"Diesel VED could rise by £800"

[300bhp/ton]

skyrover said:

As the graphs above show... the diesel is emitting approx 0.6 g/km NOx (real world) and the petrol is emitting approx 0.01 g/km NOx


So despite the diesel travelling further per gallon, it's not travelling 6000% further

Thanks. I didn't use Google translate, so wasn't really sure what some of the words meant.

That said, and I'm not disagreeing. But I don't really know what those graphs are showing. At what speed, or engine load are the emissions produced?

And how much g/km Nox really makes any odds? (I don't know, hence asking), but it might be that 0.6 g/km really is not worth mentioning anyhow.

[Mr2Mike]

xjay1337 said:

I think there's just as much emission control on petrols!
Petrols often have EGRs and other such devices...

And because the exhaust in inherently cleaner, the EGRs on petrol engines don't tend to suffer from getting clogged up with crud like they do on diesels.

[Limpet]

vtecyo said:

They believe that encouraging motorists to switch from diesel towards lower emission alternatives such as petrol, hybrid, or electric cars would lead to a dramatic improvement in air pollution levels in the UK."

Wasn't the same nonsense spouted 20 years ago but with the words petrol and diesel transposed?

These things always change once they make a big enough dent in tax revenues.

[Mr2Mike]

Treb0r said:

Thanks for the laugh! Those are cooling towers... It's not "pollution" unless you're also worried about fog (and "chemtrails" etc etc)!

Not quite sure why you are laughing, coal fired power stations plenty of NOx.

[mybrainhurts]

rb5er said:

mybrainhurts said:

How very hysterical

You find it funny sucking up all the diesel st when you walk through town centers?

I'm not seeing the funny side. Please elaborate.

Funny? No, I mean hysterical, as in you, expressing irrational fear.

Since the 1950s, buses and lorries and taxis and vans have been blowing out huge amounts of pollution, which is now very much diminished with the use of cleaner engines and I see no evidence of genocide emanating therefrom. I'm guessing you weren't around in the 1950s, but I remember great clouds of black smoke from buses, smog, and my home town hall that turned out not to have been built with black stone when they blasted it clean.

Now we have two problems, tax raisers looking for a reason to increase taxes and ecomentalists, sniffing around for another opportunity to exert control over the population.

And you've fallen for it.

Have a look at the claimed deaths caused by vehicle emissions, look at the actual numbers, currently somewhere between 4,000 and 80,000, then look into how those figures were assessed. You'll find some very shaky assumptions and methods.

It wasn't long ago that boffins were claiming more deaths from respiratory problems were caused by air quality inside the home than vehicle emissions.

[buggalugs]

Mr2Mike said:

Treb0r said:

Thanks for the laugh! Those are cooling towers... It's not "pollution" unless you're also worried about fog (and "chemtrails" etc etc)!

Not quite sure why you are laughing, coal fired power stations plenty of NOx.

That's some plant in Wales though, not Drax in the picture

In any case better the NOX is pumped out 300 ft up in the middle of nowhere than at ground level in your local town centre.

[mini me]

DonkeyApple said:

And others:

had assumed they would be raising existing rates also? So does VED never change for old cars?

No same as the changes applied to cars registered after.... errr April 2006 was it?

Changes to RFL bands are not generally retrospectively applied to older vehicles thankfully. Those of us with older cars should only suffer the usual increases due to inflation hence the point of my earlier post re cars like the new Mustang.

Its gotta sting a bit to be charged over 3x the road tax for the sake of picking your car up a week earlier.

[rb5er]

mybrainhurts said:

Funny? No, I mean hysterical, as in you, expressing irrational fear.

Since the 1950s, buses and lorries and taxis and vans have been blowing out huge amounts of pollution, which is now very much diminished with the use of cleaner engines and I see no evidence of genocide emanating therefrom. I'm guessing you weren't around in the 1950s, but I remember great clouds of black smoke from buses, smog, and my home town hall that turned out not to have been built with black stone when they blasted it clean.

Now we have two problems, tax raisers looking for a reason to increase taxes and ecomentalists, sniffing around for another opportunity to exert control over the population.

And you've fallen for it.

Have a look at the claimed deaths caused by vehicle emissions, look at the actual numbers, currently somewhere between 4,000 and 80,000, then look into how those figures were assessed. You'll find some very shaky assumptions and methods.

It wasn't long ago that boffins were claiming more deaths from respiratory problems were caused by air quality inside the home than vehicle emissions.

Diesel HGVs and buses have indeed improved massively as have cars. The problem is that now most cars bought are diesel and the sheer numbers of them is huge compared to the buses and HGVs. There are probably 100 diesel cars for every HGV if not more.

In the 50's yes there was smog due to such low tech and lots of coal-burning powerstations but in the 90's I could go into town and not smell diesel fumes at all. Now I only have to cross the road in a small village and I smell diesel.



In 10 or 20 years you may well see the huge rise in deaths attributed to diesel but it doesn't happen overnight just like asbestos didn't.

Theres no hysteria about it, diesels are very bad for health and the environment and should be limited to commercial useage as required. Indeed taxing should not be the answer but it seems the only way to make people think is to hit them in the pocket.

[skyrover]

300bhp/ton said:

Thanks. I didn't use Google translate, so wasn't really sure what some of the words meant.

That said, and I'm not disagreeing. But I don't really know what those graphs are showing. At what speed, or engine load are the emissions produced?

And how much g/km Nox really makes any odds? (I don't know, hence asking), but it might be that 0.6 g/km really is not worth mentioning anyhow.

It's still a much much higher output than the equivalent Petrol powered car. The you have to factor in how it will multiply exponentially as the ratio of diesel to petrol car's increased.

You can sit in one of two camps IMO.

1. The government had no clue what it was doing and simply focused on short term Co2 targets in order to comply with EU regulations.

2. The government knew exactly what it was doing, forecasting the massive increase in Nox and particulate emissions in order to generate the next cycle of tax increases.

[Mr2Mike]

buggalugs said:

That's some plant in Wales though, not Drax in the picture

In any case better the NOX is pumped out 300 ft up in the middle of nowhere than at ground level in your local town centre.

Pumping it out at 300 feet doesn't seem to have fixed the estimated 1,600 premature deaths a year and associated health costs.

The Aberthaw plant is particularly crap, but all coal fired power stations emit a NOx and other nasties. The concern over Chinese and Indian coal power expansion and the planned phasing out of coal power in the UK is not for nothing.

[300bhp/ton]

skyrover said:

It's still a much much higher output than the equivalent Petrol powered car.

But that still maybe have no relevance. Again, I'm not saying it doesn't, I'm saying I don't know.

But hypothesise

It might be that 50 would be a bad number and 5 still a good one, so 0.6 vs 0.01 isn't even worth distinguishing as different.

Absolutely not saying this is the case. But often people argue about two things being different, when the reality is, the difference means nothing in real terms.

skyrover said:

The you have to factor in how it will multiply exponentially as the ratio of diesel to petrol car's increased.

No idea on the ratio. Although I suspect nicer more refined diesels and the fact that a 2.0 TD would do 45-55mpg vs a 1.8 petrol that would do 25-35mpg and be slower, have likely played a bigger part of this, than anything emission based.

skyrover said:

You can sit in one of two camps IMO.

1. The government had no clue what it was doing and simply focused on short term Co2 targets in order to comply with EU regulations.

2. The government knew exactly what it was doing, forecasting the massive increase in Nox and particulate emissions in order to generate the next cycle of tax increases.

I don't sit in either camp.


I don't believe in "carbon footprints", as something like this:


Nullifies anything mankind can do anyhow.


And I don't believe that paying the government more money to still do something, will ever have any affect on the environment.

[AC43]

rb5er said:

Diesel HGVs and buses have indeed improved massively as have cars. The problem is that now most cars bought are diesel and the sheer numbers of them is huge compared to the buses and HGVs.

Totally agree

rb5er said:

In the 50's yes there was smog due to such low tech and lots of coal-burning powerstations but in the 90's I could go into town and not smell diesel fumes at all. Now I only have to cross the road in a small village and I smell diesel.

Try cycling round Richmond park as to soot chuckers rumble past.

rb5er said:

Theres no hysteria about it, diesels are very bad for health and the environment and should be limited to commercial useage as required. Indeed taxing should not be the answer but it seems the only way to make people think is to hit them in the pocket.

I agree. Especially in built up areas where journeys are short and diesel cars may never fully warm up, vastly increasing the problem

[k-ink]

Yes a volcano does make our annual efforts of pollution look tame. The trouble is when the next super volcano adds the additional pollution to what is already here. It is not an excuse to give up. I love cars but the situation is getting stupid.

[xjay1337]

Without getting into a discussion on global warming I believe in natural cycles of which the last hundreds of millions of years show a variation between low and high levels of CO2 / other pollutants. We are currently on what is described as a rising trend.

I am sure we contribute but there are greater forces at play that ourselves. It's an excuse for taxation.

[k-ink]

If the average world temperature rises too much the permafrost will melt and release vast quantities of methane. This will be hundreds of times worse than current car pollution emissions. Thus we are headed towards a point of no return. It has been stated by scientist that we may then enter a very poor situation which will last for tens of thousands of years, no matter how we react afterwards.

Selfish idiots running diesels with no DPF are just helping us get there even faster. Kind of takes the edge of enjoying a hoon about.

[300bhp/ton]

k-ink said:

If the average world temperature rises too much the permafrost will melt and release vast quantities of methane. This will be hundreds of times worse than current car pollution emissions. Thus we are headed towards a point of no return. It has been stated by scientist that we may then enter a very poor situation which will last for tens of thousands of years, no matter how we react afterwards.

Polar caps have continually changed, at least twice in Earth's history they have met at the equator and have retreated far more than they are now.

What we do most likely has little to no affect on this. In fact, if we believe we can affect these cycles, then that is actually fantastic, as we may be able to avoid the next ice age.

To give some perspective to this, during the last ice age, the polar cap came as far south as Hatfield. Which means nearly all of the UK and indeed large parts of the Northern hemisphere would be uninhabitable.

k-ink said:

Selfish idiots running diesels with no DPF are just helping us get there even faster. Kind of takes the edge of enjoying a hoon about.

Do you really believe this, or is it some kind of joke? No idea if you are being serious or not, but would pity you if you were. Running a diesel car with no DPF is less relevant than pissing in the Ocean for all the affect it will have.

[k-ink]

You had better go and argue with scientists. You will do as you wish guilt free no matter what anyone says. You are not alone. I love cars, but I am torn between the fun now v the future.

[Treb0r]

Mr2Mike said:

Pumping it out at 300 feet doesn't seem to have fixed the estimated 1,600 premature deaths a year and associated health costs.

The Aberthaw plant is particularly crap, but all coal fired power stations emit a NOx and other nasties. The concern over Chinese and Indian coal power expansion and the planned phasing out of coal power in the UK is not for nothing.

Surely the premature deaths are more likely to be due to the drastically higher NOx concentrations in close proximity to dense population levels in cities?

[300bhp/ton]

k-ink said:

You had better go and argue with scientists. You will do as you wish guilt free no matter what anyone says. You are not alone. I love cars, but I am torn between the fun now v the future.

It's not about guilt free. But the reality is, individuals will have no affect at all. And even as a race, it is debatable if even then we can any 'real' affect.


And it's about perspective.

How does paying more to do the same thing have any affect on the environment?


And if a carbon footprint is so important, how come illuminated billboards haven't been banned and the like?



Or importing products from half way round the world, when they can be sourced locally?



Ummm I wonder what type of fuel this burns....

[k-ink]

Mate you are talking nonsense. People measure the pollution 24/7 at the poles. Current air is compared to ice cores. There has been constant streams of data going back a very long time. For example, it was clearly measured when CFCs were in use, then different readings before and after. It is black and white data. There is no arguing on our effects.

Edited by k-ink on Thursday 5th May 15:04