Safe Speed Forums

I'm relying on our children to save us.

They are much smarter than my generation. They must be, they all have much better A level grades.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

There's nothing that we as individuals can do to make a difference. The UK emits only 2% of the 25bn tonnes of man made CO2 produced annually, and there are 58m of us. Therefore, the average per capita carbon footprint in Britain is about one three billionth of the world total. Individual efforts such as blocking up old chimneys or replacing incandescent bulbs with neons won't even disturb the air molecule adjacent to the highest filament of dust lying on the surface of what waits to be scratched.

As for politicians, as far as I'm concerned they've missed various opportunities to promote carbon neutral fuels and improve efficiency in their quest to wring our wallets of the last drop of cash, at the same time claiming that this is their "new" "green" policy. Besides, whatever is done about whatever problem we face, governments of any colour are reluctant to spend a fortune when payback time will come long after they have left office.

I'm by no means convinced either way, but even if you take out the extreme crap spouted by the doom-mongers there does still seem to be some case to answer for the last 150 years of warming being asymptomatic with anything that has gone before. Whether that is down to humans, or natural factors that have not been experienced in the past, remains to be seen.

It is not unsurprising to find that amongst all pro-motor vehicle organisations, almost everyone is a "global warming denier" Blind-hope, or real belief? I suggest the former!

yes, nobody had a thermometer so we don't actually know what the temperature was before, we can only guess. If they were growing grapes in Yorkshire 700 years ago and they can't do it now because it is too cold, perhaps someone should explain why it got so cold in the first place!

Well I used to believe it because it's what everyone said was happening.
Now I have learned to develop good and healthy authority issues.
So now I don't believe anyone about anything. Sometimes I don't even believe myself.

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Andrew.

Even if you believe it was 100% caused by man you can't undo it and if the whole world stopped emitting greenhouse gasses overnight it wouldn't make a massive difference.

We would be much better off putting time and money into coping with the inevitable than trying to play king Canute.

Sometimes I think-

We don't have children and given that people that do seem not to care why should we? If things hang together for another 40 years or so that will do nicely.

Then again -

We compost, recycle, save water, buy electricity from renewable sources,
have a high efficiency boiler and well insulated house.

Most of that is because we do not like waste and it leaves more cash to spend on other things.

Our cars have high emissions but only do about 8K miles total per year so produce less carbon than a pair of average mileage low emission cars.

Does it matter? Who can say.

I have an idea that the reported climate change is a mainly natural cycle, human pollution may affect the rate of change but has not caused it.

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Driving fast is for a particular time and place, I can do it I just only do it occasionally because I am a gentleman.
- James May

I thought it was spelt Cnut

The combination of dyslexia and and trying to make the tide go back would probably make you one.

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Malcolm W.
The views expressed in this post are personal opinions and do not represent the views of Safespeed.

I recycle everything that "they" say I should, even though the 7 litre engined dustcart wastes any savings and the plastic goes to china anyway....more waste fuel...

I drive a diesel, mainly because the insurance is cheaper, the co2 emissions are lower and it runs on 40% rapeseed oil without a fuel heater.
I also drive a BMW m/cycle, because as far as bikes go I couldn't give a sh** about global warming...

In any case, as it warms up the house will need less heating, so the co2 footprint will be lower....

I thought of drilling some deep holes and using a heat pipe to run the heating on, but B%Q only make 18 maximum length drills, so that's outy.

As I understand it the ships are going that way anyway and if they weren't carrying our waste they would have to take on ballast. The abuse of low paid 3rd world labour is another issue.

If you take walk to your local fish and chip shop and have a word with the owner, he might tell you where he gets his oil from. These chaps buy cooking oil in 20 or 25 litre drums, much easier to fill your tank with those than 4 litre bottles from Tesco. Most chippy's round here have the oil taken away, it then gets burnt in trucks after filtering. Your's might not, in which case your in.

Obviously Gordon Brown knows all about your cars fuel and recieves the duty

The tax on vegetable oil is about 27p per litre.

I've tried the "filtered chip shop" oil....10 miles before the fuel filter got bunged-up....the next lot got filtered and washed....too much time...tesco does rapeseed oil at about 50p per litre...mix it at 33% tesco rapeseed and 67% tesco diesel fuel oil and it runs ok...you may like to invest in a new fuel filter anyway since veg oil in the tank gets the shit out...and into the filter. You also need to check your fuel/injection pump...some of them have seals inside that don't like vegetable oil....

Oh, and since the law are now doing "random emissions tests" at the roadside, you may like to reconsider not paying the tax...and as discovered by a known vill....er...friend...it can also tell if you're running on red diesel !

As "DieselMoment" said.........We in the UK emit only 2% of the planets CO2. .. and only around 4% of that, is down to the MOTORIST!.....



Why then?.............are we being forced to pay 99% of the TAX?.....



It's OBSCENE GORDON!...........See you in the dole queue ......

And then you start stalling at roundabouts. Noice.
But I remember some impressively large clouds of white smoke on one or two occasions when it was cold...
I'll have to give vegetable oil a go in my current car, when it has it's 4 working injectors again. It's got a fuel pre-heater and everything.

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Andrew.

Hi I recently raed 'The Energy Age' by Robert Kyriakides.

If you take the experts/oilmens view We only have 27 to 41 years worth of oil left anyway. So we can only eke it out at best. Who's to know if going for a burn it later rather than earlier will make a difference ? I have halved my electricity bill by energy efficiency/frugality with little effort or cost. I have developed/renovated and lived in 5 houses and 1/2 a day in the loft and £100 of insulation has always made a huge difference to comfort and payback has been less than a year. It makes a good selling point too.

Gas will last a little longer. So the cost profile of oil/gas will be very interesting over the next 50 years.

I am just surprised that we seem not to be preparing now for the rundown of fossil fuels - this is far more certain than global warming.

Richard

Is it? When I was 8 there was only 30 years left, which means we run out next year.

Does anyone know what the Earth's oil production rate is compared to mans extraction rate?

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It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.

Upton Sinclair

Natural gas fields refill in between 10,000-1 million years, oil fields perhaps 10 times that.



http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar ... lish-wine/

Actually, they are growing grapes in yorkshire now.

Human caused global warming is a reality. The first step to fixing it is the replacement of coal-fired with nuclear power stations; unfortunately people seem more concerned with using it as a stick to beat motorists with..

Hi gopher and andy interesting stuff. I know the estimates were all over the place years ago - and it is still a lot of guess work to say the least. In 1988 OPEC quotas were changed to a % of oil reserves. In that year OPEC reserves suddenly changed by +50%. In the 1970's US oil production peaked in 1999 UK oil production peaked. It is thought that Saudi oil production peaked in 2004. The crucial fact is the world is using 28 billion barrels of oil a day and only discovering 7.42 billion barrels a day. Oil is a finite resource and it looks like we will use it all in 100 years - a very short period in geological terms. The other factor is most of the oil and gas is in relatively politically unstable areas. The wide variation in prices is hidden by our tax system recent price rise from 10$ a barrel to 70$ a barrel is probably just a taste of what is to come .


Richard