Air quality

Atlas wrote:They knew they were cheating. They knew that 'controlled' testing wasn't the 'normal' traffic volumes of emissions. Again - disingenuous and although not actually criminal virtually so. You can wrap it up in engineering speak as much as you want they 'knew' what they were doing.

The test is standardized and not designed by the motor companies but by the authorities. It is not the fault of the motor manufacturer who must design his product to ensure compliance with the test imposed on him.

cyfrifia wrote:
The idea that an emmisions test to represent real driving conditions would "rag each and every car to within one inch of it's life" makes no sense.

Emissions are maximized by driving a car at peak power (acceleration) and by sitting for hours at tick-over in traffic calming schemes designed to make the driver give up and use the bus. Neither of these eventualities can be catered for in a standardised emissions test.

The sort of destructive testing you describe is equivalent to crash testing of cars. Yes, car manufacturers should test all systems for extreme circumstances, but that's no reason or excuse for not running an emissions test for ordinary driving.

An emissions test for ordinary driving is the most relevant. To avoid that simple truth with implausible explanations is unconvincing. Car manufacturers who tried to were taken to court and ended up in a mess.

If the 'authorities' were responsible for setting the wrong parameters for emmisions tests, the car manufacturers should have pointed that out rather than conniving with them.

Again yet another disingenuous platitude to conjure with. No government wants you to 'live long', it costs too much in health and pensions. But they do need your vote. The answer is a simple one 'death proxies'. To prosper is to be a good citizen for in that the State does well - during and after - 'death duties'. And so if we can't kill you now we will get around to it eventually. Hey ho -

http://www.westbriton.co.uk/images/localworld/ugc-images/276391/binaries/Solds.jpg
Crazy smog man
http://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/smog-free-tower-diamonds/

cyfrifia wrote:The sort of destructive testing you describe is equivalent to crash testing of cars. Yes, car manufacturers should test all systems for extreme circumstances, but that's no reason or excuse for not running an emissions test for ordinary driving.

An emissions test for ordinary driving is the most relevant. To avoid that simple truth with implausible explanations is unconvincing. Car manufacturers who tried to were taken to court and ended up in a mess.

If the 'authorities' were responsible for setting the wrong parameters for emmisions tests, the car manufacturers should have pointed that out rather than conniving with them.

So how would you define 'NORMAL' driving? How would the manufacturers define it? How would the regulating authorities define it?

What we have with the current tests is an operations cycle which goes some way to presenting a standardization of average driving. But every car has to be capable of completing the cycle, and cars are driven according to their performance not standard driving.

Everybody knows that vehicles never meet the standard test consumption figures (and by extension emissions figures, since the two are inexorably linked). These figures represent the best comparison data we have and should be used in this context.

it is interesting to note that no-one has complained particularly loudly (apart from the authorities) that real-world data and standard test data differ, and on the whole people are happier with a standard test where comparisons can actually be made, than with stand alone tests which allow no comparison.

I see what you mean, it is difficult to define 'normal' driving.

The only way I can imagine would be to put a normal driver of normal height, weight and build, who is in a normal mood, into the vehicle to be calibrated, in a normal state of repair and disrepair, normally loaded in a normal way with normal shopping, with normal tyres at normal pressures, and instruct them to drive it normally, on a normal road, with normal road surface, normal camber, normal potholes and normal gradients, plus normal road hazards, e.g. normal pedestrians trying to cross the road, at a normal time of day, on a normal day in normal weather for a normal amount of time. Of course you would have to do it all again from scratch if anything that wasn't normal was to happen.

Aaaaarghhh! What have you done to my mind with your deeply troubling and pithy questions! You have forced me to realise that normality cannot possibly exist, it is too elusive, the world is chaos. Doing something like manufacturing a car would be impossible. The world seemed entirely normal before I came on here, now it will never be the same again.

Suddenly it seems there is a supermassive black hole at the centre of our galaxy! How can that possibly be normal?

Self-drive regulated vehicles. You may remember when heavy goods vehicles were regulated. You take it out of the hands of the human. Simple really. But may take 50 years.

Take it out of the hands of the human - those of us who have done a lot of driving might agree that, to do it to an acceptable level of safety takes up a lot of attention, it can add up to many hours of mentally and physically focusing on the job.

Multipy that by all the drivers on the roads at any one time, and it adds up to a huge amount of human effort every day, which is apparently unavoidable.

The amount of time and the number of people driving increases every day, driving becomes ever less enjoyable as motorways spread their tentacles across the land.

It certainly keeps the population busy, but it's a strange and somewhat alienating destiny for humanity, to spend so much of it's lives looking at the world through a windscreen.

Atlas wrote:Self-drive regulated vehicles. You may remember when heavy goods vehicles were regulated. You take it out of the hands of the human. Simple really. But may take 50 years.

ah you mean tachographs - the spy in the cab.

No johnb. I was more specifically referring to gas pedal regulators in the days when heavy goods vehicles were regulated to 50 mph max. I had a wagon in the 1950's thus regulated.

We already have governed (limited) vehicles, and the technology to limit speed dynamically using GPS fencing. what it does not do is control acceleration.

We could actually reduce the acceleration of vehicles using electronic engine management (what VW and others did to ensure cars stayed within the test parameters for emissions) but I suspect such meddling would prove unpopular with the very drivers who are complaining about emissions.

I don't doubt its unpopularity should it become the norm. Stop the boy racer in his tracks. But if 'everyone' had to do it it would soon become accepted. Another 'must' would be breathalyser start-up procedures. It will all come eventually as governments attempt to control over-population - regardless of present clamouring regarding immigration. It's the way it has to go for the survival of the species.

The survival of our species is generally thought to be something we all want, and are 'programmed' by survival instinct to work for. Humans only need a lifespan of about 40 years to reproduce and bring up the next generation.

Far less than that if you look around India and some other much poorer places. Street boys from 7 years old have survived. The young have amazing capacities for 'getting through'.

Ah yes, India, millions died there last year from air pollution.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/11/health/india-air-pollution-health.html?_r=0

In accord with that, everyone over 25 years old is pretty much 'surplus population' in reproductive, survival of the species terms. Maybe life isn't just about producing children and leaving them to their own devices, grandparents are quite useful too.

Even for the elderly, staying alive is an attractive prospect. The medics tell us that exposure to polluted air does irreversible damage to toddlers lungs. Clean air is important for everyone of all ages. The air in places like Manchester is pretty toxic, as more people take notice, and of the deadly levels of pollution in places abroad, it will become more of a 'hot' issue.

If government is going to come under pressure to do something about it, the first thing is stop 'accidental' fires at recycling plants of various kinds, they are almost entirely preventable.

cyfrifia wrote:Ah yes, India, millions died there last year from air pollution.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/11/health/india-air-pollution-health.html?_r=0

More properly, "Millions died there and air pollution was a contributory factor".

Nobody dies from air pollution, they die from the asthma, emphysema and cancers to which it has contributed.

Naughty johnb - splitting hairs. You will have to smack his hands cyfrifia. But he is right of course.

And so we return to whence we began and recycling plants and elf and safety and sod you jack I'm alright. Cruel world is it not.

We could argue about statistics until we go blue in the face, if we argued in New Delhi.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Delhi-a-wake-up-call-for-world-on-air-pollution-Unicef/articleshow/55384187.cms
After we went blue in the face, we might then go a sort of pale greenish-grey.

As and when the world governments wake up to the world's pollution problems and begin to collectively take action we shall no doubt conquer (by technology) that which is the world's biggest threat to our simple existence. Sounder minds would have already applied themselves to the problem and indeed some have. The problem is that not enough 'have'.
Carbon capture will become vital as at the same time the change over to more cleaner fuels are expanded across continents. Meanwhile the new industrialising nations will continue to churn out crap across the skies as they strive to become 'modern'. The race is on - and has been for over a decade. Who will succeed. Who will fail. Who will survive. All these questions are up for grabs as somewhere on the planet others strive to find new worlds in order to prolong the universes agony of the 'parasitic species' known an 'Man'. Eh lass I could write yet another book -

U.N.I.C.E.F Executive Director Anthony Lake says _

“Air pollution is a major contributing factor in the deaths of around 600,000 children under five every year ”

“Pollutants don’t only harm children’s developing lungs – they can actually cross the blood-brain barrier and permanently damage their developing brains – and, thus, their futures.”

https://www.unicef.org/childsurvival/media_92979.html

Waiting for world governments to wake up could be too slow. Waiting for people to wake up, similar. It's not very inspiring that so many think setting the moors on fire in the summer is a fine tradition. It isn't.

Traditions die hard. Especially when the life expectancy was not much over 55 and you must remember this was long before the Industrial Revolution. Swaling, as it was called, was encouraged by moorland farmers in my day in order to promote good fresh grass for the next years season for without good grazing the sheep wouldn't survive the coming winters which in those days were criminal. Remember when snow-drifts ten feet high was normal!!! As the world changes we have to learn to change with it - as said before - the race is on - - - - .

Traditions do die hard, fire is deeply rooted in most cultures. Some things humans are attracted to appear to have evolutionary reasons, our liking for sugar is thought to come from a time when fruit sugars were only really available in ripe fruit, similarly our colour vision is thought to have developed the way it is to judge the ripening of fruit, hence our love of colour. Similar with fat, our ancestors needed animal fat to survive the ice ages. Those examples may be arguable, but the general principle of deep rooted reasons from many centuries ago that drive our cultural insticts seems to be right.

Teamwork and technology from hunting, and the use of fire. Humans have used fire to stampede animals, to cook, to make metals and weapons, clear forest for hunting and later for agriculture, eventually industry, the instict to think positively of fire is still strong.

The burning of peat moors was and still is used to, as you say, clear heather etc., to force and reveal new shoots of vegetation. Used for raising grouse, pheasants etc on shooting moors and for sheep etc.

This burning of moors is really a last resort 'slash and burn' method of agriculture, destroying the land for a small but valuable crop. Game birds shooting provides large incomes for landowners who can charge high rates for shooting rights. Poverty stricken farmers take the opportunity to graze sheep even if it does destroy the land.

Fire has been both freind and a foe to humanity, similarly our instincts can help us survive or, have the opposite effect. One of the most difficult aspects of human life is addiction in all it's forms, both to chemicals and behaviours. Strong urges and instincts sometimes drive us towards our own disability and destruction.

Human use of fire and chemistry in combination, our technologies generally, have over-run into atomic weapons and extremely deadly chemical and biological weapons, we have to know how and when to refrain from using such things.

The global picture now is of massive population and various pollutions, including air pollution, running out of control. Burning the moors does have roots in tradition, but in todays world it's just more destruction of fragile landscape and pollution of the atmosphere. There is too much of that already, without doing it on purpouse or 'accidentally'.

https://38.media.tumblr.com/b0eda6b5e0b7a13e5030174fa046b227/tumblr_mio8bd2m8L1r7xh3qo1_500.gif

And like I said before - humans need to survive makes them selfish of all others. You die if you want to, I'm for burning the forest. If your expecting to educate the starving I suggest you begin by feeding them actual food for the stomach instead of food for the brain. The reasons the Nazi hierarchy plumbed for starvation as the most profitable weapon was because a starving man doesn't look for ways of ridding himself of his persecutor because he is too busy looking for his next meal as he slowly wastes away and dies.
Be Green by all means but without being unselfishly human first you will inevitably fail. The race is on - and the Devil has the whip hand.

Hungry people don't benefit anything from moorland fires. These days, the huge moorland fires on the hills each summer are either 'accidental', or vandalism. They produce no food or income, just destruction and smoke. A fair bit of money and effort goes into trying to restore and preserve the moorland of the pennines, replanting, reseeding etc after those destructive fires.