Safe Speed Forums

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Too much of our money is being wasted on supposed road safety improvements that are actually making driving more dangerous.

I've been stuck behind enough buses to know that they're chucking out particles and other muck. I've parked at Hatton Cross tube station often enough to know that leaving the car by a big airport for a few days means having to wash off the layer of unidentified crap at the weekend (for non Londoners Hatton Cross tube is next to Heathrow airports perimiter road, and might as well be a third airport station - but it's a fairly cheap place to park if you want to get the Tube into town). These things do bother me.

What I don't worry about is CO2. As greenhouse gases go it falls into a very poor second place behind water vapour, and the amounts of both man-made CO2 and water vapour are titchy compared to natural sources. On top of that, CO2 is essential to plants (so much so that I believe Dutch flower growers often add CO2 to the air inside their greenhouses to boost growth - now that's a greenhouse gas ).

Yes, the planet is warming a bit, though likely not as much as the ban-everything-vaguely-industrial brigade would have us believe. What gets forgotten about is that the warming we see is uncomfortable when considered in a human lifespan, but insignificant on much longer scales. We're still recovering from a period of unusual cold a couple of centuries back. Of course the place is going to warm up - it's as inevitable as a bag of frozen peas thawing when you take it out of the freezer.

I think a lot of current policies are created with CO2 in mind, but to reduce it rather than increase it. I think the idea, in some quarters at least, is to make driving so bloody unbearable that we decide to ditch our cars and go straight to the bike shop. However, they're having the opposite effect because a lot of motorists are unwilling to swap a half hour car journey for two or three times that on a bike, and the public transport options in many areas are too comical to even consider. I'm not sure "traffic calming" schemes fall into this category though. I think these are brought in with safety in mind, but again their effectiveness is pretty questionable as other factors are overlooked here as well.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

British drivers are confused about lane control at roundabouts, especially those on two lanes roads. Many new ones quite simply do not follow the highway code recommendations, and should be replaced.

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I stole this .sig

I am in complete agreement with the bulk of your views on this Gatso with the exception of the "uncomfortable when considered in human lifespan but insignificant on much longer scales" bit.
The unfortunate truth is we only have human lifespans to work with. The world will roll on after we (humankind) are all gone. I for one don't want to risk minimising that brief human period if we can avoid doing so.

I have yet to see this government demonstrate a real grasp of the Co2 issue and what it will bring. So far it has hit the easy target motorist because tax revenue was the driver, its need, not pollution reduction was the crucial motivator. We are seeing sound bite political statements but where is the real action?
As far as road policy to reduce Co2 (as opposed to vehicle policy) I don't see any but am open to be shown examples.
In fact if anyone can turn up a statement from any authority, where the concern for pollution was even considered, prior to traffic lights being erected, I would like to read it.
RJ

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Too much of our money is being wasted on supposed road safety improvements that are actually making driving more dangerous.

Rod, I wasn't just talking about geological timescales. Even in recorded human history the temperature has been going up and down like a bride's nightie, as has atmospheric CO2. This started long before the industrial age, and I can't believe the climate somehow knows the difference between naturally produced CO2 and anthropogenic CO2, and would react differently to them.

The climate is hugely complex, far more so than the causes of crashes on the roads for example. We're talking about a million or more factors, just one of which is CO2. Even the AGW lobby recognise this point, though it's pretty rare to see it in the media.Want to guess where that came from?

Edited to correct typos and add image:

Rod, this came from junkscience.com, though they got it from the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research (or from their data).



You'll see that while there is warming it wanders up and down, and the rate of warming in the last 50 years or so is far from unprecedented. Look at the 1690s. You'll also see that 1999 was no wrose than 1950 and barely any warmer than several years in the pre-industrial 18th century. Go back another 500 years or so and it was even warmer than now. Same if you go back to Roman times IIRC.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

The world is only any good with people in it. Without people, there is no 'world', just a massive zoo with savage creatures roaming about. Actually, that's sounds like the Cambridge rush hour!



What action do you suggest, Rod? Carbon is released when we use fuel. Should we use less fuel? Another idea would be to prepare a bolt hole. I'm betting that people in these overpopulated European countries will be eating rats in cellars in ten years. Calgary is a better bet, 5000 feet above sea level.



Another approach which would need less road digging etc. would be to stop the engine while you wait at the lights. Or get a job near home.

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I stole this .sig

B/erk wrote;
What action do you suggest, Rod? Carbon is released when we use fuel. Should we use less fuel? Another idea would be to prepare a bolt hole. I'm betting that people in these overpopulated European countries will be eating rats in cellars in ten years. Calgary is a better bet, 5000 feet above sea level.

Well Bas, there are many strategies that are Co2 reducing, from clearway roads so vehicles can travel at optimum efficiency, to more efficient vehicles that get more miles from each gallon thus the Co2/ mile ratio is improved.
There is also the current development of hydrogen fueled vehicles that don't produce any Co2 at the road face and providing the electricity used to crack the fuel from water is generated from nuclear or renewable sources there is no Co2 anywhere in the system.

I would prefer to see a wider acceptance of light weight, fully enclosed, either two or three wheeled motor cycle vehicles these would allow easy commuting easy parking and over 100 miles/gallon. It would require serious investment to bring it to commercial reality which is where government funding would help. Free city centre parking for two and three wheeled vehicles is where local authorities could help along with the releasing of bus lanes for such vehicles to use.

All of the above would reduce Co2.
RJ

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Too much of our money is being wasted on supposed road safety improvements that are actually making driving more dangerous.

Gatso wrote:
You'll see that while there is warming it wanders up and down, and the rate of warming in the last 50 years or so is far from unprecedented. Look at the 1690s. You'll also see that 1999 was no wrose than 1950 and barely any warmer than several years in the pre-industrial 18th century. Go back another 500 years or so and it was even warmer than now. Same if you go back to Roman times IIRC.

Gatso, the graph is a local snap shot of central Englands weather, how accurate these are depends on the source data, typically tree ring analysis is used, then climate condition extrapolated.
I am sure the moderated climate we enjoy due to the atlantic makes our local climate statistically stable.
The global graphs are more representative of the overall climate condition and these show the last fifty years to be trending ever upward. If you can get onto the newscientist web site you should see some graphs showing this.
The level of Co2 at 380ppm and rising is unprecedented in human history, if we add in the more damaging methane gas increase, due to population growth and farming then the situation gets worrying.
The scientific consensus is that at least half of the temperature increase in the last 50 years is due to human activity.
We have to engage practices that take out our damaging inputs, only governments working collectively at international level can do what has to be done.
Tony Blair et. al. must get on with it now.
RJ

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Too much of our money is being wasted on supposed road safety improvements that are actually making driving more dangerous.

Must be right then.

Hold on a minute....
It was scientific consensus that the universe was infinite
It was scientific consensus that we could not travel at more than 30 mph
It was scientific consensus that the world was flat
It was scientific consensus that said the sun went round the earth
It was scientific consensus the sound barrier could not be broken

Yep looks like they have got it wrong before. Especially when there is so much grant money available for research....me cynical, never.

Climate change science is BIG business nowadays. And CO2 is the new face of political correctness. No one is allowed to say anything against.

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Speed camera policy Kills

Couldn't get on to the Hadley site where the original data is so I don't know what proxy was used. I would hope somewhere like the Hadley Centre would use better proxies than tree rings, which really show stuff-all apart from how good the conditions were for tree growth in part of the year.
That's the point. The Atlantic basin isn't stable and has never been stable, even in historical times never mind geological. Greenland was sufficently free of ice for Vikings to settle there - can't remember the head bod's name but I expect he had horns on his hat.
Seen 'em, or ones very mcuh like 'em. But it's by the by. Even in historic terms 50 years is a snapshot - the equivalent of watching 50 seconds of a the middle of a Grand Prix and imagining that from that you can determine the start and finish order. Actually you probably could do that with a Grand Prix, so maybe not such a good example. Go back to the 1930s, America's dustbowl years. Very warm and lower CO2. Go back further to the Little Ice Age for extreme cold and even further to the Medieval and Roman Warm Periods. All very natural, and those two warm periods were warmer than today (confirmed by several different proxies I believe, not just tree rings).
CH4 breaks down fairly rapidly so isn't a big problem, and with the overwhelming majority of it comin from natural sources if it was going to fry us it would no doubt have done so many millenia ago.
Gizmo's already covered that. Scientific consensus is meaningless at best and an oxymoron at worst. There can't be consensus if only one disagrees, and that one individual may be the one that's right. In this case even the apparent consensus is divided. Have you got the source of that quote I gave you earlier?
There's part of the problem IMO. Politicians like to be seen to be doing something about a problem. What they do doesn't necessarily need to be a solution, and what they're trying to fix doesn't necessarily have to be a real problem. Activity is the important thing, and if there's any achievement as a result that's a bonus. Sir Humphrey always had that one right.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

I am not qualified to defend the whole of the scientific community but am sufficiently well read to know the difference between received wisdom and scientific fact. The examples of scientific error above are at best tongue in cheek mischief and at worst examples of random ignorance.
1. The scientific consensus is, that the universe was infinately small.
Fred Hoyle conceded he was wrong and the stable state theory was abandoned.
2. A few crackpots pre. the steam era promoted fast travel was beyond human ability to survive it was never scientific consensus.
3. Only the ignorant thought the world was flat. In 250 BC Eratosthenes a Greek mathematician from Cyrene measured the spherical Earth.
4. In the fifth century BC Philolaus from Croton promoted the Sun centred not Earth centred solar system he was followed in 310BC by Aristarchus another Greek this was documented by Archemedes so no scientific consensus of flat earths for the last 2500 years.
5. Since the sound barrier was broken in the late 1700's there was no scientific doubt it could be done from the muzzle of a gun at least. Prior to that I don't know.

All theories are there to be proven wrong, Co2 increase due to human activity is no exception, global warming is happening some doubters many with big business vested interests claim the situation is normal variation.
They are wrong:
Even if they were right we would still be better off as a world if we reduced our negative impact on the environment.
The road planners have to look at what they are doing, it is not enough to claim the "safety" excuse endlessly and think that is acceptable.
RJ

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Too much of our money is being wasted on supposed road safety improvements that are actually making driving more dangerous.

Sorry Rod, but I have to point out the discrepancy between saying that all theories are there to be proved wrong and following it up with saying that AGW doubters are wrong. Absolutely AGW as a theory is open to be disproved, and a lot of doubt has already been cast upon it. Strictly speaking, if the scientists want to be taken seriously they should be at least as sceptical, if not more so, than the ones who aren't convinced. To be fair, some of them are, but they don't get a lot of media attention. Perhaps because they keep using unfashionable terms like "uncertain", "can't predict" and so on . "Maybe" never sold a newspaper.

Also, I think the bit about big business vested interests is, while sometimes true, a bit unfair. Global warming has itself become a big business, and therefore there are vested interests at work on both sides. If nothing else all the scientists doing the research for the IPCC etc are gainfully employed thanks to the theory of man made global warming. If it turns out to be nothing then a lot of tenure will become very shaky. You might say that this doesn't mean they're mistaken, and you'd be absolutely right to do so. However, that must apply equally to anyone who's research is funded by businesses or organsiations apparently opposed to the theory.

You've probably got the impression that I don't care about the environment, or that I treat it as a resource to be used. Actually nothing could further from the truth. I love natural photography, so there are few things in the great outdoors that wind me up more than a beautiful landscape spolied by some bastard's smoky factory, or for that matter a bunch of bird mincing "green" wind turbines . Doubly so if whatever is there has taken over something irreplacable. Habitat loss is a real and undeniable problem that can be reliably measured. Anyone can get on a plane and go count the tree stumps and homeless orang-utans, or whatever has been affected by the logging. It infuriates me that this is being forgotten about because CO2 is the environmental poster boy of the moment, and doubly so because of this Canute like idea that changing one of the millions of variables at work in the climate will somehow stabilise something that hasn't been stable in my lifetime, or my father's lifetime, or in recorded history, or as far as anyone knows for the last four billion years. All the money, effort and column inches are being pissed away when they could have been sorting out a genuine problem.

Sorry for the angry rant.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

Rod

I thought you might like to take a look at the following links:

http://www.cnsnews.com/Culture/Archive/200412/CUL20041202a.html
http://www.cnsnews.com/Nation/Archive/200411/NAT20041119a.html
http://www.cato.org/pubs/regulation/reg15n2g.html
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/warming/debate/singer.html

Considering that scientists like Lindzen, Michaels and Singer have been lead authors for the IPCC assessment reports, I'd say that they do know a bit about the subject.

Scientific consensus is an oxymoron.

EDIT: There's a book by Sir Crispin Tickell, who was chief scientific adviser to the Thatcher government, enitled: Climatic Change & World Affairs.
It's full of the usual stuff, how mankind is changing the climate with industry and cars etc, and talks about the unprecedented increase in extreme weather; storms, tornadoes, drought, etc.
Well, that's global warming for you then. But hang on, this book was written in the Seventies, and speaks about global cooling and how we're rushing headlong into another ice age.

Barely a decade later this same chap was crowing about global warming.


Regards
Peter

Take a large pinch of salt before you accept anything from cnsnews. There are warnings that it is nothing more than an American "conservative news" outlet spouting endless amounts of right wing drivel. Also, it’s owners, Media Research Center, look like a front for the neo-con wing of the Republican Party!

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I stole this .sig

The sad fact is that motorists have no God given right to pump CO2 out of thier tail pipes. When they have become carbon neutral, they can form an opinion. The way forward? Hydrogen and geo-thermal.

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I stole this .sig

[rant]I take what you say with a very large pinch of salt.
I take it you couldn't be bothered to read even the other links then, let alone the csnnews?
You know, I just can't fathom how an evidently intelligent person like yourself can be so blinkered and prejudiced.
I promised myself a long time ago that I was no longer going to respond to your drivel - so much for promises, eh? [/rant]

Regards
Peter

Not quite a century ago, people were saying much the same thing about 'genetically inferior' people not having a God-given right to breed.
The science was Eugenics, and anybody who expressed skeptism about the dogma was branded an ignorant heretic - much the same as is happening now with the 'science' of global warming.
Of course, after WWII, when the true horrors of taking that dogma to it's logical conclusion were exposed, nobody admitted to being an Eugenicist.

BTW, it's easy to cut CO2 emissions - just stop exhaling.

Regards
Peter

There is a lot of publicity about CO2 and global warming at the moment which seems to draw attention away from the other problems inherent in the use of fossil fuels:

1) Local air pollution, (Nitrogen Oxides, Sulphur Oxides, any number of organic chemicals, Ozone).

2) Use of unsustainable resources, the more we rely on these, the faster we're going to use them, and the more trouble we're in once we run out.

3) The removal of these fuels from the ground, the processing and the subsequent transportation to the final destination all amount to an incredible environmental risk.

The debate about global warming could go on for a long time, this means (in my opinion) we should be adopting the precautionary principle. Especially considering the above points. We don't know what effect the increase in CO2 is having on the global environment, but it doesn't look good at a local level, so maybe we should think about limiting it.

<sighs> H2O vapour, CO2, and CH4 are all naturally occuring greenhouse gases (in vastly higher quantities than mankind produces or is likely to) and the climate is an inanimate system. So how does the climate know the difference between the H2O vapour and CO2 that I pump out of my lungs and the H2O vapour and CO2 pumped out my car's exhaust? How does it know the difference between CH4 emitted naturally and that emitted by the flatulent cow producing milk for my tea?
[sticks red star on furry hat]Well said Comwade basingwerk. If they do not support the party, they vill be sent to Sibewia instead. They can express their opinions there. Mwahahahaha [/red star hat thing]
I'm with you on geo-thermal energy, and also a move towards a hydrogen economy. But I cannot accept the idea that an individual's opposition to something denies their right to an opinion on it. You might as well suggest that anyone who opposed the Iraq war or any of Phoney Tony's other policies may not vote in case they fail to vote for his third glorious term.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

Peyote, the problem with using the precautionary principle is identifying the real worst case scenario. That's usally assumed to be if mankind's actions cause global warming, or global cooling if you remember the scares of the 70s. This is actually a mistake. Natural climate change is in fact far, far worse as we will almost certainly be unable to do anything to change it. To apply the precautionary principle as you suggest runs the risk of wasting huge resources on futile attempts to change something we cannot affect, whereas in such a situation those resources would be better used to adapt to the changes. If you really want to apply the precautionary principle you should be assuming that all climate change is natural. Which is also wrong btw.

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Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein