"IMM" wrote in message
Vehicles "are" a very large polluters, especially when they are
concentrated
in cities, where masses of people live. Great progress is being made on
pollution from homes, in insulation standards, boiler efficiency , etc,
yet
there appears no immediate solution to the filthy car.

Sorry!? I think you have that the wrong way round.
The laws on vehicle pollution continue to get tougher and tougher and the
manufacturers have had to comply to continue to sell vehicles. There has
been massive strides in reducing pollution from cars, per mile travelled.
Catalytic Converters, Electronic Engine Control, lean burn engines, two
stage ignition, direct petrol injection, particle traps etc with more to
come. We are significantly reducing overall pollution figures despite a
massive increase in vehicles, now all we need to do is get rid of all those
old polluting buses.

As for central heating, I thought the figures were they produced 80% of the
greenhouse gasses produced in this country.

Technology is there
to make boilers very efficient and very clean burning, at no great cost,
also by increasing insulation standards, a homes emissions can be
drastically reduced. This can be done right now and people wonder why it
is
not being implemented. The car? Well apart from taxing larger engines, not
much at all can be done. There are some advanced concept engines around,
but the big corps have not yet taken up these ideas, tending not wanting
any
change at all.

Not much can be done about cars? What about the exhaust emmissions laws
which have worked amazingly and conuinue to get tougher, the MOT emissions
tests, that's a damn sight more than is happening with central heating.
Some people use boilers that are decades old and with no maintanance.

Fact is... All the major manufacturers and significant others are working
flat out on Fuel Cell engines which produce no pollution except steam.
Meanwhile they continue to develop even cleaner reciprocating engines.
The Hydrogen to run Fuel Cells can be produced using sunlight eventually, to
split water, so then we will be using the energy current account and not
even extra heat will be produced above that the sun provides.


Cars are even dirtier until the engine and exhaust is hot. So, in many
cases, when the car is used to go to Safeway or the school run, the thing
is
hardly up to temperature before being switched off. In this period they
pollute heavily. The current piston internal combustion engine needs
totally replacing.

True but that's as much a social problem. Anyway, see my comments above.

--
Regards
Bob

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