Reporter test drives all-electric Nissan Leaf, experiences "fuel envy" and has to call a tow...
BARRONS 3/5/11: Ouch! The all-electric Nissan Leaf I was driving came to a standstill in downtown Manhattan, its battery pack dead, the closest charging station nearly a mile away. As gas-guzzling Porsches and a Lamborghini rolled by, I mused on my fate. Then I called for a flat-bed tow back to Brooklyn.
Officially, the Leaf's range is 100 miles but that's only in city driving. On a highway, it's less, much less. I got warnings after about 60 miles, and a dead battery at 82. Going 65 mpg to keep up with traffic cut my driving range. [remainder behind paywall but contents reflected in video below]. Note: even if the reporter made it to a charging station, it takes 21 hours to fully recharge the Leaf on 110 volts, and 7 hours on 240 volts.
Taking the Nissan Leaf for a Test Drive 3/5/2011 11:02:09 AM Barrons
Reporter Naureen Malik test drives the Nissan Leaf and concludes the all-electric Leaf has its attractions -- but not if you run out of juice in Manhattan.
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Friday, March 4, 2011
New material posted on the NIPCC website
A Century of River Discharge Rates in Finland (1 Mar 2011)
They fail to substantiate what climate alarmists predict about the effects of planetary warming on floods and droughts ... Read More
Surface Air Temperatures Over the Arctic Ocean (1 Mar 2011)
State-of-the-art climate models have a long way to go before they can adequately simulate even the past climate of the Arctic Ocean (much less predict its future), for in the words of the six scientists who evaluated them in this study, their creators have made “no obvious improvement” in the models’ simulation ability since the time of the Third Assessment Report several years earlier ... Read More
Eating Healthy in a CO2-Enriched World (1 Mar 2011)
The “yield and pharmaceutical quality of Malaysian young ginger varieties can be enhanced by controlled environment production and CO2 enrichment” ... Read More
Climate Change and Australian Bushfire Property Losses (1 Mar 2011)
Data from Australia provide a stunning repudiation of Al Gore’s Inconvenient-Truth claim of there having been a “steady increase in major wildfires” on every continent over the last half of the 20th century ... Read More
Mid-Holocene Coral Mortality in the South China Sea (1 Mar 2011)
Results from a new paper suggest that many recent episodes of coral bleaching may have been caused by something other than unduly high SSTs, or that many of the cases of coral bleaching experienced over the past few decades that do indeed appear to have been precipitated by unseasonably high SSTs may have been “aided and abetted” by other more localized anthropogenic-induced factors that could have weakened the corals and made them more susceptible to heat-induced bleaching ... Read More
Aerosol Properties of the Global Atmosphere As Input Data to Climate Models (1 Mar 2011)
Current assessments of greenhouse-gas forcing of climate made by the very best models in use today are “unsatisfactory” in their treatment of the global distribution of aerosol optical thickness and, especially, aerosol microphysical characteristics ... Read More
The Role of Seagrasses in Earth’s Carbon Cycle (1 Mar 2011)
What is it? ... and how is it impacted by rising atmospheric CO2 concentrations? ... Read More
Simulating Arctic Cloud Cover and Sea Ice (2 Mar 2011)
The thinning of Arctic sea ice over the past half-century “can be explained by minuscule changes of the radiative forcing that cannot be detected by current observing systems and require only exceedingly small adjustments of the model-generated radiation fields,” and, therefore, “the results of current GCMs cannot be relied upon at face value for credible predictions of future Arctic sea ice” ... Read More
The Effect of Elevated Ozone on Methane Emissions from Peatlands (2 Mar 2011)
Only the fourth study to address the complex subject may be revealing what the future may hold for the CH4 contained in the world’s peatlands ... Read More
The Fire History of California’s Lake Tahoe Basin (2 Mar 2011)
It suggests that the region’s current mean annual temperature is nowhere near as high as it was during the Medieval Warm Period ... Read More
Vector-Borne Diseases of the Very Recent Past in Central Europe (2 Mar 2011)
The two authors of this paper conclude that “it is due to continuing globalization rather than to climate change” ... Read More
Three Decades of Modeling Climate Sensitivity to CO2 (2 Mar 2011)
How much progress has been made? ... and how much remains to be made? ... Read More
The Global Spread of Dengue Fever (2 Mar 2011)
“There is no good evidence to suggest that the current geographic expansion of the dengue virus and its vectors has been or will be due to global warming” ... Read More
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Scientist Arnold Schwarzenegger: Climate debate is comparable to bodybuilding
Arnold Schwarzenegger, aka Conan the Barbarian, has "issued forth a call to end the false debate over climate science." Sure Arnold, it's a "false" debate, about which the Professor and Chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Dr. Judith Currie, just stated on her site, "If climate scientists can’t convince... people who are looking at the arguments carefully, reading the primary literature, and analyzing data, then it seems to me that the arguments can’t be that strong (or the confidence levels can’t be that high). This just isn’t an issue of “communication.” Sure Arnold, it's a "false" debate, about which climate scientist Dr. Roy Spencer recently stated, "[climate scientists] have let their worldviews, their politics, their economic understanding (or lack thereof) affect their scientific judgment. I am ashamed for our scientific discipline and embarrassed by their behavior."
Schwarzenegger: It's Time to Terminate Skepticism on Climate Change
WASHINGTON, D.C. 3/1/11 — In a room full of scientists, and with a slate of Nobel Prize winners and bureaucrats scheduled to speak, it took a movie star to demand that everyone stop playing make-believe. Giving the keynote address at the APRA-E Energy Innovation Summit here today (March 1), Arnold Schwarzenegger issued forth a call to end the false debate over climate science, to stop assuming China will provide new green tech cheaper and faster than the United States, and to stop pretending that global warming won't affect people for decades.
Using analogies to leverage every aspect of his history, Schwarzenegger made the case that transitioning to a green economy, fixing the environment and ending political stalemate over carbon legislation fell well within the power of today's technology and today's political climate.
"We want a new era of energy independence, a new era of green technology and green jobs, a new era of better health from a cleaner environment, and a new era of American inventiveness," Schwarzenegger said.
Cover of Conan the BarbarianThe former governor and action-firm superstar compared the current debate over climate change to the state of bodybuilding when he entered that sport in the late 1960s. A pervasive fear of weightlifting's effects led celebrities to disavow their own exercise routines, and produced euphemisms when discussing the activity. However, scientific evidence eventually came to support the health benefits of weightlifting, and today talk about abs and pecs is common. Confident in having brought weightlifting to the mainstream, Schwarzenegger told the audience he hopes to do the same for climate science.
Schwarzenegger also linked a future green economy to the current unrest in the Mideast, both literally and figuratively. He suggested that the overthrow of foreign dictators seemed impossible a month ago but now seems inevitable. Similarly, he believes that defeatism about the ability of a green revolution to change America will soon look absurd as well.
More directly, the former California governor also pointed to the recent volatility in oil prices resulting from Middle Eastern revolutions as a perfect example of why the U.S. needs to wean itself off foreign oil.
"Why should a dried-up desert country with a crazy dictator like Libya play havoc with America's energy future?" said Schwarzenegger.
In a closing point that struck the deepest chord with the audience, the erstwhile Terminator, who first made his mark in action films as Conan the Barbarian, identified the ARPA-E attendees as the primary agents for the change he advocated.
"I've made a lot of action movies in the past, so I know about action. And you are the true people of action," Schwarzenegger said. "Conan was asked, 'What is best in life?' He answered, 'To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of the women.' Now, my views have evolved since. But my point is that Conan was not big on philosophy or navel-gazing. He was big on action, just like you."
Schwarzenegger: It's Time to Terminate Skepticism on Climate Change
WASHINGTON, D.C. 3/1/11 — In a room full of scientists, and with a slate of Nobel Prize winners and bureaucrats scheduled to speak, it took a movie star to demand that everyone stop playing make-believe. Giving the keynote address at the APRA-E Energy Innovation Summit here today (March 1), Arnold Schwarzenegger issued forth a call to end the false debate over climate science, to stop assuming China will provide new green tech cheaper and faster than the United States, and to stop pretending that global warming won't affect people for decades.
Using analogies to leverage every aspect of his history, Schwarzenegger made the case that transitioning to a green economy, fixing the environment and ending political stalemate over carbon legislation fell well within the power of today's technology and today's political climate.
"We want a new era of energy independence, a new era of green technology and green jobs, a new era of better health from a cleaner environment, and a new era of American inventiveness," Schwarzenegger said.
Cover of Conan the BarbarianThe former governor and action-firm superstar compared the current debate over climate change to the state of bodybuilding when he entered that sport in the late 1960s. A pervasive fear of weightlifting's effects led celebrities to disavow their own exercise routines, and produced euphemisms when discussing the activity. However, scientific evidence eventually came to support the health benefits of weightlifting, and today talk about abs and pecs is common. Confident in having brought weightlifting to the mainstream, Schwarzenegger told the audience he hopes to do the same for climate science.Schwarzenegger also linked a future green economy to the current unrest in the Mideast, both literally and figuratively. He suggested that the overthrow of foreign dictators seemed impossible a month ago but now seems inevitable. Similarly, he believes that defeatism about the ability of a green revolution to change America will soon look absurd as well.
More directly, the former California governor also pointed to the recent volatility in oil prices resulting from Middle Eastern revolutions as a perfect example of why the U.S. needs to wean itself off foreign oil.
"Why should a dried-up desert country with a crazy dictator like Libya play havoc with America's energy future?" said Schwarzenegger.
In a closing point that struck the deepest chord with the audience, the erstwhile Terminator, who first made his mark in action films as Conan the Barbarian, identified the ARPA-E attendees as the primary agents for the change he advocated.
"I've made a lot of action movies in the past, so I know about action. And you are the true people of action," Schwarzenegger said. "Conan was asked, 'What is best in life?' He answered, 'To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of the women.' Now, my views have evolved since. But my point is that Conan was not big on philosophy or navel-gazing. He was big on action, just like you."
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