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Not As Environmentally Friendly As Promised

Souleater said:
The problem is, everyone is living in the hope that technology will save the planet
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Using petrol to put out a fire.

Souleater said:
that someone will invent some magical 'thing' which will make everything ok again
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The essence of capitalism - things are wrong, buy this thing from me and it will make everything right. Except it never will, because then there is no opportunity for me to sell you more things.
 
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Technology and capitalism feed billions (to say nothing of saving their lives.) They cure disease. They land robots on Mars.

There are more people on Earth, living longer, healthier and more prosperous lives, than ever before.

Today in the UK we spend 10.6% of our income on food. In 1957, when I was an infant, it was 33%. Thank technology and capitalism.

- Yet people imagine that we can't address issues like plastic in the sea?

maximus otter
 
Coastaljames said:
Using petrol to put out a fire.



The essence of capitalism - things are wrong, buy this thing from me and it will make everything right. Except it never will, because then there is no ability to sell more things.
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I remember there being an Athena poster back in the day which said something like "Only when you have cut down everytree, killed every animal and poisoned all the water will you realise you cannot eat money."
 
Min Bannister said:
"Only when you have cut down everytree, killed every animal and poisoned all the water will you realise you cannot eat money."
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Yeah, became a kind of new-agey poster trend didn't it. But doesn't mean it doesn't have value. Full quote is -

"Canada, the most affluent of countries, operates on a depletion economy which leaves destruction in its wake. Your people are driven by a terrible sense of deficiency. When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money."

Alanis Obomsawin, 1972.


I dunno...I'm not even meant to care about this stuff...it just drives me nuts that people are conned so easily, and so stupid. If you do care- then think! You can't buy anything of value. You have to change.
 
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Here’s something I’ve seen recently.

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Each bag is is from a recycled plastic bottle. That’s just swapping plastic for plastic and is virtue-signalling bandwagon jumping if you ask me. A better idea would be to introduce thick paper bags.
 
Problem is that everything has an 'unexpected consequence'.
Using paper bags instead of plastic seems like a good idea, but we are just replacing one 'disposable' with another.
Plus increased paper usage basically means more trees cut down, which is in itself possibly worse than making stuff out of recycled plastic.
Much better if everyone actually had a proper bag made out of some sort of sustainable material, which cost some money, so that it is taken care of and used for years (....wouldn't want to throw away a bag that cost me £20!)
"Bag for life" is just as bad - it's convenience and virtue signalling. For a start, supermarkets are phasing these out now anyways, so hardly 'for life' is it? Plus they split quite easily and only last maybe 5 or 6 trips before they become fairly knackered. And a lot of people don't reuse them anyway, they just buy new ones each visit and bin them afterwards, so they're probably even worse than the cheapo carrier bags they replaced.
 
Trevp666 said:
IMO you're just staying this side of the line for 'political comment', so you should be okay.

On a different point though, there is a bigger and bigger push towards electric cars and the ending of the uses of fossil fuels, along with the recently announced ban on new gas boilers (I think from 2025 so some companies will already know they're going bust if they haven't already designed alternatives), but that all ignores the facts that we don't only travel by cars.
What about all the other transport? Lorries/Trucks, buses, trains, ships, aircraft......they all use various types of fossil fuel engines which would be difficult (if not impossible) to replace with alternatives.
And for 100% electric cars everywhere, that would beg the question "Why aren't governments ensuring that every car parking space has an electric charger?" because that is what will be needed - not just 2 or 3 chargers over in the far corner of a supermarket car park which, lets be honest, are anecdotally usually not working either through 'user damage', malfunction, or vandalization.
Plus as mentioned before, the electric cars have to be made in the first place, which not only necessitates the use of fossil fuels to do so, but additionally needs vast quantities of fairly rare materials for the batteries.
And then the electricity has to be created somewhere in large enough continuous amounts to satisfy the demands of a massive charging network. So in order to be reliable that would need to be power stations relying on burning stuff, or nuclear. Wind and Solar is only any good when the wind blows or the sun shines.
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Gee, it's almost as if they expect the world population to drop dramatically.
 
Trevp666 said:
Problem is that everything has an 'unexpected consequence'.
Using paper bags instead of plastic seems like a good idea, but we are just replacing one 'disposable' with another.
Plus increased paper usage basically means more trees cut down, which is in itself possibly worse than making stuff out of recycled plastic.
Much better if everyone actually had a proper bag made out of some sort of sustainable material, which cost some money, so that it is taken care of and used for years (....wouldn't want to throw away a bag that cost me £20!)
"Bag for life" is just as bad - it's convenience and virtue signalling. For a start, supermarkets are phasing these out now anyways, so hardly 'for life' is it? Plus they split quite easily and only last maybe 5 or 6 trips before they become fairly knackered. And a lot of people don't reuse them anyway, they just buy new ones each visit and bin them afterwards, so they're probably even worse than the cheapo carrier bags they replaced.
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Paper bags are biodegradable. That’s the difference. Trees can be grown to replace the bags.
 
You might use trees as a windbreak but they also break wind.

If a tree farts in the forest, does it make a sound? No, but it does add a smidge of greenhouse gas to the atmosphere.

Gases released by dead trees — dubbed “tree farts” — account for roughly one-fifth of the greenhouse gases emitted by skeletal, marshy forests along the coast of North Carolina, researchers report online May 10 in Biogeochemistry. While these emissions pale in comparison with other sources, an accurate accounting is necessary to get a full picture of where climate-warming gases come from.

A team of ecologists went sniffing for tree farts in ghost forests, which form when saltwater from rising sea levels poisons a woodland, leaving behind a marsh full of standing dead trees. These phantom ecosystems are expected to expand with climate change, but it’s unclear exactly how they contribute to the world’s carbon budget.

“The emergence of ghost forests is one of the biggest changes happening in response to sea level rise,” says Keryn Gedan, a coastal ecologist at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., who was not involved in the work. “As forests convert to wetlands, we expect over long timescales that’s going to represent a substantial carbon sink,” she says, since wetlands store more carbon than forests. But in the short term, dead trees decay and stop taking up carbon dioxide through photosynthesis, “so that’s going to be a major greenhouse gas source.”

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ghost-forest-tree-farts-emissions-greenhouse-gases
 
Analogue Boy said:
Meanwhile, like I’ve said many times before, we’re all filing our rubbish only to see it all sent off and jumbled up again in a landfill in another country.

As for electric cars, a lot of homes are two car families. That’s a lot of battery charging right there. Even if there’s enough lithium or whatever to make the batteries for these cars in the first place. Then there’s scrappage on your old car to consider. All the while, mum, dad and the kids all have phones and tablets that need charging continuously. It’s already a bit late to start setting up the infrastructure for the energy needs for this bright, green future.
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Plus there's also those of us who will NEVER be able to afford a new car and will carry on driving our big old diesel cars until they, or we, die. They can put all the scrappage schemes in the world on, I can't afford a brand new car (or even a second hand electric one, it would need to be nearer ten years old before I could come close).
 
This hubnut film is very telling. This Welsh car scrapyard is full of very many quite recent vehicles, and as he says often throughout, some of them are vehicles that in his mind are still 'new'.
At this point I have selected in the film he finds a 'Nissan Leaf' in the yard.

 
As I'm sure I've mentioned before the most environmentally friendly car is somethineg like a Morris Minor produced in the 1950's, well maintained and still in use today. If government were serious they would tax on how "well" you passed the emissions test - dont care if it's a V8 or clockwork - tax it on what it actually produces in that vehicle. That would incentivise folk to make their cars run well.
One of the Auto magazines a few years back compared modern Diesels to one from about 2000 (Volvo I think) - no surprise to me the "old" car was cleaner on every test it was put through.
All the "scrap" old cars stuff isn't green it's to sell new cars.
 
The government stands to lose the £28 billion gained annually from fuel duty. Charging an electric vehicle would result in a meagre 5p in VAT for every pound spent. This leaves the thorny problem of how to raise the revenue. One answer would be to raise energy prices across the board, which would affect everyone equally whether they owned a car or not. We already have people here who have to make a choice between food or heat so I can’t see this being popular. An alternative would be to charge car users by the mile. This would mean installation of black box equipment to monitor the exact details of each journey - whether you want that information known or not. And hey. Add a speed detector and they could issue fines automatically. No need for cameras anymore. This would be unacceptable to those who would prefer our freedoms as they are and would prove unpopular.

The technology to charge drivers by the mile already exists. Once a price is set, like fuel duty, there’s not much chance of that price going anywhere but up. Being sucked into another taxation system doesn’t seem much of an incentive to go electric.

If everyone has an electric car, imagine the drain on the national grid when everyone gets home from work, puts the kettle on, starts charging their phones, switch on the TV, cook dinner AND recharge the car at the same time. Plus, the batteries are not an infinite source of power, they gradually drain and have a limited lifespan so there’s the issue of deterioration, scrappage and recycling of those coming too.

To cope with the massive increase in energy needs, many more power stations would be needed. Maybe 3 times the output we already have. These need to be planned well in advance and the source fuel needs to be a consistent supply, whether that is coal, waste, wind, nuclear or whatever. All problematic to some section of society.

Early adopters are loving their electric cars now but I suspect the novelty will wear off when there’s continual power cuts and there’s not a charge point to be found for love nor money. Be careful what you wish for.
 
Analogue Boy said:
The government stands to lose the £28 billion gained annually from fuel duty. Charging an electric vehicle would result in a meagre 5p in VAT for every pound spent. This leaves the thorny problem of how to raise the revenue. One answer would be to raise energy prices across the board, which would affect everyone equally whether they owned a car or not. We already have people here who have to make a choice between food or heat so I can’t see this being popular. An alternative would be to charge car users by the mile. This would mean installation of black box equipment to monitor the exact details of each journey - whether you want that information known or not. And hey. Add a speed detector and they could issue fines automatically. No need for cameras anymore. This would be unacceptable to those who would prefer our freedoms as they are and would prove unpopular.

The technology to charge drivers by the mile already exists. Once a price is set, like fuel duty, there’s not much chance of that price going anywhere but up. Being sucked into another taxation system doesn’t seem much of an incentive to go electric.

If everyone has an electric car, imagine the drain on the national grid when everyone gets home from work, puts the kettle on, starts charging their phones, switch on the TV, cook dinner AND recharge the car at the same time. Plus, the batteries are not an infinite source of power, they gradually drain and have a limited lifespan so there’s the issue of deterioration, scrappage and recycling of those coming too.

To cope with the massive increase in energy needs, many more power stations would be needed. Maybe 3 times the output we already have. These need to be planned well in advance and the source fuel needs to be a consistent supply, whether that is coal, waste, wind, nuclear or whatever. All problematic to some section of society.

Early adopters are loving their electric cars now but I suspect the novelty will wear off when there’s continual power cuts and there’s not a charge point to be found for love nor money. Be careful what you wish for.
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Exactly so. I am simply amazed that nobody 'in charge' is smart enough to see this and comment upon it.
 
Analogue Boy said:
The government stands to lose the £28 billion gained annually from fuel duty. Charging an electric vehicle would result in a meagre 5p in VAT for every pound spent. This leaves the thorny problem of how to raise the revenue. One answer would be to raise energy prices across the board, which would affect everyone equally whether they owned a car or not. We already have people here who have to make a choice between food or heat so I can’t see this being popular. An alternative would be to charge car users by the mile. This would mean installation of black box equipment to monitor the exact details of each journey - whether you want that information known or not. And hey. Add a speed detector and they could issue fines automatically. No need for cameras anymore. This would be unacceptable to those who would prefer our freedoms as they are and would prove unpopular.

The technology to charge drivers by the mile already exists. Once a price is set, like fuel duty, there’s not much chance of that price going anywhere but up. Being sucked into another taxation system doesn’t seem much of an incentive to go electric.

If everyone has an electric car, imagine the drain on the national grid when everyone gets home from work, puts the kettle on, starts charging their phones, switch on the TV, cook dinner AND recharge the car at the same time. Plus, the batteries are not an infinite source of power, they gradually drain and have a limited lifespan so there’s the issue of deterioration, scrappage and recycling of those coming too.

To cope with the massive increase in energy needs, many more power stations would be needed. Maybe 3 times the output we already have. These need to be planned well in advance and the source fuel needs to be a consistent supply, whether that is coal, waste, wind, nuclear or whatever. All problematic to some section of society.

Early adopters are loving their electric cars now but I suspect the novelty will wear off when there’s continual power cuts and there’s not a charge point to be found for love nor money. Be careful what you wish for.
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One way around the 'black box' installed to record milage, is for the tax to be calculated as part of the MOT test as every car has to have this anyway, the milage can be entered into a database and your tax calculated on your milage for the previous year.
Just an idea.
 
Souleater said:
One way around the 'black box' installed to record milage, is for the tax to be calculated as part of the MOT test as every car has to have this anyway, the milage can be entered into a database and your tax calculated on your milage for the previous year.
Just an idea.
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Whatever method they choose, it will impoverish most people. It'll be designed to suck the maximum amount of tax from our wallets.
It'll be back to the days before everybody got their own vehicles.
 
Mythopoeika said:
Whatever method they choose, it will impoverish most people. It'll be designed to suck the maximum amount of tax from our wallets.
It'll be back to the days before everybody got their own vehicles.
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Maybe that is what is needed in the long run, but public transport will have to improve
 
Why would you want to be charged by the mile? Is that something you’re keen on? Lots of car choices are made on fuel efficiency. Miles per gallon. If this changes to taxation based on distance driven, it means there’s no point in looking at economy.
 
Analogue Boy said:
Why would you want to be charged by the mile? Is that something you’re keen on? Lots of car choices are made on fuel efficiency. Miles per gallon. If this changes to taxation based on distance driven, it means there’s no point in looking at economy.
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I was under the impression we were discussing how the government would recoup taxes lost from fuel duty if everyone drove electric cars.
Was that not the crux of your post that i replied to?
 
Well your point on recorded mileage taken at an MOT is an idea that gets around a black box. But really, THEY want you to have a black box.
 
Souleater said:
Electric cars are unsustainable, not practical and not even enviromentally that friendly, ive said this for many years, as soon as the car companies/energy businesses stop supressing hydrogen fuel cell power technology the better, but nobody can make vast amounts of money from a car that you can power by filling up with water.
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Back when the In-House GP was still a Paid Computer Geek, he worked for Ford. I'm pretty sure I remember him telling me that Ford had got a good handle on how to run cars on water, but they shelved the technology because - possibly - of pressure from the big oil companies. Ot maybe it was the government refusing to subsidise something? It was nearly 30 years ago...
 
Mythopoeika said:
Exactly so. I am simply amazed that nobody 'in charge' is smart enough to see this and comment upon it.
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Unfortunately there is a 'vocal minority' which constantly pushes a green agenda which hasn't been thought through properly, including the 'unexpected consequences' of the push towards a fully electric 'sustainable' future without fossil fuels etc.
This 'vocal minority' are 'the squeaky wheel that get's the oil' (poor analogy I guess) and without going into the forbidden zone of politics it is difficult to go into detail about how that plays out, but there are many other places that you can go to to read-up on that.
 
Another thing about plastic bags is they should be washed and preferably sterilised as they can become carriers and breeding grounds for e coli and salmonella. Transfer of what I, as a non-scientist, call ‘Germs’ can collect in the bag. Whether this can be transmitted to a trolley or the packing area of the checkout for someone else to pick up is for someone more qualified than me to explain.

Of course, we’re all sterilising our Bags For Life after each use aren’t we?
 
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