Richards: F1 aero excessive and irrelevant

[djos]

This is to my mind nothing but sour grapes from Richards, as he keeps failing to get back to the pit-babes himself.

As for the "CO2-threat", it's just the biggest hoax since the "Ozon layer-threat", or perhaps the "Acid rain-threat"?

Im not going to address your co2 or acid rain comments but your "Ozone layer-threat" is very real here is Australia!

I live in Adelaide and back when I was a kid (pre teen - im 34 now so 80's) us kids could lark about to our hearts content in the hot summer sun and get a nice tan from a couple hours of exposure. Now we get burnt in 30mins even on a nice 21 degree C day all due to the thinned out ozone layer over Antarctica and southern Australia!

This was driven home to me when holidaying in Thailand a few weeks ago, we were spending all day by the pool with no sunscreen and All I got was a nice tan - if I did the same in Adelaide I would have been hospitalised from sun-stroke combined with serious burns.

[WhiteBlue]

As for the "CO2-threat", it's just the biggest hoax since the "Ozon layer-threat", or perhaps the "Acid rain-threat"?

Sure if you don't care what will happen in the next 20 years.

[xpensive]

For those who bother to look beyond what news-journos, as well as scientists tooting their own horn for more grants,
are yelling, it is quite obvious that temperature has gone up and down in both long and short cycles over the millenniums.

Besides, we have only had reliable measurements for the past 150 years or so, but it is also obvious that a lot of statistics against global warming is being left out of the PC-discussion. For an xample, average temperatures in North America's inland has been reduced with 2-3C over the past 50 years, when the CO2 increase should have been the worst.

And in time for the climate-conference in Copenhagen, Scandinavia has its best winter in years, -10C and plenty of snow. Spot-market price for electricity is off the clock however, when politicians listening to the "environmentalists" have shut down some of our nuclear power-plants to try and replace them with windmills, which produces zip in winter conditions.

[WhiteBlue]

For those who bother to look beyond what news-journos, as well as scientists tooting their own horn for more grants, are yelling, it is quite obvious that temperature has gone up and down in both long and short cycles over the millenniums.

You fail to mention that those temperature changes went along with huge changes of the ocean level that would make big parts of the world inhabitable. Beside some very small changes can be enough to make drastic impact on "local" wether patterns. Can you imagine what would happen to Europe if the Golf stream gets disrupted or diverted into another direction? There are similarly sensitive wether phenomena in Asia with the monsoon rain falls. If such patterns are disrupted a billion people could face catasthrophal changes to their living conditions. The early signs of higher seas due to melted glaciers and pole ice caps are here. Just take notice of the cost that London, the Netherlands and Venice face to keep the higher water out. That is nothing compared to the consequences in India or Bangladesh. Alpine regions like Switzerland, Austria, France and Italy will face huge bills for coping with the erosion problems of receding glaciers and changes to their water systems. The speed at which glaciers are melting is well documented and the connection to average global temperature increase is known.

[xpensive]

As I said, climates as well as ice-ages has come and gone over the millenniums, Greenland is one recent xample,
but there's simply no sustainable proof that CO2 levels in the atmosphere has more than a miniscule effect on that.

Variations in Earths path around the sun, changes in earth-axis angle, cosmic radiation and sunspots changes are certain to have a far and away bigger impact on the climate if you ask me.

But the PC-propaganda is so overwhelming, remember the drowning polarbears in Al Gore's movie? Not an eye was dry.
Only he forgot to mention there are five times more of those animals today than in the sixties, while they have survived as a species for thousands of years during which time temperature in Arktis has been much higher than today's.

[outer_bongolia]

X,

I have agreed with you on quite a lot of topics, but you are extremely off on this one...

Besides, we have only had reliable measurements for the past 150 years or so, but it is also obvious that a lot of statistics against global warming is being left out of the PC-discussion. For an xample, average temperatures in North America's inland has been reduced with 2-3C over the past 50 years, when the CO2 increase should have been the worst.

And in time for the climate-conference in Copenhagen, Scandinavia has its best winter in years, -10C and plenty of snow.

Actually, global warming will have a three step cycle in northern hemisphere:
Step 1) Colder winters: the melting snow will supply extra cold water to north Atlantic, resulting in winters to be colder than normal. Summers will get hotter.
Step 2) Warmer winters: as the Arctic and Greenland ice sheets get smaller, winters will just get warmer and warmer, until...
Step 3) Northern Ice Age: the Gulf Stream will stop due to the supply of fresh water from north and the lack of hot water will turn all northern Europe and Eastern United States into a nice little ice bowl.

So, yip.. In our lifetime we will be seeing colder and colder winters and warmer summers. Get used to that.
And yip.. It is definitely our doing. I don't see aliens dumping CO2 into the atmosphere..

[Saribro]

It is definitely our doing.

Heh, it's going to decimate the human population regardless of the cause. :)

[xpensive]

So, yip.. In our lifetime we will be seeing colder and colder winters and warmer summers. Get used to that.
And yip.. It is definitely our doing. I don't see aliens dumping CO2 into the atmosphere..

Without argument, the worlds climate is continously changing, the last warm period between ice-ages before this one, some 120 000 years ago, was much warmer than now with a sea-level 5 meters above today's.
With the last ice-age, sea-level fell 125 meters with the forming of ice. This we know.

But there's still nothing to prove that the last century's CO2 emissions is the culprit in any major way.
If people would bother to read my posts?

[WhiteBlue]

Back on topic I still think it makes more sense to use other fields of competitive advantage than aerodynamics.

[Ciro Pabón]

In short: excessive, yes. Irrelevant, no.

Actually, I dare to say: are you kidding me? How do you win a race in F1?

By downforce, that's how you win. I don't know if aerodynamic science is applicable to production cars (duh), but I do know it's applicable to racing. The square exponential factor in velocity vs drag equations takes care of it.

On a side note (most threads are a long side note):

CO2 denial, x? Isn't that penalized by law in some european countries?

Acid rain forest: you will get a sunburn if you stand under its "foliage", even if you're not in Australia. The way acid rain has been "managed" is the best example of how it takes a century to convince skeptics: you wait until they are dead... then they're finally convinced


Now, let's put some throttle into the thread:

Juicy article on some acid comments (ha, ha!) by Wirth about Patrick Head:

Wirth hits The Head of Williams

The season hasn't started, Virgin is not a team (yet!) and we have another nice fight to watch. Isn't F1 wonderful?

Remarkable remarks:

"He (Head) has also unwisely invested in two wind tunnels which are a bit archaic."

Archaic Head?

"I can tell you right now how fast our car will go around Barcelona - I won't, but I can."

Hmmmm.... Wirth has done things in ALMS and IndyCars (yeah, I know, someone will comment about american vs british racing... sigh).

Wirth calls it "Development in the Digital Domain". My translation (I'm not a native english speaker, so I apologize in advance): we don't have money to use a tunnel because Branson is cheap, so we use 1.000 PCs or so.

As for me, I can wait to see Virgin's Barcelona lap times. It will be the deflowering of our outmoded concepts about engineering tests and (maybe, maybe) a resounding confirmation to Richard's proposition, echoed by WB.

Yeah, why should we work on testing where you have to get dirt your hands?

It sounds a bit like Enron creative accounting. Remember Enron? The bright kid in the block, they called it.

It also reminds me of reality shows (motto: more real than real life). British Idol anyone?

As always, let's do it the engineer's way: wait and see (unless we can digitally reproduce Virgin's results through the year: that would be an accomplishment in the Digital Domain).

At first sight it smells like bull manure, but you never know, don't you? Isn't Wirth urged by Branson's need to have the largest ehem, "tool in the block"? Perhaps, perhaps not. Dreaming costs nothing.

Stop sign at Ferrari's Maranello legendary entrance: who will win next year? The dozen artisans that produce by hand the works of art called Ferrari engines or the savvy 120 engineers that play Solitaire at Branson's shiny PCs?

[xpensive]

Actually, honorable moderator, I listened to a couple of climate-talibans (a "scientist" and a "moderator") the other day,
when they quite seriously discussed if climate-skeptics should be allowed to voice their heretic opinions in public.

Nick Wirth-less, without his friendship with MrM, he would have died with his own stupid Simtek-effort in 1994. I think.

[xpensive]

A quarter of a century ago, like when you were young and handsome Ciro, it was predicted that all the Scandinavian forests would die due to the "Acid-rain", why "evironmentalists" collected egg-shells to drop in the lakes.
Must have worked, because no forests ever died.

[WhiteBlue]

In short: excessive, yes. Irrelevant, no.

Actually, I dare to say: are you kidding me? How do you win a race in F1?

By downforce, that's how you win.

Not if the level of downforce is limited by regulation and is equal for all participants. Instead we have 40 pages of rules that change every year. The downforce isn't irrelevant but messing around with it all the time is. In short, back to school for all those who did not read the thread.

[Ciro Pabón]

Well, X, acid rain was managed: I think the way it was handled shows how CO2 should be managed. It was an experiment worth looking.

History of acid rain in the US

So, "since the 1990s, SO2 emissions have dropped 40%, and according to the Pacific Research Institute, acid rain levels have dropped 65% since 1976", that explains why there are no dead forests around you. You can say thanks to four persons: Herbert Bormann, Robert Pierce, Gene Likens and Noye Johnson.

They said: "Hey, stop arguing and let's check some facts".

You know, you will always have catastrophic arguments around you: "The world is going to end this time". On the other side, if I'm allowed to say so, we lack people that thinks about the consequences of their actions: "The world is going to be here forever, no matter what you do".

Puh-leeze, let's have some perspective: Top ten ways to destroy the planet

In the end, let me assure you that I share Carlin's look on the environment:

I'm not one of these people who is worried about everything...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c[/youtube]

So, let's be cool, but let's not freeze. We are (well, at least I consider myself to be) a huge part of the "self correcting system". Let's be moderated...

Same kind of look, I'd say, goes for digital vs experimental engineering. Let's brush the zealots point of view aside, no matter which side they're in.

Those of you that play football (american or european) know the old adage: "You have to raise your head and look at the far end of the field".

Raise your sight, watch the "long term play". The truth is in the middle, rest assured.

WB, I think the main thing people competes for in F1 is for a better floor design and a good engine. Kill both (one is almost dead) and you'll kill the little passion left in racing engineering.

However, hey, I'm latino, I can understand why people could have a different point of view, even if I emphatically differ. What are you going to do if you freeze engine design and regulate downforce? Commercial logos and paint design, perhaps that's all what we could have left to fight for.

You know, I don't see a huge difference between rationality and feelings. To me, engineering is an art, perhaps the most beautiful and difficult one to exercise, so, the solutions you arrive to have to come from your soul, from your heart, as much as from your brain. Just like when you race. Let's give a wide berth to computing, but let's experiment a little. Both are fun and enlightening. Allow me to quote myself:

The wise engineer is told about Tao and follows it. The average engineer is told about Tao and searches for it. The foolish engineer is told about Tao and laughs at it.

If it were not for laughter, there would be no Tao.

[bjpower]

sorry to sound like a tit but...
what has benefit has soccer brought the world which spends more than f1 each year.
american football, baseball. hell what has cycling brought to the world. can you tell me the 100 euro bike you buy has any relation to the CF racing bikes in the tour de france? should they be forced to race on mountain bikes?


why is it motor sport has to suffer.
i would bet the farm if you took the footprint of everyone that goes to a soccer match over each weekend and compared it to that of F1 it would be a hell of alot higher.
ya i want to see more interesting tech in motor sport. but I'm sick of this crap of its motor sports responsibility.
I drive a car that gets 45.5 mpg how many soccer fans can say that.
hell how many soccer players can say that!
leave my sport alone!!!
If your going to change it, change it to make it better. not because you want to be seen doing something, case and point the kers system.
i posted a topic along time ago along the lines has the failure of the kers system proved the prius is a bucket of crap. the response i got was no but the rules for the kers system make it pointless.
ps. I like the aero i find it interesting.

again sorry for the rant. im just sick of this green crap being used as an excuse for everything. ( before you give out about that last comment look up the irish green party )
If you want to combat climate change, use less heating and electricity, drive more efficiently, buy an efficient car, plant trees etc.
but leave my sports alone.