EDITORIAL: Carbon tax not as popular as Liberals think - "The Liberals are no doubt patting themselves on the back that a majority of Supreme Court of Canada justices have given them the green light to force a carbon tax on provinces that are against it. The Premiers of Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan fought the feds for their right to do as they see fit with the issue, but the courts didn’t oblige. Those three premiers — Ford, Kenney and Moe — have all been pretty vocal about the issue. Ford in particular campaigned aggressively against the tax and scored a majority mandate victory after doing so... if you ask Canadians if they support what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is actually planning to do with the carbon tax the majority suddenly opposes it... the carbon tax would rise slowly from $30 per ton to $170 per ton by 2030. It’s quite something... Carbon taxes are feel-good polices that are supported in theory, but not once you break down the details."
LAU: Canadians should reject Trudeau-style carbon taxes - "The criteria that a carbon tax must meet to be sensible policy is considerably narrower than almost all carbon tax proponents will say, and in practise, carbon tax policies in Canada have deviated from these criteria, unnecessarily damaging the economy. First, the tax rate must relate to the environmental harm of emissions or the “social cost of carbon,” which the Trudeau government assumes to be $50 per tonne. But in fact, according to economic literature, the optimal carbon tax is actually much lower than the social cost. Because of how carbon taxes compound the burden of existing taxes, the social cost should be discounted by the marginal cost of public funds (a measure of the economic cost to the private sector of raising an additional dollar of government revenue). In the Canadian context, as economist Ross McKitrick has written, this likely means discounting the social cost of carbon by about half. Then, as other economists note, the tax rate should be discounted again to account for the fact that in some cases, the tax would not reduce emissions but simply cause emission-intensive activities to relocate, producing an economic loss without any environmental benefit... This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. In addition, to mitigate the economic harm of a carbon tax, the revenues to the government should be offset by equivalent cuts to other economically-harmful taxes such as personal or corporate income taxes. Unfortunately, no current carbon tax policy in Canada looks like this. Lastly, the economic logic of the carbon tax is to make emitters pay for the environmental harm they cause, eliminating the need for any other policies to reduce carbon emissions. Indeed, the case for a carbon tax relies on the tax completely replacing — not being layered on top of — existing policies designed to reduce carbon emissions"
Obama admin scientist says climate 'emergency' is based on fallacy - "‘The Science,” we’re told, is settled. How many times have you heard it?... Yes, it’s true that the globe is warming, and that humans are exerting a warming influence upon it. But beyond that — to paraphrase the classic movie “The Princess Bride” — “I do not think ‘The Science’ says what you think it says.” For example, both research literature and government reports state clearly that heat waves in the US are now no more common than they were in 1900, and that the warmest temperatures in the US have not risen in the past fifty years. When I tell people this, most are incredulous. Some gasp. And some get downright hostile. These are almost certainly not the only climate facts you haven’t heard. Here are three more that might surprise you, drawn from recent published research or assessments of climate science published by the US government and the UN:
Humans have had no detectable impact on hurricanes over the past century.
Greenland’s ice sheet isn’t shrinking any more rapidly today than it was 80 years ago.
The global area burned by wildfires has declined more than 25 percent since 2003 and 2020 was one of the lowest years on record.
Why haven’t you heard these facts before? Most of the disconnect comes from the long game of telephone that starts with the research literature and runs through the assessment reports to the summaries of the assessment reports and on to the media coverage. There are abundant opportunities to get things wrong — both accidentally and on purpose — as the information goes through filter after filter to be packaged for various audiences. The public gets their climate information almost exclusively from the media; very few people actually read the assessment summaries, let alone the reports and research papers themselves. That’s perfectly understandable — the data and analyses are nearly impenetrable for non-experts, and the writing is not exactly gripping. As a result, most people don’t get the whole story. Policymakers, too, have to rely on information that’s been put through several different wringers by the time it gets to them. Because most government officials are not themselves scientists, it’s up to scientists to make sure that those who make key policy decisions get an accurate, complete and transparent picture of what’s known (and unknown) about the changing climate, one undistorted by “agenda” or “narrative.” Unfortunately, getting that story straight isn’t as easy as it sounds. I should know. That used to be my job... doubts began in late 2013 when I was asked by the American Physical Society to lead an update of its public statement on climate. As part of that effort, in January 2014 I convened a workshop with a specific objective: to “stress test” the state of climate science. I came away from the APS workshop not only surprised, but shaken by the realization that climate science was far less mature than I had supposed. Here’s what I discovered:
Humans exert a growing, but physically small, warming influence on the climate. The results from many different climate models disagree with, or even contradict, each other and many kinds of observations. In short, the science is insufficient to make useful predictions about how the climate will change over the coming decades, much less what effect our actions will have on it.
In the seven years since that workshop, I watched with dismay as the public discussions of climate and energy became increasingly distant from the science. Phrases like “climate emergency,” “climate crisis” and “climate disaster” are now routinely bandied about to support sweeping policy proposals to “fight climate change” with government interventions and subsidies. Not surprisingly, the Biden administration has made climate and energy a major priority infused throughout the government, with the appointment of John Kerry as climate envoy and proposed spending of almost $2 trillion dollars to fight this “existential threat to humanity.” Trillion-dollar decisions about reducing human influences on the climate should be informed by an accurate understanding of scientific certainties and uncertainties"... Scientists write and too-casually review the reports, reporters uncritically repeat them, editors allow that to happen, activists and their organizations fan the fires of alarm, and experts endorse the deception by keeping silent. As a result, the constant repetition of these and many other climate fallacies are turned into accepted truths known as “The Science.”"
Of course, anyone who doesn't buy into climate change hysteria is a "climate change denier"
Facebook - "⚠️False Alarm: Scaring us senseless. Since “climate change” doesn’t sound dangerous enough they rename it “climate breakdown” or “climate emergency”... Media outlets reinforce the extreme language by giving ample space to environmental campaigners, and by engaging in their own activism. The New York Times warns that “across the globe climate change is hap- pening faster than scientists predicted.” The cover of Time magazine tells us: “Be worried. Be very worried.” The British newspaper the Guardian has gone further, updating its style guidelines so reporters must now use the terms “climate emergency,” “climate crisis,” or “climate breakdown.” Global warming should be “global heating.” The newspaper’s editor be- lieves “climate change” just isn’t scary enough, arguing that it “sounds rather passive and gentle when what scientists are talking about is a ca- tastrophe for humanity.”"
Facebook - "US heatwaves 1895-2020 Worst-ever in 1936... Obviously, doesn't fit the narrative, so very often data started in 1960, ignoring the 1930s, producing a convenient, upward trend"
Blaming Climate Change - Dilbert Comic Strip on 2019-12-13 - "dilbert: how are the tech support calls going?
dogbert: great. i'm blaming all of our product flaws on climate change, and people are totally buying it.
dilbert: that doesn't make sense.
dogbert: you'd be surprised how little that matters."
Facebook - "Housing units on the coast have seen a spectacular increase (Freeman and Ashley 2017). In 1940, there were 4.4 million units within 50 kms of the coast all the way from Texas to Maine. In 2000, the 26.6 million units were 600% of the 1940 number. And almost everyone wants to live close to the coast––the first 50 kms have twice as many houses as the next 150 kms inland. That many more people live in the paths of hurricanes with many more (and more expensive) houses goes a long way to explain why the cost of hurricanes keeps going up as seen on the left in Fig. 16. This data is often used to suggest that global warming is making hurricanes worse and more damaging. But correcting for the many more people and more expensive houses tells a very different story. Modeling all 212 US continental hurricane landfalls as if they landed in today's setting of people and infrastructure corrects for the expanding bull's-eye and shows that there is no significant increase in hurricane-adjusted costs"
Facebook - "Today's climate alarmism is the culmination of decades-long eco-anxiety. In 1982, the UN was predicting climate change and other environmental concerns could cause “devastation as complete, as irreversible as any nuclear holocaust” by the year 2000. Needless to say, that didn't happen. And while we should certainly care about the planet and its inhabitants, we need to do so smarter and more effectively. It is also vital to not ignore the big picture: focusing excessively on climate in a world full of problems leaves us poorly prepared for all the other global challenges. The world’s poor still battle with much greater challenges like starvation, poverty, dying from easily curable diseases and lack of education. And these challenges have solutions where each dollar can help much more."
All this has happened before. And all this will happen again
U.N. ECOLOGY PARLEY OPENS AMID GLOOM - The New York Times - "Mostafa K. Tolba, executive director of the United Nations environmental program, told delegates that if the nations of the world continued their present policies, they would face by the turn of the century ''an environmental catastrophe which will witness devastation as complete, as irreversible, as any nuclear holocaust.''"
TRUST THE SCIENCE. IT IS SETTLED
Facebook - "Global warming ๐๐ฎ๐๐ฒ๐ 166,000 lives each year Temperature increases from 2000-19 mean more heat death (116K), but also fewer cold deaths (283K) Global warming is still a problem we need to fix smartly, but we're badly informed when media only reports on heat deaths"
How Climate Change Pseudoscience Became Publicly Accepted - "my research as an astrophysicist led me to the conclusion that climate change is more complicated than we are led to believe. The disease is much more benign, and a simple palliative solution lies in front of our eyes... In 2008, I showed, using various data sets that span as much as a century, that the amount of heat going into the oceans, in sync with the 11-year solar cycle, is an order of magnitude larger than the relatively small effect expected simply from changes in the total solar output. Namely, solar activity variations translate into large changes in the so-called radiative forcing on the climate... In the decade following the publication of the above, not only was the paper uncontested, more data, this time from satellites, confirmed the large variations associated with solar activity. In light of this hard data, it should be evident by now that a large part of the warming isn’t human, and that future warming from any given emission scenario will be much smaller. Alas, because the climate community developed a blind spot to any evidence that should raise a red flag, such as the aforementioned examples or the much smaller tropospheric warming over the past two decades than models predicted, the rest of the public sees a very distorted view of climate change—a shaky scientific picture that is full of inconsistencies became one of certain calamity. With this public mindset, phenomena such as that of child activist Greta Thunberg are no surprise. Most bothersome, however, is that this mindset has compromised the ability to convey the science to the public. One example from the past month is my interview with Forbes. A few hours after the article was posted online, it was removed by the editors “for failing to meet our editorial standards.” The fact that it’s become politically incorrect to have any scientific discussion has led the public to accept the pseudo-argumentation supporting the catastrophic scenarios. Evidence for warming doesn’t tell us what caused the warming, and any time someone has to appeal to the so-called 97 percent consensus, he or she is doing so because his or her scientific arguments aren’t strong enough. Science isn’t a democracy."
Comment: "Tbf, the one incontrovertible fact that convinced me all this climate change business is just a replacement for mass religion, is the forceful removal of "deniers" from the public debate, and the nurturing of exaltees"
Facebook - "Dear @BillNye, is there a way to link the growing Jew-hatred in North America to climate change? I loved your edifying link between solar panels and the Bataclan massacre in Paris so I’m hoping for an equally incisive explanation. Thank you."
The Meme Policeman - Posts | Facebook - "this meme from Green New Deal doesn’t accurately capture what’s happened with floods. The reality is that we have far fewer deaths, and even less financial losses, than in the past. This comes from a 2018 study published in Nature that analyzed flood events in Europe from 1870-2016... he study found that, while there were increases in flood inundated areas and the number of persons affected, there was a consistent decline in flood fatalities since 1870, and a considerable decline since 1950 (-4.6% per year). Financial losses from floods also saw a significant decline since 1950 (-2.6% per year)... In fact, the study found that urban areas were better protected from floods than rural areas, due to their increased protective infrastructure. In other words, people are more at risk for floods (as well as most other natural disasters) living in an unspoiled landscape vs. an urban area.
This runs completely counter to the meme’s portrayal of a river causing no damage flooding in a rural landscape, but causing havoc when modern infrastructure appears. This is pure fantasy. Floods have always caused huge destruction to civilizations, it’s only recently that the damage has been mitigated in terms of life and property."
Twitter Moments on Twitter - "The India Meteorological Department has said that deaths by lightning strikes have doubled since the 1960s, partly due to climate change."
India's population in 1960 was 450 million. In 2019 it was 1.37 billion. Thank you climate change for reducing the per capita deaths from lightning strikes!
Facebook - "⚠️Half the world now believe that humanity will go extinct from climate change The reality? UN expects the average person by 2100 to earn 450% of today’s income. Climate will reduce that to 434%. Problem, not end-of-world... Unsurprisingly, the result is that most of us are very worried. A 2016 poll found that across countries as diverse as the United Arab Emirates and Denmark, a majority of people believe that the world is getting worse, not better. In the United Kingdom and the United States, two of the most prosperous countries on the planet, an astonishing 65 percent of people are pessimistic about the future. A 2019 poll found that almost half of the world’s population believes climate change likely will end the human race. In the United States, four of ten people believe global warming will lead to mankind’s extinction. There are real consequences to this fear."
Hysteria has very real harms
Escape The Echo Chamber - Posts | Facebook - "A team of researchers, with a utopian bent, decided to actually do the math to find out what it would take to meet the goals for Paris agreement. American families would all be required to live in a home the size of a small one-bedroom apartment, cut their energy usage 90%, use three tanks of gasoline a year, and eat 30% less. No country in the world meets those standards. The researchers weren’t done there. They asking called for massive income redistribution that would have made Mao proud and the end of economic growth because… reasons. The takeaway is that the Paris agreement is a fantasy document. Under its climate assumptions the world cannot reach those goals. Those draconian changes would never survive a democratic vote. Which, if you believe the warming estimates are accurate (and they haven’t been), means that the prudent course of action is to devote global warming spending to mitigation plans and nuclear energy."
On the "team of European researchers led by University of Leeds sustainability researcher Jefim Vogel"
Facebook - "Breathless climate reporting told us of an extraordinary 2020 hurricane season Yes. It was extraordinary. Extraordinarily weak Globally 2020 was one of the *weakest* in past 40 years Accumulated Cyclone Energy was 76% of average (1980-2010). How is this possible, when we were constantly told about the 2020 'record' hurricanes? This is because there were *more* hurricane energy in the North Atlantic But most climate reporting conveniently left out that there was much less hurricane energy in the other regions: Western Pacific, Eastern Pacific and the Southern Hemisphere. Indeed, for each hemisphere and globally, 2020 was much lower than average. Clearly, we're not well served, when climate reporting only tells us about where things are worse, and neglect to tell us that things are much better more places."
Key Economic Sectorsand Services - "For most economic sectors, the impact of climate change will be small relative to the impacts of other drivers (medium evidence, high agreement). Changes in population, age, income, technology, relative prices, lifestyle, regulation, governance, and many other aspects of socioeconomic development will have an impact on the supply and demand of economic goods and services that is large relative to the impact of climate change."
Naturally, climate change hystericists will ignore the IPCC
Meme - "Absolutely - I believe 100% that society will collapse from climate change within 20 years
That's why my life plan is
1. live in a big city
2. specialise in white-collar or artistic work
3. cultivate 0 practical skills"
Replacing gas boilers to hit 2035 climate target could cost households 'up to £25,000' - "the target was criticised for lacking a coherent plan for how it will be achieved, with concerns that transition in electric cars and heating could penalise some of the least well-off."
Virtue signalling is expensive. If only the virtue signallers were the only ones who had to pay for it
Wind Turbines: Green Energy Useless during Cold Snaps - "“Wind turbines are shut down when temperatures are below -22° F because it is too cold to operate them safely. This means it will be too cold for the wind turbines built by the power companies to generate any electricity.” They note that during the last Polar Vortex in 2019, wind and solar provided almost no power. Ergo: When you really need power and heating, wind and solar are out of commission...
'Wind turbines will actually consume electricity at these temperatures because the turbines use electric heaters in their gearboxes to keep the oil in the housing from freezing, which would cause damage to the turbine. During the 2019 Polar Vortex, wind turbines were consuming 2 MW of electricity. Wind turbines are a liability on the grid when the power is needed most.'
Solar power is even less reliable in severe weather conditions. Frigid temperatures are often associated with bright sunny skies, but the temperatures drop way down at night — you know, when there is no sunlight. Also, snow and ice often disable the panels. What this means is that if — God forbid — Joe Biden realizes his maniacal dream of zero fossil fuels, the people in North Dakota, Minnesota, Chicago, and Boston will be in big trouble. Maybe they can go back to the Middle Ages and build fires."
Liberal logic is that since this wasn't the main reason for the Texas power issue, it isn't an issue at all
National Grid fires up coal power station for first time in 55 days - "National Grid has fired up a coal-fired power station for the first time in 55 days after Britain’s record-breaking heatwave brought wind turbines to a near-standstill and caused gas-fired power stations to struggle... A string of power stations were unable to produce electricity on Wednesday because of planned maintenance work which often takes place during the summer, but even available gas plants produced less electricity than usual owing to the heat... Electricity output from Britain’s wind farms, which generated 30% of the UK’s electricity in the first quarter of this year, fell to lows of 4% on Wednesday afternoon... Ratcliffe is one of Britain’s few remaining coal-fired power stations, which are all due to shut down by 2025 under the government’s ban on coal-fired power."
"Green" energy!
I guess after 2025 the UK can suffer blackouts due to their environmental virtue signalling
BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, ‘I don't think this does give more power to developers, it creates a much more certain system’ - "‘Why is owning your own home a dream that is simply out of reach for a growing number of young people? The answer, say some, is simple. Britain's outdated planning system has been captured by a noisy minority which puts power in the hands of older wealthier NIMBYs who resist new development. Not anymore if the government means what it says. It's proposing to remove the rights of local people and local councils to approve or disapprove of new developments, once land has been put into a zone which would permit new building on it. The Town and Country Planning Association are warning that the reforms will be a bad deal for communities and they say a sad day for local democracy’...
‘The planning system is crucial for climate change, is crucial for people's health’...
If you need to appeal to climate change to defend restricting the building of new homes...
CU Study: 97% Of Wildfires In 24-Year Span Started By Humans - "we’re building more homes in the line of fire"
Time to subsidise electric cars
Please enjoy this 2009 clip of John Kerry warning that "state-of-the-art science" predicts our 1st "ice-free Arctic summer" should've been here 7 years ago
Of course climate change hystericsts will just claim that Science(TM) has advanced so the current predictions of doom are trustworthy
Net Zero will take over our lives - "According to the White Paper, the government wants to encourage the insulation of homes, the ‘rolling out’ of smart meters, plus smart washing machines, smart dishwashers and smart tariffs. There will be an end to conventional cars and vans, and, instead, a ‘transition to clean, zero tailpipe emission vehicles’. It all sounds expensive but there are a few nods to the affordability of it all for vulnerable households. And, the government assures us, it will create new ‘green’ jobs. But within four pages, a projection of ‘up to’ 250,000 green jobs by 2030 becomes ‘up to 220,000 jobs per year’ by 2030’. To put this speculation in perspective, Britain’s offshore wind sector currently supports just 7,200 direct jobs. But apparently, we are just on the cusp of a global Green Industrial Revolution, the White Paper insists... there are 300 mentions of homes and houses, but just four for factories, and three for lorries and trucks. The main novelty of the White Paper is that it wants to use smart IT to help ‘engage’ consumers so that they can ‘make a personal contribution to delivering a clean energy system’. In other words, it demands more day-to-day involvement from us in managing our energy use. What a bright, participative, democratic future for us all! As Joe Kaplinsky and I argued during the last major bout of climate hysteria in the late 2000s, ‘If the world could be more thoughtful about energy supply, individuals could be thoughtless about their energy use’. But the government’s interpretation of energy matters is entirely the opposite of this. It wants us to be thoughtful about – indeed, obsessed with – the minutiae of everyday consumption of energy, and the accompanying minutiae of consumer IT. Meanwhile, it betrays great thoughtlessness about energy supply, when it is energy supply that governments should concern themselves with. Through Carbon Capture, Usage and Storage technology (CCUS), the Conservative government’s ‘ambition’ (a famously Blairite weasel word) is to sequestrate the equivalent of four million cars’ worth of annual CO2 emissions. Apart from the fact that CCUS is expensive, and that four million cars represents just 10 per cent of those on Britain’s roads, the sum proposed to help CCUS is paltry: a mere £1 billion.It’s the same with nuclear energy, which gets just £385millon for an ‘Advanced Nuclear Fund’. Hydrogen, a still-embryonic carrier of energy which requires a whole lot of energy to produce, gets 132 mentions in the White Paper. By contrast, nuclear gets 77. And again we get the fudge factor: ‘We will aim to bring at least one large-scale nuclear project to the point of Final Investment Decision (FID) by the end of this parliament, subject to clear value for money and all relevant approvals.’ In other words, we will have a plan but not have anything built."
Facebook - "Climate change is a real, man-made problem. But its impacts are much lower than breathless climate reporting would suggest. The IPCC has found that if we do nothing, the total impact of climate change in the 2070s will be equivalent to reducing incomes by 0.2-2%. Given that by then each person is expected to be 363% as rich as today, climate change means we will "only" be 356% as rich. A problem, yes, but hardly the end of the world.Climate policies could end up hurting much more by dramatically cutting growth. Comprehensive studies show that for rich countries, lower growth means higher risks of protests and political breakdown. This isn't surprising. If you live in a burgeoning economy, you know that you and your children will be much better off in the coming years.If growth is almost absent, the world turns into a zero-sum experience. Better conditions for others likely mean worse conditions for you, resulting in a loss of social cohesion and trust in a worthwhile future. The yellow-vest protests against eco-taxes that have rankled France since 2018 could become a permanent feature of many or most rich societies."
Instead of panicking, fight climate change with innovation - "Most rich countries now promise to go carbon neutral by the middle of this century. Shockingly, only one country has made a serious, independent estimate of the cost: New Zealand found it would optimistically cost 16 percent of its GDP by then, equivalent to the entire current budget of the country.The equivalent cost for the EU and the US would be more than US$5 trillion. Each and every year. That is more than the entire United States' federal budget, or more than the governments of EU member states spend across all budgets for education, recreation, housing, environment, economic affairs, police, courts, defense and health.We are incessantly being told that renewables are ever cheaper and that a transition to green energy will make us richer. Yet this facile argument is belied by reality. Solar panels in some places make cheaper electricity at noon, but at night the cost is infinite. That is why across Europe, the higher the share of wind and solar, the higher the household cost of electricity.German consumers had to pay €31 billion (US$36.92 billion) last year to support supposedly cheaper green energy. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that of the 128 analyzed climate policies, all made us poorer.Tellingly, European Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans recently admitted that climate policies would be so costly that it would be a "matter of survival for our industry" without huge, protective border taxes... politicians focus on ever stronger climate policies that would lower and potentially eradicate growth over the coming decades. This would delight a few job-secure academics that from comfortable ivory towers advocate degrowth for climate, but it would lead to tragic outcomes of stagnation, strife and discord for ordinary people.Most voters are not willing to pay for these extravagant climate policies. While Biden proposes spending the equivalent of US$1,500 per American per year, a recent survey by The Washington Post showed that more than half the population was unwilling to pay even US$24.Moreover, these policies have little impact. If all Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries were to cut their carbon emissions to zero tomorrow and for the rest of the century, the lack of energy would devastate societies. Yet run on the standard UN climate model, the effort would make an almost unnoticeable reduction in temperatures of 0.4 C by 2100.This is because more than three-fourths of the global emissions in the rest of this century will come from Asia, Africa and Latin America. The countries in these regions are determined to lift their populations out of poverty and ensure broad development using plentiful energy, mostly from cheap fossil fuels."
Facebook - "Still silly: "Climate change most significant public health issue of our time" Biden's Climate Advisor McCarthySome people were annoyed that I didn't include the deaths from extreme weather. Of course, those deaths have been declining for decades. But here they are, all 409 deaths, including 72 from Rip Currents and 13 from Winter Storms, neither of which are likely to be from global warming.Cardiovascular disease kills 33% and cancer 26% of all AmericansHeat kills 0.3% and declining. Cold 6.4% and increasing.Yes, global warming is a problem.No, 0.3% is not our biggest challenge"
Today's Electric Car Batteries Will Be Tomorrow's E-Waste Crisis, Scientists Warn
So much for "green" technology
The curse of 'white oil': electric vehicles' dirty secret - "The race is on to find a steady source of lithium, a key component in rechargeable electric car batteries. But while the EU focuses on emissions, the lithium gold rush threatens environmental damage on an industrial scale"
Toyota CEO Agrees With Elon Musk: We Don't Have Enough Electricity to Electrify All the Cars - "EVs are not powered by magical unicorn emissions, they are powered by the means we use to generate electricity. In Japan, the United States, and everywhere else, that’s fossil fuels to the tune of a huge majority of our electric power generation (61% in the U.S., with wind and solar making up about 17%, while Japan relies more heavily on nuclear power than most due to its lack of indigenous oil). Imagine taking every car in Japan or the United States and powering it not by gasoline or diesel, but by electricity. This will require a dramatic expansion of the amount of electric power we currently generate. There is no getting around this fact. We would be displacing gasoline or diesel for another power source. We’re still pulling something out of the ground and burning it in some way. The main question is where is it being burned?How will we generate power to meet the new level of demand? Some will claim we can do it by ramping up renewables — wind and solar — but that’s not realistic. Drive out through West Texas between Llano and San Angelo out to Midland-Odessa and you’ll see a curious sight: hundreds and hundreds of towering windmills. Those are just the ones you can see from the road. There are more of them farther from the beaten paths. That part of Texas generates more wind power than the entire state of California. Wind farms cover mile after mile after mile. But all those hundreds of windmills only generate about 15% of Texas’ electricity. Wind is not economically competitive yet, so it’s subsidized by the government. Neither wind nor solar are cheap or reliable enough to displace oil and especially natural gas in our grid. The wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine. Oil and natural gas always burn... The second issue Toyoda is getting at is that petroleum isn’t just a fuel, it’s the foundation of thousands upon thousands of products we rely on every day. Cars alone have plastic and other petroleum-based parts throughout their systems and interiors. There is, as of yet, no reliable or economical replacement for the petroleum used to manufacture those parts. So if oil and natural gas stop coming out of the ground tomorrow, once the supply has gone through all the refining and other processes, our entire way of life takes a wallop.If the politicians who are pushing to ban gas cars and force everyone over to EVs with renewables at their present or near-future state of development do understand any of this, they’re not letting on. They’ll wreck modern industry.Toyoda isn’t alone in this reality check. Elon Musk recently sounded a similar note... Perhaps two of the world’s leading car experts should be listened to before Tokyo, Washington, or any other capital follows California’s lead and bans gas cars without considering the ripple effects"
Electric cars are good fun for wealthy virtue signallers, but a dreadful way to save the planet - "electric cars will achieve only tiny emissions savings at a very high price.Electric cars are certainly fun, but almost everywhere cost more across their lifetime than their petrol counterparts. That is why subsidies are needed. And consumers are still anxious because of their short range and long recharging times. Despite the US handing out up to $10,000 (£7,600) for each electric car, for example, fewer than 0.5 per cent of its cars are battery electric. And almost all the support goes to the rich. Ninety per cent of electric car owners also have a fossil-fuel driven car they drive further. Indeed, electric vehicles are mostly a “second car” used for shorter trips and virtue signalling.If you subsidise electric cars enough, people will buy them. Almost 10 per cent of all Norway’s passenger cars are now electric because of generous policies that waive most costs. Over its lifetime, a £23,000 car might receive benefits worth more than £20,000. But this approach is unsustainable for most nations. Even Norway is starting to worry, losing more than a billion euros a year from exempt drivers.Innovation will eventually make electric cars economical even without subsidies, but concerns over range and slow recharging will remain. That is why most scientific prognoses show that electric cars will not take over the world. A new study shows that by 2030, just 13 per cent of new cars will be battery-electric. If Johnson bans new petrol cars by then, he would essentially forbid 87 per cent of consumers from buying the cars they want. It is hard to imagine that could be politically viable. The International Energy Agency estimates that by 2030, if all countries live up to their promises, the world will have 140 million electric cars on the road. Yet, this would not make a significant impact on emissions for two reasons. First, electric cars require large batteries, often produced in China using coal power. Just producing the battery for an electric car can emit almost as much as a quarter of the greenhouse gasses emitted from a petrol car across its entire lifetime.Second, the electric car is recharged on electricity that almost everywhere is significantly fossil-fuel based. Together, this means that a long-range electric car will emit more CO2 for its first 60,000km than a petrol car. This is why having a second electric car for short trips could mean higher overall emissions. Comparing electric and petrol, the International Energy Agency estimates the electric car will save six tons of CO2 over its lifetime, assuming global average electricity emissions. Even if the electric car has a short range and its battery is made in Europe mostly using renewable energy, its savings will be at most 10 tons. To use America as an example, if Biden restores the full electric car tax credit, he will essentially pay £5,700 to reduce emissions by at most 10 tons. Yet, he can get US power producers to cut 10 tons for just £45. Indeed, if the whole world follows through and gets to 140 million electric cars by 2030, the IEA estimates it will reduce emissions by just 190 million tonnes of CO2 – a mere 0.4 per cent of global emissions.We need a reality check. First, politicians should stop writing huge cheques just because they believe electric cars are a major climate solution. Second, there is a simpler solution. The hybrid car saves about the same amount of CO2 as an electric car over its lifetime. Third, climate change doesn’t care about where CO2 comes from. Personal cars are only about 7 per cent of global emissions, and electric cars will only help a little."
