goes 40 miles, so 200 watts a mile? Sounds incredible since the headlights by themselves take almost 100 watts.

Now I’m #208 ?!

Wow, this is going to be a long 2+ years.

Hey Lyle, why don’t you take a break and come on out to Montana for some fishing.

I believe that truth will show that global warming is false, but reality is that it’s followers will be dislodged from their power base only with great difficulty. You’ll find truth falling on a lot of deaf ears. The efforts will be made, and money wasted, but there’s nothing at all we can do about it right now except stay aware of which way the wind is blowing, to see if some good can be wrung from it, and wait for the political storm to pass.

They’ve demanded an end to inquiry, while I only asked you politely.

I just don’t want the Volt to be hurt by the shrapnel, is all I’m saying.

For what it’s worth, I think the Volt will do better than gasoline in the CO2 department.

Even though Lutz is right on Global Warming, there’s still ‘good old fashioned’ Air Pollution which is a reality in urban areas (where most people live), and the Volt will surely help actual air quality, there.

Voltage converters are between 85-95% efficient. So at 10% loss, it would take 17.8kW-hr to put 16 kW-hr of energy back into the battery. There are also some losses associated with battery charging, but not as much as voltage conversion.

But I prefer striving for the truth, which I do not claim to know. The problem with your approach is that if global warming is not man made, and if our efforts to overcome a natural global effect are doomed to failure, then we will spend a lot of money and achieve nothing. So, that debate should continue.

I predict that the Volt will stand on its own 2 feet without a CO2 argument.

Take that!

I remember the first energy crisis. It was pitched as patriotic to cut back on energy use, to stymie OPEC (which wasn’t fazed in the least). Eventually, oil prices dropped, availability soared, and vehicle weights ballooned as mpg plummeted.

Clearly, patriotism was inadequate incentive.

If patriotism is insufficient to force us into energy self-sufficiency, perhaps frightening everyone with the DEATH OF OUR PLANET will be.

It is actually hard for me to take up the CO2 debate; I doubt very much that human-created CO2 has any significant effect on climate change. The climate is changing because that’s what climates do.

The Sun has more effect on climate and weather than any other factor, but it’s influence is consistently belittled by anthropogenic global warming advocates. Worse, when anyone with any agenda says that ‘the science is over, and discussion closed,’ that’s the very time we should all dig in our heels and throw up every resistance which can be raised; for that direction leads to a dark age of unenlightened totalitarianism.

Many of the loudest of the global warming advocates stand to benefit personally from a system of “carbon credit” trading, enough cause for suspicion even if it werent for the dissenting scientists.

Yes, coal will be king over the next 22 years, I don’t think anyone can deny that. But, can coal be made cleaner? Can CO2 be sequestered, or used to grow algae which is then turned into biodiesel? Will we be willing, over these next two decades, to plant the seeds of future “greener” (domestically fueled) alternatives?

The argument that electric cars release more carbon strikes me as an extremely cynical one, fueled (if you will) by a point of view which has already been fixed. But Why do I care? I don’t swallow the global warming line.

The answer is simple:

I don’t have to believe in Global Warming to exploit it.

We need those electric cars for more flexible energy options that can be met domestically, and once the public starts catching on about the CO2 conundrum, things are going to get ugly. Perhaps it will be electric cars which receive the backlash — cars we need urgently to displace foreign oil.

I think that it’s as likely that we’ll all be concerned by global cooling (again) by 2030, and it will be awfully hard to keep the green bogeyman scarey under such conditions.

If you can somehow make the case that the electric car is actually worse for global warmists, the backlash could start early, nipping projects like Volt ‘in the bud.’ Please don’t. We have to make the change to electric while the conditions permit.

…and if global warming turns out to be real; ironically, my attempt to exploit belief in it for national survival will also have much of the effects that the ‘warmers’ wanted to achieve in the first place.

So There.

jdsv-197
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Thanks for the references. Found this. Very interesting. I will use it to refute Jackson #199:
“http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/pdf/0383(2008).pdf”
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Jackson-199
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Great points. I agree with a lot of them. Seductive arguments also. But I am not easily seduced!
Take a good look at the above link. Pretty official predictions from the US government. It seems that green president or not, CO2 believing president or not: “Coal-fired power plants continue to
be the dominant source of electricity generation through 2030 (Figure 61).”
EVs will add base load to the nighttime demand. Daily EV charging might add new peaking requirements. Assuming EVs take off in the next 20 years like we are all hoping, it means a heck-of-alot of CO2. (OK, OK, maybe less than gasoline engines … but I haven’t completely ceded that point yet. It seems somewhat controversial and dependent on assumptions.)