Minor nitpick, but tailpipes aren't the primary source of emissions. The study is about PM2.5[0]. which will chiefly be tires and brake pads. Modern gasoline engines are relatively clean, outside of CO2, though diesel engines spit out a bunch of bad stuff.
Exactly. The noxious tailpipe emissions in a city are usually from diesel trucks, small vehicles like motorcycles (small or absent catalytic converters), modified vehicles (catalytic converter removed or diesel reprogrammed to smoke), but not modern gasoline ICE vehicles.
The love for diesel engines in many European countries was always confusing to me.
PM2.5 is also a broad category of particulates that come from many sources. The PM2.5 levels in the air depend on many sources, with wind being a major factor in changing PM2.5 levels. It’s hard to draw conclusions when a number depends on the weather and a lot of other inputs.
And turns out the whole thing was a lie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diesel_emissions_scandal
It's unfortunate that so much rhetoric around environmentalism is based on faulty claims. It's starting to make me sceptical of environmental claims in general.
The latest one is AI data center water use- the extreme numbers like 5 liters of water per ChatGPT image just makes me feel sad that we can't have a civil discussion based on the facts. Everything is so polarized.
Best effort is not enough to guarantee a good outcome- for example, this car is diesel and has lower emissions, therefore I will buy it and I will be reducing my own emissions turns out to not be true all the time.
Just like congestion pricing might or might not actually affect pollution in the way that it's claimed. The obvious point being that the city loves the new revenue, no matter what the level of impact it actually has.
I'm actually in favor of congestion pricing in principle (whether or not pm2.5 is reduced or not). I'm just sad that often times it's impossible to figure out what's true.