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Comment by sp332 | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, but I also remember there being way more diesel fumes and soot. Cars and trucks have gotten much cleaner over the past 10-20 years, so why would this be contributing to a decline in pollinators?

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Persistent pollution - there is a whole class of pesticides: herbicides, fungicides, insecticides, etc. That use complex chlorinated hydrocarbons, that stay in the environment, in various forms, and which often degrade into more toxic, and more persistent (survive longer) versions. For example there is more DDT in glacier runoff water now, than there was in the 70s and 80s, even though it hasn't been used since then. The story is complex, and goes on, and on.

The ones listed in the actual article aren't that, though. NOx is down dramatically. Remember acid rain?

Yes indeed. I think the whole air pollution question is a distraction to the bug problem. (Rather an addition to?) There are serious issues with modern gasoline, and it's byproducts of combustion, though. All together there are a lot of pollutants which we need to clean up, still ongoing. It's a huge problem.

Diesel might be cleaner in dense cities leading to less smog but coal power around the world still belts out plenty of particulates, scubbers are not perfect and regulations are lax in some localities. One area is marine shipping where different countries have regulations requiring certain emissions standards in their territorial waters but out in the open ocean it's a race to the bottom burning the cheapest fuels possible. It's not just a matter of any ships that want to be able to travel to those ports being built with an exhaust system clean enough to meet regulations, they'll switch fuels going into and out of zones with stricter regulations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZZ591x0Ajs

Cars and trucks don't burn bunker fuel so thick you have to heat it with steam just to pump it into the engine. Local hotspots of pollution on land have gone down, but globally there's still plenty of heavy polluters out there.

The human population has exploded though, so presumably increases in other types of pollution have more than made up for decreases in diesel fumes and soot.

Even electric cars pollute in the form of microplastics from the tires and toxic brake dust

More pollution from tires due to the added weight, less from brake disks and plates due to regenerative braking. Not sure if this has a measurable impact compared to the reduced CO2 emissions.

It's less brake dust only if you use an old school automatic I'd assume. On a manual engine braking does the same in practice as regenerative braking: slowing down without using brake pads, only it does this with the force of a vacuum rather than friction in the EV motor. Coming up to a 25mph stop or an uphill offramp, its actually possible to come to an almost complete stop (assuming you'd clutch in to not stall) by engine braking in a manual without touching your brakes at all. Newer automatics seem to have some engine braking capability baked in rather than just kicking you into overdrive and coasting when you lift off the throttle.

and from the power stations which generate the electricity they run on.

EVs are certainly a step in the right direction, but if we are burning fossil fuels to generate the electricity to power them, then the EV has just shifted the point where the greenhouse gasses are produced, not lowered the total amount of greenhouse gas

(exceptions for people who use solar power to charge their EV)

EVs are more efficient than ICE vehicles even when using electricity generated using coal.

Probably the most efficient thing is to cut out using a car for commuting and use it as sparingly as possible, and keep the car you already have and is already here as long as its possible. Any car represents an enormous amount of spent energy just in the form of converting those raw materials from where they are found naturally, forming it into a 3000lb car somewhere, and ultimately delivering it to you where it currently sits in front of you. Its going to take a lot of fuzzy math to negate that massive energy cost as well as the energy cost to bring this new car built from resources found around the world to your door, and the cost to do away with the old one. Limiting personal consumption imo means getting the most out of your existing materials and tools, or those found immediately locally, versus spending energy to bring in ever more things from around the globe.

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