 
Wintonsweek CAR INNOCENT OF CLIMATE CHARGE, BUT FACES MASSIVE HURDLES Diesels, Hybrids, Fuel Cells Will Help Eke Out Scarce Oil Supplies Gore Leads U.S. Leftist Lobby To Frighten Us With Junk Science It would be truly ironic if the car, which has liberated and empowered millions, turned out to be a silent and insidious killer. The environmental movement claims fossil fuels and their CO2 emissions are poisoning and warming the climate. It has zeroed in on the car as the embodiment of all that is evil. Many politicians and some Hollywood prima donnas say cars must be curbed. Just as long as this excludes their own chauffeur driven limousines and Gulfstream private jets, of course. The world’s media loves to frighten us with scare stories about the world’s climate and how we will all die unless we submit to the Kyoto treaty. If newspapers and television are almost unanimous in telling us that global warming is happening and its all our fault, surely it must be true? I have good news and bad news. The good news is that top climate scientists in Europe and the U.S. say if the world is warming, it is probably down to natural causes. After all, it was warmer in Britain 2,000 years ago when the Romans produced Red Wine in Sussex. Greenland was colonised because the climate was mild enough to support crops. Humans were hardly producing any CO2 then. Temperatures fell significantly between 1940 and 1975 while CO2 emissions continued to expand, and panicky academics warned us about Global Cooling. Top scientists like Professor Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Professor Philip Stott of London University now say any action to slow global warming would be futile because the climate changes for reasons beyond our control. The bad news is that nobody ruling over us seems to believe them. Truth that dare not speak its name In a column in March 2006, Will, exasperated by a scare story in Time Magazine headlined “Be Worried. Be Very Worried”, followed up by a gullible U.S. TV network ABC News, pointed the finger at irresponsible journalists for spreading alarm, when none was justified. This month “Vanity Fair” magazine, usually content with ingratiating itself with celebrities and taking seriously, ill-educated buffoons from Hollywood, devoted an issue to the “threat” from global warming, and picked up the remark by British government chief scientist Sir David King that global warming was a bigger threat than terrorism. Paragon of righteousness The article is peppered with phrases like “planetary emergency”, “perceiving that danger”, “danger of crossing a point of no return within the next 10 years”, “the amounts of carbonic acid we are continuing to sink into the oceans”, and when he really wants to make a point to remember, the dreaded exclamation mark. What is Gore on about? Any expert that challenges his silly theories is of course allied to the hated oil industry, so no matter the strength of their arguments, the likes of Gore just dismiss them. Gore’s article is twinned with more junk science written by a Mark Hertsgaard, who claims the great climate expert the Queen of England is convinced we are all going to die in his article “While Washington Slept”. Hertsgaard also thinks The Wash is a vast North Sea wetlands, and that Tony Blair criticised the Bush administration for withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol in 2001, when of course the U.S. never joined it. Kyoto was rejected by the Senate under vice-president Gore’s watch. Devastate industry, achieve nothing “If we act on the Kyoto agreement, the cost will be more than $150 billion each year, yet the effect will not be felt until 2100, and even then it will be only marginal – postponing global warming and a rise in the sea level by about six years,” Lomborg said. So we can blithely carry on driving cars with no thought for the consequences? Sadly that is not possible. Driving cars may not harm the climate, but oil is a finite and scarce resource and must be used in a responsible and efficient way. Car manufacturers are not off the hook and must change their ways voluntarily, or governments will do it for them. In Europe, the trend to diesel power has accelerated to such a degree that every other new car bought now is an oil-burner. This has bought huge improvements in fuel consumption, but diesels pump out dreaded particulates (except the latest ones with particulate filters), which are thought to cause lung and respiratory problems. Hybrid powered cars, pioneered by Toyota and Honda of Japan, are becoming popular. Hybrids use electric motors to boost the performance of petrol or diesel engines. Holy grail hydrogen Wrong. Hydrogen is not a source of energy, but has to be produced using fossil fuel, renewable energy, or nuclear power Peering into the future reveals a confused picture. 10 years from now there will be cleaner diesels and more hybrids. The fuel cell car will still probably be 10 years away. Supplies of oil will be getting scarily short. Artful politicians, who think the car provides too much independence and freedom, will still be trying to force us on to buses and trains. Gasguzzlers must go The car might be off the hook as far as global warming is concerned, but the industry faces huge challenges to improve efficiency in the short term and find alternative power sources in the long term. Neil Winton – May 2, 2006 |
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