Be Excellent To Each Other

You strike me as someone who'd have one at home, one at work, and several hidden along the journey.

Luckily I have an office to myself, so there isn't anyone in swinging distance.

Although someobody has just sent me an email and spelt my surname incorrectly, which is some kind of mystical error that everyone makes. One of these days someone is going to have their ears ripped off until they learn how to spell.

No because there are several requirements for carpooling.

1 - Live near people you work with. I did not.
2 - Start and finish at the exact same time they did, I ran a blockbuster, not possible to organise.

And in my new job (although I don't drive) I can't guarantee when I finish on any given night, so I don't know how I would be expected to.



Assuming you can commit to starting and finishing at the exact same time every single day. I certainly couldn't at BB or in my current programming job.

Yup, that's why I bought a bike. There is a train station a 10 minute walk from my house with frequent service, but the hours I work don't quite fit with the schedules.

Join us, Mr. Chris. Join us!

Yeah, we can have another MaliA-esque argument on the merits and legality of filtering.

FTFY
/runs

Comical Gomez?

Oh well, I'll be keeping my now-worthless Skoda then, it'll be in either band K or L I think - that linked-to website only covers the current models, not my 2004/54 vRS. I'm pretty sure it's somewhere between 200 and 230 g/km Band J at 192g/km. Not bad for a 1.8, eh?

Whereas my '97 M3 is - like Grim...'s doomtank - a mere £195/yr instead of band M (where I'm sure Brown would love it to be), giving me 3 free tanks of doomjuice per year. Splend.

My car is from 1996, so I don't think the new rules apply.

I guess that means I don't have to pay any road tax any more, right? Right?

I think it's a great system (though I'm not sure I agree with the retroactive thing ).

The fact is that cars like we drive today are not viable in the medium to long term. We need to move over to cars powered by things other than petrol, and to do that you need to create incentives for the customer and crucially the manufacturer.

This will lead companies to advertise what rank their car is in. It makes them want to create cost effective cars. By saying this car is cost bracket K and has a showroom tax of £500 will effect the manufactures a lot more than just hiding a MPG rating.

Any non-petrol car is going to be a worse car than a petrol driven car. A replacement technology won't surpass the combustion engine until it's been used and developed for decades. But for that process to begin you need to start. Therefore you need to make a lot of incentives to force the transition. This is the first step.

Yeah its not nice, and big car owners will moan, but Peak Oil is a reality. Even if it's still a few decades away.

Current heading and power systems aren't viable, but I don't see the government passing a law to state that all new builds in Britain should have solar panelling. And that's because it knows it can get away with pissing off car owners, but not big businesses.

Plus, fuck whoever's around in 50 years time. I'll be dead.

Oh, hang on. I've got kids. Damnit.

Indeed. All they're doing it punishing the people at the bottom of the ladder who can't really do anything other than eat more costs.

If they were trying to put us off driving by providing viable alternatives, okay, fine with me. All they're doing, though, is increasing costs and there's very little we can do to avoid them.

Well that and Solar Panels would achieve fuck all. They aren't effecient, they cost a huge amount of oil to produce, and they take years to pay off that debt. Even prius (who are thinking of adding them to their cars) are only doing it as a "symbolic gesture"

But yeah, you are right, the real issue facing the planet is that we know massive lifestyle changes need to occur over the next 50 years, but those changes are inherently the opposite to what is in the best interest for corporations to do. And whilst the Gov should grow some balls and take on big business directly, it isn't.

Still making it a big deal to get a environmentally optimised car is an important step to take, and I think the Gov should start putting pressure on the public. We all talk the talk about "turning green" but generally we don't do anything about it. It's like how people say they like watching BBC 4, but if you actually watch them, they're watching hollyoaks.

Thats true that it hurts the poor, but it designed as well to effect the Grim...'s and thats good. (Sorry Grim..!) The Gov really needs to sort out Public Transport, thats a given, but they created an incentive for people to drive tiny, cheap CO-lite cars.

Whilst the poor should be helped, at the same time SUV school run driving idiots need to be taxed into rethinking the damage they are doing to the world. And this manages it, whilst at the same time encouraging corps to develop efficient people carriers.

Dear god

It's a revenue-raising exercise, pure and simple. You can't change behaviours with taxation if you're not investing in things for people to change *to*.

That's not entirely true though is it? Ok it's not tax but the rise in fuel prices has caused a drop in demand, (I think something like 20% over the last year).

Problem solved FTFY.

Really? I wonder where the reduction in journeys has hit in. Probably people going to visit elderly and infirm relatives.

That's fair enough then. Like I say, I completely understand that it isn't viable for everyone.

Hell, at least they drive their kids to school - I use mine for playing with, man

I do see (and agree with) chris' point, but at the same time if we don't develop fusion and good batteries, all we will be able to do is encourage people to change to *not travelling.*

Not just holidays, but the way people "pop to the shops" and "pootle around". We need that oil for medicine and the like.

I genuinely believe that episodes of Top Gear will be looked back on in 50 to 100 years time as an important symbol of our ridiculous decadence. The very idea of cars being 'playthings' will disgust and shock people. Like slavery does now.

I know that thanks to petrol costs now I rarely do any more driving than I absolutely need to, depsite the fact I used to love going off on little joyrides by myself.

That said, I do 300 miles a week to work and back (and before anyone asks, no-one I work with lives anywhere near me and the entire journey is motorways to an office that's built into a former stately home outside a small village, so it's not like I can pick anyone up en route either).

Ha! Slavery>>> Ferraris and Land Rovers.

Hm, you've just reminded me that I still need to rub some anti-dangerous cream on my brakes. Quite how, for a couple of months, I've continually managed to forget the violently-shaking, not-really-stopping symptoms the moment I get out of it, I don't know. My memory is a terrible thing.

I used to, but can't really justify the cost any more. Bikes are ace, but I only get to use mine for commuting and necessary trips now.

That said, I'm going down to London next weekend and, yet again, it's going to be cheaper and quicker to ride down than take the train. I'll be doing 2 weeks' worth of riding in 2 days.

The depressing truth is though, that as a society we need to move to that kind of behaviour being standard regardless of the price of oil.

The idea of flinging a giant metal weight all around the country for relaxation needs to become a ridiculous luxury. Which sucks balls, but is the truth.

(Poor Grim... )

If oil is a limited resource, there are a lot of things other than petrol that we need it for, too.

Hopefully things like this are a step in the right direction.

Also: the Tesla Roadster. It might cost Ferrari money now, but it seems to be really promising technology.

Plastic, for a start.

Exactly, it's not just a case of working out how fusion works to replace the lost energy, we need to develop ways to mass produce hydrocarbons. Otherwise, bye bye computers, bye bye medicine, bye bye society.

I think it's frightening that there are problems that we need to solve, and that if we don't solve within a certain time frame we'll lose the tools to ever solve them. Regardless of whether we survive another million years.

It's quite feasible that when I'm an old man, I'll be telling my children about how technology was better in my day, as we start an unstoppable, eternal return to medieval standards of living. Our chance to live amongst the stars gone for good.

Indeed. Although we could presumably use plant oils for that too. Cos we have toooo much food going round.

Someone's been drinking the koolade!
Solar heating panels would make a vast difference to energy consumption in the UK, and if installed when the house is built add only a trivial cost which is recouped within the first year or two.

I'll grant you that PV is a harder sell but does have its place, and a lot of the "facts" popularly used against it (like that it never pays off the energy used to make it) is utter rubbish made up by supercillious bastards with vested interest in the traditional energy infrastructure. Watch out for that pls.



Quite.
http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/07/laugh-at-high-g.html
This sort of thing, and electric cars, will only come along when the comfortable zone of low fuel prices and cheap petrol cars is made less confortable.

Even now, people I work with who continually bitterly whine about how much diesel costs go ahead and trade their cars in for larger, less fuel efficient ones come bonus time. I don't blame the government at all for jacking the tax up.

Oh but chinnyhill might get his favourite Amstrad computers re-released, so there is a silver lining.

Given a choice between being a knight and being an astronaut I don't think I'm alone in picking the former.

I'd be happy with a mass thinning out of the human race and a return to good old fashioned feudal values.

I read an article about algae that excreted crude oil recently. That sounded ace. I'll see if I can dig it out.

The anti-green lot are claiming that oil is not, in fact, made how we think it's made, but is in fact constantly being produced by something or other, and we'll never run out.

Which obviously isn't true, but there is more than enough left to definitively murder the climate, which is potentially a worse outcome for living standards than simply running out would be

Well quite - it requires re-writing of Science.


Yup, indeed.

We should be using the little oil we have left for the things we *really* need it for. This does not involve £49 flights to Malaga.

Hah, excellent. This 'solution' comes from genetic modification though, and they're having great trouble making it in bulk without taking up more space than we have.

I'm not sure I agree on the Solar Panel issue. But purely on a pragmatic level. They cost a lot of oil to make, and they last for a finite time before breaking. Typically in a manner that can't be repaired. But then I'm a big fan of The Long Now, so I just don't see them as a sustainable decent source of energy.

However, thats only a present (and based on what I know - I would lvoe to be wrong), I think a lot could be done with the technology, especially when nano-tubes can be mass produced. At present I think solar powered water heating is a more cost effective use of solar energy, as all it takes is copper pipes behind a black screen.

Then you are a fucking fool.

Well, it's more complicated than 'obviously' I would say.

It's clear that oil takes millions of years to form, but regardless there must be a yearly formation rate. And despite the manner it was produced way back when, not being in effect now, I guess it isn't zero.

Who knows we might have a whole kilogram of oil foriming a year scattered all over the world. That will do us.

What kalmar tried to point out to you, that you're ignoring, is solar->hot water panels that are simple, effective and cheap. You're talking exclusively about photovoltaic solar->electricity panels, which are none of those things.

He mentioned them in the paragraph after the one you quoted.

Oh yes. Oops. Still, they appeared (to me) to be talking about different things without realising.


Pchah! I choose both!

Some what? You mean replace them, right?




Don't feel sorry for me mate, I can afford to do it for years yet, cheers. Besides, the day it costs too much to tax is the day I sling it on a trailer.

Last time we went to Greece, virtually every building had a solar hot water heater on the roof. Really simple galvanised barrel / tube / sheet contraptions that probably cost about 100 quid tops. Obviously, Rhodes gets a bit more sun than we do, but I bet it would help a bit.

D'oh you beat me, I was going to do a really patronising reply to wind Bik up.



To be fair, me and Kalmar often look like we are arguing when we actually agree with each other (pretty much) he keeps my science tight, and I love him for it.

Also: that movie looks awesome.