Discussion»Questions»Current Events and News» We have streets now where people live a mile from The city of London where only Hybrid or electric cars are allowed to drive down .Have yo
We have streets now where people live a mile from The city of London where only Hybrid or electric cars are allowed to drive down .Have yo
Do you have such nonsensical rules where you live....Power is going to local governments heads...we are all being slowly brainwashed with local government becoming more and more like the Gastapo it feels....
I am sure that the people in local government , and those who back them, feel they are doing the right thing with something like that. The way they see it is hybrid and electric cars are desirable because they less pollute the earth therefore they should be encouraged as much as possible even to the extent of such regulations because of that. They are right so we should do what is right. Ad I'm sure if they could they would pass laws because of that requiring that ALL cars should be electric.
This is what we call in the U.S. "political correctness" meaning that a particular side, because it is "right", must be adhered to and encouraged until all people conform to it.
There is a mounting interest in electric cars in this country and I have seen ads for rallies and is very possible will at some time not far off become political. In the town of Concord which is west of Boston and the next town to where we live, a group of people got together and banned all sales of water in plastic containers a few years ago. Because such containers pollute the earth and the oceans. While I think that is a good cause it is rather harsh when carried to the extent of making it law and it does encroach on personal freedom.
In town to the east of us for maybe 15 years there has been a growing movement to restrict automobile traffic and street that were before two lanes on each side have been pared sown to one lane each way with the other lanes being converted to exclusively bicycle lanes to encourage people to use bicycles but which are hardly used as such. So you have whole traffic lanes seldom used. In addition restrictive structures are built into the roads - bump-outs and "raised tables" the only purpose for which is to "calm the traffic" hopefully so it will go slower and thus there will be fewer accidents. The same with putting up more and more traffic lights until in some areas there is one at the end of every block! Which succeeds only in frustrating and enraging drivers. The labor unions, which are very powerful in the eastern part of this state support this because it guarantees their membership a certain amount of work yearly building such structures so they get the local governments to do so by otherwise threatening not to vote for them or even sometimes threatening bodily harm if the governments will not.
People do need to feel they have some power in their own lives but unfortunately when they are able to obtain more they often do use it to support private or largeragendas whether selfish or supposedly for the good of all of us. Whether we want them or not. Which is pretty much the wayit has always been. People want to "do things" to create for what they see as the good of all so they can feel more powerful and see themselves as "good" so they don't hesitate in making all manner of laws and regulations and in having built all kinds of things to such ends.
The pollutants from mining the materials thats needed in making nickel cadmium vehicles batteries are devastating parts of Canada , Romania and where ever else it is mined.....at the moment very few cars are produced to run on batteries ,can you imagine how much polution and damage to the enviroment making all vechicles electric will cause..... A few years ago in England our so called Goverment wanted people to swap to diesel powered cars and vans....Ten to Fifteen years later they want to ban them all....What about all commercial vechiles that run on diesel.....nothing electric can power them at the moment... What about huge diggers and industural vehicles too....?
Consider that the electricity used to charge electric vehicles is probably still generated from fossil fuels, from coal and oil delivered to power plants by diesel trains and trucks. Is there a net gain burning more coal in place of petrol?
America is cutting down virgin rain forest to provide England with wood pellets to burn in our old coal fired electrical generating plants..... 30 % of the wood chopped down gets used in drying out the wood to make wood pellets from it....
It's nothing short of insanity to chop down forests that taken 1-200 years to grow.....plus what about the wildlife it displaces...
...and the Co2 that those trees can no longer filter from the atmosphere. Wherever man has been, the forests are the first to pay the price. Since antiquity, man has cleared forests out most of the European continent, the North American continent, and increasingly the Amazon rainforests. It was the vast forests around the earth that continuously filtered the atmospheric Co2 and created our oxygen-rich environment, moderating our climate. This is scientific fact. Absent the TRILLIONS of trees that once stood, our prospect of countering the increasing output of carbon is non-existent. Meanwhile we have people in charge of important sh-t who still deny the science of it all.
This post was edited by Don Barzini at September 16, 2018 12:45 PM MDT
I can only agree with every word you say....money must always come befire things like that though...one day that will be proven...just before we all die from asphyxiation....
Yes I know master element....Sometimes when I'm angry ,correct names seem to evade me...... There is no way on earth that every vehicle can be powered by batteries until something new and less pollutant is discovered... Make them run on water...All the petrol chemical companies know how to do it...it's them that's brought up all the rights to produce water powered engines ..
We don't have such rules where I live. The infrastructure here is bad enough and I think an "electric only" rule would just make the power issue worse. Also, I wonder what would happen when hurricanes come and knock out the power for weeks. At least with oil you could stock up on it before the storm, but I don't know how it works with electric cars. At least with hybrids you could go either way..I think. I don't know, I've never owned a hybrid either..
You need specialist breakdown recovery vehicle to work in hybrid or all electric cars....if any of those cars crashes the fire department are at serious risk from chemicals and electrocution.... Changing a light bulb can also lead to serious burns or even death...
But out civil engineers are making it more difficult for people to drive their own vehicles, trying to force us to use mass transit. Of course, it has been proven (in at least one regional city) that expanding mass transit is responsible for expanding violent crime along those routes. One local police chief even threatened to resign, if mass transit was expanded into his jurisdiction, due to the influx of crime it would bring.
The problem with mass transit (besides the crime) is that business hours and transit times don't match. So if you either arrive too early or too late. You get disciplined for being late, of course. And nobody wants to wait around outside (in the Pacific North West weather) for the business to unlock and go to work.
As most of the posts above bear out, these decisions are taken with the best of intentions but very little real thought, and what worries me is that it will become worse.
I fear the general level of any, even simple, understanding of science and engineering among many politicians, journalists, environmental campaigners and the public at large is very low. Yes, people waffle about "we all" now being "technologically savvy" but this linguistic froth merely condenses to knowing how to use a TV remote-controller and a so-called "smart" phone.
I wonder how many of the politicians who want us all to drive battery cars, even understand the differences between fuel, energy and power? Or have considered the full practical difficulties and environmental "equation" of their intended policies?
I think in Britain at least, huge numbers of people in future will be unable to own a battery-only car for simple practical reasons missed by Greenpeace and politicians; while as Nice Jugs and Don Barzini have pointed out, we would still need diesel- or equivalent- engines for heavy goods vehicles and industrial and agricultural plant.
Not long ago, Theresa May brightly announced wanting not only cars but also all Britain's railways to be electrified by 2040. Now the latter is technically feasible, but would be extremely expensive thanks to large parts of the network being still diesel-only. As it is the Government's knowledge of railways is shown by its official HS2 web-site listing no Engineers on its Board - but does include a "Director of Strategic Partnerships", so that's all right then. Lose these not-yet-electric railways as the obvious financial alternative, and combined with the battery-car policy, it would result either in a big increase in road traffic or many communities around the country becoming very isolated. Another aspect the pro-ell-electric people don't spot.
Nice Jugs remarks that the fuel companies know how to make cars run on water... I have heard that many times but it cannot be that much a secret, and I suspect it originated years ago by someone misunderstanding or misquoting something. There are only two ways you can obtain power from water. You can evaporate it into steam, but that requires a combustible fuel to provide a lot of heat, and is not very efficient despite not being too fussy about fuel type. Or you can electrolyse the water and use the hydrogen in a fairly conventional internal-combustion engine, or in a fuel-cell powering an electric motor. However, firstly that needs an enormous amount of electricity to disassociate the hydrogen and oxygen, and secondly if the hydrogen is burnt with air instead of pure oxygen (a difficult reaction to use in an engine), its exhaust contains nitrous oxides - the very compounds produced by diesel (and any fuel) engines that have so scared the Government.
Ironically the move to diesel from petrol was for the lower overall fuel consumption, and forced by a mixture of ever-tighter "environmental" laws made by politicians, and commercial imperatives anyway, the vehicle manufacturers have made enormous strides in making diesel engines far more efficient and far cleaner and environmentally sound than they used to be, and indeed than petrol engines of equivalent size.
The stark fact is whatever the real environmental cost of using fossil fuels, we are faced either with crippling restrictions on our ways of life now, or in the future when these fuels run short anyway. In the latter case, it will be far more than fuels that become scarce, too.
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