The reason why I think that road pricing is a bad idea is that, for it to work effectively, some people will have to find it too expensive and thus be priced off the road, presumably either onto public transport or having more items delivered (if cheaper).

The problem is that this falls 99% of the time on the poorest (i.e. it would affect them far more severely, because the charge is a flat rate per car/mile), which is a great way the rich can keep the little man (and woman) 'in their place' whilst the rich lord it up with their fancy cars.

If it was solely about reducing the worst polluting, then surely we'd ban all those powerful sports saloons and supercars which, despite many being quite new, still put out considerable amounts of CO2 and other pollutants, just because they are performance-orientated (and not effeciency-orientated) vehicles and are driven harder.

It kind of reminds me of those future dystopian films where the rich get richer off them handing their waste and pollution to the poor to deal with, causing most of the latter to live in squaller adn die of horrible illnesses. It's the reason why the likes of China and India have recently banned the import of plastic bags for recycling and will likely grow wider to more types of 'recycling waste' we export.

Why are electric cars so expensive? A Nissan Leaf will set you back £30k but a Focus is £10k cheaper for the basic models.

What about 4x4s, vans (large and small), lorries, minibuses, HGVs, buses, breakdown trucks and many other commercial vehicles. Do the powers that be expect these to run from batteries as well?

I hope i live long enough to see the coming shambles in 15 years, 44 ton lorries carrying 10 tons of goods due to 30 tons of batteries and motors and it still can't manage a 6 hour journey without a 12 hour recharge at the 4 commercial charging points at Watford Gap, 2 of which will be out of action.

The politicians making all these grand plans won't be in power in 2035, they'll be enjoying their well heeled retirements far from the chaos they created, and some other schmuck will be having to make the excuses why this utopian nightmare is going to have to be postponed, unless you want to starve whilst your food rots in that 3 day queue at Watford Gap.

Some MSA's have already got electric hook ups for fridge vehicles parking overnight, not as these could cope with charging vast battery packs, but half of those are already smashed to pieces or otherwise out of action.

This is Britain people, our leaders and civil service couldn't run one in a brewery, we can't even stop a couple of dozen invaders a day from making south eastern landfall on an inflatable bed, does anyone seriously believe these plans have any chance of coming to pass.

A world wide shortage of Lithium may make the battery vehicle short lived and apparently most of it is mined in China so price could also be the deciding factor

There are huge mines in West Australia, Chile and in Argentina amongst other places. Lithium miners are scaling back and moth balling mines because there is a glut and prices are falling. Every one jumped on the lithium band wagon a few years back and now the wheels are falling off. No doubt it will pick up again in another few years. Mining is like that.

www.reuters.com/article/australia-lithium-miners-i...H

I hope i live long enough to see the coming shambles in 15 years, 44 ton lorries carrying 10 tons of goods due to 30 tons of batteries and motors and it still can't manage a 6 hour journey without a 12 hour recharge at the 4 commercial charging points at Watford Gap, 2 of which will be out of action.

The politicians making all these grand plans won't be in power in 2035, they'll be enjoying their well heeled retirements far from the chaos they created, and some other schmuck will be having to make the excuses why this utopian nightmare is going to have to be postponed, unless you want to starve whilst your food rots in that 3 day queue at Watford Gap.

Some MSA's have already got electric hook ups for fridge vehicles parking overnight, not as these could cope with charging vast battery packs, but half of those are already smashed to pieces or otherwise out of action.

This is Britain people, our leaders and civil service couldn't run one in a brewery, we can't even stop a couple of dozen invaders a day from making south eastern landfall on an inflatable bed, does anyone seriously believe these plans have any chance of coming to pass.

You said you were not going to post any more posts if they were anything political - didn't keep to your word for very long!

Pretty much right though, made me laugh that BJ admitted he didn't know what Climate change was all about, if he doesn't know, what are the others like. doesn't make sense

It's a very good thing that the greenland ice cap melts off the result of the winter's accumulation of ice, if it didn't it would just get higher year by year.

Called into Hopwood services on the M42 on Saturday morning. Well over 50% of the chargers were occupied by mostly the ultra large Teslas. It cannot be long until the charging capacity is full and cars have to wait and somehow queue to charge, quite how this will work I cannot envisage. Do you stay with the car until it is your turn or coffee and pee and then queue! In any case it looks as though they will soon need a new bank of chargers! Personally I could not be bothered especially in a storm like today.

Rather takes me back to the 1970s when we had to queue up for fuel (well, my Dad was and I was there for the ride on the way to my grandparents' homes). I wouldn't be at all surprised if some EV owners resented queuing for 45 mins and fights started to break out.

Even worse if you were in a big queue and had to go over the 2 hour free-of-charge (pardon the pun) stay at the service stop! Now that would be an expensive visit, especially when you factor in the price of food and drink at such establishments!

Just had a minor power cut - due to storms.. electrcity supply flickered on and off a few times.

I wonder how mass chargers would react to that? All that current tripping on and off. Has to replace 13A fuse on elderly Dyson as a result.. It's 12 years old and original fuse failed...

Same happened on a fridge /freezer last month when interior bulb flared and failed..

You're lucky that just the fridge's interior light bulb failed - in my neck of the woods, we had a cascade power failure of 2/3rds all power along the local dual carriageway (all towns along affected for 15+ miles), where some of the town had power, but most had 1/3 power, meaning the fridges, freezers etc kept on trying to start up, not doing their compressors, etc any good at all.

In such cases, apparently the best course of action is to take the plug out/turn it off at the wall until full power is restored, otherwise the compressor ,etc could fail early due to it trying to start up (and failing) many times during a short period.

Not sure what would happen with fast chargers for vehicles though - perhaps they have some kind of capacitor set-up to smooth out fluctuations in the power supply, but I suspect they couldn't cope with outages more than a handful of seconds, if that.

I think that, other than reducing the cost of reading meters (noting that they don't pass that onto customers, as my supplier admitted) and being told to do so by government (and the EU before we left) to pretend that it leads to 'lower usage', I think that the main reason is so that energy providers can institute variable pricing throughout the day and night, based on demand.

Just like roads pricing, it will mostly negatively affect the poorest the most, because everyone will pay the same rate, but only some will inevitably be able to afford the higher prices at peak times without serious implications for the rest of their expenditure.

I doubt if they will 'suck' electricity back up from batteries in cars, etc. The street lights on my housing development have capacitors so that when the incoming power dips a bit, they discharge to the lamp to make up the difference, when there's an oversupply and/or they aren't fully charged, they draw power from the external grid to charge them up. As I said earlier, the likelihood is that they only provide a handful of seconds worth of power, maybe less.

They aren't a full battery backup, or like for a VCR or mains-powered boiler controller, which may have one or draw so little power that the capacitor can keep their clocks going for some time when during an extended power cut.

I think that the charging infrastructure and generation problems (especially when they are charged opposed to when most 'clean' electricity is generated) is going to be far more of an expensive technical and logistical problem to overcome than the EV batteries capacity issue. This also feeds into the hydrogen separation issue I raised earlier, as it relies heavily on the generation of electricty.

This also feeds into the hydrogen separation issue I raised earlier, as it relies heavily on the generation of electricty.

I was wondering why a country like Australia couldn't separate hydrogen from sea water using banks of solar panels. The interior is vast and unpopulated with large sun exposure. But there is a problem with the negatively charged chloride in seawater corroding the positive end during electrolysis. Still, the problem is being addressed but isn't at the manufacturing stage yet.

And you still have the hydrogen storage issue.

DO you fancy piping salt water 1,000 miles and liquify hydrogen and transport it at 40C ambient? I can thin k of lots of reasons why it will be cery costly...

I was wondering why a country like Australia couldn't separate hydrogen from sea water

On a vaguely similar note, a week or two back there was a programme about desperate water shortages in Brazil, on a day when the news had stories about melting ice in Antarctica causing rises in sea levels. If sea levels are rising as claimed than surely that's ideal for countries such as Brazil to be having massive desalination programmes to solve their water problems. It's an opportunity, not a cause for doom-mongering.

To add a process to split off the hydrogen

I wasn't including making hydrogen, solely referring to their critical water shortage, to drink, bathe, and so on.

The vast, vast of the world's CO2 output from artifical sources comes from things other than cars.

Far better to decarbonise heating for buildings by making them more thermally efficient, amongst other things (that I've mentioned elsewhere many times), and reduce the emissions of sea and air transportation, not just by new tech, but by reducing supply chain distances and being more self-sufficient.

A question - is the primary goal of a politician (a) to save the planet, or (b) win elections and stay in office.

The cynical me would go for (b) every time. The fairly trivial tax increases on bigger cars were what they thought they could get away with politically, and (maybe) change car buyers behaviour and choices.

A pity that Gret knows diddly about climate science and she's been manipulated by her leftist activists parents, coached to give a performance for teh camera by her actor Dad.

The same goes for the Extinction Rebellion, who's founder says (like AOC in the Us with her 'Green New Deal) that their agenda has nothing to do with saving the planet and everything about promoting hardline scoailsim/Marxism.

We have to be very careful about blindly believing people (including scientists) who have overt political agendas that shape and frame their utterances and more importantly (from the scientists), research and interpretation of results.

Scientists in the past were often blindly believed (herding) and a good number of times proved completely wrong by people called heretics (and not just by religious bodies, often the majority of other scientists in their field of study) for giving a contrary viewpoint or saying they don't believe the 'mainstream'.

A bit of scepticism is a healthy thing, and not the same as tin-foil hit conspiracy theories.

A pity that Gret knows diddly about climate science and she's been manipulated by her leftist activists parents, coached to give a performance for teh camera by her actor Dad.

You can be sceptical about the science if you like but I think Greta knows her stuff.

No she doesn't. I've seen video clips (though never shown on MSM TV) of her being asked 'off script' technical questions, i.e. ones she's not been coached to answer by her parents and handlers (and the vast majority of those are simple questions with little technical content, more 'feelings' than facts), and she has no clue and is stumped every time.

They aren't hard questions either. Not really a suprise, she is a 16yo with little schooling behind her (she's missed much of the last few years).

Scientists in the past were often blindly believed (herding) and a good number of times proved completely wrong by people called heretics (and not just by religious bodies, often the majority of other scientists in their field of study) for giving a contrary viewpoint or saying they don't believe the 'mainstream'.

Can you give any examples of this from say the last 100 years?

Galilieo and flat vs round earth c 500 years ago..

The science of evolution which Darwin proposed to outright hostility from the establishment - 150 years ago.

Anti vaccination Dr Wakefield 20 years ago - oh he was a total fraud..

Various theories on genetics mainly populairised by the Nazis and totally without any proof.. 80 years ago.

Err after that I am struggling..

(There will be cases in medicine which I cannot recall - eg vaccination etc but they are all 150+ years ago).

Scientists in the past were often blindly believed (herding) and a good number of times proved completely wrong by people called heretics (and not just by religious bodies, often the majority of other scientists in their field of study) for giving a contrary viewpoint or saying they don't believe the 'mainstream'.

Can you give any examples of this from say the last 100 years?

OK:

1. That the universe was not expanding at all (and the Big Bang theory was rubbish), then that it was only expanding at a constant or reducing rate;
2. That the aether existed (admitedly this was from the late 1800s, but not far off 100 years);
3. That a global ice age was upon us due to pollution;
4. That the ice caps would melt by 2014;
5. That homosexuality is an illness (WHO, 1977);
6. That at times in the past the continents (as they are today) were all joined;
7. That most other star systems would either be planet-less or very similar to our own, including obriting a similar type of star to ours;
8. That most star systems are made up of a single star and not binary (or more) stars;
9. That by the turn of the century, i.e. 2000, the growth in the population (which was under-estimated as well) would easily outstrip our capcity to grow/produce enought food for everyone to live off of, leading to mass starvation (far more than in Ethiopia in the 1980s - on a scale of billions);
10. That thalidomide, DDT, smoking cigarettes, and asbestos-based products were perfectly safe.
11. That fat is unhealthy and worse than sugar;
12. That plastic packaging and all pesticides are safe as regards long term exposure to humans and into the environment;
13. That above ground nuclear weapons testing posed no threat to health/the environment, or the same as regards the sea for underground testing on atolls;
14. The effects of Y2K;
15. Eugenics;
16. That black holes do let anything escape;
17. What foods/drinks are good and bad, and in what quantities.

You will need to show some sources for this.

Stop trolling. I found many of the above (other than those I personally know about as an engineer myself) from a 10 minute search on the Interweb to confirm. The vast majority of them are well documented, and if you don't know about those I mentioned means you aren't very well read or up on scientific issues.

Please show me which ones I specified are lies and that scientists at the time (they aren't all from the last 20 years, mainly because recent theories are not likely to be proven wrong for a good few years, which is often how things get debunked).

Many of the things, e.g. thalidomide, Eugenics, about fat in foods compared to sugar, etc is widely known to have been accepted as fine, then later research done to confirm the contrary. I mean, Sir Fred Hoyle himself (and many other top scientists) said that the Big Bang theory was rubbish, only when the Hubble Space telescope's observations showed that the universe's exapnsion is speeding up did the scientific community accept this.

If you'd just asked me for one or two things, then I would've given the supporting data, but 17? My point was that each generation of scientists think there's is the one' that made all the big breakthroughs, but often all that happens is that the next generation or three debunk quite a few of their theories and discoveries.

This is especially true today with social politics again playing a big part in science, e.g. theories on race, sexuality, gender, etc. Scientists, just like entertainers, like publicity and court it often by bending the knee to the latest social fad or agenda, not because they believe in it, but because they can gain publicity and funding for their projects.

Scientists aren't all selfless people who are only interested in the betterment of society through gaining knowledge - they are flawed people, just like the rest of us, sometimes more so for the reasons I gave. It's one of the reasons I went into engineering and not science, because we tend to work behind the scenes, not courting publicity for our work, because the results are our reward.

1. That at times in the past the continents (as they are today) were all joined;

I thought it was widely acknowledged that there was a super continent called Pangaea at the end of the carboniferous period.

Edited by corax on 11/02/2020 at 17:15

If it was solely about reducing the worst polluting, then surely we'd ban all those powerful sports saloons and supercars

I've said for years that if there really was a crisis being caused by cars which was threatening to end the world as we know it, then just after the turn of the century when the government began taxing on the basis of CO2, they wouldn't have messed about and would have declared an immediate ban on any sale of a new car with an engine of over 1.6 litres or 100bhp or a top speed over 90mph.

You don't think the government wants to stay in power then?

You don't think the government wants to stay in power then?

If the alleged climate crisis was real then the opposition parties of the day would be saying the same thing and supporting it. Besides, what's the point of winning an election if the world is going to end in a few years anyhow? Which is what a certain element of scientists, TV animal watchers, extinction rebellion, and the cabbage patch Swede keep telling us will inevitably happen if drastic action isn't taken immediately. In fact, one would imagine that if governments around the world were privy to such irrefutable evidence of imminent doom as is claimed, then rather than the comparatively minor measures I suggested, we would have seen national grids switched off, petrol stations shut down, all aeroplanes grounded, that sort of thing. Yet there's hardly a one which is going even as far as our own government.

It is no coincidence whatsoever that the rapid growth of this movement of so-called climate activists began in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the break-up of the Warsaw Pact bloc, when marxists in the west were forced to accept that their beloved Soviet Union wouldn't be taking over the world anytime soon, and they had to find a way to wreck western societies from within.

I LOVE a good conspiracy theory.

The best ones are those written with NO proof.

The above is therefore excellent. :-)

Coincidence is not proof...

Edited by madf on 11/02/2020 at 10:30

Coincidence is NOT causality.

Anyone can produce a theory but without proof it is meaningless.

Show us the proof.

And if you say "coincidence" I say "I started sleeping on my right side and the next day President Trump was elected. I now sleep on my left side to ensure it does not happen again"

"It is no coincidence whatsoever that the rapid growth of this movement of so-called climate activists began in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the break-up of the Warsaw Pact bloc, when marxists in the west were forced to accept that their beloved Soviet Union wouldn't be taking over the world anytime soon, and they had to find a way to wreck western societies from within."

I'm getting pretty tired of the "bash-the-left" mantra that seems to have taken over this forum - with some notable exceptions, of course.

But this takes the biscuit.

So those who support the idea of man-made climate change are all in the grip of crazy marxists, bent on wrecking "western societies". You really couldn't make it up.