Point/Counterpoint: The 7 High-Voltage Lies About Electric Vehicles
http://autos.aol.com/article/seven-electric-vehicle-lies
The modern internal-combustion engine is not obsolete, and is one hell of a lot better than its predecessors as far as efficiency and performance go.
BTW, while we're at it, assuming global warming is real, there's not a damn thing we can do about it. For one thing, the excess carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere by human activities over the last 7,000 years will remain there for quite a while because we've removed so much of the world's plant-cover (plants are necessary to draw down and bury CO2). Also, if the Greens somehow realized their fondest wet-dream and removed all internal-combustion engines, electrical-generating plants, and other modern sources of power from the world, they'd have seven billion-plus furiously angry human beings after their asses, armed with just about every sort of weapon you could imagine and more than willing to use those weapons to get revenge on the idiots for taking away relatively clean (or any!) means of heating homes, cooking food, commuting and otherwise traveling, keeping modern hospitals able to do their best work for patients, and all the rest of what we use flameless power for (and could not do with open flame). Yes, we could do many things necessary to our lives with modern nuclear plants and orbital solar collectors now done by oil- and coal-fired plants, electricity, internal combustion, and so on. But not everything. People have to eat, clothe themselves, shelter themselves and their families, and do all the other things that keep body and soul together, and in most cases they can't do it without using hydroelectric plants, methane, propane, coal, gasoline, kerosene, and oil to generate the power to do that. Not all the mainstream media pundits, politicians, and Greens in the world can change that. Nor can they restore the old-growth forests and rain-forests and other plant cover that used to cover so much of the world. We're stuck with whatever climate trends we're facing, good, bad, or indifferent, for a long, long time, perhaps ten thousand years. So Al Gore and his ilk can blow it out their collective ear. There are no political solutions for climate change. Humanity can certainly influence climate, but cannot reverse the direction of any changes we have made in such broad-scale systems, regardless of what they are.
The modern internal-combustion engine is not obsolete, and is one hell of a lot better than its predecessors as far as efficiency and performance go.
BTW, while we're at it, assuming global warming is real, there's not a damn thing we can do about it. For one thing, the excess carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere by human activities over the last 7,000 years will remain there for quite a while because we've removed so much of the world's plant-cover (plants are necessary to draw down and bury CO2). Also, if the Greens somehow realized their fondest wet-dream and removed all internal-combustion engines, electrical-generating plants, and other modern sources of power from the world, they'd have seven billion-plus furiously angry human beings after their asses, armed with just about every sort of weapon you could imagine and more than willing to use those weapons to get revenge on the idiots for taking away relatively clean (or any!) means of heating homes, cooking food, commuting and otherwise traveling, keeping modern hospitals able to do their best work for patients, and all the rest of what we use flameless power for (and could not do with open flame). Yes, we could do many things necessary to our lives with modern nuclear plants and orbital solar collectors now done by oil- and coal-fired plants, electricity, internal combustion, and so on. But not everything. People have to eat, clothe themselves, shelter themselves and their families, and do all the other things that keep body and soul together, and in most cases they can't do it without using hydroelectric plants, methane, propane, coal, gasoline, kerosene, and oil to generate the power to do that. Not all the mainstream media pundits, politicians, and Greens in the world can change that. Nor can they restore the old-growth forests and rain-forests and other plant cover that used to cover so much of the world. We're stuck with whatever climate trends we're facing, good, bad, or indifferent, for a long, long time, perhaps ten thousand years. So Al Gore and his ilk can blow it out their collective ear. There are no political solutions for climate change. Humanity can certainly influence climate, but cannot reverse the direction of any changes we have made in such broad-scale systems, regardless of what they are.