News is out that diesel cars which don’t comply with pollution standards will be banned from some roads in Germany on “high pollution” days. Depending on how often those bad news for diesel industry and owners. How useless is a car that you can’t drive when you need it? Stuttgart is being called the “Beijing” of Germany for air pollution. Residents are suing the Mayor for “bodily harm”. The same thing happened in Oslo — governments told people to buy diesel to reduce carbon pollution, but they are now banning diesel cars on some roads on some days too.
This may apply to as many as 90% of diesels on German roads. Sales of diesels fell by 10% last month. The pain level in this depends on how often those high-pollution days are. See the current Stuttgart air-quality monitoring — it’s OK today, but if I read this air pollution road map from 2008 correctly, it suggests some roads are over the safe limit 60, 80, even 180 days a year. In 2014 fine particulate matter exceeded safe limits on 64 days a year.
Corruption always has a price but in this case the owners of diesels are paying for the corruption of officials, bureaucrats, car companies and politicians. It is time the real culprits paid. Way back in 2006 – 2009 the Eco-Worriers were pushing diesel as a green alternative to “save the planet”. E.g Diesel: Greener Than You Think. MotherEarth top ten Green Cars.
If the Greens actually cared about emissions and pollution they would have checked, protested and stopped this long ago. Instead, they ignored it and it is coming back to bite.
Diesel Cars Banned from Stuttgart on Days When Pollution is Heavy:
[Reuters] Stuttgart, home to Germany’s Mercedes-Benz (DAIGn.DE) and Porsche (PSHG_p.DE), said on Tuesday it will ban from next year diesel cars which do not meet the latest emissions standards from entering the city on days when pollution is heavy.
Only around 10 percent of diesel cars in use on German roads at the start of 2016 conformed with the “Euro 6” standard, which is the latest EU anti-pollution rule.
Death of Diesel, by EuroIntelligence.
When we reported on the VW scandal, we made the point that the really important implications are not the fines but the long-term industrial fallout. The long term is already happening now.
The sales statistics also support the trend against the diesel car. In February, the number of diesel cars sold sank by 10%, while the rest of the market was largely stable. … There are several reasons for the dramatic decline in diesel sales. The VW scandal is clearly the trigger, along with revelation that the entire industry has cheated, and that there was a probable collusion by the German government and the European authorities. …
There are further court cases in favour of a similar rule for the cities of Berlin, Essen, Cologne, Aachen, Frankfurt and Mainz…
This means that diesel will become a rogue technology very soon. Owners of diesel cars may be able to sue for compensation, but the political trend in Germany is now clearly against diesel technology.
From the people who were big on “sustainability”, we have an increasingly sustainable catastrophe. More unintended consequences from another unexamined and undiscussable noble cause.
“Oh what a tangled web we weave when we first practice to deceive.”
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I look at it this way…diesels are sludge burners….how logically can you try and burn a heavy fuel and expect it to be cleaner than a petrol car unless it super hot?
Common sense says diesel could never be cleaner.
And they sound like delivery trucks….clatter clatter….oooarrrr…..off to plow me field, loike…
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What is this thing you speak of called “common sense”?
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It is the appendix of the brain – must be removed if it shows up as active.
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Yes, sorry…I will take 500 lines….
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You are all missing the point here!
How long will it be before the same restrictions are applied to petrol powered vehicles?
The diesel scenario is just the thin end of the wedge to push for acceptance of the policy.
And when will the same be restrictions be applied here in Australian cities & towns?
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Graham – please link to different clean air standards for diesels and petrol powered cars.
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This has nothing to do with “clean air standards” !
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My apology. What restrictions did you refer to?
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You can’t really be that gullible, surely?
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Here’s a link to what you require:-
http://www.theaa.com/driving-advice/fuels-environment/euro-emissions-standards
Note that the latest EU6 diesels have the same NOx limits as EU4 Petrol engines.
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Thanks, I am surprised that there are actually different Euro emissions limits for petrol (is it a European word?) and diesel. I thought that petrol was a type of fuel, and diesel was a type of engine. The standards are for a kilometer whether it is a two-person car or a truck or a bus. If true, I am all for Brexit.
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The main problem–if one’s target is the physical truth of the matter–is that there is no consistent discrimination, on the level of public reporting at least, between particulate and gaseous pollution. Diesel combustion is infamous, for decades, for its particulate “black carbon” emissions, but the “VW scandal” was over gaseous NOx emissions (and no doubt, lurking in the background of these indiscriminately mentioned pollutants–with particulates by far the worst of the two–is CO2, a.k.a. That-Which-It-Seems-Must-Not-Be-Named-Just-Yet-Until-We-Leaders-Can-Tell-Which-Way-The Political-Winds-Are-Blowing, and which is not a pollutant at all unless you try to breathe it, concentrated, instead of regular air).
Simplify, simplify, simplify. Particulates, particulates, particulates are the problem, if there is a problem still, in the latest generation of diesel engines. Not gases. And forget “greenhouse gases” altogether, just as they had to forget phlogiston back in the good old days.
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Lionell Griffith, nice comment. I also think this is an example of what happens when ignorant people with political clout force their will on the public and industry.
Seems the Greens cannot even see or smell the difference between gasoline engine and diesel engine emissions. Maybe willful ignorance would better apply in this case.
If you walk the sidewalk or ride a bike and a diesel powered bus pulls up beside you and then accelerates away the difference is obnoxious and most obvious.
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Wait till they have to replace or remove all those windmills. It’s not as if anyone was unaware of the problems with diesel. Completely unrealistic standards led to unrealistic testing which led to widespread cheating. Windmills and solar panels are a huge environmental problem in the making. All 300,000 of them.
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Absolutely!
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I’ll have to upgrade my angle grinder. Off to work we go !
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Printing money out of thin air will also be environmentally unfriendly so things need to go cashless as well, It is only becoming common knowledge now that using plastic to print money is highly polluting
I suppose the plan is to only have essential services like laser cannons and high tech military equipment powered by carbon only. Any form of energy generation needs be systematically phased out for civilian use.
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VW (and no doubt others) were told to meet a certain Standard using the specified test. This they did.
[Deleted as per author request. #3 comment left in place to keep nesting in order] ED
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Mod: please delete Comment #3.
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VW (and no doubt others) were told to meet a certain Standard using the specified test. This they did.
The 2 questions I have are:
Why is no-one blaming the people who designed the test? Didn’t it occur to them to introduce a check method?
I recall when working that the company was ordered to use a certain method to measure organic emissions. That it was impractical and inaccurate (as well as expensive in time) was ignored because it was the pet of the public servant leading the survey.
How dangerous are the levels of particulates anyway? There is a huge tendency for public officials to over-reach in what they want, beyond what is necessary.
Years ago, when TVs had tubes the use of bromo-biphenyls in the backing boards was banned because they might release bromo-dioxins in a fire.
That they were there to prevent fires, that they didn’t release dioxins when burnt and that there was no figures for toxicity etc. for bromo-dioxins was ignored. There was a blanket ban by the EU on their use anywhere because of a non problem and other fires became more likely.
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I smelt an Oh Bummer fish or two.
Toyota had a mysterious, unsolvable cruise control issue which hurt their USA sales immensely.
And then VW falls foul of a meaningless NOX emission test.
Isn’t it odd that the USA carmakers are squeaky clean?
You know, the ones who were propped up by Oh Bummer after the GFC – when people stopped buying cars. Oh Bummer’s city of Detroit turned into a dangerous slum – almost overnight.
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It wasn’t obummer who killed Detroit. More likley Nixon who “opened” trade with China on a global scale. Then you saw the outsourcing of parts to all corners of the world. Creating pools of toxic materials where they had no regulations to prevent it.
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Detroit was a dangerous slum back in the 90’s. Not too sure that it is a recent phenomenon.
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When the VW diesel story came out, I met a gentleman who was retired from Land Rover in the UK. I expressed my opinion that can manufacturers have been setting up engines to pass the test only, for a long time. I made this statement on the basis of what a mechanic had told me about EGR systems, and how they work, but only for a few hundred miles. I was then told that I was probably right, and that there used to be a fuel economy test in the UK, based on traveling at 50 miles per hour, and the mile per gallon was then stated on the basis of this test. So what the companies used to do (in the days of SU and Zenith Stromgberg carbs), would be to profile the needles so the car would run lean at 50 mph, and hence perform better in the test.
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Common practice, James. And why wouldn’t it be?
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Ha ha, you didn’t buy Landrover for their fuel economy, which was only slightly better than for a Rolls, you bought them as they got you home through the bush. As a field geologist I have owned 3, and driven many more, and have often been in difficulties but never let down by the old workhorse. I drive a turbo – diesel cruiser now for comfort and economy.
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That is absolutely true. Those tests were never ‘real world’ tests. VW simply wrote code to ensure that their cars passed the tests as specified. The problem was not with VW, it was with the tests. VW simply outsmarted them It was hardly ‘cheating’.
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Europeans have the sophistication to resolve these difficulties in an enlightened way: get into a gigantic aluminium cylinder loaded with 150,000 litres of kerosene and fly off to a far-away conference to discuss the relative merits of banning things that work and promoting white elephants.
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Hmm!
I wonder if banning diesel vehicles from the roads also applies to semi trailers and perhaps even locomotives, or is it just the long suffering personal user, as in most other cases, who will bear the brunt of all this.
Tony.
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LP gas and Diesel used to be a fraction of the cost of petrol because motorists did not use them. Diesel was used for tractors and trucks and forklifts.
Now they also suffer extreme taxation, which is the bulk of the cost of power, as it is with electricity. The odd thing about electricity and the RET is that the government handballs the cash to third parties who pay to import windmills and solar panels, so taxation by the government for the benefit of people overseas. This is theft. It is especially true of solar panels where the importer gets 15 years carbon tax in advance in cash. This is cash for nothing. Plus cash for compulsorily selling the electricity back to suppliers who do not want it. Saving the planet? No.
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And those big thousand odd horse power back up diesel generators that are all the rage in the UK as registered generators that are kept ready to go through huge subsidies from a UK government that is becoming increasingly paranoid about massive blackouts across the UK when the wind don’t blow and the sun don’t shine.
And those 80,000 KW ship’s diesels that burn heavy oil that has to be heated to actually flow through the engine fuel systems.
A world wide diesel powered international goods shipping system that has done so much to create wealth and better living standards everywhere trading of goods and services takes place.
The emergency diesel generators in hospitals and medical centres. Nice to know they are there and hopefully will run OK when you or one of your closest is ill and having an operation and the wind stops blowing and the sun don’t shine.
A few tens of millions of Diesel farm tractors, about every single one of today’s tractors around the world are diesel engined and for damn good efficiency and safety reasons, which is the reason why mankind with his fast increasing numbers doesn’t really know any naturally induced hunger and food shortages.
Only the interference of man in war and strife and crazy, stupid turning food into fuel in about the most inefficient manner that could ever be dreamed up even by governments who are so utterly ignorant and so deeply involved in Saving the Planet that they created and perpetuated such blatant subsidised food to fuel stupidity for a couple of decades past is responsible for the pockets of hunger around the world today.
And my bet would be that in another few years all hell will break loose all over again as some researchers somewhere pinpoint gasoline fumes and particles as being responsible for some other serious human and societal problems.
Of course batteries are the answer aren’t they?
Until battery manufacture is brought home from China or the Chinese throw them out and a few dozen rivers and a few thousand food sources and a few tens of thousands of citizens are all polluted, corrupted and destroyed by the battery manufacturers failures to adequately control their highly polluting industrial processes .
And then the politicians discover that so much money from both taxes and from the voters pockets is going into trying to pay for the batteries as well as the extra 20% of energy that has to be generated due to losses in the batteries that batteries were a really bad idea as the living standards and the economic losses mount up and batteries and their uncontrolled use and rapidly rising levels of battery manufacturing and disposal pollution all created by a mandated requirement from the government to use battery storage for most power needs should now instead be controlled or even banned in many situations.
Then some bureaucrat or political gets a real brain wave; why not mandated diesel engines to be fitted to all vehicles, diesels with their low fuel consumption, their low levels of polluting particles and etc would make an excellent mandated engine requirement for all vehicles and would help to Save the Planet all over again.
Is there really no end to government and bureaucratic and the so called and grossly misnamed “expert’s” blatant stupidity and their uncontrollable pathological urges to interfere with to try and run and direct and control every single aspect of our lives today.
Australia, America, Canada , even Great Britain were built into modern highly developed nations and economies BEFORE the Governments of each of those nations became the arrogant, know all, overreaching, non listening, utterly incompetent interfering busybodies that are now so desperate to interfere and control our lives at every level of every citizen’s lives.
And can anybody readily identify today, all that pollution that must have existed if we are to believe all the do gooders and politicals and crazy greens that must have been created whilst our forefathers were building our nations, nations whose governments of the day stood back and told their citizens, go for it as what ever you build or make or do will benefit our future as a nation and our citizens both now and into the future.
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So where is the energy efficient water disassociation tech we know exists?
Love to see that dragged out and dusted off….problem solved – no dodgy batteries, no fumes…
Everything seems to avoid the elephant in the room of cracking H20 into fuel….
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I had this idea, but unfortunately it really doesn’t add up. Oxygen and Hydrogen from hydrolysis of water.
Now the oxygen relased is valueless for storage as it is already free in the air, so there is no point building a compression system. All you have to burn as fuel is the hydrogen. The hydrogen has energy as a lightweight fuel at 141kj/mole of hydrogen atoms into H2O but most of the energy comes from the oxidation of the Carbon into CO2 at 393kj/mole, not the hydrogen. Worse, the hydrogen is hard to compress and store, liquid only at -253C. Then to add insult to injury, Hydrogen attacks steel containers. You can’t win. That’s not to say it is not worth doing, but that it is a poor energy store compared to hydrocarbons. However it might be better than batteries and endlessly recyclable.
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I’d suggest its worth pursuing…
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No. The generation methods are inefficient hence cost too much. Then there is the problem of storage of hydrogen, it leaks readily and has a very wide range of explosive limits in air, coupled with the difficulty of detecting leaks (unless there is an explosion then you can be sure there was a leak). Search euanmeans.com for (reliable) analysis.
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Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t it the case that the electrical energy used during the hydrolysis process exceeds the energy available from the resultant hydrogen?
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Graeme, there is low power HV plasma tech around that may change the “more energy in than out” balance.
I figure we can with 1960s tech, send people to the moon.
Why we cant solve a basic issue with hydrogen I find is really just being gun shy….that and the greens dont want it solved either, as it would allow personal freedom and govts wouldnt be able to tax the fuel…oh dear, that would never do…..
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Steve,
Some time ago, on a distant thread on this blog, Roy mentioned a few of the problems associated with storage of H2.
Practicalities seem to mean it isn’t a realistic option.
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Cracking H2O is essentially an alternative storage system for electricity as it requires about the same amount of electrical energy to crack the H2O as the thermal energy that is stored in the resulting 2xH2+O2. And batteries are a lot safer.
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I am optimistic – I think with plasmas, we have a decent chnace of shifting the balance of the currently accepted energy equation….
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Hey! What’s ‘this ‘even Great Britain’ stuff about ROM?
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It was Annie, a long time ago!
It truly was a “Great Britain” when its entrepreneurs and its engineers in the 1760’s gambled in a truly gigantic and ultimately global changing fashion with its consequent immense changes to every nation and peoples on the globe, that the new technologies of spinning mills and weaving mills driven by the new fangled and extremely dangerous steam engines that were fueled by coal mined from increasingly deep mines that had to use the power of steam to pump the water from those coal mines.
And they gambled that those coal fired steam driven looms and spinning jennies would produce vast amounts of cotton and woollen cloth at a far lower price than the small cottage weavers and spinners across every developing nation could ever hope to match and compete with.
And with that steam powered technology in the coal mines that nobody else could match in productivity gains due to increased depth as the the British engineers could pump and de-water those deeper mines using their skills and knowledge of steam power with a consequent far greater access to much greater amounts of better quality coal.
Better quality and far cheaper Coal that could then be used in the steam engines to drive the new spinning jennies and wool looms to make cheap cloth that was sold all over the world at prices and a profitability that nobody anywhere else could match.
And then there had to be engineers and machine tools invented and created and built and developed to build those rapidly advancing in technology and performance and efficiency steam engines and all the machines and iron working technologies and transporting equipment and maintenance machinery for the railways that followed with their steam powered locos.
Machine tools that were taken up as fast as they could be developed by what was by now the irreplaceable railways system that had increased productivity, reduced costs and reduced transport costs and increased transport efficiency many times over and so dramatically.
British entrepreneurial companies then won contracts to build the first iron ships in British ship yards with iron from the newly developed coal fired iron ore smelters, iron ships which then began to dominate the world’s shipping trade as they were so much faster and better and safer and carried more cargo than any other wind powered and hybrid wind/ steam powered ships of all other nations.
And then the Great British rail network was built in a matter of only a few decades, some of which is still running today on the same routes as they were built on some 250 years ago in Britain and then in the British colonies and then in other nations of Europe and Africa and the America’s.
And much, much more that was and is called the Industrial Revolution began by the 30 million British of Great Britain who went on over the next century to create the largest and greatest and possibly best governed Empire , an Empire that covered a third of the world’s land masses and an empire on which the Sun never set, that mankind has ever seen.
There was a “Great Britain” Annie, and when seen for what it accomplished so quickly in a historical sense with its 30 million inhabitants and so few natural resources on a large island off the coast of a vast eurasian land mass over the century that it dominated the world with the largest Empire the world had ever seen, it fully justifies its title of a “Great Britain” in every sense of the words.
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Incidentally Germany wasn’t that far behind the British in the Industrial Revolution although Germany as such didn’t exist as a cohesive nation but as a German Confederation of States until the German nation was officially created in 1871.
The German industrial revolution went down the chemical development track beginning with the dyes used for dying clothing and etc.
Consequently we still see the very big German chemical groups like Bayer and etc dominating a good part of the global chemical industry.
With steel production they were amongst the first to develop “steel” from Bessemer furnaces as against iron which led to the German tendency to produce lots of high quality steel based weapons such as the giant Krupps organisation and its rail and weapons output for sale across the world.
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Yeah, I know all that! What I meant was the way you said ‘even Great Britain’ after listing Australia, America and Canada! As if it was an afterthought and GB was not terribly important in the industrial revolution. That’s how it came over to me and I thought ‘Hang on a mo!’. Perhaps I misunderstood you.
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Apologies Annie if I offended you by not quoting “Great Britain” first.
Its a blog and often a quite fast moving blog that doesn’t allow a commenter to reflect for long on the way he/ she has posted something up.
I invariably find that leaving a screed lie for a few hours or a day or so and then reflecting on it again leads to many changes and improvements and clarifications that show up as flaws in the original screed.
But we are rarely granted that time to reflect on our blog comments here so we just make of the comments what we will whilst leaving very considerable latitudes as to what the commenter may have actually meant or implied in the posted comment as we read that comment.
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It’s ok ROM, I’m not offended! I just wanted to clarify that GB was very much the pacemaker for the industrial revolution.
For the record, I enjoy your posts. I always get back to your longer ones at some stage, though I need to concentrate hard with your long multi-clause sentences! You are in good company there as St Paul in his epistles and one of my favourite writers, Bernard Levin, wrote in a similar style! 🙂
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@ Tony – this story (I know, it’s the Daily Mail) suggests that small cars are considerably worse than larger ones, and emit as much NO2 as a heavy truck:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4284572/VW-Polo-bad-lorry-pollution.html
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Heavy trucks have low speed engines, optimised over a narrow rpm range therefore having many more gears than a small car.
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So much for the billions of dollars spent around the world removing Sulphur from Diesel fuel including refinery modification costs and field engine technology costs.
The merry-go-round of extreme greenism: First Lead removed from Petrol and related refinery and engine technology costs, then Diesel targeted and gradually the push for electric vehicles.
As the new world order marches onwards, and outwards from the EU thought bubbles factory towards their new world order dream.
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Removing the sulphur from all fuels is really good. The Acid rain from H2S which became H2SO4 was killing Europe, as well as people’s lungs. South American oil has a lot of sulphur. However the diesel with much higher pressures produces Nitrous oxides which form HNO3, nitric acid which is every bit as bad.
Of course that only happens in Volkswagens if you accelerate or drive up hills, so the ‘cheating’ meant going dead to acceleration. I think that fault still exists as a fault in many cars, if you idle too long. Even the most powerful Audi/VW/Skoda/Lamborghini will refuse to accelerate if you drive sedately for too long.
The general idea was that with higher temperatures and compression there would be less CO but the price was more NO. There is also more mileage because engines are more efficient at higher temperatures plus the fact that diesel has 10% more energy per litre than petrol. LP gas is 20% less. Thanks to the miracle of taxation, they all end up the same cost. Governments are not about saving the environment, they are about paying for governments.
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When my father’s WD9 International tractor ordered in 1946 at 680 pounds cost price arrived in 1952 at 2,500 pounds cost, the fuel consumption was 2 gallons/hour, as against 3 gallons / hour for the W9 with a kerosene powered motor doing similar work. I think the diesel had more punch.
The other huge advantage with the diesel of course was the absence of ignition electrics. That particular diesel though had a low compression/petrol powered start to warm the motor, so did have the electrics. At cranking speed the magneto worked with a trip impulse mechanism, and as a 12 year old kid I was able to start that 60 hp diesel by cranking it if the battery was flat. Crank it over one compression to charge the next cylinder, and the next click fired it up.
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No coil, distributor, spark leads, sparkplugs. No carburettor with direct injection. So a diesel will really work underwater if it can just get air in and out. It will start more easily in the cold and is not as temperamental, as the Germans discovered on the Eastern front. The fuel is not as flammable and dangerous and you have to carry less or replace it less often.
So for a pump down by the dam for two days in the rain and half in the water, it is utterly reliable and However it took a lot of improvements in manufacturing to make diesel suitable for passenger cars and less noisy and cheaper. The downside is that the higher compression creates its own problems with Nitrous Oxides, the serious problem with the VW tests. There is far less of a problem though for steady use such as pumping. Each technology has its place.
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A farmer friend had an early 1900s Massey Harris diesel tractor in a shed that had not been started for many decades, he decided to use it in a local town street parade pulling a designed to be Horse drawn wagon with a table top the dimensions of a large truck tray and timber wheels taller than the average person. After priming the fuel system and turning the engine a few times with the crank handle it roared into operation and did not miss a beat thereafter. All he did for the parade was to remove its steel spiked rear wheels and replace them with rubber tyre rims.
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German tanks,I believe used gasoline( petrol) engines – as did the western allies.The superb Russian T-34 however was diesel powered. Some countries Germany, France and Russia had operational diesel powered aircraft. Not particularly successful .
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The Germans used two stroke diesel engines in flying boats. When out at sea they could refuel from submarines or ships. The Junkers motors had two crankshafts with pistons opposed in the same bore slightly out of sync. There were ports in the cylinder walls at the bottom of the stroke. The leading piston then cleared its ports first, allowing the exhaust, and it then closed off first to hold the air charge forced in via the trailing piston. A clever design.
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The old tanky term to brew up was not to put the kettle on, it was a term used to describe a petrol powered tank that met an incendiary. Petrol’s volatility is the reason I use a diesel 4WD. So much safer to carry.
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The Germans used diesel in the petrol engined vehicles; as “coolant” during the second winter on the Eastern Front. Anti-freeze was a rare commodity and having one less thing in the supply chain was a big deal.
There are a few thermodynamic advantages to using diesel fuel as a coolant an it could work better than water-based coolants despite the lower specific heat. For one, the boiling point is much higher, even without pressurisation. Then it has much better conductivity and it wets the surface of metal very well so the thermal resistance into the liquid is much lower. Diesel is slightly more viscous than pure water but not much different to the chemical cocktail that’s used to cool modern engines.
The lower thermal capacity can be offset by a higher flow rate and by allowing a higher peak temperature (~140°C) in the cooling circuit. The higher temperature tends to improve efficiency.
You can’t use it in modern vehicles because many of the polymers used in the cooling circuit are not compatible with diesel.
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Acid rain in Europe was due to British power stations pushing their outflow into the westerly winds through ever taller chimneys, not from car exhausts.
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Oh Dear.
I sold my old motor (V12 engine) for a pittance and saved the world by purchasing a modern diesel SUV which uses less than half the fuel/kilometre.
Now it seems that I was better with the old car.
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How does “biodiesel” compare real pollution-wise to petroleum diesel?
I think I read somewhere that it was worse, both in production and in use.
Anyone got any reliable info ?
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Andy G55 @ # 8.1
The EU, the UN and the IPCC in its AR5 all backed away from biofuels in around 2012 due to land use environmental problems; ie; forest and etc being cleared to grow low yielding, heavily subsidised bio fuels plus direct pollution problems from some bio fuels.
Just google “Biofuels Rethink“ and a lot of articles come up from official sources and not so much the Fake news “Saving the Planet” dishonest rabble.
eg; Study: Biofuels mandate could increase EU CO2 emissions
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Official sources have been the worst offenders in our Fake News / Fake Facts department.
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Still got my old 2003 Holden V8 🙂
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Keep it tuned and enjoy the sound and the feeling of “Master of the Universe” when you hit the accelerator.
I am regretting the loss of the 1975 V12 Jaguar XJC.
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Just now I have no plans to drive to Stuttgart.
WWIII is already well and truly under way. When the bullets start flying, I wonder what the pretext will be.
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Peter C: what make was your V12? I can’t think of many cars that use this configuration.
Some Jaguars? Ferraris? Other exotica? Please say that it wasn’t something like this, and you bought – a DIESEL?
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When it comes to air pollution Stuttgart has nothing on Delhi or Beijing but … this from DW.
‘Many commuters don’t use their car because they want to, but rather because they have to, Daniel Moser – a traffic expert at Greenpeace – told DW.
“People in Stuttgart’s surrounding areas are dependent on their cars – they often have no alternative,” he said, adding that politicians are responsible for improving public transport.
‘According to Resch, authorities’ recent measures have even worsened the situation.
“They installed a huge parking lot on the outskirts of Stuttgart, with buses for commuting into the city center,” Resch said. But this is not being used, he added. “The buses are empty – emitting even more fine particulates.”
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I do not know about Beijing but I went to Delhi last year. The air pollution was staggering.
The likely cause was vehicle traffic. I spent hours on the roads. Trucks, buses and Tuk Tuks all belching black smoke.
Delhi seems to sit under a perpetual atmospheric inversion and did not get any rain during my stay, so they need environmental standards more than most places.
Trump is on the right track here. EPA – Clean Air and Clean Water.
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Peter C:
My father complained that his eyes watered the whole time he was in Los Angeles in 1956. As for London they were just starting to tackle the smog. Dickens talked of a London Particular but this came home to me reading about Richard Owen (the forgotten scientist) who went out one morning through Whitechapel where he had to feel along the walls and count the (memorised) number of streets to navigate to his objective**, and back again for breakfast. They seem to have tolerated this in London for over a hundred years until too many died one winter and there was an outcry.
** A slaughter house, he was on a Government inquiry.
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Los Angeles
I visited there for 3 or 4 days in 1963 (summer).
We would go into an air conditioned place every so often for relief.
Visiting any large city about then would give me a headache that would not go away until I had been in fresh air for half a day.
I never seriously considered employment in a large city and live in a rural area.
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Air quality in some areas is related to the geography as much as anything else. Some places just don’t have decent air flow.
http://gizmodo.com/why-air-pollution-has-always-been-a-problem-in-l-a-an-1572151647
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Around the 1970’s there was a cartoon of a muscle man exercising with the caption
“I breathe for taste – I live in Los Angeles USA”
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‘governments told people to buy diesel to reduce carbon pollution’ even though diesel engines produce more actual pollution. They care more about their climate religion than people’s health.
170
I live in norway, and it is true that our capital Oslo tried to ban diesels on a set of consecutive days just recently. The reasoning behind the ban was that on cold, clear winter days without wind the local air pollution in the form of nitrous oxides and fine particle dust would skyrocket. Leading up to the day when the ban was set to begin both the actual weather and the forecasts were showing that there might actually be a problem. The different measuring stations in the city were steadily going from green to yellow and some even red – indicating unacceptabel levels of air pollution. However, on the day they started the ban it also started to rain….contrary to forecasts, as late as 4 hour before the ban was effective.
All stations became green before the ban was introduced, and stayed green throughout the ban. According to those officials who went along as “technicalexpertise”, the pollution would have been high had it not been for the rain, so the ban was “justified”.
Meanwhile, in Trondheim where I live, we are doing things differently. Oh, we have more than our share of greens amongst local politicians and bureaucrats, but we also have Norway’s largest technical university and the largest indepedent technical research institute in Scandinavia. And with it, some common sense – and knowledge. We were also faced with initial threats of bans and the like several years ago, since local air pollution on two of the roads in this city are soaring when temperatures and the wind drop together. However, we managed to tell the politicians that you actually need to clean streets even in winter. At first, we were told that was impossible since cleaning uses water and water freezes. But of course, that was just bollocks from the uninformed. We got the municipality to hire a state-of-the-art winterized street cleaning vehicle, and the results were as predicted – and baffled the greens.
Today, we rarely if ever hit the yellow on stations anymore.
Strange that.
250
That’s Interesting.
What were those stations measuring? Dust in the air?
Here on my side of the world, the only street cleaning is clearing up the autumn leaves. The rest of the time we wait for rain to clean the streets. No one has suggested that street cleaning would reduce pollution.
60
Tires and brakes wear and the particles land on the street.
These are stirred into the air.
Locations vary with regard to if or how quickly nature moves it away.
20
The stations are measuring PM10 and PM2.5. Some special stations can measure NOx. But the emphasis has been on PM10 and PM2.5, since these are assumed to be linked with respiratory disorders. NOx is assumed to be linked to both respiratory disorders and cancer.
As A C Osborn says further down, the particle part of this air pollution is actually more to do with tyre wear, road wear, brake wear and wood stoves than it is due to diesel fumes. In Norway there are still a good part of cars using spiked winter tyres, and these do contribute more to road wear. Non-spiked tyres have more tyre wear, which also gives particles. Both these sources are mostly PM10.
Anyways, in winter we get dry spells in clear, cold weather. Traditionally the only road clearing has been for snow. During the dry spells the road dust has been allowed to accumulate, and due to local conditions some areas in the city are affected by high pollution. It turns out that when cleaning is performed, using vehicles with equipment suitable for winter conditions (anti-freeze in the water…), most of this air pollution disappears. That is in spite of a slow continuous rise in traffic.
In summer this is normally not a problem, since rain takes care of most of it.
00
MIT was developing a plasmatron to remove a lot of the NOX from diesel fumes – does anyone know what happened to it , it disappeared and was quite promising…
30
Lovely place Trondheim.
20
Better than Trollheim.
00
Anders, you have reported exactly what I was going to say.
The latest studies do not point to Diesel engine pollution, it points to Brake, Tyre and Road Particles and Wood Burning Particles.
The Diesel is being demonised.
40
Yeah, efficiently collected by diesel vehicles and barfed out their tailpipes whenever I follow them. Worse than a week in Beijing in the winter.
20
My big thirsty four wheel drive guzzles 23 litres of diesel per hundred kilometres, don’t care much about what comes out the exhaust but would like to get better fuel economy .
A lot of four wheel drives are modified so the exhaust is straight through , not cat converter or anything that restricts exhaust flow .
To keep up with emission standards engines are becoming less reliable and smaller , people are working out how to bypass the anti pollution gadgets and the straight through exhausts are making new diesel 4x4s dirtier than the old ones .
11
I think in Oz they sell on-board-generated-hydrogen injection kits for trucks, might be worth a look?
20
Yeah there are lots of systems for diesel , gas , petrol , hydrogen etc but most of them end up blowing motors .
10
Yes, my passenger diesel is modified for a straight exhaust too (no EGR or anything), but that didn’t harm the fuel economy any – it runs at 4 to 5 L per 100 km. I assume it is generating NOx, but at such a low fuel consumption, it probably isn’t generating that much. I hope 🙂 We have clean air standards and corresponding emissions testing rules for vehicles here, and they changed the rules recently (Ontario). It used to be that the emissions test measured the gaseous and particulate emissions from actual tailpipes, but diesels got a free pass. Then they changed the rules, so now all cars are tested the same way, but they don’t measure tailpipe emissions any more – the testers just hook into the ECU and ask it what it thinks it is producing based on various engine operating parameters. If the ECU says everything’s good, the vehicle passes. So I’m good for now, until they start banning all diesels outright…
00
I’m aged 74 and live in the UK. There was an interesting discussion about diesel pollution on a UK TV political programme a short while ago, and I put the relevant clip on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1YAloJNuUI&feature=youtu.be
I find it curious that myself and peers were brought up in the so-called highly polluted environment of the 50s/60s and we’re all living so long that we are becoming a problem.
This stuff about diesels is just another part of the grand design of the ‘Greens’ and the UN. Tim Ball and Christopher Booker have written some well researched books on this.
71
Quite agree, older Bro. ! Good link as a reminder. As an aside , but VERY IMPORTANT Point is Drive-style. Bigger the engine, quicker the acceleration- COLD & BIG engines Petrol or Diesel, WILL produce more obnoxious fumes BUT there WILL BE more RUBBER wear – BLACK stuff,the sudden stopping – Black & BLUE stuff + Brake Disc wear. Where there’s Tyre wear, there is likely to be “equal and opposite” ROAD Surface wear ( Green stuff ?:-)) . So where do all these bitties go to ?
40
I can tell you. We live on a corner much loved by hoons – all the rubber and road dust ends up stuck to our front wall!!
20
When we lived on a main road in an inner suburb of Melbourne the dust in the house was black. Here in country Victoria it is multi-coloured and in one place in England it was whitish as there was a flour factory nearby. In another place in England it was whitish because of a limestone quarry nearby. The black stuff in Kew was the worst. One thing I do know…a woman’s work dusting is never done…sigh (not very PC am I?).
As a child I lived in London smog….still around! Also have survived driving through the dust of an asbestos mine in Cyprus! 😉
30
Further to your link, here is another current one – – and where is the LOGIC in Countryside being WORSE than the Cities? – maybe its the wild life doing something – ahh! that’s it – more wildlife in the Inner cities nowadays – maybe Mr Urban Fox is Cooking!!
20
The greens are happy to make everyone change to diesel cars and then ban them because they don’t like cars and would be perfectly happy if there were no cars at all.
/Anders
71
It is not as if the Governments didn’t know. In the UK they were warned in the late 1990s that “the inherent nature of the diesel combustion process produces increased NOx and particulates”. This is from someone who actually advised the then (Labour) Government. He added that “no foreseeable add-on technology would solve the problem”.
So they ignored the best scientific advice (He was a combustion chemist working for Shell) advice and ploughed straight on to promote diesels because all their blinkered vision could see was “less CO2”.
Corrupt, ignorant zealots doesn’t even begin to describe them.
140
Its even worse than that B&T, diesel engines were doing OK when green influences forced them to de-tune them so that they produced less CO2. Result?- higher particulate output.
The solution – tune them back to optimum performance to reduce particulate output, but it will increase CO2 output. Oh-Oh thats a no go zone!
50
That same labour government rose petrol tax 3% and diesel tax 6% in their first of office.
10
Looks like I won’t need to sell my 1962 3.4L Jaguar after all.
By “modern” standards it is a low pollution vehicle:-)
70
Major problem is that some vehicles are only available WITH Diesel Engines in certain markets nowadays- eg UK & VW Transporter range. If you have the need for transporting a larger than average Family ( Large can mean Taller) and you have a Talent – eg playing Large musical Instruments or you are very active and require to carry your Hobby/Sports equipment, then you would need such a vehicle – and of course if you mix Business with pleasure and use it as a works vehicle, you don’t have much of a choice. Living in a remote part of the country, simply carrying goods home or to market is also a necessity. The 2CV is no longer an option and Wine doesn’t grow here in SCotland
30
During the last major energy storage, fertile minds came up with a lot of solutions. Mine was burning aluminum, which works out price competitive with oil and of course, safe storage, easty transportation, endless life and very powerful.
Another was harvesting the huge solar collector which is the ocean with ammonia driven generators offshore which work on the thermal incline between the surface and deep ocean. They would work well and unlike solar, collect from a huge area without impacting living space as heat transferred to a cooler area. Solar without the panels.
You have to wonder where we would be if instead of spending $1,500Bn a year on windmills and solar panels because that is all politicians understand, someone like the CSIRO actually looked for alternatives instead of employing 350 full time scientists to try to prove we had a climate problem? They failed.
81
TdeF:
The OTEC trials in Hawaii weren’t a big success. As for aluminium I think that someone is working on it used in a battery. The slimy viscous alumina hydroxide formed is a drawback.
As for the CSIRA scientists they came up with the molten silica heat bank (see today’s Australian article by Alan Kohler who won’t like most of the comments).
20
Major energy storage crisis. Sorry. OPEC driven fuel crisis. Artificial in Australia of course as our petrol was all home made, but we suffered anyway by government decisions. Governments felt it was good for us to pay very high prices and to reduce demand while their taxation income soared. The Australian government did very well out of OPEC embargoes.
61
What about taxis,lorries & buses; don’t they use diesel engines?
40
The highest levels of NOx and 2.5 particulates in London are in Oxford Street. This is only accessible by buses and taxis.
20
Oxford St. ? – and only Buses n Taxis ? Now that’s saying! NO ONE has mentioned that now, have they? No electr. or Hydrogen powered vehicles then?.
BBC News this morning – flying pigeons to record air quality. Bird brained stuff. If you were a bird flying from A2B, where would you fly?
20
Away from or around the polluted zone.
10
If environmental groups and governments really were interested in running on cleaner less polluting fuels , why don’t they promote and encourage LPG more , less polluting than petrol or diesel and because it burns hot just as efficient without loss of performance , also LPG tanks less likely than petrol tanks to explode or burst into flames in an accident , I drive a Skoda Yeti that runs on both petrol and LPG and commute 100 miles per day to work and back , the 50 ltr Doughnut style tank fitted in the spare wheel compartment cost £28 to fill at current prices compared to £60 to fill the petrol tank , its a no brainer , especially with the fracking boom .
20
The Government will be galvanised into action….they will ban frakking. If that doesn’t work then they will ban LPG use.
Used to drive a dual fuel one (many years ago). Do you still have to start up with petrol?
30
Yes Graeme , LPG burns at hotter temp so engine starts on petrol then automatically switches to LPG after approx one minute , the problem with LPG is that only a few petrol station forecourts have it and car manufacturers do not build lpg systems into the design of cars , rather they are fitted as an afterthought taking up extra boot space etc
30
LPG is an alternative fuel but not as efficient as petrol or diesel.
30
Thanks Robert that’s true but not so much that an ordinary commuter like myself would notice , I know my car will go approx 25- 30 miles further on a full tank of petrol compared to a tank of LPG but its hardly worth mentioning compared to the savings , plus if you want an alternative fuel its much better than the problems caused by the promotion of BIO fuel such as corn oil , even better than electric cars that have to get their charge mostly from fossil fuel power stations or diesel generators like those pathetic Formula E racing cars
40
Why do you have an issue with fossil fuel power stations Doubting Dave?
00
LPG powered vehicles have problems in cold winter temperatures as well.
10
Also have problems filling up on hot days .
00
Those wonder boys in SA who build submarines will have to have a contract variation to change the subs’ engines to petrol.
31
Assuming the power stays on long enough to fill the subs fuel tanks…..arf arf…
30
I got an idea…. Lets ban the Greens. If we have to ban something. It might as well be them.
141
If you buy a new VW diesel you have buy an additive for every tank of fuel to reduce the NOx output. It seems the additive, apart from being expensive in Europe, is urea or purified urine.
It litres per 1000 Kms
20
This is incorrect. The “AdBlue” (aka “AdWee”) urea solution needs topping up every 5 to 20 tankfulls; depending on actual driving cycle. Consumption will be higher with lots of idling and low loads.
The catalytic reduction agent is in a separate, heated tank which in earlier models could only be filled by “service personnel” because of the filler location. Later ones have the filler next to the fuel filler.
The tank is heated so that the water-based solution does not freeze; which’d prohibit it from being injected into the catalytic converter. Correct dose is monitored by a sensor downstream of the converter so that excess injection is minimised. i.e. if too much AdBlue were injected, ammonia comes out of the tailpipe.
If you want to find more details on VW/Bosch technology, search the web for keywords “SSP”, “SCR” and “Adblue”. The search should yield some self study programmes produced by VW for technical training.
00
The greens could buy a diesel and save on fuels cost while brag about their environmental concerns. It could not fail.
Unexpected consequencies of CO2 obsession.
20
OT…. In case people miss this bit of a laugh.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/03/06/monday-mirthiness-greenpeaceknew/
Josh nails the cartoon yet again. !!
21
Greenpeace knew?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/03/06/monday-mirthiness-greenpeaceknew/
10
Meant to add earlier… the BBC at Breakfast this Monday morning, using children and their teacher in a protest against vehicles, methinks. Is this not another form of CHILD ABUSE – some of those Bairns may look back in the future and ask WHY they were led along on this scam. Others, no doubt will continue on this scam crusade. …. and we ( UK) wonder where or WHY our Education system has gone wrong
30
Found this tonight on BBC news if the Breakfast link doesn’t work: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-39132679 Yes the BBC is going at it hammer and tongs
20
Vladimir Lenin realised early on and actively pursued using schools as primary indoctrination dissemination places.
20
Gough Whitlam continued the work with tertiary institutions.
20
There is technology that by burning diesel more efficiently the exhaust is much cleaner. Injected Liquid Petroleum Gas. On a 4-cylinder under 3000 cc diesel engine with 20 per cent LPG injected into the total fuel consumption the efficiency factor increases from about 80 per cent to more like 95 per cent resulting a much fewer particles in the exhaust gases and an increase in engine power of about the percentage of LPG injected.
There are a number of Diesel-Gas systems, the most efficient is injection. Obviously the handicap is finding space for an LPG cylinder however a 35 Litre cylinder is normally sufficient and supplies at least two average Diesel tanks of fuel. There is a small improvement in fuel economy.
30
All of this was pretty obvious stuff. The French encouraged the use of diesel cars by lowering the tax on the fuel relative to that on petrol. As a result, the vast majority of private cars in France are diesel today.
The pollution was unbearable in much of Paris even 20 years ago.
Now, they are banning diesel cars from Paris:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/dec/02/four-of-worlds-biggest-cities-to-ban-diesel-cars-from-their-centres
Diesel car sales might be falling, but because cars nowadays last 15+ years, it will take a generation to change the composition of the national car fleets.
Frankly, diesel fuel is far too valuable to use for private cars. It is what powers much of the modern economy – trucks, bulldozers etc.
00
You can have my Nissan patrol if you prise the steering wheel from my cold dead hands !
00
I assume that you know that diesel can be produced from coal? Germany did it during WW2 and South Africa did after sanctions were imposed based on apartheid policies.
30
“I assume that you know that diesel can be produced from coal? Germany did it during WW2 and South Africa did after sanctions were imposed based on apartheid policies.”
At what cost?
10
O/T…. report seems to read like it was written by eco groups…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-07/state-of-environment-report-warns-climate-change-irreversible/8330582
“What else did the report say?
Invasive species were listed as one of “the most potent, persistent and widespread threats” to the Australian environment.
“Invasive species have a major impact on Australia’s environment, threatening biodiversity by, for example, reducing overall species abundance and diversity,” the report said.
The report said climate change was a pervasive pressure on all aspects of Australian environment as was altering the structure and function of the natural ecosystem.
“Evidence shows that the impacts of climate change are increasing, and some of these impacts may be irreversible,” the report said.
The report found urban growth in coastal areas was leading to more rubbish in coastal and marine ecosystems, with plastic accounting for three-quarters of debris on Australian beaches.
“Although mining developments have slowed in recent years, the ongoing environmental impact of former mining sites and the expansion of unconventional gas extraction are emerging concerns, particularly because of concerns for safety and competition with other land uses,” the report said.
Record high water temperatures caused widespread coral bleaching, habitat destruction and species mortality during the five-year period.
The report found the Antarctic environment was “generally in good condition”.
“There is increasing evidence that the ozone layer is starting to recover as a consequence of international controls on the use of human made ozone depleting substances,” the report said.
“The Antarctic environment is showing clear signs of impact from climate change.”
00
Original steve.
I gave a submission into feral and introduced species last year in Mansfield (Victoria) .
It became obvious to me that minority special interest groups from both sides of the fence , along with state and Federal govts are not capable of commonsense with the feral animal issue .
I suppose at least they spent a few bucks making it look they tried , but I know what the Victorian outcome will be !
Forget the environment when there’s a dollar to be made and regulation to be drafted .
10
If diesel-electric power is good enough to haul railway carriages and huge amounts of freight surely diesel-electric hybrid technology makes good sense for heavy road transport?
10
Many heavy transports are diesel electric, trains, ships, mining trucks. I am surprised that long haul trucks, road trains etc aren’t diesel electric as a constant speed generator and electric motors are more efficient than a complex mechanical driveline.
00
The FUNDAMENTAL issue going on here which everyone has ignored is that the Leftist Elites don’t like the Deplorables having personal mobility and they never have. For them, it’s just another aspect of personal freedom which that hate anyone to have except for themselves. That’s why there’s an ongoing war against the motorist in terms of high taxes, regulations, lack of appropriate investment in roads etc.. They want the sheeple living in “compact cities” (high density rat holes) and using public transport as per UN Agenda 2030. The sheeple are much easier to control that way. Banning diesels on some days is just the start. The end game is to have no cars and no individual mobility.
41
Well, as you say, NOT JUST cars mobility, BUT ALSO Train Fares.
I have repeatedly said that a train fare for a single person , maybe acceptable considering cost of car ownership and parking, etc etc. But when MORE THAN ONE person from a household goes anywhere, it doesn’t cost any more to take with you in the car – negligible cost mpg, whereas per PUBLIC Transport costs Prorata . Wife n Bairns should travel free with Dad.
30
I recently visited the Australian International Air Show at Avalon and was surprised to discover that some light aircraft (the Cirrus brand in particular) use diesel engines although they use Jet A as the fuel which is similar to diesel fuel but available at airports.
20
greenwash:
6 Mar: Bloomberg: Anna Hirtenstein: Saudi Aramco’s Green Energy Push Seen Widening Appeal of IPO
Saudi Arabian Oil Co., as it is formally called, is considering investments of as much as $5 billion in renewable energy…
Saudi Arabia has said it thinks Aramco is worth more than $2 trillion…
In February, the government invited tenders for its first major wind and solar projects, scheduling a decision in April, although it has since suspended the project. Last month, it invited banks including HSBC Holdings Plc, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Credit Suisse Group AG to pitch for a role in helping Aramco identify renewable acquisition targets…
Aramco plans to spend about $300 billion in capital expenditures through to 2025. The funds it may allocate to clean energy deals would make up 1.7 percent of the total…
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-06/saudi-aramco-s-green-energy-push-seen-widening-appeal-of-ipo
1 Mar: UK Telegraph: 1,500 people, two Mercedes Benzes, 459 tonnes of luggage and a golden escalator: how the Saudi King travels
5 Mar: ClimateChangeNews: Saudis make Maldives land grab to secure oil routes to China
3 Mar: Guardian: ‘We need development’: Maldives switches focus from climate threat to mass tourism
The new government plans to relocate residents to larger atolls – leaving small islands ripe for development. It says these super resorts, not solar power, will create the money needed to adapt to climate change
by John Vidal in Malé
As rumours abound that (President) Yameen has been negotiating to sell an entire atoll with 19 coral islands and dozens of reefs and lagoons to the Saudi royal family for $10bn (£8bn), his ministers outlined plans to geo-engineer artificial islands, relocate populations and attract millions more tourists by creating 50 more resorts.
In a sign of the new times, Saudi king Salman bin Abdulaziz is expected to sign a deal to buy or lease Faafu atoll in the north of the archipelago when he arrives in the Maldives next week with an entourage of 1,000 people…
Plans for the barely touched paradise could mean Faafu becomes a Riviera-style super-resort with sea sports, six star hotels, high-end housing and several new airports…
Plans to increase tourism from 1.3 million people a year to more than seven million within 10 years were backed by Shiham Adam, director of the government’s Marine Research Centre…
Fears of immediate sea level rise, which scientists said in the latest IPCC report was accelerating and could mean 75% of the Maldives being under water by 2100, were unfounded, Adam said. “It is not going to happen next year. We have immediate needs. Development must go on, jobs are needed, we have the same aspirations as people in the US or Europe.”…
“Climate change is happening but we are not leaving the Maldives to the waves,” said environment minister Thoriq Ibrahim. “We are going nowhere. The dream [of making the Maldives carbon neutral] is over. We are looking to be a low-carbon country.”…
The government accepts that its plans will increase climate emissions, even without counting the thousands of extra flights that will be needed each year to bring the hoped-for millions of tourists. But it argues that the Maldives only produces 0.003% of global emissions and has the right to develop.
“We want renewable energy but we do not have the physical space for solar. We can go to 30% but above that we need storage. With international help we can reduce our emissions 30% by 2030, but without climate aid only 10%. We must be realistic,” he said…
“A responsible opposition would always support what is good for people,” said Muizzi. “With Nasheed it was a dream. We do not need cabinet meetings under water. We do not need to go anywhere. We need development,” said Ibrahim.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/mar/03/maldives-plan-to-embrace-mass-tourism-sparks-criticism-and-outrage
21
the unreliability of predictions:
7 Mar: Courier Mail: Chris Honnery: Brisbane weather: Weather bureau’s rain forecast was ‘misunderstood’
THE weather bureau says its forecast of rain across Brisbane last week was not wrong, despite most of the city missing out.
Showers and thunderstorms were forecast to hit Brisbane for most of last week but some residents were left wondering why they didn’t receive any rain at all.
The Bureau of Meteorology gave Brisbane about a 70 per cent chance of rain for much of last week.
Despite the grass remaining parched, the bureau says it was right and residents misunderstood the forecast.
“(The likelihood of rain) is determined by the dictating weather patterns on the day,” senior forecaster Michelle Berry said.
“On those days that were given a 70 per cent chance of rain, the forecast was for 0.2mm of rain to fall (not heavy falls). There seems to be a bit of a slight misunderstanding about it.”…
Ms Berry said the misunderstanding came partly from Queensland’s “convective”, or “hit and miss”, rain activity.
“Shower activity can be on and off around the southeast because of the convective nature of storms,” she said…
Several industries that rely on the weather have said life would be easier with more accurate rain forecasts.
“It definitely creates its challenges having rain forecast and then missing out,” AgForce chief Grant Maudsley said.
“The more accuracy the better because farmers may well cancel their cattle sales or start planting their crop if rain was on the way…
Queensland Seafood Industry Association president Keith Harris said stocks were dependent on the weather, so “rain dictates the terms of when we can go to work”…
Master Builders Queensland deputy chief executive Paul Bidwell said builders often looked to complete indoor jobs if rain was forecast…
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/brisbane-weather-weather-bureaus-rain-forecast-was-misunderstood/news-story/2aef6933c3d1baa2c5f7f8e31e3a09e0
01
Weather forecasting is very difficult.
However, by constructing a model or two, climate can be predicted with extreme precision for centuries in advance.
20
Yes, they can predict the temperature in 2050 or 2100 to the nearest 0.1℃, although all those predictions from 1982 to 2000 about the big temperature rise by 2016 have proved inaccurate, by about 97%. Can we sue for breach of contract?
30
Their ABC had a scientist from Sydney uni ? Who was saying a study they did showed trees do no better when Co2 levels are increased , and they don’t absorb more Co2 if the levels increase .
Their study was confined to eucalypts but the suggest they are a good bell weather specimen for all species .
So it worse than we thought .
30
Rober Rosicka @ # 37
.
As usual another Sydney university academic is just talking straight out crap.
From Nature [ 18 Nov 2008 ]
30
I know it’s crapp rom , it seems they are getting desperate , if you heard what was said you would have laughed or cried , just utter rubbish complete with “research suggests” .
30
7 Mar: ABC: Climate change: State of the Environment report highlights threat of coal mining, urban growth
By political reporter Henry Belot
The State of the Environment report — commissioned by the Federal Government and written by independent experts — found while the main environmental challenges remained climate change and land use, Australia had made good progress in managing marine environments…
7 Mar: Bloomberg: U.S. Oil Industry Becomes Refiner to World as Exports Boom
by Laura Blewitt and Javier Blas
“U.S. refiners are now the refiners for the world,” said Ivan Sandrea, head of Sierra Oil & Gas, which is planning to build infrastructure to import U.S. fuels into Mexico.
U.S. companies last year exported a record 3 million barrels a day of refined products, more than double the 1.3 million barrels a day shipped a decade ago, according to data from the Energy Information Administration. Gasoline led the surge, with exports hitting an all-time high of almost 1 million barrels a day in December, up ten-fold from a decade ago.
On top of the export boom, U.S. refiners are enjoying fresh supplies of relatively cheap and high quality crude from the Permian, the Bakken and other shale basins. The combination is spurring oil companies to invest in new capacity, particularly along the Gulf of Mexico coast. Oil refiners are set to discuss their investment plans this week at the annual CERAWeek, an industry conference where every year thousands of executives, bankers and officials gather in Houston…
Take Exxon. When it updated investors on its strategy last week, it showed a chart of its integrated business. Over a map of Texas, photographs of oil pump-jacks, pipelines, refiners and, ultimately, tankers with arrows pointing toward Europe, South America and Asia displayed the importance of the export market…
And there’s China, which also capped a record year for both diesel and gasoline exports in 2016. As Chinese exports flood Asia, U.S. refiners will find new competition in markets such as Japan, which in December imported a record 379,000 barrels a day of U.S. fuels…
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-06/u-s-oil-industry-becomes-refiner-to-the-world-as-exports-boom
6 Mar: The Hill: Devin Henry: Trump hails new Exxon jobs plan
President Trump on Monday hailed oil giant Exxon Mobil Corp.’s announcement of a major jobs and manufacturing plan for Texas and Louisiana.
Exxon said it has embarked on a $20 billion plan to build or update manufacturing and refining facilities on the Gulf Coast, something the company predicts will create 45,000 news jobs.
In a statement, Trump said that is “is exactly the kind of investment, economic development and job creation that will help put Americans back to work.”
“Many of the products that will be manufactured here in the United States by American workers will be exported to other countries, improving our balance of trade,” Trump added.
“This is a true American success story.”…
CEO Darren Woods told an oil and gas industry conference on Monday that the shale boom in the United States was driving the company’s investment plans.
“The United States is a leading producer of oil and natural gas, which is incentivizing U.S. manufacturing to invest and grow,” Woods said.
“We are using new, abundant domestic energy supplies to provide products to the world at a competitive advantage resulting from lower costs and abundant raw materials.”
http://www.thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/322571-trump-hails-new-exxon-jobs-plan
11
Agenda 2030:
6 Mar: LA Times: Liam Dillon: California won’t meet its climate change goals without a lot more housing density in its cities
To meet the bold new climate change goals put in place last year, California will work to put millions of electric cars on the road, revolutionize its dairy industry and generate half of all power from solar panels and other renewable sources.
But those efforts will come up short, warn state regulators, without dramatic changes to how Californians live and travel.
To do so, Southern Californians will have to drive nearly 12% less by that date than they did five years ago, cutting their miles on the road every day from 22.8 to 20.2, according a Los Angeles Times estimate based on data from state and regional climate and planning officials…
By 2030, residents will have to travel by foot four times more frequently than they did in 2012, alongside a nine-fold increase in bicycling over the same time, and a substantial boost in bus and rail ridership, climate officials say…
Getting people out of their cars in favor of walking, cycling or riding mass transit will require the development of new, closely packed housing near jobs and commercial centers at a rate not seen in the United States since at least before World War II, according to a recent study by permit and contractor data analysis website BuildZoom…
Hasan Ikhrata, the executive director of the Southern California Assn. of Governments, which is responsible for implementing a plan in Los Angeles, Imperial, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties to meet the new climate goals, believes the new push to reduce driving is too difficult to achieve.
“We’re going to do our best, but I think it’s too ambitious, to be honest with you,” Ikhrata said…
Should California cities attempt to grow rapidly within existing urban areas, it will mean supporting redevelopment of some single-family neighborhoods that planners have long considered untouchable because of local resistance, according to Issi Romem, BuildZoom’s chief economist.
“I can’t imagine it happening,” Romem said. “It doesn’t feel realistic to me.”…
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-housing-climate-change-goals-20170306-story.html
31
High density rat-hole housing and public transport is all part of the UN Agenda 2030.
21
Won’t concentrating all those people in one spot lead to instability on the San Andreas fault?
30
Daily Delusionals:
6 Mar: AtlantaJournalConstitution: Atlanta science march leaders claim ‘endorsement’; Deal’s office says no
by Greg Bluestein
The Atlanta March for Science aims to send a message to Donald Trump’s administration about “increasing cynicism” toward climate change and a “cavalier” attitude toward facts. So to say organizers were stunned by Gov. Nathan Deal’s response to an invite to the event would be an understatement.
In a letter postdated for the April 22 event, the governor wrote it was a “pleasure to be a part of your event” and commended the planning committee for “spreading knowledge about science and its advancements.”
“It was a really big deal,” Dr. Jasmine Clark, a microbiologist who organized the Atlanta event, said of Deal’s response. “We were very surprised. We were also really excited. It was a mixture of surprise and excitement all around.”
The governor’s office says Clark and her colleagues were reading too much into what could be described as a customized form letter…
But they (the march organizers) also stressed in their letter to Deal that their march was nonpartisan and “motivated by sincere patriotism.”…
Deal’s office said the message was sent by an aide in the governor’s constituent services department and was not intended to be an endorsement or a show of support for the march. He is not planning to attend the event, a spokeswoman said…
The office said it has processed more than 300 letter requests since February and rejected less than 1 percent.
Clark, for her part, was not deterred by the attempts to downplay his dispatch.
“We reached out to his office for an endorsement, and we got this letter,” she said…
“We’re happy to have this support from him,” she said. “As long as he believes in our mission, to us it was a really big deal. We were really glad and sincerely thankful for the endorsement from the governor’s office.”
http://www.myajc.com/news/state–regional-govt–politics/atlanta-science-march-leaders-claim-endorsement-deal-office-says/HVKvooSyyjxmqeX64AEEUP/
4 Mar: Heat St: Anti-Trump ‘March for Science’ Forced to Apologize for Calling Women ‘Females’
by Ian Miles Cheong
Its promoters have courted the progressive crowd, and now they’re reaping the consequences. Namely, they recently came under fire for using the word “female.”
In late February, the organizers tweeted out a question: “Are you a female who thought about doing engineering but decided against it? Why? What can the science community do better? #ScienceMarch”…
With their penchant to be readily outraged, progressives following the account completely missed the point and took it to task for using the word “female.”…
In response, the organizers issued a profuse apology in a series of tweets, writing…
https://heatst.com/culture-wars/anti-trump-march-for-science-forced-to-apologize-for-calling-women-females/
11
Can you emagine the hand wringing and exploding heads if we had diesel powered air travel. “You have been counted Thought Criminal # 143777. Do not imagine anything about diesel”.
30
We nearly did have diesel powered air travel
Following the end of WW2 Napier Engines of the UK built the big 3000HP on up , Napier Nomad diesel propeller aircraft engine.
It had one of the lowest Specific fuel consumption figures around for any engine but was pretty bloody heavy.
On the long hauls across the Atlantic it was calculated that the low consumption of diesel fuel more than compensated for the heavy weight of four of these propeller driving engines in the proposed airliners of the times.
It was cancelled after only a couple of development engines had been built as it was realised that the new jet engines albeit witha very high fuel consumption were going to outperform and out run any prop driven aircraft that relied on piston engined power.
The Russians also had diesel engines in a couple of types of bombers during WW2.
A Russian bombing raid using these quite unreliable diesel engines on Berlin in around 1944 was a disaster with most of the aircraft having engine failures and / or crashing or returning to base .
There are a couple of newish diesel aircraft engines being both already built and in service in a couple of executive type aircraft as well as other diesels being developed with the promises, always promises from a whole bunch of backyard wannabe aviation diesel engine developers promising to have something ready, always by next year.
Usually rarely to be seen again.
00
more March for Science non-partisan madness (hint: it’s all about CAGW).
6 Mar: NCSE Blog: Why NCSE Is Marching for Science
The National Center for Science Education was one of the first organizations to endorse the march, and we are encouraging our members to take part. Why? Because we believe that the marches will be a powerful and positive reminder that there is something that virtually everyone agrees on: the value and importance of science.
Some scientists have counseled against marching. They fear it will cast science in a partisan light, as if demonstrating for science means demonstrating against something else. While we appreciate the concern, we disagree…
At the National Center for Science Education, we know that science sometimes addresses controversial issues. It’s no surprise to us that scientific findings can trigger fierce disagreement. We’ve devoted over thirty years to making sure that science teachers have the expertise and support they need to teach about evolution and climate change, even when there are people in their communities who object.
But it is important to remember that many who object to the teaching of evolution or climate change haven’t encountered the science for themselves. They are merely taking cues from those they trust—politicians, church leaders, or their favorite websites and newscasts. When people are given an opportunity to explore the scientific evidence for themselves, they often conclude that accepting what the evidence shows need not threaten their fundamental values…
On April 22, 2017, people all over the world will be gathering together to celebrate science, and to declare that science belongs to everyone. NCSE will be there.
https://ncse.com/blog/2017/03/why-ncse-is-marching-science-0018478
5 Mar: HuffPo: Mike Sandler: Helicopter Money and Helicopter Books for the March for Science
In the face of now-accidentally-reinforced myths that should have been debunked, it is more important than ever to participate in the March for Science next month. Scientific literacy has become a matter of life and death. Anti-intellectualism seems to be on the rise, with leaders and their followers rejecting scientific facts and consensus, especially around climate denialism and putting Christian creationist theology in place of scientifically-proven Darwinian evolution…
The March for Science provides an opportunity for scientists, or really anyone with a certain amount of scientific literacy, to get the word out to the (frankly, less-educated) masses about what science is, what we know about the world, and the implications for our democracy and economy. Knowledge can help dispel the fear that is driving the anti-planet, anti-life agenda.
Fossil fuel companies fear going out of business. Coal miners fear being left to fend for themselves…
Middle-class jobs are scarce and becoming scarcer, but basic income could provide a new type of economic stability, if people can get beyond the idea that having a job is their only, or their most important, contribution to society. Basic income has been referred to as “helicopter money,” dropped like manna from Heaven.
To combat anti-intellectualism, we will also need “helicopter books.”…
But now, after the 2016 election, we may need to helicopter-drop science books here in the USA in rural areas, the South, and the Midwest. Books away!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/helicopter-money-and-helicopter-books-for-the-march_us_58bcbd00e4b02eac8876d06e
About the writer: Mike Sandler
Political economist, climate change professional, sustainability advocate
Mike Sandler is a climate change and sustainability professional with experience working for nonprofits and government. In 2001 Mike co-founded the Center for Climate Protection based in Sonoma County, California. Non-profits he worked at include Community Clean Water Institute, California Interfaith Power & Light. He assisted local governments in reducing greenhouse gas emissions while at the Sonoma County Regional Climate Protection Authority. Inspired by Peter Barnes and Richard Douthwaite, he spent several years advocating for revenues in the carbon market mechanisms of California’s Global Warming Solutions Act to be returned back to the public as a per capita dividend or share. He has also written on green monetary reform and basic income. Some of his work on carbon pricing may be found at http://www.carbonshare.org.
01
6 Mar: CanberraTimes: Georgina Connery: Record submissions and huge opposition to Jupiter Wind Farm proposal
The Jupiter wind farm proposal has attracted massive opposition and more submissions than any NSW renewables project, including the first formal objection ever made by the Australian Wind Alliance to a wind farm project…
Among the individual submissions, there were 536 against the wind farm and 38 in support of the joint Australian-Spanish venture which plans to install 88 turbines across 23 rural properties in Tarago…
Among the objecting organisations were the Queanbeyan-Palerang Regional Council and the Australian Wind Alliance, in an unprecedented move formally objecting to a wind farm project.
“It was the first time and I hope the only time we will find ourselves objecting to a wind farm,” AWA National Coordinator Andrew Bray said…
The alliance’s submission stated the proponent’s “lack of flexibility and poor communications have unnecessarily raised the ire of many local residents”.
Flaws in the environmental assessment of noise and visual impacts, lack of consultation and not considering local planning controls plagued the proposal early on…
http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/record-submissions-and-huge-opposition-to-jupiter-wind-farm-proposal-20170306-gurfbr.html
a day later, ABC has a Canberra report, all spin about pro-win group, no details of how many submissions were opposed, etc:
7 Mar: ABC Canberra: Jupiter Wind Farm: Pro-wind group announces opposition to plans for Tarago site
The Australian Wind Alliance is a supporter of wind energy, but has opposed the controversial proposal, which is being considered by NSW planning authorities…
“This is a huge turnaround for us.
The Wind Alliance’s national coordinator Andrew Bray said poor community engagement and consultation around the windfarm left his group with no choice but to oppose the farm…
“We’ve been arguing … whenever we get a chance to, that windfarms really deliver huge benefits.”…
The Wind Alliance’s submission states that the group would be happy to see a different wind farm in the Tarago area, provided the proponents had proper regard for community consultation…
4 Mar: Herald Scotland: Renewables companies fear 1 in 6 jobs to be lost in next 12 months
The Scottish Renewables study found businesses in the industry predict full-time equivalent posts in Scotland will drop 16.9% in the next 12 months.
Its Employment Trends and Business Confidence survey also asked respondents how they feel about the future of the renewables sector more generally over the coming year.
More than four in 10 (41%) said they feel either quite or very negative, while the same number said they are “neutral” about the year ahead.
The organisation has called for action from the UK Government to address the issues and boost confidence in the sector.
“For Scotland’s renewable energy industry to continue providing jobs and ever-greater reductions in carbon emissions, Government must act quickly to give companies the confidence they need to keep investing in our sector.”…
The SurveyMonkey poll was completed by 46 companies within the Scottish Renewables membership between February 6 and 19…
WWF Scotland director Lang Banks said: “These are worrying findings and underline the urgent need for the UK Government to clarify its plans to support renewables and the thousands of people now employed in the sector.
“Scotland has incredible natural renewable energy resources, but if it is to maximise the economic opportunities on offer, the UK Government must provide energy companies with a clear route to market…
A UK Government spokeswoman said: “The renewables industry has been a strong success in Scotland thanks to UK Government support, worth £730m per year…
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/15133245.Renewables_companies_fear_job_losses_over_next_12_months/
11
in Jupiter wind comment, meant to type WIND, NOT WIN, WHEN PREFACING THE ABC PIECE – it should be:
“all spin about pro-WIND group”
01
posted online mins ago:
7 Mar: 9News: AAP: AFL boss settles in wind farm dispute
AFL boss Gillon McLachlan has reached a settlement with a company proposing to build a large wind farm close to his family’s property in the Adelaide Hills.
Mr McLachlan was among four groups appealing against the plan by Tilt Renewables Australia to build a wind farm of more than 100 turbines at Palmer, about 65 kilometres east of Adelaide.
But the Environment, Resources and Development Court was told on Tuesday that he would no longer be directly participating in the action and Mr McLachlan confirmed to AAP that he had reached a settlement with the company
http://www.9news.com.au/national/2017/03/07/14/25/afl-boss-settles-in-wind-farm-dispute
posted a couple of hrs ago:
7 Mar: AdelaideAdvertiser: AFL boss Gillion McLachlan’s challenge to $700 million SA wind farm goes ahead — without him
by Sean Fewster
Mr McLachlan is one of four people who filed action against the proposed farm, which features 114 turbines standing up to 165m high dotted along the ranges between Palmer, Tungkillo and Sanderston.
He has asserted the project, adjacent to his family’s sheep and cattle station near Mount Pleasant, which is more than a century old, should not have received development approval…
On Tuesday, the hearing — scheduled for 19 days — began as planned, but without Mr McLachlan’s attendance.
The court formally noted, for its transcript, that the AFL boss had been granted an exemption from appearing and rested his case upon written submissions.
It was also noted Mr McLachlan had agreed he would be informed of any changes made to the project after the conclusion of the trial of the other three appeals…
The trial comes as a 100-megawatt wind farm has been approved near Jamestown, but under the toughest licensing conditions in the country (LINK)…
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/news/south-australia/afl-boss-gillion-mclachlans-challenge-to-700-million-sa-wind-farm-goes-ahead-without-him/news-story/183a9e66c4fbabe8863b6c9724e0fcb3
Bolt blog has: AFL BOSS PREACHES GLOBAL WARMING, FIGHTS WIND FARM
there may be some more info in the comments at bolt’s blog, but I have trouble accessing bolt’s blog since it was re-modelled.
11
O/T
How do you think this works? I think money can be made because they don’t pay for the batteries.
http://www.afr.com/brand/business-summit/reposit-power-building-virtual-power-station-to-take-on-traditional-suppliers-20170304-guqsdh?&utm_source=social&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=nc&eid=socialn%3Afac-14omn0053-optim-nnn%3Anonpaid-25%2F06%2F2014-social_traffic-all-organicpost-nnn-afr-o&campaign_code=nocode&promote_channel=social_facebook
10
And who pays for the energy that is needed to charge those batteries BEFORE any energy at all can be drawn back out of those batteries?
Who pays for the double the number of turbines and solar that are needed to both run the grid system at today’s renewable input levels PLUS the equivalent number of wind turbines / solar systems which will only operate and charge the batteries at the same time when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining whilst the grid turbines and solar are providing energy to the grid.
So a complete duplicate wind and solar network system has to be built to charge the batteries so that the batteries to have enough energy to tide the consumers through the windless and dark hours long periods.
Plus of course, an extra 20% number of turbines / solar systems to cover energy losses during battery charge and discharge periods plus wiring losses in the network of wiring to connect all those battery cells.
Plus the high energy requirements to run the batteries at controlled temperatures both cooling and warming and the electronics to carefully control the rates of charge and discharge so as to not damage the batteries..
And who pays for the extra energy that is lost due to inherent losses that will always be a part of any energy storage system, battery technologies being no different to any other energy storage technology when it comes to losses over a storage period and during the charge- discharge- recharge, etc cycles? .
Who pays for the problem of disposing of those batteries which by the end of their economical life might have some fairly toxic chemicals and solids within their interiors?
Who pays for the batteries if there is a rapid breakdown in the public’s and the politicals belief in the claimed “Free energy” of the renewable energy industry and / or some prominent media outlet sees the light and begins to go after the renewable energy industry and uncovers a suspect and vast amount of renewable energy corruption and its brown paper bag deals amongst politicians and local councils and etc as has already been well researched in Germany and proven very serious corruption of the politicals by the renewable energy industry so much so that the politicals are voiding and avoiding any inquiry into the German renewable energy industry?
Who pays if there is a major health or pollution problem arising from the battery industry requiring that all batteries have to be returned or disposed of ? [ Lithium batteries in smart phones and in Boeing airliners plus numerous other unpublicised examples of lithium battery failures and fires ]
Who Pays?
There is a one and only source of all the money needed to run a battery storage system and that is the consumer/ tax payer, the one and same pocket from which all that moola will be forcibly extracted so some scamming creepy, lying ass hole can make himself / herself a fortune at the expense of the ordinary man and woman in the street.
Who pays ?
You and me and nobody else!
Thats who pays or is going to be forced to pay for this total battery crap if we ever allow it to happen.
80
Good rant ROM! Here in the wonderful state of SA the current wind farm fleet rarely provides excess power to other states. Without a major expansion of the wind farms or some new solar power stations there is no likelihood of ever being able to use batteries for backup. Can you even use batteries for heavy industry? Can they even start a ball mill at Olympic Dam from start – inertia anyone? The whole idea is preposterous and rather than belling the cat i.e a moratorium on the RET, they come up with these stupid ideas which will only cause more unintended consequences.
70
ROM makes a lot of good points, mainly as to who pays, and from that, who then pays for the disposal of expired wind towers at the end of their life.
I was curious when I found that ancient old Hazelwood is closing down after 53 years of operation, and I find that for the last five days, (could be more, as I only noticed it three days back now) that ancient old clunker of a plant is running all eight of its units, and they have so far been operating full time, and now, first thing each morning I’ll be checking to see how many are running right up until, and then after, the plant is scheduled to close.
All eight of its units still operating, and admittedly they can’t make the full power they once did when new, but hey the fact that they are still running at all after so long is pretty amazing.
So, as an exercise, I tracked down an old (ish) wind plant, Challicum Hills in Victoria, and that plant opened in 2003, so it’s only 14 years old, and is one of the oldest wind plants in Australia.
It was installed with 35 X 1.5MW towers for an overall Nameplate of 52.5MW.
I have checked back through the dates at the wind power site, and just for this plant, I can find no day in the last few years where the plant has generated more than 42MW in total. I haven’t checked every day, just 40 or 50 days, but it is indicative that I can only find any maximum of 40MW. Because of the closeness of those towers, then it only stands to reason that in a high wind period of good generation, then all of them would be turning over.
So, if the maximum I can find is only 42MW, then that leads me to believe that the missing 10MW is from six units which are not working.
So, six out of 35 of these towers not even working at all. Just sitting there doing nothing.
Hazelwood has all 8 units operational after 53 years, and a wind plant has one in six of its units not working after only 14 years.
It’s not a case of fixing them, otherwise they would have done that.
Get a huge crane, take off the blades, lift the nacelle back to the ground, replace the generator at enourmous cost, and then put it back up onto the pole.
Imagine the cost for all that. It’s cheaper to leave it up there not working.
Do you think we’ll ever get told about this? What happens when the wind plant becomes uneconomic? Who pays to have it removed back to pristine countryside again, or does the operator just walk away with Ozymandias just sitting there in the field, useless.
We all lose, and this is just one plant among many of them with units probably not working. Who pays?
If one unit at a coal fired plant goes down, you can bet there would be hell to pay.
53 years, and all eight units still running.
Tony.
50
I doubt they will remove the foundations in any case. I heard of about a concession given somewhere in the UK where the subsidy farmer was not required to remove the foundations when the farm is eventually closed down. I Googled it but could not find the reference.
10
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scotland/10142126/Old-wind-farms-bases-could-be-left-in-countryside.html
10
What are the economics of having dead turbines in the fleet? What, if anything, does the owner lose? Even though dead, they would still be regarded as renewable producers wouldn’t they?
30
Thanks Tony.
Re the Challicum Hills farm near Beaufort in western Vic and only a few kilometres off the western highway between Melbourne and Adelaide.
I go past it only every couple of months compared to near fortnightly a few years ago on our way from Horsham to Ballarat usually these days for a medical appointment either for my wife or myself.
Specialist 10 minute Medical appointments at a couple of hundred kilometres distance and two or more hours driving time seems to be feature of aging for anybody in Australia’s rural areas unfortunately.
Yes you are quite right;
I haven’t seen more than about two thirds of those turbines turning even on some of what I thought were ideal winds and right in the middle of the range of wind strengths that should have suited wind turbines at close to maximum output.
And thats from an old glider pilot with round three thousand hours flying time over 50 years of flying and who has done quite a lot of research on wind turbine types and performances in the past.
On another forum some years ago now, an engineer who actually ran a the team that commissions and starts up brand new very large installations such as the very large base load electrical generating units ; [ He and his team commissioned and started the Vic desalination plant. He was quite careful with his comments about that desalination plant for obvious reasons if anybody in government or greens or what ever caught onto him and his comments.]
He openly said on the forum that the renewable energy companies will let a high percentage of their generators fail and go out of action and be shut down until it becomes a worth while economical proposition to bring in a one or two of those giant hundred odd metres tall cranes that costs thousands of dollars per hour to hire, to service all of the failed turbines in one session on the one farm.
So it seems that the wind farm operators are making so much money out of the poor consumer / tax payer, same person, that they can afford to shut down a high percentage of their turbines for weeks or months before bothering to do the essential maintenance on those broken down turbines.
With the very unfortunate and politically Labour promoted steady proliferation of wind farms here in western vic, no apparent commentary or dissension allowed from the locals by Labours Dickhead Despot Dan Andrews here in Victoria, there is starting to be a reservoir of former wind farm employees circulating through the community.
And believe me, they ain’t doing the local wind farms or their operators any favours at all with their guarded and very scathing comments on the technology and the whole idea of wind turbines having seen them very close up and from the inside literally as well as the way in which the wind farms are run and managed.
10
Bravo rom , bravo and well put as usual .
Is it past Willards bedtime ?
30
My last post of a few minutes ago is in moderation.
Battery Will’s answer would probably be along the lines that all those things I posted on in # 46 would be included in the cost of the power we use!
Yeh! Right !! thats if you aren’t already in the classification of Energy Poverty where your household spends at least 10% or more of its disposable income on energy
.
In Germany, the UK and now increasingly in Australia, energy poverty is already well known and documented amongst the various charitable organisations here in Oz.
These are the 2014 ACOSS [ Australian Council of Social Services ] figures for Energy Poverty in Australia and energy costs have escalated substantially due to the increasing penetration of renewable energy into Australia’s grid system thanks to a whole bunch of outright ignorant politicals at the behest of the wealthy high income inner city green elites and academics since this data from 2014.
—————-
Facts and figures;
• The lowest income households spend 7% of disposable income on energy, compared to 2.6% for the highest income households.
.
• The average household in Sydney spends 4% of income on electricity, low-income households spend 8%.
.
• Single parents, couples with children and people receiving government benefits are among the most impacted by energy stress.
.
• 40% of surveyed NSW households containing an unemployed person had been disconnected in the previous 12 months.
From; Addressing energy poverty
.
40
Recently had some issues with our pool , and overheard the saleswoman talking to a customer about how long they were running the pump for .
When it was my turn to get served I enquired a bit further and lots of people aren’t running their pumps long enough to filter properly because of the electricity consumption .
21
Just nice to sit back sometimes and read people’s opinion then revisit the same posts a few years later and look back at how wrong they were.
00
.
Yep!
.
MIT technology review;
Why We Don’t Have Battery Breakthroughs
00
Thanks for providing an article that’s over 2 years old Rom, it reinforces the developement of batteries in such a short time, since that time the battery tech Tesla use has more than halved in cost whilst doubling in energy density, and Tesla are only one runner in a very big field of battery developers that are hitting the track so to speak.
00
OK you now have your batteries!
What are you going to put in them?
If you generate half of our energy needs from turbines and solar then ;
Any energy needed to charge the batteries has to be taken from the turbines and solar whilst the wind is blowing and the sun is shining.
So to replace the power that would have come from the turbines and solar for the grid but is now going being used to charge the batteries then you have to run your fossil fueled power generators.
If you don’t charge the batteries when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining and put that renewable energy into the grid instead to meet the energy demand then there is nothing left over for the charging of the batteries.
Of course you could then charge the batteries up by using fossil fuel generators!
Or you could charge up the batteries during the day with the wind turbines and the solar particularly when the sun is shining.
And use the fossil fueled generators to generate power for the grid during the day whilst those batteries are being charged up so as to have battery power available to run the grid when the sun doesn’t shine at night and perhaps there is little or no wind.
The advantage here being that there would not be any need for night shift workers at the fossil fueled generators as they would be idle during the night ?????
If as some truly ignorant cranks believe that we can go to 100% renewable energy [ without hydro ] then apart from not having any industry or anything else much in the way of a highly technocratic civilisation, the entire output, all 27% capacity of the gross plated output of all the combined turbines and solar would be used to run the grid or the remnants of the aforesaid grid.
So to charge the batteries to cover the periods when there is no wind, sometimes no wind for days as a major high pressure settles down over eastern Australia [ been there and done that in my formative years with my fathers first 12 volt wind generator and its battery bank for our household some 70 years ago now ] and to cover the 15 hours or so when solar is not available each day, then there would have to be another completely duplicated renewable system of a similar size to the grid system of turbines and solar so as to be able to charge the batteries that will drive the grid and provide adequate power to consumers and industry when the wind don’t blow and the sun don’t shine for whatever period that might eventuate, from minutes to days and perhaps weeks as has happened.
And this battery charging renewable system would be operating at the same time as the renewable grid generator system with the wind blowing and the sun shining as the equivalent and parallel Grid turbine and solar renewable system delivers power to the Grid.
Both of which would only operate when the wind was blowing and the sun was shining .
Now I have no doubt that batteries that can cater for the thousands of megawatt hours needed to run even a smallish national system like eastern Australia’s can be designed but they would have to have a high artistic input as they would be nothing more than an immensely expensive monstrous garden ornaments or hideously designed and built industrial ornaments in practical reality.
The politicals and greens would then no doubt demand that fossil fueled generators be installed to charge the batteries so they could justify the cost of most of the national GDP in building such an utterly useless system in the first place.
Duh!
10
The batteries are not being installed to provide every unit of energy at all times, they are intended to remove the peaks and lows- Duh!
01
I don’t know of anyone who has died because of particulate pollution. Steve Milloy of the JunkScience website has written a book about the so called PM2.5 scare. There is no science or record of particulate pollution causing heart attacks, or lung cancer. Here is Milloy’s book.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01NALP1HX/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1482383503&sr=8-1&keywords=scare+pollution
As Milloy once said, where are the bodies?
The scare about diesel engines is just more malarkey.
42
As this is the only place I like to OT rant here are two.
SA has been warned of blackouts this winter because Torrens island is a 50 year old piece of junk and lack of gas (don’t mention Hazelwood) I have had a gut full of this stupid green dream.
My CO told everyone today there is a new rule in play designed to screw us over on our travelled allowances, aca just ran a story showing how our incompetent pollies who can’t even rum a power network get more allowances a day than I get in a fortnight but I am the one who gets screwed? Enough!!!!!!!!
Thanks for listening
112
Sorry but I require an explanation for the red thumb, are you pissed about your green dream being flushed before your very eyes or are you a useless, gutless pollie defending your luxurious lifestyle?
102
Nine News Adelaide:
WATCH: South Australians will continue to live with the risk of blackouts throughout winter and for at least the next two years.
https://twitter.com/9NewsAdel/status/839016771457687553
Towers have tumbled at the old Port Augusta coal-fired power station today
https://twitter.com/9NewsAdel/status/838627834847338496
50
I don’t know why but I thought with all the trouble they have in SA with power and the fact that when Hazelwood closes we won’t have anything to spare they might have come to their senses and tried to extend its life .
Should have known better .
30
The Leftist Elitists don’t want us to have cars or electricity.
50
Tomorrow (Wed) I am going visit Hazelwood Power Station area and have a swim in its cooling pond which is at 26C until they shut the station down at the end of the month.
The station is 53 years old, obsolete but still going strong and vastly superior to windmills.
Thank you Hazelwood for delivering cheap, reliable, environmentally friendly power for 53 years.
Apologies for the barbarians who are about to destroy you.
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How do you tell when a Leftist Elitist is lieing?
They are opening their mouth.
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When Hazelwood is shut down I am hoping South Australia is punished with multiple power failures for voting in the [snip] Gangrene government.
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read all. Weatherill’s only solution is a “carbon intensity scheme”? who voted this guy in?
7 Mar: Australian: Michael Owen: SA Premier Jay Weatherill advised to buy gas-fired power station
Key economic advisers to Premier Jay Weatherill have recommended South Australia buy or lease a gas-fired power station as a “medium-term” solution to the state’s energy woes.
The Economic Development Board has revealed a range of short, medium and long term options it provided to the Premier to secure South Australia’s electricity supply and prevent further blackouts.
The board first warned the government of stability problems with its wind-reliant grid in July last year, two months after the state’s last coal-fired power station was forced to close by the rise of renewable generation.
It warned the state’s power grid was at risk of being “islanded” by a “non-credible continuous event”, which subsequently occurred in September and December…
Today, Mr Weatherill declined to comment on the Pelican Point option and said his “substantial” plan was still being worked on.
“We have been deluged with ideas,” the Premier said, adding his plan would not be determined by the outcome of Chief Scientist Alan Finkel’s review into the national electricity market.
Mr Weatherill said he had today written to Malcolm Turnbull urging the Prime Minister to reconsider an emissions intensity scheme…
Economic Development Board advice also warned the upcoming closure this month of the brown coal-fired Hazelwood power plant in Victoria “is expected to increase significant pressure on the power network in Victoria and in South Australia”…
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/state-politics/sa-premier-jay-weatherill-advised-to-buy-gasfired-power-station/news-story/85d4a2d875f3f173249003b8ca864630
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Eco-terrorist have both the
1. Political power of world tyrants, &
2. Fear-impaired reasoning ability.
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Diesel vehicles emit black carbon[ soot], but the other emissions of black carbon…from the burning of forests in Indonesia to plant palm oil plantations goes on unabated and in the Amazon the burning in order to plant soy and other crops is apparently resuming after a hiatus…and the burning of other biomass including wood and dung continues across much of Asia, India and Africa.
Since many of the European countries are apparently still some of the biggest importers of palm oil… it looks like very selective mitigation …looking after their own air quality…but ensuring the forests continue to burn.
Scientists testified before Congress in 2010 on the Black Carbon problem…telling Congress BC causes almost as much of the global warming as CO2 is claimed to do…and mitigation of it is relatively easy and results are almost immediate.
The BC is deposited on the Arctic ice darkening it..cutting albedo…so that the sun’s energy is absorbed instead of reflected…melting the ice and leaving dark water that in turn absorbs more energy…setting up a catastrophic cycle of warming with global effect….likewise with glaciers and permafrost.
You would think the UNIPCC …that seems to be running the world these days…would make this a priority if they were really interested in reducing any global warming there is…but the burning continues and just this week Indonesia was trying to flog palm oil to Australia.
IMO the CAGW cabal doesn’t want to really prevent the deposition of BC on polar ice because the world would then realize that CO2 is not the massive driver of global warming they want us to think it is.
GONE would be the hold the international CAGW cabal has over the democracies…and the game would be up for their real aim of wealth redistribution from the Western democracies to mostly Socialist regimes including Communist China…as described by UNIPCC official Ottmar Edenhofer , who said at Cancun….
[ ‘This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy
… we redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy..’
. Obviously, the owners of coal and oil will not be enthusiastic about this. One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy.’ ]
So until the UN is seen to be making it a priority to stop the burning and production of millions of tonnes of soot[BC]…it’s hard to take seriously any other measures they take…especially the enforcement of the Paris Agreement…and IMO Australia should have every right to cancel our RET without having to make any penalty payout …unless and until the UN deals with the largest sources of BC …not just modern diesel.
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The UN is a powerless bully, living in fear of truth (reality).
By 1 April 2017, I plan to publish a paper celebrating the centennial birth of the late Dr. Paul Kazuo Kuroda, my research who risked his life after WWII to keep frightened world leaders from hiding “powers beyond the dreams of scientific fiction“ that
1. Francis William Aston discovered in atoms and reported in the last paragraph of his Nobel Lecture on 12 Dec 1922, and
2. Frightened world leaders tried to hide from the public by uniting nations and national academies of sciences under the UN on 24 Oct 1945.
1. Aston’s Nobel Lecture:
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/1922/aston-lecture.pdf
2. Powers Beyond Tyrants’ Control:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/Dawning_of_Truth.pdf
(Off topic) CTS
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A load of BS – it’ll never happen because the buses and trucks cannot be changed to petrol let alone electricity so banning diesel car will do SFA. When they try to pass the law, reality will hit.
BTW What do people think if HR 861 (US Bill to terminate the EPA by end of 2018)?
https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/861/text
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Yeah Diesel isn’t going away. No other fuel source can do as much work as it can do per liter for less money.
I saw this several years ago. I went on an industrial job with a bunch of workers where as private contractors we each had privately owned work pickup trucks. Three of us had turbo diesel powered trucks but one guy named Randy bought a brand new Chevrolet with a 454 cubic inch gasoline engine. Before we even got to Las Vegas he had to stop and refuel 3 times -at $100 each time- while the only reason those of us driving the diesel trucks had stopped was to urinate. Doing the math he was averaging about 6 miles per gallon, while the diesels were averaging over 20 miles per gallon. The diesel powered trucks had a ton more power too. They could do several times as much work for less fuel consumed.
With those kinds of economic realities who cares about emissions? I know a lot of people who disable the emissions control equipment on their diesels to minimize fuel consumption and increase usable power.
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You are oIncorrect Analitik, electric buses are cheaper to run and maintain, as diesel buses reach the end of their economic lifespan they’re being replaced with electric- http://www.standard.co.uk/news/transport/more-fully-electric-buses-to-run-in-london-in-drive-to-clean-up-air-a3467256.html
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Utter BS, Willard. For a heavily urbanized run, like in London, that may be true but try it with any trip that requires real range. Note how the vast majority of the newer buses will by hybrids – they will be attempting to stop buying diesel only double decker buses
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You called BS Analitik, I provided evidence you are incorrect so you attempt to change the parameters, let me spell it out in capitals- THE THREAD IS REFERRING TO BUILT UP AREAS, IN AREAS SUCH AS LONDON AUTHORITES ARE REPLACING DIESEL BUSES WITH ELECTRIC, YOU SAID IT COULDNT BE DONE, IT IS ALREADY BEING DONE.
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Read the article you quoted, properly. The 120 electric buses run on 4 routes. The 2,000 hybrids buses make up 20% of the bus fleet so do the math on how consequential those electric buses are. In reality, the electric buses are window dressing to make the London council appear environmentally conscious.
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So is 120 buses on 2 routes still BS? And as diesel buses reach the end of their service life and get replaced with electric what will you call?
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I am all in for it along with at least sixteen other alphabet soup agencies along with ALL of their sub and sub sub agencies. They ALL have gone way beyond their original mandate that itself was not even close to a proper function of government for a free people. Leave perhaps a minimized DOJ, DOD and a microscopic diplomatic agency but little else. The resulting government would cost perhaps as much as 0.1% of GOP.
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Just watched the history of the Diesel engine patented by Mr Diesel in 1892. One amazing statistic. As a replacement for the steam engine, apart from being able to be started quickly by one person, it was 3x more efficient than external combustion. What that means is that it reduced CO2 x 3, particulate matter by 3 and tripled the world’s fossil fuel reserves.
The move from burning carbon neutral trees saved our forests as it took 12 acres of forest to produce 1 tonne of steel. So overall the development of coal, coke, diesel not only made the modern world possible, they saved the forests of the world and dramatically reduced pollution for a world population of 1.5Billion.
So instead of vilifying coal, coke, steel, diesel and petrol, we should be celebrating the saving of the green forests, the dramatic reduction of all forms of pollution and the reduction of CO2 output, if only because it means our precious fuel lasts longer.
Meanwhile the Victorian State Labor government yesterday was the first state to ban fracking and they are delighted at holding the state back, ensuring blackouts, gas shortages and the end of manufacturing. Reason to celebrate. Despite the massive loss of manufacturing jobs which will result as power stations closed and while we go medieval with imported windmills, the ‘progressive’ Labor government is very pleased at stopping all progress. Why is the only question? I suppose politician is the only job for which they are qualified, by a process of elimination.
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The US-EPA has been arbitrarily tightening what it considers, arbitrarily, to be harmful emissions.
It has done so in spite of the agreement with the automotive industry in the 1990’s that the regulations would not be onerous or to impose disproportionate costs. Where the industry has failed in a big way, perhaps wanting to seem green, was to agree to the tightening noose with managers simply trusting that engineering would triumph and only unicorn farts would come out of the tailpipes, when regulated to do so.
The reality was that by 2005, especially the diesel technology was way behind being able to meet imminent standards, without substantially higher manufacturing and operating costs, with e.g AdWee. Nobody checked to see if the new limits were justified.
The EPA hadn’t yet run its illegal human trials on vulnerable individuals only to find no effect.
Nobody challenged the necessity of tightening the limits. They simply trusted what they were being told and did not check the quality of the supporting evidence.
That was an industry-wide failure. The regulators should have had their “bluff called”, but it appears that nobody in the industry had the wherewithall or the Engineering instinct to check everything; especially when it’s going to cost lots. Even if they did, none employed the testicular fortitude necessary to insist on rationality above arbitrary rule changes.
It was of course wrong to deliberately circumvent the rules; absolutely stupid given that the EPA caught similar attempts by a US truck maker in the 1990’s.
There wasn’t just the EPA in the game, there were also the EU. And they sat around the table, agreeing with industry about things which, apparently neither understood, but which “had to be regulated” to reduce further and further. Because we must have emissions reductions.
One absurd consequence is that there are several Euro6 compliant (no cheating) vehicles that failed Euro2 and some even Euro1 in testing commissioned by the UK publication Which Car. One of the worst CO transgressors was a Lexus hybrid faux wheel drive. The test cycles have changed. Arbitrary test cycles.
And this is getting far too long …
P.S. Just in case that’s thought not to be relevant to NOx
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Those crazy Germans have a guilt complex for every day of the week.
In Stuttgart, the home of Mercedes Benz and Porsche, their guilt from profiting from the making of cars drives them to ban cars.
Some German new media motoring commentators simply cannot understand because the ban applies only to cars of non-residents which are not in the city on business. (video in German)
Such restriction will have no measurable effect on emissions; as Germany’s main motoring club observed in 2012 that “environmental zones” which require all vehicle to meet minimum standards; made no significant difference to air quality.
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“The VW scandal is clearly the trigger,”
What scandal is that? That a manufacturer read the rules, created a product that met the rules and sold said product as meeting said rules? It did/does meet the rules according to the test and they (VW) did nothing wrong. If the test got “scammed”, who is foolish enough to think someone wouldn’t do it? It’s normal practice to do these sorts of things! How many times have how many people been bitten by “according to spec” contracts because it’s not what they wanted – lots! Mis-specify what you want, someone will take advantage and they’d be mad not to.
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No VW did knowingly cheat – the rules are for normal operation and it was just that the testing was done in a lab on rollers. I own a couple of diesel VWs and accept that they cheated. I do not accept that the test they cheated had any real relevance to pollution, just as I don’t accept CO2 is a planet damaging pollutant.
But they definitely cheated.
That said, my VWs aren’t going to be undergoing the voluntary update for the Australian market.
21
“But they definitely cheated.”
How?
Their vehicles passed the regulated test, therefore they meet the rules – simple!
If the test is badly designed and can be “scammed” (as VW did, I am happy to admit that!), that is not VW’s fault.
Or do you think that everyone should always behave according to the intent, not the letter, of the law? That is certainly a laudable thing to suggest, but the reality is that the people who act in that way end up being screwed by those who follow the letter of the law.
Classic example: tax. Almost no-one and no company pays based on the intent of the law, only the letter. Those who pay by intent are unable to compete with those who pay by the letter and fall by the wayside – that is, doing the “right thing” sees you removed from the playing field. Since public company directors are required to behave in the best interests of the shareholders, they could conceivably be sued for negligence if they tried to follow the intent of the law. So VW making vehicles that pass the regulated test is not cheating – it is survival!
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