James Woolsey: We have to reduce the amount of carbon that we’re putting into the atmosphere. We have to make sure that energy is as affordable as possible. And we have to make sure that it is as secure as possible.
That’s James Woolsey, who from 1993 to 1995 was director of the CIA. Woolsey spoke at the 2009 National Academy of Sciences summit on America’s Climate Choices, about the relationship between climate change, U.S. energy use, and national security.
James Woolsey: Let’s take as an example moving away from oil as our source for 97 percent of our transportation and moving toward electricity.
A switch to plug-in hybrid vehicles, he said, could strengthen national security.
James Woolsey: Not only do you obviously help reduce oil use and oil’s contribution to climate change, and our oil dependence problem that has created a situation where oil being in the hands of a lot of dictatorships and autocratic kingdoms that don’t like us very much.
Woolsey pointed to recent studies. They show that plug-in hybrid cars on today’s electric grid – powered by coal – still generate about 15 percent less CO2 than comparable internal combustion engines.
The challenge today with plug-in hybrids, said Woolsey, is that they rely on electricity from coal-fired power plants, which too emit CO2 and other pollution. According to Woolsey, recent studies – such as that from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratories, the Electric Power Research Institute, and the Natural Resources Defense Council – show that plug-in hybrid cars on today’s coal-based electric grid generate about 15 percent less CO2 than comparable combustion engines.
James Woolsey: And as the grid is cleaned up, by replacing coal, let’s say, with renewables and the like, that also cleans up the cars even further.
‘Clean grid’ modernization allows renewable energy, like solar and wind, to send electricity back into the grid and eventually out to homes and business that need it.
James Woolsey: So not only is one reducing the dependence on oil, by moving toward plug-in hybrids and toward renewables to produce electricity, one is also moving to help deal with the climate change problem.
Our thanks to:
Jim Woolsey
Venture Partner, Vantage Point
Clean Technology Investment Area
Fellow, Hoover Institution
Stanford University
The NOAA is breaking ranks and others will follow soon in abandoning this failed theory:
Figures are for North America.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/cag3/na.html
2006 – 2008 Trend = -44.25 degF / Decade COOLING
2005 – 2008 Trend = -16.35 degF / Decade COOLING
2004 – 2008 Trend = -1.50 degF / Decade COOLING
2003 – 2008 Trend = -0.69 degF / Decade COOLING
2002 – 2008 Trend = -2.47 degF / Decade COOLING
2001 – 2008 Trend = -0.17 degF / Decade COOLING
2000 – 2008 Trend = -0.74 degF / Decade COOLING
1999 – 2008 Trend = -1.08 degF / Decade COOLING
1998 – 2008 Trend = -1.77 degF / Decade COOLING
1997 – 2008 Trend = -0.15 degF / Decade COOLING
1996 – 2008 Trend = 0.92 degF / Decade WARMING
CLIMATE CHANGE is just weather for pussies.
Get over it! And stop scaring my kids, FREAKS!
Please read this excellent post in Andrew Revkin’s DotEarth blog, based on a paper that has just been accepted for publication …
Cool Spells Normal in a Warming World http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/03/cool-spells-in-a-warming-world/
Electric cars will only reduce our “carbon footprint” if we build a bunch of nuclear power plants real fast. Electric cars use more energy than gasoline powered cars. Gasoline and diesel are the most easily stored energy we know of that is practical to run an automobile on.
Solar and wind generated electricy have absolutely no chance of replacing the electric power we use now. If we try to power our cars on electriciy, we will need massive amounts of power just for the cars.
Do not just beleive me. Please get out a calculator and take the time to learn for yourself. Look at the theoretical efficiency of any sort of power plant. Then, look at the effiencies of the step up transformers, the transmission lines and the stepdown transformers. then look at the efficiencies of the local grid and the local transformers. Then look at the abysmal efficiencies of battery chargers. And, keep in mind that reality is worse than theory. If you will do this, you will find that electric cars failed over one hudred years ago for a reason.
Please be rational and use a calculator, not a knee jerk reaction to plaintive cries from the uninformed and the shyster politicians.