This is a repeat of a previous reply.
I had a very interesting conversation with my brother over the weekend. Now, he’s a big California liberal, and always very ahead-of-the-curve on all things political. He always seems to know what is going to be happening next in progressive political circles.
We’ve gone at it hammer-and-tong over AGW over the years. He was always a true believer, and I have always been a skeptic, since the 1980s, when I was sitting around the Math Department at Berkeley talking about environmental models and how they could be massively powerful tools for manipulating public policy.
Anyway, my brother was going on about how he wants to buy a Chevy Volt when they come out, and how he thinks the plug-in hybrid will be a revolutionary product. I decided to needle him gently about how the Volt will actually have a larger carbon footprint than a conventional car of similar size if the electricity used to charge it comes from a coal-fired power plant.
He blithely replied that all that carbon stuff was nonsense, and he was really concerned about reducing our nation’s dependence on foreign oil. So if he could run his car off of domestic coal, he was all for that, because this would mean that we would not longer have to support military adventures around the World to secure oil supplies.
Well, I about dropped my beer. A averred that kicking terrorist butt was a good thing in and of itself, and let it go at that.
So, my big prediction is that the Left is going to give up on this AGW business by the end of the year. We are about to experience a “Two Legs Better” moment, where the narrative will suddenly change.
I think people are seeing the writing on the wall and beginning to back away slowly from AGW. They can only ignore the data for so long before the models must be abandoned.
I think the Russian data transcription “error” right before Election Day and the ice sensor “error” right before Inauguration are the last gasps.
As I told a person who was crestfallen when I stated that the earth has COOLED over the last ten years:
“Don’t worry, the true goals remain the same. Whether it’s global warming, the coming ice age, overpopulation, or some other impending disaster, someone will be able to use it to advance the cause of global socialism.”
Socialists have ignored the data on capitalism for 200 years. Read the latest budget. They can ignore reality indefinitely, and they will.
The only question before the house is when the rest of us finally get around to ignoring them.
Except it isn't true. An electric vehicle creates about 20% less CO2 to produce the same amount of energy than a conventional gas-powered automobile.
A couple references to back me up:
Electric Cars and CO2 Emissions
Council hears about electric car impacts on power system
"Kinter-Meyer told the Council that Battelle’s research suggests that between 43 and 73 percent of all the cars and light trucks in the nation today could be replaced by plug-in hybrid electric vehicles without adding new power plants or transmission lines, depending on the time of day that the vehicles would be charged.
If this were to happen, America’s net oil imports would be reduced by 52 percent, the nation’s total emissions of carbon dioxide would be reduced by 27 percent, and the batteries in all of those vehicles would provide an important source of storage capacity that could enhance power-system stability, he said. The amount of carbon-dioxide reduction also depends on the time of day the vehicles are charged, as time of day determines whether more coal or cleaner natural gas is being used to generate electricity."