Future of Gasgas

[lineaway]

 Must have been down for the weekend. Working now even with a search.

[zippy]

27 minutes ago, lineaway said:

 Must have been down for the weekend. Working now even with a search.

Can confirm

[telecat]

On 7/2/2019 at 3:55 PM, ChrisCH said:

There is so much rubbish circulating about electric vehicles it is perhaps worth looking at the subject a little.  Firstly they are not green and they are not beneficial to the cause of CO2 reduction in any measure.  The big push for EV comes from the need to reduce NOx and other air pollutants in cities.  Diesel produces particulates (soot) and the older and dirtier diesels are the main issue, newer vehicles have DFP which can nearly eliminate PM problems.  Illegal removal of filters is another problem that should be easy to stop but has had little action thus far.  For bikes and scooters the EV can be a good improvement as the motor requires little if any maintenance and is more reliable that most small petrol engines.

Trials bikes are an insignificant part of any consideration as they are not out there in any volume and generally use very little fuel.  Small motorcycles for commuting are "green" as they reduce congestion and are a very efficient way to move a human cargo.  I would imagine a lot of commuters would love an electric bike rather than a small petrol bike as it requires much less servicing and is much better suited to the stop-start pattern of city commuting.  Electric sports bikes have similar benefits and most sport bike riders tend to ride a low overall distance per year.  A big tourer with hard luggage is probably still best suited to an ICE for the same reasons many car owners prefer ICE - long runs.

Personally I like the idea of the electric trials bike (the ones with a clutch anyway).  No issues with dirty fuel, air filters or carburettors.  Power and performance are unaffected by the angle of the vehicle.  Much less routine maintenance as well.  It's just the price that puts me off buying one.  When they are in the second-hand market I will be looking for one.  No more smelly petrol cans in the van and no more mixing two stroke.  All good stuff in my opinion.

The global fight against fossil CO2 is critically important and we must do what we can to reduce CO2 to zero and possibly even begin to artificially remove CO2 if we want to survive as a species.  Buying an EV isn't really moving in that direction and the mandating of EV seems to me to be a pointless step.  Biofuels are very low carbon and work with current ICE technology.  The "installed base" of ICE is huge and scrapping it for EV is not practical.  If developed countries ban ICE the old vehicles will end up in less developed countries and carry on spewing out CO2 until they wear out.  The planet is not concerned whether the CO2 comes from the US or the Central African Republic, it all has the same effect.

It's also important to remember that a lot of the world's electricity is still generated with fossil fuels.  An EV just moves where the pollution occurs.  The CO2 from a coal fired power station warms up the planet just like the CO2 from my TRS.  I do like the smell of two stroke though - if I am honest.  I'd still like the electric trials bike if I could afford it.  Then drive to the trial in my diesel van ?

Unfortunately if you remove CO2 from the atmosphere not only do plants die, we do as well. CO2 triggers our breathing out mechanism. As a Greenhouse gas CO2 is rather poor. There isn't a great deal of it in the atmosphere and the so called "heating effect" does not happen. CO2 increases only once the temp has increased. It does not cause an increase. In Leeds you only need to look at the Buildings to realise we don't push out anything near the pollution we used to. The "black" buildings and SMOG of my youth have been replaced by clean stone and vastly superior air to breathe.

[turbofurball]

On 7/2/2019 at 4:55 PM, ChrisCH said:

...  Buying an EV isn't really moving in that direction and the mandating of EV seems to me to be a pointless step.  Biofuels are very low carbon and work with current ICE technology.  The "installed base" of ICE is huge and scrapping it for EV is not practical.  If developed countries ban ICE the old vehicles will end up in less developed countries and carry on spewing out CO2 until they wear out.  The planet is not concerned whether the CO2 comes from the US or the Central African Republic, it all has the same effect.

It's also important to remember that a lot of the world's electricity is still generated with fossil fuels.  An EV just moves where the pollution occurs.  The CO2 from a coal fired power station warms up the planet just like the CO2 from my TRS.

There's a few big sweeping statements and logical falacies in there, eg.

Renewable energy has got to the point where it can, on occasion, provide most of the electricity for an entire nation.  Fossil fuel power stations do exist, however there are fewer of them as time goes on despite China building a handful of new ones.

The ability of renewable energy sources will improve over time, along with large scale battery systems.  If we stick at it traditional power stations can become an emergency backup and nothing more.

Many of today's cars will end up in third world countries anyway, and will eventually wear out anyway.  So replacing them with an electric alternative gives a net improvement in emissions (especially given the ability to recycle most of the materials in a new car).  Nobody has proposed that existing cars be scrapped while they still work.

CO2 is used as a gauge for global warming through human intervention because it's easy to keep track of.  Having more of it in the atmosphere does increase global warming, although TBH the effects of methane release from permafrost is more likely to finish us off at this point, because that's harder to control than our own emissions.

I could go on ...

[ChrisCH]

6 hours ago, telecat said:

Unfortunately if you remove CO2 from the atmosphere not only do plants die, we do as well. CO2 triggers our breathing out mechanism. As a Greenhouse gas CO2 is rather poor. There isn't a great deal of it in the atmosphere and the so called "heating effect" does not happen. CO2 increases only once the temp has increased. It does not cause an increase.

Nice try.  Wrong.  And you missed "all" from the first sentence.  I don't think it is possible to remove all the CO2.  The CO2 that triggers breathing is made in the body - so you are wrong about that as well.  (PS Plants create CO2 just like we do so they will not die)

Fail.

Edited July 15, 2019 by ChrisCH
add PS

[ChrisCH]

1 hour ago, turbofurball said:

There's a few big sweeping statements and logical falacies in there, eg.

Renewable energy has got to the point where it can, on occasion, provide most of the electricity for an entire nation.  Fossil fuel power stations do exist, however there are fewer of them as time goes on despite China building a handful of new ones.

The ability of renewable energy sources will improve over time, along with large scale battery systems.  If we stick at it traditional power stations can become an emergency backup and nothing more.

Many of today's cars will end up in third world countries anyway, and will eventually wear out anyway.  So replacing them with an electric alternative gives a net improvement in emissions (especially given the ability to recycle most of the materials in a new car).  Nobody has proposed that existing cars be scrapped while they still work.

CO2 is used as a gauge for global warming through human intervention because it's easy to keep track of.  Having more of it in the atmosphere does increase global warming, although TBH the effects of methane release from permafrost is more likely to finish us off at this point, because that's harder to control than our own emissions.

I could go on ...

We don't appear to disagree very much.  In fact you have repeated a lot of my post.

Renewables must take over from fossil at some point either because we (humans) want them to or because fossil fuel runs out.  Take your pick which but the point will come sooner or later.  The sooner it is the better from every point of view other than that of the fossil fuel companies.

You're right about the methane and it will possibly cause a runaway effect.  If so what power my trials bike will not matter.  I still fancy an E bike but I hope I made clear it has nothing to do with climate change.

[d2w]

Since we're talking about the Future  of Gas Gas, I'd consider an E-bike if it came with one of these. 

[ChrisCH]

28 minutes ago, d2w said:

Since we're talking about the Future  of Gas Gas, I'd consider an E-bike if it came with one of these.

That would be one fast charger!

[b40rt]

4 hours ago, turbofurball said:

 China building a handful of new ones.

 

How big are your hands ??????

[telecat]

18 hours ago, ChrisCH said:

Nice try.  Wrong.  And you missed "all" from the first sentence.  I don't think it is possible to remove all the CO2.  The CO2 that triggers breathing is made in the body - so you are wrong about that as well.  (PS Plants create CO2 just like we do so they will not die)

Fail.

I said Remove CO2. By definition that's all CO2. As for Plants they breathe CO2 in and Oxygen out as part of the photo synthesis process. No CO2 no plants. Didn't you take Biology at school?

 

[ChrisCH]

51 minutes ago, telecat said:

I said Remove CO2. By definition that's all CO2. As for Plants they breathe CO2 in and Oxygen out as part of the photo synthesis process. No CO2 no plants. Didn't you take Biology at school?

 

Sorry but you are completely wrong.  Plants do not breathe CO2 - I learned that at school when I was 12 as part of my O level biology.  Your misunderstanding of the difference between respiration (breathing is not respiration, plants do not breathe at all) and photosynthesis is excusable to some extent, but wrong nevertheless.

Plants create CO2 just like animals and their respiration is exactly the same process.  The oxidisation of carbohydrate to create energy.  This is the basic chemical process of life.  Plants also have the ability to use sunlight to create sugar which they store in their tissues.  This sugar can be "burned" later on to create energy.  This process creates O2 which the plant excretes.  At night there is no sunlight and the process reverses.  The night time plant closes its stomata and the excreted CO2 builds up in the leaf.  In the morning the CO2 is used in photosynthesis.

Reducing the CO2 to levels below which it is available for the process would impair the plant but all plant life would not die as eventually CO2 would be replaced into the atmosphere by plant or animal respiration.  Plants can grow in a sealed glass vessel, something the Victorians did widely.  The plant does not use up the CO2 and die.

The amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere affect the level to which the sun's radiation is retained on earth as opposed to being returned to space.  Whilst there is some disagreement about the correlation - mostly driven by lies from the fuel industry - the scientific facts are quite unambiguous.  Human burning of fossil fuel is increasing the warming of the planet and we are now at a tipping point beyond which much of humanity is threatened by the changes.  As per my earlier comments the use of electricity as a motive power isn't going to make much odds to that.

I had hoped my earlier post would allow us to discuss the merits of electric as a motive fuel for trials and how that affects the future of one of the biggest manufacturers without the usual hyperbole and lies about climate change that seems to accompany discussion of electric powered vehicles.  This is a trials bike forum and not an environmental discussion group after all.

[ChrisCH]

Just to get back to electric bikes this PDF is interesting reading.

https://mcia.co.uk/en/the-route

If we assume that the industry is keen to promote electric two wheelers it makes a lot of sense for Gas Gas to be an early adopter in that market space.

As a motorbike enthusiast I am keen to see bikes not only tolerated but encouraged and their ability to reduce congestion should be a key selling point.  Not that I am about to start commuting to work on the TRS. 

[turbofurball]

On 7/15/2019 at 5:23 PM, ChrisCH said:

We don't appear to disagree very much.  In fact you have repeated a lot of my post.

Renewables must take over from fossil at some point either because we (humans) want them to or because fossil fuel runs out.  Take your pick which but the point will come sooner or later.  The sooner it is the better from every point of view other than that of the fossil fuel companies.

You're right about the methane and it will possibly cause a runaway effect.  If so what power my trials bike will not matter.  I still fancy an E bike but I hope I made clear it has nothing to do with climate change.

Ok, so at this point you're willfully missing the points I was trying to make - namely that reduction in CO2 output can be effected through the widescale adoption of electric vehicles, that CO2 production does have a direct effect on global warming, and that no existing vehicles need to be purposefully destroyed in order for that to happen.

You're also repeating an old and incorrect idea there about "peak oil"; there's more than enough oil on the planet for use to incinerate our entire atmosphere!

As for me, one of the largest attractions to going electric is to avoid air pollution, so just because it's not the case for you, doesn't mean it's the case for everyone - I'm riding around nature, why would I want to fill it with 2 stroke smoke?

In the next 5 years I will be converting my TY175 over to electric, and I have begun slowly saving to replace my road bike with an electric one when it expires too.

[overtone]

The planet has gone through repeated cycles where temperatures were much warmer - lovely warm and temperate weather in Canada and Greenland - and much colder, with extensive glaciation, with CO2 levels that have been considerably lower and considerably higher.

Anthropogenic warming is complete nonsense, and the puppet masters have had to recast their propaganda to "climate change" (after shouting "warming" for 2-3 decades) because all the hockey stick models were so wrong, that even the dimmest of sheep would have begun to catch on.  But since climate is always changing, that is a fine synthetic enemy in the name of which we shall be fleeced in perpetuity.

CO2 is a trailing indicator, positively correlated with global temperature changes, and lagging those changes considerably.  We need CO2 to have abundant crops, and indeed more CO2 would be helpful in our current situation.

The real global-scale problem is pollution -- all the Monsanto-type poisons, the industrial and medical waste dumped into rivers, the plastics, the nuclear weapons activities.  Check this out:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLCF7vPanrY

The military-financial complex oligarchs that run the world are complete sociopaths, and yet, Al "an inconvenient partner in Goldman Sachs carbon trading exchange" Gore is a caring, humanist truth-speaker?  Give me two freaking breaks...

[Andy]

FFS