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Originally Posted by trebuchet03
I disagree - because it's been done already  In any case, the last time more strict standards were proposed was about a month ago
I'm not asking for 125% control - and I'd appreciate it if you didn't put words in my mouth
I would like to see, in the big picture, emissions go down. Be that with emissions controls or with R&D for more efficient processing. Steel used to be incredibly inefficient to make (by comparison to today) - until someone found a better way which resulted in cheaper manufacturing and created industry.
You don't need to doom and gloom about investors bailing and job losses when someone asks for higher efficiency  Plenty of companies have/are reaped/reaping the benefits from it For example, the estimated savings from upgrading efficiency - $7 million per year 04/30/2008: Petroleum Refineries to Take Steps to Reduce Air Pollution
I just did a quick search for refineries AND 2008 on the EPA's website and clicked the first thing that looked related to emissions  |
Well your source is being deceptive. 31,000 tons of waste is more NOx SOx than the biggest 3 refineries in the world produce. Those plants only produce 32,000 tons of waste other than CO2 and those are the biggest 3 in the US. I hardly see how it would be possible for 30 refineries to reduce more than 31,000 tons each if some of them don't produce that much.
What they mean is they are reducing carbon dioxide which can qualify as an organic compound and then if they just reduce it by a few percentage points they skip right over that 31,000 tons easy. But if you want to talkabout CO2 a refinery produces 125% more CO2 than your car. Power plants produce as much CO2 as your car and there are alot of other contributors that point to improving FE means saving emissions at all cost.
If you want to talk about NOx and SOx and reducing emissions as I said, refineries are the biggest contributors.
As you said limit refineries. Fine. But once again you will never be able to get refineries to produce less emissions that your car. If thats true then there is no point wasting vast amounts of resources on it. Those resources are much better equipped to solve FE problems.
If we eliminated the EPA for gasoline engines and put that to funding more FE engines you would solve your emissions, energy and dependence issue much faster.
It MIGHT be possible to slow the problem through emissions controls that hamper production and efficiency. It's definitely possible to build better more efficient engines. The best engines get 39.5%. refineries already clean up 75% or more of their pollutants. On an exponential curve it takes much more effort to clean to 76% than it does to go to 41%. If they have the same effect why waste your time worrying about the 75% its pretty good to start with.
On the ACT and SAT its easy to bump your score from 1200 to 1300 or 27 to 28. It's incredibly difficult to move up from 32-33 or from 1450-1500 because it takes tremendous amounts of effort to move up the percentages as it gets larger.
So in that regard why not focus on the subject thats lower and improve it, instead of spending fortunes moving 1% of global emissions you spend the same fortune and get 4%.
I'm not doom and gloom about the economy. Adam Smith would tell you anytime you raise taxes on a business its likely a large part of that business dies and quits. effectively emissions controls in a large number of areas are taxes. I have no respect for a source that throws out deceptive data but what probably happened was the refineries(like Chiba) realized instead of just torching some of their pollutants they can create electricity from it(not much compared to consumption levels).
They did this almost two years ago. The amount of electricity could forseeably be 7 million. What usually happens is someone develops a good idea and the government comes along a long time later and mandates everyone do it. Then they also expect them to be able to develop another technique to lower it further, but companies don't spend anywhere near as much on pollution control R&D than they do on efficiency R&D. Fortunately for emissions efficiency means less emissions. . .Like I said a long time ago in this post. . .
For the record also as long as gasoline is below 4 dollars a gallon the US government walks away with a larger cut of gasoline profits than the gas companies. Maybe they should spend the money on making the process better instead of demanding companies do it and implement it at their own cost.