Category: Eco-Crap

Save The Wales

Eco-Crap, Terrorism

This is a strange one:

One of America’s most wanted terror suspects has been tracked down and arrested in rural Wales some 21 years after a double bombing attack in San Francisco.

Wales?

The BBC reports Daniel Andreas San Diego, 46, is in custody after an operation Monday backed by counter terrorist police and North Wales Police.

The fugitive now faces extradition to the U.S. after being arrested at a remote property near woodland in north Wales by Britain’s National Crime Agency (NCA).

The NCA said the Berkeley, California-born runaway was arrested at the request of U.S. authorities and appeared at Westminster Magistrates Court in London on Tuesday, where extradition proceedings began.

Okay, the “Berkeley” part makes sense, but…

The FBI has previously called the suspect an “animal rights extremist” and was the first alleged domestic terrorist to be added to the U.S. agency’s most wanted terrorists list.

Ooooh, an eco-terrorist. (Now does the title of the post make sense?)

I suggest that he be reunited with his beloved Mother Nature en route back to the U.S. in the usual manner, from 10,000 feet up:

Ocean, prairie, jungle, Berkeley, Wales, whatever.  I’m not fussy.

Or if we wanted to make the punishment fit the crime, we could always borrow a pager from some other terrorist and duct-tape it to his scrotum.

Potato, potahto.

And Custer’s Having Problems

Eco-Crap, Mocking Furriners, Watermelons

Some days the wind blows strongly, some days softly, and other days not at all.  This is not a suggestion, nor yet a theory, but a statement of fact based upon… oh, century upon century of daily observation and measurement.

So why would you want to base your energy supply upon so changeable a source?

Well to most of us, the answer is simple:  you shouldn’t.  Unfortunately, there are others — some in positions of great authority and power — who see the whole thing differently.  And some in that latter group are now getting bitten in the ass:

“At the beginning of this month, Germany’s power supply reached its limits,” Dr. Markus Krebber wrote on LinkedIn.

Citing Nov. 6 as an example, Krebber bemoaned extreme high energy prices and “shortage of supply.” He also warned that the “same situation would not have been manageable on another day with a higher peak load.”

In other words, Europe’s over-reliance on wind power means that when wind speeds slow, energy producers sometimes cannot meet demand.

This state of affairs suppressed energy supply and raised prices in the UK, Germany and elsewhere in northern Europe earlier this month.

You don’t say.

Of course, British government officials have learned all the wrong lessons from “Dunkelflaute.”

For instance, Chris Stark, appointed in July to head the government’s new clean energy-focused Mission Control, doubled down on renewables.

“Even small amounts of low-carbon flex can displace a lot of gas. We’ll also need to support the build of a lot of new renewable generation – of all types, but especially offshore wind,” Stark said on Nov. 5.

Indeed.  When foolishness proves not to work, what you need is… MOAR FOOLISHNESS.  So if the wind isn’t blowing at all, more wind generators will solve the problem.  Does he even realize how stupid he sounds?

As with all Socialism, when the facts do not conform to the theory, the theory is still paramount.

Unbelievable.

About Those Duracell Cars

Drive Time, Eco-Crap, Gummint

Seems like every day there’s something new to post about this nonsense.  Here’s the first:

Labour will bow to pressure from car manufacturers and rethink strict rules on the sales of electric vehicles.  Downing Street today confirmed ministers will launch a consultation on current plans following intense lobbying by firms.

Under an existing Government mandate, at least 22 per cent of new cars sold by every manufacturer in the UK this year must be zero-emission vehicles (ZEV).  The mandate is set to increase to 28 per cent next year and will rise each year over the next decade – reaching 80 per cent in 2030 and 100 per cent in 2035.  This is when there will be a ban on the sale of all new non-zero-emission cars as part of the Government’s Net Zero commitments. 

Carmakers are set to be fined £15,000 per polluting car sold above the limits.

But firms have been warning ministers that the ZEV mandate is putting jobs and investment at risk in the UK.

Government mandate, meet market reality.  Mind you, not that any kind of reality has ever been part of governmental wishful thinking (e.g. gun regulation).

And then there’s this:

Germany has joined a growing backlash against fining car makers who miss net zero targets – suggesting the firms should be allowed to keep the money to invest in cutting emissions.  Chancellor Olaf Scholz has hit out at the European Union’s zero emission vehicle plans, which require manufacturers to reduce the emissions from their new cars and vans by 15 per cent compared to 2021 levels by next year.

The quickest way for firms to do this is to reduce the production of petrol and diesel cars and encourage people to swap to electric vehicles – but firms say motorists aren’t biting and warn jobs could be at risk if UK and EU mandates aren’t eased.

However, it will be the car firms that face penalties if they fail to shift enough battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) to hit the 15 per cent target.

This grows to a 55 per cent reduction in car emissions and 50 per cent vans by 2030. EU autocrats then want a 100 per cent reduction – i.e. no purely fossil fuelled cars and vans sold at all – by 2035.

Germany has a vested interest in protecting car firms from fines: its car industry is solely responsible for an estimated five per cent of GDP, and is home to huge names including Audi, BMW, Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz.

Yeah, rules and fines are all very well, as long as there’s no economic damage — or so one would think.  Except, of course, that governments of the Leftist ilk seldom seem to care about consequences, because as we all know, Leftism requires only that policy is based on good intentions, and the consequences thereof are irrelevant.

At some point — and in this regard, for once, the U.S. seems to have tumbled to this before the others — voters are going to cry “Enough!” to this insanity.  And nowhere is this becoming more evident than in the auto industry.

Times are becoming more and more interesting, nicht wahr?

Goodbye, Witchcraft

Eco-Crap, Good Stuff, Science!

If you look at all my posts about Global Warming Climate Cooling Change© over the years, you will see all the following points appear at some time or another.

1. The modest increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide that has taken place since the end of the Little Ice Age has been net-beneficial to humanity.
2. Foreseeable future increases in greenhouse gases in the air will probably also prove net-beneficial.
3. The rate and amplitude of global warming have been and will continue to be appreciably less than climate scientists have long predicted.
4. The Sun, and not greenhouse gases, has contributed and will continue to contribute the overwhelming majority of global temperature.
5. Geological evidence compellingly suggests that the rate and amplitude of global warming during the industrial era are neither unprecedented nor unusual.
6. Climate models are inherently incapable of telling us anything about how much global warming there will be or about whether or to what extent the warming has a natural or anthropogenic cause.
7. Global warming will likely continue to be slow, small, harmless and net-beneficial.
8. There is broad agreement among the scientific community that extreme weather events have not increased in frequency, intensity or duration and are in future unlikely to do so.
9. Though global population has increased fourfold over the past century, annually averaged deaths attributable to any climate-related or weather-related event have declined by 99%.
10. Global climate-related financial losses, expressed as a percentage of global annual gross domestic product, have declined and continue to decline notwithstanding the increase in built infrastructure in harm’s way.
11. Despite trillions of dollars spent chiefly in Western countries on emissions abatement, global temperature has continued to rise since 1990.
12. Even if all nations, rather than chiefly western nations, were to move directly and together from the current trajectory to net zero emissions by the official target year of 2050, the global warming prevented by that year would be no more than 0.05 to 0.1 Celsius.
13. If the Czech Republic, the host of this conference, were to move directly to net zero emissions by 2050, it would prevent only 1/4000 of a degree of warming by that target date.
14. Based pro rata on the estimate by the UK national grid authority that preparing the grid for net zero would cost $3.8 trillion (the only such estimate that is properly-costed), and on the fact that the grid accounts for 25% of UK emissions, and that UK emissions account for 0.8% of global emissions, the global cost of attaining net zero would approach $2 quadrillion, equivalent to 20 years’ global annual GDP.
15. On any grid where the installed nameplate capacity of wind and solar power exceeds the mean demand on that grid, adding any further wind or solar power will barely reduce grid CO2 emissions but will greatly increase the cost of electricity and yet will reduce the revenues earned by both new and existing wind and solar generators.
16. The resources of techno-metals required to achieve global net zero emissions are entirely insufficient even for one 15-year generation of net zero infrastructure, so that net zero is in practice unattainable.
17. Since wind and solar power are costly, intermittent and more environmentally destructive per TWh generatedthan any other energy source, governments should cease to subsidize or to prioritize them, and should instead expand coal, gas and, above, all nuclear generation.
18. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which excludes participants and published papers disagreeing with its narrative, fails to comply with its own error-reporting protocol and draws conclusions some of which are dishonest, should be forthwith dismantled.
Okay, there may be a couple in there that I didn’t write (e.g. #13), but I think you get the gist.
As it happened, the above came from a gathering of actual scientists in Prague.  These are actual scientists, as opposed to a bunch of gloomy watermelons subsidized by Leftist governments and universities.
I expect the response from the Fainting Goats On The Left will be the usual mix of screams, character assassination and assorted hysteria.
From right-thinking people, however, the response will just be nods of agreement and approval.

Burning Down The Climate Change Thicket

Bureaucracy, Eco-Crap, Good Stuff, Rights

Here are some very constructive ideas about how to unlock and/or break the raft of stupid eco-fascist laws and regulations.  I especially like this one:

Obama joined Paris Climate Agreement by executive action. Trump exited by the same method. And Biden rejoined, again by executive action, right on January 20, 2021.

Trump could follow the previous method and just quit again. But my preferred suggestion would be to submit the Agreement to the Senate as a treaty. There is zero chance that the Senate would ratify. That would kill this thing much more securely than the other method.

And this would be the time to submit it, while the Stupid Party controls the Senate.

I know, the Paris Climate whatever is pretty much a paper tiger and waste of time.  Don’t care about it?  Then try this one:

“Regulations” are different from mere Executive Orders and actions, in that in order to be adopted they have gone through some complex and time-consuming processes prescribed by the Administrative Procedure Act. The processes are designed to give these “regulations” some purported legitimacy and heft, to make them hard to undo, and to distract the gullible public from the fact that they have not gone through the only process that counts under the Constitution for valid legislative action, namely passage by both houses of Congress and signature by the President. The result of all the procedural rigamarole is that — if you buy the legitimacy of enactment of massive substantive regulations by administrative agencies in the first place — then the processes to eliminate the regulations are the same complex and time-consuming mess that it previously took to adopt them.

Do the Trump people really need to go through the same labyrinth to rescind these Rules? Here’s an approach I would take: First, announce that the legal opinion of the administration is that the Rules are invalid under Supreme Court precedent (i.e., the “major questions doctrine” of West Virginia v. EPA), and therefore they will not be enforced. Next, announce that permitting on power plant and other fossil fuel projects will take place as if these Rules did not exist. Finally, switch sides in the litigation, and join the red states and other plaintiffs seeking to have the Rules invalidated.

Here’s what I really, really like about this initiative:  it would also nullify, ipso facto, all the horrible regulations foisted on us by other Gummint agencies — such as the fucking ATF, for starters, and [add your favorite agency’s name here].

So when you follow the link above to see all the other Good Ideas, don’t just look at those suggestions as part of the destruction of the “climate change” myth, good as they are;  apply those principles to all areas of our life that the bureaucracy have (un-Constitutionally and illegally) affected over the years.

Roll on January 2025.

Non-Starter

Corporate Fuckery, Drive Time, Eco-Crap

The old legend of Saxon king Cnut sitting in a chair on the beach attempting to stop the incoming tide by royal command is, of course, total bullshit.  Yes, he did that;  but he was attempting to show his idiot courtiers that his royal power had limits, and that there were forces over which no human authority had control.  It was far from being an object lesson in overweening pride and hubris (as it so often is used today), it was the precise opposite.

And here’s its modern-day manifestation.

Anyone with half a brain would have known that battery-powered trucks were a non-starter, for the simple reason that trucks aren’t cars:  they require power, lots of power, to move heavy loads, and sometimes over long distances or over power-demanding terrain withal.   Ferrying humans to and from the supermarket or soccer practice, sure.  Gadding about city streets, absolutely.  But that’s not what trucks were designed for.

So despite boutique efforts like Tesla’s dumpster-looking pickup (surely ol’ Elon was just having us on), all EV pickups were doomed to fail, as has just been proved:

Ford Motor Company is halting production of its electric F-150 Lightning pickup truck at a Michigan factory, the auto giant announced Thursday. Just three years ago, President Joe Biden and Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D., Mich.) visited the plant to celebrate the truck’s rollout, calling it an “incredible facility” that shows there’s “no limit to what American ingenuity and manufacturing can accomplish.”

Ford—which, like other major automakers, has struggled to keep its EV business afloat—will shutter the Dearborn, Michigan, manufacturing plant beginning on Nov. 18 and until Jan. 6, 2025. “We continue to adjust production for an optimal mix of sales growth and profitability,” the company said in a statement Thursday. 

Expect the plant to continue that suspension way past Jan 6, 2025 despite the weasel corporate-speak, because when it comes to pickup (or any other) trucks, EV production will never achieve an “optimal mix of sales growth and profitability”.  (As an aside:  anything hailed by FJB, including his choice for VP, has the automatic stench of failure about it.)

So here’s where the Cnut example becomes more relevant than ever:

Ford’s halt in F-150 Lightning production highlights the disastrous impact of federal EV mandates driven by the Biden-Harris administration,” Jason Isaac, the CEO of the American Energy Institute, told the Washington Free Beacon.

In other words, just because the .dotgov says it must happen, that doesn’t mean that it will.

We’ve seen it before with the laughable sustainable energy mandates, where wind- and solar power hasn’t even come close to expectations of consistent electrical delivery (nor will it ever, because — and I hate to repeat myself — anyone with a brain could have told these terminally-deluded dreamers of that outcome).

But control freaks of the ecological- and socialist persuasion [redundancy alert]  persist in thinking that if they simply order Net Zero to happen by x date, it will happen.

The collapse of the EV market is simply a signal — a foreshadowing, if you will — that as these idiots remain sitting stubbornly in their chairs on the beach, the tide is most assuredly coming in and will drown them.

We should be so lucky.

The problem is that these assholes are trying to force us all to sit with them.

“American automakers and workers are paying the price for policies that ignore real consumer demand,” Isaac continued.

…and it’s not just automakers and workers.  It’s everybody.