The sun is dead!! Mini iceage???

Could explain why we haven't had the "April Showers" we used to always have up to about 2 or 3 years ago. Sunshine and downpours.

Could explain why now we get winter and straight to Summer.

When you want to fertilise the lawn ye can't because there's no bloody rain!

You’d know if it was hot and unusual the media would be all over it but cold events are not news worthy.

I would be far more concerned with all the plastic entering the Oceans and the food chain than some CO2 in the Atmosphere + the PM 2.5 from Diesel exhaust, this is having a much greater impact with no sign of the Government tackling this by reducing tax on Petrol and making Diesel much more expensive and also new diesel cars, they still have a Co2 based tax system and this is ridiculous as Co2 is a non toxic gas in the environment and harmless to human health and good for plants, trees etc but oh no they still allow new diesel cars with no extra taxes and penalise the Person buying the cleaner Petrol car, you couldn't make the sh1t up if you tried.

The Global temps have hardly moved in relation to increased Co2, sure weather patterns have changed somewhat but this can be linked to past solar minimum and I expect we will see more and more chaotic weather events the longer the Sun sleeps.

Nabber wrote: »

It's a system based on the efficiency of diesel vs petrol, the deficiency has changed with increased technology particularly in the hybrid market.

No it's not a system based on efficiency it's a system based on a tax created to make Ireland do what the rest of Europe were doing for fear of looking bad for not doing the same.

Nabber wrote: »

France tried to change abbeit after people bought diesel as it was long touted as the lesser evil of combustion engines, I would say in general it wont be too easy for have a model shift from pro diesel to pro petrol.

You're correct it won't be as easy because it would mess everything up, first tax was based on ending CC, next on Co2 and to change it to proper pollution tax would mean another change. So the best way is to electrification, as an ev owner for 5 and a half years I wouldn't go back to Petrol or Diesel again, the range is good enough now, 400 odd kms is the new norm from 100 Kms back in 2011. The cost needs to come down more + there needs to be more EV models to choose + there needs to be a lot more of the fast DC public chargers installed, the Government are not doing much here and the ESB are seriously dragging their heals.

Nabber wrote: »

I'm against taxation to deter consumers, they generally tend to be a working class tax like tobacco and alcohol. If there is justified concern for the nations health then ban them.
There is also no indication that tax deters consumers. Education and alternatives work a whole lot better.

Tax does change people's habits, for instance, over night when the Co2 tax system was introduced there was a substantial shift to much higher polluting diesel cars.

Hybrids are fine but they are old tech, for instance, there is not much difference to Toyota's Hybrid system since 2004, they're still using tiny NiMh batteries, the greatest change has come from tweaking the ICE not from the hybrid system and their main source of power is still the ICE so they consume mostly Petrol.

Electrics on the other hand can use the ever increasing amount of Green electricity on the grid + the electricity doesn't have to be refined from oil like Petrol and diesel which consumes a large amount of energy.

We all know what VW did to fool people into thinking their Diesels were clean, of course this was much more of an issue in the USA where their emissions standards are far higher than in the E.U, it wasn't just VW of course, then we had the car tests, former NEDC which was a farce and allowed the car manufacturers build cars that were much higher polluting than should have been because the test system didn't reflect actual real driving.

The Amount of PM 2.5 and Nox emissions from cars would be incredibly higher in the E.U than allowed in the USA if the car manufacturers selling cars in the E.U had to adhere to the same standards years ago diesels would have been banned years ago.

So my gripe is that there is still nothing happening to stop the sale of these diesel cars in Ireland by making new Diesels taxed much higher, for instance, VRT on new diesels should reflect the fact that they are the most polluting form of transport available, tax on Petrol should be lowered and increased on Diesel.

So many People buying new diesels to drive around town and cities which is the worst place and form of driving for Diesels when they are at their most inefficient and highest polluting.