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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34968 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 3, 2023

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E.P.A. Is Said to Propose Rules Meant to Drive Up Electric Car Sales Tenfold.

The Biden administration is planning some of the most stringent auto pollution limits in the world, designed to ensure that all-electric cars make up as much as 67 percent of new passenger vehicles sold in the country by 2032, according to two people familiar with the matter.

That would represent a quantum leap for the United States — where just 5.8 percent of vehicles sold last year were all-electric — and would exceed President Biden’s earlier ambitions to have all-electric cars account for half of those sold in the country by 2030.

...

The proposed rule would not mandate that electric vehicles make up a certain number or percentage of sales. Instead, it would require that automakers make sure the total number of vehicles they sell each year did not exceed a certain emissions limit. That limit would be so strict that it would force carmakers to ensure that two thirds of the vehicles they sold were all-electric by 2032, according to the people familiar with the matter.

To me this looks like they failed to make electric vehicles attractive to consumers compared to gas ones, so they're giving up on that and instead are going to effectively make gas vehicles illegal to manufacture. It's absolutely insane to me that the EPA can just destroy a major industry like this, and have a massive effect on the lives of every American, and they don't have ask anyone. Congress doesn't vote on it, the president doesn't sign it, it just happens because they said so.

I think that's a trend that's common with environmental regulations. Whether it's CFL bulbs, paper straws, gas stoves or low flow toilets, consumers get stuck with an inferior substitute and the alleged crisis never seems to actually get solved. It's always just a prelude for the next demand. And by doing it through the administrative state elected officials never have to take any flack for it. If congress had to pass a bill outlawing incandescent bulbs and the president had to sign it then voters would have someone to get mad at. But when it's a new DOE regulation that just appears, people don't know who to blame. Nobody ever has to argue for it or stake their career on it.

So I don't think things will change. Just like the CDC can declare themselves dictators of all apartment rentals because of the Covid crisis, the EPA can declare itself king of all energy because of the climate crisis. Year after year, more things will be banned, prices will go up and life will get worse. But most people will either not realize the reason or will have entirely forgotten that things used to be different.

gas stoves

There was a minor media circus about them, but they haven't actually been banned, have they?

Anyway, induction is amazing and I hope both gas and conventional electric stoves get banned.

  • -23

Not sure how true it is, but it's said that induction stoves screw with pacemakers. If true, that would make them unfit for universally mandated use.

Apart from the policy being misguided in the first place. What's the justification?

OK, pacemakers are the only good argument against the ban I've seen so far. The only research paper that I can find is this one from 2006:

Conclusion: Patients are at risk if the implant is unipolar and left-sided, if they stand as close as possible to the induction cooktop, and if the pot is not concentric with the induction coil. Unipolar pacing systems can sense interference generated by leakage currents if the patient touches the pot for a long period of time. The most likely response to interference is switching to an asynchronous interference mode. Patients with unipolar pacemakers are at risk only if they are not pacemaker-dependent.

I don't know what that means TBH.

Having exhausted the scientific literature, I tried the next best thing: Reddit. There are anecdotal reports from people with pacemakers cooking with induction and people with pacemakers who were told by their doctors not to cook with induction. No reports from people with pacemakers who tried cooking with induction and died.

Edit: And what about people who have embedded metal fragments that can't be removed? I guess my ban isn't a very good idea after all.

No reports from people with pacemakers who tried cooking with induction and died.

A very literal example of survivorship bias.

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