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Climate Change Debate

HAzelGroveWolf said:
The natural El Nino is the likely culprit, please wait for the following La Nina before getting in a sweat.
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By itself. But in context, with records being set and broken each year, El Nino is not a satisfactory explanation.
 
HAzelGroveWolf said:
So you subscribe to some 'ideal' global temperature. What is that and what is the ideal set of conditions?
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What I'm saying is that these records are broken almost every year, whether El Nino is a present or not. You should know why that doesn't work.
 
On electric cars: my company authors and/or translates technical documentation for pretty much every major automotive company in the world (they're all listed on our website so no secret - http://www.star-uk.co.uk/about/clients.html).
In that capacity, we get to see a lot of what is in the R&D pipeline long before anything comes to market, and I can tell that pretty much every one of the mass producers is working on electric car technology in one form or another, in a big way.
Regardless of what some may think about "viability", that bit of the future is already here. No doubt they all have their own reasons other than environmental concerns for going in that direction but I suspect it's mainly a desire not to be the modern equivalent of the last mass producer of carts for horses.

And it will be driven by consumer demand. The more people that hear my brother saves over £300 a month driving his Mitsubishi Outlander hybrid, the more people will want to go down that route. Demand (along with legislation) will drive innovation, which will force viability.
 
One of the directors at my work has got one of those Outlanders, just seems a bit of a tax dodge rather than a practical solution to me.
 
MARKakaJIM said:
One of the directors at my work has got one of those Outlanders, just seems a bit of a tax dodge rather than a practical solution to me.
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Well my brother's a sales guy who does a scary amount of miles, (as well as abandoning his family to play an awful lot of golf, the bastard) and he says it's easily the equal in terms of performance of his previous car, a Volvo XC60. It costs pennies to recharge overnight at his house and, yes, saves a *lot* on tax and insurance. It's not really a "tax dodge", just taking advantage of what's available.
 
So Long Architect said:
Well my brother's a sales guy who does a scary amount of miles, (as well as abandoning his family to play an awful lot of golf, the bastard) and he says it's easily the equal in terms of performance of his previous car, a Volvo XC60. It costs pennies to recharge overnight at his house and, yes, saves a *lot* on tax and insurance. It's not really a "tax dodge", just taking advantage of what's available.
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Obviously it makes a lot of financial sense given the tax breaks afforded to hybrids but in terms of a practical alternation to combustion power I don't see having something like a 30 mile range of pure electric power, which can't be restored until you're next at a charging station, really adds all that much. You could save yourself a lot of money purely through the tax breaks without ever even charging the batteries and using the hybrid functionality, in effect you'd save money just by carrying a load of batteries round in your car for no real purpose.
 
I'd really like a hybrid or electric car.

Currently though they are too expensive. I don't have a garage or driveway where I could plug it in overnight either. Plus the range per charge isn't good enough yet.
 
MARKakaJIM said:
Obviously it makes a lot of financial sense given the tax breaks afforded to hybrids but in terms of a practical alternation to combustion power I don't see having something like a 30 mile range of pure electric power, which can't be restored until you're next at a charging station, really adds all that much. You could save yourself a lot of money purely through the tax breaks without ever even charging the batteries and using the hybrid functionality, in effect you'd save money just by carrying a load of batteries round in your car for no real purpose.
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I'm not a salesman for the things, just passing on my bro's experience. Lot of miles/savings on tax/insurance/fuel costs/no appreciable loss of automotive performance = win for him. I have no particular problem with you using it as describe above if that floats your boat.
 
MARKakaJIM said:
Obviously it makes a lot of financial sense given the tax breaks afforded to hybrids but in terms of a practical alternation to combustion power I don't see having something like a 30 mile range of pure electric power, which can't be restored until you're next at a charging station, really adds all that much. You could save yourself a lot of money purely through the tax breaks without ever even charging the batteries and using the hybrid functionality, in effect you'd save money just by carrying a load of batteries round in your car for no real purpose.
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Doesn't the engine charge the battery whilst your driving?
 
machin05 said:
Doesn't the engine charge the battery whilst your driving?
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Not on the Outlander, it's a 'plug-in hybrid'. That's why I described is a being a bit of a tax break as much as anything else, they've sort of half way housed it with the technology, enough to get the tax breaks but doesn't give the full benefit of the hybrid system, though admittedly that probably helps keep the price down.
 
So Long Architect said:
And it will be driven by consumer demand. The more people that hear my brother saves over £300 a month driving his Mitsubishi Outlander hybrid, the more people will want to go down that route. Demand (along with legislation) will drive innovation, which will force viability.
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They said the same about diesel cars many years ago, now look at those costs ?
People have got to do this for noble reasons rather than costs as certainly those savings wont be there in decades to come.
 
Paul said:
They said the same about diesel cars many years ago, now look at those costs ?
People have got to do this for noble reasons rather than costs as certainly those savings wont be there in decades to come.
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My current diesel's cheaper to run than my old petrol.

Taxi drivers round here are starting to use hybrids, presumably for economic rather than noble reasons.
 
So Long Architect said:
My current diesel's cheaper to run than my old petrol.

Taxi drivers round here are starting to use hybrids, presumably for economic rather than noble reasons.
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The problem with some of the hybrids, they lose a lot of space in the boot, which isn't so good for a taxi that goes to the airport a lot. The one I'm thinking of is the Toyota that they use for a taxi.
 
So Long Architect said:
On electric cars: my company authors and/or translates technical documentation for pretty much every major automotive company in the world (they're all listed on our website so no secret - http://www.star-uk.co.uk/about/clients.html).
In that capacity, we get to see a lot of what is in the R&D pipeline long before anything comes to market, and I can tell that pretty much every one of the mass producers is working on electric car technology in one form or another, in a big way.
Regardless of what some may think about "viability", that bit of the future is already here. No doubt they all have their own reasons other than environmental concerns for going in that direction but I suspect it's mainly a desire not to be the modern equivalent of the last mass producer of carts for horses.

And it will be driven by consumer demand. The more people that hear my brother saves over £300 a month driving his Mitsubishi Outlander hybrid, the more people will want to go down that route. Demand (along with legislation) will drive innovation, which will force viability.
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I would suggest that such technologies will prove themselves when they have zero government hand outs for purchase and by virtue of popularity attract a tax.
 
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