O/T Frack me

[WanChaiMiller]

I think this is interesting from the article about.....'He quotes an American report from 2013 – ironically enough, commissioned by coal industry lobbyists – that pointed out that using either a tablet or smartphone to wirelessly watch an hour of video a week used roughly the same amount of electricity (largely consumed at the data-centre end of the process) as two new domestic fridges.'

[WanChaiMiller]

Another interesting quote. Was there someone on here into ******* recently....'He (James Bridle) mentions the vast amounts of electricity consumed by the operations of the online currency ******* – which, at the height of the speculative frenzies earlier this year, was set to produce an annual amount of carbon dioxide equivalent to 1m transatlantic flights.'

[rolymiller]

Agree couldn't have an old style Marxist socialism which was based on industrialisation but think many socialist principles can still hold when dealing with environmental issues. Think capitalism should be ruled out because of its encouragement of materialism and self serving attitude. I don't say this to spite such as Kerr I genuinely don't think it is geared up to solving environmental problems.

[rolymiller]

If I can get our lass into me fan club I will have cracked it GM!

[monty_rhodes]

If I can get our lass into me fan club I will have cracked it GM!

Is it true roly that your club meetings are held in an old phone box?

[rolymiller]

Is it true roly that your club meetings are held in an old phone box?

There is an elephant of truth in that Dear Monty!And when I put on a few pounds it can be hard to hold meetings.

However, I have tried to lose a bit of weight recently so there is a bit of room for Mr. Kerr.

[rolymiller]

There is an elephant of truth in that Dear Monty!And when I put on a few pounds it can be hard to hold meetings.

However, I have tried to lose a bit of weight recently so there is a bit of room for Mr. Kerr.

Whoops looks like my slimming will be in vain!

Think the Mrs is doing Lasagne in answer to your question (beef not insect by the way) and you?

Don't have much pork to be honest dunno if that is better thing to have than Beef in terms of environmental protection. Genuine question, do you know? I don't. (Not trying to score points by the way).

Never said I was perfect. Who is? I think I do make quite a bit of effort to protect the environment with my lifestyle. Could I do more ?

Yes!

Some issues -like for example the meat argument- I was genuinely unaware of its impact on the environment and I suspect many are. I think this is another major issue that people need to be more educated on the products they consume. Maybe then they can make a better more informed choice. The stuff on mobile phones on here is very eye opening. Maybe produce we use ought to have some sort of warning on it like for example fag packets do only i n terms of damage to the environment rather than human bodies.

[gm_gm]

If I can get our lass into me fan club I will have cracked it GM!

.....

[KerrAvon]

The 80 miles figure was Tom Hanks referring to how much range he required, "Tom Hanks told the David Letterman show that a single charge for a range of 70-80 miles a day was all he needed personally"

That was the first generation, the second generation but patent blocked NIMH batteries could achieve up to 160 miles range.

Yes, petrol is more dense than any battery. That includes Lithium ion which is likely to replace petrol and diesel, so I fail to see the significance. It just means the weight carried for energy storage is heavier, though other aspects are lighter (no engine).

A bit of a straw man to mention an 800 mile journey for a van, I'm not arguing that batteries were ready for all use cases, just that the technology was patented and blocked by an oil company where there were legitimate mass market use cases for it, I'm failing to see anything to suggest this is in any way not the case or a conspiracy.

I'm on holiday at the moment and only have my phone with me, so you have something of an advantage. I see that the 1st generation of the car used lead/acid batteries and had a range of about 80 miles and the later NiMH version had the 160 to which you refer.

Whichever battery type, they still had to be charged up and a considerable amount (somewhere around 25% I believe) of that charging would achieve nothing more than lugging the battery around as they weighed over half a tonne. That's a lot of fossil fuel to be burned so that the drivers could feel worthy. That's the significance of the power to weight ratio.

It's hardly surprising that the car could only carry two people with no luggage. It's also no surprise that GM decided to, ahem, pull the plug on what could never have been a commercial success.

Conspiracy theories have never been my genre of choice, but I'll watch the film when I'm back from my hols.

There was nothing straw man in my post. I was making the point that electric vehicle technology doesn't meet the needs of anyone other than for a local commutes. Do electric car fetishists think we should all have two cars - one for short jaunts and one for longer trips? That would be good for the environment...

[John2]

Whichever battery type, they still had to be charged up and a considerable amount (somewhere around 25% I believe) of that charging would achieve nothing more than lugging the battery around as they weighed over half a tonne. That's a lot of fossil fuel to be burned so that the drivers could feel worthy. That's the significance of the power to weight ratio.

Doesn't quite work like that, once you've got the momentum adding extra weight doesn't have as big an impact on the fuel economy as you might imagine, this is something I learned converting a campervan. A person who understands the physics explained it to me in more detail, but I can say that not far from doubling the weight of the van probably took the fuel economy from 39mpg to 33mpg.

It's hardly surprising that the car could only carry two people with no luggage. It's also no surprise that GM decided to, ahem, pull the plug on what could never have been a commercial success.

You ignore the fact that while the EV1 was a first generation experiment (with 270L of boot space as it happens), Toyota deemed it succesful enough to create a NIMH battery powered RAV4... and the only thing that stopped them selling it was getting sued by the oil company that owned the patents to NIMH battery technology. There was a waiting list of disappointed buyers.

There was nothing straw man in my post. I was making the point that electric vehicle technology doesn't meet the needs of anyone other than for a local commutes. Do electric car fetishists think we should all have two cars - one for short jaunts and one for longer trips? That would be good for the environment...

Since the majority of trips are local commutes, that's an incredibly huge market you casually dismiss. The rise of the electric car now there is a viable battery that hasn't been patent encumbered demonstrates this.

You've ironically managed to throw a straw man into that paragraph, I doubt electric car advocates are promoting 2 car households. These days car sharing clubs are growing hugely, I'd personally think a far better and probably cost effective solution would be renting a car for long journeys, though this is more accessible in cities where I'd guess many people are within 10 mins walk of a club car. Though batteries can be charged quickly enough (30 mins) and the infrastructure is widespread enough these days that long trips increasingly shouldn't be an issue.