Are 2 strokes doomed?

[Blurredman]

You know, I have Cosmos on dvd. It's great - something I only watch when I am ill in bed though, every few years..

[Puffs]

Gerry, if you quote me, please quote me. Not necessarily in full, but without editing my text.

Carl Sagan was often right, but you're comparing apples & pears. Here, the topic was wrt the age of earth (4.5e9 years), not wrt the age of the universe (13.8e9 years), and as I said, I used Lucy (the first recognised homonoid, 6e6 years ago) as the start, but you might want to use Homo Habilis (aka the handy man, he's on this forum too; 3e6 years). Do the maths as you like, but it's never 2 seconds.

Ta for that link, I looked for it but couldn't find it. It puts it at 77seconds, meaning 0.4e6 years ago, the alleged start of Homo Sapiens:

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_habilis

I had figured Long Way Round would be better fitting...

[Gerryman Ts125]

Gerry, if you quote me, please quote me.

Carl Sagan was often right, but you're comparing apples & pears. Here, the topic was wrt the age of earth (4.5e9 years), not wrt the age of the universe (13.8e9 years), and as I said, I used Lucy (the first recognised homonoid, 6e6 years ago) as the start, but you might want to use Homo Habilis (aka the handy man, he's on this forum too; 3e6 years). Do the maths as you like, but it's never 2 seconds.


I had figured Long Way Round would be better fitting...

Carl's said 'I'm trying my best to dumb it down a bit, most people are not really dumb are they, well sue me'.


So, only quoting Carl, it comes from my junior space encyclopaedia. Or my brain puffs.

Sorry for mugging your quote, I made it shorter, as it can be viewed above (or previous thread)

[Puffs]

Soooo... COP26 in Glasgow has finished and produced a text, in addition to significant emissions of CO2. The text states that the parties will endeavour to do this, that & the other to keep cool and particularly honour the rights of just about everyone, except of course those of tax-paying MZ riders. When reading through it I got the strong impression there must be quite a bit of the EU in there, or at least some of their wordsmiths.

Will the pact help? I'd be surprised. Why so vague? Because everybody want something else, and fights his own turf. As outline earlier.

Sure, some good intentions will reduce the impact of human emissions, but we're already with way too many, and the pact says everybody has rights (as they have, whatever it means), and with 15 or 20 billion souls on starship Earth it simply means that we all have equal rights to shared misery. In the most optimistic case those good intentions will serve to reduce the first bottleneck, so that population can continue to grow till we hit the next bottleneck. Earth is finite & limited, so to me it seems obvious that the amount of people should also be limited too. To what level, required for a long-term balance in the natural processes, is a subject for research & debate, but the only fundamental solution can come from recognising this principle, and working towards it. Yet I cannot find anything on it in the agreed pact. So the pact may help - humanity into misery. Soylent Green here we come.

Let's enjoy our 2T's while we still can.

[Gerryman Ts125]

No law against drinking 2t, unless they that be pass it through Copout 27. Its been a big pile of shi7e anyway. Nothing will be done. If you can't still find yet one more loophole to continue pollute the planet. Then there is no profit in clean air. Weapons manufacturers will just use H2o. Ha Fuc&ing ha, and wars will be settled over a game of cards.

[Andy_C]

What an intersting thread this has evolved into, now that the COP has finished for this year, back to the original question:

Are 2 strokes doomed?

Not in the immeidate future as far as I can see, unless Gretta Turdburger convinces world leaders otherwise.

As regards climate change I really cant see the change being turned around in my lifetime, as I am 61 now, lets say I have another 25 / 30 years tops, really connot see things changing save for EVs.

From a personal point of view I do pretty much everything I can to try and reduce my environmental footprint - switching things off, not leaving things on standby, keeping the heating turned dow a little, recycling, taking the pushbike out for short journeys, LED lighting in the home / garage etc etc.

As suggested earlier our 2T's are insignificant compared to what industry are doing, and whilst we are encouraged to consume more and more - for example do we REALLY need a new mobile phone every few years, or a new television set / radio etc, anything we do as individuals makes hardly any difference except make you feel like you are trying your best.

In the meantime ringa ding ding...........

[Gerryman Ts125]

As we have all said no biggy. 2t's aren't dead yet, maybe soon though.
I remember reading my 2000 ad, comic in my modern studies class, during secondary school.
A Judge Dredd story in my favourite weekly stood out to me in the late 70's (I also bought, the Plug, The Topper, Beano, Commando, How it works and Celtic view. OK I was a paperboy, and my aunt and uncle gave me a discount, so sue me)

Well Joe Dredd, goes to a smokotorium (His boss told him to) where junkies can smoke anything. He kills a couple of crims, but one escapes in his old oil burner. So Joe and Co, chase after they, on their hover bikes (nuke powered) and catch and kill him (easy they had lawgivers) they get his antique pile distroyed but if my memory does not deceive me. There where people driving lots of old transport in that cell (or cells).

The judged, where killed if their transport did not have a way of converting their smog mobiles.
But then also, could just fine them.
Its pretty much like today, apart from, we're all almost 22 years into the future of Dredd. But future of what??

[Puffs]

I came across another titbit of information relevant to this thread.

It may have been said or alluded to in the past, but if the objective is being green, you should include all resource use and emissions of an article, over it's entire lifecycle. This is often forgotten, and people like to think 'Look how green I am, driving this 0-emission car! All that climate change is certainly not due to me. I have done my bit for my 7 children*, and I am on the right side of history!', and car manufacturers are happy to quote extremely low (or 0) values for CO2/km for hybrid (or electric) vehicles.

But of course the real emissions very strongly depend on how the power to drive that 'green' vehicle** is generated. If it is generated from coal/oil/gas, the real CO2/mile might actually be higher, because then the emissions of the power plant should also be allocated to the 'green' vehicle. As should the emissions & resources used for constructing that power plant.

And even if that electric energy is generated by wind or sunshine, it is still not quite without emissions or resource use: those (pretty huge) wind turbines have to be produced, transported, installed, maintained and recycled, and for an honest comparison, the resources and emissions associated with that should also be included. And similar for solar cells. And of course also for the electric vehicles, and particularly their huge battery blocks and the (rather quick) recycling thereof. These matters are commonly ignored.

The point is that also the emissions and resources required for the production of the vehicle should be taken into account, and this is where we, riding our somewhat geriatric MZs, win. All the resources and emissions for the production of those were done in the past. They are so called 'sunk costs'. Nothing we do can bring those back, and Earth has already endured & absorbed those emissions.

Now here comes the titbit: a study has been done at the Japanese Kyushu university, to investigate the effect of longer car life, or early replacement, and the conclusion is that extending car lifetime and first-owner possession length can reduce overall emissions more than accelerating replacement. See https://www.kyushu-u.ac.jp/en/researches/view/218 .
If you want to be green: continue driving your car with an internal combustion engine; this is greener than replacing it by a new electric vehicle.

So, taking a small leap, I think we can say that riding our MZ's is actually a very green thing to do. Governments planning to stop us doing so, should be aware that such plans only increase pollution & resource use.

*: Called: David (aged 33), Sophie (31), Donata (28), twins Victoria and Johanna (26), Egmont (22), and Gracia (21).
**: Which is actually more than for conventional internal combustion vehicles, because the conventional ones are lighter.

[Andy_C]

Puffs.

You might find this interesting.

https://brandnewtube.com/watch/unobtani ... jQylA.html

[Gerryman Ts125]

My Great, great, grand mother, once said to me 'Everything pollutes. Now how much damage it does, and for how long. That has to be addressed by the people eventually'.

That was in 1969, just before the moon landing. Now the ring around the planet 22:000 miles up. Is full of non corroding dangerous metallic pap.

And some recent scientific working stuff, that is of some use until that wears out or is superceded.

At that time she also told me 'The Clangers' lived in the clouds above our tenements roof.

And I believed they were real, and they recycled the space pap.

_20211125_211416.JPG (10.44 KiB) Viewed 3952 times

[Puffs]

Andy, thanks for sharing Mr. Mills views in https://brandnewtube.com/watch/unobtani ... jQylA.html .
I very much agree with much of what he says, as you gathered from my previous post.

But not with everything; some comments:

- Yes, PE cells & wind turbines are near the theoretical maximum, but we can get more output by simply placing more. So the argument that those technologies are at their maximum output, simply does not hold. However, I do not want to live near a wind turbine. Of course there are always solutions, but not all solutions are equally desirable.
- Hydrocarbon supplies are definitely NOT 'almost inexhaustible'. In fact, the easiest hydrocarbons have already been produced. It is true that natural processes produce new hydrocarbons, but at a much much lower rate than we are consuming them. Hence we are, also in this field, depleting what we have. If we want to achieve balance, we'd have to reduce our hydrocarbon consumption very significantly. And find alternatives.
- And I am not sure his cost comparison between a modern oil/gas well and a wind turbine holds. But yes, from an overall life cycle cost perspective, conventional hydrocarbons will still win hands down. Both in financial costs, and probably as well in environmental costs. And while the easy oil is gone, new developments & more expensive development techniques will give access to new hydrocarbons, but nevertheless: it is finite. There is only so much in the cookie jar.

And this is the fundamental issue that also Mr. Mills does not address. Yes, I agree with him that for now conventional should not be relegated to the 'unsustainable', 'bad' and 'villain' corner, and that there is a maximum in how efficient we can do things, but I disagree with him in that I think that continuing as we do now will become quite unpleasant. It is certainly no long-term solution. Earth really is finite, and we do have to accept that, and deal with it.

So we have to use less, make less, do less. Mankind should strive to achieve balance with its environment. Earth is finite, but it is a dynamical system, and the only long-term solution can come from living in a balance with it. A chosen, new balance, not necessarily the historical balance. But it will be required to reduce our impact on our environment, so use/make/do less. In overall terms, for all of mankind. We can achieve that by each of us consuming less, or by being with fewer of us - what do we want?


The forecast tails off in the 12 billion souls range by the year 2100, but that is because of all sorts of assumptions, expectations, and hopes. That is not reality, and not necessarily reliable - it might be more. I think we have to accept that there are simply not enough resources, not even when using all the best/modern technologies, to have such numbers of people live on earth, with the quality of live that we have been used to. There are simply not enough cookies in the jar.

On the 'what do we want' question, it's the question we should ask ourselves. But I have low hopes we will, not seriously. I suspect we'll simply continue on our path, driven by the characteristics that served us so well over our evolutionary development, unable to change quick enough. Led by a woman with 7 children (yes, those were the names of Mrs. Von der Leyen's children). Well, some of us are.
Others are led by a man with 7 children.