The environmentalists are cheering in victory as Obama’s war on coal and oil begins and the EPA is no doubt working on new stringent regulations for coal plants producing electricity. However, climate change due to greenhouse gas emissions has been scientifically demonstrated to be inconclusive with some believing it to be a myth. The sky is not falling and the planet is not going to boil over if the climate change initiatives aren’t implemented. But, what is the status of one of the most visible and promoted environmental initiatives to help reduce carbon gas emissions – the electric car?
In an article on UPI.com, a recent study has revealed that electric cars might be among the dirtiest transportation options. That is something you won’t hear from the environmentalists. According to researcher Ozzie Zehner, visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, “electric cars merely shift negative impacts from one place to another.”
The UPI.com article continues:
Writing in the journal IEEE spectrum, researcher Ozzie Zehner says electric cars lead to hidden environmental and health damages and are like more harmful than gasoline cars and other transportation options.
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 impacts 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, once an electric car enthusiast who has since changed his position and become an activist looking at a number of so-called green initiatives, is the author of the book “Green Illusions.”
Zehner writes in his report:
“The suggestive power of electric cars is a persuasive force—so persuasive that answering the seemingly simple question “Are electric cars indeed green?” quickly gets complicated.
As with most anything else, the answer depends on whom you ask. Dozens of think tanks and scientific organizations have ventured conclusions about the environmental friendliness of electric vehicles. Most are supportive, but a few are critical. For instance, Richard Pike of the Royal Society of Chemistry provocatively determined that electric cars, if widely adopted, stood to lower Britain’s carbon dioxide emissions by just 2 percent, given the U.K.’s electricity sources. Last year, a U.S. Congressional Budget Office study found that electric car subsidies “will result in little or no reduction in the total gasoline use and greenhouse-gas emissions of the nation’s vehicle fleet over the next several years.”
Others are more supportive, including the Union of Concerned Scientists. Its 2012 report [PDF] on the issue, titled “State of Charge,” notes that charging electric cars yields less CO2 than even the most efficient gasoline vehicles. The report’s senior editor, engineer Don Anair, concludes: “We are at a good point to clean up the grid and move to electric vehicles.”
Why is the assessment so mixed? Ultimately, it’s because this is not just about science. It’s about values, which inevitably shape what questions the researchers ask as well as what they choose to count and what they don’t. That’s true for many kinds of research, of course, but for electric cars, bias abounds, although it’s often not obvious to the casual observer. To get a sense of how biases creep in, first follow the money.”
The electric car has to be one of the biggest gimmicks the environmental groups use to promote cleaner air by reducing carbon emissions from vehicles. It’s no surprise the groups would only release information supporting their claims and the testing of only one portion of the entire impact of the electric car. After all, that is how the left plays the game. Regardless of the entire environmental impact of the car, the left chooses to hide the entire truth, which would not support their claim, in favor of supporting a false truth to further push their specific agenda.
It appears the environmental groups and the Obama administration have a lot in common. If they were members of E-Harmony, Dr. Neil Clark Warren would have no problem getting a “matched made in Hades” between these two.
The Obama administration is busy running public relations interference refuting the claims that Obama’s plan to target the coal industry by imposing strict limits on carbon emissions is a “war on coal.” At the same time, a member of the White House’s advisory panel of outside scientists told the New York Times that a “war on coal” is needed. Decisions by this administration based on faulty information, inconclusive and faulty scientific data, and pressure by leftist environmental groups have the potential to cripple the coal industry thereby increasing unemployment, increasing the cost of electricity, not to mention putting America at a disadvantage in maintaining what is left of its industry.
With all the scandals coming out of Washington regarding unconstitutional agencies and the IRS, it is no secret these agencies need more than reform; these agencies need to be abolished. Agencies under the executive branch with appointed officials offer no accountability to the people who created the government. Tax-payer money has already been squandered on Solyndra to the tune of $535 million dollars; that company went bankrupt due to falling silicon prices. The federal government cannot continue to throw good money after bad on half-baked schemes with a $16 trillion debt which increases daily; particularly when, data is inconclusive.
The sky is falling and something is boiling over but it isn’t the earth because of climate change or global warming.
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