That’s not what “critical” means though. I could say tuna is critical to my health because 80% of my protein comes from tuna, but a sane person would be like “why is you so obsessed with tuna” and “there are other kinds of food out there”. Most people dont even try anything different. My fucking neighbors drives their kids to school because they are too lazy to wake up 15 minutes earlier to catch the school bus, and waste an extra 20 minutes of their time in the process. Most car trips are less than a few miles in the US or something like that.

I’d argue we’d have a much stronger economy with dramatically fewer personal cars and car trips.

Yet deaths are up, especially for pedestrians and cyclists. Per distance driven is the wrong metric anyway since more highway miles makes the system appear safer than it actually is. Plus automakers and regulators prioritize occupant safety, not actual absolute safety. And traffic “engineers” optimize travel time while ignoring things like induced demand. The regulators (US focus) are an absolute joke whem it comes to safety, as the multitude of gigantic pickup trucks and SUVs and the dogshit infrastructure clearly show.

Fuck free gas, the oil needs to stay in the ground.

A TV connected to a computer is a dumb display and nothing more. Methinks you’re both in agreement.

NYT and wild titles are like peas and carrots. “Cycling” of course is much more than the UCI world tour, but NYT continues to frame the simple act of riding a bicycle as something of a niche hobby or professional sport. You’re absolutely right that it will be the one constant through whatever climate hellscape is unfolding.

I wish shrinkflation worked on cars and trucks, they just keep getting bigger and bigger.

I think universal programs tend to have more public support.

How is it better? It all just evaporates and breaks down into the same amount of CO2, while also poisoning some habitat along the way. I guess it’s less NOx, so maybe that’s a benefit?

A lot of the most dangerous roads are in… surprise surprise… lower income areas that tend to have a greater proportion of minorities. And traffic death disproportionally affects non rich/white demographics. Despite what people love to parrot, speed enforcement (yes even cameras) increases safety and reduce deaths. Cameras work, and are much cheaper than actual infrastructure investment. So it’s no surprise this admin wants to do something vaguely muh freedom that proportionally harms poor/brown people more. Bonus points if your average chode would assume cameras are DEI, which seems likely. We already have something worse - flock.

Right. One issue is that the US’s glidepath towards low GWP includes significant HFO usage (which is a PFAS) rather than speedrunning natural refrigerants which are the only sustainable long term solution. So we’ll likely have more warming, but less PFAS as a result of this, along with higher costs and more uncertainty. The focus needs to be on natural refrigerants though long term.

Those are parliamentary systems of government…

If a simple majority is required to rule, then logically two parties will form somewhere near 50% support. The fact that other parties have existed in the past is an exception to the logical conclusion of two party rule inherent in the design itself.

That’s not how it played out though. Rural areas had higher death rates.

You’re a bit less cynical than I am, so I applaud you for that. I’m not sensing mailce per se, but I’ve noticed the same pro-hydrogen content for years from this particular user and it’s getting pretty wild considering the massive, observable growth in the EV sector and the proven viability. There will always be folks tilting at windmills, however. For me, I’m going to continue promoting walkable/bikable/transit focused communities with EVs as a backstop.

Hydrogen cars are dead and EVs won already. This pro hydrogen position has only ever benefited the fossil industry, and is laguhable considering the state of the industry in 2026 (gestures broadly at China). Their arguments are simply disingenuous (e.g. obviously efficiency doesn’t matter because bikes are more efficient than cars, so let’s all agree to use inefficient cars). Hydrogen will be a thing for some industries, but not cars.

What are you actually advocating for here? Not electrifying and waiting another few decades for hydrogen? You come off as excessively defensive of the practically nonexistent H2 industry and excessively critical of electrification, which is basically the Shell and Exxon position. We don’t have time wait for anything, we need to use the tech we have now to reduce warming. Where do we get the hydrogen in your world? Is it blue or green? Blue is just fossil fuels with extra steps and green doesn’t make sense until we have significant excess renewables and already electrified the easy stuff (buildings) and then it might still make sense only for industry/shipping and niche stuff. H2 itself has a GWP of 11 or so, and we will leak quite a bit. So again, what are you actually arguing for? I can’t buy hydrogen, period. I can’t buy a hydrogen vehicle, or a hydrogen furnace, or a hydrogen anything. What do you actually think we plebs should be doing here? I already want green steel as much as you do.

Also to compress it, chill it, transport it, and store it, while avoiding leaks and fires. You’re absolutely right though, first comes renewables (and a shit ton of batteries), hopefully in parallel some green steel and chemical processes, then heavy transit and the harder edge cases to electrify, assuming electrification hasn’t already solved those issues by then. Talking about regular folks buying fuel cell cars is not realistic.

Exactly. Colorado also has an independent committee. Those asswipes managed to give equal seats to republicans last election and now its 4-4 dems/gop despite dems having a large statewide majority. Like thanks a lot, what a noble and fair system we have here. Give me equal shenanigans until everyone plays by the same rules. Yes we still have Boebert.

It’s just microclimates. I particularly hate the article’s framing of white materials as “geoengineering”, which implies that black asphalt roofs and roads are somehow not. We also know urban heat islands shift moisture downwind. So they’ve modeled some micro interaction that shows piecemeal application of low and high albedo surfaces can possibly result in some weird local effects on precipitation, all packaged up for misinterpretation by EPDM manufacturers.

Meanwhile everyone with a brain knows that black asphalt and roofs are hotter than white surfaces. The solution is of course stop black roofs and the bate minimum amount of roads/parking lots, not try to make everything heat absorptive in the name of equality.

Yep, mostly becuase cold climates are high latitude and they don’t get a ton of free BTUs from the sun all winter anyway. An exception might be lower latitude, high altitude areas (just guessing). I’d also guess that people doing white roofs are more likely to do basic air sealing and insulation retrofits.