Hurricanes and weather and electric cars

Ironically, if there were more smog in the air, the hurricanes would be less severe, because the heat would be more evenly distributed. Just putting it out there because the other side surely will...

Who would have guessed that making the air more clear over the last few decades (probably not any more, though) would have hastened runaway global warming? No good deed goes unpunished, I gues.

Obviously this thread was started with a litte bit of provocative humor. ;)

But just to set the record straight:

...sea rise has been about 350 ft since 20,000 years ago. (so it's not new)

...and the "Climate Cycle" of every 100,000 years continues to hum along with it's natural "Global Warming" and "Ice Ages".

Even the CO2 fails as the driver of climate because it's always slightly lagged temperature changes.

Climate alarmism is so out of style now. That was "so 2008". ;)

...20,000 years ago in Germany the people lived in caves and they found the earliest musical instrument (a flute) which means that they entertained themselves with music while it was the Ice Age outside.

Part of the reason we are missing so many artifacts of early humans is because 350 ft of ocean sea rise erased a lot of the settlements along the coastlines.

So all this "Climate Change" has been with us from the beginning... and it will never go away...

(it's actually driven by the earths orbit and wobble)

The biggest mistake is to imagine that climate does not change naturally.

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That said... I still like EV's because they are fun to play around with and have the potential to eliminate the need for smelly and dirty gasoline. EV's are a great idea. (but let's not pretend we can halt the climate cycle... LOL... )
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I think no one disagrees that climate changes, always has and always will. I think people are saying that the rate of change is accelerating, that acceleration is man made and we will have a hard time adapting to the accelerated rate successfully.

Here is a question I have about the CO2 level reaching some "Dangerous Level"....Isn't it true that all that captured CO2 that is being released was, at one time, not captured and was in the atmosphere? Aren't we simply re-releasing it when we burn fossil fuels? Does that necessarily make the planet uninhabitable?

Another question: Do we seriously believe that we can stop the emerging economies of the world from buying cars, heating homes and using electricity just like we have for the last hundred years? For every ICE vehicle we take off the road how many are put on the road in India and China? How many homes are built with Heat and central air? There is no political way China and India and other third world countries can not allow their people the same things we have had for decades. Things that fossil fuels make possible. The middle class of China is greater than the population of the whole United States and it is growing every day. They clamor for these things.

Frankly, I think there is a strong possibility the ship has sailed on stopping man-made climate change.

With the above issues confronting us it seems that the real issue is that the world is going to"burn through" all these fossil fuels or cause them to become increasingly scarce and our moving away from them is a matter of national security. That is something that concerns ALL of us. Not just the left or right. It is also an issue that is much easier to grasp than Global Warming/Climate Change. Notwithstanding Hurricane Sandy.

When people realize that electric vehicles are CHEAPER than gasoline then we are done.

The problem at the moment is that the price isn't right yet.

The government has to back off and let the technology "do the talking".

Geez... we are at $4 gas in the US and way worse in other places... EV's should win on economic grounds.

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The whole "climate cycle" vs "climate change" vs "global warming" thing is a distraction. The "bottom line" is that climate changes whether we like it or not and all that matters is that we are ready for a more efficient future using EV's. (cleaner too)

An electric vehicle made sense for me because I have solar power at my house and I make about 30% more than I use. The electric company was not paying me for it and that led me to want to just waste electricity rather than give it to them for free.

That idea bothered me so I got a Current C130 electric motorcycle instead under their Test Pilot Program.

When I ride it my miles are replacing miles driven in my 1969 Mustang that I have owned for 30+ years.

The cost per mile for the Mustang in just gasoline is about 40 cents per mile.

The C130 Maxi Scooter cost per mile is free.

I use the C130 Maxi Scooter in my business to see clients so the mileage deduction on my taxes is 50+ cents per mile. Net, I save about 60 cents per mile on the C130 Maxi Scooter compared to the Mustang and if I ride 15+ miles per day it is more than paying for itself. In fact,due to the tax deduction outstripping the cost of operation, I could actually make money above and beyond the cost of the vehicle just by riding it. Gotta love the IRS!

So-o-o-o it DOES make economic sense for me.

Plus it's fun!

Try explaining that to the average person though.

Here's my point- Whether the electric vehicle makes economic sense or not depends on what vehicle it is replacing. (Yes I know I could have bought an I.C.E. scooter for less and all costs included come out ahead. BUT I WOULDN'T BE SCREWING THE ELECTRIC COMPANY AND YOU CAN'T PUT A PRICE ON THAT!)

People buy different vehicles for many different reasons and price is only one of them.

Its illegal price fixing and windfall profits and NO investigations into same, and the same oil and war mongers suppressing alternative energy IE congress just raised taxes severerly on low cost high efficiency solar panels from china (but they keep taxes on other china goods low?? ) .. its the super rich who control congress who are so afraid of not being re-elected that they take the donations/bribery to insure their win in the next election.
Its well known that Texaco bought the NIMH battery patent from GM (yeah general motors ) in an insidious play to suppress the rave review electric cars.

They originally said 10 years ago that it would take 100 years for the ocean level to rise 6' or less, now they are saying its speeding up (non linear going exponential) and that it may only be 50 years. FYI: A 6' rise in ocean would wipe out most of Miami FL and lots of NY city ! scary stuff ; all because of the selfish few super rich oil mongers.

Here is a question I have about the CO2 level reaching some "Dangerous Level"....Isn't it true that all that captured CO2 that is being released was, at one time, not captured and was in the atmosphere? Aren't we simply re-releasing it when we burn fossil fuels? Does that necessarily make the planet uninhabitable?

That is correct, but back then there were _no_ people on the planet and the world was a place of boiling mud. Nor was there any free oxygen. So the current occupants of the planet don't really want to go back there. It's not clear that re-releasing all the Carbon as CO2 would make the place entirely uninhabitable for everything, or even everyone - no doubt a few would survive almost any situation. But any significant divergence from the climate we have now will almost certainly ruin our ability to feed over 7 billion people as we have an increasingly stretched and finely-balanced system.

Beyond something like 6C change we really have little idea what would happen: make large enough changes and you probably get a radical re-arrangement of things to some new and different stable(ish) state, but it's safe to say that all the crop failures, water shortages (and floods), land-use changes, sea level changes and so on would cause a great deal of war, famine, misery and death, untilt some new stability was reached. Most people don't want to go down that route.

War, famine, death is normal.

Peace, love, and a constant climate is abnormal.

The earth flows in cycles... we are done with the "Golden Era" and, well, you see where things are going now...

We had some great times, but everything "begins and ends at exactly the right time and place".

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Thanks safe, you are right the eco system does seem to flow in long cycles.
BTW: Someone said Nimh had to be cooled to work correctly, but I think the Large Format types in the 1998 EV1 and 1998 Rav4 EV did "not" have to be air conditioned or cooled except perhaps by just the air flow from driving (the EV1 unlike the prius had the LF type whereas the Prius is "having" to use stacked prismatic modules which are less efficient. Thus since the EV1 did not have ac I doubt that the LF types of NIMH have to be cooled. (i could be wrong, but the Rav4 EV had a separate ac and heat system that was run from a small gas engine while the main drive train was all electric giving rise to the question of what would a person do if the gas tank for the ac ran dry (not drive the car? which in turn supports that the Rav4 LF NIMH batteries were also 'not' cooled except perhaps by air rush from driving. If anyone knows for sure what the story on the Rav4 EV NIMH 1998 battery cooling if any was i'd like to know.
Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. The best battery will win out in the end.