Ludicrous Consequences of Carbomania

General Motors Volt

Governments’ hugely expensive plans to induce motorists to convert from vehicles driven by fossil fuels to those powered by electricity have become a farce.

In the US only about 3 per cent of people planning to buy a new car would even consider General Motors’ highly-publicized Volt, only a few thousand of which have been sold since it was launched last December. Not surprising, really, considering that even after a federal subsidy of $7,500, the Volt has a sticker price of $41,000 and gets only 56 kms on a single battery charge.

In China the much-hyped electric-car manufacturer BYD, into whose shares billionaire Warren Buffett has poured money, is a ludicrous failure. It’s sold only 365 of its plug-in hybrid model since its launch 2½ years ago, while its showcase pure-electric model, the e6s, has sold only 53 since March 2010. Almost all went to one buyer, a taxi company… owned by BYD.

Another political scam, “green jobs,” is proving to be hugely expensive.

In Ontario, Canada, it’s estimated it requires investment of a million dollars for each green job being created.

In Michigan state an “advanced battery” facility built to equip all those electric cars the bureaucrats expected consumers to rush to buy, having already soaked up a quarter of a billion dollars in federal funding and state incentives, is losing money heavily, although it did create some green jobs – at an average cost to taxpayers of $625,000 apiece.

Some of the manipulations of the facts by the carbonatics to keep the public on-side for continuing huge subsidies are laughable. For example, what do you think of as “green” jobs? Those who make solar panels or bio-fuels? In its latest study the Brookings Institute claims the most numerous jobs that it claims as green have been in categories that encompass sewage plant operators, bus drivers and park rangers.

And in Britain it’s estimated by an energy consultancy that green taxes already account for £15 of the £82 average cost of a megawatt of power. By 2020 the burden of taxes and all the expensive infrastructure needed for a distribution system that can handle unreliable wind-farm power will reach £50 per megawatt.

Outrageously, all these huge costs are being imposed on the public by the political classes on the basis of scientific evidence that is at least questionable – more so, because of the hysterical attacks on those who question the extent to which human beings are responsible for causing global warming.

A new development guaranteed to stoke the controversy is a scientific study that proves what the carbonatics have consistently denied – that natural factors, in particular changes in the sun, could be more important than human activity in determining climate change.

Changes in the sun’s impact on cosmic rays, which in turn impact on the earth’s cloud cover. According to a study carried out at CERN, the European nuclear research facility, the rays appear to strongly enhance the formation of clouds.

Current climate models used to predict global warming don’t take any account of the impact of cosmic rays on clouds.

This is new evidence supporting earlier analysis by Scandinavian scientists that showed a close relationship between solar variations and changes in the earth’s surface temperature since 1860 – something which until now the politically-charged climate change “consensus” has refused to accept.

The scientists who did the CERN research don’t deny that human activity contributes to climate change. But they question its importance relative to natural factors such as the influence of the sun.

CopyRight – OnTarget September 2011 by Martin Spring