Off Topic The Environmental & Pollution Thread

Dave, have you received any notifications from your energy supplier to help balance the grid? During storms Clara and Dennis, wind turbines were producing so much electricity that EV owners were asked to charge their cars and were paid a small amount too to help out. Of course, when stationary batteries are built much of this excess electricity will be stored until it becomes useful, which will stop an increasing number of peaker coal and gas power stations being brought online, and as more on/offshore wind turbines are commissioned.

 

I saw stuff about that, but I didn’t get any notification from my supplier (I should ask them) but, as the car was over on the IOW at the time, it was pretty well a moot point anyway .....

Last night was the first time we charged “Marvin” (I didn’t name it ) here ......

 

NASA has produced a Climate Change quiz. See how you do: https://climate.nasa.gov/quizzes/global-temp-quiz/

FWIW, I did ok.10/10. Inappropriately, I think - I'm supposed to be a Rocket Scientist. As my qualification is in Environmental Science, I'll accept that instead.

 

Got one more interesting item. It's a covering for my quarterly Ramblers magazine made from potato starch instead of recyclable plastic. It feels exactly like plastic but you compost it. Or you can recycle it anyway, but not with the plastics. Or you could even send it to landfill, I suppose, because it breaks down super easily. This was a new one for me:

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Plastic is a super usable material, we all know that. But it's in our ecosystems, where it most definitely should not be, and it can occur in the very air we breathe. So, as a kind of adjunct to the previous otherwise unrelated post, here's this BBC news article:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-51546978

 

Hat's off to an oil company. No, really. A fairly minor oil company Hunt Oil has seen the writing on the wall and has been developing Perovskite Solar Cells [think I mentioned them before]. They are cheaper, more efficient, simpler and cheaper to mass manufacture, and more environmentally friendly: https://cleantechnica.com/2020/02/2...olar-cell-company-bursts-out-of-stealth-mode/

It has long boggled me why oil companies haven't diversified into clean power yet. They have all the spare cash and research facilities they need, and the tide towards leaving the carbon in the ground is turning. So why not? BP and Shell own Rapid Charger networks, but this is moving towards producing clean power. That's fundamental.

 

Been waiting for this revelation. Plug-In hybrids [PHEVs] are not the environmentally friendly vehicles you might think they are. I have considered writing paragraphs on this topic before, but this Guardian fairly long article tells it well enough: https://www.theguardian.com/busines...ers-accused-of-con-over-zero-emissions-claims.

But put into its simplest terms, the batteries in PHEVs are more often than not, just not big enough. You can't draw sufficient power from them at any given moment to stop the ICE kicking in and sending all your mistakenly good intentions to the ****ter. Non-Plug-In hybrids [SCH] or Self-Charging Hybrids? Don't make me laugh Toyota and Subaru.
There are various reasons why manufacturers like to make PHEVs [and SCHs]. Here's two obvious ones: 1] They can put an existing, if modified ICE under the bonnet, and 2] They have sod-all quantity of batteries, because they've been caught with their pants down [I'm most definitely looking at Toyota again], so they put a tiny one inside the car with bugger all range and call it "green".

 

Britain's first Climate Change refugees? Sadly, it was always going to happen:
BBC News - The UK’s first climate change refugees?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51667018

Reflect on what the chap says at the end, perhaps?

 

Hallelulah! Well done, TSS and the Guardian. Heard yesterday that a PHEV owner was complaining that he charged overnight for a range of 20 miles! And they plug into a rapid charger for next to nothing. A tax incentive and a massive con.

 

That’s the tragedy of climate change hitting close to home ..... expect many more

 

In the paper, this morning, I saw two photos, taken by NASA over China.
One was taken in January and the other in February.
The first showed a massive cloud of pollution covering an enormous area.
The second one showed almost no pollution.
The improvement is believed to be due to factories not working and less traffic movement, as a result of the coronavirus.
Nature’s way of rebalancing the climate changes, caused by mankind?

 

Do you remember when they closed the airspace around New York City back after the 9/11 events? I believe it lasted for several days and the air quality improved tremendously. And that was just from aircraft of two decades ago. The ground traffic flowed as per normal. Of course, those pollutents and greenhouse gasses had to go somewhere. But a significant proportion broke down in reaction to sunlight. The CO2 and resultant H2O vapour took longer. The Earth can start to mend the situation for us if we give it a helping hand by just stopping being so dirty in our lifestyle.

 

I'm sure we've all heard of that story which broke about 18 months back where companies had bought fleets of PHEVs on the tax incentive, and on selling them on, new owners had found that on-board battery charge cables were stilled sealed in bags and the batteries had never seen a raipd charger either. They been used as normal FFVs from the day they were new to the days they were sold on. Bloody ridiculous.

 

A really inspiring video to show how the vision of one man and his willingness to share it has helped his people. By using the meagre resources available he educated people to improve their food crop balance by using simple farming techniques. So simple and so brilliant.

I love stuff like this and it's people like Yacouba who are the real heroes of our planet. Enjoy .....

 

My old employer was extremely keen to be seen to be “green” so encouraged (aided and abetted by HMRC) management to get PHEVs as company cars. So virtually all of them did ..... and I’d guarantee that not one was ever plugged in .....

 

What's even more ridiculous is that company vehicle running costs would have been lower if they had been used as PHEVs.

 

Exactly ......

 

I’m so glad, well done Chris, you are a hero:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51722251

 

Was going to write a long post. But just watch the video. What it explains is a scenario involving a rape of Greta Thunberg. The scenario is utterly disgusting. I would say more, but just watch the video:

And Greta's response was utterly fantastic.

 

Wanna read some good news about the environment?
The Australian bushfires are finally officially out. 240 days after the first one started.
That's two-thirds of a calendar year. Bloody hell.