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

Tim,

all climate change predictions are based on computer generated extrapolations of past events, modified by applying a range of variable factors.

The finance sector does the same: recent evidence suggests that they really are not very good at it. So why should we believe the climatologists any more than the financial pundits?

Hehe, yes!

Half listening to some "Green" politico the other day giving off about fracking in AONBs, Forest of Dean etc. saying how it would ruin the landscape and we should be relying more on renewables, I nearly sent an email complaining about the destruction of the landscape by wind and solar farms. Plus the decidedly non-green effect of using millions of tonnes of concrete...
There is no one simple answer - but the UK might benefit from a few more vineyards??
However, I'm just a simple Morgan driver, so what would I know???

The climate models have got an extremely long record of accuracy, remember that it is now 50 years since scientists issued the first warnings.

If you look at the predictions made by Wallace Broecker's 1974 model and the recorded observations, I would say the correlation seems pretty good. So I would say yes, 40 years of observations matching predictions does make the models trustworthy.

Hi guys. The biggest problem the Earth faces is POPULATION EXPLOSION. More than 7 billion at the mo, 8 billion by 2020ish and 10 billion by 2050?

Mass starvation and resource exhaustion will hit future generations, and I say that starving whilst driving a car that emits 90g of CO2 will feel exactly the same as starving whilst driving a car emitting 250g.

We need efficient vehicles of course, but we need to limit the sheer numbers of humans emitting CO2 etc in the first place! 2 children per couple should be the norm and no government ANYWHERE should ever pay child benefits to a third etc child. (Special cases to those who have triplets perhaps ?).

The use of solar power is clearly the most sustainable way to generate power and major efforts should be made to incentivise the harnessing, storage and use of the one resource that will outlive us all !

Cheers

Quite right Jeremy. The response I most often hear to this is "the birth rate will drop when we have sufficient economic growth", but unfortunately as we are seeing the environmental costs of the growth are likely to make our world unsustainable for humans to live in.

I agree that solar power is a good approach, but for meeting baseload requirements we're going to need a good few Nukes. They can produce steady amounts of power all the time, so they can meet day time consumption requirements and at night can provide power for recharging batteries and cracking water to make hydrogen for fuel cells.

Ah, now, fuel cells - can I have one to make a steam car??
Bu99er all these polluting batteries!!!

Jeremy, will you be driving 43172?? (hope I've remembered that number correctly!).

Aye you're probably right there Tim, I have no expertise so can't comment ! Ongoing decommissioning costs are a bit of a downer though?

Cheers !

I don't think you've quite thought this one through, Graham?

Not like the hockey stick then!