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AS and the Environment...


FakeConcern

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Oh, a pet hate of mine...

I know super/hyper cars are a tiny, tiny proportion of total car output.

But when I watch Doug Demuro's channel and see how many of them never get used and spend 99% of their lives attached to a battery conditioner in an underground garage - it's hard not see that as a staggering waste of resources putting all that energy into an object that sits still as a status symbol/investment - essentially inert.

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On 12/2/2019 at 9:35 PM, egg said:

Apparently my Mondeo has been caring* for the environment for the last 26 years! So it's certainly not a new marketing ploy..

IMG_20191202_213325.thumb.jpg.4c3ef473f653191f0ce257025479139b.jpg

Hey, my Capri owner's handbook talks about new fangled EEC emissions regulations and how carbs should only be adjusted by Ford dealers...

 

There's so much chatter about reducing waste, yet so many ridiculous examples of it.

We had some builders in at work a few years ago. The project manager asked them to quote to put up some additional hoarding, cost was £X, all approved and they got on with it. They ordered in a bulk pack of ply sheets and timber, used a certain amount, and the remainder was wheeled out to the skip - there must have been a dozen lengths of brand new 4x2 thrown out. (A number of which were subsequently "rescued" to be repurposed...). Asked the manager if it wasn't a little wasteful - they were nonplussed, the cost of the excess material was within the "£X" quote, and besides the subcontractor erecting it was coming from miles away so didn't want to take excess back, and it was a different contract to the main works so the material couldn't be used elsewhere. 

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On 12/2/2019 at 9:44 PM, egg said:

Oh, a pet hate of mine...

I know super/hyper cars are a tiny, tiny proportion of total car output.

But when I watch Doug Demuro's channel and see how many of them never get used and spend 99% of their lives attached to a battery conditioner in an underground garage - it's hard not see that as a staggering waste of resources putting all that energy into an object that sits still as a status symbol/investment - essentially inert.

Yes that was one of my feelings when I met a lot of the people that own these things. They spend £3000 on a set of Pirelli P-zeros for a Ferrari or whatever because the original set from 1981 have perished due to lack of use while there are people living rough on the streets or in inpovorished countries dying of famine, disease or lack of clean water. 

I'm not saying that if I had all the money I'd be giving away but it's such a waste and, it seems, the top 10% literally have more money than they know what to do with. 

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On 12/2/2019 at 5:07 PM, wuvvum said:

Old ships are also having to be retro-fitted with scrubbers under the latest regulations.  In fact it's very difficult to get a spot at a dry dock anywhere in Asia at the moment as they're all full of cargo vessels having scrubbers fitted.  A lot of them will be open-loop due to the relatively low value of the ships, which as you say seems to be a bit of a cheat - just moving the pollution from the air to the sea.

The scrubbers remove SOx to comply with IMO MARPOL regulation(tier 3 is coming in to force in January and will cause havoc); without scrubbers ships have to burn diesel or ultra low sulphur fuel oil in order to comply, which is a problem as there simply isn't refinery capacity to produce enough ULSFO to run the world's shipping, nor are ship owners or charterers interested in burning diesel as it's much more expensive. There's also the issue of what will happen to the sulphurous sludge that is HFO if ships stop burning it; it will be sold to poor countries where there are people who either cannot afford to care about SOx or don't care about it because they are shits. Scrubbers are a massive maintenance overhead, even open loop systems are enough to keep an extra engineer busy, closed loop systems are just ridiculous as they are dealing with large volumes of hot, acidic seawater filled with abrasive ash, which is so kind to things made out of steel. I'm glad I don't have anything to do with slow speed diesels, the whole thing is going to be a mess, and that's before you consider the nonsense needed to deal with NOx.

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I think folk who are into cars are going to have to get a lot more philosophical about their hobby. I love cars but I can see with my own eyes that theyre a friggin menace and everybody driving round in 1-2 ton tin boxes burning fossil fuels at 30% efficiency is ridiculous. Everyone is gonna have to organise their lives so they are travelling about a lot less (including me who drives 100 miles/day to his office job).

 

Whether your car is an old Lucas-pumped ‘stinker’ or a modern hybrid with pictures of leaves on the instruments, is of little consequence really. So my tip is enjoy your shite while you still can but accept that its days are numbered.

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12 hours ago, Snipes said:

Yes that was one of my feelings when I met a lot of the people that own these things. They spend £3000 on a set of Pirelli P-zeros for a Ferrari or whatever because the original set from 1981 have perished due to lack of use while there are people living rough on the streets or in inpovorished countries dying of famine, disease or lack of clean water. 

I'm not saying that if I had all the money I'd be giving away but it's such a waste and, it seems, the top 10% literally have more money than they know what to do with. 

Kind of off topic, but I'm happy with people having stupidly large amounts of money as long as everybody else has enough.

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14 minutes ago, Lacquer Peel said:
19 minutes ago, sierraman said:
According to the Met Office the wettest summer on record was 1912. So read into that what you will. Wetness aside it was warm this year and as it goes the year before that so no complaints from me there. 

Ok as long as you're personally not affected it's fine.

Spot on. I’ll be honest, I rarely think about the damage I’m doing to the environment as I drive about. If you really broke it down you’d never do anything, you’d never fly anywhere, own a car, eat red meat. You would just live in a field grazing on grass, composting your own shit. 

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Somewhat related (possibly) but couldn't sleep last night and ended up trawling the tv for something vaguely interesting to watch. Landed on a thing called 'Truckin' Hell' or something. Watched it for a short while. It consisted of several American folks with big hats and beards whooping and yelling at some other folks driving home made vehicles in a quarry. All totally pointless and clearly hyped up for TV. A waste of everything IMHO. Done to entertain the masses, the masses being the issue here. Move more, eat less and stop having kids. Fifty years of this policy and things may return to normal. Maybe.

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1 hour ago, sierraman said:

.....If you really broke it down you’d never do anything, you’d never fly anywhere, own a car, eat red meat.....

Authoritarian governments devote considerable resources to making sure their citizens never do anything to harm the status quo. So not doing anything or flying anywhere, etc. suits 'em just fine.

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14 hours ago, somewhatfoolish said:

I'm glad I don't have anything to do with slow speed diesels, the whole thing is going to be a mess, and that's before you consider the nonsense needed to deal with NOx.

I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that a slow-speed 2-stroke diesel is about the most thermally efficient internal combustion engine there is, so in terms of fossil fuel use per MW/h or whatever they're already ahead of the game.  Agree though that we're going to be seeing a lot more breakdowns and / or shipowners prosecuted for bypassing the scrubber system in the future. 

The problem is that if every freight company ran their ships on MGO rather than HFO the cost of freight would go up massively, which would mean that everyone would have to pay more for their Black Friday megadeal* 10'6" TV, and that brings us back to the old problem of most people being happy to see environmental policies in place as long as it doesn't affect them personally.

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Best thing I have done for the environment was to retire.

No longer do I commute 120 miles a day (by motorbike 90% of the time). Over the last 25 years that's over half a million miles. 

I own a 14 year old Saab that I've done probably 4000 miles in over the last 3 years. Only 78k since new, so years of life left. Which I am going to have to sell.

I've just bought an older, hillside house in Spain, near enough fully furnished.  What furniture it doesnt have I can buy secondhand-there are always Brits and Scananavians selling up to "go back home.

Although it is connected to mains electricity, recently some solar panels were added (fine with 300 days of sunshine a year) which are sufficient to supply most of the electricity I will need

Drinking water is delivered by tanker, and I can also get spring water from the taps at the spring 400 yards further up the hill. Other water connection is deemed as "agricultural water" and is use for watering the garden and vegetable patches.

Sewage is dealt with by a two stage septic process that does not require emptying. House has no central heating, but does have two wood burners. Logs available locally and i have loads of trees in the garden that need cutting down. 

I have no need to own a car,  as I can cheaply rent one locally should I need to. I'll use my single cylinder motorbike which does at least 85 mpg for any trips.

The nearest town (with shops) is 10 minutes away. As is the local market selling fresh fruit, veg and meat, none with any plastic packaging.

I may return to the UK now and again-but dont see that as a regular thing. No need for a holiday in the sun, as I'm here.

It maybe a simple life, but easier to lead in Spain than it is in the UK. The eco bit of it is a bonus.

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Can we go back to the 70's? Glass milk bottles delivered by an Electric vehicle, chips wrapped in recycled newspaper, all fresh veg etc unwrapped and taken home in a multi use bag, meat was wrapped in paper - again no single use plastic, kids on bikes riding everywhere, most folk taking buses to work or to shop,  No ads 24/7 ramming the latest version of last years shite down our throats..no fast food joints every 20 paces, Public loos available in 90% of towns (BIG Bugbear of mine)

OK we had power cuts and miners strikes, but generally the Country as a whole actually made things that were useful...Local steel place shut in the Early 80's few thousand laid off....new shopping centre offered to re-train workers...blokes that had worked and laboured hard all their lives being trained to use tills???? didn't work..

The country on a whole now wants us to SPEND SPEND SPEND...as that helps the economy!!! Dunno why cos it's all come from China!!!!

Love the fact the government are trying to stop single use plactics .... but when shops wrap things in plastic, thats also wrapped in plastic, whats the point...most of our rubbish when i was married was packaging..god help the bin men the week after xmas...Plastic and cardboard everywhere after all the MUST HAVES have been opened and forgotten on xmas day!!!

 

BAH HUMBUG!!!

 

 

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4 hours ago, Mr_Bo11ox said:

Whether your car is an old Lucas-pumped ‘stinker’ or a modern hybrid with pictures of leaves on the instruments, is of little consequence really. So my tip is enjoy your shite while you still can but accept that its days are numbered.


What I understand by reading this is 'Buy that V8 Jag or Lexus now, while you still have the choice.' ?

 

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In addition to my initial rant about the pointlessness of recycling anything when I spend my days breathing in paraffin fumes from the most recent aircraft to depart EMA can I just add the following ECO grumps; Starting with that hoary old favourite, dog shit. My dog generally shits in a hedge bottom & I do nothing, but whilst walking Steve in the playing fields, I pick it up in what purports to be a biodegradable bag. I chuck this into a bin lined with a yellow 'surgical waste' quality bag. And then on Tuesdays, Derek collects all the bags and drives them to Coventry where they are chucked into landfill.

Norman Tebbit once famously told folk to get on their bike & look for work. Nice idea, but no-one works locally anymore, my wife has a 50 mile commute North & she passes a millionty folk with a 50 mile commute South, it's no wonder the roads are busy. Similarly, when I was a kid at junior school, we all went to one of the two schools in the village, depending on which side of the main road we lived. Now parents have to apply to send their kids & they also apply to send them to the 'better' or smaller village schools in Diseworth & Hemington. At the mo, Diseworth is 3 sets of lights, a temp set of lights and 3 roundabouts away, Hemington is just two sets of temp lights away. And the parents of course, have to drive that & then drive home and then do it both ways again in the evening. it's no wonder the roads are so...

Finally the science of the melting icecaps. I did O level physics so I know what I'm talking about here. Apparently if the polar ice caps melt, the sea will rise and we'll all drown. Except that ice has a greater mass than water - I can prove this by omitting the anti freeze from my motor car and watching the core plugs pop out. Similarly, if I fill a glass to the brim with water & float an ice cube in it, ensuring that the water remains right to the top of the glass with a meniscus. As the ice melts, its mass decreases & it rises up, displacing less & less water...

Will the glass really overflow?

 

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58 minutes ago, bezzabsa said:

Can we go back to the 70's? Glass milk bottles delivered by an Electric vehicle, chips wrapped in recycled newspaper, all fresh veg etc unwrapped and taken home in a multi use bag, meat was wrapped in paper - again no single use plastic, kids on bikes riding everywhere, most folk taking buses to work or to shop,  No ads 24/7 ramming the latest version of last years shite down our throats..no fast food joints every 20 paces, Public loos available in 90% of towns (BIG Bugbear of mine)

OK we had power cuts and miners strikes, but generally the Country as a whole actually made things that were useful...Local steel place shut in the Early 80's few thousand laid off....new shopping centre offered to re-train workers...blokes that had worked and laboured hard all their lives being trained to use tills???? didn't work..

The country on a whole now wants us to SPEND SPEND SPEND...as that helps the economy!!! Dunno why cos it's all come from China!!!!

Love the fact the government are trying to stop single use plactics .... but when shops wrap things in plastic, thats also wrapped in plastic, whats the point...most of our rubbish when i was married was packaging..god help the bin men the week after xmas...Plastic and cardboard everywhere after all the MUST HAVES have been opened and forgotten on xmas day!!!

 

BAH HUMBUG!!!

 

 

I get what you are saying but without getting all political, at that point in time we were producing but we weren’t productive if that makes sense. The products we were making were often hopelessly uncompetitive (see British Leyland) or failing and not cost effective but underpinned by increasingly large government bail outs (Coal Mining). Once the conservatives had pulled the rug from underneath the increasingly demanding trade unions the whole lot fell apart. 

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1 hour ago, wuvvum said:

If you're trying to make us jealous, it's working.

It comes at a cost though. The motorbikes I've collected over the last few years have, or will, be sold. There is no way I can get them registered here without significant financial input. Easier to sell them and be happy that I had the opportunity to afford to own them at least once in my life.

Plus shite cars are not liked here, at least not by the insurance companies i have got quotes for.  

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It will be interesting to see how governments of the future handle companies and individuals regarding Attitudes and behaviour. Carrot or stick? We are also getting into the realms of who or what is influencing who - 

Government        ”the People”     Corporations

?

 

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13 minutes ago, Jerzy Woking said:

It comes at a cost though. The motorbikes I've collected over the last few years have, or will, be sold. There is no way I can get them registered here without significant financial input. Easier to sell them and be happy that I had the opportunity to afford to own them at least once in my life.

Plus shite cars are not liked here, at least not by the insurance companies i have got quotes for.  

I have to say it brings me disproportionate joy to see you doing exactly what you want - and how you want.  Something for us all to aspire to - especially when it's being done in an environmentally responsible way.

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