Tag: #greenfail
The new heretics
September 28, 2022 4:56 pm HershbloggerLeave a comment
In G.K. Chesterton's day, it was not necessary to qualify the word "Liberal" with "Classical."
Culture and political designations have changed. Verities, by definition, have not.
Five score and seventeen years after it was published, this resonates. It requires a careful reading:
"Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion. And the scepticism of our time does not really destroy the beliefs, rather it creates them; gives them their limits and their plain and defiant shape. We who are Liberals once held Liberalism lightly as a truism. Now it has been disputed, and we hold it fiercely as a faith. We who believe in patriotism once thought patriotism to be reasonable, and thought little more about it. Now we know it to be unreasonable, and know it to be right. We who are Christians never knew the great philosophic common sense which inheres in that mystery until the anti-Christian writers pointed it out to us. The great march of mental destruction will go on. Everything will be denied. Everything will become a creed. It is a reasonable position to deny the stones in the street; it will be a religious dogma to assert them. It is a rational thesis that we are all in a dream; it will be a mystical sanity to say that we are all awake. Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer. We shall be left defending, not only the incredible virtues and sanities of human life, but something more incredible still, this huge impossible universe which stares us in the face. We shall fight for visible prodigies as if they were invisible. We shall look on the impossible grass and the skies with a strange courage. We shall be of those who have seen and yet have believed."
― G.K. Chesterton, Heretics, 1905
It is indeed strange that by 2022 courage is required contend that 2+2 is 4. The idea has been declared racist and patriarchal. We're told simple arithmetic is an artifact of white privilege.
One may speculate that the hue of the impossible grass has been excluded from Progressive contempt only because that color is 'green.' And/or because neither white nor asian heterosexual males have mentioned it lately.
As to strange courage… How can it require courage to oppose those who declare men to be women?
Why is courage needed to suggest government profligacy tends toward inflation?
From whence could courage be summoned to contest those who think human life begins only after a full 9 months gestation?
In what reality does the idea that self-defense is a natural right become a courageous position?
What's even stranger… these ideas have public support. In 'safe' districts hoary politicians run on these these ideas. Their wannabe successors echo the themes. Many of them are elected in spite of it. In fact, because of it.
What we can conclude is that our practice of democracy has proved Tocqueville right, and Benjamin Franklin's fears accurate.
Posted in books, culture, religionTagged #greenfail, extinction rebellion, TERF war, tocque, trans
The Electric Firetruck Acid Test
From the Toronto Sun, a note on a new fire truck in Vancouver. It's electric.
"… the new e-truck will cost $300,000 more than a comparable diesel model, pump 40 per cent less water and have such a short range (30 km) because of its enormous weight that it will have to have backup diesel power in case it runs out of juice on the way to a blaze."
It seems like an incredibly stupid purchase, guaranteed to get you booted out of office. Let's see if it's accurate. A "fact check" if you will.
The central question is, "Is it likely purchases of this nature will contribute significantly to saving us from the coming climate horror, or is it a vanity bonfire fueled by virtue signaling public officials?" We're provisionally accepting the assumption of CO2 precipitated planetary catastrophe here, because it is a religious tenet for a goodly majority of Vancouverites… who elected the people who bought the truck. The virtue Vancouver public officials are signaling is sacrosanct.
Still, some questions naturally follow (though I doubt Vancouver asked them).
How much emitted CO2 will it prevent? Is there data about life cycle carbon emissions for EV vs ICE (internal combustion engines)?
There is, and Bjorn Lomborg references a comprehensive set of data at the International Energy Agency in a WSJ article. Policies Pushing Electric Vehicles Show Why Few People Want One:
Making batteries for electric cars also requires a massive amount of energy, mostly from burning coal in China. Add it all up and the International Energy Agency estimates that an electric car emits a little less than half as much CO2 as a gasoline-powered one.
The climate effect of our electric-car efforts in the 2020s will be trivial. If every country achieved its stated ambitious electric-vehicle targets by 2030, the world would save 231 million tons of CO2 emissions. Plugging these savings into the standard United Nations Climate Panel model, that comes to a reduction of 0.0002 degree Fahrenheit by the end of the century.
Vehicle electrification is having a very small impact on future climate. And an electric firetruck's contribution to CO2 reduction is proportionally much less than a car's. A firetruck is driven very few miles compared to a car, and since driving is where the emissions are actually saved an electric firetruck is CO2 reduction theater. A better use of well over a million dollars would have have been replacement of every city car with an EV. Well, except for public safety vehicles like police cars. They'd have to be hybrids if they were appropriate to their mission.
As the article alludes, the firetruck needs diesel backup. Unsurprisingly, it's an OEM option. If we look at the truck specs we can see whether that's really optional; get some indication about whether the range is only 30 kilometers; and gain some insight into how well the truck can pump water once it gets to the fire.
The truck is an Austrian made Rosenbauer RT, and there is a claim here that it can go 100 kilometers, round trip. That would be 60 miles.
"The system is set to be recharged incredibly quickly and can power the truck for 100 km of driving; Moore notes that in Vancouver they usually only drive five to 10 km, and never anywhere near 100 km. And if they do need power for an extended period of time there is a range extender, a 350 hp diesel engine from BMW which can refill the batteries faster than driving depletes them. Using that it can go another 300 to 400 km."
No word on what 'incredibly quickly' means, but with a dedicated 350 HP Beamer diesel, it doesn't matter. Of course, that makes it a hybrid, not an EV.
The range discrepancy might be explained by the fact that there are options for 1 or 2 50KW hour battery packs, and how far it can go/how long it can pump will vary depending on the outside temperature.
On the pumping question we have this:
With the battery packs at 100% of charge, the water pump can work continuously for one hour at 528 gpm until the charge falls to 20%. When the turbodiesel engine kicks in, the truck can keep pumping water for five hours more.
With 2 battery packs then, it can pump for an hour. Let's assume 80% of that is available given the need to drive to and from the fire. That's 48 minutes. That's maybe 24 minutes with a single battery pack.
It seems that each truck would have to be equipped with the Beamer diesel in order to fulfill a mission of public safety. Practically, that means it's a hybrid, not an EV. The carbon emissions it does save? At best, that's for an hour of operation per fire. But then it has to be recharged…
Beyond the base emission scenario there are carbon questions related to a firetruck's job.
Are the batteries in Vancouver's new truck kept up solely by a combination of dedicated windmills, solar panels, and hydro power? If not, there is a carbon cost to having it sit in the firehouse.
Is there additional carbon generated by fires that will burn longer, or spread, with less water being delivered? Is the cost of increased property damage considered? What about increased danger to life and limb?
The laser focus on CO2 emissions is the same error similar myopic apparatchiks made with the CCP virus. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ELSE MATTERS but flattening the curve. Pathetic.
So, right in line with the logic behind mandating electric vehicles before we have the means of powering them. Ref: California, where internal combustion engine vehicles were banned by 2035 just a few days before EV owners were asked not to charge their EVs due to threats of rolling blackouts.
Get back to me when you have affordable electricity infrastructure in place. You'll need nukes.
Posted in energy, environmentTagged #greenfail, Green Ordeal
The existential threat of the Perfumed Princes
August 1, 2022 4:53 pm August 1, 2022 5:01 pm HershbloggerLeave a comment
Our President has lately been fear mongering about climate change as "a clear and present danger." A "threat to national security."
He wouldn't recognize such a threat even if his handlers wrote it on his mentalprompter. And stamped it on his palm with a branding iron.
He seeks to invoke emergency powers to accomplish AOC's Green New Deal. That 'deal' our Federal legislators will not countenance.
Joe Biden is valorizing higher energy costs (and the consequent disproportionate suffering from food and goods shortages, employment shrinkage, and lessened government ability to respond)… as a defense of democracy.
He is playing the race/transphobe/climate-catastrophe cards all at once.
'Climate change' is the magic intersectional trump card – it's claimed to disproportionately affect people of color, the 51% of our people who are actually female, the shrinking proportion of our population who are children. A group the President has abused in person, over decades, with his sniffing fetish; and now generally via his promotion of puberty blockers.
An actual threat to national security posed by the President's governance (and I use the term loosely) is the cadre of Perfumed Princes in the Pentagon
General Mark "Thoroughly Modern" Milley is the Patchouli poster child for those military CNN gig seeking, poseurs, wokies, stalwarts the President encourages to focus on proper pronoun usage, critical theory, and free transgender transition surgery for service members. If you missed the 'member' pun, assume it wasn't intended.
Salon, a lefty rag, noticed the trend as long as long ago as 1999:
How the grunts are betrayed by the U.S. Army's "perfumed princes"
Our ability to maintain a volunteer military has suffered since.
America's woke Army is facing a recruiting nightmare
No one wants to join the military anymore
US Army Abandons Recruitment Goals, But Not Its Woke Policies
The Great American Military Rebrand
The Next Republican President Must Fix the Military First
Priorities: U.S. Military Base Is Hosting a Drag Show
West Point is going woke, alumnus warns
Posted in military, politicsTagged #greenfail, Green Ordeal, trans
Malinformation
March 20, 2022 5:12 pm HershbloggerLeave a comment
Hunter Biden's laptop turns out to be exactly what the New York Post reported it to be. Exactly what presidential candidate Biden denied it to be.
Accurate, well researched reporting got the NYP blocked on Twitter and Facebook.
But that's just one recent Prog conspiracy identified. Let us not forget these longer running scams:
Wage gap.
Recycling.
Males Pretending to be Females.
A review:
'Equal Pay Day' this year is March 15 — the next 'Equal Occupational Fatality Day' won't be until April 23, 2032
America Finally Admits Recycling Doesn't Work
Aannd… Progs argue that this biological male competing athletically with biological females is the only "fair" thing to do. "Lia" has no advantage from having gone through puberty as a male…
You gonna believe us or your lying eyes?
This is a human with male chomosomes and male genitalia who insists on showering with women. Women he forces to use his anti-scientific pronouns. We used to know this by the term "abuse."
We should regard the "wage gap" canard, all the Green Ordeal virtue signaling, and the chromosome denialists in the same light as Hunter's laptop.
Posted in culture, feminism, sportsTagged #greenfail, Envirostatism, Green Ordeal, MPtbF, wage gap
March 10, 2022 2:15 pm March 10, 2022 2:17 pm HershbloggerLeave a comment
Solyndrafication
February 13, 2022 1:42 pm Hershblogger2 Comments
Jennifer Granholm is highly experienced at gamifying green giveaways. She has acquired lots of badges, awards, stickers, and trophies – and now she's leveled up.
Her latest accomplishment is the "If you fail, just do the same thing again. Only bigger," badge, with "Fed cluster." It grants the power to reuse your old speeches just by changing a few numbers.
Biden Administration Rolls Out $3 Billion EV Battery Program
"As electric cars and trucks continue to grow in popularity within the United States and around the world, we must seize the chance to make advanced batteries — the heart of this growing industry — right here at home," Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said in a statement. "With funding from Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, we're making it possible to establish a thriving battery supply chain in the United States…
But the White House acknowledged that China controls an "outsized share" of global mineral refining capacity in a supply chain report published in June. Mineral refining is a key component for renewable energy technology including battery manufacturing."
Compare that announcement with this one from 2010:
Our first clue should have been that they didn't name it 'MichiganWatt' – December 9, 2010.
Despite bad reviews of ethanol and an unrequited flirtation with windmills, the Governor thinks she has a clue about THE NEXT BIG THING:
"In Michigan, we are trying our own version of this race — focused on the lithium-ion advanced battery for electric cars, a high-tech product previously manufactured almost exclusively in Asia.
We offered irresistible state tax incentives for manufacturers of "advanced energy storage." We pancaked our state incentives on top of the competitive federal Department of Energy grants to advanced-battery companies and suppliers. We also created robust public-private partnerships."
Her reasoning was that if we gave A123 $100 million it would make them a success. What it did was encourage bad business decisions. "Irresistible tax incentives," are so hard to resist you don't worry about business plans.
That mention of ethanol? It was the previous BIG THING. Granholm had just watched the bankruptcy of her earlier irresistibly incentivized green boondoggle – $20 million for an ethanol plant that never got built.
That bright future for batteries in Michigan didn't work out either.
One of the reasons China has an outsized share of battery manufacturing is because Jennifer Granholm hand picked winner went bankrupt. And then the Chinese bought it for pennies.
And the winner the statists picked is… China – August 13, 2012.
A123 has ripped off the American taxpayer for $249 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Energy. It was one of former governor Granholm's favorite picks, to the tune of $100 million. The Chinese are grateful, I suppose, for taxpayer assistance while A123's stock dropped from $26.00 to $0.82. Without said assistance, A123 might have been gone before they could buy it. Worse yet, from Obama's point of view, Bain Capital might have turned it around.
Posted in corporatism, energy, environmentTagged #greenfail, Envirostatism
China Syndrome
October 12, 2021 1:54 pm October 12, 2021 1:56 pm HershbloggerLeave a comment
Think again, sweetie. The UK is running out of coal.
UK Readying New Law Mandating Home EV Chargers Be Shut Down During Peak Hours
Turns out the China Syndrome is coal fired power plants, not the nuclear plant meltdown the Greens told us it was. #Greenfail.
"In 2019, 58 percent of the country's total energy consumption came from coal, which helps explain why China accounts for 28 percent of all global CO2 emissions."
And it's going to get worse for the warm mongers. China Dominates 2020 Coal Plant Development
Posted in energy, environmentTagged #greenfail, Envirostatism