Innovation calls for using tech in ways that compliment the environment that it is used in. So in the Southwest solar panels would seem to make a lot of sense along with wind generators. It would seem a garage properly provided with solar panels could keep an electric car charged for use for daily local use.

In areas where these are not possible wind electric generators with back up batteries would provide for both house and transport. Water driven generators and tidal generators.

But, let’s skip to the cars themselves. It seems to me these lease schemes are a way for GM and others to keep control of the vehicle and to get twice as much money for them in the long term. Lease for the price and profit of the car and then buy for the further profit from the car. Doesn’t sound like a good deal to me.

As far as the car goes we have to remember that GM offered this car and then sabotaged it and no one has built the infrastructure to support electric cars. It is like selling trains without first building the tracks.

The only realitic program that I have heard of is the one the Chinese are using in Israel in which they are building the infrastructure to create the market for the electric cars. When we see this we will see reality and not a bunch of press release announcements. In this country the auto makers should pick a few high population cities across the country, put in the infrastructure (aka charging stations), garages with ability to maintian electrics and the start selling electric cars. There will be a market then, but still something needs to be done about the overcharging for each car.

It seems most likely that ‘Ice Ages’ are caused by a warming atmosphere,. In fact the prediction is that our current unnatural warming efforts could bring about the next Glacial Age 80,000 years sooner than the natural cycle.

There is a good artical speculating on this subject here;

http://www.scribd.com/doc/9381189/An-Ice-Age-From-Global-Warming

“It is not unreasonable to assume that the previous 20-or-so ice ages came on like that.
And while another would not normally be due for perhaps as much as a hundred millennia, we humans, all by ourselves, may have generated adequate greenhouse gases
like carbon dioxide, methane, and others to prematurely precipitate a new ice age soon.”

So yeah, electric cars may be helpfull in lessening GW however it all depends on how they are produced and how the electricity is generated, as both require great inputs of energy.  The more usefull move is to lessen consumption generaly, reduce the numbers of cars, and implement wide spread Permaculture to help mitigate and reverse the warming trend.

  The main problem is cultural one. The focuse on material consumption, with little regard to conections and concequenses, is a child-like mentality that if humanity can not collectively out grow, will prove a tragic sortcoming of our greedy culture.  Dieback on epic scale is then the inevitable result of not acting now to shift our focus away from selfish materialim, to a more productive human culture of interconected cooperation, embracing out larger selves that include the living systems that we are but a part of. 

Those arguing against action are like children refusing to clean up thier room.  Perhaps a good spanking and no dinner will do the trick.

Google has enough money to do anything it wants to… I would not surprise me to see google getting into the social media craze.

The pigman - Rush said in his show today that gm
had approached him to do a commercial for the
- he turned them down.

Enough said although I have bee on the list to purchase
one I will now purchase the Nissan Leaf simply
because they considered him

If you are a ’ liberal’ tell gm that stupid ignorant
illeterate teabaggers are too poor to
purchase one - they are not their target market.

@purplewolf

The commercial you are talking about with trains is that it can pull 1 ton of freight 400+ miles for a gallon of fuel is all done with economies of scale.  A train can’t go very far on a gallon of diesel, but a full train IS very economical on a ton/gallon basis.  So, in answer to your question why can’t we do that with cars… well, we can.  They are call buses.  BUT like the train example, they have to be full.

“What caused hot humid weather back in 1850?”

Since there where many people in 1850 there could not possibly be any MORE people in 2010?  This is the deductive logic you employ in your childish denialism of the real effects of human activity especialy industrialisation.

“The evidence comes from direct measurements of rising surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures and from phenomena such as increases in average global sea levels, retreating glaciers, and changes in many physical and biological systems, for example increased drought, flooding and other natural disasters.

These changes are indeed the result of human activities. Atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, methane, tropospheric ozone, and nitrous oxide, have been rising exponentially since pre-industrial times. Carbon dioxide levels have increased from 280 ppm (parts per million) in 1750 to over 375 ppm today – higher than any previous levels that can be reliably measured (i.e. in the last 420,000 years). Climate change is happening now!”

Still engaging in polite debat I see; “You’re an idiot.”  pot kettle.

I have no interest in the Volt until they replace the Korean-made Lithium Manganate battery with an American-made Lithium Phosphate battery. That LMO battery (made by LG) is NOT SAFE for use in automobiles. They mitigate the safety risks by building an armored case so that WHEN it explodes the blast goes downward. Charge it too fast, it will explode. Charge regulator allows it to charge too much, it will explode. Get into an accident, it will explode. Why oh why couldn’t they wait a little longer so they could sell the car with a SAFE, American-made LFP battery?????