CityCyclingEdinburgh Forum » Debate!
Some truths about oil
(21 posts)-
Posted 14 years ago #
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And in many cases using a car just isn't that easy. It's not all open roads like in the adverts.
Looking forward to the Airdrie - Edinburgh trains next month but I suspect it will still be cheaper to load wife and weans into the car. It shouldn't be.
Posted 14 years ago # -
Looking forward to the Airdrie - Edinburgh trains next month but
you should take one [on your own] and check out what they have done with the cycle track that has been reclaimed by the railway
if all the folds started to use the train to edinburgh regularly then a family railcard might make journeys more viable I suppose?
We used to take a taxi from Balerno into Waverley with various pushchairs, travel cots, car seat/rocker things and set up camp in the London train - sometimes it was quiet and the whole journey was a pleasure [well until past York]. Now we have become too many and we drive. But the train should be a way of removing single occupant cars from the road?
They should convert the water of leith path back to trains then all the mountain bikers could get the train to Balerno, the big brown strip up their backs does look comical when they emerge from the WoL at Bridge Road. Those Roseburn and Trinity paths will be great for the trams too.
Posted 14 years ago # -
The only time I can think of when I use a car on my own is going out for a ruby (when allowed by the management). Even then there is a full car after the ruby because I take everyone home and often pick people up on the way there too.
The memsahib usually warns me about the impending sticker shock whenever I have to fill the tank because I do it so rarely and I get out of touch with the costs of motoring.
I might go for a run along the cycle path over the Festivus break or perhaps in the spring. It's due to reopen on the same day as the railway. There is a problem with the Class 380 trains for the Glasgow - Ayr line, they keep breaking down, and the old Class 334 stock from there is due to be used on the Airdrie - Edinburgh stretch. I'm not sure what the knock on will be for here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_334
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_380
Had a strange dream last night about going from Glasgow to Ayr by roadster at night. I had no cash or cards for a train ticket but didn't think of going to tap my cousin in Paisley nor did I remember that the A77 is pretty empty as far as Kilmarnock these days. I did it from Ayr to Glasgow in the dark once in the early '80s but that was in the morning, left around 0600, and there was no traffic.
Posted 14 years ago # -
the A77 is pretty empty as far as Kilmarnock these days.
that is the route the Co-op Glasgow to Edinburgh 100 mile cycle took this year before turning towards sunshine and civilisation [a quote from The Spurtle - a community newspaper of the Broughton are of Embra]
In your dream - was it windy? [gales I mean not turns]
Posted 14 years ago # -
No, not windy.
Once you get past Newton Mearns it's downhill to the coast.
Posted 14 years ago # -
@Gembo "They should convert the water of leith path back to trains then all the mountain bikers could get the train to Balerno, the big brown strip up their backs does look comical when they emerge from the WoL at Bridge Road. Those Roseburn and Trinity paths will be great for the trams too."
OI! No spoiling a nice easy scenic run by putting expensive infrequent trains on it! ;-p
Most of the comutters I see on the WoL have invested in mudguards, must be the weekend peeps who still have the terribly passe brown facepack and back decoration.
Saw two packs of MTB'ers in Colinton yesterday, to a man soaking wet and filthy, looked most uncomfortable, I have to confess I looked at them and though, "buy/make some crudcatchers ffs!! This is Scotland not California!" :-))Posted 14 years ago # -
Back when I used to have two wheels on my MTB I didn't mind getting generally muddy. It was a brown badge of courage. Even the occasional scratch or scrape was worn with pride.
The skunk stripe wasn't so good.
Posted 14 years ago # -
Mud is good, but as you say, the skunk stripe....
Posted 14 years ago # -
Back to the subject... the article does not cover the impact on the environment that the BP leak has had. I know that the loss of 11 humans is tragic but what about thousands of seabirds, mammals, fish, coral, well just about everything that lives in water in the surrounding area, not only from the oil pollution but the toxic detergents and dispersants used.
Also the pursuit of viable non-mineral lubricants and oil is already having a major impact on the planet in terms of destruction of habitat and thus wildlife to plant oil rich plants and also food shortages/starvation will occur on a vast scale for the same reason... all so that people can drive a car. Sad!
Posted 14 years ago # -
People will have to accept, some time or another, that cars are just not viable. Oil is running out... it is a fact. There is no getting away from it.
This is about the Americans having had it so good for so long, cheap oil and petrol, and now they are whingeing. We all have a responsibility to use our resources sensibly and how it hurts...
I was watching the link about marine life around Scotland that was posted here, and this is the same. Blinkered people with no foresight/insight into the destruction caused by ways of supplying a resource and feeding a need. The sea once so abundant around our shores is now a desert, devoid of life, and fish once so numerous and abundant almost driven to extinction and maybe some have become extinct (we don't actually know), and it has only taken a hundred years of mismanagement to cause it.
Posted 14 years ago # -
But if people can't park their car right at the front door of the shop then how are they going to get food home? There will be a mass famine and food spoiling in the shops!
Posted 14 years ago # -
@kaputnik - I had not thought that one through properly, but surely that would be a good thing? Fewer people.
Actually I think we should be encouraging people to drive, it clearly increases the number of road fatalities and leads to a decrease in the population AND oil runs out faster meaning fewer cars ultimately too - a win, win, win situation.
Posted 14 years ago # -
personally cannot wait for oil to run out
Posted 14 years ago # -
Yeah same here i'd love to be a working class man in the Victorian era. &_&
Posted 14 years ago # -
As long as there's an alternative source of chain-lubricating oils and unavoidably-hydrocarbon-derived-plastic cycle components.
Has anyone ever converted a railway handcar to be powered by pedals? It'd be nice if there was still a means of pedal-powered long-range transport available post-oil-apocalypse when the roads are choked with fuel-less cars.
Posted 14 years ago # -
I think its bringing in a whole new era of engineering, and all those mothballed super efficient projects that were hidden by the oil companies over the years will start to come into play. It will be considerably better than the Victorian era, maybe.
Posted 14 years ago # -
Adrian Bebb, from Friends of the Earth Europe, added: "The scale of the damage that European countries will cause with their biofuels plans is now clear - forests and nature will be destroyed on a shocking scale to fuel our cars. The resulting release of climate-damaging greenhouse gases will make biofuels a worse polluter than fossil fuels."
http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/topstories/Greens-open-fire-on-Leith.6620315.jp
Posted 14 years ago # -
Has anyone ever converted a railway handcar to be powered by pedals?
Not quite converted, but an episode of Scrapheap Challenge built human powered rail vehicles. One went for an option of 4 bikes driving an axle through the cassettes (so each rider could vary their gearing to suit). The other went for a giant hamster-wheel like arrangement with them running around inside.
The bicycle option won hands down, although I think by the end only 2 of the bikes were still connected to the axle and functional.
Posted 14 years ago # -
In fifty years when we have commercial grade Fusion power i'll agree we're done with oil till then all these super efficient projects are just tinkering on the fringes. Oil, Gas and Coal will continue to provide the bulk of our energy needs.
Our electricity is mostly Natural gas at about 40% coal for the last 5 years Coal about 35% and about 15-20% from Nuclear, the balance a mix of oil products and renewables. The largest is burning wood and waste at about 3%. Solar/Wind/Other comes in about 1-1.5%. We'd need to cover the country in wind farms to meet the UK's current electricity demand and that ignores that however we plan to power our transport will have to be electrically generated if we're not going to burn oil. Lets be realistic bikes and trains aren't going to cover all our needs just as they didn't pre IC engines.
The oil companies didn't need to bury anything, people naturally gravitate to what is cheapest/easiest that for the foreseeable future is oil/hydrocarbons.
Don't get me wrong cutting our demand for hydrocarbons is a worthy goal and i know that won't be achieved by a silver bullet but lets be clear oil for transport isn't going any where and hydrocarbons for electricity doubly so.
Posted 14 years ago # -
"
Graham Strouts (@Skepteco)
23/06/2013 14:43
Shale oil & gas reserves "overestimated by a minimum of 100% and by as much as 400-500%..." http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/earth-insight/2013/jun/21/shale-gas-peak-oil-economic-crisis"
Posted 12 years ago #
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