Can You Believe This-The Government Wants Us To Go EV but In So Doing They Will impose a gas surcharge

Empirical Audio said:
I don't understand how these bills could be so high. My place is 4600 sq ft and my high bill is $300. I have all electric with two heat pumps and solar hot water, all LED bulbs. Maybe because it never hits 100F here? Is it just the electric rates?
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I think it’s mainly the electric power rates. It never hits 100 degrees or anywhere near that hot where we live.

My electricity bill is shocking in the spring, summer and fall because we like it cool and we set the AC at about 72 during the day and 62 at night. o_O
 
Empirical Audio said:
there are people on every street running polluting lawn equipment, usually 3-5 on every street. You cannot get away from the running IC motors. They are everywhere.
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I even bought an electric lawn mower with accu. Love it :cool:
 
Thanks NorthStar. Interesting read , especially about the Climate Change scientists trying to erase the data of the pre little Ice Age European warming period.

I saved the site.

I'm sure we will be hearing from the Climate Change Priests that that site is funded by big oil:)
 
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Empirical Audio said:
We are doomed. :(
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I don't think so. But Earth could become far less pleasant.

This is why I keep saying it's splitting hairs debating current EV vs ICE vehicles, it just doesn't matter right now and in some respects it is too late, which is why I think concentrating on developing technology to manipulate the Earth's climate and even atmospheric composition is most important. The basic problem seems to be warming trends disrupting ecosystems, leading to extinction events such as the mass death of coral reefs, insect populations, etc. It also seems to be favoring various pathogens and raising the risk of disease and pandemic. And if sea levels rise too much we have to abandon all coastal cities and some countries and many islands simply disappear. And then there's natural disasters getting worse, like hurricanes and flooding.

I experienced flooding from an "atmospheric river" that dumped incredible amounts of rain over a broad area very quickly in 2013. Roads are still being rebuilt. This is happening fairly frequently now.

None of this is good news, and it all seems to be caused by warming. We need to stop the warming. I do agree we need to reduce carbon emissions, but that's only a small part of a solution that will actually solve the problem we're facing.
 
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Empirical Audio said:
We are doomed. :(
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“This planet is doomed anyway. Eventually the sun will explode or cool and one small insignificant particle of the universe will disappear with only a tremble.”
? P.D. James, The Children of Men

I was just thinking about the movie 'Children of Men' directed by Alfonso Cuarón.
...From the book by P.D. James.
It's full of great quotes by Jasper Palmer (Michael Caine).

But no, we are not doomed if we act quick and accordingly.
Right now we are not thinking and acting straight.
We are distracted by the quick gains and power security...oil.
We try to act in our own affairs but we depend of each other...renewable energy.

We will all be evaporated eventually, but we don't have to leave to our kids our gas cars.
The cleaner the toys we leave behind to them ... well it doesn't need a rocket scientist to figure out the rest.

Things have to change on our ways of life. The kids are counting on us ... we ow that to us.
 
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DaveC said:
I don't think so. But Earth could become far less pleasant.

This is why I keep saying it's splitting hairs debating current EV vs ICE vehicles, it just doesn't matter right now and in some respects it is too late, which is why I think concentrating on developing technology to manipulate the Earth's climate and even atmospheric composition is most important. The basic problem seems to be warming trends disrupting ecosystems, leading to extinction events such as the mass death of coral reefs, insect populations, etc. It also seems to be favoring various pathogens and raising the risk of disease and pandemic. And if sea levels rise too much we have to abandon all coastal cities and some countries and many islands simply disappear. And then there's natural disasters getting worse, like hurricanes and flooding.

I experienced flooding from an "atmospheric river" that dumped incredible amounts of rain over a broad area very quickly in 2013. Roads are still being rebuilt. This is happening fairly frequently now.

None of this is good news, and it all seems to be caused by warming. We need to stop the warming. I do agree we need to reduce carbon emissions, but that's only a small part of a solution that will actually solve the problem we're facing.
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I’m somewhere in the middle on this... somewhere a little more towards expecting a potential ‘doom’ for some things but certainly not seeing our species extinction as the only possibility. But we do have a lot to do to in any way better ensure that.

Cheap private transport is likely doomed as a scenario.

Affordable methane intensive foods are also equally unlikely to be available going forwards.

Liveable cities are still very much a potential though where the coastline will be is clearly the issue... even replacing the loss of riparian communities in a global coastal inundation is a challenge itself but the sum loss of the embodied energy of the existing ‘at risk’ city infrastructure across the planet will be a giant blow.

The change itself to move towards a post carbon future is going to actually take a crazy amount of carbon to create. If economies move into recession then the funds to pay for the change we are going to need to create just won’t be there.

Expecting to maintain current population levels has another large question mark hanging over it.

I believe that the loss of affordable private transport (be it ICE or EV) might not seem like the end of everything or even the most painful element of all the change that may likely be required of us to create a survivable ecology for the future and also find a way to help maintain our species on this planet.
 
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Chinese scientist say the heating and cooling goes in cycles based on records. I can see why someone would be suspicious on that, but it does make a lot of sense. My personal stance is that I don't like breathing pollution or bad farming practices. This is why I'm willing to admit that while hybrids are kind of lame, they're the best currently for low impact.
 
Folsom said:
Chinese scientist say the heating and cooling goes in cycles based on records. I can see why someone would be suspicious on that, but it does make a lot of sense. My personal stance is that I don't like breathing pollution or bad farming practices. This is why I'm willing to admit that while hybrids are kind of lame, they're the best currently for low impact.
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The evidence of the direct correlation between the presence of carbon in the atmosphere and climate patterns (including temperature) is however unequivocal so whether the rate of change comes out of natural cycles or human activity (currently 95%+ science consensus on it being the direct consequence of carbon issues created by human activity atm) the carbon intensive way is a modern dinosaur and so any activity that creates a lot of carbon is up for a rethink. Whether you factor in other sustainability issues beyond carbon creation makes evaluation more difficult. User pays models will likely make carbon intensive transport unaffordable whether it be ICE, hybrid or EV as the calculations will need to include embodied energy and end of cycle energy as well.

On the relationship between carbon and climate and which is driving which - From the NOAA (note CO2 currently well over 400 ppm so beyond any level in the last 800,000 years)...

One of the most remarkable aspects of the paleoclimate record is the strong correspondence between temperature and the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere observed during the glacial cycles of the past several hundred thousand years. When the carbon dioxide concentration goes up, temperature goes up. When the carbon dioxide concentration goes down, temperature goes down. A small part of the correspondence is due to the relationship between temperature and the solubility of carbon dioxide in the surface ocean, but the majority of the correspondence is consistent with a feedback between carbon dioxide and climate. These changes are expected if Earth is in radiative balance, and they are consistent with the role of greenhouse gases in climate change. While it might seem simple to determine cause and effect between carbon dioxide and climate from which change occurs first, or from some other means, the determination of cause and effect remains exceedingly difficult. Furthermore, other changes are involved in the glacial climate, including altered vegetation, land surface characteristics, and ice sheet extent.

Temperature-change-and-carbon-dioxide-change-measured-from-the-EPICA-Dome-C-ice-core-in-Antarctica-v2.jpg


Temperature change (light blue) and carbon dioxide change (dark blue) measured from the EPICA Dome C ice core in Antarctica (Jouzel et al. 2007; Lüthi et al. 2008).
 
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As far as the effects we're likely to see from climate change, I think cause and effect doesn't happen linearly, it's a quantum phenomenon most of the time... by that I mean causes are cumulative and only effect change once certain conditions are met, then the effect arises. So I think we'll see abrupt changes, and it seems like none of them will be good news for humans.

Agreed on CO2 but now the levels are far too high, we've burnt so much fossil fuel for so long it's a pretty massive cause that will take similarly massive measures to counteract.

Our contribution to climate change started decades ago and we even felt a massive shift in the mid-late 80s that many have noticed but has been mostly ignored. When I was a kid growing up in Maryland we had snow, I made money shoveling snow... by the time I was getting into high school there was a shift, it snowed a lot less and the lakes didn't freeze enough to walk on for most of the year. Same think happened in N. Europe, from talking to Germans and Danes in work I've been involved with. Since then we've seen disruptions in typical weather patterns all over the world.

This could all end in Earth being a lot like Venus. Not good. I hope we can figure out some good solutions!
 
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DaveC said:
As far as the effects we're likely to see from climate change, I think cause and effect doesn't happen linearly, it's a quantum phenomenon most of the time... by that I mean causes are cumulative and only effect change once certain conditions are met, then the effect arises. So I think we'll see abrupt changes, and it seems like none of them will be good news for humans.

Agreed on CO2 but now the levels are far too high, we've burnt so much fossil fuel for so long it's a pretty massive cause that will take similarly massive measures to counteract.

Our contribution to climate change started decades ago and we even felt a massive shift in the mid-late 80s that many have noticed but has been mostly ignored. When I was a kid growing up in Maryland we had snow, I made money shoveling snow... by the time I was getting into high school there was a shift, it snowed a lot less and the lakes didn't freeze enough to walk on for most of the year. Same think happened in N. Europe, from talking to Germans and Danes in work I've been involved with. Since then we've seen disruptions in typical weather patterns all over the world.

This could all end in Earth being a lot like Venus. Not good. I hope we can figure out some good solutions!
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we are all going to hop a ride on Space X to Mars :)
 
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