Anti-diesel measures in the UK - magazine article

[Snagger]

I hate to think how much fossil fuel or nuclear energy goes into fabricating and erecting a wind farm...  I had thought it was unlikely a turbine would ever recover the energy invested into it, and have subsequently stumbled across a few articles stating that as a fact.  Again, I have no idea as to their accuracy, but the amount of turbines or even whole farms I see static or turning as an idling speed when I'm working leads me to continue to believe it.

I can see the argument for removing the pollution from where it has the most negative impact, ie population centres, and if the merits of electric cars were presented as that I'd have less cynicism in the debate, but they're presented as planet savers, and anyone with a mildly enquiring mind knows that isn't the case.  Sea levels still haven't actually risen,  recorded temperature rises of 0.2oC can be explained as more accurate and more widespread ability to take readings where they were previously unable, and no-one in the environmental lobby has explained why increased storm activity on Earth has to be man-made while all the other planets in out system with atmospheres are also seeing more storms.  They at least admit, very, very quietly, that a single volcano spews out more green house gas in a day than mankind in a year...

Reducing pollution has to be a good thing.  But I can't help feeling that the bulk of the effort should be going into recycling waste and getting leaner burning engines with better catalytic converters rather than pursuing electric vehicles, which are far more damaging than old bangers.

So, instead of trying to plan for the incoming anti-diesel (and later anti-petrol) laws and charges, we'd ideally be able to get authorities to react to real science instead of media aggravated public hysteria, but of course there are too many industries making far too much money out of the global warming farce.

[mad_pete]

Okay some bold views there, can you link some sources please ?

 

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/environment/2012/feb/29/turbines-energy

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earthtalks-volcanoes-or-humans/

 

 

 

[Sheffield]

We are now being told that wood burningstoves are also bad, and we should feel guilty about using them. If we abandon them, and we should not use coal or gas perhaps we should add further to the electrical load with house heating.  Would that the Greens and politicans produced a sensible plan for the future, and stuck to it.

The real problem is that there are too many people on the planet, far more than it can sustain. The only solution I can see is a good war, or some infection that can not be controlled.

[mad_pete]

Is that you Thanos ? :-) Posting on here again? 

[Bowie69]

Wood burning stoves issue is particulates, large ones that are bad for lungs, but local heat generation is very efficient, as for the farcical CO2 figures, well what made the trees in the first place?

[monkie]

The thing is about volcanoes, as far I know there is nothing we can do about it. The problem with the CO2 we make is the rate we are releasing it from locked up sources into the atmosphere in terms of the past few 10s thousands of years.

I don't think that it can be denied that we are changing the climate and doing so fast.

All forms of power generation require some power to put into them at times for example nuclear plants require energy to power coolant pumps when the reactor is off line. Wind and solar require something (usually gas) to fill the gap when the wind doesn't blow and the sun isn't out.

[Snagger]

19 hours ago, Sheffield said:

We are now being told that wood burningstoves are also bad, and we should feel guilty about using them. If we abandon them, and we should not use coal or gas perhaps we should add further to the electrical load with house heating.  Would that the Greens and politicans produced a sensible plan for the future, and stuck to it.

The real problem is that there are too many people on the planet, far more than it can sustain. The only solution I can see is a good war, or some infection that can not be controlled.

That is the real problem.  The only nation to acknowledge it was China, and they were condemned for it.  But almost all human problems come from this - famine, drought, genocidal wars, plagues, the suffering of natural disasters such as flooding or land slides.  All caused by too many people for the amount of resources available, and people being force to live in dangerous areas because of taking up too much space.

Politicians and Greens won't produce a sensible plan.  There is simply too much money involved in environmentalism: I think if human activity was as much to blame as it''s made out to be, and I don't dispute that it is likely to be a contributory factor and have previously said that reducing pollution is important, that there would be far more restrictions on new goods.  It strikes me that there is a religious fervour to environmentalism, with anyone who has any doubts over what we're being told being branded a heretic and being hounded.  Frankly, I have read plenty of news articles on both sides, but much more is printed on one side.  Scientists who had previously championed Global Warming and the ski jump graph lost their careers when they changed their position (remember David Bellamy?).  That graph had to be retracted along with the original claims on temperature rise, and eventually they had to drop the Global Warming name as it was so discredited and go for Climate Change instead.

Now, under the Climate Change banner,  the UK media gets hysterical at the first sign of snow, forgetting that it was the norm  in winter.  They go mad if the summer temperature reaches 30 a if it's never happened before.  We're shown photos of melting ice caps, but never shown the advancing ice in the winter - I flew from the middle east to Seattle over the north pole recently and didn't see a drop of water between Moscow and a hundred miles north of Vancouver;  the whole of the way was snow covered, every lake and river frozen and no visible sea.

I'm sure both sides of the debate are telling some truths.  I'm even more sure they're both telling a lot of lies.  But while so much money is being made out of environmentalism, I'm going to feel very cynical about it.  That may offend your sensibilities, Mad Pete, but there is s much bull being presented by scientists on payrols of vested interests that I find a lot of it hard to swallow.  The sad truth is that I don't trust either side enough to believe their data, and am undecided on the issue.  I'm pretty sure we're not causing as much climate change as we're told, though - the climate is always in flux and we have seen rapid changes in the past, even in the last few millenia.

[Bowie69]

As with most things, the truth lies somewhere down the middle, it is up to us, the plebs, to decide for ourselves, and behave in accordance to our own convictions.

In other words, yes, I still go with my son and feed old bread to ducks.

[mad_pete]

As you say questioning data and things presented as truth from all sides is a very good thing, especially these days.  I’m just asking for sources. If the source has a vested interest in the outcome or is not backed up from other sources the information is less reliable which I certainly agree with. 

 This could make make the Earth no longer suitable for us to live on. This is a hole in the ozone kind of thing. We should decide on the approach to look at it, get some trustworthy scientists on it and if it is an actual thing sort it out sharpish with legislation. 

We shouldn’t have do you want to buy a CFC fridge or not approach.

CFCs were decided to be bad, banned and now the ozone hole is recovering (slowly).

Yes the weather has always been crazy but information suggests it’s getting more crazy more often and that’s the problem. 

It’s normal for my landy to struggle to start one in twenty, it’s now getting more like 1 in 5 and I’m beginning to think there is a problem that needs fixing. :-)

 

 

[monkie]

Out of interest, I'm sure I heard somewhere that it was the same scientist who came up the idea of using CFCs as a frigerant who also came up with the good idea of putting tetraethyl lead in petrol. If this is true, he certainly left his mark!

 

[Snagger]

Apparently, someone in the far east is manufacturing CFCs again and ozone is being destroyed like before.

Please don't misunderstand my position.  I'm not defending the position of people like Trump who deny climate change.  I simply don't know whether or not it's true and have grave doubts about what we're told and the motives  behind it.  I agree with reducing pollution, but electric vehicles aren't the answer if we can't generate the power cleanly and create batteries without causing more problems.

[Snagger]

5 minutes ago, monkie said:

Out of interest, I'm sure I heard somewhere that it was the same scientist who came up the idea of using CFCs as a frigerant who also came up with the good idea of putting tetraethyl lead in petrol. If this is true, he certainly left his mark!

 

I wonder if it's the same guy who added tricresylphosphate to turbine engine oil.  That's the cause of organophosphate poisoning in aerotoxic syndrome.  But it does make my point about new technologies being marketed as a benefit without looking at the bigger picture, which seems the case with electric vehicles.

[monkie]

4 minutes ago, Snagger said:

Apparently, someone in the far east is manufacturing CFCs again and ozone is being destroyed like before.

Please don't misunderstand my position.  I'm not defending the position of people like Trump who deny climate change.  I simply don't know whether or not it's true and have grave doubts about what we're told and the motives  behind it.  I agree with reducing pollution, but electric vehicles aren't the answer if we can't generate the power cleanly and create batteries without causing more problems.

I completely share your view.

[monkie]

3 minutes ago, Snagger said:

I wonder if it's the same guy who added tricresylphosphate to turbine engine oil.  That's the cause of organophosphate poisoning in aerotoxic syndrome.  But it does make my point about new technologies being marketed as a benefit without looking at the bigger picture, which seems the case with electric vehicles.

I have no idea. It's the CFCs and leaded petrol that I remember.

[Snagger]

Just now, monkie said:

I have no idea. It's the CFCs and leaded petrol that I remember.

I was only being rhetorical - I doubt it's the same guy!  

[Bowie69]

Erm, I thought lead in petrol wasn't a problem, it just had to be removed to allow catalytic converters to work without clogging up.

You know, the things that make your car use more fuel

 

[mad_pete]

Having an airborne heavy metal in breathable form was not a good idea.

The term heavy metal refers to any metallic chemical element that has a relatively high density and is toxic or poisonous at low concentrations. - nice.  

 

So in the spirit of a bit of research I've gone to 

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/weather/climate-historic/#?tab=climateHistoric

and pulled the data for highest temp per month in degree C (on the left axis on the graph) from Heathrow weather station (no special reason but London seems to feature in the temp readings in papers)

Temperature is easily verified and I think quite a lot of people run weather stations so if met was out it would be noticed.  This runs from 1948 to pretty much now and I've just run the data not picked out something that supports a given view. Initially I thought it would be flat. So with max temp per month on left we see the weather does indeed fluctuate quite a lot with highs happening over the last 30 years.  This weather station seems to not have hit 30 at any point.  Putting a trend line does show the trend is upward and if you look it does seem support that with the points gradually shifting up.  I think that's part of the issue the variances are large compared to the baseline shift of a few degrees over 10s of years. 

This is not "look climate change must be happening, I've made graph" but to encourage people to challenge and research the data being put forward from both sides. 

To a degree fossil fuel is going to run out so in that respect climate change doesn't matter because burning oil and gas is not something we can carry on doing indefinitely anyway so may as well start moving over to other things now, 

 

 

 

[monkie]

1 hour ago, Bowie69 said:

Erm, I thought lead in petrol wasn't a problem, it just had to be removed to allow catalytic converters to work without clogging up.

You know, the things that make your car use more fuel

 

No, it was a massive problem because Lead is a toxic metal. The lead from car exhausts finds its way into human and animal blood. It is particularly a problem for children as their brains are growing rapidly compared to adults.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0892036201001842?via%3Dihub

[Bowie69]

I understand lead is a poison etc, otherwise why move away from lead plumbing, but didn't think there was much chance for the lead from leaded petrol to get absorbed into the bloodstream. However a quick scan on WHO site seems to say otherwise, maybe back in the day th government/press span it a different way to play down the fact we'd been getting poisoned since 1900. I remember well when unleaded can in, and was definitely spun to allow cats to work and reduce CO emissions.

Otherwise, yes, the cats won't work with lead, it coats the catalytic material and stops them working.

[monkie]

23 minutes ago, mad_pete said:

Having an airborne heavy metal in breathable form was not a good idea.

The term heavy metal refers to any metallic chemical element that has a relatively high density and is toxic or poisonous at low concentrations. - nice.  

 

So in the spirit of a bit of research I've gone to 

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/weather/climate-historic/#?tab=climateHistoric

and pulled the data for highest temp per month in degree C (on the left axis on the graph) from Heathrow weather station (no special reason but London seems to feature in the temp readings in papers)

Temperature is easily verified and I think quite a lot of people run weather stations so if met was out it would be noticed.  This runs from 1948 to pretty much now and I've just run the data not picked out something that supports a given view. Initially I thought it would be flat. So with max temp per month on left we see the weather does indeed fluctuate quite a lot with highs happening over the last 30 years.  This weather station seems to not have hit 30 at any point.  Putting a trend line does show the trend is upward and if you look it does seem support that with the points gradually shifting up.  I think that's part of the issue the variances are large compared to the baseline shift of a few degrees over 10s of years. 

This is not "look climate change must be happening, I've made graph" but to encourage people to challenge and research the data being put forward from both sides. 

To a degree fossil fuel is going to run out so in that respect climate change doesn't matter because burning oil and gas is not something we can carry on doing indefinitely anyway so may as well start moving over to other things now, 

 

 

 

That's a nice graph. The average shows atleast a 1'C rise during the period shown. That is significant. Also the extreme higher temperatures seem to be getting more frequent.

[monkie]

1 minute ago, Bowie69 said:

I understand lead is a poison etc, otherwise why move away from lead plumbing, but didn't think there was much chance for the lead from leaded petrol to get absorbed into the bloodstream. However a quick scan on WHO site seems to say otherwise, maybe back in the day th government/press span it a different way to play down the fact we'd been getting poisoned since 1900. I remember well when unleaded can in, and was definitely spun to allow cats to work and reduce CO emissions.

Otherwise, yes, the cats won't work with lead, it coats the catalytic material and stops them working.

Its a long time ago now, but I seem to remember two separate issues at the time that the press were talking about. Phasing out leaded petrol as far as I remember (I was still at school so it does seem a foggy memory to me) did seem to coincide with the introduction of catalytic converters fitted to cars and yes there was much published about poising your catalyst if you fill up with 4star.

I do also remember the environmental part being on the news. I think it was also a similar time to when there was a lot in the news about acid rain and they were showing pictures of dead forests in Norway and Sweden then "smoke" coming from a car exhaust.

[Bowie69]

Yup, acid rain was still an issue, but less so, but cats were sold as the solution to the world's problems, sound familiar?

[=jon=]

On 5/22/2018 at 12:59 PM, FridgeFreezer said:

If it's a petrol engine you just need to mount an injector or 4 somewhere and you can run megasquirt for fuel + ignition, nice switchable tables for proper running on LPG...

Dragging this back up from the beginning of the thread - recent versions of the MS3 firmware support secondary injector switching via relay, switchable AFR tables, switchable Stoich, switchable deadtimes for the secondary injectors as well, so you can run full closed loop with all the proper settings... If I'd have realised this earlier I'd have probably bought an MS3 daughterboard for my MS2 rather than the LPG controller..

[Snagger]

8 hours ago, mad_pete said:

Having an airborne heavy metal in breathable form was not a good idea.

The term heavy metal refers to any metallic chemical element that has a relatively high density and is toxic or poisonous at low concentrations. - nice.  

 

So in the spirit of a bit of research I've gone to 

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/public/weather/climate-historic/#?tab=climateHistoric

and pulled the data for highest temp per month in degree C (on the left axis on the graph) from Heathrow weather station (no special reason but London seems to feature in the temp readings in papers)

Temperature is easily verified and I think quite a lot of people run weather stations so if met was out it would be noticed.  This runs from 1948 to pretty much now and I've just run the data not picked out something that supports a given view. Initially I thought it would be flat. So with max temp per month on left we see the weather does indeed fluctuate quite a lot with highs happening over the last 30 years.  This weather station seems to not have hit 30 at any point.  Putting a trend line does show the trend is upward and if you look it does seem support that with the points gradually shifting up.  I think that's part of the issue the variances are large compared to the baseline shift of a few degrees over 10s of years. 

This is not "look climate change must be happening, I've made graph" but to encourage people to challenge and research the data being put forward from both sides. 

To a degree fossil fuel is going to run out so in that respect climate change doesn't matter because burning oil and gas is not something we can carry on doing indefinitely anyway so may as well start moving over to other things now, 

 

 

 

I wonder again how much of that recorded rise is down to measuring accuracy, and also how much of it is due to the increased infrastructure at LHR affecting its temperature.  Siting of thermometers is critical to accuracy, but the more tarmac and buildings there are, the higher the daylight temperatures will be.  It could be a true indicator, of trends, but it could also be subject to very localised effects of the development of the airport.

[Snagger]

7 hours ago, =jon= said:

Dragging this back up from the beginning of the thread - recent versions of the MS3 firmware support secondary injector switching via relay, switchable AFR tables, switchable Stoich, switchable deadtimes for the secondary injectors as well, so you can run full closed loop with all the proper settings... If I'd have realised this earlier I'd have probably bought an MS3 daughterboard for my MS2 rather than the LPG controller..

hat's all way over my head, but it sounds like you could make the engine behave in a pretty modern way, all things considered, and get pretty good performance and economy out of it.