this post was submitted on 16 May 2024
602 points (97.9% liked)
Technology
59374 readers
6873 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Fuck leaf blowers. I don't care if they're quieter. The term here is "polishing a turd." They don't really solve any problems. They're not good at removing debris, but just blowing it to a place where someone else will deal with it.
Also... removing debris on its own is a dubious pursuit, since "debris" could also be termed "stuff that holds moisture longer and slows the effect of drying soil during drought conditions."
The majority of use my leaf blower gets I blowing grass clippings from the street back into my lawn. It keeps cyclists safe and doesn't make a mess on public travel ways. I think for that purpose they are a great solution.
Yeah, I use it to blow leaves off my walking path and into my flower/mulch beds. Prevents me from slipping and helps my plants
Yeah the rakes don't like it too much when you use them on the road too
A broom works fine for that.
Not wrong
I actually see street cleaning teams here in Germany regularly where one person blows the dirt out from bike racks and from under parked cars and the other person sits in the big street sweeper to pick up the dirt. I think this is a very valid use for blowers. The blowers are electric, but I sure would.not mind them a bit more quiet.
The gasoline powered blowers are also one of the worst polluting motors in common use.
Absolutely. And all those emissions are taking place very close to a human's face.
I want you to think about how many leaf blowers are actually being used, and how many hours even the most inefficient small engine would have to run to compare to a single semi-truck route.
It's so incredibly fucked how you people miss the forest for the trees.
So I promise I'm not trying to be a dick here. While what you're saying is essentially reasonable, it's actually not true.
The amount of emissions in these small, wildly inefficient engines is considerably worse than even a large pickup truck. The reason is because emissions standards, including the introduction of catalytic converters, etc. don't apply to lawn equipment. The result is that these don't actually burn fuel correctly, and spew out lots of harmful pollutants in a way that even large ICE vehicles don't.
https://www.edmunds.com/car-reviews/features/emissions-test-car-vs-truck-vs-leaf-blower.html#:~:text=Distilling%20the%20above%20results%2C%20the,than%20the%20crew%20cab%20pickup.
https://grist.org/technology/lawn-equipment-pollution-report/
Like sure, there are larger sources of emissions, but I'm kinda in favor of making changes that would offer a large benefit proportionate to the amount of lifestyle change needed to make the switch. As in, making this switch would be easier than not. These emissions produce no benefit to us, and they cost us a weird amount of money to produce.
So I promise I'm not trying to be a dick, but do you actually understand the results from the articles you posted?
A basic mass balance on the claims implies a very narrow interpretation of "emissions". It doesn't even pass the most basic sniff test, come on.
Not only do those articles completely ignore CO2, what about the energy required to manufacture and transport the fuel in the first place?
Those studies focus on NOx emissions, a very small subset of overall environmental impact. They basically cherry pick the fuck out of what consitutes as an "emission", and ignores the massive difference in greenhouse gasses produced.
There are claims that running a leaf blower for 30 minutes produces as much "emissions" as driving a Raptor like 1 thousand miles.
Lmao, if you think a quarter gallon of gas from the leaf blower is "worse" than 100 gallons of fuel the truck would burn, you have to be mad.
Think about it for more than a couple seconds.
And even funnier about this, the solution for this shit is already here. Aside from commercial landscaping companies, electric is already taking over. Its basically a non-issue as far as realists are concerned.
Savage turnaround
This is an alert from the Summer's Eve Emergency Broadcast System. This is not a test. I repeat, this is not a test.
Reddit has experienced a Level Spez douche release which impacted Lemmy.world approximately 96 hours ago. Lemmy users may observe increased douche activity, including but not limited to: unjustified smugness, irrelevant and erroreous corrections, bad arguments, ego fragility, unwarranted hostility, and assorted douchebaggery. Users are advised to remain calm, refrain from engaging encountered douches in serious conversation, and to liberally use the block feature.
Do you have any solid information to provide or are you just making vague allusions toward some unsubstantiated assumptions so you can justify to yourself being a judgmental ass?
It's so incredibly fucked how "you people" are judgmental shits who are busy jerking yourself off every time you can "well ackshally" someone.