Global Warming? Don't Blame The Car

KOMPAS.com -  General Motors executive says solar flares are responsible for climate change, not car emissions or CO2. Senior General Motors executive Bob Lutz has slammed scientists and environmentalists, saying global warming has little to do with humans and more to do with solar flares and sunspots.

The self-confessed petrolhead and man who proudly claims to be a progenitor of the Chevrolet Volt electric car (due in Australia in 2012) still scoffs at global warming.

Lutz, who in 2008 memorably described global warming as a “crock of shit”, once again aired his views while meeting with a group of Australian journalists at the Detroit motor show last week.

"I am not going to give a speech on this because everytime I do I get in trouble,” Lutz said, then immediately began explaining his views.

"All I ever say is look at the data, look at the empirical evidence. Look at what they said 10 years ago what would happen with rising ocean levels, it hasn’t happened.

"Those of you who have watched the Al Gore ‘Inconvenient Truth’ movie saw his hands over the Gulf of Mexico and all this boiling hot water. ‘You think Hurricane Katrina is bad you haven’t seen anything yet, we are going to have all these horrible hurricanes every year’. We haven’t had one, Katrina was six years ago and we have yet to have the next hurricane.”

Instead of CO2-driven global warming, Lutz embraces the theory that the planet is actually cooling because of lower solar flare and sun-spot activity.

"It has got nothing to do with CO2, it’s got everything to do with solar activity, and when the solar flares stopped and the sun has been unusually quiet almost to the point of worrying people, then global temperatures go down.”

So why is Lutz such a strong proponent of the Volt and the electrification of the automobile? Peak oil is the answer.

Lutz argues that continued dependence on oil as demand inevitably increases will simply exacerbate boom and bust economic cycles. That’s especially the case as Chinese car sales grow. In 20 years he estimates the China market will equal the rest of the world combined.

"At that point we have to have alternative drive systems, which to me have to be electric,” Lutz said.