03/12/2006
FEATURE BY MIKE LAWRENCE
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Hardly a day goes by without us being reminded of global warming, green issues, pollution, saving the planet and so on. The trouble is that some of the issues have been confused. Not very long ago, we put lead in petrol and that was not a Good Thing. I can remember when every industrial city in the UK would have periods when smoke from chimneys could not escape because of the weather. Thousands died every year because of air pollution, but not much attention was paid until London suffered smog in the early 1950s and the death rate through respiratory illness shot up.
Ella Fitgerald could sing, A Foggy Day In Old London Town and be believed. No Sherlock Holmes movie could do without the fog. It was once a feature of the place, but has not been for half a century.
The Clean Air Act was passed in parliament and things got better. In the 1960s, it was proposed to clean St Paul's Cathedral of all its encrusted soot and, of course, there were those who protested. They argued that St Paul's had acquired the shite honestly, being in an industrial city. The soot was part of the history of the building though Sir Christopher Wren probably did not have soot in mind when he designed the building.
There are cities where smog is a major problem and the motor car is a contributory factor. I believe that Los Angeles is one, Athens is another. When the British parliament introduced the Clean Air Act, the main problem was the burning of coal, but there were alternative energy sources and coal fired power stations could be sited away from cities. When it comes to the motor car, we do not have a viable alternative to oil.
Toyota and Honda have each produced hybrid cars. DaimlerChrysler has been working for years on hydrogen fuel cells and has made enormous progress. Within the last couple of weeks, BMW and Honda have both announced evaluation programmes using hydrogen.
BMW will lease 100 7 series saloons with two fuel tanks, one housing liquid hydrogen, the other petrol. To make hydrogen a liquid, it has to be reduced to minus 253 degrees Celsius and that consumes a lot of energy. Honda is to lease the CFX, which has a fuel cell. It is the second such experiment by Honda, but this time the fuel cell is a Honda product.
Both the BMW Hydrogen 7 and the Honda CFX are claimed to have zero emissions, which is a good thing. A problem is that the hydrogen is obtained from natural gas which, like oil, is a finite resource. There is no shortage of hydrogen, two parts in three of water is hydrogen (you and I are mainly made of water) it is the energy required to separate it which is the sticking point.
Hybrid cars sound okay on the surface, but there are the batteries. Energy is consumed in the making of them and then there is the matter of disposal. Honda guarantees the batteries in its hybrid for ten years and that means a nine year old car is worth half the square root of damn all. When you and I buy an old car, we take a punt. It may blow up next day or serve us for years, we buy in hope. A car with a boot full of batteries which you must replace signals otherwise, it won't go does not do it for me. Cameron Diaz does many things for me, buying her old Prius is not among them.
Pollution has been connected to global warming, but I am not convinced the two are as closely connected as some people claim. Global warming is a fact. In the UK, last winter was the warmest on record. Our recent autumn is the warmest since records began in 1731.
I live on the south coast of England, so the climate is pretty mild. We used to get a fall of snow most winters. It was not what a Canadian would call snow, but it was several inches deep and hung around for a couple of weeks. We have not had more than the odd flurry since 1987, though local vineyards are flourishing.
England is not the first place you think of when wine is mentioned, but there is a growing number of vineyards within 20 miles of the south coast. On the other hand, the Romans were able to establish vineyards 200 miles to the north which suggests the climate was warmer. There were times in the 17th Century when the River Thames froze in London, and the Thames has a strong tide. Fairs were held, coaches plied their trade on the river and oxen were roasted whole on the ice.
The ancient Egyptians were able to build pyramids because the land was so fertile that the economy could stand it. Contrary to popular belief, the pyramids were not built by slave labour, the workers were paid, fed, and housed.
Today, the pyramids stand in desert, but they were built in lush land and so were the cities which archaeologists are still discovering. You cannot build a city unless you have a sure supply of food.
Whether or not there is a connection between carbon emissions and global warming is still unproven. I know that some scientists believe it to be the case, but I also know that the River Thames supported ice fairs and, in the way these things are measured, it was yesterday.
When Lord March proposed using the Goodwood Motor Circuit for Historic racing, I was in the thick of it. The Goodwood Revival Meeting has been a huge success, but first it was a local issue, the District Council had to agree. Five of us got together to back the proposal. We did not know each other, we each responded to a letter in the Chichester Observer. We met in a pub and it was apparent that we all brought particular skills. The lawyer was voted Chairman and I was put in charge of press and PR. Yup, I am the guy responsible for bringing motor racing back to Goodwood.
I learned first hand about the eco weenies, the sub group who just have to protest. Don't get me wrong, protesting is an honourable tradition. I hope the day never comes when I give up protesting. Protest can be the stone on which the steel of truth can be sharpened. It was protest which gave us the rights that some of us enjoy, though I will be convinced about votes for women only when every woman's magazine drops horoscopes.
Motor racing at Goodwood, we were told, would cause air pollution and traffic problems. I do not recall the same arguments being raised about the Goodwood horse track, yet all the nags arrive by road, and so do the spectators and jockeys.
One thing that really pissed me off is that protesters were called 'environmentalists' as though we who supported motor racing were unaware of our environment.
Motor racing is an easy target for the eco weenies, they are not so keen about arguing over the scandal of bottled water. Coca Cola tried selling bottled water in the UK, under the name, 'Dasani', and got its fingers burnt. Dasani was regular London tap water and then Coca Cola 'purified' it. Their process caused Dasani to be withdrawn from sale because it was unfit for human consumption. How we all laughed. Journos dug around and found that 40 per cent of all bottled water comes from the tap.
Some bottled water does have a distinct taste, but mainly that is due to it being served chilled. No water tastes so wonderful that it is worth the energy to bottle it and transport it vast distances. It is, however, worth the effort because there are so many gullible people and they are the very people most likely to bang on about the environment.
The one time we get close to oil is when we fill our cars, so the car becomes a Bad Thing. I am writing this on a wooden table and oil was used in its manufacture, tables do not grow on trees. Energy was used to bake the bricks in my house, the glass in the windows, and the paint on the walls. Oil is a constituent of the plastic from which my keyboard was made. It's a fair bet that the electricity that powers my PC, and allows you to read this piece, involved the consumption of a finite fossil fuel.
A prominent politician in the UK recently made a big point of cycling to Parliament, he was Mr Eco friendly for as long as it took journalists to work out that all of his papers, and his suit, were following him in a car, and there were other cars filled with security agents. If you are in a car which has to follow a cyclist, who is not Lance Armstrong, the fuel consumption goes through the roof.
The car is the villain, yet manufacturers have worked tirelessly to reduce fuel consumption and to ensure that their products can be recycled. The motor industry deserves credit for what it has achieved. Not far from where I live is the Rolls Royce factory and there are few more 'green' plants anywhere. If you drive in, and they like people to drive in, you would never imagine that cars were being assembled. If you didn't know, you might guess an IT or pharmaceutical company. There are artificial lakes, which both make the place look pleasant and also serve as heat exchangers for the air conditioning system. Flowers grow on the roof, the saplings are maturing into trees.
A Rolls Royce Phantom is beyond my reach, but its construction uses not a great deal more materials and energy than a couple of inexpensive mid sized Korean imports. It is not the material which is an issue, it is what is done with it that matters. Switzerland has to import steel, but it imports a ton of steel and exports Rolex watches.
The FIA is actively looking for 'green' technology which can be demonstrated in motor racing. Everything comes down to energy. Energy is produced when a car brakes and there are ways of storing that energy and reusing it. At present this means converting the energy into electricity and storing it in a battery, which is fine for a hybrid car, but hybrid cars are only one answer to a very complicated question.
A major headache is drawing up the rules. Every formula in motor racing is designed to limit power and speed. At Le Mans this year, Audi came first and third with 5.5 litre turbocharged diesel engines and the only previous time a diesel powered car had run at Le Mans was in 1950 when there was an entry from MAP (Manufacture d'Armes de Paris). It was an interesting machine, mid engined for a start, but it did not finish and I think it was not entered in any other race.
Audi had read the rule book and realised it could gain an advantage with diesel engines. Audi's regular diesel engine programme, for road cars, is unsurpassed so the technology was there. More than once have I heard the comment, 'Who did Audi beat?' My reply is, 'Audi beat everyone who wanted to win Le Mans.' The rules perhaps favoured the diesel option, but the rules are the same for everyone.
Every engineer in F1 wants to be faced with a challenge, it is in the nature of the beast. The problem that the FIA faces is to give them the right, the constructive, challenge. That
means framing the rules so everyone can compete evenly because, primarily, F1 is a competition and a spectacle.
At present, F1 is a conspicuous consumer of resources and that makes it vulnerable to criticism. The FIA is aware of that. Believe me, no body on earth is more aware. The trick is to balance the rules so that new technology can be developed yet does not upset the competitive nature of the sport.
The word for which we are searching is 'harmony' and that is what most of us want, most of the time. We want harmony in our lives.
Mike Lawrence
mike@pitpass.com
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