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From: Nick Finnigan on 8 Jul 2010 12:49 Chelsea Tractor Man wrote: > > The moral is that to travel greenly you need to travel slowly, ships, maybe > with sails, airships. Not when you consider non-greenness of the increased number of ships / airships /crew /accommodation needed to travel slowly. To travel greenly you drive a loaded car/bus/road-train at about 50mph or a ship at 20mph. Or take a plane if you really have to cover large distances.
From: Colin McKenzie on 8 Jul 2010 17:12 On Thu, 08 Jul 2010 07:10:51 +0100, Chelsea Tractor Man <mr.c.tractor(a)hotmail.co.uk> wrote: > thats as good a proof as we need. I can move a loaded narrowboat on the > end of a rope, I cannot keep that weight up in the air. Which is, frankly, not the point. We're talking about big ships weighing tens of thousands of tons, vs aeroplanes weighing around 100 tons. Accurate figures are not too easy to find on the www, but here are a couple of data points (with my comments in []): "According to the Cruise Log for a recent sailing on HAL's Noordam, the ship uses 80,000 gallons of fuel per day for 10 days, and traveled 3,752 statute miles (3,263 nautical miles). Divide that by 1,979 guests and 795 crew aboard and, per person, we get 13 miles per gallon per person." [Which is worse than long-haul air and probably worse than short-haul too. And assumes the ship is full.] "An inconspicuous plant could soon embark on a career as a climate saver: hairs on the surface of water ferns are to allow ships to have a 10 per cent decrease in fuel consumption. ...... "Fuel saved world wide: one per cent And it is one with huge technical potential to boot. Up to now with container ships more than half of the propulsion energy is lost through friction of the water at the hull. With an air layer this loss could be reduced by ten per cent according to the researchers' estimate. Since ships are huge fuel guzzlers, the total effect would be enormous. 'Probably one per cent of the fuel consumption worldwide could be saved this way, is Professor Barthlott's prognosis." [So about 10% of worldwide oil consumption is shipping.] Colin McKenzie -- No-one has ever proved that cycle helmets make cycling any safer at the population level, and anyway cycling is about as safe per mile as walking. Make an informed choice - visit www.cyclehelmets.org.
From: Doug on 9 Jul 2010 02:17 On 8 July, 12:52, Chelsea Tractor Man <mr.c.trac...(a)hotmail.co.uk> wrote: > On Thu, 8 Jul 2010 04:38:02 -0700 (PDT), Doug wrote: > > Its strange how many motorists seem to find and use the most > > inconvenient places to live and work. Maybe its because they can? > > only inconvenient without a car. Its also not just about work, some of have > lives. The car gave us freedom, we are not interested in losing it. > A personal freedom that entraps everyone into causing, or being the victim of, congestion, pollution and deaths and injuries. Freedom without responsibility? > > > Though what the point of doing it is eludes me. > > Maybe it does, but many of us prize the ability to not live in an inner > city shithole. > And yet a large majority choose to live in such places. Maybe its because they don't want to be total car junkies and want more choices. -- . London Carfree http://www.london.carfree.org.uk/ 1.5 million adults in London live without a car.
From: Adrian on 9 Jul 2010 03:29 Doug <smithx(a)btinternet.com> gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying: >> Maybe it does, but many of us prize the ability to not live in an inner >> city shithole. > And yet a large majority choose to live in such places. Care to put some numbers to that? No, thought you might not. So I will. UK population - ~60m Total population of 10 biggest cities in UK - 12.15m London - 7.2m Brum - 1m Leeds - 720k Glasgow - 560k Sheffield - 512k Bradford - 467k Edinburgh - 450k Liverpool - 440k Manc - 420k Bristol - 380k (and down to a whole bunch of 'ickle places) http://www.ukcities.co.uk/populations/
From: JNugent on 9 Jul 2010 04:03
Adrian wrote: > Doug <smithx(a)btinternet.com> gurgled happily, sounding much like they were > saying: > >>> Maybe it does, but many of us prize the ability to not live in an inner >>> city shithole. > >> And yet a large majority choose to live in such places. > > Care to put some numbers to that? No, thought you might not. > > So I will. > > UK population - ~60m > Total population of 10 biggest cities in UK - 12.15m > > London - 7.2m > Brum - 1m > Leeds - 720k > Glasgow - 560k > Sheffield - 512k > Bradford - 467k > Edinburgh - 450k > Liverpool - 440k > Manc - 420k > Bristol - 380k > (and down to a whole bunch of 'ickle places) > > http://www.ukcities.co.uk/populations/ I think there's a category error at play there. On the very basis that "London" has a population of 7,200,000, then "Birmingham" (measured in the same sort of way as "London" - a collection of adjacent metropolitan areas in a single conurbation) has a bigger population than the "mere" 1,000,000 who live in the city proper. Even if you leave out Coventry (as I think one must), the West Midlands built-up area must be up around 2,000,000 or more in population. Similarly for Greater Manchester and Merseyside (c. 2,000,000 each, probably still so even if you leave out the outlying Southport and Wigan), West Yorks and South Yorks. All up at, near or just over 2,000,000. The Bristol area is a bit smaller, as is Tyneside, and there is the Solent area to take into account, but larger conurbation totals (rounded to a half million) are probably something like... London 7 Mersyeside 2 Gt Mcr 2 W Mids 2 W Yorks 2 S Yorks 2 Gtr Glasgow 2 Tyneside 1.5 Bristol 1.5 Edinburgh 1 Soton/P'mouth 1 So maybe around the 25,000,000 mark (not even counting the East Midlands conurbations or Teesside). Doug probably wasn't exactly right about areas large enough to have a recognised (and problematic) "inner city area", but then, he wasn't exactly wrong either. Where he was wrong was in suggesting that the denizens of the average inner city are there by choice. That's almost certainly true for Hampstead, Chelsea and Clifton, but wide of the mark elsewhere. |