"Point I am making is the revenue made from CO2 levies and cars etc, will have to come from somewhere in the future. "
Your argument only applies if Governments continue to spend money as at today's rates: 2 wars, large welfare state, etc.
With resources coming more scarce.. look at oil, grain and basic metals.. we are all going to see a significant rise in our living costs. That means we will have less money to spend.
In the meantime Gov't costs go up.
It takes no genius to realise, either Gov't taxes more (at a time when disposable income is falling) , borrows more (interst rates rising) or spends less.
If politicians were logical..
I predict air pollution will get worse cos the rising car use in India China and the US and Latin America will just continue on as is... until there is a real need to change.
A real need is defined as mass deaths or starvation or both.
We have just seen the end of a golden age of motoring with cheap oil and cheap cars due to technology and competition. Solar panels will become cheaper and moree effective but in the UK do you seriously want to rely on solar energy.
As for wind energy, it's a bad joke. Even the Outer Hebrides do not want wind farms and the transmission losses!
Car makers take 10-20 years to adapt new technolgy (except in the US where it's 40 years). So even if electric cars powered by battery were viable now, volume use would be 2017 at the earliest.
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What if all these motorists sign up for green tariff power (is there a limit to how many can sign up for this).
There is yes.
To try and put it into words, if you imagine that the UK's power was 50% fossil fuel and 50% renewable, that would mean that everyone's power was 50% zero carbon.
Then along comes a power company who sell a green tariff, they get 25% of the UK poplulation to pay the premium and switch, these people now get to boast that their electricity is 100% zero carbon. But wait, now the remaining 75% of the UK have electricity that is only 33% zero carbon as half of the renewable power is being used by those on the green tariff. After all of the marketing fuss and people paying premiums, the net result is that the UK is 50% fossil fuel powered and 50% renewable.
The only way that a green tariff could claim to be truly green would be if they built a brand new renewable gnerator (whatever type that may be) every time 25 people switched.
In order to get around this problem what many firms do is take the premium and pay most of it into a "green fund" which gives grants to schools, community centres etc. to allow them to put a turbine on the roof so they can save a couple of quid on their leccy bill.
So, I appreciate that my figures are wildly inaccurate, but I just wanted to make them a little easier to understand rather than using the actual renewable figure which is about 2% IIRC.
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Let's get real people - there is absolutely nothing we can do about these emissions and their effect on climate.
Most "global warming" is caused by water and water vapour - "Water accounts for about 90% of the Earth's greenhouse effect -- perhaps 70% is due to water vapor and about 20% due to clouds (mostly water droplets), some estimates put water as high as 95% of Earth's total tropospheric greenhouse effect (e.g., Freidenreich and Ramaswamy, ?Solar Radiation Absorption by Carbon Dioxide, Overlap with Water, and a Parameterization for General Circulation Models,? Journal of Geophysical Research 98 (1993):7255-7264)
Let's say that the rest of "global warming" is down to CO2 (forgetting methane etc), "humans can only claim responsibility, if that's the word, for about 3.4% of carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere annually, the rest of it is all natural ."
Therefore, if you removed ALL "human" CO2 emitters from the equation you would only remove 3.4% of 5% of the "global warming" gases from the atmosphere. Road transport is about 10% of of that 3.4%.
I make that 10% of 3.4% of 5% of global warming gases removed if you removed every car, truck and van from the surface of the earth tomorrow - so what effect do you think the odd car in Britain would make, plug in, gas-guzzler or whatever?
It's all a ruse to extract more tax from car drivers - easy targets.
Did humans cause the last ice age? (Which we are still in) Did humans cause the warming in "Roman Times" in UK? Did humans cause the warm spell in Middle ages? Did humans cause the "Little Ice Age" (1600 to 1800ish?) Did we helluslike.
Go on, explain that in 2008 so far "According to Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, we experienced the sharpest January-to-January global temperature drop - three quarters of a degree Celsius - since records began in 1880. Temperatures were lower than their 20th century average for the first time since 1982. Snow cover in the northern hemisphere was at its greatest extent since 1966. At the other end of the world, Antarctic ice-cover was at its most extensive since satellite records began in 1979, 30 per cent above the January average (see such websites as the US National Climate Data Center, Cryosphere Today and Watt's Up With That)."
For goodness sake - keep driving your gas-guzzlers if you want to (I won't, but then I don't need one), keep your central heating turned up; if you win the lottery - buy a Ferrari and drive it hard - whatever you do will have no effect on "global warming"
Enjoy life - it's yours , and only for one tiny insignificant moment in earth's history - make the most of your life and the car you can enjoy.
If you want sources for various quotes above, I can supply them, but remember one thing - global warming may be occurring, but it's nothing to do with the car youy drive.
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So PhilW, what's the story? Is there conspiracy by a global network of scientists & governments all in the pay or er, Greenpeace or somesuch organisation to promote the false idea of global warmnig being caused by human activity? If no conspiracy, then just lots of misguided scientists & national/international organisations (UN, EU, Royal Society, US EPA, US NOAA etc.) all trying to stop us using our cars & keeping warm eh?
What rotters & dissimulators they are!
Now what possible reason would they have to do that? I trust you'll forward your research & conclusions forthwith to the relevant organisations & governments, so they can repent & tell us the truth.
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I expect that PhilW will make the 10pm news tonight for his amzing research that has completely debunked the work of thousands of scientists over the last few decades.
Yes, I always thought it was a global conspiracy to get everyone on the planet to pay more tax.
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I'm quite shocked to have just found out that the department for transport (DfT) are also in on this climate change scam that is being played on us all.
Just take a look at this website they run:
www.dft.gov.uk/ActOnCO2/
Look at this crazy statement that the DfT are making on the homepage of the website:
"All cars on the road today contribute to climate change because their engines burn fuel and therefore produce carbon dioxide (CO2) every time we drive."
Edited by moonshine {P} on 28/02/2008 at 08:50
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>>"All cars on the road today contribute to climate change
There is absolutely no scientific proof of this assertion. Please provide references if you believe otherwise.
their engines burn fuel and therefore produce carbon dioxide (CO2) every time we drive."
Fair enough.
Personally, I am all for reducing energy consumption, and waste, increasing recycling etc. and as a result am no great fan of Ferraris. But only because the world has finite resources. The amount of CO2 in the air is - what? - 0.02 or 0.03%. To suggest that a tiny variation in a tiny proportion of the composition of the atmosphere can change the climate beggars belief.
Just remember that in the 1970s scientists were reporting global cooling and asking what politicians were going to do to prevent the next ice age.
The climate is changing. But the climate has always changed. We have been emitting CO2 for a long time, but only in the last 10-20 years has it been alleged that it has suddenly caused temperatures to rise. It just doesn't stack up. Sorry.
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Imagine the atmosphere is a giant chilli con carne you are making for your supper. You add the chillis and by volume they make up less than one percent of the total. It's lovely. Then you add a little more. Still less than one percent, still a tiny amount, but suddenly your dinner is inedible.
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>>"All cars on the road today contribute to climate change There is absolutely no scientific proof of this assertion. Please provide references if you believe
The assertion was made by the DfT so I can't tell you where they sourced their info
Just remember that in the 1970s scientists were reporting global cooling and asking what politicians were going to do to prevent the next ice age.
We did prevent the next ice age by releasing lots of CO2 into the atmosphere. We should be getting colder but in fact we are getting warmer.
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SQThe assertion was made by the DfT so I can't tell you where they sourced their info
Probably best not to repeat it on a public forum then. Unless you believe all the propoganda that the Government peddles...
Edited by Dynamic Dave on 28/02/2008 at 14:16
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It's very kind of you, woodbines and moonshine, to credit me with the research, but as I made clear in my post, I was quoting others. My main point (perhaps not well made enough) was not that global warming is not taking place but that the emphasis on HUMANS causing it may well be misplaced and the penalising and demonising of car drivers is out of all proportion to their contribution to "Global Warming" or should that now be "climate change"? - already we see a subtle change in terminology because "those thousands of scientists " are now not so sure that "Global warming " will take place but that some parts of the earth may actually cool.
As for the UN, RA and all those other organisations - are you referring to the same UN that based its arguments on the "Hockey stick" graph, you know the now totally discredited one that shows global temperatures rocketing to previously unheard of levels but just happened to exclude the even warmer temps of the Middle Ages?
And of course there is no hypocrisy involved (or money to be made?) by the likes of Al Gore who clocks up more air miles per month (promoting his film berating us for driving) than most of us clock up in a life time; or by those 10,000 "Global Warming" advocates who went to Bali, half a world away, to discuss how to reduce CO2 emissions. I wonder what attracted them to that tropical island paradise for their conference? How about introducing a Low Emission Zone which penalises motorists while at the same time allowing thousands of aircraft to overfly the same city, or building a relatively new airport in docklands? or propose massive expansion of Heathrow? And the newspapers are no better - they warn us of Global warming then have a travel supplement which almost exclusively promotes, for about 40 pages, the delights of flying to numerous exotic long haul destinations.
Of course, if you feel that swapping to a battery driven car, powered actually by coal/gas/oil fired power station will make a difference to Climate Change, then feel free to do so - just a pity that perhaps 90% of the world's population have never even heard of Climate change.
Long rant over - apologies.
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It's interesting that water vapour is the biggest contribution to global warming. Hydrogen powered cars are supposedly considered global warming friendly because they don't emit CO2. However they do emit large quantities of water vapour. Can anyone else see a contradiction here?
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A little knowledge is dangerous.
As for water vapour, it's where it is in the atmosphere that counts. At sea level... no big deal. At 20kms up, significant.
I refuse to discuss climate change here because most of us are repeating positions taken by others: but with the benefit of total ignorance.
I envy those who KNOW they are right. I wish I was so expert:-)
Plug in cars could increase pollution.. depending upon the way the electricity consumed is made.
In Germany the electricity industry is set up so any surplus electricity produced by a consumer or town or factory can be resold to the Grid: at a profit.
In the UK: at a loss if you can sell it.
So basically despite huffing and puffing, the laws on Electricity supply in the UK will have to change to allow anyone - on their own - to make any difference to electrical pollution. As for wind, wave or sea, it's uneconomic, unloved by environmentalists and totally unreliable. Apart from that it's ideal:-)
The UK electricty supply at present would collapse in overload if asked to supply lots of electric cars: so the question is academic.
Rant over.
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So basically despite huffing and puffing the laws on Electricity supply in the UK will have to change to allow anyone - on their own - to make any difference to electrical pollution.
I don't understand this, if you choose to install micro-generation in your home and you want to pay for the installation of an import/export meter then you can quite legally and easily re-sell your excess electricity back to the grid, last time I looked one of the big suppliers would pay 7.5p per KWh (ish)
Of course you would have to have a lot of excess to ever get close to making a profit after you have paid for the turbine, wiring and extra metering equipment, but then the situation is no different in Germany.
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The hockey stick graph has not been totally discredited - my understanding is that they are still argueing over it. My view is that there may have been a flaw in their methodolgy, but if corrected it does not change the result.
I agree with you on one thing - there is a lot of hypocrisy. As an example, those who drive a large SUV hybrid, "becuase it's good for the environment"
No car will ever be 'good' for the environment. By their nature they are bad for the planet. They consume resources, we pave over green spaces to build roads, they kill people, the dust from tyres and brake pads contains heavy metals that poison the earth.
But I'm a hypocrite as well, I like cars and in the right situations I also enjoy driving.
95% of my mileage is for commuting, going to the shops etc. For me that's not fun driving and that's where I would like to reduce my CO2 emissions.
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moonshine
"The ?hockey stick? representation of the temperature behavior of the past 1,000 years is broken, dead. Although already reeling from earlier analyses aimed at its midsection, the knockout punch was just delivered by Nature magazine. Thus the end of this palooka: that the climate of the past millennium was marked by about 900 years of nothing and then 100 years of dramatic temperature rise caused by people. The saga of the ?hockey stick? will be remembered as a remarkable lesson in how fanaticism can temporarily blind a large part of the scientific community and allow unproven results to become ?mainstream? thought overnight.
The ?Hockey Stick? is dead. "
from
www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2005/03/03/ho.../
Which may of course be the most biassed site on earth!
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