Without going into the whys and wherefore’s , what I can’t understand about the rush towards electrification is what happens to people who live in apartment blocks, flats or street park and have simply no way of home charging?
3 Likes
Wasn’t me that started comparing ventilators to batteries, the point being made was about innovation rather than climate change as I understood it. I’d best not allow myself to be drawn into covid arguments as I’m even more of sceptic on that front.
Returning to climate change, it is worth noting that one of its key protagonists, Dr Michael Mann, was challenged to provide the data behind his famous ‘hockey stick’ graph by another climatologist, Dr Tim Ball. The graph shows an inexorable rise in global temperatures that seems to correlate with mankind’s industrial activities. Tim Ball disputed this and called Mann a liar. It ended up in court where Mann failed to produce the data behind it. Al Gore was a great fan of Mann and it formed a large part of his film, An Inconvenient Truth. Inconveniently for Mr Gore it seems that the truth may not be what Dr Mann claims.
1 Like
An excellent point, and one that has been aired elsewhere. There was great enthusiasm for charging from lampposts a while back but it seems that it dawned upon even the most zealous of EV fans that having charging cables cluttering up the pavement was not the wisest move and would be an insurance nightmare.
1 Like
With the views you are expressing on CC, and your implied views on covid you’re obviously sharing those of that well known and respected world expert on those subjects - Donald J Trump.
1 Like
Funny you should say that as I kinda got to like the guy, he was his own man if nothing else. Is that really a sin?
He was his own man: a con-man, a bully, a user, and all the things that give humankind a bad name. Fine in a hermit, but not in the leader of the world’s most powerful nation.
1 Like
I’ve yet to see any politician wearing a halo.
Neither have I, but really? Trump was on another level of thin skinned egomanicism. (Is that a word😂)
I would agree with much of that, especially the point about hybrids which, at the end of the day, are just petrol cars with a bigger battery and electric transmission. The diesel engine, which has been utterly transformed from the smelly oily thing that many of us knew it as, has been shunted out of the way for whatever reason, yet the laws of thermodynamics still insist it is a far more efficient way of burning carbon fuels than spark ignition engines.
China is the bad boy in all this, no doubt about it. If we dig a little deeper we find that the country owns, or controls, 80% of the world’s lithium resources. China is also VW’s biggest customer, so it is totally tin foil hat territory to start wondering just why VW is so keen to build battery cars?
Just to expand a little on my earlier response.
When I was brought up an inquiring mind and wide general knowledge were considered valuable attributes, yet now they are disparaged and we are to trust the ‘experts’ instead. There are two major problems with this, the first is that said experts tend to lose sight of the larger picture and then, who gets to choose the experts we are obliged to listen to?
To add to this train of thought, VAG is German, Germany have a huge influence on European policies, and European Politicians are pushing for individual transport to become primarily electric…
BTW, Germany is also the worst polluter in Europe from burning coal for power generation. You really couldn’t make it up…
1 Like
[quote=“Corkonians, post:70, topic:119909, full:true”]
I agree that an inquiring mind and wide general knowledge are valuable attributes, but the mind should also be open. I get the impression from your posts that you have closed yours when it comes to CC. As for the larger picture, what picture is larger than CC? The future of our planet as we know it depends on whether we get it right when it comes to assessing it and if necessary (and I believe it is) finding ways to deal with it, not closing our eyes and our minds and saying “it doesn’t exist because I don’t believe in it” and doing nothing. Better to err on the side of belief and action than disbelief and inaction, life on Earth could depend on it and we won’t get a second chance!
1 Like
Dr, Tim Ball had a professorship in Geography at Winnipeg University. The case that you refer to was the publication of an interview Hill gave to the CC denial media Frontier for Public Policy’s in which he said the Mann should be “in the state pen, (prison) not Penn. State (University)” and Mann sued for libel. In the end the media company withdrew the interview and issued an apology as part of its settlement with Mann. The court awarded costs to Hill because Mann’s legal team failed to produce their case in time. There was no judgement either way on the case itself. So far from Hill proving Mann’s CC position wrong, it was an undecided libel case. Bottom line, Tim Hill is a CC denier who is funded by a large Business/Industrial anti-CC lobbying group. The “Hockey Stick” theory, with a few minor alterations has generally been accepted by CC scientists.
1 Like
The graph has been around for a long long time, so is it not strange that they couldn’t come up with the data on time?
The libel case was nothing to do with the graph. It related to Ball’s (unsubstantiated) claim that Mann had been involved in the hacking of the Climatic Research Unit’s server and the theft of emails and files in the weeks prior to the 2009 Stockholm Summit on Climate Change. It is thought that with the withdrawal of the article and apology by FfPP Mann’s legal team assumed Ball would do the same, when he didn’t they had not left themselves enough time to prepare their case.
Layer upon layer of intrigue. Lawyers are paid not to assume anything and it is suggested that Mann is not entirely innocent of slinging slanderous comments around himself. Not having time to prepare the case sounds a rather flimsy excuse especially when even those who support the climate change theory question Mann’s data and its use. This from the Guardian in 2010 -
Mann’s graph was clearly the more compelling image of man-made climate change. Jones and Briffa’s “dilutes the message rather significantly,” said Folland. “We want the truth. Mike [Mann] thinks it lies nearer his result.”
But Briffa did not. Three hours later, he sent a long and passionate email. “It should not be taken as read that Mike’s series is THE CORRECT ONE,” he warned. “I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards ‘apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data’, but in reality the situation is not quite so simple… For the record, I believe that the recent warmth was probably matched about 1,000 years ago.”
The “Hockey Stick” graph has been subjected something like two dozen reconstruction since its inception. the last being Pages in 2013 and (with some minor adjustment) have concluded the the proposition it made was correct. The only ones who disagree are harded CC deniers. I have no intention of continuing this discussion. I believe in CC, you don’t. Never the twain shall meet.
1 Like
An open mind constantly questions the established narrative. Back in the seventies and eighties the next ice age was the big fear, now we are being bombarded with ‘facts’ purporting to show that we are to fry instead. The closed minds belong to those who have adopted this latest notion without stopping to look at what has happened globally over history. We are presently in an inter-glacial warming period, that is beyond question, but it is the sort of fact that is not quite so beloved by the global warming scare mongers.
Countryboy, I salute you for your knowledge 
. Always good to see a well substantiated opinion.
1 Like
I think it’s a bit more obvious than the semantics of whether the world is warming up a bit or not. The population of the earth has doubled since the 1950’s. Look around you at the general state of things and what we as a species are doing to nature both here and in developing countries, it’s really not good.
The question is framed wrong, it’s not about battery cars saving the world that’s just another short-sighted way of perpetuating the automotive industry. We need to travel less, consume much less and stop having so many children.
It’s a bit of a bitter pill to swallow especially on a great car enthusiasts forum but I think we should enjoy our cars responsibly whilst we can and maybe don’t worry too much about the next MX5 being produced if indeed it should be?
4 Likes