Electric Cars

Believe it or not, I am a big fan of electric cars. That seems to go against my favorite subject, Global Warming Is Crap.
Though I am a climate skeptic, I still do believe we should cut down on fossil fuel consumption as much as is reasonably possible.
Ay there's the rub, "reasonably."
I've been here a bit before, but it's too cool to leave alone.

Electric cars are getting better all the time, and are fast becoming practical, especially with the rapid increase in charging stations.

Here are a few links to some electric car manufacturers, and some other links of interest.

DETROIT ELECTRIC
The name is from a company long gone, but this is a startup. Very spiffy. Lotus based.

Detroit Electric Home

TATA TECHNOLOGIES
This is not a production car, it's a design study. But it does appear tantalizingly close to realization. We may someday see these on American streets.

Tata Technologies eMO

TESLA
So far, this seems to be the greatest of all electrics. Performance, luxury, long range. Nothing to dislike.

Tesla Home

MITSUBISHI
At the other end of the spectrum from Tesla is the Mitsubishi i-MiEV. I know someone who drove one of these and he tells me it's basically an enclosed golf cart. Crazy overpriced, except for one dealer!

Mitsubishi i-MiEV home

But there is a dealer in Illinois who offers leases on these for $89/month, making it the most affordable electric car out there, as far as I know. It was $69/month back in January 2013. Just let the video play, it'll show you the lease option.

O'Brien Mitsubishi

FISKER
This one makes me sad. What a beautiful car. High performance too!

Why Fisker crashed and burned

Here's the company home page, for however long it stays around.

Fisker Home

MYERS
A few years ago, this was the Corbin Sparrow. Nice to see the quirky looking thing is still around.

Myers Home

TANGO
Very narrow, it looks very odd, like it had been squashed. But with a 0 to 60 time of 3.2 seconds, and a top speed of 150mph, this is one FUN electric. Crazy expensive too. But then, most fun things are.

Tango Commuter Car

CODA
Much more conventional in appearance and function. Still, a very interesting car.

Coda Home

NISSAN
Can't leave this one out! About the most affordable electric car around that isn't a tin can.

Nissan Leaf



END
Well, no, not the end of electric car lists. There are others, such as Chrysler's GEM. And there are several under development right now. Startups from all over the world. It's an exciting time in the world of electric cars.
Some will fail. Some have already, such as Phoenix and Ox. Many have taken millions of taxpayer dollars down with them unfortunately.
But those that survive will make the world a little better place I think.

Global Warming is Crap XX

One of the accusations the warmies like to hurl at skeptics is that we cherry pick our starting points.

For example, the temperatures haven't gone up for about 20 years, leading many to question global warming. I must agree that 20 years isn't enough to determine a trend. But neither is 50 or even 100 in my book.

Note however, that the warmies are finally admitting that global warming hasn't increased for about 20 years. They got very upset whenever the stall in climb was mentioned before, going so far as to eject those who brought it up at meetings.

Here is an article that reports several possible explanations for the warming trend's hiatus.

Twenty Year Hiatus

Here is a paragraph from the article:

International Panel on Climate Change chairman Rajendra Pachauri recently told The Weekend Australian the hiatus would have to last 30 to 40 years "at least" to break the long-term warming trend.

OK, so we skeptics are full of beans for finding a 20 year stretch significant (and again, I agree that it probably isn't). But note that they do seem to find 30 or 40 potentially important.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So with 30 to 40 years in mind, on to a chart.

This is an example of one the warmies like to break out to put us skeptics in our place.

Global temp chart

Look at that huge climb from the late 70's right up to 2000. Ye Gods, we are gonna fry!
Well now look at the 0 point for temperature anomaly. Note that from about 1978 right back to 1850 the temperatures were abnormally low, except for a brief period around 1940. Looking at it that way, we still see a sharp rise. But it is only a high anomaly for about 20 years, after which point it will level off, though the graph ends at just past 2000 so doesn't show that.
So, a 20 year hiatus is not important, but the 20 years before that is. Let's go back further, as many warmies do. Let's start at 1950, and we see a much larger change. Heck we could bounce around and pick points to prove anything here. And we're looking at over 150 years. It would be best to start at 1850, and hand it to the warmies that, yeah global warming is real, and looks to be man made when you figure the start of the industrial revolution.

Right?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Let's just cut the crap shall we?

65 million years

Is that long enough to determine a trend warmies? Hell we don't even need that long, how's about 5 million years? 10,000?

Here's a quote from the article:

Temperatures are only considered to be increasing if viewed for the last 150 years, from 1850 onward, which is roughly when thermometers began collecting global data, and is also the period of time the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has chosen for its review.

Oh well how very interesting. That chart in the previous link. That's the data the UN uses to prove global warming is real and is certainly man made.

So warmies claim us skeptics are bought by the oil companies, practice pseudo science, and lie about everything.

Yet they base it all on a measly 150 years.

Suck it warmies.