INSIDE TRAX: Engines: Eco Whipping Boys

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By: Kent Lester

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank GreenPeace and all those Hollywood liberals who have been portending global warming the last few years. Obviously their rants have worked and the tide has turned. This has been the coldest, snowiest winter in years. The earth has cooled off and it’s all because of them. Keep up the good work.

If I sound a little tongue in cheek, please forgive me. Frankly, I’m sick of having bad science shoved down my throat and tired of listening to politicians being influenced by environmental lobbies with big dollar agendas.

Furthermore, I’m fed up of being told the combustion engine is responsible for all the world’s eco-ills when the real scientific evidence indicates otherwise. The global warming issue is the hottest political debate in decades and the fear-mongering being propagated is making me nauseous.

I’m tired of movie stars and washed up Presidential candidates dictating truth. Of course, as media we’re not allowed to have a contrary opinion – and going against the tide here invokes some pretty strong objections from those who have influence. As a matter of fact, today, non-believers in the fact that combustion engines are causing and contributing vastly to climate change are being categorized as evil and destructive.

David Roberts, of climate website Grist, writes: “when we’re in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage (of climate change), we should have war crimes trials for these (objectors) – some sort of climate Nuremburg.” Sure sounds like freedom of thought to me.

Fact: In the last 100 years the globe has warmed a bit. The change has been approximately 0.74 degrees Celsius with a plus-minus factor of 0.18 degrees (a 25 percent margin of error). If you go beyond the 100 year past, it’s really hard to verify numbers because of the lack of good historical data and primitive meteorological information gathering back then. Yes, the climate is changing – but also, yes, the climate has always been changing.

Okay, suppose we all need to drive hybrids and heat our homes with solar energy and windmills. Noble thought but, here’s a sobering fact: Just the increase in the amount of coal China will burn every year by 2020 will produce as much carbon dioxide as would be burned by 3 billion full sized Sport Utes (likely with 4-wheel drive).

A report released by the UN in 2006 (not talked about much, by the way) stated that the livestock industry is responsible for 18 percent of all greenhouse gases – more than the entire transportation sector worldwide.

Furthermore, livestock is responsible for 65 percent of the release of nitrous oxide into the atmosphere – a greenhouse gas that warms the planet over 250 times more than carbon dioxide. Lets not even talk about methane.

Oleg Sorokhtin, a fellow of the Russian Academy of natural Sciences claims the most recent oceanic data indicates the earth has passed the peak of its warmer period (0.74C) and that solar activity such as sunspots and solar flares, which have been around forever (literally) and wax and wane over time, are having the greatest effect on the climate.

Oh, and by the way, go ahead and ask me for factual references on these statements – I’ve got ‘em. But if I was an eco-warrior I’d be able to make any statement, no matter how radical, without references and it would be accepted as fact by every politician who has ambitions and every six o’clock newscaster with an opinion.

So, is the ‘global cooling’ trend something we’re just seeing in North America? According to Eugenio Hackbart, chief meteorologist of the MetSul Weather Center in Brazil: “a brutal cold wave (last year) brought record low temperatures, widespread frost, snow and major energy disruption.” In Buenos Aires, it snowed for the first time in 89 years. Last August, Chile’s agriculture minister lamented “the toughest winter we’ve seen in 50 years.” In 2007, Johannesburg, South Africa experienced its first significant snowfall in a quarter century, Australia had its coldest ever June and New Zealand’s vineyards lost much of their 2007 harvest when spring temperatures dropped to record lows.

The Boston Globe reports: “ it’s no surprise that 2007 didn’t turn out to be the warmest ever. In fact, 2007’s global temperature was essentially the same as that in 2006 – and 2005, and 2004, and every year back to 2001. The record set in 1998 has not been surpassed. For nearly a decade now, there has been no global warming. Even though carbon dioxide accumulation is up by about 4 percent from 1998, the global mean temperature has remained flat. That fact raises some serious doubts about the theory that C02 is the cause of climate change.”

I’m a strong proponent of cleaning up snowmobile engines. I believe it’s been a good thing for the industry and a good thing for the environment.

Amazing engineering feats like the development of clean 2-strokes and the advent of 4-stroke technology has proven this business to be adaptive and innovative. It has responded incredibly quickly and is delivering technology that goes beyond what is required.

But please, somebody tell the politicians to stop whipping the boys who have already gotten it done.

Supertrax Online
Supertrax Onlinehttps://www.supertraxmag.com
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