There was a time when, in my view, the subject of this article would have seemed too trivial to bother with – how naive I was.  Thanks in large part to misinformation campaigns by oil pushers, the public at large remains grossly oblivious to climate change issues. 

When false science permeates the media it leads to confusion amongst many, which can lead to frustration on their part.  The long-term consequence of misinformation is an apathetic society.  Apathy is a sad but accurate description of how a large proportion of the North American population feel about climate change.

The electric car on its own is not really a green solution.  Traditional gas-guzzling cars have internal combustion engines that convert fossil fuels into energy to power it, while outputting significant amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in the process.  Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, so-named because it transforms the Earth’s surface into a greenhouse, trapping sunlight in, and gradually causing the surface temperature to increase.

What many fail to recognize is that an electric car, which requires no fuel, does require electrical energy; the first law of thermodynamics stipulates that the energy must come from somewhere.  Electric car batteries are charged by plugging them into the local electrical grid, like a cell phone battery.  The big question is then what powers your grid?  Globally, the answer is fossil fuels 70% of the time.  If you live in an area that is powered by coal for example, you are no further ahead environmentally by swapping for an electric vehicle.  You are simply diverting the CO₂ spewing from your car engine to your local power plant.

On the other hand, if you live in an area that gets its power from a non-fossil fuel source (Nuclear, Hydro, Wind...), then you are indeed reducing your carbon footprint effectively.  If you are in this 30% minority, you should commend your government for it.  If we are serious about curbing our carbon output, then as electric cars are phased onto our roads, fossil fuels must be phased out of energy production.

Are you ready to plug in?

As an engineer, I prefer the electric car over the internal combustion version on many levels, but mostly because the design is simpler.  Electric cars have far fewer parts, and thus require less work to assemble and less effort to maintain.  On the flipside, some parts are incredibly expensive.  In particular, the car battery remains a cost issue.

The car battery is at the center of the electric car debate as many key parameters are directly affected by its design.  Fuel-powered cars can drive around 600 km on the highway with one tank of gas.  Also, they can be refuelled in about five minutes.  Optimizing these two parameters has been the primary goal for electric car technology over the past decade, and major strides have been made.  30 km on one charge has been increased to 150 km for more recent designs – not ideal for a long road trip, but completely adequate for all other purposes.  Also, batteries can now be charged in minutes instead of hours.

Car performance is another issue that driving enthusiasts bring up.  The reality is that 98% of the population have no need to get to 60 mph in less than 10 seconds.  What today’s auto consumer wants is a car that gets them from A to B safely and affordably.  If two cars are virtually equal in these two regards, the public will choose the one that is more environmentally friendly.  Unfortunately, only the aforementioned 30% of people are in a position to make this choice and have it mean something.

Someone forgot to tell the makers of the Telsa Roadster that electric cars aren't supposed to be sexy

The coming decade will bring a Honda Civic-like car that plugs into the electric grid for all of its power.  Once they are mass-produced on the same order as combustion cars, and battery technology matures, the electric car price will be similar to that of the gas-guzzler.  Couple that with the rising oil prices (and dwindling supply), and it is not far-fetched to predict that half of the cars on the road by 2030 will be fully electric.

You may have noticed that I did not bring hybrids into this conversation.  While they represent a useful technology, I tend not to support overly complex designs.  Buying one car with two energy systems is like buying a 2-in-1 VCR/DVD player.   Having twice the number of parts can lead to twice the amount of repairs.

What we need to make a real dent in our carbon dioxide emissions are power plants that do not emit them.  Only then can electric cars be considered green.  I stated this point to some friends of mine recently when a car commercial came on during some sporting event.  The notion had never occurred to them, and so I thought it was a worthy one to pass on to my readers. 

This morning, I was planning on posting a pleasant article describing Watson’s dominance on Jeopardy! (for those of you that missed it, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter had a two-day total of around $20,000 apiece, whereas Watson surpassed $77,000).  However, my mood is less than pleasant, and there is something I need to get off of my chest.  I don’t get angry very often, but yesterday morning I was fuming.

On February 16, 2011, a local radio morning show featured a con-artist posing as a scientist.  Larry Bell, a man with no expertise in climate science, was pedalling his book, which claims that global warming is a hoax.  It is not illegal to deliberately misinform the public, but if it were, Bell would be behind bars.

I firmly believe that those who mislead the public intentionally should be made accountable for their actions.  People like this Larry character move the world several steps backwards.  Scientists, rather than focusing on the science, must spend their time correcting the cranks, like damage control.  It is like when a teacher must focus his efforts disciplining a student rather than teaching content.  Bell is an adult, who should not need a parent to hold his hand.  At the very least, Bell should not be allowed to publish anything in the future.  I believe in free speech, but my disdain for propaganda trumps it.

As you can clearly see, I am less than pleased with Mr. Bell, a Professor at the University of Houston.  Yes, you read that correctly: this man teaches students – what could be more dangerous than a crook with an audience?  He wrote a book about global warming.  Does this make any sense, considering that the man is a Professor of Architecture?

The global warming issue is a complex one for an actual scientist to explain clearly, let alone someone with no appropriate science background.  I will not address the global warming issue at this time in detail.  Suffice it to say that man has managed to have a macroscopic effect on the Earth’s biosphere, and we must continue to assess our effects carefully, and seek a sustainable way forward responsibly.  If you want to read a science-based attack on Larry Bell’s false climate claims, this article on RealClimate will do the trick.

Let me instead focus on the more general problem with scientific quackery.  It is a common misconception that if something is printed or spoken, it is true.  Publishing companies, as well as media outlets, want to make money.  Dollars are more important to some content providers than accurate content.  Of course, if a provider of information pumped out false content on a regular basis, its educated readers would stop seeking content there.  These irresponsible providers are giddily aware, however, that many readers are not educated enough to notice the difference between truth and fiction.

The realm of science is filled with posers.  The question I want to address is: How can we spot the posers?

The first thing to check is the credentials of the author or speaker.  Should you trust a fortune teller to predict how a vibrating string will oscillate as a function of time?  I think a dynamics expert might be more suited.  Is the latest health fad being pedalled by a medical doctor or a chiropractor who read ABCs of the human body?  Those years of study at institutions are necessary not only for becoming an expert on a subject, but also for communicating that expertise effectively.  There are occasions when a reliable source has put in the research and work but has no academic background, though it is not typical.

Bell, the Architect, can tell you how to build a home that looks attractive and that will hopefully not fall down.  He should not be entrusted to predict the future of our planet.

Unfortunately, some posers have great credentials.  Some of the worst offenders of purposefully misleading of the public are very well educated individuals.  Often, they are swayed by money to support a certain product, and carefully bend the truth about it.  All of those years of study – they learned about science, but learned nothing about integrity.  The power of knowledge should be used responsibly by those who behold it, just as Spiderman’s powers should be used for good and not evil.

Sometimes, the truth is inconvenient.  I think the title for Al Gore’s documentary was well-chosen.  That being said, he should have left the stage to a leading climatologist to speak to America about the science of the climate.

Yesterday, after listening to Bell push false data over the radio waves onto unsuspecting citizens, I decided to use my knowledge of science to do something positive.  I called the radio talk show in question, and this is what I said:

“I am a scientist and engineer, and I can confidently say that the guest on this morning’s show is on a misinformation campaign.  For starters, Mr. Bell says that 80% of climate experts agree that the global warming issue is a non-issue.  I want to know exactly where this ludicrous stat comes from.”

Bell said he did not know where this particular stat had come from.  I will venture a guess that the stat came from the same place that I would like to stick a flaming torch.

This is yet another indication of a phony.  If you spew out facts and cannot produce the sources of them with confidence, you are acting irresponsibly.  Listeners to yesterday’s program would agree that Bell provided no support for any of his arguments.

I wanted to ask a follow-up question to Larry the Architect about the Chemistry of the biosphere, but there was no time on the show.  The host cut me off, as they needed to check the local traffic, which was in gridlock.  Do you see the irony?  Do not believe Larry Bell when he says that the chemical reactions in all of those idling internal combustion engines contribute no major chemical effects to our atmosphere.  He is a quack, and he has made me angry.

Galileo Galilei was an italian physicist, mathematician, astronomer and philosopher, and is often referred to as the father of modern science.  In the year 1610, his research led him to believe that the Earth revolved around the Sun.  He was warned by the Catholic Church to abandon this view as it was “false and contrary to Scripture”.  In 1632, Galilei was placed under house arrest for the remainder of his life, as he continued to support the heliocentric view.  These primitive minds, which could accept that the world was not flat (after some convincing), were very uncomfortable with the idea that the Universe did not revolve around them.  When it was later discovered that these orbits were elliptical in general, and not circular, the religious leaders of the day objected yet again, because God would only draw perfect shapes (who are we to define what a perfect shape is?).  Mankind has since, to a certain extent, accepted its place in the Universe.  However, its feelings of self-importance in this Universe have not changed all that much.

The clearest example of this human-centric mentality is depicted in the many end-of-the-world scenarios we see in film and CNN discussion panels.  Many people see the end of humanity and the end of the world as the same thing - they are not.  I suppose it does not help that “the World” is a very vague description.  While it used to mean “the Earth”, the definition of “the World” might now extend to our Solar System and beyond.  In either case, when the Earth began burping in the film “2012”, or when a giant meteor was heading towards the Earth in “Armageddon”, the term end of the world was evoked.  Massive cataclysms such as these could represent the extinction of the human race, but let us not confuse that with the end of the world.  That we place a high importance on the survival of our species is good; it is a useful fear mechanism still embedded in our brains from our millennia of evolution.  Still, I think that we, as a species, would gain a lot from the humbling experience of merely existing in the world (not as the world).

It is true that certain events, such as a celestial collision, could cause life on Earth to change drastically.  It would have to be very drastic for all of humanity to be wiped out.  But even so, life would probably still exist.  As a general rule, the more advanced that an organism becomes, the more fragile it becomes.  So, while no humans could survive a temporary temperature shift of one hundred degrees, small bacteria would easily survive.  A closer look at our fragility makes one question where our large egos emanate from.  Perhaps we are compensating for something.  If you put our ability to manipulate our environment aside, human beings are relatively weak creatures (more so today than ever before).  We cannot survive in water, and have trouble on land.  We thrive in a pathetic temperature range from say 18 to 30 degrees Celsius (and don’t get us started on humidity).  We require a fair bit of energy to power us, and need to sleep one third of the time.  Fortunately, our impressive mental abilities more than make up for our physical shortcomings.  I guess it is our large brains that cause us to have big heads.

More and more, mankind relies on ingenuity to compensate for its fragility.  Developments in agriculture allowed billions of people to essentially be fed by thousands.  This shift gave rise to the division of labour, which spawned many technological advances yielding the iphone4 and other important devices to tap on.  Any medical professional will tell you what marvels of biology human beings really are, but let us not forget that without basic oral care, tooth decay would cause us to expire before our fortieth birthdays.  In other words, we would be in big trouble if not for our tools.  The difference in life expectancy with vs. without basic medical care is dramatic.  If we were not smart cookies, we would be toast.

The discussion of our physical limitations and our mental prowess is a useful preface for the issue of global warming that currently plagues our planet.  I want to believe that we are not powerful enough to manipulate our environment on a grand scale, but there is strong evidence that we are doing just that.  Of course, there are many inputs affecting the climate of our biosphere.  It is shocking to learn that our burning of fossil fuels, which releases carbon dioxide into the air, is an input on the same order as the seasonal release of CO₂ of all of the trees on the planet.  The difference between our CO₂ release and that of the trees is that we are not releasing the gas in a cyclical fashion.  To a certain extent, the temperature fluctuations on Earth were in a state of equilibrium before the industrial revolution.  Now, the equilibrium temperature is shifting upwards, and we are most certainly the cause for this.  We are indeed powerful enough to manipulate our environment on a planetary scale; we are therefore capable of undoing the effects that we have done. 

There will be no end of the world due to global warming.  There will be no extinction of humankind either.  There will very likely be a massive decrease in human population should the current trends for energy production and human population continue.  Humanity has flourished over the past two hundred years, but the energy that was required to do so has come at a cost.  We now must depend on a major technological advance, or several, allowing us to change the way that our energy is produced.  We also require technological advances for effective cleaning of greenhouse gases.  It is a race against time for a large population of the Earth, and we will need lots of nerds to save us – or, maybe we could just send Bruce Willis up in a space ship and hope for the best.

Our large egos are justified by the fact that we can cause major change to our planet.  It is easy to forget that we are not the only life on Earth.  It is a common misconception that the Earth evolves to suit our needs.  We certainly do impact the Earth, but we are not its boss.  We evolved to live on an Earth with properties of air, water, and soil that were different than they are today.  The delicate balance of our biosphere has been set on an altered course because of our presence.  We can react to these changes by cranking up the A/C, or we can change the way we do things.  We can try to consume less energy, and produce it in a cleaner fashion.  We can also try to clean up the mess we’ve made.  With regards to the depletion of the ozone layer, we are no longer contributing to the problem, and it may just fix itself over the next half century.  However, the global warming issue presents a much tougher challenge than that of the ozone layer.

Whatever decisions mankind makes, we must realize two things: (1) we can have profound effects on our environment, and (2) our environment does not revolve around us.