Conflict of interest...

[Bob Gnarley]

Just thought i'd throw this out there for discussion as it's the holidays.

I'm 53 and have been an armchair motorsport fan for as long as i can remember, a sideways Roger Clark in the Escort Mk1 was the hook...I've spent countless happy hours absorbing just about every form of motorsport known to man.

But over the last few years I've taken an interest in climate science, cause and effect etc and the more i learn and understand the more my internal conflict with my love of motorsport grows.

For a while i've been feeling like it's a bit wrong to be watching and therefore supporting it, but it's getting to the point where it's like watching a terminal lung cancer patient smoke a cigarette. I think for me the affair is fading.

Is it just me? Any thoughts?

 

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

It's not just you. This is a risky thing to try to discuss on a motorsport forum (even when it is pretend-cars), just paging @Kenny Paton beforehand, so if this thread takes off, our master-mod is aware of it.

Back to the thread, I feel the same way. Even more when I moved to a bigger city, and live in the middle of it and see what ends up around the windows here after a little while, then thinking that I actually breath in it... It's more than just global climate issues in play. While I do plan to move to a bigger apartment in the same area, I also know that I shouldn't really live here for the rest of my life the way things are now. It just cannot be healthy at all.

I really do enjoy classic cars in racing and rallying, so that is the opposite of what I "should". I do feel like motorsport, with ICE and old cars will have a place for a long time in the future, it's a tiny part of a big problem, so while it would send a signal, it's far from the most important thing to stop or stop following.

Selfishly I wish I was born earlier so I could take part in the 70's and 80's era of motorsport... So, conflict of interest is very very true!

 

[Bob Gnarley]

Thank you for your reply Ole Marius.

Dear reader, this thread is not meant as a trigger or some kind of attack on anyone's lifestyle or some such. The hope is to perhaps provoke some thought and sensible debate.

It's very much from a personal point of view. I believe in live and let live and wouldn't call for anything to be banned or otherwise.

The more I've ignored the "climate debate" and just concentrated on the cold hard science, the more I've realized the vastness of the issues that we are creating for our future generations. It's not a debate anymore, we really need to change our ways.

I haven't got kids but a lot of people do and one day those kids might want have kids and so on and so forth. It's quite clear that the more selfish we are now, the harder their life will be.

This is where the conflict comes in. On an instinctive level, i find things that go fast exciting, always will.

But common sense is pointing out what a vain and self indulgent pursuit it is to fly and ship the various circus's around the globe every year just in order to declare someone champion. It's the kind of wastefulness that we can't afford anymore.

Obviously it's not just motorsport, there are many areas of life that need a bit of a long hard look. But as die hard lifelong motorsport fan i can't help but feel torn to the point of maybe i need to let it go. But then things that fast are exciting...grrr. Conflict!

As i say, not attacking anything here, just wondering if anyone else is getting to feel the same way.

 

[Kenny Paton]

just paging @Kenny Paton beforehand, so if this thread takes off, our master-mod is aware of it

I already was mate.
The title immediately caught my eye.
In our current global circumstance it's a discussion worth having.
I'd hazard a guess that the vast bulk of our members can relate to the opening post, for or against, so hopefully there can be a respectful debate.

 

[jgf]

What we do here is fantasy, neither condoning nor condemning reality. Combat oriented games are quite popular but no sane person wants to go to war. I also enjoy sub sims but have no desire to be a submarine commander.

And consider, many racing series run on alcohol compounds (the cars at least, I hope not the drivers) so are much less polluting; and the amount of pollution contributed by all racing series worldwide is not 1% of what is produced by other cars, trucks, buses, locomotives, aircraft, power plants, etc. Driving a few blocks following a city bus is more disgusting than an entire weekend at a race track.

The very act of living in the modern world contributes to pollution and other environmental issues. Our electricity comes mainly from oil fired, coal fired, nuclear, or hydro plants, all of which contribute negatively to the environment. Our cities purify water for our use ...and what happens to the impurities? What is the total effect of all the concrete and asphalt covering much of our world? We are far from being civilized enough to deal with this and maintain our society.

 

[Ole Marius Myrvold]

What is the total effect of all the concrete and asphalt covering much of our world?

Flooding.

 

[jimortality]

It's all about money! while people are making millions from racing and power then they may talk the talk about the climate but they're not going to give up the money. Also from a selfish view I would be disappointed If all racing went electric, I just don't feel the same about it tbh.

 

[Bob Gnarley]

What we do here is fantasy, neither condoning nor condemning reality. Combat oriented games are quite popular but no sane person wants to go to war. I also enjoy sub sims but have no desire to be a submarine commander.

Thank you man.

I get that it's a big subject for a sim racing site but being mostly motorsport fans here, myself included, i thought it would make a valid discussion topic. And it's just a discussion, not looking to change the world.

And consider, many racing series run on alcohol compounds (the cars at least, I hope not the drivers) so are much less polluting; and the amount of pollution contributed by all racing series worldwide is not 1% of what is produced by other cars, trucks, buses, locomotives, aircraft, power plants, etc. Driving a few blocks following a city bus is more disgusting than an entire weekend at a race track.


The very act of living in the modern world contributes to pollution and other environmental issues. Our electricity comes mainly from oil fired, coal fired, nuclear, or hydro plants, all of which contribute negatively to the environment. Our cities purify water for our use ...and what happens to the impurities? What is the total effect of all the concrete and asphalt covering much of our world? We are far from being civilized enough to deal with this and maintain our society.

Like a slowly growing number of people i've been looking at life with different eyes and considering what changes i can make and what i can live without. And i can't help but see motorsport with the same eyes.

It's not so much on a club or national level where things are trailered around or what the cars put out really, but big internationals like F1 and motoGP etc are bloated juggernauts with the whole shooting match being constantly shipped and air freighted around to the next place with money for 11 months of the year. I mean, if some people want to have a race, fair enough but what's the point of making economies in my own life while supporting such wasteful enterprise.

 

[Bob Gnarley]

It's all about money! while people are making millions from racing and power then they may talk the talk about the climate but they're not going to give up the money. Also from a selfish view I would be disappointed If all racing went electric, I just don't feel the same about it tbh.

I'm think it was somebody on this forum that attended an early Formula E race and spotted the bank of diesel generators powering the event because the host venue couldn't meet the power requirements.

While electric vehicles are an improvement over ICE, they aren't the future. just a stop gap solution till we find something better. Or shrink every aspect of our lives to within cycling distance.

 

[Ruttman98]

I do not feel the excitement/environment paradox when it comes to motorsports. COMBINED, all the local kart tracks*, dirt ovals, drag strips, race circuits, street circuits, hillclimbs, desert rallys, rally raids, endurance races, and their support infrastructure plus even sim racing in our living rooms and hobby caves contribute far less to than the actual forms of fossil fuel power upon which our modern lives rely: heat and electricity generation coupled with bus, auto, train, water, and air travel and transport.

Racing and related hot rodding / auto restoration hobbists are the ORIGINAL recyclers taking tired cars and powertrains and repurposing them in clever ways. Look at all the vintage Detroit iron which resourceful Cubans have managed to keep on the road despite nearly six decades of U.S. embargo.

I do, however, feel the twinge you feel about environmental impact when pursuing my largemouth bass fishing hobby which--at the top tiers--sees 200+ HP outboard motors exhaust spent hydrocarbons DIRECTLY into the water through their propellers. As much as I Iove the roar of a Mercury powerhead at full song, I would like to see more application of EV and fuel cell technology to recreational watersports. Sadly this is probably 50 years distant for even minimal adoption.

When one considers at the horsedrawn world that the internal combustion engine era supplanted, we no longer have the filth and disease of thousands of horses and their excrement and even dead carcasses. Which brings me to horse racing--you would be appalled at the numbers of these beautiful animals are literally ground up for the sake of sport. For every Seabiscuit there are 1000s of thoroghbreds sacrificed on the altar of greed and ambition not to mention harness racing breeds.

*Most environmental activists seem blind (and deaf) to the horrible noise and air pollution produced by gas powered lawn and garden equipment, most of which use ancient and dirty two-cycle ICE tech. I have a cordless electric mower which I value for its quiet operation and lack of poisonous exhaust. It carries the added plus of not needing to and transport gasoline cans inside the passenger compartment of my car. And that's when you can find pure gasoline which does not contain ethanol* which damages fuel system components.

Which leads me to the totally obsession of monoculture yards of bluegrass especially in the U.S. . . . What a massively obscene waste of precious water, human time, fertilzer and chemicals, and financial resources! Beautiful, biodiverse, and locally suited vegetation can be cultivated so much more easily and with more benefit to the eye and to dwindling pollinator populations.

You can see from my diatribe above that the issue of human activity upon the climate is one that should be not just with visceral knee jerk action to ban one group's livelihoods or hobbies**, but with a wholistic approach.

*As a midwesterner, I understand the monetary value of ethanol to farmers in this region, but ethanol production is a subsidized shell game which does not add up on paper. It takes diesel and fertilzer and chemicals--all derived from petroleum plus-to produce corn which would be moral use feeding humans. Add in the heat from natural gas to distill the fuel and there's another sketchy equation.

**Environment Canada effectively scuttled all professional drag racing in that country with a lead fuels** ban. With the stroke of a pen, the nitro methane-burning top fuel dragsters and funny cars which are the kings of the sport were outlawed. That pen cost Canadians millions in revenue from the spectators to the Sanair racing faxility for the NHRA LeGrand National. Compared to gross emitters such as electeical generation, rail, and shipping, the environmental impact of one national event a year would have been negligible.

***General aviation suffered for a time in the U.S. as older planes relied on the higher octane and compression cushioning of tetraethyl lead. I am not privy to the details of that changeover, but I am sure it would have had for A&P mechanics adding hardened valve seats to cylinder heads (or cynically, chemical manufacturers of lead additives which prolong the continued aerial emission of lead!)

 

[jgf]

True, electric vehicles are a stopgap, replacing 100,000 small polluting engines with one large polluting engine to generate the electricity to charge the electric vehicles. Electric cars will not be an environmentally sound option until cleaner ways of producing electricity are instated.

Biodiesel is an option but has its own problems, as does recycled vegetable oil. (https://www.motherearthnews.com/sus...diesel-vehicle-on-vegetable-oil-zmaz07djzgoe/)

Nuclear energy is, in my opinion, still the best option ...but not until energy production is nationalized and no longer run as a for-profit industry. As long as power production is investor owned, "the bottom line" will be the bottom line - build everything as cheaply as possible and charge as much as possible for maximum dividends to the investors. By making the public the investors you will get more efficient operation and lower power costs.

As for auto racing, F1 has never been a cost effective series. If they weren't generating billions of dollars from worldwide marketing all that cost and logistics issues of shipping an entire racing series to a different country every two weeks would be laughable. Some years ago Frank Williams was asked if F1 is about racing or business, he replied "F1 is a big business that happens to go racing every two weeks". Whenever profit is involved all other concerns are secondary.

 

[Bob Gnarley]

Great posts Ruttman & JGF, many thanks.

Part of my impatience with motorsport is that a lot of lip service is paid to how green certain aspects of the sport such as formula E or F1 hybrids are when often they are backward steps.

I don't know if the stats exist for f1 but generally speaking hybrid and electric vehicles are more carbon intensive to manufacture than regular ICE. But that's ok because over the useful lifetime of the vehicle, 8 - 10 years or so, lower emissions mean they come out well in front.

But as you guys know, the useful life of an F1 engine is counted in hours. One season or a few races isn't enough for a hybrid to claw back the manufacturing emissions deficit over an F1 ICE. Just another corporate level knee jerk reaction designed to cool peoples brow and keep them spending without actually doing anything real or tangible.

I don't know about batteries in EV race vehicles but generally EV batteries are very Co2 intensive to produce. So it's likely that a Formula E would fair even worse against its ICE counterpart. Ironic.

When you consider the the emissions involved with a season of top level motorsport, the logistics, visitor flights etc, etc, there is an awful lot that could and should be implemented to actually reduce Co2 emissions. Instead of adding races to the calendar, take one or two off maybe.

But it's motorsport. Gestures are made, nobody cares unless it affects the racing. Carry on as normal. Thankfully we wont be around to explain the importance of all this to our great great great great grandkids. Crickey that would be...er...awkward.