UK X: Who Wants To Live Forever

[Neon Ignition]

Forbes leaving Scottish government for personal reasons, insists Yousaf deputy | Kate Forbes | The Guardian
Yousaf attempts to embarrass Kate Forbes by offering her a huge demotion, she resigns instead and Yousaf's Deputy tries to downplay her exit
Good first day on the job

[Cassius_Smoke]

Endless corruption.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-65115204

[Asura]

Endless corruption.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-65115204

I don't even know if this really is.

I mean, as long as the public keep electing wealthy people, this is going to happen. Anyone with a personal worth of more than 1mil surely has an investment portfolio with money in tens or even hundreds of businesses. No matter who the government invest in, they're going to boost the portfolio of someone.

I mean yes, it is corruption. But it's corruption the voting majority surely approves of.

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/mar/30/half-baked-half-hearted-critics-ridicule-uk-long-awaited-climate-strategy

Shocking no-one the Governments climate strategy is worthless

Britons have more confidence in EU than Westminster, poll finds | Brexit | The Guardian
The faith in politicians between the UK and EU leaders has reversed amongst the British people

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2023/mar/30/rishi-sunak-keir-starmer-labour-humza-yousaf-latest-politics-news-updates?page=with:block-6425391a8f08a2f794cc48a5#block-6425391a8f08a2f794cc48a5

Labour is launching its local elections campaign as the Party for Lower Taxes for Working People

https://www.energylivenews.com/2023/03/30/no-u-turn-britain-to-stick-to-2030-petrol-and-diesel-car-ban/

The Tories say the UK ban on petrol/diesel fuel new car sales in 2030 will stay despite the EU rolling their deadline back to 2035 due to the target being unattainable. First - it's obvious why, because it's highly likely they will force Labour to take the blame for rolling it back later. Second - the interesting wrinkle in plans also seems to be that the drive to Electric vehicles might have been a bit of a fools errand to a degree as eFuels are now being heavily looked at which could keep combustion engines permanently in play and if it works are infinitely more practical.

[CMcK]

Efuels are a non starter. Too expensive to produce, only available in tiny quantities and still cause local pollution when burnt. I could see hybrids being given a bit of an extension before they are banned but realistically most manufacturers are killing off non EV sales in the EU long before the 2035 deadline anyway.

[fishbowlhead]

If anyone thinks all electric vehicles are the answer it shows how little thought and research has gone into the issue. There isn’t enough raw materials to replace even a fraction of the cars on the road into electric.

Hydrogen is the only way forward, and yet its 15 years behind what it should be.

[Cassius_Smoke]

If anyone thinks all electric vehicles are the answer it shows how little thought and research has gone into the issue. There isn’t enough raw materials to replace even a fraction of the cars on the road into electric.

Hydrogen is the only way forward, and yet its 15 years behind what it should be.

I think the current amount of Lithium world wide wouldn't be enough to replace the cars only in England!
There is a big push to dig out more (with Russia being one of the biggest Lithium supplyliers).
Hydrogen fuel is the best way. But it requires a large amount of energy to strip hydrogen from water or air. Hydrogen is in massive abundance, but its usually stuck to other things.

[Neon Ignition]

The eFuel that was being discussed on the radio yesterday relating to the EU's delay was one made via extracting Carbon Dioxide from the atmosphere and combining it with Hydrogen molecules to synthesize methanol. Apparently it avoids the fuel cell issues of hydrogen cars and the battery needs also. The idea being that by making a low carbon synthetic fuel that is liquid, they can basically just swap the fuel rather than the infrastructure that already exists. Like every alternate fuel it seems like there are barriers to it currently but it sounds like something similar would be 1000% more practical and realistic than electric charging points


Charles Bronson to stay in prison as panel denies him parole | Charles Bronson | The Guardian
Bronson gets prison and infamy for at least several more years

[fishbowlhead]

The eFuel that was being discussed on the radio yesterday relating to the EU's delay was one made via extracting Carbon Dioxide from the atmosphere and combining it with Hydrogen molecules to synthesize methanol. Apparently it avoids the fuel cell issues of hydrogen cars and the battery needs also. The idea being that by making a low carbon synthetic fuel that is liquid, they can basically just swap the fuel rather than the infrastructure that already exists. Like every alternate fuel it seems like there are barriers to it currently but it sounds like something similar would be 1000% more practical and realistic than electric charging points

Great idea if it can be scaled up, the infrastructure is already there in basically every country.

Will it come to fruition? Na, let’s just trash the planet and move on, well the super rich can anyway.

[CMcK]

The eFuel that was being discussed on the radio yesterday relating to the EU's delay was one made via extracting Carbon Dioxide from the atmosphere and combining it with Hydrogen molecules to synthesize methanol. Apparently it avoids the fuel cell issues of hydrogen cars and the battery needs also. The idea being that by making a low carbon synthetic fuel that is liquid, they can basically just swap the fuel rather than the infrastructure that already exists. Like every alternate fuel it seems like there are barriers to it currently but it sounds like something similar would be 1000% more practical and realistic than electric charging points

Thats the stuff Porsche has been working on with a plant in Chile IIRC. It’s never going to scale to meet global demand. You’d need the capacity to match a lot of refineries. And a shed load of renewable electricity which could just go straight into a battery anyway. And it’s not like carbon capture just plucks the CO2 out of the air it needs industrial sources. If we could extract carbon from the atmosphere we could solve global warming!
Hydrogen is also a non starter for passenger vehicles. Again it needs a lot of energy to produce and most sources aren’t exactly green or renewable. At least a fuel cell is zero emissions. But fuel cells use precious metals and are expensive to manufacture. As for hydrogen tanks in vehicles that’s a whole other problem. They’re expensive, take up a lot of space, have a finite lifespan and need to vent off hydrogen to atmosphere.
Go back to before there was all the petrol stations we have now and you bought the fuel for your car from the chemist. People couldn’t have imagined that we would get to this stage. So why can’t we do it with charging points? If there’s money to be made it’ll happen. And electricity is easier to distribute than liquid fuel and already all over the country.
The real route to decarbonising transport is getting people out of cars and having serviceable public transport. But that’s really not very likely.

[Asura]

God I hope we figure out cold fusion, or something, by some kind of miracle this decade. If we had basically limitless power for peanuts, so many of the world's problems might start to fix themselves.

[fishbowlhead]

God I hope we figure out cold fusion, or something, by some kind of miracle this decade. If we had basically limitless power for peanuts, so many of the world's problems might start to fix themselves.

Why would the oil industry allow that? Anything that’s even remotely useful and can be scaled will just get buried. Even solar and wind energy gets lumped in with gas/coal prices so that the big fossil firms don’t loose out to a renewable industry that would otherwise quickly take over.

It doesn’t really matter anymore though, this all should of been done 50 years ago, the planet is way to far gone now global warming wise.

[Anpanman]

Hydrogen is the only way forward, and yet its 15 years behind what it should be.

Agreed.
Said this multiple time here, we can produce hydrogen from our windfarms during the lull in summer.

EV's aren't delivering on performance particularly in cold weather range is reduced, a few of my co-workers have company EV's and they can't do a full day of travel home-meeting-home without stopping to recharge. Piece-o-piss with a diesel.
EV HGV's are coming but the enormous cost is prohibitive and the additional weight means no-where near as good as diesel for range plus they can't carry as much cargo due to weight restrictions.

Infrastructure front end as well as back, additional tyre wear, brake dust, breakdown retrieval, fire containment and safety of mechanics are other issues with EV's.

[Neon Ignition]

So, the end game seems like... fossil fuel cars still going 2040 and beyond then

[Neon Ignition]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/mar/31/sunak-private-jet-trips-cabinet-office-flight-costs

Sunak blows half a million on tax payer funded private plane travel in just a fortnight