The Downside Of Electric Vehicles

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Accept EVs, accept anything – forever?

PA Pundits - International

By Duggan Flanakin ~

If you listen to the “woke” futurists, or even to the majority of auto companies pledging to stop manufacturing gasoline and diesel vehicles, it might be time to sell your auto stocks. Do you really think the U.S. is about to build 280 million electric vehicles to replace the 270 million internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles that many states (and many countries, not to mention auto manufacturers) want to ban (from the highway not just from new sales) by 2030, 2040, or maybe 2049?

Forget if you will all the arguments about the massive amount of earth mining using slave labor those 270 million EVs will generate to acquire the cobalt, nickel, lithium, and other metals without which EVs cannot be built, much less operate. Forget the huge costs of expanding the electric grid to account for all of the electricity needed to move those vehicles…

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Covid chaos: Decision to close Scottish mass vaccination centre due to COP26 climate plans described as ‘madness’

Jabs no more

Climate conference or Covid jabs, folks? Hardly worth asking — it wouldn’t be the conference. But then, those concerned don’t get asked if they want to delay, or go elsewhere for, their jabs so 20,000 foreigners (all fully jabbed?) can invade Glasgow for a chin-wag about the weather.
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A decision to permanently close one of Scotland’s key mass coronavirus vaccination centres at the end of this weekend has been described as “madness”, reports inews.

The facility at the SSE Hydro in Glasgow will close at the end of Sunday in preparation for the COP26 climate change conference in November.

Between now and then it is also due to host a series of concerts featuring artists including Genesis, Haim and McFly.

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde (NHSGGC) said it was switching its focus away from mass vaccination centres and towards mobile facilities and drop-in centres in local communities.

Schwarzenegger slams climate alarmism: No one’s going to invest in a movie that has no hope

Credit: Robertson / The GWPF

Replace ‘has no hope’ with ‘makes no sense’, then he’s getting closer to the reality that eluded the doomsters long ago, if they were ever anywhere near it at all.
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Environmentalists’ constant hyperbolic predictions of apocalyptic doom have left the public tuned out and resigned, actor Arnold Schwarzenegger told his fellow climate warriors at the Austrian World Summit in Vienna on Thursday. CNSNews reporting.

“No one is going to invest huge sums of money in a movie where there is no hope,” Schwarzenegger said, warning that people won’t invest in the climate movement if they are bombarded with nothing but messages of doom – ranging from famine and war to human extinction:

Was 2020 a Record-Breaking Hurricane Season? Yes, But. . .

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Quote: ‘the bottom line is that the doubling in the number of named storms over a century is very likely due to technology change, not natural or man-made climate change.’

Inside the Eye

Chris Landsea and Eric Blake [1]

An Incredibly Busy Hurricane Season

The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season was extremely active and destructive with 30 named storms.  (The Hurricane Specialists here at the National Hurricane Center use the designation “named storms” to refer to tropical storms, subtropical storms, hurricanes, and major hurricanes.)  We even reached into the Greek alphabet for names for just the second time ever.  The United States was affected by a record 13 named storms (six of them directly impacted Louisiana), and a record yearly total of 7 billion-dollar tropical cyclone damage events was recorded by the National Centers for Environmental Information (https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/billions/time-series/US).  Nearly every country surrounding the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean Sea, and tropical/subtropical North Atlantic was threatened or struck in 2020.  Total damage in the United States was around $42 billion with over 240 lives lost in the United States and our neighboring…

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Prince Charles wants pension funds to help finance his climate obsessions

Anyone in charge of large pots of other people’s money is in his sights, it seems. The people whose money it is are excluded from the conversation, such as it is, of course. Just keep shouting vague buzz terms like ‘climate change’,  ‘greenhouse gas’, ‘net zero’, ‘biodiversity’ etc. and wait for the money to roll in.
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HRH Prince Charles has called for “real action” from the pensions and investment industry on tackling the “existential threats of climate change and biodiversity loss”, says Corporate Adviser.

His call to action was made at the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association’s online ESG conference.

Setting out the challenge Prince Charles said: “I have spent much of the last forty years trying to get across the message about why sustainability matters and… frankly, I am fed up with all the talking. We know now what needs to be done.”

He said that institutional investors, pension professionals, chief finance officers and accountants attending have an “essential role to play in driving the urgent and substantial change required”.

Caltech professor helps solve Hindenburg disaster

The LZ-129 Hindenburg, the famous Zeppelin, at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in 1936 [image credit: CIVIS TURDETANI / U.S. Department of the Navy, Bureau of Aeronautics]

As hydrogen is in the news these days as a potential ‘alternative’ fuel, heavily promoted by climate obsessives and others, this look back in history is vaguely topical and offers a fresh technical analysis based on experiments.
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On the evening of May 6, 1937, the largest aircraft ever built by mankind, a towering example of technological prowess, slipped through the stormy skies of New Jersey and prepared to land, says TechXplore.

The airship Hindenburg was nearing the end of a three-day voyage across the Atlantic Ocean from Frankfurt, Germany. It was a spectacle and a news event.

Onlookers and news crews gathered to watch the 800-foot-long behemoth touch down.

And then, in one horrifying half minute, it was all over. Flames erupted from the airship’s skin, fed by the flammable hydrogen gas that kept it aloft, and consumed the entire structure, ending 36 lives.

An Obama scientist debunks the climate doom-mongers

Another setback for the doomsayers, as some inconvenient truths flow in their direction. Meanwhile the US ‘climate envoy’ comes up with the useless claim that “You don’t have to be a scientist to begin to feel that we’re looking at a trend line.” A trend of ever-increasing vacuous climate sales talk?
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The Washington Post has published an enlightening opinion piece on climate alarm and climate realism, says The GWPF.

Its weekly columnist Mark Thiessen bases his column on an interview with Steve Koonin and his new book ‘Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters’ which is making quite a splash due to its matter-of-fact, no-nonsense approach.

Shutting down nuclear plants risks ‘greatest loss of clean power in history’

Existing Sizewell B nuclear power station

Being hooked on ‘carbon intensity’ beliefs can lead to many strange decisions. For example, lack of enthusiasm for nuclear energy sits alongside the boom in biomass burning, churning out vast amounts of supposedly unwanted carbon dioxide.
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If governments around the world continue to shut down nuclear plants, they risk driving the “single greatest loss of clean power in history”.

That’s the warning from industry associations including the Canadian Nuclear Association, FORATOM, the Japan Atomic Industrial Forum, the Nuclear Energy Institute, the Nuclear Industry Association and the World Nuclear Association, who have penned a letter calling for world leaders to step up investment in nuclear infrastructure, reports Energy Live News.

The group states that unless policymakers unveil a raft of new spending on nuclear, progress on decarbonisation will ‘backslide’ and the carbon intensity of energy generation will begin to rise.

Electric cars may make driving too expensive for middle classes, warns Vauxhall chief

Vauxhall Corsa-E [image credit: carmagazine.co.uk]

Car makers are getting nervous about the high cost of electric cars compared to fuel burners. Sales figures for EVs aren’t impressive, and uncompetitive prices are just one of several negative factors. Being pushed around by climate-obsessed governments is causing problems, to say the least.
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Driving could become the preserve of the rich as Britain and other countries around the world impose bans on diesel and petrol cars and embrace electrification, the boss of Vauxhall owner Stellantis has warned. The Telegraph/Yahoo Finance reporting.

A global rush to go electric could make cars too expensive for the middle classes, said Carlos Tavares, chief executive of the world’s fifth-biggest car maker – and it may even fail to significantly reduce carbon emissions because the vehicles are so much heavier than petrol ones.

The comments are the most outspoken public criticism of electrification by any car boss and will likely cause consternation in Downing Street, where Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said new fossil fuel cars will be banned from 2030.

EV’s Not Family Workhorses, But Short-Range Second Cars

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EVs are looking more and more like the non-solution to the non-problem.

PA Pundits - International

By Ronald Stein ~

With half of the EV’s in the entire country being located in California, the recent 2021 California study may be a downer for the EV excitement as it shows that EV’s are driven half as much as internal combustion engine vehicles. The study illustrates that EV’s are generally second vehicles and not the primary workhorse vehicle for those few elites that can afford them.

To date, zero and low emission vehicles are generally from the hybrid and electric car owners which are a scholarly bunch; over 70 percent of EV owners have a four-year college or post-graduate degree. This likely explains why the average household income of EV purchasers is upwards of $200,000.

If you are not in that higher educated echelon and the high-income range of society, and a homeowner or resident of a NEW apartment that has charging access there may…

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Albert Einstein said no to CO2 radiative warming of the atmosphere

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Unfortunately climate alarmists are too far down their manic road to be halted by the views of Einstein or anyone else, but worth a look anyway.
[H/T Chaeremon]

Odyssey

The hypothesis of global warming from man made CO2 depends on a much-repeated narrative about CO2 trapping infrared (IR) photons leaving the earth. Although a beguilingly simple idea, a host of assumptions underlie it. One of these is that the radiative photonic absorption – emission interactions of the trace gas CO2 dominate heat movement in the atmosphere. And it turns out, this argument, a pillar of the global warming theory, is false – it was refuted in advance by none other than Albert Einstein in 1917.

In this 1917 paper:

http://inspirehep.net/record/858448/files/eng.pdf

Einstein says this about radiative heating of a gas:

“During absorption and emission of radiation there is also present a transfer of momentum to the molecules. This means that just the interaction of radiation and molecules leads to a velocity distribution of the latter. This must surely be the same as the velocity distribution which molecules acquire as the…

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Africans Deflect Biden’s Demand To End Fossil Fuel Use

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Climate dogma and economic reality are not compatible. If one wins, the other loses.

PA Pundits - International

By Duggan Flanakin ~

As the merger of climate change and COVID panic materializes in front of our eyes, “global leaders” have found plenty developing world voices to join the crusade to “save the planet” from carbon (dioxide) “pollution.” But like their Chinese and Indian counterparts, many Africans, from heads of state to captains of industry and beyond, intend to expand, not shrink, reliance on fossil fuels to build their economies.

According to Oxford University researcher Galina Alova, “Africa’s electricity demand is set to increase significantly as the continent strives to industrialise and improve the well-being of its people,” but those who hope for rapid decarbonization in Africa will likely be disappointed.

Alova’s research found that Africa is likely to double its electricity generation by 2030, with fossil fuels providing two-thirds of the total, hydroelectric another 18 percent, and non-hydro renewables providing less than 10 percent.

Such an energy…

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Many Brits underwhelmed by so-called ‘climate crisis’, Sky News poll finds

Credit: planetsave.com

The prospect of a cool country becoming marginally warmer, should that happen, isn’t an urgent problem or maybe even any problem for the average Brit, judging by this poll. Climate fearmongers may need to look elsewhere for a good source of propaganda victims.
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Only 50% of respondents in the YouGov poll for Sky News supported a ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030.

Almost 25% of Britons are unwilling to change key habits that would help tackle climate change, an exclusive poll for Sky News suggests.

The survey, conducted by YouGov, asked participants what they would be prepared to do in order to reduce the country’s carbon emissions.

America Pursues Expensive Electricity While Much Of The World Lives In Energy Poverty

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Climate virtue signallers demand belief in their fool’s paradise, regardless of cost.

PA Pundits - International

By Ronald Stein ~

With many still living with little to no access to electricity, American politicians are pursuing the most expensive ways to generate intermittent electricity with offshore wind turbines on the East and West Coasts.

The U.S Energy Information Administration (EIA) has already documented that offshore wind continues to be one of the most expensive forms of electricity generation.

Energy poverty is among the most crippling but least talked-about crises of the 21^st century. Electricity is the one of the simplest solutions to improved health, economic opportunity, education, nutrition, and comfort in the developing world, especially for women and girls.

In the world’s poorest countries, there are 11 million children in the world dying every year.

Those fatalities are from the preventable causes of diarrhea, malaria, neonatal infection, pneumonia, preterm delivery, or lack of oxygen at birth as many developing countries have no…

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As Brits dream of continental holidays, Prince William warns humans must ‘reset trajectory’ to avoid climate disaster

Prince William [image credit: Frankie Fouganthin @ Wikipedia]

We’re in the realms of vague waffle here. Where the climate fits in to anything he says is a mystery, in this report at least. Anyway, who is interested in yet another jet-setting promoter of a so-called ‘great reset’ that boils down to yet more restrictions on lifestyles — for the many, but not the favoured few like him?
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Prince William is calling for humanity to “reset our relationship with nature and our trajectory as a species” in a bid to avoid a climate disaster, reports Sky News.

In a special video message broadcast at the Conservation International Gala in the US, the Duke of Cambridge said the next decade would be “one of our greatest tests”.

Biden’s Blackout Nation: ‘Green’ New Deal Promises More Time Freezing or Boiling in the Dark

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The UK and EU seem determined to make these obvious power generation
mistakes that will inevitably lead to much higher prices and blackouts, sooner or later.

STOP THESE THINGS

Sitting freezing or boiling in the dark provides a moment to consider where one’s electricity comes from. Californians, South Australian and now Texans have all enjoyed the experience, one way or another.

The common thread, of course, is an obsession with sunshine-dependent solar and/or weather-dependent wind power.

The belief that we’re just a heartbeat (and a few TWhs worth of lithium batteries) away from an all wind and sun powered future is not just delusional, it’s dangerous.

Modern, civilised society depends upon having power as and when we need it. Not merely those occasions when Mother Nature feels inclined to deliver it.

The temporary loss of electricity to provide light, heating or air-conditioning might be an irritating inconvenience. But for the aged, the infirm and those on life support it’s no laughing matter.

Then, behind the curtain, there are a raft of critical systems – including communications (think mobile phone…

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Apparent Atlantic warming cycle likely an artefact of climate forcing, modellers claim

Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation 1880 to Nov 2018 based on the ERSSTv3b dataset [image credit: Giorgiogp2, bender235 @ Wikipedia]

No prizes for guessing who is behind this one. Climate models ‘prove’ humans are the problem, not nature – heard it before?
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Volcanic eruptions, not natural variability, were the cause of an apparent “Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation,” a purported cycle of warming thought to have occurred on a timescale of 40 to 60 years during the pre-industrial era, according to a team of climate scientists who looked at a large array of climate modeling experiments. Phys.org reporting.

The result complements the team’s previous finding that what had looked like an “AMO” occurring during the period since industrialization is instead the result of a competition between steady human-caused warming from greenhouse gases and cooling from more time-variable industrial sulphur pollution.

Boris defends green activists like Carrie Symonds in UN climate speech

Image credit: BBC

More of the usual tedious arm-waving evidence-free rhetoric on climate. People deserve better.
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He attacked climate sceptics in a speech to the United Nations, blasting those who ‘say this is all green stuff from a bunch of tree-hugging tofu munchers and not suited to international …. politics’, reports the Daily Mail.

In the virtual address to the Security Council, as the UK chaired the body for the first time in 30 years, he drew a direct link between environmental change and terrorism.

He warned that those displaced when their homes became unlivable were easy prey for extremists in refugee camps.

How did UK popular press go from ‘climate fear is bonkers’ to greenwashing?

Since when did the British Press in general ‘respond to government policy’ by reversing its opinions on anything? Very strange. No evidence is offered in this article of what public opinion of government climate policy, or even of climate propaganda in general, actually is, so they resort to assertions.

H/T The GWPF
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The new green face paint of the British press is not simply a consequence of public opinion.

It’s also a response to new Government policy, says I-news.

Like a shrinking Antarctic ice shelf, collapsing into the sea in the face of global warming, the climate scepticism of large parts of the UK press is finally starting to melt away.

Earlier this month, The Times, which had caused scientists to despair at its apparent support for climate change denial, ran an editorial in support of Government proposals for new taxes to combat carbon emissions. “It is the right approach,” the paper concluded.

On 30 January, Natasha Clark, political correspondent at The Sun, tweeted that she was “delighted to be taking on environment, green and climate news ahead of COP26”, the UN change conference in Glasgow in November.

In October The Sun launched a Green Team campaign so that “every reader can help save the planet” (and maybe win some vegan sausages).

Most surprisingly, the Daily Express, for so long the loudest-ranting climate denier on the UK newsstand, turned its Crusader icon the colour of an avocado on 8 February and implored its readers to “Join our green Britain revolution!”

Alongside that front-page headline were logos of such unlikely Express bedfellows as Greenpeace and Solar Energy UK, and a photo of Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak larking around with an electric vehicle charging gun.

Here is a clue to what’s going on. The new green face paint of the British press is not simply a consequence of public opinion. It’s also a response to new Government policy.

Downing Street is working hard to bring the Tory press in line with Boris Johnson’s strategy for a “green industrial revolution” to underpin economic recovery and establish the UK’s reputation as a champion of clean energy ahead of the UN summit.

This is welcome, if worryingly late in the day. It is also deeply ironic. Five years ago at COP21, that moment in Paris where global leaders united to fight global warming, much of the UK press viewed the euphoria with cynicism.

Full article here.

Facebook announces UK trial to ‘tackle’ climate misinformation

Photosynthesis: nature requires carbon dioxide

Tackle – or generate? Carbon dioxide being a benefit to plants – which it clearly is – will be deemed false if it’s ‘excess’, according to this report. Anything that might cast doubt on climate catastrophism is likely to get the label treatment.
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Labels to be attached to posts directing users to Facebook’s Climate Science Information Center, reports The Guardian.

A new section of the Climate Science Information Center, launching alongside the labelling trial, debunks common myths such as the false claim that polar bear populations are not suffering due to global heating, or the widespread belief that excess carbon emissions help plant life.

Facebook is working with climate communication experts from around the world, including at the University of Cambridge, to produce the content.

Dr Sander van der Linden, a Cambridge academic who has worked with Facebook on the centre, said: “The spread of damaging falsehoods endangers the level of international cooperation required to prevent catastrophic global warming.

“Facebook is in a unique position to counter the circulation of online misinformation, and the new climate ‘myth-busting’ section is an important step toward debunking dangerous falsehoods.”

Full report here.