the whole place for an hour.
Anyway it's pretty easy to play around with. I didn't save the data anywhere unfortunately.
Huh? Why would this be necessary? Just use the range hood that should already be installed and should vent to the outside. Are these not required in your country for some strange reason?
And yes most people here use it for cooking and hot water only. I spend like a tenner on gas each month.