Bummer: Sales Of Large Pickups And SUVs Is Harming Carbon Pollution Reduction From EVs

By William Teach September 24, 2022 – 3:00 pm

In the real world, these are the vehicles people want, especially SUVs

Surging sales of large gasoline pickups and SUVs are undermining carbon reductions from electric cars

Replacing petroleum fuels with electricity is crucial for curbing climate change because it cuts carbon dioxide emissions from transportation – the largest source of U.S. global warming emissions and a growing source worldwide. Even including the impacts of generating electricity to run them, electric vehicles provide clear environmental benefits.

Plug-in vehicles are making great progress, with their share of U.S. car and light truck sales jumping from 2% to 4% in 2020-2021 and projected to exceed 6% by the end of 2022. But sales of gas-guzzling pickups and SUVs are also surging. This other face of the market subverts electric cars’ carbon-cutting progress.

People want these vehicles. Many manufacturers had already mostly stopped making sedans. Others stopped offering sub-compact cars, like the Honda Fit and Toyota Yaris. Nissan still has the Versa, but, it doesn’t sell well, they do not make that many right now, and most go to rental car companies. The subcompact SUV class, though, which includes ones like the Honda HRV, Toyota CHR, and Kia Soul, are selling like gangbusters. RAV4s, CRVs, and other compact SUVs likewise sell big time. Many people are interested in the regular hybrid versions. People are interested in getting a mid-sized hybrid, but, not much going on there. People just do not want to deal with the charging issues of an EV. Or the pricing.

In spite of rapidly growing sales, however, EVs have not yet measurably cut carbon. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data indicates that the rate of carbon dioxide reduction from new vehicles has all but stalled, while vehicle mass and power have reached all-time highs.

Why? The surging popularity of low-fuel-economy pickups and SUVs. My analysis of the EPA data shows that through 2021, the higher emissions from market shifts to larger, more powerful vehicles swamp the potential carbon dioxide reductions from EVs by more than a factor of three.

Consumers make the choice. It shouldn’t be Government demanding it. If Warmists want EVs, let them go get one, and stop telling everyone else how to live their lives and what products companies can sell. And, as usual, John DeCicco, Research Professor Emeritus, University of Michigan, who wrote this piece, fails to note that he’s switched to an EV.

Policymakers and environmental organizations have mounted major promotional campaigns in support of EVs. But there are no similar efforts to encourage consumers to choose the most efficient vehicle that meets their needs. Significant numbers of Americans now believe that global warming is for real and of concern. Connecting such beliefs to everyday vehicle purchases is a missing link in clean-car strategy.

Mind your own business. Stop minding everyone else’s.

Read: Bummer: Sales Of Large Pickups And SUVs Is Harming Carbon Pollution Reduction From EVs »

Posted in AGW Socialism, Global Warming | 15 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach September 24, 2022 – 1:00 pm

…is an Evil fossil fueled vehicle, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Moonbattery, with a post on indoctrination in the U.S. Air Force.

Doubleshot below the fold, check out Pacific Pundit, with a post on creepy Biden saying he was creeping on a 12 year old when he was 30.

Read More »

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 12 Comments | Trackback URL

Brandonconomy: Beer Shortages Could Be Coming

By William Teach September 24, 2022 – 10:30 am

No worries, Biden is heading to New Castle, Delaware today, after having a nice concert featuring Elton John Friday night. He’s on the ball and will take care of this

Is a beer shortage on tap? Inflation and supply chain pressures on brewers are intensifying

We have endured no shortage of shortages recently. There was toilet paper and computer chips, followed by tampons and baby formula. Could the next shortage involve beer?

The potential arises as beer makers, big and small, are under pressure from a confluence of inflation and several supply chain issues. Some breweries have found it challenging to get carbon dioxide (CO2), which is used to clean tanks and carbonate beer. When they do get it, the price is often higher, sometimes twice what they used to pay.

Also rising: the price of other ingredients such as malted barley and the cost to ship that and other products.

All this could lead to higher beer prices. And, it could result in some of your favorite beers being out of stock or not on tap.

“I don’t know if I can think of a scenario where there’d be no beer from a brewery, but I can understand a scenario where there would be a limited or smaller offering, as beer has a short shelf life,” said Chuck Aaron, owner and founder of Jersey Girl Brewing in Hackettstown, N.J.

Unlike with many products, such as eggs and other things that have disappeared from the grocery stores, there really isn’t a generic brand of beer (except on TV and in the movies), but, many craft brewers might reduce output or shut down

The environment is challenging enough that it could force some breweries to close. “This could certainly be a factor in closures,” Bart Watson, chief economist for the Brewers Association, told USA TODAY.

The big brewers will just raise prices. You’re already seeing it, as the cost of diesel for the trucks that deliver the necessary goods to make it have gone up (barley up double, aluminum up 50%), and then trucks have to take the made beer to stores. Will production be reduced from the big brewers? They have the product to make beer. Except there is a shortage of glass, aluminum, and CO2.

Despite the dilemma, the nation’s beer taps won’t likely run dry. But they could be tempered, he said.

“I’m not sure I’d go so far as to say there will be shortages. Individual producers may have issues, but this isn’t so widespread that you’re going to see empty beer shelves,” Watson said. “I think the beer brand that consumers want occasionally being out of stock is closer to accurate. And brewers might make different or fewer beers.”

Just one more thing we can thank China for. And Fauci and the National Institute of Health, for funding gain of function research in Wuhan, at a facility that has shown itself lax. Biden will be absent, as usual.

Read: Brandonconomy: Beer Shortages Could Be Coming »

Posted in Bat Soup Virus, Economy, Food and Drink | 3 Comments | Trackback URL

Climate Lunatic Sets Himself On Fire At Tennis Match

By William Teach September 24, 2022 – 7:15 am

Seriously, this is what you get when people are fed a constant diet of apocalyptic doom

From the link

A protestor ran onto the court and set his arm on fire in the middle of the 2022 Laver Cup in London on Friday. The man wore a white shirt with the words “end UK private jets” written on it. He was quickly escorted off the court after the fire was put out by officials.

The protest temporarily halted the singles match between Stefanos Tsitsipas and Diego Schwartzman. He reportedly ran onto the court after Tsitsipas won the first set and set his arm on fire before security grabbed him. After officials determined the fire did not alter the court, the match resumed and Tsitsipas won the second set to clinch the victory.

Here’s what it looked like

End UK private jets is exactly what you think

While the act itself was unceremonious, the message finds plenty of relevance at a time when climate action and justice are as essential as ever. A study published in Science Direct has revealed how private jets, with fewer than 10 people on board, account for about 7,500 tons of carbon emissions every year, way more than commercial aviation.

The startling growth in private aviation in recent years has become an alarming addition to climate change and is a crucial topic of dialogue in climate activism. Therefore, it is not a matter of surprise that an intruder found it pertinent to display such a message at a tournament whose participants flew in by private jets.

Perhaps he should have waited to pull his stunt during the next climate cult Conference on the Parties, which will be held in the fancy vacation spot of Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt during November, what with all the big wigs flying in on private jets.

Read: Climate Lunatic Sets Himself On Fire At Tennis Match »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Global Warming | 7 Comments | Trackback URL

Americans Are No Longer Buying Into COVID Boosters

By William Teach September 24, 2022 – 7:00 am

The problem is that people really do not trust them that much anymore. There are way too many data points on people who’ve gotten them getting COVID, and then reinfections in short order. The only benefit is, supposedly, keeping people from getting a bad case of COVID

Data show just 4.4 million Americans have had the new COVID booster, but experts expect accelerating demand in the coming weeks

The first tallies for the new bivalent booster are out, with some 4.4 million people in the U.S. having received the updated shot, according to health officials. Meanwhile, public health experts continue to fret about President Joe Biden’s recent remark that “the pandemic is over.”

Health experts said it is too early to predict whether demand would match up with the 171 million doses of the new booster that the U.S. ordered for the fall, the Associated Press reported. The new shot targets the most common omicron strains as well as the original virus strain.

“No one would go looking at our flu shot uptake at this point and be like, ‘Oh, what a disaster,’” David Dowdy, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told the AP. “If we start to see a large uptick in cases, I think we’re going to see a lot of people getting the [new COVID] vaccine.”

Most have moved on. A lot of people have removed themselves from the mask cult. And no one trusts the data on how good the booster works.

The daily average for new cases stood at 55,591 on Thursday, according to a New York Times tracker, down 19% from two weeks ago. But cases are rising in 20 states, and are up by a lot in some.

Washington state has seen a 47% increase in cases in the last two weeks, while New York is up 45%, Massachusetts is up 40%, Maine is up 36% and New Jersey is up 32%.

So, places which had been epicenters of COVID vaccine worship and massive restricts. The Powers That Be want to try to keep scaring us. Most of us are done with this.

Read: Americans Are No Longer Buying Into COVID Boosters »

Posted in Bat Soup Virus | 28 Comments | Trackback URL

Top Bank Execs Tell Rashida Tlaib She’s Nuts Regarding Climate Doom

By William Teach September 23, 2022 – 3:00 pm

They missed a great opportunity to ask Tlaib if she’s stopped using fossil fuels herself. Perhaps it’s just me, but, when someone starts yammering about climate doom that’s the first question I ask them

Top bank CEOs decline radical climate demands from Rep. Tlaib: ‘That would be the road to Hell for America’

Leaders in the banking industry clashed with Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., Wednesday after Tlaib demanded that they commit to immediately end all financing of all fossil fuel products.

J.P. Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon told the far-left representative during a House Financial Services Committee hearing that her request would lead to despair and ruin.

“You have all committed, as you all know, to transition the emissions from lending and investment activities to align with pathways to net-zero in 2050… So no new fossil fuel production, starting today, so that’s like zero. I would like to ask all of you and go down the list, cause again, you all have agreed to doing this. Please answer with a simple yes or no, does your bank have a policy against funding new oil and gas products, Mr. Diamond?” Tlaib asked.

“Absolutely not, and that would be the road to hell for America,” Dimon responded.

And they all told Tlaib that they would continue to loan money, because, you know, that’s what banks do. If doing away with fossil fuels was so easy, then, why have most Warmists not done so? Who wants to bet that Tlaib flies back and forth between D.C. and Michigan?

Critics of the environmental policies Tlaib advocates, argue that those policies have already reduced funding to fossil fuel projects which has exacerbated the energy shortages seen in Europe since Russia invaded Ukraine earlier this year. American financier Kyle Bass, for example, argued that the transition from fossil fuels to alternative energy must not be rushed.

“These transitions take forty years, Joe. The move from coal to natural gas took forty years. They take a very, very, very long time. We can’t just flip a switch,” he told CNBC in an interview last month.

And how’s that working in Europe?

Read: Top Bank Execs Tell Rashida Tlaib She’s Nuts Regarding Climate Doom »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Energy, Global Warming | 3 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach September 23, 2022 – 1:00 pm

…is a scary looking sky from carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Legal Insurrection, with a post on the Martha’s Vineyard’s Citizens For Sanity ad. Progressive or parody?

Read: If All You See… »

Posted in If All You See | 8 Comments | Trackback URL

Time: Shipping Migrants To Sanctuary Cities Is An Attack On The Constitution Or Something

By William Teach September 23, 2022 – 10:30 am

Well, this is a new one. There have plenty of attacks on DeSantis and Abbott, even accusing them of trafficking, as you well know. Now we have attacking the Constitution

Republican Governors Shipping Migrants Around the Country Is a Disturbing Attack on the Constitution

(Multiple paragraphs about the shipping of the illegals/migrants, all of which you know)

President Biden and others have derided these trips, as well as the ones arranged by DeSantis, as “political stunts.” They are more disturbing than that. They are lawless acts, deliberate attempts by some states, acting through their governors, to contravene the basic premise and purpose of the union established by the U.S. Constitution.

States have always had to find ways to coexist even when they have divergent interests or policy preferences. The Constitution itself was adopted to resolve coordination difficulties the states had in matters such as national defense, the conduct of foreign affairs, the creation of a common currency, and financing a national government. The federal courts, also established by the Constitution and further developed by Congress, provide another avenue where states can peacefully and lawfully resolve their differences, adjudicating particular disputes that arise between them. Even before such fights ripen into lawsuits, states, like individuals, sometimes need to negotiate terms of cooperation with one another. There is an established legal mechanism for doing this, called an interstate compact. It, too, is rooted in the United States Constitution, which has been interpreted by federal courts to set ground rules for ensuring such state-to-state agreements have the assent of the federal government.

Texas, Arizona, and Florida are all already party to numerous interstate compacts, spanning everything from multistate lotteries to water apportionment to child custody and adoption to professional licensing. Had Abbott, Ducey and DeSantis been trying to develop multistate mechanisms for accommodating asylum seekers and other lawful migrants, they could have approached their counterparts in other states to hash out an agreed upon plan.

That’s the argument from Heidi Li Feldman, a Professor of Law and Associate Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University Law Center. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. Abbott, DeSantis, and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey didn’t establish a compact to ship illegals/migrants to Democratic Party run areas which call themselves sanctuary cities. That’s some serious weak sauce from a professor of law. There is a compact, in which people can cross borders of states as much as they want if they’re here.

And, not one word from Feldman regarding Biden flying the same people around the country in the dead of night and dropping them off in small town America with zero warning.

Instead, Abbott, Ducey, and now DeSantis have chosen to ambush the governments of sister states by surprising them with the arrival of busloads and planeloads of migrants at unannounced times and places. They have refused requests from mayors in other states to work together. The buses and planes sent by Abbott, Ducey, and DeSantis discharge their passengers wherever will get the most press coverage or will cause inconvenience and difficulties for residents and government responders.

Ambush? Now, that’s funny. Still no mention of Biden doing this. Or, border states being ambushed by massive inflows of migrants/illegals.

The U.S. Constitution does not explicitly forbid one state from purposely creating disorder in another. But attempts to do this subvert one basic premise for joining together in legal union: peaceful, cooperative co-existence among states, as well as between them and the federal government. As state governors, Ducey, Abbott, and DeSantis have acted extra-constitutionally, even anti-constitutionally. While they have not launched armed attacks on other states or the federal government, they have shown a refusal to participate in the basic design and ambition of the American constitutional union. That is a step toward secession.

So, sending these migrants creates disorder to non-border states, ones who advocate for open borders and now get to share in it? It’s silly, very silly, but, the point here is not to create a strong argument, it’s to create a talking point that the three governors and their states are violating the Constitution (the same one Democrats hate because it stop their authoritarianism).

Read: Time: Shipping Migrants To Sanctuary Cities Is An Attack On The Constitution Or Something »

Posted in Barking Moonbats, Democrats, Illegal Immigration | 6 Comments | Trackback URL

LA Times: Americans Don’t Care About Climate Doom Or Something

By William Teach September 23, 2022 – 7:00 am

This has given LA Times columnist Nicholas Goldberg a big sad

Nicholas Goldberg: Americans don’t care about climate change. Here’s how to wake them up

Why is the greatest threat to the planet of so little concern to most Americans?

It couldn’t possibly be due to the fact that those pushing this the hardest seem to always fail to mention what they’ve done in their own lives, could it? That they show themselves as climahypocrites? That they want Other People to be forced to practice the beliefs that the Warmists won’t?

It’s shocking, frankly, that global warming ranks 24th on a list of 29 issues that voters say they’ll think about when deciding whom to vote for in November, according to the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. Only 30% of voters say they are “very worried” about it and more than two-thirds say they “rarely” or “never” discuss the issue with family or friends.

No, it really isn’t. When a slight increase in global temperatures in 170 years is matched up against real issues it loses. Many care about it in theory, but, not in practice. And this is after 30+ years of fearmongering, which has really gotten bad over the last 10 or so

How can people be so blithely unconcerned when the clear consensus of scientists is that climate disruption is reaching crisis levels and will result not only in more raging storms, droughts, wildfires and heat waves, but very possibly in famine, mass migration, collapsing economies and war?

Because science is not consensus, and, if it was all so bad, people like Nicholas would tell us how they’ve started driving an EV and made their lives carbon neutral. I’ve read a lot of ‘climate change’ articles over the years. A lot. And of all those, perhaps less than .5% mention what these people have actually done in their own lives.

In his forthcoming book, “The Activist’s Media Handbook,” due out in November, David Fenton says that the forces trying to rouse the world to fight climate change — including philanthropic foundations, environmental organizations and activist groups, among others — have by and large ignored the most rudimentary tenets of marketing and advertising, to their detriment and the planet’s.

That’s because they believe that the business of selling ideas is fundamentally dirty, manipulative and beneath them.

They’re convinced that data, truth and evidence are what matter, Fenton says. To them (and we’re talking here about lots of well-intentioned lawyers, scientists and people who studied the humanities), good ideas sell themselves.

But, see, they don’t provide data, truth, and evidence. They rely on scaremongering, doomsaying, computer models, crystal ball, and a failure to, yes, practice what they preach. And, among the same old ideas, such as keeping the message simple, Nicholas never recommends that practicing what you preach idea.

Read: LA Times: Americans Don’t Care About Climate Doom Or Something »

Posted in Collapsing Science, Global Warming | 27 Comments | Trackback URL

TDS: We Can Save The Nation From Trump By Rewriting The Constitution

By William Teach September 23, 2022 – 6:45 am

Seriously, do these people understand how bat-guano-shit insane they appear?

The Best Way To Save The Constitution From Donald Trump Is To Rewrite It

Perhaps you have wandered through much of your life only mildly aware and mostly indifferent to the fact that there is something called Constitution Day. If so, consider me a fellow traveler.

But in these times, in the wake of the Jan. 6 committee’s work exposing Donald Trump’s assaults on rule of law and the orderly transition of power, many responsible people have concluded that Constitution Day complacency is a privilege we can no longer afford. The official holiday was Sept. 17 (you knew that, right?) and in the week before and continuing this week there have been a gusher of speeches and symposiums devoted to extolling the Constitution and illuminating the threats to it. (snip)

The occasion underlined two related Trump-era paradoxes that likely will shape our politics long after Trump’s shadow lifts.

First, Trump is properly seen as a constitutional menace, but from a progressive perspective many of the most offensive features of his tenure were not in defiance of the Constitution. Instead, they flowed directly from its most problematic provisions. He was in office in the first place because the presidency is chosen by the Electoral College rather than by the popular vote. His influence will live for decades because partisan manipulation of the Senate’s judicial confirmation power gave him three Supreme Court justices, who have no term limits and face no practical mechanisms of accountability. Like some other presidents, but more so, he used the Constitution’s absolute pardon power for nakedly self-interested reasons. In short, Trump may be an enemy of the Constitution but he is also the president who most zealously exploited its defects.

Obviously, getting rid of the Electoral College is a big thing for the Progressives (nice Fascists), who aren’t happy that they can lose playing by the established rules

Correcting or circumventing what progressives reasonably perceive as the infirmities of the Constitution, in fact, seems likely to be the preeminent liberal objective of the next generation. Progress on issues ranging from climate change to ensuring that technology giants act in the public interest will hinge on creating a new constitutional consensus. Trying to place more sympathetic justices on the Supreme Court is not likely to be a fully adequate remedy. There are more fundamental challenges embedded in the document itself — in particular the outsized power it gives to states, at a time when the most urgent problems and most credible remedies are national in character.

They are likewise unhappy they can’t jam their unhinged agenda through at the national level. They talk a lot about “democracy”, but, aren’t happy they can’t get it through playing by the established rules.

Here, though, is where the breakdown in constitutional consensus becomes potentially climactic — as it did during the Civil War, and threatened to in the New Deal. Popular majority or no, most of those amendments would be opposed by conservatives — which under the terms of the existing Constitution means they likely would not pass. It takes three quarters of the states to approve an amendment, a provision that gives many small, conservative states wildly disproportionate power over the fate of the nation.

This is hardly a new problem, but it is one that threatens to reach a breaking point. The political scientist Norman Ornstein has popularized an arresting statistic, one that is validated by demographic experts. By 2040, 70 percent of Americans will live in just 15 states. That means 30 percent of the population — coming from places that are less diverse and more conservative — will choose 70 senators. Already each senator from Wyoming, the least populous state, exercises his power on behalf of less than 600,000 people, while each senator from California, the most populous, represents nearly 40 million. This distortion of democracy, already hard to defend, could become the defining feature of national life.

See, it’s a big problem that the system works as written

But there are other ways short of violent rupture to survive those moments, as now, when the Constitution no longer reflects the imperatives of the moment. One of those ways is when artful improvisation creates a new consensus. The Supreme Court struck down much of FDR’s initial program, but the New Deal’s core assumption — that we live in a national economy with a robust and responsive national government — prevailed, helped along by a dramatically new understanding of the interstate commerce clause. Another way to survive is good luck. In the Cold War, presidents had (and still have) a power never contemplated in the Constitution — the ability to blow up the world with nuclear bombs on command, in minutes, with no approval by Congress or anyone else.

In other words, they’re say F the Constitution, just do as they want. Because Trump, you know.

Read: TDS: We Can Save The Nation From Trump By Rewriting The Constitution »

Posted in Constitution, Democrats | 10 Comments | Trackback URL
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