dandelion patch
Energy saving
Shame on you New Scientist! Centuries of wretched publishing behaviour. Below, is the normal truncated intro into a long overdue report by New Scientist whom like most have been unearthly quiet with. It arrives at the question of exactly how much energy is required to male a car... then demands subscription before the reader is given the information. This tax on knowledge identifies the aspect of society that's like walking through wet clay in waterboots a size too big. The energy load in car manufacture far exceeds what the car will use in its lifetime on the road. From memory this is something like 2,5 times?? Anyway, in the absence of official figures I have tended not to argue the point in key moments in life across 20 years and governments and policy makers have delighted in some bizarre blinkered policy that must be topped by the car scrapage scheme. NS tells me... "SOMETIMES you want to make a decision that helps the planet. Maybe you’re selecting an electricity supplier, choosing whether to sign a petition against wind farms or wondering whether to install solar panels. The right option might seem obvious: who could argue with the green credentials of a solar panel, for instance? But such decisions are often harder than you think."
It continues...
"Often the problem comes down to hidden energy. Energy is most obvious when it is kinetic, producing a visible effect such as when you kick a ball or wrench open a door. But energy is also needed to make things, and is locked up, or “embodied”, in all sorts of manufactured matter, from a metal pipe to a slice of pizza.
Take buying a car – a big purchasing decision that could have a more significant impact on your carbon footprint than most. Say you’ve decided to swap your old petrol-powered banger for a new, fuel-efficient version. If your current car was manufactured a decade ago, it might typically pump out about 1.8 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, if you drive an average sort of distance of 12,000 kilometres. If you were to buy the most fuel-efficient model you can find on garage forecourts today, and drive a similar sort of distance, you’d emit about 1 tonne annually, according to company-declared emissions at least.".. it goes on...
“They might seem easy, but few green choices are as straightforward as they first appear”
That seems like a worthwhile saving, but crucially we’ve yet to consider the energy embodied in the car. It takes ...
Now I didnt need to read the first part to know exactly where the cliff hanger was going to be placed. This has to be pathetic. The problem is that even when w pay for that extra nugget of infomation, someone is determined to insist that it is not true. Evidence based policy appears to eat itself.. spends all opportunity and we end up with more chaos and no change!
Energy saving
Shame on you New Scientist! Centuries of wretched publishing behaviour. Below, is the normal truncated intro into a long overdue report by New Scientist whom like most have been unearthly quiet with. It arrives at the question of exactly how much energy is required to male a car... then demands subscription before the reader is given the information. This tax on knowledge identifies the aspect of society that's like walking through wet clay in waterboots a size too big. The energy load in car manufacture far exceeds what the car will use in its lifetime on the road. From memory this is something like 2,5 times?? Anyway, in the absence of official figures I have tended not to argue the point in key moments in life across 20 years and governments and policy makers have delighted in some bizarre blinkered policy that must be topped by the car scrapage scheme. NS tells me... "SOMETIMES you want to make a decision that helps the planet. Maybe you’re selecting an electricity supplier, choosing whether to sign a petition against wind farms or wondering whether to install solar panels. The right option might seem obvious: who could argue with the green credentials of a solar panel, for instance? But such decisions are often harder than you think."
It continues...
"Often the problem comes down to hidden energy. Energy is most obvious when it is kinetic, producing a visible effect such as when you kick a ball or wrench open a door. But energy is also needed to make things, and is locked up, or “embodied”, in all sorts of manufactured matter, from a metal pipe to a slice of pizza.
Take buying a car – a big purchasing decision that could have a more significant impact on your carbon footprint than most. Say you’ve decided to swap your old petrol-powered banger for a new, fuel-efficient version. If your current car was manufactured a decade ago, it might typically pump out about 1.8 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, if you drive an average sort of distance of 12,000 kilometres. If you were to buy the most fuel-efficient model you can find on garage forecourts today, and drive a similar sort of distance, you’d emit about 1 tonne annually, according to company-declared emissions at least.".. it goes on...
“They might seem easy, but few green choices are as straightforward as they first appear”
That seems like a worthwhile saving, but crucially we’ve yet to consider the energy embodied in the car. It takes ...
Now I didnt need to read the first part to know exactly where the cliff hanger was going to be placed. This has to be pathetic. The problem is that even when w pay for that extra nugget of infomation, someone is determined to insist that it is not true. Evidence based policy appears to eat itself.. spends all opportunity and we end up with more chaos and no change!