Xoddam, I did not dismiss electric powered vehicles, but present electric personal vehicles are still less practical than most other forms of energy…for most people's needs. Electric trains are the exception, not the rule.
Taswegian…‘please don't accuse me of hypocrisy’.
Please re-read my post and avoid jumping to conclusions…I accused you of no such thing, merely suggesting you had missed an obvious and clear WINNER in biofuels!
Congratulations on your own efforts, but wood burning could be replaced also…as an environmental alternative.
Arjay you’re right and looking back, we’ve got more to fear from global COOLING to an ice age…when Greenland was green it meant more land suitable for crops, etc. During an ice age (or cooler periods that were not even as drastically cold) life got pretty tough to survive and food production became a more serious problem.
punter57, I’ve heard some pretty good tales of how those post office rain gauges were filled too…
cardine, telling people the problem is MASSIVE and unfixable creates an ‘I’m only me and it’s all too much to do’ malaise rather than telling the facts and how to keep things working well and fix those that need fixing…i.e., polluting our local environment will clearly cause problems and is something we can all fix. In the bigger picture, Governments should be including trade barriers against policies of other governments (like China) that are environmentally unsound or less than Australians are expected to abide by. We talk of level playing fields but our government policies reward countries like China who fill our supermarket shelves with poor quality and toxic produce and clothing made with dangerous, carcinogenic resins…while our own farmers and manufacturers are forced to sell quality goods for a pittance.
There are practical ways to reward sound environmental policies and penalise unsound products and policies before they cause health and environmental problems...presently we're encouraging unsound policies elsewhere and penalising the sound environmental policies that our own primary producers are following and decimating our manufacturing sector who follow far safer practices than the countries we're importing from.
(tbc...)

(cont...)
We have little manufacturing left and primary industry is diminishing fast...we'll soon be left with no choice but to eat from the toxic trash of foodstuffs full of chemicals banned here for years.
oink, Bazz is right, and any prediction is only as good as the data it is based on…remember those suspect post office rain gauges? :)

Meg1 You are simply wrong on electric cars.
I very recently joined the Australian Electric Vehicle Association.
The first meeting I went to a lady there had a converted modern hatchback.
She uses it like any small car, she does all her local running around
in it. The only disadvantage she has found is if a couple of people
are standing in the way when she wants to back out of a parking spot
they are not aware she is about to move as there is no engine to start
and make a noise. It was a very neat conversion with the batteries
divided between the engine bay and the rear and out of sight.

She gets up to about 100km range for about $1.50 per charge.
The car has two modes, performance and economy. One gives high speed
up to about 100 kmph and the other about 70 kmph.
The performance is better than most hatchbacks.
There are two companies that I am aware of doing conversions.

Meg, the edges of southern Greenland get very green every summer. It does get snow cover each winter, but summer days are very long in the Arctic and it can get quite warm.

http://images.google.com/images?&q=greenland+meadow

Greenland's present climate is similar to the 12th century when Erik the Red led the first settlers there (though getting warmer). It did get cold in between, but the first Norse settlements only ever had a few thousand people and were already abandoned by 1450, long before the "little ice age" of the 1600s (neither cold nor long enough for continental glaciation). Greenland is no good for crops or hay-making, which is what the Norse settlers did with it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Greenland#The_demise_of_the_Greenland_Norse_settlements

No-one need fear an incipient ice age today, because all evidence indicates the opposite. If we were expecting the earth to get cooler (and if an approaching ice age was considered likely to devastate the agriculture billions of people rely on), we might have an international protocol obliging countries to increase their emissions, not to curb them.

There's no likelihood of an ice age any time soon: we're at the wrong point in the Milankovitch cycle, and temperatures are increasing even as solar radiation decreases. Maybe it would be a good idea to retain as much high-carbon fuel as possible (firewood, coal) so we can warm the place up when another ice age does come around?

If monsoons and other rains fail (as they sometimes do, and may do more often and more devastatingly as a consequence of global warming), your fuel crops will help to push staple food prices further beyond the reach of those people whose incomes dry up with their fields.

There are pleasanter forms of population control than mass starvation. They require maintenance of a sustainable industrial civilisation and spreading scientific education to the corners of the earth. Relying on coal is no more sustainable than continued petroleum dependence would be; but with coal cheap as chips and emissions limits confined to a few countries, the market is blind to the fact.

Bazz, the AEVA website is unhelpful. More local information, please?

Hi Bazz, I am not against electric cars…but your own stats indicate they have very limited use.

The problems are not with converting or purchasing cars to suit.

Your comment: ‘a lady…had a converted modern hatchback…she does all her local running around in it…she gets up to about 100km range for about $1.50 per charge…high speed up to about 100 kmph and the other about 70 kmph.’

So the car is unsuitable for highway travel for any length of time or even city travel that involves sitting in traffic for extended periods…100km range (round trip) even for most city commuters (including periods waiting at intersections and traffic lights, etc.) is of limited use.

Size limits (e.g., for families, etc.) are another factor that limits suitability as does capacity for use as passenger and small freight carriers…either batteries would be constantly being changed or battery capacity would simply be insufficient for the purposes.

Travel across cities or from one regional centre to another indicates that 100km range is very limiting. I also have a friend who has a small electric car which is supplied with her salary package. While she is determined to persevere with the vehicle, it is proving to be of very limited use as opportunities to recharge or requirements to change batteries over are not ideal.

For many purposes served by ‘local running around’ in an electric vehicle, perhaps physically ‘running around’ might still be the healthier and more environmentally sound proposition…just a thought.

(tbc...)

(Cont...)

xoddam, please, I’m not suggesting that we’re heading for another Ice age…just that we would have more to fear if we were…mass starvation would be a certainty.

Better use of available food production could feed the world now and for the foreseeable future…greed and stupidity and an obsession for power (under the guise of other fronts) is the immediate problem with world food shortages, etc.

Greenland did grow crops, that was my point…it was warmer…so was the rest of the world…some places became wetter and others hotter and drier. We could use our water resources much better with some vision and planning. None of that will come about while the decisions made are political decisions dictated by corporate transnationals through their cheque books as election donations to all the major political parties.