Re: Quick diesels

The most significant problem is still the carbon dioxide produced. Of course the other stuff affects health, but the global warming effect of carbon dioxide has to potential to affect human civilisation as a whole.

To avoid continued global warming, we should immediately stop extracting carbon-based fuels from the ground. I suspect petroleum based plastics would not be a problem provided that the plastics are never burnt.

With good insulation and building techniques houses can be made to keep warm on renewable sources of energy.

Road transport can run on renewably generated electricity, but we will have to become much less reliant on transport. Air travel will be much more of a problem. Industry that relies on significant quantities of energy will have its own problems so production of raw materials such as steel and concrete will need to have a major re-think.

But these problems pale into insignificance when compared with the rise in sea level which will cause displaced populations to try to relocate thereby causing political instability.

Trump may solve the whole problem for us with the nuclear option - there won't be anybody left to worry about it ...

Just wondering about the sum of chaging power which is needed to charge

Of course there is nuclear, but now less in favour. Expensive. Fusion, ready when it is ready... Wind and waves. Naturally limited to the occurance of Wind and waves. Expensive

Certain countries are more suitable for electric vehicles, e.g if they have geo-thermal energy sources. New Zealand has been mentioned as an example.

fuel cells (for cars) are probably the real way forward.

Driving a lot on motorway, it's ineviatle that I follow some diesel cars, at appropriate distance of course. I'm not a tailgaiter, on the contrary.

But time does strange things over extended time periods. My car is a model from 1995. Two years ago my car failed MOT because of a dull single headlamp reflector. Not quite dull as such, but insufficient to pass MOT.

Me thinking of the theory, that this must have been caused by a blanket of diesel fumes behind the diesel cars. The effect is not immediately obvious, but then give it 20 years or so.

Try Norway. Has oodles of oil and gas and doesn't need more than a smidgeon of it as it has so much hydroelectric. It is a net exporter electricity on that alone.

No surprise it is also one of the richest countries in the world*.

• on a "per capita" basis - the only sensible basis when looking at things like energy or health care that are broadly proportional to population. But of course that doesn't stop the gross measure being used by people who want more spending and argue it must be affordable 'cos the UK's the fifth richest country in the world. On that basis China is of course the second richest and India the sixth.

And it only affected a single headlamp because...?

Chris

Well, no.

Given that the road vehicle has to have storage to carry its electrical power with it, charging can easily be from a renewable source such as sun, wind or tide. Given that cars in particular spend typically 23 hours per day parked, an intelligent charging strategy is all that is needed. So no need to burn any carbon-based fuel to generate the required electricity.

on 23/09/2017, johannes supposed :

More likely the effects of ultra violet on the lens.

MrCheerful has brought this to us :

The sums just don't add up, unless there is a massive upgrade of the supply infrastructure, many more power stations, the grid, plus the local distribution network.

The favourit in my book, but still some way off..

Graham J laid this down on his screen :

..and how, even supposing those green sources are enough, does the power get to the places where the vehicles are to be charged?

The peak demand is during the day, when many commuters will be at work and near a charging source. Many others will spend their working days driving and will need to charge at night - how do they manage that? Many power stations, massively improved power infrastructure, then where do they plug them in to charge? The clue is that most domestic supplies are not adequate for that and plugging them into a street light has to be someone having a laugh.

You make a good point here - if we stop burning fossil fuels, the costs of lots of things will rocket as we'll not be extracting and refining enough to keep up with demand.

That's a dream, rather than a reality for much of the world. We just can't produce enough 'renewable' energy on our small island - some countries are much better off, though. And this is without taking into account the huge environmental impact of mass production of heavy and inefficient batteries.

This is all part of the natural cycle, what we do actually has very little impact! We're here for the ride and can't really influence things on that scale.

My employers are trialling 'hydrogen on demand' - well, it's not quite on demand, but on-site production can fuel 30 hydrogen cars per day.

People always think of hydrogen as a fuel to be burned in a combustion engine to drive the wheels, rather than thinking of a hydrogen tank as a really efficient battery. (500 miles from a 5 minute fill in a tank no bigger than current petrol tanks)

Steve H submitted this idea :

That, on the face of it, sounds like a workable solution depending cost.

There's some work going on to develop catalysts to make hydrogen production more energy efficient - at the moment, on-site production is still expensive... but the fuel cell EV is actually a much better idea than hauling half a tonne of toxic batteries around.

Steve H formulated the question :

Not to mention the toxicity of production and eventual disposal. There is nothing green about the use of batteries.

I agree that this hasn't been thought through. The problem isn't with carbon based fuel but with fossil fuel. If we use bio fuel or hydrocarbons made from the atmosphere we are not adding to the carbon emissions and we already have vehicles and a distribution system ready for them.

Fuel cells are a reasonable technology but we would still need a lot more power stations to make the hydrogen in the first place, even if it's just a field full of solar cells next to the filling station, and even a tiny leak risks a big bang. What will happen when the vehicle is twenty years old? Not everyone follows the law and has MOT and insurance for their vehicle.

Best hope for some astounding developments in supercapacitors over the coming years, then.

Maybe the other reflector is also on the way out. It could also be due to matching the side of many diesel exhausts as NS is cleaner than OS usually.

or the car had a headlamp replaced