Hotcold Take: Switching To EVs Could Save 100K Lives

By William Teach March 30, 2022 – 3:00 pm

If only Government would force citizens to switch to EVs

US transition to electric vehicles would save over 100,000 lives by 2050 – study

st greta carA speedy nationwide transition to electric vehicles powered by renewable energy would save more than 100,000 American lives and $1.2tn in public health costs over the next three decades, according to a new report.

Analysis by the American Lung Association highlights the public health damage caused by the world’s dependence on dirty fossil fuels, and provides a glimpse into a greener, healthier future – should political leaders decide to act.

According to the report, swapping gas vehicles for zero-emission new cars and trucks in the US would lead to 110,000 fewer deaths, 2.8m fewer asthma attacks and avoid 13.4m sick days by 2050.

Interestingly, they could be correct. But, this nothing to do with ‘climate change’, but, the environment. I’ll be happy to admit that combustion engines release air pollution. Of course, what of the pollution caused by all the mining of the precious metals to create the batteries, and we really do not know the environmental damage in full caused by EVs.

The shift would lead to a 92% fall in greenhouse gases by 2050, generating $1.7tn in climate benefits by protecting ecosystems, agriculture, infrastructure from rising sea levels and catastrophic weather events including drought and floods.

Are they really saying that 92% of the greenhouse gases come from vehicles? Cult. It’s no surprise they’ve dragged in a scam to what is actually a real environmental issue.

Overall, communities of color and low-income neighborhoods would reap the biggest benefits from zero-emission technologies as they currently suffer disproportionately from air pollution and climate disasters, the study says.

Because they won’t be able to afford the vehicles?

The calculations are based on transitioning to 100% electric cars sales by 2035 and 100% electric trucks by 2040, as well as ditching dirty fossil fuels for 100% renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, hydroelectric and nuclear by 2035.

However, given political polarization in the US and a lack of political urgency, it seems highly unlikely that oil and gas companies will stop drilling or that American car dealers will be selling only electric cars by 2035.

Joe Biden’s Build Back Better (BBB) legislation, which includes historic funds for climate initiatives, has failed to move through the Senate due to stonewalling by the Republicans and the conservative Democrat Joe Manchin, the fossil-fuel friendly senator from West Virginia.

Unsurprising is the pimping of Government solutions.

Read: Hotcold Take: Switching To EVs Could Save 100K Lives »

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If All You See…

By William Teach March 30, 2022 – 1:00 pm

…is an area drying up due to carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Gates Of Vienna, with a post on the West’s goals in Ukraine.

Read: If All You See… »

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COVID Idiocy: Many Given Probation, Banned From Several Parks Over Organizing Big Hiking Group

By William Teach March 30, 2022 – 10:30 am

We’ve seen lots of stupid things from the time of the Chinese coronavirus. A guy arrested for paddleboarding in the ocean (which, don’t blame Crazy Gavin Newsome, his outside exercise orders allowed that). All the people getting thrown off planes for refusing to wear masks. British cops going nuts. This takes it to a new level, rather like in Fascist Australia where the cops showed up at people’s homes simply for attempting organize a protest

Man Banned from National Parks For Organizing 139-Person Grand Canyon Hike

A Washington State man faces probation and a multi-year ban from several United States national parks after he pled guilty to misdemeanor charges stemming from a 139-person group hike he organized in the Grand Canyon in defiance of park guidelines.

Joseph Don Mount, of Chehalis, Washington, pled guilty to violating park rules limiting group size to 11 people on the October 2020 hike. He will serve two years on probation and will be banned from entering national parks in northern Arizona including the Grand Canyon during that time.

The National Park Service first became aware of Mount’s plans in September 2020, when the Grand Canyon’s permit office received a tip that a large group of more than 100 people was planning to hike the canyon on October 24. The pseudonymous tipster sent a screenshot of a post by Mount in a private Facebook group noting that he had “112 COMMITTED HIKERS COMING FROM 12 DIFFERENT STATES!!!” and talking about the importance of taking precautions so that they wouldn’t draw attention to themselves. Grand Canyon National Park has limited sizes for under-the-rim groups to 30 since 2014, and further lowered the limit to 11 after the Covid-19 pandemic began. When Mount spoke to the park’s permit office, however, he said he was bringing a group of 12 people; when advised that his group was slightly over the limit, he asked about the possibility of splitting it up to comply with the park’s rules, and was informed that was not allowed.

Cutting to the chase, 139 people showed up to hike that day, and there were rangers waiting for them. They were all outside, and planned on hiking in smaller groups. Other than the government and unhinged COVID cultists, anyone of rational thought see a problem? They were outside in the fresh air getting exercise. Government did not like this, hence, he was actually prosecuted for this.

Ryan Stevens, Mount’s attorney, told the Associated Press that his client had only good intentions in organizing the event, and intended it to be a respite from the solitude imposed by the pandemic.

Things were opening up in October of 2020. Gyms were opening. Things were becoming freer. Last time I checked, there were no laws against hiking, even in big groups, as passed by the federal Congress and signed into law by the President. Just Executive Orders, and sometime simply orders from agency heads. Or park rangers. It’s insane. Too bad he plead guilty, but, fighting the feds is expensive.

Meanwhile

(NBC News) Twenty-one states on Tuesday sued the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other federal agencies to end the country’s much-debated mask mandate on public transportation.

The suit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, argues that the federal mandate exceeds the CDC’s authority and interferes with state laws banning forced masking.

“Florida has led the nation in standing up to misguided federal government policies and fighting back against heavy-handed mandates that have no scientific backing,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said in a press release announcing the action. “If politicians and celebrities can attend the Super Bowl unmasked, every U.S. citizen should have the right to fly unmasked. It is well past time to get rid of this unnecessary mandate and get back to normal life.”

We’ll see if this goes anywhere.

Read: COVID Idiocy: Many Given Probation, Banned From Several Parks Over Organizing Big Hiking Group »

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Senate Climahypocrites Announce 500 Day Energy Independence Plan

By William Teach March 30, 2022 – 7:15 am

I wonder what it could be? I wonder what could be missing?

Senate climate hawks announce 500-day energy independence plan

Senate Democrats who are part of the chamber’s Climate Change Task Force are calling for a multistep strategy to achieve energy independence by transitioning to renewable energy over the next 500 days.

At a meeting of the task force Tuesday, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) outlined a series of reforms that he said would achieve the goal without increased reliance on fossil fuels.

The group has called for lawmakers to permanently codify President Biden’s ban on Russian oil imports through the Severing Putin’s Immense Gains from Oil Transfers Act, which Markey introduced at the beginning of the month.

Yes, let’s stop using Russian oil and get our own…oh, right, they don’t want us to have our own

It also is pushing for passage of another Markey-sponsored bill, the Strategic Reserve, Appliance, Vehicle and Energy Efficiency for Consumers Act, which is co-sponsored by task force member Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.). The bill would offer short-term consumer relief by releasing the equivalent of 500 days of Russian oil imports from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve and authorize the president to set emergency energy efficiency targets.

The “SAVE Act” would drastically increase the required energy efficiency of everything, giving the Executive office the power to pretty much set standards to whatever the hell they want. What consumers save in energy will be a heck of a lot less that in the cost increases for vehicles, appliances, AC and heating systems, you name it.

The task force is further calling for the creation of a Civilian Climate Corps, one of the major environmental prongs in the sweeping Build Back Better Act. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) seemingly torpedoed the bill in December when he said he would not vote for it, but he has said the act’s climate provisions are among the aspects he supports and could back in a smaller package.

A bunch of government funded nags, Green Shirts, if you will.

The bill would let Executive Office agencies set standards for energy efficiency, and even mandate reductions in the use of energy and gasoline by American citizens (section 3). It’s only 7 pages, mentions “clean energy”, but fails to mention production of oil and natural gas on American property. Nothing about nuclear energy. The main point is giving Biden more power over Citizens and their energy use and gas use. I can’t stress that enough.

And it has a chance to pass. Joe Manchin may well support it, and they may get a few super squishy Republicans to vote for it in the Senate. Don’t be fooled by it being a short 7 pages. It is dangerous investing that much free power in the Executive Office.

If elected Republicans had any brains, they’d trot out their own bill which would require reduced energy use by the federal government, starting with the White House and elected members of Congress and their staffs, put them on the spot.

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Posted in Democrats, Energy, Global Warming | 36 Comments | Trackback URL

Biden’s Bungling Reshapes European Spending Priorities

By William Teach March 30, 2022 – 7:00 am

Now, maybe Putin would have gone into Ukraine regardless. Maybe not. Biden sure didn’t help stop the invasion in the least, and hasn’t helped since, so

The War Is Reshaping How Europe Spends

Joe Biden Ice Cream AfghanistanNicolae Ciuca spent a lifetime on the battlefield before being voted in as prime minister of Romania four months ago. Yet even he did not imagine the need to spend millions of dollars for emergency production of iodine pills to help block radiation poisoning in case of a nuclear blast, or to raise military spending 25% in a single year.

“We never thought we’d need to go back to the Cold War and consider potassium iodine again,” Ciuca, a retired general, said through a translator at Victoria Palace, the government’s headquarters in Bucharest. “We never expected this kind of war in the 21st century.”

Across the European Union and Britain, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is reshaping spending priorities and forcing governments to prepare for threats thought to have been long buried — from a flood of European refugees to the possible use of chemical, biological and even nuclear weapons by a Russian leader who may feel backed into a corner.

That whole off the cuff regime change think sure helped, right?

The result is a sudden reshuffling of budgets as military spending, essentials like agriculture and energy, and humanitarian assistance are shoved to the front of the line, with other pressing needs like education and social services likely to be downgraded.

The most significant shift is in military spending. Germany’s turnabout is the most dramatic, with Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s promise to raise spending above 2% of the country’s economic output, a level not reached in more than three decades. The pledge included an immediate injection of 100 billion euros ($113 billion) into the country’s notoriously threadbare armed forces. As Scholz put it in his speech last month, “We need planes that fly, ships that sail and soldiers who are optimally equipped.”

It’s a pretty long NY Times piece, showing the problems going on in Europe. Refugees, high energy prices, food stocks, you name it, spending priorities are all change.

The pledge includes countries that have fallen below NATO’s goal to spend a minimum of 2% of national output as well as countries that have exceeded the threshold. (The 27 members of the EU and the 30 NATO members overlap but are not identical.)

Hey, I remember when all the Democrats and pundits, including Europeans, give someone a lot of guff over demanding European NATO members pay more for their own defense. Who was that again?

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Who Had Will Smith Slapping Chris Rock Being A Race Thing?

By William Teach March 29, 2022 – 6:32 pm

There’s been some serious hot takes, some dragging Trump in, because Trump Derangement Syndrome, and, now, apparently, whites and blacks are discussing this differently. If the only thing you can think of is how race plays a part in some issue, you, yes you, are the racist.

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If All You See…

By William Teach March 29, 2022 – 3:00 pm

…is a wonderful low carbon bike used to help reduce the rise of the seas, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Diogenes’ Middle Finger, with a post on Joe taking pre-submitted questions

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Climavirtue Signaling: Save The Children Refuses Big Oil Company Donation

By William Teach March 29, 2022 – 3:00 pm

See, it’s more important to let the kids starve than prop up fossil fuels…..which were certainly used to transport and deliver the aid (via Watts Up With That?)

Charity snubs £750,000 donation from gas company over reluctance to take cash from fossil fuel firms

Save the Children has refused an energy firm’s £750,000 ($985,331 U.S.) donation to ease the Ukraine crisis because it doesn’t want to endorse fossil fuels.

It rebuffed cash from North Sea gas producer Neptune Energy two weeks ago, stating it was ‘committed to working on climate change issues’.

Despite refusing help for Ukraine, it said it would take cash for its Children’s Emergency Fund, which supports youngsters in crises around the world, because ‘this could be used in a crisis for which relatively little money is available’.

Neptune, which says it has given £1.5million for Ukrainian humanitarian efforts, challenged the decision with Save the Children’s trustees, saying its staff chose the charity and the snub had ‘shocked’ them.

Save the Children will now refuse donations from firms ‘whose core business is fossil fuels… following a lead by children who have protested about the threat the climate crisis poses to their future’, The Daily Telegraph reported.

Oh, so, it’s OK to take the money for one thing, not another? Huh. This is a cult, a doomsday, quite bonkers one. Eric Worrall writes

Every one of the “Save the Children” executives who made this fatuous decision use fossil fuel in their every day lives, in the clothes they wear, their household appliances, home heating, the roads they drive on. Their computers and telephones are largely made of fossil fuel based plastic, and powered by fossil fuel. Even if they drive an EV, their automobile is mostly made of fossil fuel, and recharged by generated powered by fossil fuel. Any metal components in their EV were smelted and shaped using fossil fuel powered machines.

The timing of this move could not be worse. The world stands on the brink of a food supply crisis, thanks to the interruption of 25% of the world’s wheat supply, wheat which normally comes from Ukraine.

It’s a food bank. The point is to get food and aid to those kids. And they will use fossil fueled vehicles, planes, and or ships to harvest it, get it to market, ship it to affected areas, then distribute it. Fossil fuels to refrigerate some of it. And, yes, the big wigs in the cult won’t give up their own use of fossil fuels.

Read: Climavirtue Signaling: Save The Children Refuses Big Oil Company Donation »

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We Need More COVID Funding For Racial Equity Or Something

By William Teach March 29, 2022 – 10:30 am

There are hot takes, and then there are Hot Takes. This one rather highlights that COVID response is really all about politics, at least at this point

Covid funding inaction threatens fragile progress on racial, economic disparities

Racial and ethnic disparities in Covid-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths are likely to worsen if Congress does not soon approve billions in new pandemic funding.

Public health experts, lawmakers and health officials say the White House’s decision to scale back or suspend programs that provide free testing, treatments and vaccinations will disproportionately affect the tens of millions of uninsured Americans — a majority of whom are people of color.

The congressional stalemate threatens to upend the fragile progress that has been made since the early days of the pandemic when the federal government’s decision to make Covid interventions available to everyone free of charge temporarily helped level the playing field in a nation where access to health care is usually tied to employment and income and often correlated with race.

It’s so interesting that Democrats always think the worst of “people of color”, eh? It shows that Democrats will take advantage of any issue to push their politics

The Biden administration cautioned lawmakers in a meeting last week that without immediate new funding, the federal government will stop reimbursing doctors for testing, vaccinating and treating the uninsured. If a second booster shot is recommended for the general population, the government won’t be able to provide it free of charge. Disease surveillance will also be hampered, they warned, meaning public health workers won’t know about outbreaks or the emergence of new variants before they’re already widespread.

Why? They have plenty of money that was already allocated for HHS and other federal agencies, and state, county, and local agencies have their own money. This does rather show that the federal government should be taking less money from citizens, because they are too big and do not know the local areas. Federal taxation should be cut in half, at least, and the money should be moved to the states, who know their citizens better.

Oh, and

(Rollcall) The White House said Monday that it has about $300 billion in unspent COVID-19 funding but only about $60 billion that is unallocated as it warned lawmakers that it doesn’t have enough money for additional vaccination efforts unless Congress provides more relief.

The administration again requested that Congress provide $22.5 billion in supplemental COVID-19 aid without offsets. It said it would be difficult and controversial to repurpose the $60 billion.

Senate Republicans have pushed to repurpose existing funding.

So what are they doing with that $300 billion as it stands? Why would it be difficult and controversial to repurpose the $60 billion, which, accord to the laptop calculator, is more than $22.5 billion? Back to original

But if the federal government can’t subsidize a potential fourth dose of the vaccine it could be a “disaster” for the state’s uninsured population — nearly half of whom are non-white, though people of color make up just about a third of the population — said Scott Harris, Alabama’s state health officer.

“If a second booster dose is approved soon and there’s no money for booster doses, then we’re just creating just another health disparity on the basis of our funding policy,” Harris said. “That’s just a really sad situation.”

A Kaiser Family Foundation analysis published Friday found that without more funding, the government could be short more than 118 million doses if a new booster is recommended for Americans of all ages. If there is a shortage, experts expect people of color will lose out to those better able to take time off work to hunt for an appointment or travel farther to find a dose.

White Progressives sure do think little of black people, eh?

Read: We Need More COVID Funding For Racial Equity Or Something »

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Oops: British Government Looking For Ways To Tax EV Users

By William Teach March 29, 2022 – 7:15 am

Since EVs are successful(ish) in the U.K., road user taxes have gone done. No good deed goes unpunished, eh?

Electric vehicles’ success is a headache for the Treasury

Electric vehicleWhen Rishi Sunak announced a temporary cut of 5p a litre in fuel duty in last week’s Spring Statement, electric vehicles were probably not at the front of the chancellor’s mind. He was focusing on the vast majority of road users who experience “pain at the pump” from spiralling petrol costs. Yet the accompanying fiscal outlook from the Office for Budget Responsibility, the independent watchdog, noted that more than one in 10 cars sold in the UK last year were electric; by 2027, it forecast the proportion would rise to 59 per cent — double its forecast only six months ago. Consumer appetite for electric vehicles has consistently run ahead of the OBR’s estimates.

This poses a headache for the exchequer because of the importance of revenues from fuel duty and vehicle excise duty, neither of which electric car owners have to pay. Together, they raise about £35bn a year. The OBR forecasts the higher share of electric car sales alone will reduce motoring tax revenues by £2.1bn by 2026-27. It also assumes Sunak will be able to keep his promise to reverse the 5p cut in fuel duty — which may well prove over-optimistic.

One way to help balance the books might be to remove the subsidy regime, which has already been scaled back over the past decade and is now capped at a £1,500 grant on electric cars costing less than £32,000 — helpful support for EV sales. This would be foolhardy. The EV market is still in the nascent stages of growth, and government support to improve uptake will be warranted for some time yet.

The Commons transport select committee last month recommended considering road user charging as a like-for like replacement for fuel duty. This would involve monitoring all cars in the UK and charging according to the distance they drive, factoring in the type of vehicle used, and congestion. Some economists like this idea as a way of charging motorists proportionately for the public cost of building and maintaining roads. As the committee cautioned, however, any road charging mechanism should entirely replace fuel duty and vehicle excise duty rather than being added to them, and should not result in motorists paying more.

The government creates the problem by requiring these types of vehicles, then whines about the loss of revenue, so, finds new ways to get the money, which can be problematic for those who are over-reaching their budget when buying an EV.

And all being done for a scam.

Read: Oops: British Government Looking For Ways To Tax EV Users »

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