Going Green!?

[BMAONE23]

I read an article back in the '80s that discussed 16 off the shelf modifications that were done to a turbocherged diesel engine that was then placed in a 1982 thunderbird (for aerodynamis raesons). Mr Ron Moody stated that tests indicated that the car would get 84MPG city and 110MPG hwy (real tests not track tests) running on refined Used Cooking oil at 10 cents per gallon.

Haven't been able to locate the magazine or article since.

[wonderboy]

In britain, its illegal to run your car on cooking oil because no tax has been paid on it. If it were to be taxed it would just cost the same as normal petrol or diesel. I do NOT see how a government has the right to intervene when you have bought cooking oil (which has Value Added Tax applied to it already) and modified your own car using your own money so it runs using the cooking oil. Intervention on that basis, to me, is a breach of your fundamental freedoms.

I think its as silly as police officers sitting in their cars sniffing out the familiar smell of a car running on cooking oil (it smells like a fish n chip shop) chasing it down and criminalising the driver for tax evasion or something.

Its despicable.

[Chris Peterson]

In britain, its illegal to run your car on cooking oil because no tax has been paid on it. If it were to be taxed it would just cost the same as normal petrol or diesel. I do NOT see how a government has the right to intervene when you have bought cooking oil (which has Value Added Tax applied to it already) and modified your own car using your own money so it runs using the cooking oil. Intervention on that basis, to me, is a breach of your fundamental freedoms.

I'm not taking a side here one way or the other, but such a position is not irrational. Cars produce emissions and place loads on the public infrastructure that affect all of society, so it is reasonable to use taxes on fuel as a mechanism to partly offset those societal costs. If that is the rationale, I don't think anybody's fundamental freedoms are being breached.

[wonderboy]

although I don't entirely disagree, there should be a new tax on fuels created by yourself for your own car which is a lot less than that on normal fuel, with thought given to the recycling effect of using old oil as well. This would have an environmental impact aswell as it means that the oil is going to use rather than to waste. Some hotels may get rid of it illegally by dropping it into the water system.


Either way, I can see the point of taxing fuels, but not the point in taxing the same as more commonplace fuels.


Paul.

[BMAONE23]

Is it true that Petrol is heavily taxed in GB? I had heard that the taxes practically double the cost. If that is the case, and refining cooking oil for fuel costs even $1 per gallon, I would gladly set aside an additional $1 to cover the proportional taxes
and at $.10 the additional dime would be even better

[Chris Peterson]

Is it true that Petrol is heavily taxed in GB? I had heard that the taxes practically double the cost. If that is the case, and refining cooking oil for fuel costs even $1 per gallon, I would gladly set aside an additional $1 to cover the proportional taxes
and at $.10 the additional dime would be even better

Yes, but if the tax is designed to offset costs associated with cars and the burning of gasoline, it isn't a proportional tax. It is an absolute tax, assessed per liter of fuel. If that works out to 50p per liter, that's what you should expect to pay per liter of cooking oil, regardless of the actual cost of that oil.

BTW, in many areas diesels are increasingly regulated or restricted because they are so polluting, and where diesels are permitted the use of cooking oil may be prohibited because it burns less cleanly than refined diesel fuel. So there's more at issue than just tax revenue.

[Beyond]

What a planet!! Just one taxing situatiion after another. Sheesh

[Chris Peterson]

What a planet!! Just one taxing situatiion after another. Sheesh :roll:

And then you die.

[wonderboy]

What a planet!! Just one taxing situatiion after another. Sheesh

Poor, but you still made me laugh haha.

Death and Taxes eh?


Paul

[Guest]

If all humans stopped doing everything, running electricity, automobiles/boats, factories, dumps, deforestation, everything that includes pollution, the earth would repair itself in a week. (at least, it was an insanely short period of time, can't remember exactly how long.)
What an amazing planet we live on, it's just like our body; it repairs itself all the time.....

-H-

"When I see your heavens, the works of your fingers, The moon and the stars that you have prepared, What is mortal man that you keep him in mind, And the son of earthling man that you take care of him?"

[Chris Peterson]

If all humans stopped doing everything, running electricity, automobiles/boats, factories, dumps, deforestation, everything that includes pollution, the earth would repair itself in a week. (at least, it was an insanely short period of time, can't remember exactly how long.)

Well, this assumes it's "broken". Certainly, if human impact stopped today, it would take a few centuries before things returned to more or less the way they were before we started having a significant impact. The carbon dioxide we've added to the atmosphere would take more than a century to return to where it was a few centuries ago. The vast areas of the Earth that we have deforested would take a long time to recover. The species that have become extinct due to our impact will never recover, of course.

Some things would revert quickly, but many would not. That is why there is a lot of concern about changing our ways soon; the longer we wait, the longer it will take for more natural systems to start dominating things again.

[makc]

...the longer we wait, the longer it will take for more natural systems to start dominating things again.

Oh, we had this discussion before

[rstevenson]

If all humans stopped doing everything, running electricity, automobiles/boats, factories, dumps, deforestation, everything that includes pollution, the earth would repair itself in a week. (at least, it was an insanely short period of time, can't remember exactly how long.)

Two takes on what would happen, one real and one imaginary...
September 11, 2001 climate impact study
Life After People

Rob

[Beyond]

Death and Taxes -- The two constants of the Earth. You pay your taxes with green money. You die and get buried and green grass grows over your remains. Thats about as green as it gets

[BMAONE23]

But when you die and decay, you release all the Carbon that has been sequestered by your body back into nature. Prepare for the hefty Carbon Tax on Dying

[Chris Peterson]

But when you die and decay, you release all the Carbon that has been sequestered by your body back into nature. Prepare for the hefty Carbon Tax on Dying

I think most of your carbon remains sequestered for a long time. Obviously the carbon in your bones isn't released, and much of your soft tissue is converted to carbon compounds in the soil, and ideally is taken up by growing things. Fertilize enough vegetation and there's a good chance your descendants could earn carbon credits after your demise.

Releasing carbon into nature isn't necessarily a problem, it's releasing carbon dioxide, or other forms that will quickly become carbon dioxide. Cremation is probably quite un-green.

[neufer]

Releasing carbon into nature isn't necessarily a problem, it's releasing carbon dioxide, or other forms that will quickly become carbon dioxide. Cremation is probably quite un-green.

Do you realize how much gasoline is burned to mow cemeteries.

[Chris Peterson]

Do you realize how much gasoline is burned to mow cemeteries.

So don't mow them. Our little town cemetery doesn't have a lawn. It just grows whatever grass and flowers are happy under the ponderosas- all of it sequestering carbon from the subterranean occupants.

[Henning Makholm]

But when you die and decay, you release all the Carbon that has been sequestered by your body back into nature. Prepare for the hefty Carbon Tax on Dying

I think most of your carbon remains sequestered for a long time. Obviously the carbon in your bones isn't released, and much of your soft tissue is converted to carbon compounds in the soil, and ideally is taken up by growing things.

I don't think plants take up carbon from the soil -- on the contrary, they're famous for doing their own carbon fixation.

The carbon in decomposing organisms goes into a heterotroph food chain in the soil, a large fraction in each step being oxidized to CO₂ for entropy disposal. It takes very few steps on average for it to end up in the air.

[neufer]

Do you realize how much gasoline is burned to mow cemeteries.

So don't mow them. Our little town cemetery doesn't have a lawn. It just grows whatever grass and flowers are happy under the ponderosas- all of it sequestering carbon from the subterranean occupants.

<<Fear of being buried alive is the fear of being placed in a grave while still alive as a result of being incorrectly pronounced dead. The abnormal, psychopathological version of this fear is referred to as taphophobia (from Greek taphos, meaning "grave"), which is translated as "fear of graves". Before the advent of modern medicine, the fear was not entirely irrational. Throughout history, there have been numerous cases of people being buried alive by accident. In 1905, the English reformer William Tebb collected accounts of premature burial. He found 219 cases of near live burial, 149 actual live burials, 10 cases of live dissection and 2 cases of awakening while being embalmed. In 1896, an American funeral director, T.M. Montgomery, reported that "nearly 2% of those exhumed were no doubt victims of suspended animation."

There have been many urban legends of people being accidentally buried alive. Legends included elements such as someone entering into the state of sopor or coma, only to wake up years later and die a horrible death. Other legends tell of coffins opened to find a corpse with a long beard or corpses with the hands raised and palms turned upward. Of note is a legend about the premature burial of Ann Hill Carter Lee, the wife of Henry Lee III. On his deathbed in 1799, George Washington made his attendants promise not to bury him for two days.

Literature found fertile ground in exploring the natural fear of being buried alive. One of Edgar Allan Poe's horror stories, "The Premature Burial", is about a person suffering from taphophobia. Other Poe stories about premature burial are "The Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Cask of Amontillado".

Fear of being buried alive was elaborated to the extent that those who could afford it would make all sorts of arrangements for the construction of a safety coffin to ensure this would be avoided (e.g., glass lids for observation, ropes to bells for signaling, and breathing pipes for survival until rescued). An urban legend states that the sayings "Saved by the bell" and "Dead ringer" are both derived from the notion of having a rope attached to a bell outside the coffin that could alert people that the recently buried person is not yet deceased; these theories have been proven false.>>

[Chris Peterson]

I don't think plants take up carbon from the soil -- on the contrary, they're famous for doing their own carbon fixation.

The carbon in decomposing organisms goes into a heterotroph food chain in the soil, a large fraction in each step being oxidized to CO₂ for entropy disposal. It takes very few steps on average for it to end up in the air.

I've not seen a detailed analysis. Certainly, a lot of carbon ends up in the structure of funguses, which effectively takes it out of atmospheric circulation. And plants depend on soil nutrients provided by decaying organisms, which then fix carbon from the air, acting as a CO2 sink. I think it's entirely possible that the net impact of a dead body buried underground can be a reduction in atmospheric carbon, but it no doubt depends a lot on local conditions.

[neufer]

Certainly, a lot of carbon ends up in the structure of funguses, which effectively takes it out of atmospheric circulation. And plants depend on soil nutrients provided by decaying organisms, which then fix carbon from the air, acting as a CO2 sink. I think it's entirely possible that the net impact of a dead body buried underground can be a reduction in atmospheric carbon, but it no doubt depends a lot on local conditions.

The carbon footprint of most people's obituaries probably exceeds anything involving their dead bodies.

In any event, both are minuscule compared to their carbon footprint during life.

[wonderboy]

Im trying to lower my carbon footprint, I've put my car off road and cycle my bike about 20 miles a day. I swear my legs have gotten a few inches thicker. Need new trousers.

In a bit of policy making genius, I was thinking that the government should make some kind of policy that benefits cyclists by giving discounts on train fairs for the ammount of miles cycled. Only problem I can find with this is those lazy buggers who would put their bike on a treadmill.


Paul.

[bystander]

Eternally green: New eco-friendly cremations and burials
PhysOrg | Environment | 30 June 2010

People who care about improving the environment in life may soon be able to do so after death. Entrepreneurs in Europe have developed two new and unusual methods of body disposal — including a low-heat cremation method and a corpse compost method that turns bodies into soil — that could provide environmentally friendly alternatives to those now in use. That's the topic of an article in the current issue of Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), ACS' weekly newsmagazine.

Green For Eternity
Chemical & Engineering News | 28 June 2010

Start-up companies introduce two routes to stay environmentally friendly after you’re dead and gone

[orin stepanek]

I can see some Ideas in going green; like using biodegradables. some things are just a trade off; like electricity instead of fossil fuel! in many cases it takes fossil fuels to make electricity. We need more solar power stations and windmills and hydroelectric generators. to produce clean electricity. Unfortunately the cost is tremendous. As far as hybrid automobiles are concerned; I'm afraid that when it came time to change the batteries----- dig deep into your pocketbook.