Vehicle Emissions

[Joey Shabadoo]

You are correct, it certainly does not help. Nevertheless, there are sufficient car less people out there surviving to prove that its an excuse, not a genuine obstacle.

Straight away I can think of my Mum, the bloke directly across the road from me (new age hippy type), the caretaker at the school I was chatting to recently, even a lady copper I know - none of these folk have cars and are notable for not having starved to death recently, which blows any objection clean out the water.

Who wants to just "survive" though?

 

[Drago]

Me, if it means not poisoning those around me.

Of all the people I've just cited, they all seem to have social lives, fulfilling and rewarding existences. Only one, the Lady copper, is carless against their will, but she's cracking on OK and grudgingly conceded to me that she is enjoying the extra personal wealth that a lack of a car is bestowing upon her.

Selfish attitudes towards car entitlement are killing our brethren, robbing the planet of finite resources, and gridlocking our infrastructure. Its bad enough that its happening, but when cyclists are trotting out weak excuses for their motorised transport habits its especially saddening

By most measures we're long last peak oil, the time will probably come in my lifetime when personal motorised road transport is seen unaffordable madness it really is.

 

[raleighnut]

That's what I though but it is possible to have your cake and eat it. Mine is 180BHP petrol turbo, will return 40mpg on the motorway at 70mph and 30mpg for stop start town driving. Produces 20% less CO2 than the same petrol run engine and fuel costs 52ppl, so effectively on a run will give the equivilent cost of 80mpg and 60mpg round town. Depending on miles driven per year a conversion can pay itself off in 12 months.

LPG?

 

[Joey Shabadoo]

Me, if it means not poisoning those around me.

That's fine but you're never going to persuade a majority, or even a noticeable minority, to give up cars unless you offer a better alternative. It has to be more appealing, not less.

 

[KneesUp]

There is a problem getting power generated by solar in a sunny desert to densely populated countries in the temperate zone where the consumers of energy live.

There are problems with getting vast amounts of dense, sticky, heavy oil from below a desert across to ground level, across the desert and across the sea, before it is converted into a useful fuel in a hugely complicated industrial-scale chemistry lab, but we manage

 

[KneesUp]

[QUOTE 4749835, member: 259"]A conversion from diesel to petrol?[/QUOTE]
I assume the idea is to change car from one to the other, yes.

I did the same a year or so ago largely in anticipation of city centres charging for diesels and the consequent surge in price of petrol cars, given that relatively few decent sized ones have been sold in the last decade.

 

[Jody]

[QUOTE 4749835, member: 259"]A conversion from diesel to petrol?[/QUOTE]

No. Drive a petrol and convert it to LPG. I loved the torque of a diesel coupled with its economy. However a petrol turbo converted to LPG still gives me all the benefits of diesel, is greener than the same engine run on petrol and costs less to run than a powerful diesel.

 

[raleighnut]

That's fine but you're never going to persuade a majority, or even a noticeable minority, to give up cars unless you offer a better alternative. It has to be more appealing, not less.

It has become a self-perpetuating circle though, I grew up in the 60s-70s when car ownership was not the norm and 'out of town' shopping centres hadn't been built (on 'greenbelt' land) There were Butchers, Greengrocers, Bakeries, and General Stores etc that have all been forced out of business by these Retail 'Parks' and none of them were really needed.

 

[Drago]

That's fine but you're never going to persuade a majority, or even a noticeable minority, to give up cars unless you offer a better alternative. It has to be more appealing, not less.

Completely agree. A selfish public will never do it simpky because its the right thing to do. The sad reality is that the convenience aspect of car ownership will probably never, ever be replaced, and society needs to get over it.

In the short term the government needs to strong arm them, in the long term the oil all being used up will force them. The problem at the moment is that the government is on the one hand responsible for managing congestion, pollution etc, yet on the other it also relies on the income that car related taxation brings in.

 

[Joey Shabadoo]

It has become a self-perpetuating circle though, I grew up in the 60s-70s when car ownership was not the norm and 'out of town' shopping centres hadn't been built (on 'greenbelt' land) There were Butchers, Greengrocers, Bakeries, and General Stores etc that have all been forced out of business by these Retail 'Parks' and none of them were really needed.

Shopping was almost a daily activity too - food bought fresh in small amounts from local shops. Can't see them ever coming back.

 

[Bollo]

Sorry - gone off on one. I won't be offended if you can't be arsed with the following.....

Unless we do the sensible thing and cover desserts with solar panels and use tidal power. And wind turbines.

I would imagine that the oil rich countries are pouring money into solar, given then get all their wealth from a finite resource that's becoming unfashionable, and they have a lot of sun. But I could be wrong.

Until I chose to go full trophy husband this year, I worked for a company that provided software for the UK energy market, so this used to be my area of operations.

You're right, but only to a point. Most countries are investiging heavily in renewables. China in particular are getting heavily into solar, although they're still committed to coal in the medium term. China, Japan, Germany and I think India all produce more energy from renewables than nuclear, although this will include biomass as well as solar/wind. The reason is economics. The cost of solar in particular has plummeted.

The only two major economies that are at least trying to buck the trend are the U.K. and the States. The UK Dept of Energy and Climate Change has been outsourced to the nuclear lobby for some time. I'm not raging anti-nuclear (I'm a nuclear physicist by training) but this country's energy policy gives nuclear a very easy time, even when the economic arguments are debatable. It's also very lukewarm in its support for wind and tidal, two resources we have in abundance. The States is pure politics, but Trump's plans for 'clean coal' will be dashed on the rocks of basic economics.

There are a few technical and market driven reasons why nuclear is favoured in this country. What makes electricity difficult when compared with any other energy commodity (gas, coal, oil etc) is that it's very difficult to store in industrial quantities. The best we do at the moment is a big pumped hydro reservoir in Wales. Our current market for electricity is essentially demand driven, defining an always-on 'baseload' level of generation, suplimentented by more flexible generators for peaks in demand. Once a nuclear reactor or coal fired station is on, it stays on, so these are/were the go-to providers for baseload. The market then uses more turn-on-and-offable sources, such as gas turbines, to meet peaks.

Although this process operates as a market, with some demand being auctioned about an hour before it's required, it's quite a rigid system, which will favour the more predictable energy sources. There is a mechanism where a major power user can sell back its demanded power to the grid if things get tight (and make a shed load in the process) but there's nothing to manage consumer demand.

Most people don't realise but the UK's national grid has connections (interconnectors) to France, the Netherlands, Ireland and I think one is being built across to Norway. This allows us to share excess capacity or meet demand across national boundaries. From memory, were net importers from the European mainland but exporters to Ireland.

Bizzarely, a move to electric cars might help things as car batteries could be charged off-peak, using any spare capacity. A very clever system would allow users to sell their charge back into the grid if they didn't need it during peak demand.

Really hydrogen fuel cell technology should be the future. And monorails. Monorail!

I'll shut up now.

 

[User482]

The Government is right to address issues of toxicity, bit electric vehicles only move that from tail pipe to power station chimney.

However, the biggest change needs to be a societal one, where lazy ass people stop using cars for unnecessary short journeys, and the Government needs to be applying serious effort into breaking that culture and promoting walking and cycle use.

Sure, but those chimneys are up in the sky, well away (in most cases) from large centres of population. The bigger issue is one of capacity: we don't have nearly enough.

 

[Drago]

Sure, but those chimneys are up in the sky, well away (in most cases) from large centres of population. The bigger issue is one of capacity: we don't have nearly enough.

That only solves a local problem. Globally, its arguably worse than burning fossil fuels in a conventional ICE.

https://physics.ucsd.edu/do-the-math/2011/08/mpg-for-electric-cars/

 

[raleighnut]

Shopping was almost a daily activity too - food bought fresh in small amounts from local shops. Can't see them ever coming back.

No I can't see that happening either, like I said it's self-perpetuating.

 

[KneesUp]

Really hydrogen fuel cell technology should be the future. And monorails. Monorail!

I'll shut up now.

That is very interesting, but I don't have time to reply totally. But just to add that your last line reminded me of my dear departed grandfather, who for as long as I can remember (at least as far back as the late 70s) was lamenting town planning and road building in general - he used to grumble "Why on earth are they trying to fit more and more stuff at ground level or under the ground? There is loads of room in the air, and if it's in a city there is no view to spoil. We should be building elevated electric monorails" He spent some time in Liverpool during the war, so I would imagine was very familiar with Dockers Umbrella.