Hey, Robin Hood, can you validate?

[Silver]

Do our British cousins have any details, even anecdotal, to support the claims of this article?

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-09-1 ... uying-cars

British People Suddenly Stopped Buying Cars
Sep 12, 2017 8:00 AM
by Jim Edwards, Business Insider UK

vehicle sales uk.png (177.93 KiB) Viewed 955 times

British people have suddenly stopped buying cars.

It's not clear why. But a number of anti-car trends have hit Britain simultaneously — such as the rise of Uber and a decline in household savings — driving down car sales.

The chart above of total car sales both old and new, from Barclays, says it all. On this chart, the grey-black line is the crucial one. The blue line (online sales) represents only a small number of purchases.

[BeNotDeceived]

Online sales holding up better, but car sales have dropped?

On the horizon = China has become the latest country to publicly discuss plans to ban the production and sale of gasoline- or diesel-powered vehicles. In July, both France and the UK published plans to phase out sales of conventionally powered vehicles by 2040. China will now add another nail to the coffin of the internal combustion engine. However, unlike the French or British plans, in this case there's no target date—yet. ... https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/09/ch ... esel-cars/

Japan is gearing up hydrogen cars, while others feverishly work to improve battery technology.

Base load power generation will come down to OTEC, or nuclear. The Fukushima tsunami, really hurt nuclear. Hydrogen being the better means of conveyance, pretty much seals the deal, in its favor.

Batteries and nuclear, both have disposal issues. Power to weight ratio, also favors hydrogen, or algae based biofuel for aircraft. OTEC converted to hydrogen, looks to be the likely winner, iff we don't destroy ourselves first.

[Red]

I wonder What they're going to use to produce the electricity to power the electric/hybrid cars.

[Silver]

I wonder What they're going to use to produce the electricity to power the electric/hybrid cars.

Unicorn farts.

Next question.

[iWriteStuff]

I wonder What they're going to use to produce the electricity to power the electric/hybrid cars.

Unicorn farts.

Next question.

This is very bullish for Unicorn farms. I should probably corner that market ASAP.

[Robin Hood]

Apparently this is true.
It follows on from a boom in car sales over the past 5 years (several sales records were set), and especially the spikes in 2013 and 2016.
A lot of people get cars these days on 3 year PCP or PCH deals, so it could simply be a convergence of this cycle following on from the government backed scrappage deals introduced in 2008 to combat plummeting car sales at the time of the last financial crisis/credit crunch. If true, I would expect another spike in 2019.

There is also uncertainty regarding the future of fossil fuel vehicles, with various noises coming out of government regarding alternatives. Volvo have announced they will only make Hybrid or Electric cars from 2019 onwards, and other European car makers are very likely to follow suit. The thought is that with large manufacturers moving in this direction, battery/charger manufacturers will now have confidence to invest significantly in R&D to improve the technology. And it needs to be improved.

My view is that hydrogen cell powered cars are the real future, but there isn't as much money in that.

[Red]

I can't help but wonder how the US will keep up considering how much environmentalists hate dirty coal, yet there's not a feasible alternative to produce the electricity needed to power electric cars without burning coal.

[Robin Hood]

I can't help but wonder how the US will keep up considering how much environmentalists hate dirty coal, yet there's not a feasible alternative to produce the electricity needed to power electric cars without burning coal.

Actually, there is; ...... Nuclear.

[BeNotDeceived]

I wonder What they're going to use to produce the electricity to power the electric/hybrid cars.

Dr. Hans, will be happy to explain.

OTEC comes in three basic flavors.

1) Closed Cycle indeed does use Unicorn Farts as a working fluid.

2) Open Cycle where the working fluid is water, and it also outputs large quantities of fresh water.

3) Mist Lift again uses H2O as the working fluid to create a hydroelectric waterfall under the surface of ocean.

#1 is subject to selection of proper unicorns, that exhaust R-22 refrigerant, Ammonia or other fluid with a low boiling point.

FLOATING OTEC could target tropical disturbances, before they grow up to be named Andrew, Katrina, Harvey, Irma, and my personal un-favorite Soudelor.

Sea Water Air-Con is a close cousin currently in use in Bora Bora, and now cooling most of downtown Honolulu. Here is a Wired article about John Craven The Mad Genius from the Bottom of the Sea who orchestrated the Bora Bora deal, but then a chandelier fell on his head. Goes to show, sometimes Truth really is Stranger than fiction.

Electricity currently doesn't store or transport well outside of power sub-stations, but hydrogen or some advocate ammonia, or perhaps magical unicorns, can absorb and release large quantities of gas.

[gclayjr]

Robin Hood,

My view is that hydrogen cell powered cars are the real future, but there isn't as much money in that.

Where does the Hydrogen come from?

Remember TANSTAAFL
(There ain't no such thing as a free lunch)

Regards,

George Clay

[gclayjr]

Robin Hood,

Actually, there is; ...... Nuclear.

Are the British environmentalists OK with that?

I know France has a lot of Nuclear power, but does Britain?

Regards,

George Clay

[Robin Hood]

Robin Hood,

My view is that hydrogen cell powered cars are the real future, but there isn't as much money in that.

Where does the Hydrogen come from?

Water.

[Robin Hood]

Robin Hood,

Actually, there is; ...... Nuclear.

Are the British environmentalists OK with that?

I know France has a lot of Nuclear power, but does Britain?

Regards,

George Clay

Some are, some aren't.
But it's a non-fossil fuel and produces very little CO2.

There are a number of new nuclear plants planned or currently under construction in the UK.
Some of the older facilities we've had since the 1960's are being de-commissioned.

[Red]

I can't help but wonder how the US will keep up considering how much environmentalists hate dirty coal, yet there's not a feasible alternative to produce the electricity needed to power electric cars without burning coal.

Actually, there is; ...... Nuclear.

Yeah, nuc is definitely cleaner. It's too bad that using nuc power is going to be as big of a struggle as dirty coal. The permitting process alone is an absolute nightmare.

[Red]

I wonder What they're going to use to produce the electricity to power the electric/hybrid cars.

Dr. Hans, will be happy to explain.

OTEC comes in three basic flavors.

1) Closed Cycle indeed does use Unicorn Farts as a working fluid.

2) Open Cycle where the working fluid is water, and it also outputs large quantities of fresh water.

3) Mist Lift again uses H2O as the working fluid to create a hydroelectric waterfall under the surface of ocean.

#1 is subject to selection of proper unicorns, that exhaust R-22 refrigerant, Ammonia or other fluid with a low boiling point.

FLOATING OTEC could target tropical disturbances, before they grow up to be named Andrew, Katrina, Harvey, Irma, and my personal un-favorite Soudelor.

Sea Water Air-Con is a close cousin currently in use in Bora Bora, and now cooling most of downtown Honolulu. Here is a Wired article about John Craven The Mad Genius from the Bottom of the Sea who orchestrated the Bora Bora deal, but then a chandelier fell on his head. Goes to show, sometimes Truth really is Stranger than fiction.

Electricity currently doesn't store or transport well outside of power sub-stations, but hydrogen or some advocate ammonia, or perhaps magical unicorns, can absorb and release large quantities of gas.

Yeah I know about all that. My master's degree is in Energy Management. I was being sarcastic. I get frustrated with these great plans to eliminate fossil fuel but there are holes in the plan to make it as workable as using fossil fuel. Combined efforts in creating electricity through solar power, wind power, nuc, geothermal, etc could eliminate the need for fossil fuel, but there are still a lot of big obstacles to overcome to make it work.

[gclayjr]

Robin Hood,

gclayjr wrote: ↑
Wed Sep 13, 2017 11:56 am
Robin Hood,

My view is that hydrogen cell powered cars are the real future, but there isn't as much money in that.

Where does the Hydrogen come from?

Water.

I don't know if you are trying be obtuse to be funny or you don't get it. You do sometimes say rediculous things to be funny.

OK, yea, it may come from water, but water can't be used. the water molecules have to be broken down into Hydrogen and Oxygen. It takes energy to do this. In fact more energy than is released in burning the Hydrogen.

The problem with hydrogen cars is the same problem with Electric cars. Neither Hydrogen nor Electricity is a source of energy for cars. They are merely means of Storing energy generated somewhere else.

Regards,

George Clay

[Lexew1899]

EVs (electric vehicles) are a better technology than ICEs (internal combustion engines) for several reasons.

1. The main problem with ICE cars is that the method of propulsion for them is much less efficient. A tremendous amount of the thrust that is generated in the engine is lost to the incredible amount of heat that the process makes. I believe the efficiency of the engines is around 70% due to this thermal energy loss. That is a horribly inefficient loss.

2. Having an engine convert this fuel (gasoline) into useable energy, (fire = combustion) is much less efficient than that of any modern power plant. The thermal energy loss at any power plant is substantially lower, i.e. an EV being fueled with electricity that is created at a “dirty” coal power plant is still going to contribute less CO2 per mile than a similarly used ICE engine would in most cases.

3. You can see how much CO2 you are creating with each kind of power plant. Converting each fuel type into grams of CO2 created per 1 generation of KWHs. Here are a few common sources used in industrial power plants (gCO2eq/kWh):
Coal -820, Gas -490, Solar -41, Nuclear -12, Wind (Onshore) -11.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-cycl ... gy_sources

4. An ICE vehicle produces approximately 20 pounds of CO2 for each gallon of gas that is used. This gas obviously isn't created ex nilio considering a gallon of gasoline only weighs about 6 pounds. The remaining 12 pounds are taken from each 2 Oxygen molecules that are taken from the surrounding atmosphere, trapping it in this CO2 form. So on average for every 10 gallons of fuel you burn you are creating 200 pounds of CO2 emissions. So burning a gallon of gasoline creates 9,071 grams of CO2.

5. So how far can a typical ICE car go per mile in relation to CO2? If your car can go 20mpg/each mile grams of CO2 = 453. 30mpg = 302. 40mpg = 226. If the car goes over 50mpg, it will likely beat the “dirty” coal plant, but these are being phased out and not used in most states at this point. Most coal plants are hybrid with natural gas.

6. How far can a typical EV go per mile in relation to CO2? If you look at the best selling EV, the Nissan Leaf, which goes on average 4.1 miles per KWH here are those ratios. 1 mile/ grams of CO2. Coal = 200. Gas = 119. When you begin to use renewables, or Nuclear the rates are impressive. Solar = 10. Nuclear = 3. Wind = 2.6.

7. So the cleaner the fuel source, the better the EV performs. You would have to get a gasoline car to have an average mileage of around 3,000mpg to match the potential the EV has when run on Nuclear or Wind.

[Lexew1899]

The question for CO2 generation is, does it matter? That is still unknown to anyone who is being intellectually honest. I would surmise from anecdotal evidence that fossil fuel use should be slowed down just on the concept of pollution. I feel it has been politicised and romanticized into a religious zeal to be for it or against it. On the principle of reducing pollution, I think most people would agree that thick smoke from a coal plant, polution from the highway, etc is annoying and most likely harmful to our health.

Just walking near a busy street makes my eyes water and my lungs feel uncomfortable. But lets look at it as a strictly scientific subject and see if we can derive at the conclusion that CO2 emissions are bad…

The current CO2 levels in the atmosphere are measured at the Mauna Loa Observatory, Hawaii. They have a reading currently at 405 PPM. That doesn’t sound that high, but here is a chart showing what it has been for the last few hundred years.

Just looking at this chart would make you go, golly gee wiz, that sure looks awful mister!
Since the advent of the industrial revolution, our atmospheric CO2 levels have been rising quickly, in what looks like an exponential way. It looks frightening, and is for many people. CO2 is a greenhouse gas, yet so are many other things. Like water vapor. So what has this rising CO2 done to the global temperature?

That’s been rising also. In science however, you are always supposed to hold your personal notions, thoughts, conceptions, prejudices at bay. So you would need to look at a graph that shows what contribution CO2 is potentially having as far as a warming effect. What effect are volcanoes, solar radiation, etc having on the climate?

From this chart you would think, well, they figured it all out. The problem with the planet is us. We created global warming/climate change.
So from what we see above, we should be able to look at and say, CO2 alone is the explanation for our warming planet. As a matter of fact, it seems to be the primary cause for our global average temperature rising. We can extrapolate this data, and look at our Earth history and see similar results.

EXCEPT, you can’t. Because that’s where everything falls apart. You can see clearly we have had CO2 levels much higher than they are now, as high as 7,000 ppm in the Cambrian eon. The Cambrian “explosion” was when life flooded the planet in a massive way.
You can see from the chart that as a matter of fact, it appears that CO2 probably has very little to do with temperature.

So what should we take away from this? Humans create CO2. In the process other wastes are created that are pollutants and toxic (which I suspect probably contribute to the rise of Autism, as one factor). We should reduce those on the principle of keeping our air, water, food, etc clean. Also, we should take advantage of energy efficient modes of transportation, and clean energy imo. But you can believe whatever you want to believe, that’s just my two cents.

[BeNotDeceived]

Yeah I know about all that. My master's degree is in Energy Management. I was being sarcastic. I get frustrated with these great plans to eliminate fossil fuel but there are holes in the plan to make it as workable as using fossil fuel. Combined efforts in creating electricity through solar power, wind power, nuc, geothermal, etc could eliminate the need for fossil fuel, but there are still a lot of big obstacles to overcome to make it work.

Weird thing is those on remote tropical islands will be the first to experience this technology. Dr Hans Krock explains Floating Barges near the equator are the next locations, specifically Kwajalein Atoll.

The second video at 2:30, has rare footage of Dr. John Craven aka The Mad Genius from the Bottom of the Sea.

There are dozens of projects now in progress around the world, with the 5th annual conference coming up in November. http://www.otecnews.org/ Permitting as you mentioned, is holding up progress.

An international guidance document on OTEC is making significant development progress. This document will benefit the whole OTEC community, providing guidance to designers and project developers, and reassuring investors, insurers and national authorities.

The guidance document -IEC TS 62600-20- will be a Technical Specification developed within the Technical Committee TC114 of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC).

The document will cover land‐based, shelf‐mounted and floating OTEC plants which generate electrical power. It will be applicable to the OTEC structure, process flows and machinery, electrical equipment and controls to the point of interconnection to the primary load or electrical grid.

A first draft of the document has been circulated in January 2017, and commented by the different TC114 participating countries. A project team made of experts from UK, USA, Canada, France and the Netherlands met to work on the standard in March 2017, in parallel to the IEC TC114 Plenary meeting in Madrid. A new version of the document is targeted for the end of 2017. ...

This presentation stresses the importance of making use of existing oil and gas expertise as well as the possibility of reusing relatively modern drill ships, semi-submersibles or FPSOs as a base hull for a floating OTEC system. A number of such hulls are going to scrap at present due to the severe downturn in the offshore oil industry. Many of the systems on such vessels such as moorings, thrusters, accommodation, cranes, etc would also be needed on a floating OTEC plant.

[gclayjr]

Lexew1899,

The question for CO2 generation is, does it matter? That is still unknown to anyone who is being intellectually honest. I would surmise from anecdotal evidence that fossil fuel use should be slowed down just on the concept of pollution. I feel it has been politicized and romanticized into a religious zeal to be for it or against it. On the principle of reducing pollution, I think most people would agree that thick smoke from a coal plant, pollution from the highway, etc is annoying and most likely harmful to our health.

You do make a better argument than most I read, and it will take a while to digest. I suspect that I am a bit older than you are. I remember as a young man, going through New York on my way to West Point in 1970 to take a medical exam. I took a bus from Ithaca, New York to West Point, New York. I had a layover at Port Authority bus terminal, and decided to go outside to see what NYC looked like. I was impressed by all of the new (dented) taxi cabs and how brown and smelly the air was.

In those early days of environmental regulation, there was much talk about problems of Ozone and carbon monoxide. This led to the regulations that led to the terrible (for a car person like me) cars of the 70s and early 80s. However, technology (particularly related to microprocessors, fuel injection and electronic ignition) greatly reduced automobile emissions of those defined toxic chemicals to almost nothing. I worked in the 90s for a company whose headquorters was in NYC and had to travel there often. The change in air quality over 1970 was dramatic.

That being said, I have noticed that zealot advocates for anything can never declare victory and move on,. They always take what may be a good idea, and drive it to ridiculousness and often zealously pursue their ideas until they become as big or bigger a problem that the original problem.

I don't remember when the environmental wackos stopped taking about Carbon MONOXIDE which is definitely a pollutant and started talking about carbon DIOXIDE which is a very healthy naturally occurring gas, but they have lost credibility of being people really interested in saving us from pollution into zealots who want socialize everything and control everything we do.

Regards,

George Clay

[ajax]

viewtopic.php?f=13&t=40372

[Robin Hood]

Robin Hood,

gclayjr wrote: ↑
Wed Sep 13, 2017 11:56 am
Robin Hood,

My view is that hydrogen cell powered cars are the real future, but there isn't as much money in that.

Where does the Hydrogen come from?

Water.

I don't know if you are trying be obtuse to be funny or you don't get it. You do sometimes say rediculous things to be funny.

OK, yea, it may come from water, but water can't be used. the water molecules have to be broken down into Hydrogen and Oxygen. It takes energy to do this. In fact more energy than is released in burning the Hydrogen.

The problem with hydrogen cars is the same problem with Electric cars. Neither Hydrogen nor Electricity is a source of energy for cars. They are merely means of Storing energy generated somewhere else.

Regards,

George Clay

Certainly not trying to be obtuse.
I'm not an expert in this field (or any other if I'm honest) but I have watched a number of documentary's on this subject ie. electric battery powered vehicles verses hydrogen cell powered vehicles; and the respective technologies and energy needs.
Hydrogen won hands down in every category. Obviously there are some technical issues still requiring resolution (not least the danger of rupture and the potentially explosive consequences) but the conclusion was that the raw material, water, is too cheap and plentiful. No one will make any money.

In my view, electric cars are a significant way off here in the UK. Tesla may announce it's latest improvements to battery storage and charger times to great fanfare, but that only works in California.
The same technology here in the UK would give drastically different performance.
In the dead of winter we need our headlights on (even in the daytime - which is only 6 or 7 hours), the heater on, the windscreen wipers (it's been known to rain here!) etc, and that's before we take into account the Sat Nav, the kids watching their DVD's, phone charging etc.
I might get to the supermarket and back.

[ajax]

People make money selling water.

[Robin Hood]

People make money selling water.

They do, but it's crazy.
The stuff falls out of the sky for free. Happens a lot here.

[ajax]

People make money selling water.

They do, but it's crazy.

Not really. It's got to be made potable and deliverable. Most would prefer to pay someone to provide that service.