All diesel traction gone by 2040 ?

I take it you mean the same politicians the electorate repeatedly insists on putting in positions of influence and power ..... aside from that 30% who can never be bothered to get off their fat ar**s to vote in the first place?

In many constituencies, the 2nd largest recorded number you'll see represents non-voters. For local elections, it's worse ... much worse. Council by-elections are frequently decided by who got a majority of a couple of hundered votes. Does it matter? Well, considering many politicians start their careers in local councils and it's often easier to get re-elected once they've got a toe in the door ..... yes!

Right ..... that's got that off my chest. Back to diesels smelling of deep-fried mars bars.... and thousands of hungry fatties following the scent of diesels to their local heritage line (nice thought that, @DismalChips !)

 

Land Rovers run perfectly well on straight cooking oil most of the year, especially if you bung in a small percentage of acetone. Even in winter, 85% cooking oil + 15% diesel works perfectly well (though, I grant you, it does smell!)

 

Or surfers thinking they are at Newquay.......................

 

Yes, but you don't half get some dirty looks as you drive down the fruit & veg aisle before turning left to head across to the cooking oil shelf to top up the 'tank.

...'tis a bit of a pain having to find the wider 'disabled' checkout to be able to fit through when you come to pay as well - and the fuss they make if you leave muddy tyre tracks past the delicatessen section enroute to the cosmetics counter to get the acetone based nail varnish remover <sigh>

 

I've just recommissioned a Tilley lamp that had sat in a cupboard for some decades. I wondered whether it could be run on diesel fuel, which might be more widely available (at present) than paraffin, but a little web browsing put me off that idea. What about the other way round, running a diesel engine on paraffin (if at some future date that becomes more readily available than diesel fuel)? Or what about the stuff they burn in jet engines?

 

You can run a 'Diesel' on Jet A1 - my brothers plane has a Wilksh Aerodiesel that runs on Jet A1. The military have looked into the single fuel battlefield with everything running on Kerosene(paraffin)

The main issues are that as it has a lower calorific value you have to adjust the fuel metering & because it lacks the lubricity of diesel you need an oil not fuel lubricated fuel pump

 

Why "inexorable"? What does the government intend to replace it with?

There's a very good reason why so many railway routes in Britain haven't been electrified; the cost of installation and upkeep of the OLE, the hefty supply cables from the power stations, and the network of lineside transformers. Basically, unless a line is very heavily used, the cost of electrification is unviable.

So, do the greenies intend to close down every line which isn't electrified? Bearing in mind that many of these routes cover quite long distances, how do they propose that people and goods are transported over them? Electric cars aren't even a viable proposition in big cities at the moment - as proven by the fact that they only sell because each one gets a massive tax-payer funded subsidy on its selling price. Take that away, and the sales of electric cars would fall through the floor. When it comes to the more rural areas of Britain, unless you confine yourself to local journeys, electric cars are totally impractical, due to limited range and even more limited places to charge them.

And when you start to consider the extra freight which would need to be shifted by if you close all those minor lines (minor or not; they still add up to a considerable total), does anyone in their right mind consider that an electric powered 18 ton four wheel HGV is even remotely possible? The current diesel-powered 4 wheelers have a tare of about 8 tons, so can carry about 10 tons of cargo. Anybody like to suggest how that proportion would change if the diesel engine, transmission and full tank of fuel was replaced by an electric motor and a big enough battery to deliver goods from Inverness throughout the Highlands of Scotland, or the rural parts of Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cumberland, Northumberland, Wales, Somerset, Devon and Cornwall? Or alternatively, if all the necessary heavy duty cabling and charging points were installed at regular intervals throughout such areas?

Bluntly, the green control freaks are living in cloud cuckoo land.

I'm not suggesting for one moment that diesel and petrol powered vehicles will never be replaced, in the same way that stage coaches were replaced by trains, sailing merchantmen by steamships, and hansom cabs by petrol-engined taxis. But look at the history of such changes. They didn't come about because a bunch of ill-informed numptys screamed protest, and waved banners - but because scientists and engineers came up with alternatives which were both practical and cost-effective.

The first steam locomotives which were built and which worked - after a fashion - were the steam tricycle of Nicholas-Joseph Cugnot (France, 1769), and Richard Trevithick's 'Puffing Devil' (Cornwall, 1801); both designs were abandoned by their originators. They might have been harbingers of the future, but there was still a very long way to go.

Karl Benz patented his first petrol engine in 1879, and he patented his first motor tricycle in 1886. By 1893, he'd sold about two dozen of them, and the only reason he could stay in business was because he also owned a successful company which produced industrial machinery. Even though these early Benz models worked, most people still regarded them as mechanical novelties for rich people with money to spare, rather than practical means of transport - and that is hardly surprising. The first models had no gearboxes, so were unable to climb hills, and it was only when Benz's wife Bertha undertook a long trip that she came up with the idea of fitting the (wooden) brake blocks with leather linings to improve their grip.

And I think it's worth bearing in mind that the history of engineering advance is littered with blind alleys - and with examples of people whose imagination and inventiveness outran the technology which was available at the time.

Some pioneers tried to develop aircraft powered by steam engines, both steam and electric cars were tried in the early 20th century - and not many people know that the first semiconductors (selenium rectifiers) were in regular use in Victorian times, before they were overtaken by mercury-filled rectifiers, and then rectifier valves.

Yes, semiconductors made a comeback in the late 1940s, but only when the semi-conducting properties of germanium were discovered. And electric power is still commonly used in milk floats - but not in long distance delivery trucks, nor in JCBs!

A real eye-opener was a conversation I had with a bloke who (ironically) worked at the Centre for Alternative Technology at Machynlleth, in Wales. He said he never used the term 'alternative technology', as it implied an 'either/or' situation, or - even worse - 'good' versus 'bad'! The term he invariably used was appropriate technology - and he explained why, like this.

"Horses are used for extracting felled timber in Kielder Forest. If you use machinery on those steep slopes, the machines leave ruts, and that combined with the heavy rainfall in that area would give horrendous problems of soil erosion. The horses leave hoofprints, not ruts; they only need a very narrow space to work in, so you can fell timber selectively, helping the production of prime timber, yet always leaving a network of tree roots to hold the topsoil in place. But, if you went down with a heart attack, would you want to have to wait for a horse-drawn ambulance? Would you, hell! And that's what engineering is all about - selecting and providing the right tool, for that particular job, in those specific circumstances."

Any word, as yet, from JCB about their new range of electric back-hoe diggers? Or from Caterpillar, about their electric range of bulldozers? Or how about from John Deere, re. their production of electric farm tractors? No - and I don't expect to, either; not in the foreseeable future . . .

MTA - before anyone suggests that the government could successfully ban all diesel on road and rail, yet still allow diesel to be used by construction machinery, farm machinery, and - let's not forget this one - standby generators in hospitals - do you think the oil industry would still be willing to invest in the massive costs of building and running refineries to produce such (relatively) piddling quantities of diesel?

 

Bertha and her sons did the first TWOC taking a car away for a two day jaunt that basically proved its viability.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertha_Benz

So - the first drive of any distance was done by - a woman!

Its important to remember though that the petrol engined car was never a given and it could equally easily have been electric

 

No, it couldn't - for exactly the same reasons that electric cars still haven't taken over from petrol and diesel cars now; limited range, and the problem of arranging a sufficient number of charging points. As I pointed out in my post, above, electric propulsion is the ideal choice for milk floats; short range journeys, always returning to a fixed base, quiet when delivering in the early hours of the morning, and once deliveries are finished for the day, staying put where it's easy to plug them into a dedicated charger. How can you possibly compare that to the routine use of an average car?

Even if petrol and diesel engines had never been invented, the electric cars of the early 20th century would never have had more than a small segment of the market - coal-fired steam cars and lorries would have been far more practical, as both coal and water were readily available throughout the country by then, and such designs as the Stanley steam car could have powered their flash boilers with paraffin, which was also widely available.

 

and you are sleepwalking towards the edge of a global climate change disaster. as well as running out oil in the very near future.
now change of this level does not happen overnight but if we do not start down the path of weaning our self off this very precious and rare substance soon we will more than a little b*ggered
I do find it strange that people assume, that just because the technology does not exist/is in its infancy today that it will not exist/become viable tomorrow.
as I have said before we did not get from the Rocket to a 9f in one jump but without those first rocket steps we would have not got to the 9f.
and the same applies to battery technology its not good enough to power trucks yet but I will not be betting against the tech being developed in the near future.
And as for no battery powered tractors or JCB's you can bet that there R&D depts are working on just that.

Colin

 

The trouble with you is that you've been suckered in by the ludicrous claim that "97% of ALL climate scientists agree on this!"

For starters, science doesn't give a damn about consensus; if the evidence backs up the theory of ONE researcher, then ALL the rest are wrong.

For another, I suggest you read the background to the "97%" claim. First, the people doing the survey only sent that survey to the people whose names they found, and ONLY if the surveyors decided that the people in question were 'climate scientists'. They did NOT, however, publish the methodology they used to pick these people, let alone did they justify it. The result is that their choice was, at best, haphazard, if not entirely random. There is no list detailing every climate scientist in the world, so they have NO idea what proportion of climate scientists they contacted.

And it gets worse. 84% of those they sent the questionnaire to did not even bother to reply. So it was, in fact, only 97% of 16% of those surveyed who agreed with them - which is 15.5% of a completely unknown proportion of the total number of climate scientists in the world. I am utterly underwhelmed.

You also need to explain some other gaping holes in this crackpot theory. If the evidence is so solid, why did e-mails and programming notes from the Hadley Climate Research Unit confirm that the staff there had deliberately fabricated evidence to support their theory? Why did they never publish the methodology they used to analyse their raw data, and why did they commit the cardinal sin of destroying that raw data, making it impossible for anyone to check their work? (bear in mind, NONE of the people concerned have EVER denied the validity of those leaked documents)

Next, explain why it is that the only accurate and complete coverage we have of world temperatures - the weather satellites - show NO rise in global temperatures in the last 20 years? And this despite the fact that, since about 1840, levels of atmospheric CO2 have been increasing in a close approximation of an exponential curve - and still are? (as India and China between them are opening three coal-fired power stations per week, that's hardly surprising; even if we were to reduce our CO2 emissions to zero, the increase from India and China would wipe out that reduction in less than a year)

Finally, especially in view of what I've said above about the rise in atmospheric CO2 since 1840, can you explain the data provided by the longest-running temperature record in the world - the Central England Temperature Record, which has been compiled on a daily basis since 1659? That record shows a steady upward drift in temperature of approx. 0.26 degrees C per century - a trend which shows NO significant change since we buried Oliver Cromwell.

If you want me to accept that Central England enjoys some magical micro-climate which keeps it steady even whilst the thermometers in the rest of the world are showing relentless rises, I'll want some hard evidence.

We need to "wean ourselves off this precious and rare substance"? Precious and rare? Pardon me whilst I have hysterics! I grant you that some oilfields are running low, but more are being found all the time - and you don't seem to have heard of fracked gas, or the Bowland Basin. Or have you also been conned by the scare stories about tap water that you can set on fire, earthquakes, and contaminated water courses?

Fracking started in Germany in 1956, and is now running on about 250 sites. According to the German government's environmental officers, there have been NO earthquakes (or even tremors), NO cases of combustible tapwater, and NO poisoned water courses. Fracking has been going on at Wytch Farm, in the Isle of Purbeck, since 1959 - with the same total lack of disasters. There is masses of evidence to show that methane was present in water in places like Pennsylvania long before the first oil well was sunk, and about a century before fracking was invented. In fact, testing water for methane content was a method used by early oil prospectors in finding sites to drill. And there is enough frackable gas in the Bowland Field alone to keep us going for centuries (and other deposits have already been found in other parts of England).

By the by; did you know that the story we were told about Drax being run on "woodchips made only from waste wood" is yet another lie? Environmentalists in America have filmed the logging operation, and followed the trucks all the way back to the wood-chipping plant. Far from being made from waste wood, those chips are made from mature prime timber - and the trees which provide them are being felled at rate far faster than they can regrow.

If you want to place a bet on that, you go right ahead. My money is on the alternative; that they won't waste a brass farthing on such a project unless and until the battery makers can provide a battery with the combination of low weight and high energy density that their plant and machinery would need, and also make both the battery and its charger a practical and financially viable proposition to the end user. I suggest you check out what the likely life span is of such batteries if they are in hard and daily use - as distinct from just a few hours of light work per day. It is NOT good.

 

Are those the same climate scientists who proclaimed that our children would never again see snow in this country ?

As a former climate scientist, I can tell you that the prediction models produce thousands of significantly different outcomes. Those models have a number of missing components such as the response of vegetation to increased levels of CO2. Ask yourself why food producers pump CO2 into greenhouses if you don't believe this is an important consideration. The outcomes from the models that are selected all tend to point one way and the outcomes that disagree are quietly forgotten. There are very few research grants handed out to scientists who say that nothing much will happen.

Go figure.

 

How much does it cost compared to a diesel equivalent? And how does its performance compare with a diesel equivalent? How many have they sold?

 

Yep - the very same!

And it's a matter of historical record that rising temperatures and rising levels of atmospheric CO2 make both plant and animal life flourish. The warmer weather lengthens the growing season for plants, the extra CO2 helps their growth, and all animal life (including human!) benefits, because there is more food, and they need to burn fewer calories to maintain body temperature.

Read up on the Medieval Warm Period (a LOT warmer than anything we've seen in modern times), when humanity flourished - and then read up on what happened when the Little Ice Age hit; failed crops, mass famine, bitterly cold and long winters; human and animal populations were decimated.

 

I can see why some other (non railway) forums I belong to have banned any discussion or mention of climate change due to the amount of heat it generates

 

But surprisingly little light!

 

Ha ha very funny, very droll.

 

If you were interested you'd surely know they were cleared of such allegations by a number of separate investigations, including one by the House of Commons' Science and Technology Committee. Their conduct left a lot to be desired for sure, but the science stood up to scrutiny.

"The House of Commons' Science and Technology Committee today said they'd seen no evidence to support charges that the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit or its director, Phil Jones, had tampered with data or perverted the peer review process to exaggerate the threat of global warming - two of the most serious criticisms levied against the climatologist and his colleagues"
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http://www.deccanherald.com/content/61233/uk-climategate-inquiry-largely-clears.html

"Sceptics claimed the e-mails undermined the integrity of the CRU, which was later cleared of any wrong-doing. The EPA said critics "routinely misunderstood the scientific issues". The agency, which is part of the US government, added in a report that those who attempted to interpret the e-mails came to "faulty scientific conclusions" and "resorted to hyperbole."

They also "impugned the ethics of climate scientists and characterised actions as falsifications and manipulation with no basis for support," the EPA continued. "Petitioners often cherry-pick language that creates the suggestion or appearance of impropriety, without looking deeper into the issues."​

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-10899538

No doubt that won't satisfy people believing in some grand global conspiracy of evil scientists, but nothing ever will.

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