Are Electric Cars Another Green Energy Failure?

 

Testing by AAA has found that how far an electric vehicle can travel on one charge varies widely depending on the weather. Frigid temperatures can reduce that distance by 57%.

The research is important to the Automobile Club of Southern California because it maintains mobile recharging trucks for people who misjudge how far they can go in their electric car.

“EV drivers need to carefully monitor range in hot and cold weather,” said Steve Mazor, the engineer who manages the Southern California club’s Automotive Research Center.

The center conducted tests on a 2013 Nissan Leaf,  a 2012 Mitsubishi iMiEV and the electric version of a 2014 Ford Focus. 

The cars were tested for city driving to mimic stop-and-go traffic and to better compare with Environmental Protection Agency ratings listed on the window sticker, AAA said.

The average EV battery range in AAA’s test was 105 miles at 75 degrees but dropped 57% to just 43 miles at 20 degrees. Heat also sliced the cars' ranges but by not as much: The cars averaged 69 miles per full charge at 95 degrees, 33% less than in 75-degree weather.

The research center tested the cars following the same EPA drive cycles that provide the data for the mileage window stickers on new cars. The vehicles were charged up and then driven on a machine with rollers called a dynamometer in a climate-controlled room until the battery was exhausted.

Watch the Video at: The LA Times

Study: Electric Cars No 'Greener' Than Gasoline Cars

 

According to a newly released study, electric cars are no more “environmentally friendly” than are gasoline-powered vehicles. In fact, with everything considered, they may even be worse on the environment. Confused?
In an article entitled “Unclean at Any Speed” in the journal IEEE Spectrum, researcher Ozzie Zehner says electric cars lead to hidden environmental and health damages and are likely more harmful than gasoline cars and other transportation options. From UPI.com:

Electric cars merely shift negative impacts from one place to another, he wrote, and “most electric-car assessments analyze only the charging of the car. This is an important factor indeed. But a more rigorous analysis would consider the environmental impact over the vehicle’s entire life cycle, from its construction through its operation and on to its eventual retirement at the junkyard.”
Political priorities and corporate influence have created a flawed impression that electric cars significantly reduce transportation impacts, he said.
“Upon closer consideration, moving from petroleum-fueled vehicles to electric cars starts to appear tantamount to shifting from one brand of cigarettes to another,” Zehner, a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, said.

This, of course, should come as no shock to anyone who has followed the similarly ridiculous (political) story of ethanol.
As is the case with the electric car, the idea of ethanol was (is – to politicians and environmentalists) appealing. We could reduce our dependence on oil – foreign oil in particular – and stop spewing megatons of carbon into the atmosphere. All by replacing oil with clean, home-grown, all-American corn! It all sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it? It is.
As reported in Popular Mechanics, corn farming isn’t cheap. In fact, it’s damn expensive.

It requires heavy inputs of nitrogen fertilizer (made with natural gas), applications of herbicides and other chemicals (made mostly from oil), heavy machinery (which runs on diesel fuel) and transportation (diesel fuel again). Converting the corn into fuel requires still more energy (gas, oil, diesel fuel). The ratio of how much energy is used to make ethanol versus how much it delivers is known as the energy balance, and calculating it is surprisingly complex.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory states that, “Today, 1 Btu of fossil energy consumed in producing and delivering corn ethanol results in 1.3 Btu of usable energy in your fuel tank.” Even that modest payback may be overstated. Skeptics cite the research of Cornell University professor David Pimentel, who estimates that it takes approximately 1.3 gal. of oil to produce a single gallon of ethanol.

The pros and cons of both electric cars and ethanol will be debated for years. As will the pros and cons of wind and solar power. The question is, what should be the government’s role – if any – in the meantime?
Should the federal government mandate and support (prop up) specific technologies (See: Barack Obama: wind and solar energy) and spend (lose) billions of tax-payer dollars on those (politically-selected) technologies? Or, should it allow the free market to choose the best alternatives? (Let’s go with “B”, shall we?)
Perhaps the answer lies somewhere in between.

Read More: Independent Journal

If CO2 is so bad, Why do greenhouses pay to produce it?

 

Is CO2 is so bad for the planet, why do greenhouses pay to produce it?

If CO2 was so terrible for the planet, then installing a CO2 generator in a greenhouse would kill the plants. But scientists and even governments actually recommend supplementing CO2 in greenhouses in order to boost plant growth and food production.

"The benefits of carbon dioxide supplementation on plant growth and production within the greenhouse environment have been well understood for many years," says the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food.

"CO2 increases productivity through improved plant growth and vigour. Some ways in which productivity is increased by CO2 include earlier flowering, higher fruit yields, reduced bud abortion in roses, improved stem strength and flower size. Growers should regard CO2 as a nutrient... increasing the CO2 level to 1,000 ppm will increase the photosynthesis by about 50% over ambient CO2 levels."

In fact, as recent scientific studies have shown, the slight rise in CO2 levels of the atmosphere has actually helped re-green deserts and arid areas, accelerating the growth of trees, shrubs and grasses which produce the oxygen human needs to breathe. 

Attacking carbon dioxide is hate speech against Mother Nature 

The more you really examine the scientific truth about carbon dioxide rather than the politically-charged "hate speech" against Mother Nature being spewed by people like Al Gore, the more you realize CO2 is a crucial nutrient for the Earth's environment and ecosystem. In fact, the vast majority of all the CO2 released into the atmosphere is produced by Mother Nature via animals in the ocean. Anyone who criticizes CO2 is attacking ocean life and condemning trillions of aquatic creatures who exhale carbon dioxide as part of their natural respiration. (Should they all be fined?)

As a society interested in reforestation, expanding the diversity of plant life, nourishing trees and re-greening deserts, we should no longer tolerate anyone engaged in hate speech against Mother Nature and CO2. Those who attempt to demonize this critical nutrient for the planet are engaged in a kind of hate-motivated racism against plants.

If it's not okay to condemn someone for being black, why is it okay for people like Al Gore to engage in endless hate speech against all the living beings that are green?

Besides, all those people who keep sounding the alarm on CO2 are being too negative all the time. Nobody spews more doom and gloom than Al Gore and the global warming crowd who paint apocalyptic pictures of Earth's future if we all don't start paying carbon taxes to the super rich. Stop being so negative!

They need to practice more positivity and repeat to themselves affirmations like:

"CO2 is a nutrient for forests."

"CO2 is produced by ocean life."

"CO2 brings balance to the global ecosystem."

"CO2 is to plants as oxygen is to humans."

"CO2 can help transform barren deserts into sustainable forests."

Perhaps by staying positive, the global warming fearmongers and doom-and-gloomers can calm down, take a few breaths (with extra CO2) and recognize that what's good for plants is good for the planet.

In fact, I'm going to hyperventilate after writing this article just to generate a little extra CO2 for the world. It's my gift to Al Gore.

Learn More: Natural News

Green Graveyard: 19 Taxpayer-Funded Failures

By: Rachael Slobodien

 

While there’s speculation over which federally supported green energy company may be the next to declare bankruptcy, plenty have already gone belly up. In one of the most extensive compilations to date, Heritage has identified 19 bankrupt green energy companies—unable to make it even with the $2.6 billion in financial assistance and incentives the government promised.

The problem is that these taxpayer-funded handouts never achieve the intended objective. Rather, they artificially support politically preferred companies and industries, like green energy, while shifting jobs and resources from another sector of the economy.

Read More: The Foundry