The week of January 12 was really cold with the temperature getting as low as minus 40 degrees.
This got me thinking about transportation in cold weather.
In the old days before cars the mode of transportation was horses, with a sleigh in winter and a wagon of some kind in summer.
When the first cars, like the Model T Ford, became available you were still tied to the horse in the winter because these things were not much good in snow and the motors were hard to start and didn’t work very good in cold weather.
Now modern technology has come up with something that isn’t much better but it is supposed to save the world.
Can you imagine how nice it would be to ride around in an electric car when the temperature is down to -40 C?
I really don’t know what they use for a heater. The only thing it could be would be an electric heating element.
It would have to have a windshield defroster and an electric fan to disburse the heat.
I can’t imagine that any of this would be very efficient. You need to understand that the power for the heater and fan comes out of the same battery that powers the car motor and batteries are not real efficient in cold weather.
If this nonsense goes much further our economy is going to be in a real mess because the cost of electricity will go through the roof.
We already have a problem with electricity costs going up due to the ‘clean’ energy we are producing from wind farms and solar farms.
The problem with those forms of generation is that they both need an equal amount of back up generation for when the wind does not blow or the sun does not shine.
They are especially unreliable in the winter.
The most unreliable is solar power due to the short days and more cloudy days in winter.
Wind power is better but when it gets as cold as this past week there are days when there is no wind.
The Alberta Electric System Operator [AESO] has had a real challenge in this cold weather to keep power on for everyone during this high demand period.
The clean energy generation is totally unreliable in this situation for the reasons mentioned above.
It would be totally impractical and extremely expensive for everyone to be trying to drive electric cars in this climate.
I think the infrastructure for generation and distribution of electricity would have to be more than doubled to provide the power for these things. It would need generation produced by either gas, coal or nuclear. The clean energy generation would simply not cut it.
Regardless of the energy requirements for these things they are just impractical in our climate.
I would say that these cars might make some sense below the 38th parallel.
While you can still experience some cold weather there, it is not prolonged like up here.
The issue there would still be the same as here and that is cost.
The cars are more expensive than fuel-powered cars and would electricity be cheaper than gas or diesel
I don’t think so when you factor in the electricity infrastructure cost.
The proponents of electric cars have not considered the cost and dispersal of the used batteries that have a limited life span.
I think it would be an environmental nightmare.
The idea that their clean energy would reduce the amount of C02 emissions is simply a fantasy.
C02 is not the cause of climate change so what are we trying to prove?
If the climate change promoters, which includes environmentalists, media and politicians, would look at the real science of climate change, they would see that all of this is leading us to a dead end.
by Herman Schwenk
