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Fuel For Thought - 20 mph roads pump up CO2 emissions by 10%
(British) Automobile Association ^ | 25 January 2008

Posted on 05/23/2008 1:30:36 PM PDT by Entrepreneur

Cutting the speed limit from 30 mph to 20 mph on the wrong roads can pump up CO2 emissions by more than 10 per cent1, AA research has discovered. The UK's leading motoring organisation is now warning local authorities that some well-intentioned safety schemes may backfire in environmental terms.

On average, petrol car fuel consumption on longer and relatively free-flowing 20mph urban streets can worsen by 5.8 miles per gallon (1.3 miles/litre). Over a year this will significantly increase CO2 emissions.

In the first piece of research for its new Fuel for Thought campaign, updating widely-used test results from 1999, the AA argues for further detailed research into the environmental impact of 20mph zones - before the more widespread use of the new speed limit.

Even speed humps, although very popular with residents wanting to slow traffic in their street, pump up fuel consumption by 47 per cent when installed on 30 mph roads. Compared to a 20 mph road, speed humps along a 30 mph road increase fuel consumption by 41 per cent.

The AA accepts that targeted 20 mph speed limits in residential areas are popular and improve safety. Along shorter roads with junctions and roundabouts, limiting acceleration to up to 20 mph reduces fuel consumption. However, a 30 mph limit on local distributor roads may be more environmentally-friendly.

Some councils, that are hitting owners of larger vehicles with considerably higher charges for parking and access, may be guilty of hypocrisy if their policies increase CO2 emissions by 10 per cent through blanket and badly-placed 20 mph restrictions.

"Transport and highways planners have little or no official guidance on the environmental impact of 20 mph speed limits. It would be a bitter and unpalatable irony if local authorities, that have targeted owners of larger vehicles with environmental charges, are found guilty of pumping up CO2 emissions through indiscriminate use of 20 mph restrictions," says Edmund King, the AA's president.

"The Green Party has been advocating 20 mph limits across the whole of London, perhaps without realising that this policy would backfire in terms of environmental emissions. We need independent research to ascertain both the safety and environmental implications of 20 mph zones so that authorities don't make a huge and widespread environmental mistake. Researched guidance on 30 mph versus 20 mph limits versus speed humps will help road engineers to make informed decisions on where best to site lower speed restrictions on urban roads."


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: 55mph; climatechange; energy; speedlimit; transportation
ROTFLOL...

Drive faster to save the planet.

1 posted on 05/23/2008 1:30:37 PM PDT by Entrepreneur
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To: Entrepreneur

“Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!”
Sir Walter Scott


2 posted on 05/23/2008 1:33:32 PM PDT by devere
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To: Entrepreneur
THE ACQUITTAL OF CARBON DIOXIDE
by Jeffrey A. Glassman, PhD

ABSTRACT:

"Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the product of oceanic respiration due to the well-known but under-appreciated solubility pump. Carbon dioxide rises out of warm ocean waters where it is added to the atmosphere. There it is mixed with residual and accidental CO2, and circulated, to be absorbed into the sink of the cold ocean waters. Next the thermohaline circulation carries the CO2-rich sea water deep into the ocean. A millennium later it appears at the surface in warm waters, saturated by lower pressure and higher temperature, to be exhausted back into the atmosphere. Throughout the past 420 millennia, comprising four interglacial periods, the Vostok record of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is imprinted with, and fully characterized by, the physics of the solubility of CO2 in water, along with the lag in the deep ocean circulation. Notwithstanding that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, atmospheric carbon dioxide has neither caused nor amplified global temperature increases. Increased carbon dioxide has been an effect of global warming, not a cause. Technically, carbon dioxide is a lagging proxy for ocean temperatures. When global temperature, and along with it, ocean temperature rises, the physics of solubility causes atmospheric CO2 to increase. If increases in carbon dioxide, or any other greenhouse gas, could have in turn raised global temperatures, the positive feedback would have been catastrophic. While the conditions for such a catastrophe were present in the Vostok record from natural causes, the runaway event did not occur. Carbon dioxide does not accumulate in the atmosphere."

http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2006/10/co2_acquittal.html

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The graph above represents temperature and CO2 levels over the past 400,000 years. It is the same exact data Al Gore and the rest of the man-made global warmers refer to. The blue line is temps, the red CO2 levels. The deep valleys represent 4 separate glaciation periods. Now look very carefully at this relationship between temps and CO2 levels and keep in mind that Gore claims this data is the 'proof' that CO2 has warmed the earth in the past. But does the graph indeed show this? Nope. In fact, rising CO2 levels all throughout this 400,000 year period actually lagged behind temperature increases --and by an average of 800 years! So it couldn't have been CO2 that got Earth out of these 4 past glaciations. Yet Gore dishonestly and continually claims otherwise.-ETL

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"The above chart shows the range of global temperature through the last 500 million years. There is no statistical correlation between the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere through the last 500 million years and the temperature record in this interval. In fact, one of the highest levels of carbon dioxide concentration occurred during a major ice age that occurred about 450 million years ago. Carbon dioxide concentrations at that time were about 15 times higher than at present.":
http://www.tcsdaily.com/article.aspx?id=010405M

_______________________________________________________________

FWD:

So, greenhouse [effect] is all about carbon dioxide, right?

Wrong. The most important players on the greenhouse stage are water vapor and clouds. Carbon dioxide has been increased to about 0.038% of the atmosphere (possibly from about 0.028% pre-Industrial Revolution) while water in its various forms ranges from 0% to 4% of the atmosphere and its properties vary by what form it is in and even at what altitude it is found in the atmosphere.

In simple terms the bulk of Earth's greenhouse effect is due to water vapor by virtue of its abundance. Water accounts for about 90% of the Earth's greenhouse effect -- perhaps 70% is due to water vapor and about 20% due to clouds (mostly water droplets), some estimates put water as high as 95% of Earth's total tropospheric greenhouse effect (e.g., Freidenreich and Ramaswamy, 'Solar Radiation Absorption by Carbon Dioxide, Overlap with Water, and a Parameterization for General Circulation Models,' Journal of Geophysical Research 98 (1993):7255-7264).

The remaining portion comes from carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, methane, ozone and miscellaneous other 'minor greenhouse gases.' As an example of the relative importance of water it should be noted that changes in the relative humidity on the order of 1.3-4% are equivalent to the effect of doubling CO2.

http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/

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FWD:

Water Vapor Rules the Greenhouse System

Water vapor constitutes Earth's most significant greenhouse gas, accounting for about 95% of Earth's greenhouse effect (4). Interestingly, many 'facts and figures' regarding global warming completely ignore the powerful effects of water vapor in the greenhouse system, carelessly (perhaps, deliberately) overstating human impacts as much as 20-fold.

Water vapor is 99.999% of natural origin. Other atmospheric greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), and miscellaneous other gases (CFC's, etc.), are also mostly of natural origin (except for the latter, which is mostly anthropogenic).

Human activites contribute slightly to greenhouse gas concentrations through farming, manufacturing, power generation, and transportation. However, these emissions are so dwarfed in comparison to emissions from natural sources we can do nothing about, that even the most costly efforts to limit human emissions would have a very small-- perhaps undetectable-- effect on global climate.

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html

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3 posted on 05/23/2008 1:35:54 PM PDT by ETL
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To: Entrepreneur

Anybody know what the optimum speed is for fuel consumption?
At high speeds the drag pushes up fuel consumption and at low speeds the gearing is too low to get good fuel consumption. The optimum speed is going to vary for different cars but there should be a limited range where it is optimum for driving in the highest gear.
Is it 40 mph, 50 mph?


4 posted on 05/23/2008 1:55:59 PM PDT by expatpat
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To: Entrepreneur
Cutting the speed limit by 33% will increase the number of cars on the road at any given time by 50%. This increase can easily lead to greater delays and increase the number of cars idling vice at 0mpg.

Thus faster speed limits can save gas. 55mph in the U.S. will be a nightmare on Interstates stretches already at or close to capacity.

5 posted on 05/23/2008 3:00:26 PM PDT by SampleMan (We are a free and industrious people, socialist nannies do not become us.)
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