Is "seven billion tons" supposed to sound like a lot when we're talking about the earth's atmosphere? I realized I had no idea of the weight of the entire earth's atmosphere. The answer isn't in the article.
Also, what's "unclean" about carbon dioxide? When it comes to cleanliness, aren't electric cars worse that gas cars? From a recent article in The Atlantic:
New EV models tend to be heavier and quicker—generating more particulates.... In other words, EVs have a tire-pollution problem, and one that is poised to get worse as America begins to adopt electric cars en masse.
The use of the word "clean" in the title to the rule is deceptive. And it's deceptive to try amaze us with the number 7 billion when it's in relation to 5.5 quadrillion.
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This is my #1 issue, even over the border and foreign interventions. If the GOP can't find a way to win by running on this, they don't deserve to. EVs are nonsensical for most Americans and are devastating for climate change, if that's your priority.
Not just tire particulates - the tires of EVs need to be replaced more often due to faster wear and tear from the additional weight.
Absurd. Few want EVs. This won't change that.
It's not that easy to Google your way to how much carbon is in the atmosphere. Everybody only wants you to know how much human activity is adding. Scaring us with big numbers and no context, as you point out.
The only calculation I can find is on Quora (so, buyer beware) but this person shows his math and comes up with an estimated 3,140 billion tons of carbon in the atmosphere using 2021 data. Eliminating 7 billion tons over 30 years is basically a rounding error.
CAGW is the biggest scam in the history of the world.
The thing of it is, it can only be stopped by Trump. The reason is there is a powerful coalition between the true believers and the moneyed interests. The federal income tax credits are enormous and, as a side benefit to the Left, only feed our federal debt.
I encounter the CAGW zealots every month on the OPPD Board. Again last night I told them of the deadly consequences of net zero. We will have winter blackouts per the models. I told the four women to rise up against the two male leaders, but they all believe. The worst of it is that these weasels won’t even look me in the eye.
The main beneficiaries of net zero are China and the rich. China is building two new coal-fired power plants every week.Our power prices will triple.
Math is hard for the Propagandists (they call themselves journalists, but they aren't) at the New York Times.
Current CO2 concentration is 420ish ppm. And it's increasing -- 'tho it's more likely starting its annual decrease now as we move into Spring in the northern Hemisphere. Does the reduction of 7bn tons do anything to decrease that? I doubt it, but you won't learn that from the article, that's for sure.
It was stupid strategy to politicize EVs but given what they get away with I suppose I’d feel empowered to try any/everything…
EVs are kind of the ultimate vulgarity- wikked quick, road wrecking heavy, tear up tires, the need to build an entirely new global infrastructure with heavy dependence on carbon combustion that more than offset the most optimistic savings. If they weren’t all in on them they should be using EVs against conservatives…perhaps that’s coming…
Sometimes it helps to write the numbers out. Getting rid of 9 excess zeros we have
5,500,000 vs 7
Tough to measure such a small number in such a large one especially over 30 years.
Well if you can't blind them with brilliance, you can always baffle them with (and you know what goes here).
The government only cares about misinformation when it doesn’t come from the government.
“If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.”
― W.C. Fields
It's all bullshit central planning propaganda. Rulemaking gone wild. What started as "we're just encouraging automakers to raise the average MPG on flee vehicles" is now "we want to substitute these high-polluting but politically favored vehicles for the ones on which we have already reduced tailpipe emissions by 99.8% by brute force."
"Yah forget about all that advanced tech we made you implement by force and switch involuntarily to our untested not-ready-for-primetime EV clusterfuck." Congress should defund the EPA, which is so far from its mission of safeguarding the "navigable waters of the US" that it is hopelessly lost. Put us out of its misery. FFS.
New EV models tend to be heavier
There is no 'tend' about it. They are heavier. I've an acquaintance who has an electric Mustang (a sweet-looking car, I must say). But I asked him, since it weighs a ton (!) more than my little Prius, how much extra energy is required to accelerate and decelerate the car? You can't escape the laws of thermodynamics and mass acceleration just because you're virtue-signaling with an electric car (this same person -- married -- has two kids, and all 4 of them have cars).
New EV models tend to be heavier and quicker—generating more particulates.... In other words, EVs have a tire-pollution problem, and one that is poised to get worse as America begins to adopt electric cars en masse.
And NO ONE wants to talk about the battery disposal issue!
Similar issue with wind-farms. The carbon fiber blades can't be recycled so go into land-fills.
CO2 is "plant food". Reducing CO2 will reduce food.
These @sshats can't tell me with 100% certainty what the temperature will be tomorrow but they can tell me the temperature 20 years from now and it will kill us all.
If these folks REALLY believe the crap they are dishing out, the US would have 30+ nuclear power plants under construction RIGHT NOW but we don't so they don't believe this crap. It is just another way for them to steal from everyone AND tell us what we can and can't do.
They should all be tarred and feathers and driven out on a rail...
CO2 is PLANT FOOD. Higher Concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is better. Lower concentration = certain death. You should watch this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55n-Zdv_Bwc&t=33s
The weight of CO2 is essentially the weight of the fuel burned times three (it picks up two oxygen from the air itself).
The total mass of the atmosphere is another useless statistic designed to shock and amaze.
Math is easy. Thinking simple is hard.
7 billion tons is a not quite 15% annual reduction. It's less than 1% of the total CO2 in the atmosphere or about ~4,000-drops in a bucket for those of you in Rio Linda.
It has been estimated that 2,400 gigatons of CO₂ have been emitted by human activity since 1850, with some absorbed by oceans and land, and about 950 gigatons remaining in the atmosphere. Around 2020 the emission rate was over 40 gigatons per year.
This is insane. Auto insurance is already threw the roof. What's it going to do with even more electric cars on the road? I have a very large family. How are we supposed to afford a new van when this one dies with these ridiculous standards? The US car companies are so corrupt to play along with this. One word and Michigan would be gone from Biden in November if he insisted on this rule. The corporations are looting and burning everything down just like BLM. They just do it more respectably.
1. How will the sale of electric vehicles and hybrids "eliminate" - that is, actively REMOVE - CO2 from the atmosphere?
2. Seven billion tons over 30 years; so 230 million tons in the average year.
3. Government picking winners and losers again; Government making your choices for you.
4. Thankfully, article is behind paywall.
As Madison Man said, CO2 is 420ppm of the earth’s atmosphere. That means 2.3 trillion tons of CO2 if I did the math right. 7 billion tons is .3% of atmospheric CO2. That still seems insignificant
Breezy said...Not just tire particulates - the tires of EVs need to be replaced more often due to faster wear and tear from the additional weight."
And tires are made with and from petroleum!
CO2 itself isn't dirty, but it is a proxy for combustion derived air pollution like CO, NOx, SOx and particulates.
What if the consumers don’t buy EVs in the numbers desired? I live in northern rural Wisconsin and I will never buy an EV. They would have to put a gun to my head to force me. I’ll buy used ICE or keep repairing what I have. I have poor relatives who vote democrat but have no desire to buy an EV, their voting will change over shit like this.
CO2 (carbon) is the gas of life. There would be no life without it.
No wonder democrats want to eliminate it.
Lies, damned lies, and 'New York Times' articles.
Why doesn’t this policy/regulation fall under that major doctrine umbrella that requires a congressional vote first? This rule will not hold, as evidenced by the lack of EV sales to date. A clear and decisive majority of people aren’t buying in. Why waste time and money on this? Focus on paying down the $35T debt instead.
CO2 (carbon) is the gas of life. There would be no life without it.
No wonder democrats want to eliminate it.
You can't escape the laws of thermodynamics
True but if you censor all your critics you can pretend to violate said law, similar to how they ignore all manner of laws the rest of us respect...for now. Rules like his erode that respect even more and more quickly than before.
This via Mark J. Perry on X:
"Imagine a world where all the cars are EVs, and then along comes this new invention the internal combustion engine. Think how well they would sell--a vehicle half the weight and half the price that would do a quarter of the damage to the roads. A vehicle that can be refueled in one-tenth the time of an EV and has four times the distance range in all weather conditions. It does not rely on the environmentally damaging use of rare earth elements to power it, and it uses far less steel and other materials.
"Just think how excited people would be for such technology! They would sell like hotcakes."
Climate Change zealotry is a proxy for ID,IO,cY
(And a conduit for $$$$$$)
New EV models tend to be...quicker
The Neopuritans: Wait...what? Electric vehicles are fun to drive? People like them? Musk! [gnashes teeth] This defeats the whole purpose of making people drive electric cars.
Jesus H. Christ. When did the congress vote for this "law?" Did they just pass something that says "do whatever you want?"
Lots of things will be regulated out of existence, including pretty much anything that actually works.
EV truths are ugly:
More pollution, more fossil fuels used over lifetime than ICE vehicles, more expensive to make and maintain, no infrastructure in 97% of country (vs 100% availability of gasoline/diesel/ethanol), no used vehicle market, higher insurance costs, higher insurance claims payout, far mor damaging to environment and a fire hazard to dwellings, no storage method that does not require charging to maintain useability, no desire to purchase for target audience, no good disposal method for used LI batteries/CF bodies, no reliable grid to power this "transformation" that isn't happening (despite the hype), require super-toxic materials mined by slave labor, components sole-sourced from China our geostrategic opponent, only government subsidies make them "appear" "affordable" but as economists and physicists and people who can reason know "that which cannot go on forever won't."
Howard blurted, "
Math is easy. Thinking simple is hard."
You've got the simple part down.
What is the world wide net benefit for the environment? All the raw materials must be gathered, smelted and processed. For the most part using fossil fuels. Most of the materials come from third world countries. Some of the products and waste are highly toxic. How willl the waste be handled?
The problem with this country is that very few people really know where their stuff comes from. It appears on the shelves and at the dealership as if it is somehow magically produced. Your average urban American has no idea how the freah water gets to the tap or what happens to their poops when they flush the toilet. subtract any one of those things and society breaks down.
It is a grift. Another but more elaborate cash for clunkers in which citizens are the victims once again.
Democrats and GOPe never do anything for your benefit. It's always for their benefit.
File under: No shit Sherlock.
Danno said, "
And tires are made with and from petroleum!"
One way or another, Danno, everything is made with patroleum.
totally Non-serious question...
how much CO2 would be reduced, if we executed all the democrats? asking for a friend
Carbon is the left's lie. Carbon is fine. We need carbon.
Any discussion on the slave labor cobalt mining? any discussion on the toxic pollution created by the battery system for these EVs? (and the disposal of spent batteries?)
Are any new power plants being built and brought online in the United States? Even if a sufficient number of charging stations are added along US roadways, where will the necessary electric power supply come from? I haven’t seen any answer to this question.
Leftists are anti-Science.
Joke cars. You can mandate your tits loose but until you can recharge these cars from empty to full in less than ten minutes these are looser vehicles. You can have chargers every ten feet but the charging times are non starters. The environmental damage these environmental eucharists inflict are manifest to those who look. From kids in Congo mining cobalt to short battery lives to the damage heavy cars do to highways to the offput from tires wearing quickly.
Does the 7 billion ton estimate account for the fact that EVs run (and will continue to run) on electricity generated almost entirely from the burning of fossil fuels?
“A quadrillion is a million billion.“
So stated another way, this will reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by one roughly one million billionth.
Their cluelessness on the climate scam is a lot easier to understand when you become aware that Democrats are born without the Math gene.
This is all bullshit. Cars and transportation are not the issue concerning fossil fuels.
It's delivery of goods over our interstates via semi-trucks, and fossil fueled equipment that plants and harvests all the food for the world.
They're going to do that on a battery? My guess is this is all a sinister attempt to control they supply and distribution of fossil fuels. Think of everything that can then be controlled and rationed...
“7 billion tons is a not quite 15% annual reduction.“
Just to clarify, that’s a reduction in the annual reduction in tailpipe emissions, not a reduction in the percent of C02 in the atmosphere.
It is a ban on gas cars. It is obviously a ban on gas cars. You would have to be an idiot to claim it is not a ban on gas cars, but, hey, The New York Times.
By the way, Ann, I’m impressed that you looked that up.
"And it's deceptive to try amaze us with the number 7 billion when it's in relation to 5.5 quadrillion."
Deceptive? You mean, as in, 'trying to mislead' As in, 'lying'? Do we think that the range-bound problems with EV's won't be solved by adding more weight, in the form of batteries, that there won't be other, massively impactful consequences?
Look at how effective the world of science-propaganda has been, convincing many of us that plant food is poison. And that we are at dangerous levels of CO2 in the atmosphere, when the actual readings today, and over the eyeblink-course of human history on the planet, hover in the bottom 5% of its range within geological history. How absurd do the numbers have to be? CO2 is presently around 430 ppm concentration. In geological history, it's been as high as 4,000, and as low as 300. At ~200 ppm, photosynthesis ceases. The planet is greening as a consequence of a minuscule increase in CO2, and a minuscule fluctuation in warming, in what is arguably a natural process that has been minimally affected by man, if at all. And yet, here we are. Let's decimate the world economy by pretending it's a CO2-driven crisis, by evoking relentless propaganda that we've labeled 'settled science'.
That Fields quote above is one of the first aphorisms I remember learning as a kid. I don't know why, but that one stuck.
“CO2 itself isn't dirty, but it is a proxy for combustion derived air pollution like CO, NOx, SOx and particulates.”
Ah! Goalpost shifting. We all know that CO2 is plant food. More CO2 in the atmosphere means that fewer people starve. We are coming out of a Little Ice Age, where life on this planet, as we know it, was in danger because of the low CO2. And, indeed, that is the bigger danger - that reducing CO2 in the atmosphere would tip us into an ice age, through affecting the earth’s albedo through changing the surface from green to white. Runaway global warming is continually predicted, but stubbornly refuses to happen. And it won’t - the Earth’s atmosphere has had many times as much CO2 in it, in the past, and it did not have runaway global warming.
It’s all predicated on computer models, and as everyone in computer science knows: GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out). What’s actually quite humorous is that the UN organization predicting this now essentially votes on where the climate Is going based on the outputs of the available models, but doesn’t seem to realize that the allocation of grant money to build those models in at least this country is heavily biased by the CAGW fanatics in the organizations (NOAA, NSF, etc) allocating the money. If you want more of something, subsidize it. Here, they wanted more models predicting global warming, so that’s what they subsidized. Then, the UN adds up the predicted results of the available models, averages them, and tells us to panic. Which, among other things, provides even more money to the bureaucrats to allocate for building more computer models running hot (because it’s what they are subsidizing).
For those curious about where I am coming from, my daughter got her STEM PhD at CU Boulder, long time one of the biggest hotbeds of this. They have NOAA, NCAR, NREL, NIST (why they would be involved, I don’t know), etc there in the vicinity. A cousin spent his career at NOAA there, and in his later years was involved in digitizing, etc ships’s temperature records from throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Her advisor was extremely adept at playing the game, going from a startup research group of two (her and one other) to over a dozen in the time it took for her PhD, including a couple post docs. All by knowing who had money to hand out, and how to structure their proposals to win it. And almost a necessity with many grant proposals was a CAGW hook. indeed, the CAGW hooks have gotten quite tiresome. I was on the IEEE-USA Government Relations Council a bit over a decade ago, and it was a running battle keeping CAGW hooks out of our Board recommendations for adoption of IEEE-USA positions. Now, they are obligatory, and maybe half the articles in the IEEE’s monthly general readership mag (“Spectrum”) have these hooks now.
Long story short - it’s all a big farce. It’s a scheme to make elites rich, at the expense of everyone else, and to destroy our country, as well as the rest of the 1st World. Which suggests that China, suspiciously exempt from these constraints, has at least some part in this scheme. Which shouldn’t surprise anyone, since FJB and his family apparently made more in bribes from them, than even the Ukrainians.
“So stated another way, this will reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by one roughly one million billionth.”
Oops. Forgot the 10 to the ninth power part.
It will reduce the increase in atmospheric CO2 by one one thousandth over 30 years.
That’s the last time I try to do math before my morning coffee.
All good questions from our host.
More questions.
What is the proper allowed amount of carbon to release into the atmosphere?
A
How much will 7 billion tons reduction, reduce the planets temperature?
We can keep asking questions. We already know. There are no answers, because there is no scientific process in place for any of this.
At every single calculation, there are a slew of assumptions made. ie, SWAG. Normally that would be Scientific Wild Ass Guess. With this hoax, it becomes Wild Ass Guess. Science plays no part in the hoax. Only as much as, Science is the curtain, behind which the Con men are hiding.
The US wants to eliminate ICE vehicles.
China is bringing 3 coal fired power plants on line EVERY WEEK
India is following suit.
What the United States does will not effect the atmosphere.
I assume the 7 billion tons is just looking at the direct emissions from automobiles. The thing is that most of the electricity generation in the US comes from burning natural gas or coal. Once you burn these things to make electricity, transmit it to homes or charging stations and eventually run the cars, have you saved any CO2 emissions? I doubt it.
The obvious low-hanging fruit is power generation. If climate alarmists were serious, they'd be proposing a crash program of nuclearizing our electricity production. Once that's done, cheap electricity will induce people to move to electric heat and more electric appliances, it also will create demand for electric cars, mostly for commuting, since they can be charged at home almost for free.
The alarmists are of course not serious, or maybe they really are serious but really stupid. Whichever it is, we shouldn't let unserious or stupid people make laws.
EVs are not clean. Throughout their lifecycle EVs are actually filthy. The mining and manufacturing required for an EV are filthy and the eventual disposal of the EV is also filthy. Arguably far worse than an ICE. Small and ignorant minds focus solely on the consumer operated phase of the EV lifecycle and declare them clean.
Not to mention the wear on the roadways, both concrete and asphalt. Higher maintenance there!
BTW - Don't Mention It!
Don't. Don't.
Piling on: one of the more excellent blogs to consult on matters of energy and such is the "Manhattan Contrarian," Francis Menton. He's got a whole series on the falacies of "green."
Here's his latest:
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2024-3-20-starting-to-notice-that-the-energy-transition-is-not-happening
The actual goalposts shifting was off of real toxic/mutagenic pollution and onto CO2.
NH3 is plant food, CO2 isn't the limiting factor in the equation. The Haber-Bosch process means no one needs to starve anymore except for political reasons. This is the real reason why natural gas is so important.
Blogger Bruce Hayden said...
“CO2 itself isn't dirty, but it is a proxy for combustion derived air pollution like CO, NOx, SOx and particulates.”
Ah! Goalpost shifting. We all know that CO2 is plant food. More CO2 in the atmosphere means that fewer people starve.
“Are any new power plants being built and brought online in the United States? Even if a sufficient number of charging stations are added along US roadways, where will the necessary electric power supply come from? I haven’t seen any answer to this question.”
We don’t need no stinken new power plants - we’ve got Renewables!!!
Of course, most here know that is ridiculous. Wind and solar are ecologically disastrous, and produce power sporadically, very often at the wrong time. That power needs to be stored, and thus time shifted - which is why Tesla also leads in the stationary battery segment - it’s all so obvious, so why is Elon Musk the only one to see it? (I think that he is also working on solar collection in space). Geothermal? Waves? Both are extremely caustic environments. What about Hydro? Fish!!! WA and OR are talking breaching some of their more productive hydro dams to save spawning grounds - that the fish involved no longer have any instinctual memory for. Besides, fish ladders are far, far, cheaper.
That leaves nuclear. Too dangerous!!! 3 Mile Island! Chernobyl! Might explode! Or at least melt down. Except that the most modern designs have been “fail safe” for several decades now. That means that they have to be actively run, and when you stop that, they stop on their own, as contrasted with the active nuclear plants in this country that run passively, but have to be actively stopped. Then there is supposedly also a nuclear waste problem. We still have Yucca Mountain, not far from here. It was cleared as safe for 100k years. EPA required that they come back with 750k years. Recorded history is <10k years. Killed (for the interim) by Harry Reid, because the waste trains would go through his Las Vegas (maybe 1/4 mile from where I sit right now). Except that Vegas is surrounded by federal govt land (mostly BLM and military), and it would have been trivial to run tracks across it, around Las Vegas, to Yucca Mtn.
Then there is the transmission grid. Already unstable, and not enough money is being spent to maintain it. CA and the NE have periodic brownouts and blackouts already. But energy rich TX too? In CA, part of the problem is that utility companies can’t pass on the cost of maintaining their transmission grid to their customers, so the rights of way get overgrown, and then, ultimately, burn. Which just makes the problem worse. Plus, the further that electricity has to travel, the more is lost (and that, not surprisingly causes global warming), and the more it costs. LA already gets power from as far away as WA (from those hydro dams they want to breach) and UT states (plus, of course, nearby AZ, NV, and OR).
Meanwhile China, India, Pakistan, etc... will spew out another 70 billion extra tons.. and volcanoes will add to it.
I love the NYT for it's fierce devotion to covering for the Biden administration, no matter what. Start with the sub-head about 'aiming to encourage' EV sales. BS, it's a mandate. When you set a rule that can only be met by EVs, it's forcing, not encouraging. As many before me have shown, EVs only have environmental benefits if you ignore all externalities and only look at their operation on the road (if then). And, of course, they present the EPA cost/benefit analysis as if it was done by neutral sources and actually reflects reality. Those numbers, especially the 'health' impacts are routinely manipulated to give the results that the bureaucrats desire.
Also, what's "unclean" about carbon dioxide?
I sense a debate on Calvin Cycle under the rules of Calvinball.
China is bringing 3 coal fired power plants on line EVERY WEEK
India is following suit.
What the United States does will not effect the atmosphere.
Does anyone (with a higher IQ than AOC) really believe that the purpose is to reduce world-wide carbon emissions?
For those of you who care, 7 billion is 00014% of 5 quadrillion.
This isn't about science or the climate or the environment, it's about political power, pure and simple.
"The use of the word "clean" in the title to the rule is deceptive. And it's deceptive to try amaze us with the number 7 billion when it's in relation to 5.5 quadrillion."
Lying liars lie and lie,
Doo-dah, doo-dah!
Lying liars always lie,
Oh, the New York Times!
The innumeracy is even worse, isn't it- this is 7 billion tons spread out over 30 years. China, at present rates of carbon dioxide production will put 350 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over those 30 years. So, even if the administration's plan reduces US emissions 7 billion tons total over the next 30 years, China will negate that in 3/4s of 1 year. And it is all but certain that China will put well in excess of 350 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over those 30 years, as will India. What we are doing trying to drain Lake Mendota with a teaspoon.
Where I live, lots of people drive Teslas and other EVs - because They Care.
Of course, they also have a couple of gas vehicles - one for the teens and a big SUV for the beach house and the ski cabin.
It's the NOx, SOx and particulates from the China coal plants that are melting the northern ice cap. This CO2 movie gives a good picture of how industrial pollution is concentrated in the northern hemisphere and in Asia.
https://science.nasa.gov/resource/video-super-hd-view-of-global-carbon-dioxide/
By 2000,the settled science told us in 1990,
Manhattan would be flooded
The arctic ice cap would be gone
Average global temperature would be 5 deg C, 10deg f higher.
Have ANY of the predictions, not just these, come to pass?
John Henry
There are at least two reasons it is hard to find how much carbon is in the atmosphere
There is none. Or at least so little that it is basically unmeasurable. Carbon is a solid particulate and settles out of the atmosphere pretty quickly. (weeks or months)
There are a lot of lying, ignorant, stupid and/or evil assholes who say "carbon" when they mean "carbon dioxide" this screws up even honest search results.
John Henry
The Democrats have taken their eye off the ball on the EV ban. You are never supposed to put yourself in a position where you actually have to pass your craptastic plan to save the world, you only need to keep fighting for it. You need to keep it alive to inspire the sliver of voters you are appealing to.
If you pass it, the minority will say what are you going to give me now, and the majority will say, why did you just screw me over?
Warnings of imminent catastrophe and promises of quick fixes are inaccurate, and more often than not, dishonest.
The timeline that worries me is the geological one, in which a millennium is a very small thing. Without bankrupting ourselves or giving up our freedoms, we need to find ways to protect our oceans and our atmosphere. It won't be "solved" in our lifetimes.
Carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, it's literally plant food. Even if the temperature rises, so will areas suitable for food production. A few weeks ago, PBS's Nova aired an episode about the search for ancient DNA. A team of scientists found DNA fragments in extreme northern Greenland dated to about 2.5 million years ago. At the time, the Earth was much warmer than today. Greenland was covered by thick forests, not glaciers. There was megafauna such as mastodons and camels there, along with a lot of other wildlife. There was true global warming about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago when the mile thick ice sheets retreated from what is now northern Europe, Canada, and the US. The primitive stone age humans who were alive back then managed to survive genuine climate change with none of our modern technology. Am I to believe that modern humans are incapable of adapting to change? If so, then humanity deserves to become extinct.
That's 0.000127272% of the total.
Put that in the headline.
Electric vehicles are proving to be a disaster and their sales are plummeting. The only way to force people to buy electric vehicles is to create ICE emission standards that are so onerous and expensive that most people won't be able to afford to buy ICE cars.
The cost to insure electric vehicles keeps going up and up. It will soon be at the point where it's not cost effective for the average person to own one.
Once the warranty on the battery expires, (at about 120,000 miles or eight years - whichever comes first) the cost of a replacement battery is more than the cost of a whole replacement vehicle; so it's off to the scrap yard.
EVs don't work well (if at all) in cold weather.
And the fires that EV battery packs can create are very dangerous, difficult and expensive to fight. They also tend to cause a lot of damage because they burn so intensely for a long period of time.
Bob Boyd said...
"New EV models tend to be...quicker"
Quicker doesn't mean more fun. Just anyone who drives an old Miata.
I have a proposal to reduce carbon emissions; limit the size of POTUS motorcade to one "beast", and a SUV in the front and back for security. No more three helicopters to make it confusing to which one the President is aboard; they get one. I'm ok with reductions over time, so the 747 stays, but just one, so long as plan exists to transition to a more fuel efficient 2 engine 777 or 787. Also, nobody else in the Executive Branch or Congress gets a private jet.
Bonus, make this go into effect Jan. 21, 2025, and you screw Trump.
how and why climate science makes sense =
If Germany had banned Cremation a century ago there would have been no HOLOCAUST
SO they ban Nuclear Energy in 21st century
If the rule is that personal cars must be impractical and expensive, the purpose of the rule is to make personal travel impractical and expensive. You have a problem with that, take it up with someone who isn't going to buy a very reliable gas powered car in 2029, and hope it lasts to the day of my death.
A couple comments on Cobalt mining in Africa
It is not child/slave mining. The proper term of art seems to be "artisan al mining"
Not just Cobalt but other minerals as well.
I could not find info on production of artisan al mines. They seem to number in the hundreds, perhaps low thousands. Each with hundreds of workers digging with shovels and buckets.
On the other hand there are at least 5-6 huge commercial mines in the congo. The kind that run a couple of monster drag lines and dozens of huge haul trucks 24/7.
I expect it might take an artisanal mine a day or two to fill one of those trucks. A drag line fills one every 5 minutes or so.
Not to Minimize the horror of the child/slave labor. But I wonder what percent of Congo Cobalt production it is. Maybe 5%?
Anyone know?
John Henry
@Althouse, outstanding post! Thank you.
Scott Gustafson said...
Sometimes it helps to write the numbers out. Getting rid of 9 excess zeros we have
5,500,000 vs 7
@Scott, that’s almost right. It’s 7 over thirty years, so it’s actually 5,500,000 vs 0.233.
I see others upthread have pointed out that our electrical power generation capacity cannot support replacing gasoline-powered cars with EVs, not to mention replacing gas stoves with electric and gas furnaces with electric heat pumps. Nor can our current transmission grid support the increased load. And none of the EV and gas stove-banning nincompoops in government (and the nincompoops that support them) is prepared to advocate doing anything to address these easily foreseeable problems. As for me, I have been thinking about getting a hybrid if our 13 year old sedan starts acting cranky, but not until I can be confident that battery technology has evolved to the point where the vehicle won’t spontaneously combust just sitting in my garage or while I’m driving down the road.
My wife is a retired EPA scientist (from the forgotten time when government scientists did real science). She and I agree that the big driver is that between the Boomers and Gen-X we reduced real pollution by huge amounts — the contrast between today and the time when Lake Erie (actually the mouth of the Cuyahoga River where it emptied into Lake Erie) caught fire 14 different times. I can remember driving down into the LA basin from Thousand Oaks and the air ahead was a reddish brown color. And if you caught fish in thr Potomac River anywhere near Washington, DC, you’d best be doing catch and release because pollution made the fish unsafe to eat. Nor was the Potomac the only river like that. But none of that has been a problem for decades.
What’s left for the environmental activists to do? Because, you see, it’s so damned much fun to harangue people over their imagined environmental sins. Answer: use junk science to create new pollutants out of thin air! Plastic straws (based on a child’s elementary school project) and CO2 (not to mention the methane in cow farts.). But I’ll be damned if I’ll wreck my life so self-described activists can have fun.
The government has no business telling me what kind of car I can buy, especially for such a bogus reason as "climate change." The climate scientists are clueless about what drives the climate, it's not CO2. They keep telling us that all the glaciers are going to melt and flood the coasts. Only trouble is the glaciers aren't melting, the arctic, antarctic and Greenland glaciers are doing just fine.
The power from all of those Emission Elsewhere Vehicles is going to come from gas and coal powerplants. Those vehicles require far more recourses than a gas-powered car.
This is a naked attempt to control the population by limiting the power available for vehicles. The fascists are in control today. You will be made to obey.
Call Congress to demand they override the EPA ban.
Hey, its NOT a ban its "encouraging" electric cars.
Well Ok then.
Since Biden's new rule will force Automakers to reach X MPG, and the only way they can meet that X MPG, is to vastly increase the number of EV cars as a percent of total sales, then the percentage of gas car will be vastly DEcreased. So, SOME people will be able to buy gas cars. Just not many.
As an analogy if a company had 100 white male employees and you pass a rule that 90 must be people of color or women, you're not "banning" white males. Its just that instead of 100 white men you can only have 10. And 90 white males will have to be replaced by women and minorities. Which means no white men will be hired for a very long time, and even then you will only have 10 percent. But that's not "Banning". LOL!
That is the same as having 5.5 million one dollar bills in a pile and extracting 7 of those bills. How would you even notice it had been done?
Innumeracy in vast swaths of the voting public is one of the strengths of the left.
A war on plant food.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55n-Zdv_Bwc
"GIGO (Garbage In, Garbage Out)"
Not anymore. It's Garbage In, Gospel Out". A prescient call by Professor Lee, University of Kansas in 1975.
"My wife is a retired EPA scientist (from the forgotten time when government scientists did real science). She and I agree that the big driver is that between the Boomers and Gen-X we reduced real pollution by huge amounts..."
Where I live, they shut down the vehicle emission testing program since the government determined it not longer served a useful purpose. How often does something like that happen?
They need to put a wind turbine on top of the EVs so you can charge the battery while driving along the highway.
Photosynthesis: Plants/Plankton turning Sunlight/CO2/H2O into Food/O2; neither animal nor blade of grass would exist, absent CO2. More CO2 helps plants resist drought/damage/disease, extends growing seasons, lets plants move higher in altitude & Latitudes, shrinks deserts & reduces the spread of fire, plants using & retaining H2O more efficiently. As CO2 rises, photosynthesis flourishes & plants take in more CO2, sparking more growth, photosynthesis & CO2 uptake (recent studies indicate +20% absorption by 2100). Rising temperatures also extend growing seasons, help babies survive, increase net rainfall & save lives. We are in the short period (glacial interstitial) between long Ice Ages, the norm (where I sit) being a half mile of ice. Warm is good, cold is bad. This Cradle of Life is greener, more fertile & life sustaining than it was 200 years ago, because adding food to the base of the food-chain supports all of Nature, including humans. "It will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world – that CO2, the life of plants, was considered for a time to be a deadly poison." R Lindzen
While YES, the amount of CO2 that they claim it will remove is small, CO2 is a very small part of our atmosphere. In fact it is around 0.04% of the total gases there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth
The climate alarmists are concerned about the greenhouse effect of that CO2. Now, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but it if far from the one that is the greatest component of our atmosphere. That one would be WATER VAPOR which is around 1%, on average. That is about 25 times larger than the CO2 content. CO2 is both a very minor component of our atmosphere and a minor contributor to the greenhouse effect. But no one tells you that.
It is even worse. The climate alarmists only show you that "hockey puck" curve that shows around 75 or 80 years of CO2 data. And it looks like it is rushing up at an increasing rate. How accurate that graph actually is I won't go into. There are some who question it, but for this discussion I will grant that to them. However when you look at the historic level of CO2 over the entire history of planet Earth, you see a very different thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Phanerozoic_Carbon_Dioxide.png
In fact, over the long term, planet Earth has only recently moved from a HISTORIC LOW of CO2. Biologists have said that if the level of CO2 had become any lower at that time, then much plant life would have died and we probably would not be here discussing it.
Why is this important? Well, PLANTS breathe in CO2. They need CO2 like we need oxygen. Without it, they DIE. I mentioned that humans breathe oxygen. We need oxygen even more than the plants need CO2. Just try not breathing for a minute or two. Most humans can only survive for two or three minutes without oxygen. Oxygen is around 21% of the Earth's atmosphere. And ALL that oxygen, every single molecule of it, comes from PLANTS. Plants inhale CO2 and exhale oxygen. That's where we get each and every breath of life; from plants which require CO2.
On top of that, plants are the basis of our food supply. We either eat plants themselves or we eat animals that are fed with plants. A healthy human can survive for a month or two without food, but eventually, like oxygen deprivation, the absence of food will kill us.
So, in this cycle of life, we humans are totally dependent on CO2. If the human race eliminates CO2, then the human race is committing suicide. And I don't mean some kind of fanciful or metaphorical suicide: I mean actual, literal suicide.
CO2 is NOT a pollutant. And it's primary effect in our world is not that of a "greenhouse gas". CO2 is very literally a LIFE GIVING gas. We can not survive without it.
Paul A.
The corruption of science continues apace. Perhaps it’s time to acknowledge that we have entered a new age of ma, The Anti-Enlightenment. Galileo had his persecutors, todays honest scientists and doctors have the same thing going on.
Scientists telling lies of global warming get money, money, money and acclaim. Scientists telling truth about climate receive attacks and smears and the end of one’s career.
A new documentary explains the role of co2 versus the sun to earth’s climate. Brilliant movie, brilliant and courageous scientists. It is hard to believe that youtube hasn’t censored it out of existence.
https://youtu.be/55n-Zdv_Bwc?si=oXgZCbN6NRLkgxwd
The concentration of CO2 in the earth's atmosphere is vanishingly small. If you were served a scotch and water with such a small concentration of scotch in it you would say, "Barkeep! You forgot the Scotch!"
“Supposed to sound like?” There’s no need to psychologize numbers. They’re numbers, not feelings. Not political or social movements. Using language like “supposed to sound like” to preface a numerical consideration is actually a lot like doing woke math.
The use of the word "clean" in the title to the rule is deceptive.
Then why has the air gotten dirtier in recent summers with the rise of forest fires spewing out more particulate material than was the case in the cooler past?
Absurd. Few want EVs. This won't change that.
I forgot that more fires, flooding and droughts however are all the rage.
hpudding said...
"Absurd. Few want EVs. This won't change that.
I forgot that more fires, flooding and droughts however are all the rage."
No more than usual.
According to the climate alarmists we should have all been dead 10 years ago. I don't think It's the crisis that we've been led to believe.
But in solidarity I'm going to buy a used Prius. Right after I buy a 1971 Ford F100 pickup.
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