They've taken us so insanely deeply into debt, but what if we had a brilliant, beautiful, well-functioning, modernized national infrastructure to show for it?
Did we get anything?!
And look how quickly that headline shifts to the infuriatingly banal question what does it mean for Joe Biden's reelection potential.
Posts
160 comments:
Contemplate California’s boondoggle “high speed rail” and its significance to the whole infrastructure McGuffin. It is always a “make insiders rich” project more than a “build great things” project. Always. Every damned time.
It is not the responsibility of the government to build charging infrastructure for electric cars. Tesla etc. can do it or let ordinary people build them like they did gas stations in the 1920s.
"They've taken us so insanely deeply into debt, but what if we had a brilliant, beautiful, well-functioning, modernized national infrastructure to show for it?
Did we get anything?!"
Consultants got something.
Rent-seekers got something.
Environmental impact reviewers got something.
The Washington DC office drones got something.
We don't do big ambitious projects anymore. We could create an electric rail to replace all interstate freeways and have our cars (chassis) latch to an individual rail chassis (Think futuristic, not current rail infrastructure.) The technology is certainly easily within our grasp. But the project is too futuristic, and we don't do such things anymore. Just compare the Tokyo subway system to the NY Subway system. We can't seem to even maintain what we once built.
And Biden was singin'...
Bye bye Miss Petrodollar Pie
They'll drive their EVs to the levees
But they'll all catch on fire
And the Tesla bois
Are drinkin' lattes with soy
Singin “I'm a gender-fluid tranny who's bi!”
A HUGE percentage of government spending is structured to funnel cash to the friends of those in power (forget D or R party names). Even when the money achieves an end goal, the government administrative and contractor profit costs are astronomical. Trump and Ramaswamy are 100% correct about this issue, but also 100% naïve about the solution. The swamp was created by swamp creatures because they live from swamp profits, they thrive in the swamp, and will die before allowing that ecosystem to change. I mean you Nancy Pelosi, Joe Biden, and most of the stuffed-shirt Republicans too.
Manage it, but don't try to eliminate it. Byzantine, Mandarin, Ottoman, EU, and UN bloated bureaucracies grow and grow back fast everywhere around the world.
Electric vehicles: Think of them as personal railroads with severe limitations. They work great for urban commuting and short errands, but are asinine and will always be asinine for remote locations and long distances. Toyota stands by hybrid technology and frowns on pure electric vehicles because they know this, they are sane, and they were way ahead of the politicians in selling the commercial hit Prius.
The gas station infrastructure we have now was built by the free market, no need to burden the taxpayer or print money. Biden is so economically illiterate that he thinks this malinvestment is a good thing.
Give Tesla 7.5 billion for superchargers and get the hell out of the way. As usual the feds "invest" money ( like the mob/cartels ) with all kinds of democrat strings attached.
Reminiscent of Obama’s stimulus package in 2009. Remember all of those “shovel ready projects”?
Now that I think of it, Obama put Biden in charge of that project too.
People won't buy them, because they don't understand them - yet. Only the people that are tech-mavens want them, to have the latest gadget. The problem is, when they start to understand them, they really won't buy them.
To me, they only make sense if they're used almost exclusively for local travel, where you can plug them in at home, when not in use. It's like having a golf cart in a gated community. It only makes sense as a convenience.
This is disinformation. Part of that $7.5 billion went to Tesla when Musk opened up their charging network to other manufacturers vehicles. I suspect Politico didn’t want to note Biden was sending billions to billionaires.
Remember when Obama had a trillion dollars to spend, and the decision was made not to invest it in the kinds of projects that led to jobs mostly for men? Pepperage Farm remembers.
The naysayers (sic) have been saying this since the dawn of the electric age.
There's also no getting away from the fact that homes pretty much have a limit of 240V 50A. A maximum of 12kw (realistically, 10-11kw). [They call this a 'level 2' charger: talking about dumbing things down. Just call it what it is: a 10/12kw charger]
With a Tesla (model 3, which seems to be the de-facto comparison car) battery of ~60kw that's around 5-6 hours to charge. Of course, if you charge from around 40% that's around 3 hours. Using a full 50 amps for that time frame, if the Tesla lets you. That's around, what, 150 mile range? 3 to 5 commutes? Cost around 5 to 10 bucks? (Rough napkin math, there)
Not bad for those that can place a charger at home. For a commuter/light errand car, maybe a second car.
Tesla has the only charging configuation/infrastructure that will work and is being adopted by its competitors.
"More Automakers to Use Tesla Superchargers. Here's What You Need to Know.
Soon you may be able to plug in electric cars from BMW, Ford, GM, Honda, Hyundai, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Toyota, and others at Tesla Superchargers
By Keith Barry
Updated November 7, 2023
Worse news still for the Lefty Little Brain Elon haters (LLR Rich, readering, Dumb Lefty Mark, LLR C****, LLR lonejustice, gadfly et al) is this:
"We are sensing a narrative shift over the past few weeks among institutional investors toward $TSLA being the only investable EV company out there. Competition can’t keep up. Declining long-term int rates helps,"
https://twitter.com/garyblack00/status/1732310322399125846?t=jtzDogmVEa1DSL2Ol_I-dQ&s=19
There are also already discussions underway with Tesla competitors for those competitors to purchase/lease Tesla FSD technology, which appears to have an insurmountable current and future lead.
Along with the future life altering Teslabots coming online...well. lets just say if you want to invest in Tesla, now would be a great time to do it.
Not to worry lefties/dems/LLR's. I am quite certain your DOJ/FBI/DeepState amigos are concocting plans as we speak to strip Elon of his companies and divvy them up amongst dem loyalists.
EVs were always a niche product for techies and early adopters. Mr. Market doesn't want them.
EVs were always virtue signaling for rich white liberals.
Silly goose. You thought that $7.5 billion (and all those trillions) were for infrastructure? Hahahahahaaaa. But hey, Democrat electification infrastructure looks pretty solid.
This is also a good example of “the issue is never the issue, revolution is always the issue.” Does “investing in homelessness” ever solve the problem? Did Obamacare lead to more affordable healthcare? Did Build Back Better build anything back or make anything better? Did the disinformation experts promote Truth or lies? Did switching from hand counting ballots to machines speed up results? Does “gender affirming” care improve mental health outcomes?
Did we get anything?!
I imagine that Democrat politicians and their donors did!
Here's some fun thoughts..
a) we are running record (and TRULY MASSIVE) deficits, while
b) we are at Full employment.. And
c) national debt is larger than our GNP. SO:
d) If this is what we do, during "good times" WHAT will we do during the next downturn?
Again,
we're in "good times", and we are running deficits now
interest rates are Still low, and we're spending a TRILLION dollars a year on US bond interest.
What do we do, when the next downturn comes?
"Did we get anything?!"
More Dem debt for more Dem power for more Dem payoffs.
"And look how quickly that headline shifts to the infuriatingly banal question what does it mean for Joe Biden's reelection potential."
It may be banal, and it is good you still feel infuriated, but it is also the main question. Green spending is about prog power--amassing it, reproducing it, then using it over the rest of us to change society and our way of life.
Actually solving problems has nothing to do with it. In fact, the green transition, as contemplated, is bound to fail. "Dearth of charging infrastructure" is just one small sign. Which is fine with progs: they want us to drive less, eat less, travel less, have less. Devastating the standard of living is their way of enforcing the ultimate kowtow.
beautiful, well-functioning, modernized national infrastructure
For all of our deficit spending, our infrastructure is in terrible shape.
Our electrical grid is shaky, and there are several reasons why Americans won't buy an electric car. Hybrid vehicles seem like a decent compromise and are popular.
We could build a new nuclear power plant for $7.5 billion. That would provide cheap, reliable energy for decades.
Those screaming for an end to fossil fuels have not thought anything through. They're just caught up in their current most urgent "Cause of our Life". No one- not John Kerry, not Greta Thunberg, not Michael Mann, not even Gavin Newsom has explained how we get enough lithium and cobalt- among other rare earth minerals, to make all of the batteries and solar panels. Nor how we dispose of the waste from a planet full of old solar panels, wind turbines, batteries- and the chemicals they'll leach into everything.
Nor do we have enough battery storage to power a city. It's nice that your neighbor's pool is heated via solar, or your entire home. Or maybe the building you work in is Certified Carbon Neutral. Grand, swell. Ever seen a city the size of Chicago powered without fossil fuels? Good luck with that. Nuclear would work, but...there's that nagging issue of us not having built any new plants in decades, and...what to do with the waste? Not to mention security. For all of our grids- no matter what form they take.
Not to mention: even if you do at some point (let's say 10 years from now) have enough charging stations to make a trip from Madison to Detroit possible, how does a society who's cut out fossil fuels, power those charging stations? Where does the power come from? Dragons? New pronouns? A giant turbine powered by activists?
India and China always smile, host Green World Meetings, attend those meetings in other lands, then go back to their work, building new coal fired plants to add even more new manufacturing to their economy. Us? We crank out graduates who know nothing of history or economics, little of reality, who think Hamas stands for goodness and that Donald Trump is the end of something they think is 'democracy'. And these are the people the world has allowed to push them to make insane mandates like- no more internal combustion cars by 2030. Good God. Good luck.
If these people have their way, Europe, then North America will, in a few short years, be sitting in the dark and cold every winter. And Florida will become even more crowded. For that reason alone, we need to keep powering with fossil fuels until we have an actual alternative that can be massively expanded to handle the energy of large metropolises.
NO PROBLEM PEOPLE!!
just charge your car at home, at night, while you sleep..
OH! did we mention that we're shutting down ALL the fossil fuel electric power plants?
NO PROBLEM PEOPLE!
we're going to replace those dirty smelly natural gas plants with solar energy, on Your roof!
You know? The type that works MOST BEST at night, while you sleep
Dave Begley: "EVs were always a niche product for techies and early adopters. Mr. Market doesn't want them.
EVs were always virtue signaling for rich white liberals."
This is why dems/left/LLR's Re scared to death of already planned and in development Tesla $25K EV, with production planned for the Berlin, Austin and Shanghai facilities.
"Tesla aiming to build electric car that costs about $25,000"
By Reuters
Published Nov. 6, 2023
Updated Nov. 6, 2023, 12:13 p.m. ET
Electric cars and choo-choos
Democrat fever dreams
They've taken us so insanely deeply into debt, but what if we had a brilliant, beautiful, well-functioning, modernized national infrastructure to show for it?
A friend and I we're taking a short hike in a state park. We got to talking about the park being built by the CCC during the depression. A number of park facilities have been in need of serious renovations for quite some time. Even though we are vastly richer nation than in the 1930s, we can't seem to get anything done.
A nation in decline.
More on Mike (MJB Wolf)'s riff on "build great things." America no longer builds great things. It used to (the transcontinental rail system, interstate highway system, the space program). Now it just builds great slush funds. "Build Back Slushier."
We are being led, no, ruled, by Lilliputians now. Slushing off the ingenuity, determination, and sacrifices of former giants.
1.2 million chargers for 300 million people ok
There's no such thing as a zero-emission vehicle. Call them Emission Elsewhere Vehicles. The power to charge them comes from CO2-based power plants. It might be a direct CO2 power plant like coal and natural gas. Or it might be superfund solar power panels which require coal and natural gas to manufacture. Same for wind mills. The generators in windmills require oil lubricants. Steel and copper are refined using coke - a purified form of coal. The mining vehicles used for copper and steel are powered by diesel.
Refueling a gas- or diesel-powered car/truck is matter of 5-minutes. Recharging a 60kwH battery in 5-minutes would require a 3,000-amp charger at 240V - that's a 720kw service. Impossible.
Democrats want us cold, miserable and immobile.
"'Did we get anything?!'
"I imagine that Democrat politicians and their donors did!"
If so, you can be sure many Republican politicians were equal beneficiaries of any funds that may have been doled out by big industry. That's how Congress works.
That beautiful, modernized infrastructure relies on a reliable electric grid, which can in no way be considered reliable if much of the power generation comes from so-called renewables. Here in the Republic of Unicorn Farts known as California, tens of thousands of us lose power every time it gets too hot for too long, as it does in the summer, or the wind blows too hard, as it does in the fall. And yet, the geniuses who decide these things insist that by 2035 we’ll be a carbon-free utopia.
“It turns out the shovel ready jobs weren’t shovel ready”
No one wants to wait around a charger for thirty minutes nor wait in line for one when charging takes that long.
20 years from now another democrat cause du jour. What to do with all those deadly batteries.
They will deny any involvment and blame Trump.
Seals will clap.
Government spending $$$ for X is NEVER about actually getting X. It is about enriching politicians' friends who create companies promising to make X, but invariably put the money in their pockets and never really get around to delivering X.
Ya mean the $25,000 battery replacement every 5 years don't bother them>>
To me, they only make sense if they're used almost exclusively for local travel, where you can plug them in at home
Except parking them within 50 feet of a dwelling is too much risk, given their propensity to burst into unquenchable fire. Multi-unit apartments on East coast burned down last week because someone was charging a scooter in their apartment.
According to the interweb, an EV uses an average of 406 kWh per month, which costs about $60-70.
That's a lot more than I spend on gasoline for my new hybrid. And more than I spent on my old all-gas car.
stlcdr,
I leased a Chevy Bolt. 60 KWH battery. I charged it mostly at home on a 110 V 15 Amp circuit. I got a reliable 210 miles out of a full charge, 250 If I babied it. If I needed a quick top-up there were a couple "DC Fast" chargers a couple miles away, that run at around 25KW (The car had the Fast hardware).
I liked it a lot. But. I live in Silly Valley, and I also owned a Subaru Forester.
China's investment in Bidenomics surely paid off when Joe mandated switching to EVs, which must be sourced from China. That was the best $2B the CCP ever spent. And they are building their infrastructure on coal power. And they are excluded from "Climate Czar" Kerry's continuous hectoring, as is India.
People will buy electric cars when the cost is less than the value that they provide.
EV’s are typically bought by high income buyers who can take advantage of the tax credits. And they are typically used as second cars. That leaves out a lot of buyers.
Hybrids make much more sense.
Where's all the infrastructure we paid 305 billon we've been waiting for under Obama?? Remember the shovel ready jobs that WEREN'T so shovel ready?? Where is all of THAT cash??
Jersey Fled said...
Reminiscent of Obama’s stimulus package in 2009. Remember all of those “shovel ready projects”?
Now that I think of it, Obama put Biden in charge of that project too.
12/6/23, 8:27 AM
I should have read the comments before commenting myself!!
The Democrats pushing EVs are helping to put auto manufacturers out of business, by any means necessary. Which is their plan.
Fuck these people.
Has anyone up top considered the fragility of having our energy AND transportation networks being dependent on a single grid?
I mean it strikes me as stupid at the best of times, because imagine Texas a few years ago during the freak winter storm if the trucks had ALSO stopped working... but entering a period of potentially enormous global conflict it jumps to almost suicidal levels of thinking.
Coal and gas have an enormous upside of being *things* that once you have them, you can burn as the end user without requiring massive amounts of tech thousands of miles away necessarily working at the same time. That's an upside that never gets mentions in the NYT.
Akio Toyota, chairman of Toyota:
“Toyota can produce eight 40-mile plug-in hybrids for every one 320-mile battery electric vehicle and save up to eight times the carbon emitted into the atmosphere,” according to prepared remarks for Toyoda provided to media.”
The limiting factor being rare earth metals.
8 times reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.
Existing refueling infrastructure.
No range anxiety.
Clear thinking like this needs to be stamped out immediately.
We have a LOT of Teslas on the road here in D.C.
And I have to tell you - the WORST drivers on the road are those driving Teslas, replacing even SUVs as the worst drivers.
We are very rural, but we have 2 charging stations that I know of. One is at the Hilton, the other is at the most high-end shop in town. Both of these locations make sense, and I'm sure they paid for them because they've been there for years now. When my son took an uber home from the city -- a 3 hr trip -- and his driver was in an EV, I was happy to inform him that the driver wouldn't be stranded in buttfuck without a charge.
...what does it mean for Joe Biden's reelection potential.
Biden, like electric cars, can't go very far and his administration has proved very costly.
Reason: "Despite campaigning as a moderate, President Biden has dramatically accelerated federal spending during his time in office. He has now spent more in his first two years than President Trump did during his last two years at the height of the pandemic."
Not to worry lefties/dems/LLR's. I am quite certain your DOJ/FBI/DeepState amigos are concocting plans as we speak to strip Elon of his companies and divvy them up amongst dem loyalists.
Yes. Elon is our modern day Hank Reardon.
"And look how quickly that headline shifts to the infuriatingly banal question what does it mean for Joe Biden's reelection potential."
Leftists would rather you not bother yourself over banalities like that and keep your focus on important things- like the J6 "insurrection" and whatever the latest thing it is they're blaming Trump for this morning.
Where are all the articles on "charging deserts" and how what little we have is allocated to the rich?
Isn't this the kind of hard-hitting news the NYT and WAPO are paid to produce?
we're in "good times", and we are running deficits now
Just judging by activity where I live, the "good times" ended about 2007 and we have just been limping along ever since. Sometimes we limp a bit faster, sometimes a bit slower, but we are still limping. And the Covid-19 shutdown broke things, small businesses and franchises shut down and haven't come back and there is a lack of workers for those sorts of jobs. Why is that? There is no way the employment figures reflect the true state of employment, the data is manipulated for political purposes.
On top of that crap, we are drenched in a constant downpour of politics. The old four year political cycle is dead. Forty days and forty nights would be a vast improvement. Damn, where is the Ark when you need it.
It seems like agita is the goal
People do not respond to force.
Force = dictatorship.
Biden and his cabal of loyal money grubbing mobsters - they are the totalitarian fascists.
Mark said...
"Government spending $$$ for X is NEVER about actually getting X. It is about enriching politicians' friends who create companies promising to make X, but invariably put the money in their pockets and never really get around to delivering X."
And yet you'll vote democrat every time.
Temujin said...
Those screaming for an end to fossil fuels have not thought anything through.
Those screaming anything have not thought anything through.
the fact is: The left are stupid And Ignorant (and Hateful (and vicious))
https://www.wsj.com/articles/from-which-river-to-which-sea-anti-israel-protests-college-student-ignorance-a682463b?mod=opinion_lead_pos11
College students don’t know, yet they agree with the slogan.
But only 47% of the students who embrace the slogan were able to name the river and the sea. Some of the alternative answers were the Nile and the Euphrates, the Caribbean, the Dead Sea (which is a lake) and the Atlantic. Less than a quarter of these students knew who Yasser Arafat was (12 of them, or more than 10%, thought he was the first prime minister of Israel). Asked in what decade Israelis and Palestinians had signed the Oslo Accords, more than a quarter of the chant’s supporters claimed that no such peace agreements had ever been signed. There’s no shame in being ignorant, unless one is screaming for the extermination of millions..
A Latino engineering student from a southern university reported “definitely” supporting “from the river to the sea” because “Palestinians and Israelis should live in two separate countries, side by side.”
Still, there is (some) hope..
Shown on a map of the region that a Palestinian state would stretch from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, leaving no room for Israel, he downgraded his enthusiasm for the mantra to “probably not.” Of the 80 students who saw the map, 75% similarly changed their view.
..after learning a handful of basic facts about the Middle East, 67.8% of students went from supporting “from the river to sea” to rejecting the mantra. These students had never seen a map of the Mideast and knew little about the region’s geography, history or demography.
of course, they are NOT going to be taught any (ANY!) of this in schools..
Instead,
they will be taught basic biology: "you can pick if you're male or female"
and basic ethics: "YOU are responsible for things done 100 years ago by people not related to you"
In order to,"Build Back Better" you have to build something in the first place. The government is incapable of building anything.
We need to start a movement to claw back the $7.5B for failure to provide the goods. Same for any other approved expenditure that has been gobbled up by the grifter class instead of delivering the product or service. We need an accountability module in all legislated appropriations. Not delivered? Return the money and/or face jail time.
Mike in Sno:
"Democrats want us cold, miserable and immobile."
Charter members of the Let's All Starve To Death While Freezing In The Dark Coalition.
“and I also owned a Subaru Forester.”
Better turn in your Man Card, Fred.
Considering the wholesale "transition" to electric cars is an obvious grift, the whole point was to divert money to connected individuals. That's the point of grift. Accomplishing anything useful is not even a secondary goal and is only performed if absolutely necessary to protect the grift.
You cannot switch to electric vehicles without greatly increasing the size of the power grid. You cannot greatly increase the size of the power grid using wind and solar power, which are unreliable and often fail when needed the most. Electric cars are clearly inferior to gasoline powered and hybrid vehicles while costing a lot more. The fact that our "betters" think this is a solution is a sign that they are stupid, they are evil, or both.
You might want to look at this: https://issuesinsights.com/2023/12/06/evs-arent-the-edsel-of-the-21st-century-theyre-far-worse/
Bottom line, the con is almost up. I admire the engineering in the EVs --God knows how much talent and sweat has been poured into this-- but I question the notion of a massive, instant conversion from a proven technology to something that is still emerging (and will never be perfect, or even adequate, for much of the market). And when that conversion is contingent on the continued infusion of TRILLIONS of taxpayer dollars, I have to wonder that we can call this a "market" at all. It's a theatrical production resting on the most cynical and pathetic pretensions imposed on the most credulous and (temporarily) helpless of populations.
Meanwhile, Kevin McCarthy has announced he is taking his "muh principles" ball and going home at the end of the year.
According to the WSJ,
"It is in this spirit that I have decided to depart the House at the end of this year to serve America in new ways. I know my work is only getting started."
I assume he will be writing a book, have a gig on Fox news as a political contributor, and has a lobbying position all lined up.
It seems the GOP is doing their best to give the Democrats the House majority before the elections next year. How much more damage can the left do if they have the Presidency, Senate and House for ten to twelve months? I shudder to think about it.
actually suicidal,
Drago:
The reason why the Big Three have decided to focus on EVs are:
1. Tesla is very profitable. Bigger gross margin with EVs.
2. Federal tax credits and government mandates.
The Ford CEO has talked about selling cars direct to consumers; like Tesla does.
I'm sure the Ford dealers were happy to hear that.
BTW, body repair costs for EVs are very high.
Batteries don't last that long and very expensive to replace.
Lesson? There is no free lunch in the Universe!
Temujin:
The battery problem for the grid is a giant issue. Francis Menton's Manhattan Contrarian blog just covered it.
The $7.5 billion was never intended to produce any infrastructure- it was always intended to line the pockets of campaign donors and the families and friends of the congressmen and senators who supported it. The way this works is that the campaign donors, families, and friends get sinecures doing everything the mountain of regulations require before building literally anything at all, and they siphon the money appropriated off doing their environmental and civil rights studies etc. which are all basically cut-and-paste operations. There are dozens of levels of middlemen and at least a hundred thousand paper pushers between the money spigot of government funding and an actual EV charger being built anywhere at all.
Here is what is going to happen- it will be found sometime after the Democrats win next year's election that the $7.5 billion has been all spent and that the "tens of thousands of EV chargers still not built will require $15 billion additional dollars to "finish the job" (which will be another con job).
Our entire government has become a grifting operation. This is what a society in collapse looks like, ladies and gentlement. And, wait for it, the just recently concluded Global Warming Locust Party have put out an ask for governments to put up $2.5 trillion per year of additional funding for their grifting operation. These evil fuckers are going to destroy us if we don't stop them right now.
Solyndra smiles.
I wonder when it will be infuriating enough to stop reading papers that employ journalists so obsessed with political power that every single topic has to be filtered through it...
So, on to the technology (I haven't read the article because of the above statement...I have passed that limit). Is there a technical reason WHY the infrastructure hasn't been started? You would think that having the dollars to spend would be the major barrier. Is it political graft, supply chain delays, permitting, what? Rather than worrying about whether or not it will affect the election, maybe find out if it SHOULD affect the election...but then you would have to be open to criticizing the party of the candidate that you clearly prefer.
BTW, if the article answers that, apologies.
Not enough reliable electricity generation. Not enough lithium and other rare earth elements to manufacture batteries. Too much environmental arbitrage a la immigration reform through immediate deportation from Martha's Vineyard for our elites to care to change course.
the WORST drivers on the road are those driving Teslas
The audacity of arrogance that progresses from pride, privilege, and ignorance.
When charging stations are as plentiful and fast as gas stations, electric cars will flourish.
"People will buy electric cars when the cost is less than the value that they provide."
Except that flying pigs will be a lot cheaper.
It is not the responsibility of the government to build charging infrastructure for electric cars.
Government has shifted responsibility through trans/scientific mandates forcing market distortions.
I happened to live in NYC. Like most NYC residents I live in a multistory apartment building. The opportunities for charging a BEV here are essentially zero. About a third of the population of the US live in SMA (Standard Metropolitan Areas, i.e. cities) and about 25% live in multifamily dwellings.These two numbers overlap and are not additive. Still, I estimate that about that overall about a quarter of our population is going to struggle to adapt to a world of BEVs only. The groups hardest hit will be lower income families and racial minorities because they tend to live in cities.
So, we can conclude that the push to outlaw ICE cars is racist.
"Did we get anything?". That's the question that we need to ask the congresscritters and Mr. Biden.
As someone who recently took delivery of a model 3 a few things
- if i didn’t already have ICE powered cars, I would not get an EV
- Tesla charging infrastructure is good and actually works that said I do almost all my charging at home (and no Teslas do not ignite when charging, cheap ass Chinese scooters do)
- even without rebates it was one of the cheapest new cars I could get in may of this year, the Honda cRv I also looked at was $100 more per month for a lease
It’s a blast to drive, a nightmare to fix (got side swiped, few body shops want to deal with them) and not overly practical
A bunch of diesel powered charging stations shouldn't be that hard to set up. You don't need an electrical grid.
I read yesterday that the interest payments for the national debt is $1.1 trillion and climbing. All that money - which is more than defense spending - is to ensure the government can borrow even more money. Morons like Biden want to drive up the debt even higher. They’re less fiscally responsible than a spoiled teenaged girl with unlimited use of her daddy’s credit cards.
We drove from PA to TN to Madison and home over the past 10 days and saw more than a few car carriers full of Rivian pickups and SUVs. There were at least as many of them as there were loads of Teslas.
Our first encounter with a Rivian (pickup) was at a rest stop just short of the PA/NY line. It was parked, the occupant otherwise engaged, with a fan running furiously to cool something, my guess was the battery pack. Not sure what to make of it, but I was glad not to be parked next to it for very long.
Even when they do build the things:
Pull up to a charger; one hour to charge
Pull up to a charger and someone's already there; two hours to charge
Pull up to a charger and two people are already there, …
I mean, how many times have you had to wait in line at the gas station? It's not uncommon. Turning a 4-hour trip into a 7-hour trip? And the salt in the wound is, after considering manufacturing of the vehicle and generation of the electricity, you're basically breaking even on the carbon load.
These people are dumb as a box of rocks.
Temujin said...
"Those screaming for an end to fossil fuels have not thought anything through. They're just caught up in their current most urgent "Cause of our Life". No one- not John Kerry, not Greta Thunberg, not Michael Mann, not even Gavin Newsom has explained how we get enough lithium and cobalt- among other rare earth minerals, to make all of the batteries and solar panels. Nor how we dispose of the waste from a planet full of old solar panels, wind turbines, batteries- and the chemicals they'll leach into everything."
We saw, in one day, four scrapped windmill blades on their way to who knows where. They had been cut down to fit on a standard flatbed trailer, with the loose pieces stuffed in the wide end.
On a trip I can stop and get gas and be on my way in 5 minutes. Until you can do that with an EV I don’t care how many charging stations are built.
the wind blows too hard
Exactly, wind turbines are only viable inside a window of opportunity: fast enough to be economical, slow enough to avoid catastrophic self-abortion. Solar generation also has environmental, geographical, and progressive maintenance dependencies that curtail its function. Each has an environmental footprint or Green blight factor that limits its distribution.
Full disclosure I like them. Watching the mom van with the baby seat in back beat all comers at the drag strip was a hoot. My driving habits fit perfectly with an EV, excepting for the 3 or 4 days a year I'd have to drive far enough to need a DC charger but even there my habits could adjust to stopping in Hookset or Daytona and have lunch while topping off to continue my journey. I was a very early order Rivian but they never got their shit together sufficiently to sell me mine and I was treated poorly so now I badmouth them...
...kind of a shame the lefties decided to politicize them in stead of stasying out of the way and letting them just be offered as an alternative. Now they've fucked it all up...just like everything else they do...
It's bad policy.
With a Tesla (model 3, which seems to be the de-facto comparison car) battery of ~60kw that's around 5-6 hours to charge. Of course, if you charge from around 40% that's around 3 hours. Using a full 50 amps for that time frame, if the Tesla lets you. That's around, what, 150 mile range? 3 to 5 commutes? Cost around 5 to 10 bucks?
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers recently published The EV Transition Explained.
It was written by someone who is all in on Anthropogenic Climate Catastrophe Any Minute Now — he insists we are going to have to learn to travel less, and eat zee bugz.
And it is not a short read. But well worth it, aside from the nausea inducing genuflecting before the Catechisms of the Church of the Climate Apocalypse.
That said, it goes into some detail on stlcdr's comment. Just one of the details: Multiple chargers on one distribution transformer (they typically supply power for about 15 houses) will reduce transformer life from around 35 years to three years.
So add the replacement cost to 5-10 bucks. An option would be to use bigger transformers. Now factor in the cost of replacing all the poles these things are hung on. There are 180 million such poles in the US.
That is summarizing a few sentences from a 12 section report.
Speaking of chargers. A gas station along the interstate typically has 12 fueling points that take about five minutes to fully "recharge" an ICE vehicle, typically yielding around 400 miles driving range (ignoring reserve).
An EV, optimistically, needs 30 minutes to gain 200 miles range. (NB: this charging rate will reduce extremely expensive battery life). How many charging points will an interstate service station require to have no wait time beyond that required for charging?
One hundred forty four. No, wait. Two hundred eighty eight, because EV's have to stop twice as often.
But wait. There's more.
EV's weigh at least 1,000 pounds more than their ICE counterparts. Consider a 500 car parking structure. Which isn't built for the additional 500,000 pound load. Bridges? Roads?
It is a lead pipe cinch that none of John Kerry, not Greta Thunberg, not Michael Mann, not even Gavin Newsom have the first clue about.
VA Lawyer Mark: "We have a LOT of Teslas on the road here in D.C.
And I have to tell you - the WORST drivers on the road are those driving Teslas, replacing even SUVs as the worst drivers."
Gee, that sounds like court-ready admissable statistically-sound "evidence" untainted by any subjective bias whatsoever!
If you want something built, then hire someone to run the administration that knows how to get something built. Donald Trump perhaps.
It seems from the article that the money hasn't been spent yet. Is that how this works? Like a print on demand kind of thing?
“Has anyone up top considered the fragility of having our energy AND transportation networks being dependent on a single grid?”
Obviously not the federal government. They just agreed with an environmental group to breach the dams on the Salmon river, in order to “save” some minor subspecies of fish - which no longer have instinctual memory of spawning upstream from the dams. Hydro dams. Or maybe they do know this, and it’s part of their plan…
"And I have to tell you - the WORST drivers on the road are those driving Teslas"
My D.C. area experience is that Lexus drivers are the worst. Apparently being able to afford a "Luxury" Camry means you're a very important person. Also, you bought a cushioned sledge rather than some sort of performance car with that extra cash because you don't actually care about driving.
EVs are delightful second cars, but doing away with ICE vehicles in a 6 year time frame (or whatever ridiculous nonsense they're pitching at the moment) is an admission that they just intend to herd the entire population into urban tenements (or possibly concentration camps). There's no other possible way to meet that goal. It's deranged. There would be civil chaos that make the Great Leap Forward look like sober management.
Charging smarging. Bidenomics kicking ass and taking names.
Manufacturing construction spending through the roof in the United States since Biden took over
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TLMFGCONS
United States oil production at an all-time high.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/us-oil-output-hits-record-producers-boost-drilling-efficiency-kemp-2023-11-01/
We have a LOT of Teslas on the road here in D.C.
And I have to tell you - the WORST drivers on the road are those driving Teslas, replacing even SUVs as the worst drivers.
There are a lot of bad Tesla drivers in the Washington, DC, metro area, but I assumed that was because there were so many arrogant drivers in the Washington area. I call it the “junior deputy undersecretary syndrome,” people who assume that their government job, however far down the org chart it is, means that mere traffic laws do not apply to their loftinesses. I once saw three people turn left from a four lane divided highway onto another four lane divided highway after their green arrow had turned red. The people who had the green light were supposed to watch out for them! The kicker? There was a police substation only a half block away. And I never saw anyone arrested for running that red light.
And, of course, a lot of those drivers have replaced their Priuses with Teslas to improve their virtue signaling.
Anyway, it’s axiomatic that the worst drivers are the ones who drive BMWs. I absolutely know that I don’t want to be within a mile of someone driving an electric BMW iX in the Washington, DC, area!
"I mean, how many times have you had to wait in line at the gas station? It's not uncommon."
In the last 20 years, I don't remember waiting even once. Yeah, I know- everybody says "Costco", but I don't get my gas there. And there was the time I crossed the Colorado River, leaving The People's Republic of California and made the mistake of taking the first offramp in Arizona (where the gas was $1/gal. less than at the station behind me, BTW). The Flying J was packed, three or four cars waiting in each line. No thanks, I drove a couple of miles down the road to another place that had no wait. So there's that.
"On a trip I can stop and get gas and be on my way in 5 minutes."
I mentioned this on another blog somewhere and was told I was full of shit- that it would take at least 10 minutes to fill up. Next time I stopped for gas, I checked the clock when I pulled up to the pump- 12:33. It was 12:36 when I was finished. I reported my findings to the internet skeptic and even offered to do the math for him- funny thing, I never got a reply.
One of the first things Joe Biden did was to kill the Twin Metals Mine. He’s like a child and the whole world has gotten inside his decision loop.
Hey Skipper: "It was written by someone who is all in on Anthropogenic Climate Catastrophe Any Minute Now — he insists we are going to have to learn to travel less, and eat zee bugz."
Tesla EV's should be used exclusively within cities to drive to and from high end steak houses.
I know where you can get a bunch of Proterra Busses cheap!
Load em' up with Detroit Diesels and GO!
Why do I have this empty feeling? This feeling that ... something is ... missing? Something important, something that really should be here ...
I know! You haven't quoted WaPo today! No WaPo! Are we "honoring" the strike?
Everyone thinks in stasis. When a 25k Tesla comes out it certainly will not with more than behemoth suv/pickups. The idea that battery technology will stay in stasis is also a mistake. Ice vehicles have no room for much improvement/cost reduction. Ev’s not so much, lots of room for cost reductions.
'They've taken us so insanely deeply into debt, but what if we had a brilliant, beautiful, well-functioning, modernized national infrastructure to show for it?'
Wait, I thought everything was Built Back Better®?
Next thing you're going to tell me is the Inflation Reduction Act™ didn't reduce inflation...
'Contemplate California’s boondoggle “high speed rail” and its significance to the whole infrastructure McGuffin. It is always a “make insiders rich” project more than a “build great things” project. Always. Every damned time.'
Anyone who doesn't hire the Japanese to supervise and build mass transit should be thrown in prison.
'EVs were always virtue signaling for rich white liberals.'
I'm a rich white conservative with a Tesla and I don't care about virtue signaling.
We needed a car, the price was good, and I only needed something for local driving that I could charge in my garage at night.
Plus, I get the state of California and Uncle Sam to give me money.
Over Thanksgiving I went to the Henry Ford Museum, where they have a few all-electric vehicles on display. Vehicles from 100 years ago. Yes, in the early 20th century they were producing electric vehicles for mostly local uses, including truck deliveries.
So the technology has been known and has been there. Problem is that the engineering simply has been unable to progress beyond a certain point. And if they haven't been able to solve the problems in a 100 years, I don't think they will anytime soon.
5-minute hydrocarbon refuel, in and on with life. Carbon dioxide emissions for a sustainable green environment.
Most people don't understand how electricity works.
Charging an EV is not the same as charging a laptop. My Dell laptop battery is rated for 60Wh. (60 Watt hours) The average EV battery pack is rated for 40kWh. (40,000 Watt hours.) You need really big power to charge that EV battery pack up. And big power doesn't come cheap. Installing multiple charging stations at a location could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in wire, transformers and installation costs.
Here is a Google AI answer to the question: "Car dealerships can spend $400,000–$750,000 to install Level 3 EV charging stations. Level 3 chargers are the fastest type of EV charger, taking 15–20 minutes to fully charge most EVs. The cost depends on the infrastructure improvements required, such as additional electricity to power the charging stations."
Like I said, big power doesn't come cheap.
BTW, We have a dearth of electric vehicle charging stations, but we have a plethora of piñatas.
As a side note, going from a push button cellular phone to a 'smart' phone (iPhone, maybe a 4?) it appeared to be a stupid move: going from a rugged phone which did exactly what needed and charging maybe once a week to a 5x more expensive, fragile, device needing charging once a day.
You get used to it, and start appreciating the new features. Just like electric windows on a car.
Once it reaches critical mass, the electric car becomes a first world must have. However, its a good few years away.
It can't be built, they don't care. They don't want us driving.
Quayle,
I've always liked the idea of being able to load your car on a train and travel in comfort. There is precedent. I believe it is common in Australia for traversing the outback, The channel tunnel does this (Paris to London?) and there used to be, may still be, a service from DC to Florida.
A couple of drawbacks are speed. Freight trains travel at about 20-30 miles per hour and who wants to do that? It is difficult to run fast passenger trains on the same freight tracks.
Special systems would need to be built just for cars/people and there is probably not enough traffic to make it pay.
One of the things that I can't for the life of me understand is why we are focused on electric cars rather than electric trains. It seems like a much better opportunity and more feasible from both engineering and economics.
Virtually all commercial rail in the US is already electric. Currently, most generated the electricity onboard using diesels. It seems like a no brainer to supply the electricity externally. Battery cars dould be added behind the engines and quickly changed out for charging. We've been using pantographs for 150 years to power trains and trolleys. Third rail is another option.
Roll out could be gradual. For those areas where there is no power or the battery is not enough, fire up the diesel.
If electric transport is good, trains seem like the logical place to start. Not cars. Certainly not airplanes or ships.
I thought Brando was the original Choo-Choo Joe. Why is he not talking this up?
As a serious question, does anyone know why we are doing almost nothing with electrifying our railroads? Is there an ecomnomic or engineering reason not to? Or is it just not enough grift?
John Henry
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), aka Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), was signed into law by President Biden on November 15, 2021. The law authorizes $1,200 billion for transportation and infrastructure spending with $550 billion of that figure going toward "new" investments and programs.
So no new Electric charge stations. Where did all the money go - $1,200 Billion? Ask Mitt Romney. Or Mitch McConnell. Or the other 20 or so Republicans who voted for it.
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), aka Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), was signed into law by President Biden on November 15, 2021. The law authorizes $1,200 billion for transportation and infrastructure spending with $550 billion of that figure going toward "new" investments and programs.
So no new Electric charge stations. Where did all the money go - $1,200 Billion? Ask Mitt Romney. Or Mitch McConnell. Or the other 20 or so Republicans who voted for it.
Temujin: "Nuclear would work, but...there's that nagging issue of us not having built any new plants in decades . . ."
Actually, Georgia Power placed Vogtle 3 in operation this year, and expects Vogtle 4 to be operational in 2024, so there's that. About 27% of our power is from in-state nukes.
With regulatory reform, this could be improved considerably. Our gutless politicians probably wouldn't take that risk, but the coming 'net-zero' grid collapse might force some re-thinking.
The dirty little secret that nobody talks about is what is going to happen when the law requires that everyone have electric cars? Every apartment complex in America is going to have to have charging stations for every car. The infrastructure cost of that is incalculable. Not to mention the carbon footprint and the load on the electric grids. We are headed for disaster, and the lawmakers are not even thinking about this.
"It can't be built, they don't care. They don't want us driving."
This is the endgame. Many (most?) people haven't figured that out yet.
"The groups hardest hit will be lower income families and racial minorities because they tend to live in cities."
Let them ride public transit. It will be easier for them to eat their cake that way.
Not just charging infrastructure. Also electricity infrastructure overall. Even if electric is better in some ways, it's a really bad idea to rely on only one source for everything: home, transportation, work, cooking, etc. Having a diverse energy portfolio helps avoid catastrophe. They say that won't happen, but the unexpected catastrophe tends to define a lot of world history.
The push for it all is another way the privileged talk about helping the world or the poor but are actually against the world and especially the poor in their wider positions.
"The idea that battery technology will stay in stasis is also a mistake."
You need to read some engineering analyses of this problem. It's not going to yield to some PollyAnnish feeling that things get better with time.
"Ev’s not so much, lots of room for cost reductions."
Car cost is not the show-stopping problem.
"It will be easier for them to eat their cake that way."
Cricket cake, I presume?
Vogtle Unit 3 goes into operation
Vogtle Unit 3 is the first newly-constructed nuclear unit in the U.S. in over 30 years and can power an estimated 500,000 homes and businesses.
...
Nuclear energy is the only zero-emission baseload energy source available today, offering high reliability, and efficient operations around the clock.
"Ev’s not so much, lots of room for cost reductions."
Car cost is not the show-stopping problem.
Battery technology, mined resources, and environmental hazards are the present and forward-looking limiters of production, operation, and reclamation of Green manufacturing.
Manufacturing construction spending through the roof in the United States since Biden took over
The economics of credit/debt emission.
United States oil production at an all-time high.
Ironically, efficiency has improved with progressive prices, ethnic Springs, and new Green deals.
Even if electric is better in some ways, it's a really bad idea to rely on only one source for everything
Yes, we need diversity in energy production selected for best fitness to purpose.
John Henry,
I live about 400 yards from the BNSF main Pacific Coast track (The same one that the Amtrak Coast Starlight ran on until quite recently.) Let me assure you, those freight trains are going at least double the speed you cite.
And I realize you're not an EE, but true usually a lot more clueful about engineering issues. Do you know how many, how very many miles of complete nothing there is along that coastal railway? It would be a ghastly expense to try to electrify it, and overhead lines -- no a third rail is not an option where wildlife and people can just walk across the tracks at ground level -- would be a frightfully expensive maintenance item, ultraplace a perfectly good diesel electric scenario. Yes, it's way better for the engines to have a self-contained diesel genset on board, rather than rely on a power station burning that same diesel hundreds of miles away.
All we got is screwed.
Howard said...
"Charging smarging. Bidenomics kicking ass and taking names.
Manufacturing construction spending through the roof in the United States since Biden took over
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TLMFGCONS
United States oil production at an all-time high.
https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/us-oil-output-hits-record-producers-boost-drilling-efficiency-kemp-2023-11-01/"
You've got something on your chin there. looks like mayo.
Howard. The impressive graph showing a spike in construction does not prove what you wish it to prove. Quite the contrary all of those projects had to have been conceived, plans drawn, construction x
Contracts signed, entitlements finally granted and financing funded . Those steps take years and are clearly Trump era projects.
“It can't be built, they don't care. They don't want us driving.”
In a nutshell.
Homer was on their design team
Kirk parker
"In the United States, for example, the national average speed of freight trains is around 25-30 miles per hour."
https://traintrackshq.com/how-fast-do-freight-trains-go/#google_vignette
https://www.statista.com/statistics/547745/average-train-speed-union-pacific-railroad/
This is a graph showing union pacific average freight speed by year. Lowest was 23.2mph in 2022.highest 27.2 in 2017
Some trains go faster, sure. But others, loaded coal trains in mountains for example go slower (5-10mph). If you have info on average speeds over 20-30mph I'd be interested to see it.
Re diesel on trains vs stationary diesel efficiency I agree. Best leave them in the engine. Ditto cars. (probably exceptions in both cases,but generally) but this conversation is predicated on having cars and trains powered by unicorn farts, wind or something equally magical.
I don't think there is a single solution for trains. That is why I mentioned 4. Pantograph, battery, 3rd rail (you are right but it would still have some applications) and on board diesel when the other 3 are impractical.
John Henry
The government never does anything efficiently. Or quickly. Except make war and kill people.
Dude1394 said...
Everyone thinks in stasis. The idea that battery technology will stay in stasis is also a mistake. Ice vehicles have no room for much improvement/cost reduction
Dude? now do the electric grid..
I'm not SAYING that you're a clueless idiot.. I'm just strongly implying it
@John Henry, the reason that trains are already electric has to do with the way they start. If it wasn't for the conductive torque from their electric traction motors, they would go through mechanical friction clutches at every single startup.
But the way they operate with self-contained power-gen actually makes good economical sense when one considers the electrical resistance losses suffered through high-line electrical transmission, and the putative cost of the additional infrastructure required for wire alone. No way that would be cost-effective over the millions of miles (guessing) where track is laid.
Martin said...
It is not the responsibility of the government to build charging infrastructure for electric cars. Tesla etc. can do it or let ordinary people build them like they did gas stations in the 1920s.
12/6/23, 7:58 AM
Of course not. This was always about graft and virtue signaling. The only thing that government should be funding is research. The quality of a lot of research is so bad that it is obvious that government funded research has been corrupted as badly as education and military spending. It's incompetence all the way down.
"The quality of a lot of research is so bad that it is obvious that government funded research has been corrupted as badly as education and military spending. It's incompetence all the way down."
So perhaps, the government shouldn't be funding research after all? It's not like the Constitution tasks them with the job or anything.
How did fedzilla take charge of charging?
If Exxon, Shell, etc. see volts in their futures they'll be putting chargers at each existing gas station. At their cost.
We'll not get into the $$6 bill now going to CA "hi-speed" fail, er, rail.
Presumably lots of people who are smarter than me know the answer to this, and will tell me what I am missing.
The whole purpose of the policy of shifting to electric cars is to reduce the use of carbon-producing fossil fuels. Electricity is expensive, but the shift is necessary to save the world from carbon pollution. OK.
The US and Europe are rich, and can (arguably) afford the cost of forgoing cheap and abundant fossil fuels.
But those cheap and abundant reserves of fossil fuels are out there. Available. Powerful. Our modern societies were built on them.
There are billions of people living in "developing" countries desperately trying to improve their lot.
In what universe does that cheap, abundant oil not get used? Especially when the predicted lowered demand in the enlightened nations lowers the price for the rest of the world?
So, just as the claimed carbon-free use of EVs is dependant upon carbon-powered electricity production, the carbon-free country promised by the promoters of EVs simply shifts the carbon production to other parts of the world.
Maybe I'm missing something. This seems like economics at work--and I'm no economist.
It sounds like on the EV issue many people think they are smarter than Elon Musk
boatbuilder said:
The whole purpose of the policy of shifting to electric cars is to reduce the use of carbon-producing fossil fuels. Electricity is expensive, but the shift is necessary to save the world from carbon pollution. OK.
There is no such thing as "carbon pollution." CO2 is a beneficial gas, not a pollutant. That's the Big Lie in Emission Elsewhere Vehicles, solar power and wind power. The Sahara desert is shrinking due to the higher levels of plant food. The ice caps are not disappearing, they are still within their historic range. The Greenland ice sheet is growing. The Northern Hemisphere's snow cover is above average, its at or above the 1-sigma upper limit.
Here in the Pacific Northwest, the mountain snow pack was above average last year, and will likely be above average this year. The fall flooding season has returned as usual. The average max temperature are unchanged, the min temperatures are rising due to the Urban Heat Island effect.
We've had at least 50-years of doomsday climate forecasts. All wrong.
The purpose of shifting to EEVs is to immobilize the populace and turn the average person into a serf. Confined to the land and does what he's told to do.
"Maybe I'm missing something."
Power. You know... A boot stamping on a human face - forever.
Boat builder,
I assume you mean carbon dioxide, a colorless odorless gas. It is alleged to be causi g the global whatsit driving the megillah.
It accounts for 0.04% of the air.
If you really mean carbon, a black solid generally, your comment makes no sense.
Carbon particulates make up considerably less than 0.04% of the air. Probably a half dozen or so zeros less.
John Henry
boatbuilder,
You make some very good points.
However, in your second paragraph:
"The whole purpose of the policy of shifting to electric cars is to reduce the use of carbon-producing fossil fuels..."
... you catastrophically misspelled the word "ostensible".
Granted, it's true that there are some useful idiots who truly believe in the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Warming, er, I mean Change religion, but the people at the top really pushing this can't be that clueless. For them, it's rather all about power and control, and if CAGW loses its effectiveness as a scare tactic, they will slip in some new and different Current Thing™ so fast it will make your head spin.
"Blogger RideSpaceMountain said...
And Biden was singin'...
Bye bye Miss Petrodollar Pie
They'll drive their EVs to the levees
But they'll all catch on fire
And the Tesla bois
Are drinkin' lattes with soy
Singin “I'm a gender-fluid tranny who's bi!”
Someone needs to record this. It could be the next Rich Men North of Richmond.
“The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers recently published The EV Transition Explained.”
“It was written by someone who is all in on Anthropogenic Climate Catastrophe Any Minute Now — he insists we are going to have to learn to travel less, and eat zee bugz.”
I have been a member of IEEE for better than 30 years now. It is a rare article in their SPECTRUM magazine anymore that doesn’t genuflect at the alter of Climate Change. A bit over a decade ago, I served as the chair of the Intellectual Property Committee (IPC) of IEEE-USA. As such I was a voting member of their Government Relations Committee (GRC). The majority of the proposed position statements of the IEEE-USA (other than from the IPC) had an attached CAGW/Climate Change justifications. For each one that was brought up, I questioned the wisdom of taking sides in this debate, whenever doing so might harm us. I was able to prevent it - esp after having offered to argue the merits of the science. Where else do we squander $Trillions$ based on models that never come close to reflecting reality? That worked, until I moved on from being chair of the IPC. A decade later, and no one seems willing to fight the Climate Change cargo cult fake science there anymore.
I assume you mean carbon dioxide, a colorless odorless gas. It is alleged to be causi g the global whatsit driving the megillah.
More to the point, carbon dioxide is 100% necessary for life on earth as we know it. Without CO2, water, and solar energy in the form of photons there is no plant life. Without plant life there is no animal life — and no molecular oxygen in the atmosphere. I was born in 1946, the first year of the Baby Boom, and I recall being taught this in grade school.
For purposes of my question, I used the shorthand for "Carbon Dioxide Pollution," and assumed the premise that the goal is to reduce it.
Doesn't mean that I don't understand that carbon dioxide is the "pollutant" or that I accept the premise.
I'm not brilliant but I'm smarter than that.
Nobody answered the point: How are all of the best minds going to prevent all of that cheap oil from getting used? (Wrong crowd, I know, but can someone play Devil's Advocate?)
Plants die when CO2 is less than 0.015%. The optimum level for plants is 0.1%. We need CO2 to breath. So, tell me how CO2 is a pollutant. Only in the new fascist hell that our elitist haters of Western Civilization are trying to impose on us.
The advent of internal combustion engines for land transportation was problematic for a while because the expense of the new tech overshadowed its utility compared to horsies pulling wagons. That soon changed as car tech matured in reliability. Ford introduced his assembly lines and drove ownership costs downward, and Model Ts replaced horses on the roads.
Electric cars are at a state now where we await a Model T, a vehicle whose cost does not exceed its utility. It is unclear if anything other than government fiat will cause the use of electric cars, or if they are meant to limit car ownership and driving rights to the wealthy only.
Fine, Howard, now tell us why Tesla has cut retail prices repeatedly over the last year. We think you’re the one who is posing as smarter than Musk. He’s well aware of market forces.
Nobody answered the point: How are all of the best minds going to prevent all of that cheap oil from getting used? (Wrong crowd, I know, but can someone play Devil's Advocate?)
Wrong question. All that cheap oil should be used. That's essential to our economy. The neobarbarians pushing EEVs and heat pumps don't want to generate the electricity required for those devices. They want to tear out the dams that supply some of that power.
They're after the four Snake River dams in WA. The Biden regime will agree to a sue-and-settle agreement to do that, all to save the returning salmon. Except, those dams have fish ladders that 98% of the returning fish safely pass. All to increase fish passage by 8%, they'd eliminate barge traffic, power generation and recreation.
There is an old saying that "the poison is in the dose," nonetheless it's also true that if our planet consisted solely of plant life, the plants would starve themselves to death by lowering the CO2 beyond to their death point, and the planet would be an unlivable Snowball Earth until some geologic process raised CO2 again somehow.
The idea that we should leave a planet that was on course to kill us, to its own devices with regards to CO2 is complete nonsense. The only reason it makes sense to anybody is due to constant repetition of the absurd concept.
Here is the Hockey Stick. If you accept that the "blade" is due to man's activity, actually a lot of it is due to "Mann's activities," but ask yourself if you would like to live in the world that the "handle" was trending towards?
"In what universe does that cheap, abundant oil not get used?"
This is the real reason for the war with Russia and the planned war with China, and this is why the "Green Party" in Germany, for example, which was once extremely anti-military, is now one of the firmest backers of a war to defeat Russia, break ti up, and take control of its oil wealth. The US has more oil than Saudi Arabia, but it's politically locked in the ground. Canada has huge oil resources, but it's been bottled up by the Biden Administration's decision to shut down Keystone.
Now imagine if Russia and Iran come under US control, the oil can be locked in the ground in the same way. Why do you think that formerly anti-war politicians world-wide have signed onto the war against Russia? It's because they view it as a climate war. Joe Biden recently said that the climate was by far the highest priority of the US government. Well, why are we wasting time and resources in Ukraine? Because it's all part of it.
The Arabs are not idiots, they know the game, and that's why the Arab World has taken Russia's side in the war. They know that if the US wins, the Arab World will have to take whatever crumbs the US offers.
boatbuilder,
The reason you're getting piled on for "carbon" is that you shouldn't be conceding even that much. I understand you're trying to use the scaremongers' terminology, but that's what scare-quotes were invented for.
Don't forget, "He who controls the terms of the debate, controls the debate."
As far as your question, my reply certainly acknowledged it right up front but said no more (a) because I assumed it was mostly rhetorical and (b) "ostensible" mostly does answer it. That is, what they claim they care about isn't what they really care about, and if someone invented a cheap, lightweight, non-flammable, 4-times-the-capacity battery made from only abundant elements, EVs would suddenly lose their luster with these folks.
Gretchen "FBI kidnap victim" Whitman wants to convert Michigan's fleet to all electric by 2040. Good luck with snow plows and heavy equipment. Snow plows will run for an hour then freeze up when their charge is gone. Heavy equipment will be even heavier and lack the horsepower required to do their jobs. She's living in La La land.
@Bruce Hayden: I have been a member of IEEE for better than 30 years now.
What surprised me was that after all that slobbering genuflection, the article was very incisive, regardless of how much the conclusions contradict orthodoxy.
(NB: I am not an EE, but my son is. Also, I might be easily fooled.)
Alexander commented earlier to the effect that coal and other fossil fuels don't require technology working from afar. One of the things that happened when Texas had its freeze in February of 2021 was that natural gas lines froze in addition to the wind and solar blanking. That has been used as an argument against fossil fuels, but it is incorrect when applied to coal. While gas is preferred to coal by the CO2-causes everything crowd, coal has the advantage that one can store a lot of it near the power plant which makes it especially valuable in times when nothing else is working. But these things mean little to that crowd.
Boatbuilder --
Your question: In what universe does that cheap, abundant oil not get used?
The first answer to your question is the idea of Ricardian resources. David Ricardo was worried about the Malthusian question of what could cause human development to stop. Malthus thought it was land. Ricardo thought it was quality land. A wise person once said ``the Stone Age did not end be cause we ran out of stones." The idea is that something better came along. We still use a lot of stone, but it is much higher quality stone that is still in use, except for purposes of creating gravel for construction.
The second answer to your question is one that I do not believe is that the proponents of renewables believe that the renewables have lower costs of production than does fossil fuels. If you believe the CO2 is everything theory, then perhaps the social cost of CO2 is higher than the market price, but it seems doubtful that it is so high as to make the renewables truly the cheapest source of energy. If the latter were true, no subsidies would be required. Yet absent subsidies, the renewables do not seem to be able to coexist with fossil fuels.
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