Talk Morgan Forums Community Vehicle Talk (non-Morgan) Emissions !

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-34447545


So the lab chaps and chapesses probably knew diesels were a problem , this could be the same for all vehicles when driving on the road , never mind ...

Old, old news.

That the "EU Mandated" tests are virtually meaningless as a measure of polution and CO2 has been known by analytical chemists and engineers for years.
Taxing cars on CO2 output measured by these tests is totally unfair. Which is why the new UK car tax system is good.

The only value the standard tests have is to allow a crude comparison between vehicles, but even that is risky.

Internal combustion engine burn hydrocarbons which produce CO2 and other pollutants. Petrol engines are cleaner than diesel, but not as efficient at burning fuel. Because turbo diesels burn at high temperature and pressure they are more efficient, but produce oxides of nitrogen, which are hard to remove. There are no easy answers.

Short term small petrol engined hybrid motors are a good substitute for diesel, but they still burn hydrocarbons and I'm not convinced batteries are green enough through their product lifecycle.

Hydrogen power, anyone?

Perhaps more importantly, but your decent sports car now. Only a few years ahead all cars will have to meet a 95 CO2 limit, and since CO2 is directly related to fuel used, and fuel used is directly related to power generated, interesting cars like the plus 8 simply wont be allowed.

You likely will end up driving a Dyson car!.

I sat on the governments MOT working group representing the retail industry (I was working for the Motor Agents Association then) and we were working on MOT testing of emissions. The battle was access to meaningful testing equipment, the volume of cars to be tested (not just MOT but used cars, service cars) and the cost to owners of carrying out such tests even if they could be facilitated. We were advised by 'specialists' that the NOX were what we should target but that was not realistic given the insistence that test fees should not increase by more than 10-15% so we were restricted to going to a HC based test with CO as a side issue, all the talk was on reducing HC. Later it was pointed out that we could actually measure 4 gases fairly easily by measuring CO2 and O2 via a Lambda reading. This lead to OIML (Swiss standards house) Class One gas benches in all UK test stations and was the start of where we are today, when I was a tester for diesels we had the very high tech approach of a piece of grey card that was held in the exhaust stream, if you could see the grey card the diesel passed, if it was obscured it failed ;-) And that chaps is a true story! Happy days. The MOT working group was around 1988-1990 as I had moved to Volvo in 1991.

So what of VW and falsifying readings when it is meaningless anyway ? !

Surreal, isn't it?
That is Europe for you.
Yet another example of the bad science that permiates the EC.

I begin to believe that there is no one in Brussels who understands chemical metrology, uncertainty and all the consequences of using bad science to undepin regulation.

Excuse me, I need to go and take another tablet.

I know it was years ago Peter but we had one 20 min session with the Minister and he certainly was well briefed on what the implications were and what would really address the problem. His Sir Humphrey totally blocked it based on the increase in cost, being one of the team representing the retail motor trade we were responsible for agreeing MOT test fee rates and had already said if the garages had to spend £X on kit and training and double the time to carry out the test then the fee would need to go through the roof in order for us to support the test, the DOT HGV stations also walked away from the problem due to inability to handle the throughput. The Minister had to do something but he knew he could not deliver what the greens wanted for what the industry and car owners could afford. I actually felt for him it was a no win situation.

Since when has CO2 been a pollutant? We breath it out and trees take it in. All focus groups, Green Peace etc, distort the reality to fit their own beliefs. The test should be purely on miles per gallon. Twice the miles per gallon half all pollutants, as per a recent letter in the Telegraph by Lord Bamford. But of course we have the climate change religion to contend with - faith not verified by fact.

Oh, dear.
Rainbowj, no offence intended to you personally, but that is one of the more ridiculous posts I have ever seen.

Carbon dioxide is known, and has been known for many years, to be a "greenhouse gas" - meaning that at even relatively low concentrations in the atmosphere it acts like a blanket, leading to an imbalance in the flow of heat from the sun to the earth. At equilibrium, the amount of heat radiated away from the earth into space is roughly the same as the amount of heat taken in by the earth from the sun. The mechanisms of the greenhouse effect are very well understood, and not really disputed. Not even the most rabid climate-change-denier is seriously questioning the ice-core and atmospheric analysis indicating a rapid increase in the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide. The attached graph (this one is from a global warming website, the data points are from multiple international organizations including NOAA in the US, the BAS from the UK, and many academic research projects) shows the startling rise, and increased rate of change, in CO2 levels since around 1750.

I would turn your assertion on its head. Not to understand the phenomenon of climate change, and to deny the likelihood of human causation of that change, is very much a triumph of faith over fact, and is not supportable by any evidence whatsoever.

Apologies for the rant, but I find people's unwillingness to acknowledge the weight of evidence of climate change really quite disturbing..

Well said, Doug!