A surprising news story published by The Associated Press. A study just published Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences states that electric cars might be doing more harm than good to the environment. It also says that ethanol might not be a good alternative either. Where the car is charged might result in more of those dreaded carbon emissions that climate scientists claim contributes to global warming than gasoline powered vehicles.

Researchers involved in the project examined environmental impact for an electric car’s life span. Including the source of the power for the vehicle and battery construction. The study found all electric vehicles cause almost 90 percent more air-pollution related deaths than cars that use gasoline. However, according to the US Department of Energy, coal produces almost forty percent of the US’ electricity so when an electric car decides to charge up in a coal producing state like Wyoming, Virginia, North Dakota or Ohio, their doing so contributes more carbon dioxide and deaths attributed it than gasoline.

Scientists did point out that it will be better once electric cars could recharge from a cleaner grid but that is a long way off and countries that use renewable energy power sources still use fossil fuel power sources when renewable sources can’t operate due to lack of wind or the sun. Researchers also stated that electric cars do produce less pollution than vehicles powered by natural gas while pollution from wind, solar or wave energy sources is even lower. However, the one thing to keep in mind is this quote in the AP story from one of the scientists involved in the research.

“It’s kind of hard to beat gasoline” for public and environmental health, said study co-author Julian Marshall, an engineering professor at the University of Minnesota. “A lot of the technologies that we think of as being clean … are not better than gasoline.”

There is also this quote from Dr. Julian Marshall who was also interviewed by KCBS out of San Francisco.

“It depends on where the electricity comes from and that’s kind of one of the strongest findings here. You’re looking at the air pollution and health impacts,” Marshall said. “Electric vehicles and ethonal are sometimes offered up as environmental solutions and we found that’s not always the case.”

With all of the above facts in mind, you may want to nix the idea of owning an electric car or if you own one to get rid of it and buy a gasoline-powered vehicle. Then again, taking into account their hatred of mankind, environmentalists encouraging people buy electric vehicles makes sense. What better way to quickly kill off human beings by advocating people purchase a vehicle that results in more carbon dioxide emissions and the high amount of deaths associated with it?