Hypognosis - "... if we took away the solar sector completely then we'd be burning carbon to fuel these electric cars during the day *and* meeting regular needs, at night. Greater carbon emissions overall, without the aid of solar..."
That's not quite correct. A great many other people share your belief about this but both you and they are wrong. Allow me to explain by first asking a question:
Are you aware that you simply cannot turn off a fossil fuelled power station when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining?
Fossil fuelled power stations continue to consume fossil fuels even when the energy they produce is essentially being dumped. It's absurd. They are deliberately dumping (through heat exhaustion) energy that could be used to produce electricity in favour of identical energy produced by wind turbines and solar. As a result, the net saving of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere is zero.
It cannot be said loud enough nor often enough. For every wind turbine and solar panel there must be an equivalent amount of fossil fuelled power permanently on-line to kick in at a moments notice when the wind stops blowing the sun stops shining. Wind turbines and solar panels do not prevent carbon dioxide from being released into the atmosphere. In fact, they are net carbon dioxide emitters themselves as their creation, installation and maintenance all involve massive amounts of fossil fuels.
Hypognosis - "... electric vehicles do away with particulates and nitrous oxides.."
In their immediate vicinity, I agree that they do. But that's not what we're talking about. We're not talking about pollution. We're talking about energy production and carbon dioxide. Not particulates. And carbon dioxide is not a pollutant - no matter how many times it is described as such by the BBC and other news outlets.
Hypognosis - "... They are not saving the planet until solar/wind or other 'clean' power has brought about serious reduction in use of carbon fuels."
You think that wind turbines and solar are "clean"? Not so. See my comment above.
Why do you think that atmospheric carbon dioxide at greater concentrations than exist today are a bad thing? I assume you are aware that we currently live in an age where atmospheric CO2 is around 400 parts per million [ppm] and that there have been a great many times in the past when atmospheric CO2 has been much higher - as much as ten times higher - than current levels and yet the average global temperature has been much lower than today? I also assume you are aware that CO2 helps plants to grow? Some farmers (notably tomatoes growers who grow on an industrial scale) pump CO2 into their growing environments and as a result produce a significantly higher yield than they would otherwise? Crops 'love' CO2.
I further assume that you are aware of the limited and negative logarithmic absorption rate (ie. saturation) of atmospheric CO2? Initially, at low levels, CO2 helps to trap heat into the atmosphere but as the amount of CO2 increase, this ability diminishes exponentially. We could double the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere to 800 ppm and the average global temperature would be essentially unaffected.
http://goo.gl/cOAoz
Maybe you think that higher atmospheric CO2 concentrations result in more inclement or severe weather? If so, not one of the big global insurers shares your view. In fact, natural disasters due to weather are at an all time low. It's also been 10 years since a category 3 hurricane has hit the USA - a record in this field.
http://goo.gl/duSvjT
I understand why you think that CO2 is a problem. I really do. The mainstream media love a disaster. Unfortunately, Global Warming, or Climate Change as it is now known is slowly proving to be a dead duck. Not one of the catastrophic predictions has materialised and not one of them seems likely to in either the short or long term.