Originally Posted by Bekologist
And to rebut, as far as all the pollution watchdogs are concerned, private cars are the BIGGEST polluter of the Puget Sound region. I'm not going to bother trying to find any figures, but they throw the most particulates and noxious gases off in total tonnage compared to any other single combined source in the region.
...
The reason I'm not going to look up any figures about auto vs industrial pollution in Puget Sound is because it is COMMON KNOWLEDGE here. The private gas huffer is the big pollutin' kahuna.
If I may nitpick, that's a really poor way to argue a point. EVERYBODY KNOWS doesn't carry a lot of weight when you consider all the "facts" that everybody knows - head over to
Snopes for a bunch of examples. To quote a good line from a silly movie, "1500 years ago, everybody "knew" that the earth was the center of the universe. 500 years ago, everybody "knew" that the earth was flat. Imagine what you'll "know" tomorrow."
And really it's not that hard to find some info on this. According to the
Puget Sound Clean Air Agency, you're not really correct. For instance (from the linked page), "Smoke from wood fires produces the majority of particulate air pollution in our neighborhoods during winter months." Do
you have a wood stove, Bekologist? If not, do you think the environmental impact of the electric or gas production to run your heating system is better than burning wood? Or just better for Puget Sound, because the energy production is done somewhere else?
Frankly, you're coming across as a zealot, and an uninformed one at that. You're only going to turn people away like that, not convert them to the cause. If people are properly informed of their environmental impact, they may well take steps to reduce that impact. But if you just yell, "Cars suck, they pollute more than anything else, QUIT DRIVING!!" - well, that's not helping. Get some real facts, provable ones, and approach it knowing that it won't always work. Many people won't even want to hear it, some that do won't believe it, and a lot of the remaining folks just won't care enough to inconvenience themselves.
So, patc, to get back to Expat's original question, this is where the contempt comes from: uninformed zealots who reflect the contempt that their poorly-constructed arguments glean them from the "uneducated cager masses." Treat someone like crap too long, and they will treat everyone else that way too. It's just too bad that some people don't realize how damaging they are to the very ideals they are attempting to promote. (Or don't appear to care - "I'm not going to bother trying to find any figures.")