The end of shite!

[Junkman]

As always the solution to literally everything is for there to be less people.

 

When Hitler and Stalin addressed this issue they were considered evil.

Which selection criteria are going to be applied this time around, please?

 

 

 

This whole climate change thing is nothing new.

The Climate has been continuously changing for the past 4.5 billion years.

So let's stop that now by taxing it.

[dollywobbler]

It's nothing at all to do with saving the planet, but everything to do with trying to stop people in cities dying needlessly. Already, there have been improvements in London, which is good. My snot is no longer black after a visit there. But, having cars just sitting around, barely moving, while belching out fumes is surely nonsensical. Stop/start is no help at all when cars are just crawling around at low speed, so moving away from these mobile power plants seems perfectly sensible to me.

 

Not that the government's declaration is going to change a lot. Frankly, I suspect that by 2040, the mix of vehicles on sale will strongly favour electric anyway. It's 23 bloody years away, not tomorrow!

[sierraman]

Anyway I'll be 50 odd by then, I'll have had enough of laying under cars, I'll be glad of a Prius then.

[rantingYoof]

Strict authoritarianism is definitely* the way forwards**.

 

'Hi I'm after a new car. Preferably a diesel.'

 

'How many miles do you a do a year and where do you go?'

 

'4000 miles per year, popping into and out of town for work and school run.'

 

'I'm sorry but you are forbidden by new law from buying a diesel as YOU DON'T SODDING NEED ONE.'

 

'BUT ECONOMY!!11' *trollface*

 

'You'd need to have the car for six years to begin saving money on fuel. Are you going to have it for six years.'

 

'WHO OWNS A CAR THAT LONG OMG NO JESUS DIESEL.'

 

'Quite.'

 

 

Something like that. Maybe a smidge of my own feelings in there too...

 

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

[MikeR]

so if more people end up living longer , because they have not been poisoned or run over by a car/bus/lorry , wont that mean the world will be even more crowded , causing more pollution hot spots ,that some tree hugger will campaign  about ,  that will get some other form of enjoyment banned  ,.... at this rate , one wont be allowed to fart soon ...

[flat4alfa]

Interesting that the latest report also says SPEED BUMPS BAD and that councils should rip them out to improve air quality.

 

A decade ago we were told to buy diesel and my local council went beserk with the bumps, now the advice is the total opposite. They'll probably change their minds again.

 

It's not news though.  I remember research papers were published over ten years ago on the additional pollution the speed humps created in the home.  One or other of the Scandanavian countries did this IIRC.  

 

They measured particulate levels inside the home and if you had a speed hump outside your house the jump was remarkable

[flat4alfa]

It's also completely bonkers just a week after the same Government announced shelving a number of railway electrification schemes, very mixed up thinking.

 

This struck me too, upon hearing the announcement.

[flat4alfa]

I really wouldn't be surprised if by 2050 if we need licences, safety training and permits to own and handle petrol. 

 

It's very likely householders will be kept away from any volatile fuel.

 

 

I am not against electric cars as such, my main concern is range

 

It's also quite likely we will not have many of the freedoms we enjoy today - not least the travelling of longer distances.

Companies have been discouraging staff business trips for some time, it won't be long before the householder is targeted.  We will be encouraged not to take journeys, being taxed heavily enough to rethink our lifestyle 'footprint'

 

There will be 1000 mile range ToyotaFordFiats that never used enough to break their range barrier.

[Guest]

Something I think about often. I've spent my life in enclosed buildings with engines running, many times every day revving smokey old Diesels to try and get them trough the emissions tests, along with many other people I know and have known over the years. Surely us guys would be the first to suffer from pollution health issues caused by vehicles, along with truckers and bus depot workers?

[Yoss]

This struck me too, upon hearing the announcement.

This. Regarding the announcement of the cancellation of many rail electrification schemes. I think it was 2009 when the government announced the electrification of the Great Western, Midland Main Line and an 'electric spine' for freight trains from Southampton to the Midlands. Trans Pennine routes were added later on. The Great Western scheme has gone horribly wrong for various reasons. One being, to over simplify it somewhat, that we'd forgotten how to do it after twenty years of privatisation (the private train operators are never given long enough franchises for that sort of investment to pay off) and all the previous skills have gone.

 

But to cancel all the other routes is short term madness ( but most governments don't think more than five years ahead). They've bought all these fancy machines now so should have a rolling programme. Once they finish one line the crews and machinery should move onto the next and they will get faster, and so cheaper.

 

So now the government have changed the order for new electric trains to so called bi-mode. Basically hybrid in car speak but they'll run on electric under the wires and diesel elsewhere but some will spend the vast majority of their time on diesel. And even on electric they're carting the weight of several diesel engines around which also increases wear on track. Most trains have a design life of at least 30 years. This is mental.

 

So anyway 23 years is plenty of time for the government of the day to change their mind as can be seen above as they won't be the same government who made the pledge in the first place.

 

And as a slight aside how much difference will all the hybrids and electric cars in West London make alongside Heathrow's third runway?

[Sir Snipes]

Indeed. I work in Dulwich at the moment and there is an almost constant train of aircraft passing over head at fairly low level, I presume on some kind of final approach to whichever airport.

 

Get me out of London! Seriously, the novelty has gone after ~ 2 years!

[AnthonyG]

It's not law yet, just a plan. Let's see if Norway and Holland have managed to go 100% electric/zero pollution by 2025 as planned, which is a lot nearer, before any worrying.

[Rod/b]

I couldn't care less about this to be honest. It's 23 years away at least, by which time a whole planet's worth of kids my kids my kids' age who've just started school in 2017 will have studied for up to 16 years, some will left uni with engineering / electrical engineering degrees, grown up and come up with making a way for non-ICE vehicles to have a decent range and be fun to drive too. It's in the interests of the car makers and the energy companies that this happens. It's pretty daft to think it won't, IMO. Oil companies are already diversifying into no -fossil energy sources, and for the fossil fuels they will still extract will find new markets - shipping and air transport isn't going away any time soon.

 

Oil driven vehicles will be seen as a thing of the past, stared at in museums and occasionally wheeled out at shows. And those kids will point at their parents and grandparents, and laugh at when they got all scared and pissy on the internet because they thought the government was coming to crush their Mondeo.

 

I'm actually quite a fan of the idea that there will be ZEVs in our towns and cities. The noticeable increases in traffic on the roads in the last ten years is unlikely to slow or be reversed and with that increase comes increases in localised air quality issues - already a public health issue in some places. Forget the climate issues, it's the ability to breathe reasonably clean air i'm interested in.

 

Right having said that i've got to go and move my 5.7 litre petrol engined car down to the basement before i go one-up in a diesel powered minibus to the airport to get on an aeroplane.

[loserone]

On 26/07/2017 at 08:59, egg said:

By 2040 we will be craving an early Prius or Fluence by then, tis no problem.

Seven out of 23 years down, I already am.  

[SunnySouth]

I sat in a traffic queue last night, caused by a set of lengthy, ongoing roadworks. Of course, because it was a Saturday, there was nothing actually happening, just a massive tailback of cars all sitting there reluctantly resigned to needlessly wasting a sizeable of their weekend. It has long bothered me just how little notice anyone pays to the environmental or economic cost of the staggering inefficiency of how we carry out roadworks in the UK. We’re hammering ICE cars and their drivers all over the shop, yet the total number of hours wasted queueing past deserted roadwork sites every week across the country must be astronmical, along with the accompanying CO2 tonnage it creates.

There desperately needs to be a basic requirement that any worksite, with the exception of those in residential areas, must be in operation 24/7, with a clear requirement that works be completed in the shortest timeframe possible. Digging up the roads as a 9 to 5 job is a f*king joke! Of course, roadworks aren’t done for shits and giggles, but the idea that you can cause absolute chaos and have thousands of vehicles spend all day sat in queue while nobody does anything at all at the worksite in question, is totally unacceptable in this day and age for a variety of reasons, not least of all the bloody climate that we’re all supposed to be obsessed with. And even if we all sat there watching our lives slowly ebb away in front of our eyes in electric cars, the cost of wasted time is still phenominal. Grrrr!