Reduce motorway speed limit to 110 km/h ?

keithclancy

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

Again, you are wrong. There absolutely is a scientific consensus, and there is a fringe of wackos and fossil fuel industry shills fighting a rearguard action against that consensus.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Academic_use

Wikipedia is not considered a credible source. Wikipedia is increasingly used by people in the academic community, from first-year students to professors, as an easily accessible tertiary source for information about anything and everything. However, citation of Wikipedia in research papers may not be considered acceptable, because Wikipedia is not considered a credible source.

Matt Simis

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

Again, you are wrong. There absolutely is a scientific consensus, and there is a fringe of wackos and fossil fuel industry shills fighting a rearguard action against that consensus.

Lol, Wiki Fight?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming

I wouldnt consider it a "consensus" even ignoring the dissenters if the specifics of time, amount, root cause and to the point of C02 taxation, addressability are no even remotely agreed on.

My definition of consensus would require a more holistic view than your own.

Zubeneschamali

keithclancy wrote: »

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Academic_use

Good thing my boards post was not an academic paper, then.

Zubeneschamali

Matt Simis wrote: »

My definition of consensus would require a more holistic view than your own.

Translation "La la la - I'm not listening".

National and international science academies and scientific societies have assessed the current scientific opinion, in particular on recent global warming. These assessments have largely followed or endorsed the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) position of January 2001 which states:

An increasing body of observations gives a collective picture of a warming world and other changes in the climate system... There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities.[1]

No scientific body of national or international standing has maintained a dissenting opinion; the last was the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, which in 2007 updated its 1999 statement rejecting the likelihood of human influence on recent climate with its current non-committal position.

Matt Simis

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

Translation "La la la - I'm not listening".

At no point have I attempted to dismiss or project condescension on your opinion as you have on everyone else, but your attitude and seemingly complete mental inflexibility to challenge your own opinions has done more harm to "your" seemingly very much personal pro-AGW viewpoint here than aided it.

PS: Your long quote in italics should have a source to mean anything.

Solair

I would suspect that in Ireland the vast majority of fuel-wastage isn't done on motorways, where cars are driving efficiently. Rather, it's done in urban areas particularly Dublin and Cork where people are sitting in traffic for hours on certain routes at rush hour.

Also, if we tackled the dual problems of lack of investment and CIE's gross incompetence then maybe we could get a lot of commuters onto high quality busses in many areas without any major capital cost like building Luas lines.

As it stands, the choice of fleet being used by Dublin Bus and Bus Eireann urban services is very off putting to commuters i.e. they're usually badly ventilated, dripping wet with condensation and just generally disgusting to travel on at rush hour.

Public Transport needs to be developed from the perspective of the end user i.e. what does the customer want / how does the customer experience this service.

Simple, practical measures to improve these things and making levels of *comfort*, cleanliness, ease of use, frequency, routes, reliability and price attractive would encourage a lot of people out of their cars.

There has been far too much emphasis on 'show case' projects like the Luas, which are often delivered vastly over budget and very little put into actually tackling the blood and guts of the public transport problem in Ireland which is basically CIE's urban services are not fit for purpose.

I have lived in small / middle sized cities in Europe and Canada which were between Dublin and Cork sized (or a little smaller) and they all had excellent bus networks which were pleasant to use!

Dublin bus is OK, but the vehicles are horrible and Cork's is just totally unsuitable for the size of that urban area. It basically isn't a functioning public transport service. It also ignores the fact that outlying towns around Cork have become suburbs and seems to work off a demographic map it found from about 1950.

If we do not tackle CIE and do not deal with these basic and very fundamental problems our carbon footprint will remain high and people will not use public transport.

Fiddling with the speed limit is quite honestly, a joke.

We are not living in Spain which has some of the most amazingly high tech and well-run public transport systems in Europe and tends to have high-density cities/towns.

We don't currently have many alternatives to the car as our public transit networks are basically rubbish and our population's spread thin on the ground once you get beyond the 1930s suburbs of our cities and towns.

Zubeneschamali

Matt Simis wrote: »

At no point have I attempted to dismiss or project condescension on your opinion as you have on everyone else, but your attitude and seemingly complete mental inflexibility to challenge your own opinions has done more harm to "your" seemingly very much personal pro-AGW viewpoint here than aided it.

I'm not arguing for the Pro-AGW viewpoint, the scientific community can look after that.

I don't actually care that you're wrong about it except that you are arguing for something I believe in, and by sticking this nonsense into the argument, you're making the argument look stupid.

It's as if someone is arguing that we should vaccinate our kids because it keeps the vampires away.

Zubeneschamali

Interesting:

When I type the words scientific consensus into Google, it guesses I'm going to search for scientific consensus on climate change.

6 of it's 10 suggestions are variations, like scientific consensus global climate change.

The one other topic in the top ten? Evolution.

keithclancy

Solair wrote: »

There has been far too much emphasis on 'show case' projects like the Luas, which are often delivered vastly over budget and very little put into actually tackling the blood and guts of the public transport problem in Ireland which is basically CIE's urban services are not fit for purpose.

The Luas *spit* ... Thats Just a Cork Idea stolen by the Dubs

http://www.askaboutireland.ie/learning-zone/primary-students/looking-at-places/cork-city/aspects-of-cork-city/trams/the-electric-tram/



Although they had to tear all that up to make way for the FUTURE

Cars.

dr.fuzzenstein

The CO2 debate is really in the wrong place here, this is simply to save fuel because of those pesky Arabs.
I already drive at 110 km/h most of the time because I'm hard up and at that I'm overtaking the majority of cars, a large number of people now seem to cruise along at 90-100 km/h.
Bringing in the speed limit is nothing but cosmetics and re-arranging the deckchairs of the titanic. It's simply being politically correct, it won't change a thing, will be largely ignored, you just slow down for the speed camera vans and put the foot down again.
If we where really all that concerned about mother nature, we'd stop keeping cattle, a massive source of CO2 (and even worse) methane.

CiniO

shedweller wrote: »

Here's a little something for you speed freaks! (of which i used to be, until that fateful day...)

The mpg is in US gal but you get the picture!

Above chart doesn't look right to me.
It looks like that difference in fuel economy between 50MPH and 80MPH is usually bigger than between 80MPH and 120MPG.
That can't be true.
Most cars start to burn horrendous amount of fuel while over 80MPH. Here it looks completely opposite.

Joe 90

CiniO wrote: »

Above chart doesn't look right to me.
It looks like that difference in fuel economy between 50MPH and 80MPH is usually bigger than between 80MPH and 120MPG.
That can't be true.
Most cars start to burn horrendous amount of fuel while over 80MPH. Here it looks completely opposite.

Yeah, basicly the curve looks as though it curves the wrong way.

shedweller

It's odd alright. But here's the link with details of who did it and where:http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/05/fuel_consumptio.html
http://inet.atppbg.de/index.php
Whether you believe it or not, thats the results they got.

In any case, lowering the speed limit won't make a huge difference. Each 0.5L/100k costs nearly 75 euro per 10,000km for diesel.
That wont change much, given that the average distance is 20,000km or 150 euro per year. Yaay. My weekly shopping bill is more than that, not to mention my weekly childcare bill.
Lowering the speed limit is a drop in the ocean.
(Yeah, i've changed my mind on the subject!)

dr.fuzzenstein

shedweller wrote: »

It's odd alright. But here's the link with details of who did it and where:http://www.greencarcongress.com/2006/05/fuel_consumptio.html
http://inet.atppbg.de/index.php
Whether you believe it or not, thats the results they got.

In any case, lowering the speed limit won't make a huge difference. Each 0.5L/100k costs nearly 75 euro per 10,000km for diesel.
That wont change much, given that the average distance is 20,000km or 150 euro per year. Yaay. My weekly shopping bill is more than that, not to mention my weekly childcare bill.
Lowering the speed limit is a drop in the ocean.
(Yeah, i've changed my mind on the subject!)

The next question is how much it would cost to roll out.
Changing signs, all that paperwork, it would cost millions for a return of near zilch.
It is nothing but a vanity project for environmental zealots and anti-speed freaks who would want to see a blanket 30 km/h limit enforced over the entire country.
Sadly those people, along with the PC Nazi brigade seem to have a pretty good foothold over in the UK.
Thank God that sort of looney fringe rubbish has never caught on here, maybe because of our small population the actual numbers of such cranks and lunatics is quite low.

shedweller

True, the numbers need to be done AND published BEFORE anything like this is done.

dr.fuzzenstein

billyboy01 wrote: »

I agree with the idea of lowering the speed limits, lower to 80km/h for all Motorways and National roads and 50km/h for all others! With Zealot levels of speed camera enforcement, to create jobs and generate much needed revenue for road maintenance!

We need to keep the CO2 emissions down and increase fuel efficiency, we need an EU directive for this!

If that is your opinion I have to respect that, no matter how misguided or insane it is.
However you will find that the only people who might possibly agree with you have won zero seats, so your idea is firmly in the lefty, looney fringe and can be safely ignored.