anti diesel idea not working.....

Frontstep

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On a different but related note my pseudo green acquaintances have these dual fuel woodburning stoves yet deride diesels
clearly they haven't read their Guardians;

"Researchers at King’s College London have found that wood-burning in the capital accounts for up to 31% of the city’s particulate pollution, up from 10% in the past.

The tiny particles, known as PM2.5, are the most harmful type of air pollution and exacerbate lung and heart conditions"

I did ask where the monitoring systems, particulate filters and catalysts were located but just received a blank look as bits of forest and wildlife habitat dragged around the world by trucks were being consumed.
I drive past a householder who burns old wooden window frames in his, the "eco" smell is acrid and Mr Dulux and Mr Sikkens best must be floating around the neighbourhood.
 

C350Carl

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The biggest issue for me about pollution is it’s always the motorist (cars etc) that are penalised the most.

They need to tackle industry (shipping, trucks etc). Yes this will put up costs in the short term due to increased logistic costs. But it’s better than the long term impact on the environment.
 

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The biggest issue for me about pollution is it’s always the motorist (cars etc) that are penalised the most.

They need to tackle industry (shipping, trucks etc). Yes this will put up costs in the short term due to increased logistic costs. But it’s better than the long term impact on the environment.
Agree with you there Carl, but it would be a very brave government that would suggest it
 

KeithJG

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I also agree with the above^^^^^^

But not only the motorist but coffee drinkers this time!

In my time nobody walked around in the Streets eating or drinking from bottles or cups and i am not one of those now that go around doing this but to think of adding 25p to the cup of coffee to pay for recycling is really not on .....it should be the manufacturer of these cups that should pay or Costas out of their millions of profits?

The BBC should really check their findings as one short program stated that the cups for recycling were not being supplied to this company in enough quantities and another said they could not be recycled at all!!

The Government do not care about the environment just to be seen to be doing good as they have to...all they are doing is finding ways of getting the money out our wallet`s.

Apparently we the UK have had our Greenest Year and at what cost i say........

Now they are pushing petrol motors the CO2 has now gone up in London quite dramatically.
 

Frontstep

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All those Amazons vans with huge boxes containing tiny things being dropped off one by one.
Yes and I admit it to me now and again.
A simple lowering of testing limits at the M.O.T and improving what we have is the greenest way.
 

Craiglxviii

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I also agree with the above^^^^^^

But not only the motorist but coffee drinkers this time!

In my time nobody walked around in the Streets eating or drinking from bottles or cups and i am not one of those now that go around doing this but to think of adding 25p to the cup of coffee to pay for recycling is really not on .....it should be the manufacturer of these cups that should pay or Costas out of their millions of profits?

The BBC should really check their findings as one short program stated that the cups for recycling were not being supplied to this company in enough quantities and another said they could not be recycled at all!!

The Government do not care about the environment just to be seen to be doing good as they have to...all they are doing is finding ways of getting the money out our wallet`s.

Apparently we the UK have had our Greenest Year and at what cost i say........

Now they are pushing petrol motors the CO2 has now gone up in London quite dramatically.

One of the major issues regarding packaging in modern society is the mechanics of recycling it. Hollywood would have us believe that all American shopping bags are brown paper for instance. The reason for this is that California took a “green” decision as plastic is too polluting and unrecyclable. Only, they didn’t consider that recycling of paper bags uses twice as much power and 7 tons of water per ton of paper vs plastic bags. In a state with chronic water availability issues.

As regards these coffee cups, they’re really a complex construction. Two different types of card with and without print, each of which need different recycling streams, plus a very thin (7 micron) polythene liner which has to be mechanically removed. There are 3 recycling plants in the country that can process them.

To me the question isn’t “why are MPs charging for recycling?” but “why aren’t we mandating reusable packaging? Glass Coke bottles with a 2p returnable deposit anyone? Milk bottles in glass vs HDPE? HDPE recycling plants are horrid, they are environmental disasters waiting to happen as they each have a 25,000 gallon wash sump full of Legionella just waiting to leach into ground water.

As to the Government caring vs being seen to, that’s debatable over anything and everything really. The point is they have a duty of care to protect the population under law.

Who should pay for recycling? The point of sale. They’re the ones who decide what product to use. Everywhere else in industry the government sets legislation which industry has to follow. Here there is no legislation so the seller can get away with whatever they like. Was government to impose a landfill tax modifier to each coffee cup, there would soon be an outcry.

Finally, as regarding CO2. It isn’t the environment killer it was painted to be in 1997. Plants grow faster with increased CO2 so food yields increase. There are many more effective greenhouse gases, not least methane and water vapour. Why do you think the basis of road tax has moved away from banging on about carbon footprints (a footprint made of charcoal? That wound me up) to particulates and nitrogen oxides instead. So London really isn’t seeing a local increase in its carbon dioxide percentage...
 

keefysher

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On a different but related note my pseudo green acquaintances have these dual fuel woodburning stoves yet deride diesels
clearly they haven't read their Guardians;

"Researchers at King’s College London have found that wood-burning in the capital accounts for up to 31% of the city’s particulate pollution, up from 10% in the past.

The tiny particles, known as PM2.5, are the most harmful type of air pollution and exacerbate lung and heart conditions"

I did ask where the monitoring systems, particulate filters and catalysts were located but just received a blank look as bits of forest and wildlife habitat dragged around the world by trucks were being consumed.
I drive past a householder who burns old wooden window frames in his, the "eco" smell is acrid and Mr Dulux and Mr Sikkens best must be floating around the neighbourhood.

It was Red Ken that introduced as his parting shot, a requirement on new builds to have a high percentage of bio mass fuelled heating systems. Classic example was the raft of small 'cottage hospitals', often PFI funded that had biomass wood pellet burners. It was questioned how they were 'green', given the production of pellets and commensurate dirty emissions across the supply chain. The added burden of storage of potentially explosive feedstock in said hospitals. Not withstanding the gaseous emissions to atmosphere from the combustion, the storage of residual ash on site and subsequent disposal transportation and associated emissions. Another issue is that the boilers operate less efficiently than gas and the residues of combustion corrode the boilers rapidly. BUT it kept the tree huggers happy and was billed as a Green measure.

A paradigm shift in thinking is required and some bold steps taken. The UK housing stock is the least efficient consumer of energy. Knock it down and build energy neutral housing with insulation, local network heating, small nuclear reactors etc. Emotionally very difficult to get across, but if we are serious about things, needs to be done. The finance roulette will still spin to keep the greedy happy :shock:

Awaiting the report to surface on how dirtier petrol is than diesel that is currently buried.

A good source to understand the energy system is an organisation called the Energy Technologies Institute eti.co.uk Over the past 10 years has done some great work, under the leadership of the late Dr David Clarke.
 

Craiglxviii

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Couldn’t agree more. Remember the Green Party is really proxy Old New Labour too and nothing whatsoever to do with actual green-ness.

Couldn’t agree more about housing. In 2005 I was involved in the development of pre- fab, high energy efficiency, Thermalite block etc. Rated AA+. The cost price was around £35k in materials and £15k in labour for an unfinished house. Total elapsed time from pouring of foundation to unfinished building, 3 weeks of which 1 day was pouring and 7 days of assembly. We invented a new process- prefabbing block walls using thin layer cement- into modular sections with pre- cut cable & piping runs to enable quick outfitting. The whole house could be built using a Hiab. All the tricky stuff was done on the line at the block plant. All the materials were British too, nothing imported.

Needless to say there was huge government interest. Not a single house of that type has ever been built since the demonstrator.
 

Frontstep

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Sounds like a "Prescott" house a reasonable aspiration was swallowed up in the public sector sewer, costs rose and quality plummeted.
They didn't sell well and by the time the world and his wife had put their costs on so called affordable housing ended up as £200,000 shoddy boxes in SE ghettoes.

Houses are still often built of poor materials by disinterested workers.
The move to produce in factory environments is understandable but its often to control costs not quality and the insulated packing cases they produce do not inspire confidence.
 

LostKiwi

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The Scandinavians and Germans do this very well with their wooden houses. Everything pre-cut, pre assembled where practicable, thermally efficient and totally made from natural materials. Short build times and ecologically sustainable though cost isn't always all that low.
 

Craiglxviii

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The Scandinavians and Germans do this very well with their wooden houses. Everything pre-cut, pre assembled where practicable, thermally efficient and totally made from natural materials. Short build times and ecologically sustainable though cost isn't always all that low.
Very similar principle except it was a “normal” house structure.

There’s a very effective state sponsored house build program of this type in Germany btw.

Thermalite is great. It’s made from furnace bottom ash so Ferrybridge for instance saves more in CO2 emissions via Thermalite production than it generates in normal operation. The thin film mortar came from somewhere dreadful- Humberside I recall- as a byproduct of paint production. The rest of it was jigging and working out the mechanics of assembly.
 

Craiglxviii

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Sounds like a "Prescott" house a reasonable aspiration was swallowed up in the public sector sewer, costs rose and quality plummeted.
They didn't sell well and by the time the world and his wife had put their costs on so called affordable housing ended up as £200,000 shoddy boxes in SE ghettoes.

Houses are still often built of poor materials by disinterested workers.
The move to produce in factory environments is understandable but its often to control costs not quality and the insulated packing cases they produce do not inspire confidence.

In a way yes. It was more built as an industry demonstrator of “look what we can do for you” with the caveat “if you change how you work”. The building industry didn’t and so killed it off through zero interest.
 

Frontstep

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Builders, dealing with very conservative lenders and planners, selling to very conservative buyers, spending very conservative lenders money, to be insured by very conservative Insurers.
The buyers nimbys then move in and complain endlessly about the people that follow them on to their greenfield sites.
 

davemercedes

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The original post says "anti diesel idea not working..... and continues with "It seems like the Anti-diesel lobby might have to do a rethink, at least until alternatives are up to the standard they need to be at (and IMO theyre a long way off as they are)"

But that is not reflected in the vehicle sales figures at the end of November which showed a slump in UK car sales deepening as the industry records a 12% fall for the seventh month in a row - driven by a 30% plunge in diesel vehicle sales amid growing confusion over government’s road fuel policy.

The government handling of this situation is utterly disgraceful. Diesel owners have been abandoned to worry what they should or shouldn't do next and in many cases they have a quite significant millstone around their necks (and if not the public, then the PCP leasing companies will suffer large losses). So it seems to that the general confusion has the public achieving the government's aim (if they actually have one!) of wiping out diesel vehicles without any of the logical analysis that has been mentioned a few times above.
 

Frontstep

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The problem is all diesels are not created equal the difference in pollution levels is stark.
 

Ken_R

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Finally, as regarding CO2. It isn’t the environment killer it was painted to be in 1997. Plants grow faster with increased CO2 so food yields increase.

This is what, effectively, David Bellamy was explaining all those years ago but, it caused him to be ostracized by the media.

I seem to remember him describing CO2 as 'Airborne fertilizer for Trees'.
 

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