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When people who win elections by manufacturing millions of extra votes tell you that the human race is warming the planet by 1.5 C degrees, you sort of wonder how much of that 1.5 arrived by mail at midnight.

I don’t doubt that the climate today is slightly warmer than it might be if we weren’t on the planet, but the difference is probably smaller than they’re saying, some of the observed warming in recent decades is probably of natural origins. For example, we’ve had quite a few strong El Nino events since about 1980 and those contribute considerably to the upward trend. It also takes a while for the feedback to kick in after many strong solar cycles in the 20th century, and I believe the recent downturn of solar activity is the main reason why we’ve seen more frequent cold weather events in the past few years (like the Texas freeze last winter).

So I take a less alarmist attitude. It would be good over a long period of time to phase out fossil fuel use but we should be doing this gradually with only economically sound alternatives used, not propping up massively inefficient alternative energy sources.

Hybrid cars are probably the better option than all-electric, make the car itself the generator of electric power, not tax the grid — a study in Germany recently showed that electric cars actually have a larger “carbon footprint” than regular cars because of the increased power generation required to fuel them, and the consequences of having to turn to coal to make that happen (the wind farms are just too small a percentage input and too unreliable).

As somebody said, nuclear power should be more utilized too, the environmental movement talks out of both sides of their mouths when they want a greener energy source then want to ban nuclear power. Makes no sense, nuclear power technology has no real connection to weapons of mass destruction which was always the old argument advanced by them.