On Sun, 14 Dec 2003 16:09:02 -0000, "Badger"
wrote:


Austin Shackles wrote in message
.. .


the only thing that yer hybrid should allow you to do is to run an
internal
combustion engine at higher efficiency by limiting the rev range etc.

It does a bit better than that because the small engine works harder,
hence its volumetric efficiency is better, it then makes up for the
lower power of the smaller engine by drawing on the power in the
battery for short periods. The energy in the battery is in effect free
as it is recharged when the vehicle is slowing down. This is fine with
stop start driving and hilly areas but I wonder how the algorithm
works on a long motorway trek?

at
which it operates. which is good, but it's always going to involve fossil
fuels somehow.

Yes, not to mention lugging all that battery around, on a long run a
good diesel must be better.

is LPG has proportionally more Hydrogen than Carbon, however, water vapour
is also a greenhouse gas.

But pouring more water vapour into the air does not increase warming,
in fact if it leads to more clouds the change in albedo could have the
opposite effect ;-)


And what do you think happens to all those removed catalytic convertors that
have all sorts of nasties in them when they get removed? Ah, good old
landfill!!!! LPG is currently the only commercially viable alternative fuel
that IS cleaner than petrol or disiesel, hybrids still burn petrol

In principle the hybrid could be built with a SI engine running at
much higher (12:1???) compression ratio and using lpg. Presumably no
cat needed.

More worrying is what the depreciation will be, with a large battery
needing replacing at what cost? Every how many cycles?

AJH

On Sun, 14 Dec 2003 03:46:21 +0000, Stewart
wrote:

Because there's more to the internet than hits alone, athol wrote:

Andrew wrote:
Again I doubt this, though I was surprised to see their working life
put at around 20 years. Of course the whole drive for these is highly
dependant of the renewable obligation payment levied on fossil fuels.

Thank you. You have reinforced my fundamental point. These devices
are _not_ environmentally positive. The energy required to make them
exceeds the "renewable" energy that they produce.

This sounds worryingly like axe-grinding to me.

Possibly, its certainly not the inference I would take, such is
usenet.

Snipped points of general agreement

I am actually quite optimistic that the design life of both pv and
wind will be longer. PV seems to be guaranteed to produce 80% rated
power for 20 years and in practice seems to be likely to more than
double this in temperate regions.

AJH

Because there's more to the internet than hits alone, Me wrote:


"Stewart Hargrave" wrote in message
.. .

It's OK; we're all saved! I've just found the answer (actually I
posted it here a couple of years ago, but it amuses me enough to post
again)

http://www.tilleyfoundation.com/vehicle.htm

Read the site, and you'll see that this is an electric car that has
enough surplus energy to run a generator that keeps it's own batteries
fully charged.

And it must work, because it seems people have been giving him tons of
money to develop the idea, as you can see here

http://www.mnglobal.com/energy/
http://www.greaterthings.com/News/Ti...aud/index.html
http://www.phact.org/e/tilley.htm

That is tragic!


I'm wondering if Carl B. Tilley looks anything like Wossisname
DeLorean. Maybe the irony of converting a fraudulently funded DeLorean
car to promote another fraud should have been a clue.

And such a waste of a nice car.


--

Stewart Hargrave

I run on beans - laser beans


For email, replace 'SpamOnlyToHere' with my name

Because there's more to the internet than hits alone, Steve Firth
wrote:

Stewart Hargrave wrote:

Absolutely not.

Sticking your head in hte sand will not fix anything.

The presumptions involved in this comment give the impression of you
not being interested in solutions so much as a side in an argument.

If you believe there is only one solution you will not
be able to accept that there may be others.

We have a limtied time to implement a solution.

How long do you give it? Until what?

We will always only have a limited, though indefinite, time. But the
extent to which we'll allow those limits to reach is entirely
arbitrary, and if history is anything to go by, constantly changing.

There can only ever be interim answers. Nuclear power or wind power or
any other power is only going to do for the moment. Most people seem
to think that there should be an answer that, once implimented,
resolves everything forever. Can't be the case. It will always be
something that we always have to reconsider. The best that we can hope
for is that some answers are enduringly less inappropriate than
others.

Can you propose any
non-fossil fuel alternative that will work?

Depends what you mean by 'work'. There are proposals being made all
the time. The fact that they all become subject to political
polarising results in people presuming there is only one 'solution'
and all the others must be found to be wrong. This is not only stupid,
but it seems to make your opening jibe rather ironic.

Part of the problem is that we all want 'The Government' to do the
difficult stuff (which we will then complain bitterly about, and not
bother voting). We don't want to have to consider the changes we could
individually make, and grizzle like mad when they are imposed upon us.

The job of the governmant is, of course, to not please all the people
all the time, but any government is going to include a whole range of
solutions to appear inclusive to a whole range of people. So we end up
with a camel that suits nobody but included everybody in its design.
Politically it's difficult for it to be otherwise.

In the end, any solutions that will 'work' are going to be the ones we
find most culturally acceptable. This probably means the ones that we
think will cost us least and involve fewest challenges to our daily
lives, but are preferably the ones we think may kill us most slowly.

That suits those with an aligned interest very well.

The major block of "aligned interests" are the so-called greens. I
listened this week to "The Moral Maze" on R4 where it was obvious that
the one pushing an ecologically unsound and unsustainable "solution" was
the so-called green pushing unworkable, polluting solar power.

Didn't hear it. I find the programme unbearable - people arguing and
becoming entrenched rather than learning about other people's values.
Bit like the H of P. In fact a bit like much of usenet, too, come to
think of it.

By 'aligned interest' I meant to imply those with something to gain.
There are undoubtedly so-called greens making tons of money out of
so-called green stuff that just makes the situation worse. Pound notes
used to be green. But I doubt they are more of a 'major block' than,
for example, the pro-nuclear lobby which inevitably has far more money
invested in it.

That so-called green person may have been ignorant rather than
scheming. But we can all be guilty of that charge - worse in fact; we
so seldom realise how ignorant we are *as* we accuse others of it
(look, I'm including me in this sweaping statement, OK?). So much of
our information necessarily comes from pre-polarised sources.

What about changing our consumption habits?

You change yours.

Aww; it stings, it stings.

But at the same time neatly demonstrates how entrenched polarisation
creates 'sides' rather than solutions.


--

Stewart Hargrave

I run on beans - laser beans


For email, replace 'SpamOnlyToHere' with my name

On or around Sun, 14 Dec 2003 19:51:53 +0000,
(Steve Firth) enlightened us thusly:

We have a limtied time to implement a solution. Can you propose any
non-fossil fuel alternative that will work?

the most likely bet is plant-derived alcohol or oil. But it'd need a LOT of
plants, and that could lead to a conflict for growing-space with food crops.

That suits those with an aligned interest very well.

The major block of "aligned interests" are the so-called greens.

There is, of course, the block of people who have countless billions
invested in the existing technology...

What about changing our consumption habits?

You change yours.

Eventually I think we all will have to.

Mind, when I was young (1970s), people were confidently predicting that the
oil was going to run out in about 2020. don't hear that figure any more, so
I assume they've found some more since then.

--
Austin Shackles. www.ddol-las.fsnet.co.uk my opinions are just that
"If you cannot mould yourself as you would wish, how can you expect
other people to be entirely to your liking?"
Thomas À Kempis (1380 - 1471) Imitation of Christ, I.xvi.

On or around Sun, 14 Dec 2003 19:54:07 +0000, Andrew Heggie
enlightened us thusly:


But pouring more water vapour into the air does not increase warming,
in fact if it leads to more clouds the change in albedo could have the
opposite effect ;-)


that's an unknown. water vapour is a greenhouse gas, and liberating the
carbon and hydrogen from fossil fuels adds to the current levels of CO2 and
H2O in the atmosphere.

cloud cover at night means no frost in the morning...

and although visible light is reflected more from clouds, not all the energy
arrives in the visible spectrum.

--
Austin Shackles. www.ddol-las.fsnet.co.uk my opinions are just that
"If you cannot mould yourself as you would wish, how can you expect
other people to be entirely to your liking?"
Thomas À Kempis (1380 - 1471) Imitation of Christ, I.xvi.

Because there's more to the internet than hits alone, Steve Firth
wrote:


Your inability to face facts noted.

Yadda, yadda, yadda.

And you couldn't provide any solution, just rhetoric.

No, still no proposed solution. Unless you intend to provide electricity
from hot air.

Hit air of which you an infinite supply it seems.

Your hollow rhetoric shows that you only have cat-calling from the
sidelines as an option.

What cat-calling?? Actually I went to some lengths not to do the
cat-calling bit. My comments were intended to be dispassionate
observations. And no need to be surprised by hot-air on usenet -
that's what it's for.

And why do you presume it is for me to comer up with alternative
answers? I'm just a spectator asking questions. We've already got far
too many 'experts' - the more I listen to people who reckon to have
The Answer, the deeper become my suspicions. I haven't even got as far
as defining what The Probem is yet. By all means damn me for that, but
it seems to me to be the exact opposite of head-burying. Your original
comment of "the only answer" does not fill me with optimism, because
it seems we're gonna need plenty more than one.


Like most of those who advocate changes in consumption habits, it seems
you mean everyone else except you. The day that one of you shows a
change in *your* consumption habits is the day I'll take you seriously.

This seems rather a stupid thing to say on an LPG forum.



--

Stewart Hargrave

I run on beans - laser beans


For email, replace 'SpamOnlyToHere' with my name

On Mon, 15 Dec 2003 07:51:17 +0000, Austin Shackles
wrote:

Mind, when I was young (1970s), people were confidently predicting that the
oil was going to run out in about 2020. don't hear that figure any more, so
I assume they've found some more since then.

I was doing my A-levels in the, er, mid-80s. As a summer project I
chose a project on oil reserves, and confidently came to the
conclusion that known reserves would last to about 1998 at the
consumption rates of the time.

I reckon your assumption is OK.

--
QrizB

I sound like I know what I'm talking about, but don't
be fooled.

"Andrew Heggie" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 14 Dec 2003 16:09:02 -0000, "Badger"
wrote:


Austin Shackles wrote in message
.. .


the only thing that yer hybrid should allow you to do is to run an
internal
combustion engine at higher efficiency by limiting the rev range etc.

It does a bit better than that because the small engine works harder,
hence its volumetric efficiency is better, it then makes up for the
lower power of the smaller engine by drawing on the power in the
battery for short periods. The energy in the battery is in effect free
as it is recharged when the vehicle is slowing down. This is fine with
stop start driving and hilly areas but I wonder how the algorithm
works on a long motorway trek?

There is more too it than that....

The engines are different, particularly in the Toyota systems.

What most people don't realise is that manufacturers heavily tune their
engines to deliver punchy performance, at the expense of fuel economy, but
the Toyota engine's output is pretty limited (76ps) for a 1.5 - but it
doesn't need bags of power. The Toyota engine doesn't have a conventional
crankshaft either, in its set-up so that the power strokes have more travel
than the intake and exhaust strokes.

Also, different materials have been used, I believe the toyota engine has a
lower red-line, and the Honda engine has a special low-friction design.

Both cars have very low drag coefficients too.

at
which it operates. which is good, but it's always going to involve
fossil
fuels somehow.

Yes, not to mention lugging all that battery around, on a long run a
good diesel must be better.

is LPG has proportionally more Hydrogen than Carbon, however, water
vapour
is also a greenhouse gas.

But pouring more water vapour into the air does not increase warming,
in fact if it leads to more clouds the change in albedo could have the
opposite effect ;-)

I have tried to explain to Austin before. The point about water vapour is
that it is a strong greenhouse gas, most of it is formed by evaporations of
the oceans, and that increases with CO2 levels.

The greenhouse effect purely due to CO2 is minimal, its influence on water
vapour levels is key.

Of course the effect on the albedo is the main cause for contention, as
cloud simulations are quite difficult to do.

But human activities have almost no impact on water vapour levels (except
through CO2)


And what do you think happens to all those removed catalytic convertors
that
have all sorts of nasties in them when they get removed? Ah, good old
landfill!!!! LPG is currently the only commercially viable alternative
fuel
that IS cleaner than petrol or disiesel, hybrids still burn petrol

In principle the hybrid could be built with a SI engine running at
much higher (12:1???) compression ratio and using lpg. Presumably no
cat needed.

More worrying is what the depreciation will be, with a large battery
needing replacing at what cost? Every how many cycles?

Toyota ones are guarenteed for 8 years/100,000 miles, Honda for
8years/80,000 miles. They cost £1000 (Toyota) and £2000(Honda).

AJH

"QrizB" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 15 Dec 2003 07:51:17 +0000, Austin Shackles
wrote:

Mind, when I was young (1970s), people were confidently predicting that
the
oil was going to run out in about 2020. don't hear that figure any more,
so
I assume they've found some more since then.

I was doing my A-levels in the, er, mid-80s. As a summer project I
chose a project on oil reserves, and confidently came to the
conclusion that known reserves would last to about 1998 at the
consumption rates of the time.

I reckon your assumption is OK.

But you were right. There is always about a 10 year rolling window of oil
reserves. There is currently enough known oil to last until something like
2013. But it's the stuff we don't know about, which we will find in the
next ten years, which will get us to 2023, and so on. It won't go on
forever, but neither will it run out in the foreseeable.

There is also a continuous technology development which also allows us to
get better yield from older fields which were previously uneconomical.

David (ex-geologist, married to a geophysicist)