Category Archives: Climate Scam

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The Feds create the demand, and then give private investors money to increase the supply!

I had previously noted, on Christmas Eve of 2021, that I spotted six Tesla TSLA: (%) charging stations at the Wawa at the junction of Pennsylvania Route 61 and Interstate 78. Five of the chargers were unoccupied, while a sixth was blocked by a mid-1990s, gasoline-engine beater car, using the charging area as a parking space. 🙂

Alas! That was the last time I’ve been to a Wawa, and as someone who truly appreciates Wawa coffee, that is a tragedy. I have some hope, in that Wawa is expanding into the Bluegrass State, and there’s a permit application for construction of a Wawa at the junction of Interstate 75 and Athens-Boonesboro Road, about 30 miles from me, but someplace I could stop on my way to our daughter’s house.

At any rate, I was thinking about those six unused Tesla chargers when I read this, in today’s Philadelphia Inquirer:

Electric vehicle drivers can soon get a Shorti and a charge-up at some Wawas

The federal infrastructure law allocates $7.5 billion for new public charging stations for electric vehicles. Pennsylvania expects $171 million.

by Thomas Fitzgerald | Monday, August 21, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation recently awarded $34 million in federal grants for businesses to build fast-charging stations for electric vehicles in 35 counties across the state, part of a Federal Highway Administration program to spur the development of EV infrastructure.

Note that this is not a federal loan program, but specifically “federal grants,” for businesses to build commercial plug-in electric car charging stations, on which they hope to turn a profit.

Outlets are planned at the massive Breezewood gas-and-go junction of Interstate 70 and the turnpike, a number of motels, existing charging hubs built by Tesla and other suppliers — and around here, Wawas in Bristol, Horsham, Lansdale, Philadelphia, and Woodlyn.

The 2021 bipartisan Infrastructure Law allocated $7.5 billion over five years to help make EV charging more accessible nationally. Pennsylvania expects to get about $172 million.

“The electric-vehicle fleet is growing in Pennsylvania — there will be more tomorrow than today and more the day after that,” Transportation Secretary Mike Carroll said at an announcement event outside Scranton on Aug. 15.

Why, I have to ask, are our tax dollars being distributed to install commercial electric car charging stations? If people choose to buy plug-in electric vehicles, there will be a growing demand which will cause entrepreneurs to build such stations, using their own money, in order to turn a profit.

Pennsylvania had 47,400 fully electric vehicles registered at the end of 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Alternative Fuels Data Center. New Jersey had 87,030.

With a population of 9,261,699, New Jersey is less populous than Pennsylvania’s Census Bureau guesstimated 12,972,008, yet the Garden State has nearly twice as many electric vehicles. I guess that proves that Pennsylvanians are smarter than Jerseyites. Having spent some time in traffic on the Garden State Parkway, I shudder to think what it would be like, worrying about a steadily declining battery charge. You can get a five-gallon can of gasoline, but not a five-gallon can of electricity!

Lack of charging infrastructure has been a barrier to sales of EVs, along with high sticker prices relative to vehicles that run on fossil fuels. In turn, that complicates the ambitious federal goal that 50% of the nation’s new cars and trucks be electric by 2030, in order to reduce carbon emissions that cause global warming. . . . .

A major goal of the EV charging program is to use federal dollars to stimulate private investment in the technology, as well as in batteries and vehicles, said Andrew Rogers, deputy administrator of the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA).

“The ecosystem of charging that’s already underway is really impressive,” Rogers said in an interview. “The private sector has just stepped up in ways that have demonstrated the catalyzing effect of the law.”

If the private sector has “just stepped up” in the way Mr Rogers stated, why does the federal government need to tax poorer people to prop up wealthier investors?

Further down:

Since the Biden administration took office in 2021, the number of publicly available charging stations has increased 40%, with the private sector investing $130 billion in that effort, and developing longer-lasting EV batteries and production lines for the vehicles, Rogers said.

Last month, seven automakers from Detroit, Asia, and Europe joined in an effort to build 30,000 fast-charging ports in the United States and Canada that will work with any brand of electric vehicle

But if the private sector have invested $130 billion in these efforts, why does the federal government have to do this? Oh, wait, the newspaper gave us the answer:

The companies said one of their main goals was to qualify for federal subsidies for charging infrastructure.

Translation: supping at the federal trough to make money for private investors.

I can see why Wawa wants in on this program. While just about the only thing I ever bought at Wawa is their coffee, the convenience store also sells hoagies, snacks, and just about anything else a traveler might want to eat-and-go. The newspaper article claimed that, “Fast chargers can replenish a drained battery in 10 to 30 minutes,” but most sources state that it can take an hour or longer, unless the stop is to recharge just enough to make it home safely. For a business like Wawa, people having to sit around for half an hour or longer means more coffee, more sodas, and more hoagies sold.

If a business wants to add public charging stations, that’s absolutely fine with me; it’s none of my business. But when the federal government is throwing the dollars it taxes away from me for something the private sector has already been doing, then yeah, it becomes my business! And I say not just no, but Hell no!

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The left want poorer, minority neighborhoods to have nicer things, but fret that them having nicer things will attract more white people to move in!

Gentrification can be defined as the process whereby the character of a poor urban area is changed by wealthier people moving in, improving housing, and attracting new businesses, typically displacing current inhabitants in the process. We have reported, many times, on how the left are really opposed to gentrification.

But the left have often complained about “disinvestment,” and how poorer neighborhoods suffer from it. Yeah, it’s not exactly a surprise that people would take their money out of the combat zone or open-air drug market neighborhoods.

How can Philly build green without displacing residents?

Some research suggests that green development causes gentrification. But experts and community advocates say it’s not inevitable.

by Nate File | Thursday, August 10, 2023

When Debbie Robinson steps out of her apartment, she loves looking at the trees. “We got all these beautiful trees. Red trees, all these different yellow trees, all these beautiful trees,” Robinson, 59, said of her apartment complex in Grays Ferry.

[Sigh] Sadly, today’s journalists have forgotten the old reporter’s maxim that the 5Ws + H needed to be at the beginning of the story, to get the most information to the readers quickly, before some of the readers dropped out, or, in newspapers, didn’t turn to the continuation of the story on page A-15, or “below the fold,” so I’m having to make a bug cut here to get to the meat of the article.

Last month in Philadelphia, it felt like 105 degrees in the shade. With cooler days ahead, it may be easy to forget that the effects of climate change go beyond the rising temperature; environmental pollutants are shortening people’s lives in Philadelphia and water is flooding their neighborhoods.

And as tends to be the case with many of the problems affecting the city, low-income communities of color often experience those affects most acutely. North and West Philly are measurably hotter than the rest of the city.

Well, of course there’s always a racial angle; it is, after all, that “anti-racist news organization,” The Philadelphia Inquirer!

But while climate change is a global problem that is mostly driven by large corporations and wealthy individuals, Philadelphia can still build climate-supporting improvements that make the environment more tolerable for its people.

And it’s all the fault of the Evil Rich and Wealthy Corporations, even though those Wealthy Corporations produce the goods that even poor and minority consumers buy. But here we get to the heart of the problem:

These projects can be both large and small, from the construction of sprawling parks like Philly’s proposed Rail Park, to a row of trees along a street, or the creation of new bike lanes.

Building new green infrastructure may seem like an entirely beneficial move for Philadelphians, especially those who live in the hottest and most flood-prone areas. But community advocates and academics alike are warning against a rush to build new parks and plant trees without seriously thinking about one potential consequence: displacement.

“Folks are absolutely thinking about gentrification. I think when community members … hear about any kind of development, they think it’s for someone else,” said Jerome Shabazz, the executive director of the Overbrook Environmental Education Center, and an original member of the city’s Environmental Justice Advisory Commission. “That is an apathy that is not ill placed. It’s the tradition.”

In a 2020 study of the city’s new public green spaces, Temple University’s Hamil Pearsall and Jillian K. Eller found that “public green spaces may anchor gentrification processes. Additionally, new spaces in wealthy neighborhoods were more publicly accessible than parks in gentrifying neighborhoods.”

Simply put, to get the greener, nicer spaces the “hottest and most flood-prone areas” deserve means to increase costs to live in those areas, and that means the poorer residents who currently live in those areas will see housing costs rise to levels that they cannot afford, pushing them out. We’ve seen this before:

In a plan for a safer, vibrant 52nd Street, worried West Philly neighbors see gentrification looming

Angst is roiling minority neighborhoods as they struggle to balance the opportunities and the threats created by gentrification. “West Philly is the new Africa,” one resident warned at a community meeting. “Everyone wants the property that’s in West Philadelphia.”

by Jason Laughlin | February 21, 2020

The topic of the community meeting — a plan to beautify 52nd Street, to make it safe, welcoming, and prosperous once again — was, on its face, nothing but good news for West Philadelphia’s long-declining business corridor.

Yet the audience of about 50 residents and retailers, mostly African American, grew increasingly agitated as urban designer Jonas Maciunas flipped through a PowerPoint presentation of proposed improvements. Many weren’t seeing a vision of a neighborhood revitalized from Market to Pine Streets. Instead, in the talk of redesigned intersections, leafy thoroughfares, and better bus shelters, they heard the ominous whisper of gentrification.

“It just seems that when white people decide to come back to a certain neighborhood, they want it a certain way,” said Carol Morris, 68, a retired elementary school teacher.

Morris’ declaration opened the floodgates of fear and anger that recent night at the Lucien E. Blackwell West Philadelphia Regional Library. Maciunas and Jesse Blitzstein, director of community and economic development for the nonprofit Enterprise Center, which is spearheading the project, were peppered with skeptical questions ranging from the validity of surveys showing community support for the improvements to the maintenance of trees that would be planted.

Let’s be blunt here: the black residents of West Philly don’t want nicer neighborhoods, because, Heaven forfend!, then more white people might move in! As we have previously noted, the Editorial Board of the Inquirer have told us that racial segregation is very much part of the problem in city residents feeling unsafe, and Philadelphia is one of the United States’ most internally segregated big cities. But, rather than the evil White Supremacists about which the left keep warning us, it’s not white Americans who want to keep neighborhoods racially segregated, but black Americans, or at least the black Americans in West Philly.

While Philadelphia and the Inquirer haven’t been so blatant as to say so directly, the liberal city of Lexington[1]Fayette County was one of only two counties, out of 120 total in the Bluegrass State, to be carried by Joe Biden in the 2020 election. has. As we have previously noted, Lexington said, directly, that it was concerned about gentrification, and, “Most new owners being more affluent and differing from the traditional residents in terms of race or ethnicity.” The city was concerned about white people moving into heavily black neighborhoods.[2]Lexington’s Hispanic population are not large enough to really dominate larger neighborhoods, though there is a “Little Mexico” area.

Philadelphia is not concerned about black residents moving in and integrating nearly all-white neighborhoods, and that is what the Inquirer’s Editorial Board said ought to happen. But somehow, liberal cities don’t seem to want that to happen in reverse, don’t seem to want white people moving into majority black neighborhoods.  Yet, as the Inquirer noted:

Neighborhoods like Graduate Hospital, Fishtown, and University City — where years of reinvestment have ushered in more wealth and opportunity — are just a few minutes’ drive from shooting hot spots. But they rarely experience gun violence.

Gentrification seems to reduce violence!

Gentrification ought to be something every city wants. Not only do revitalized properties raise property values around them, but when white ‘gentrifiers’ move into a majority black neighborhood, they are clearly white people who have no racist attitudes toward blacks, people perfectly willing to have black neighbors.

Is that not a good thing?

In the originally cited article, author Nate File cites some left-leaning academics and proposals for what amounts to welfare and price controls to prevent making neighborhoods nicer from making them more expensive, and attracting all of those evil white folks!

It’s a wryly humorous situation. We have the white liberals leading one of our more leftist newspapers, saying that poorer minority neighborhoods should have more assistance, to keep them cooler during the hot summer months — though there seems to be less concern about eliminating the ‘urban heat island effect’ that would keep them a bit warmer during a nasty, cold Philly winter — but fretting that making them nicer will lead to more racial integration, in a city in which the Editorial Board have already complained is too internally segregated! 🙂

Can things really get more stupid than that?

References

References
↑1 Fayette County was one of only two counties, out of 120 total in the Bluegrass State, to be carried by Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
↑2 Lexington’s Hispanic population are not large enough to really dominate larger neighborhoods, though there is a “Little Mexico” area.
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How wealthy New Englanders fight #ClimateChange

We have previously noted how the wealthy New England homeowners featured in the Public Broadcasting System’s famous, long-running This Old House series, from areas which gave the large majority of their votes to the Democrats, still love them some fossil fuels.

It was season 43 for This Old House series, and yet another set of wealthy New England homeowners were remodeling, very extensively remodeling an 1880s Cape Cod style home, outside of Concord, Massachusetts. In the 2020 presidential election, Middlesex County, in which Concord is located, gave 617,196 votes, or 71.00% of the total, to former Vice President Joe Biden, and just 226,956 votes, or 26.11%, to President Donald Trump. That was an even stronger margin than the statewide 65.60% to 32.14% margin.

It’s safe to say that Bay Staters are very strongly liberal Democrats.

Season 43 for This Old House came after the COVID-19 panicdemic had mostly waned, and I saw only one person in the series wearing a face mask, telling me that much of the panicdemic restrictions had been removed. episode 13, “Race to the finish,” first broadcast on January 6, 2022 was well after Mr Biden and his liberal environmental and global warming climate change policies were in place.

So, what did these wealthy homeowners in Massachusetts do? In episode 13, we saw an older gas-fired boiler for the heating system replaced by a new, more efficient, but still natural gas fired boiler. Episode 16, “Cinderella Story,” shows how the homeowners had installed a high end, professional gas stove. There was a corner unit gas fireplace briefly shown, as well as a restored wood-burning fireplace more prominently featured. It seems that the wealthy New Englanders who have supported politicians and policies which would deprive the commoners, the working-class, of gas appliances, aren’t quite so eager to sacrifice their own comfort and own lifestyles.

Of course, I do not know how these particular homeowners voted; perhaps they were among the 26.11% of Middlesex County voters smart enough to vote for President Trump rather than the dummkopf from Delaware. But it sure seems that the climate activists are very busy telling people to do as they say, not do as they do.

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The #ClimateChange activists want more people to move to large cities They are pushing 'walkable' neighborhoods and public transportation

A view from our farm; the river is just beyond the trees.

The activists wanting to fight global warming climate change have long said that increased urbanization is part of the solutions they seek:

Huge gains, in terms of reducing harmful gases, can be made by changing how we plan, build, manage and power our cities and towns. Well designed, compact, walkable cities with good public transport greatly reduce our per capita carbon footprint and are key to achieving many of the Sustainable Development Goals of which climate action is a key part.

Good public transportation, huh? We have already noted how a well-funded public transportation system, the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Agency, SEPTA, has admitted that they have lost control of the train cars as the heavily Democratic city has lost any semblance of control over crime, drug abuse, and homelessness, and SEPTA’s ridership is still below that before the panicdemic. Having the homeless and the junkies using SEPTA trains and train and subway stations for shelter and shooting galleries will cause decent people to avoid the system.

But there’s another problem with promoting increased urbanization:

The Philly area doesn’t have enough homes available for low- and middle-income buyers

In the Philadelphia metro area, households making $50,000 faced the largest shortage of available, affordable homes for sale, according to the National Association of Realtors and Realtors.com.

by Michaelle Bond | Friday, June 9, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

More than one million homes nationwide were available for sale in late April. But high prices mean that what’s out there doesn’t match what people at various income levels can afford, according to a new report from the nation’s Realtors.

Basically, home listings affordable for middle- and lower-income households are missing. The country needs more homes that households at all income levels can buy to chip away at the problems of low affordability and low housing supply, according to a report that the National Association of Realtors and Realtor.com released Thursday.

“Ongoing high housing costs and the scarcity of available homes continues to present budget challenges for many prospective buyers, and it’s likely keeping some buyers in the rental market or on the sidelines and delaying their purchase until conditions improve,” Danielle Hale, Realtor.com’s chief economist, said in a statement.

The report breaks down the number of homes missing for each income level by comparing the number of listings available in April to the number that would need to be available to accommodate buyers. Realtors said they hope local and federal governments can use their analysis to ease the twin problems of affordability and housing supply.

According to the story, households with a $50,000 income level can afford homes that cost up to $163,440, but if the Philadelphia market is short 3,440 homes listed for sale at that or lower prices, there’s also the obvious question: what can someone buy at those prices? We previously noted the home at 4931 Hoopes Street, listed for $125,000 in April, but down to $75,000 now.

Kitchen at 1829 North Bucknell Street, via zillow.com

For just $69,750, you can buy this 3 bedroom, 1 bathroom 870 ft² fixer-upper at 1829 North Bucknell Street. That’s North Philadelphia, not exactly a great neighborhood!

Now, why did I pick that listing? In December of 2021, we bought a small, detached house, 2 bedrooms, 1 bath, 1,344 ft², with a detached one-car garage, in a small town in Kentucky for $70,000. My nephew and I had to remodel the bathroom and redo the plumbing, but, doing the work ourselves, spent less than $2,000. The house is perfectly neat and clean and livable — and is rented out to my sister-in-law — yet was virtually the same price. What we spent in a small town for a decent, if not modern, house, will buy you an absolute dump in North Philly.

716 West Allegheny Avenue, photo via zillow,com.

$70,000 will buy you this boarded-up, barred-in porch, 1,260 ft² rowhome at 716 West Allegheny Avenue, in the Fairhill neighborhood in the Philadelphia Badlands. Sorry, no interior pictures in the listing. The realtor probably figures that interior photos will scare off more prospective buyers.

114 South Cecil Street, photo via zillow.com.

The story stated that a household with a $50,000 income could afford a home of up to $146,440. For $145,000, you can buy this home at 114 South Cecil Street, in West Philly.

And with all of that, the Philadelphia metropolitan area was one of only four major metropolitan areas — the others being Detroit, Houston, and Cleveland — in which buying a home was less expensive than renting.

The global warming climate change activists want more and more people to move into densely-populated urban areas, and to use public transportation, to reduce CO2 emissions, but one thing is very clear: doing so will make people, especially people at the lower end of the economic spectrum, poorer than ever. Housing prices for even modest homes are hugely inflated, and mortgage interest rates have increased significantly.

It’s really quite simple: the activists live in urban areas, and that is the life they see as their baseline good. Those of us who live out in the sticks are just a bunch of unedumacated rubes. But the activists also have money, and have been able to afford living in the cities, and living reasonably well. They have to be economically secure, simply to have the time to be activist. What they seem unable to grasp is that there are a lot of people living paycheck-to-paycheck, people who can’t afford the inflated urban housing costs.

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Democrisy: How the #Climate activists want you to do as they say, not do as they do.

Two stories appeared nearly side by side in my morning feed:

Jane Fonda blames ‘White men’ for climate crisis, calls to ‘arrest and jail’ them

Story by Taylor Penley • Pentecost Sunday, May 28, 2023 • 12:45 PM

Jane Fonda blamed men – and racism – for climate change during a conversation at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, arguing that without the patriarchy, the crisis allegedly of epic proportions would cease to exist.

“This is serious,” she said Saturday. “We’ve got about seven, eight years to cut ourselves in half of what we use of fossil fuels, and unfortunately, the people that have the least responsibility for it are hit the hardest — Global South, people on islands, poor people of color. It is a tragedy that we have to absolutely stop. We have to arrest and jail those men — they’re all men [behind this].”

She continued, answering a question from one of the audience members when she delved into her claims that the climate crisis couldn’t exist without the perfect conditions.

“It’s good for us all to realize, there would be no climate crisis if there was no racism. There would be no climate crisis if there was no patriarchy. A mindset that sees things in a hierarchical way. White men are the things that matter and then everything else [is] at the bottom.”

There’s more at the original, and there’s no paywall involved. 🙂

As William Teach tweeted out, the washed-up actress claimed that her former four-time costar, Robert Redford, “did not like to kiss” and was “always in a bad mood,” apparently without ever considering that maybe he just didn’t like doing stuff with her.

But I digress. The second story in my feed was this:

What life in medieval Europe was really like

by Erin Blakemore • Thursday, May 25, 2023

A time of innovation, philosophy, and legendary works of art: the realities of the medieval period (500 to 1500 C.E.) in Europe may surprise you.

Many know the years before the Renaissance and Enlightenment that followed as Europe’s “Dark Ages,” a time of backward, slovenly, and brutal people who were technologically primitive and hopelessly superstitious.

But it turns out the Dark Ages was anything but. Here are four myths about the medieval world it’s time we moved past.

Sure, it would take until the 19th century for the germ theory of disease to overtake the concept of humors and “miasmas” that could damage human health. But the common image of medieval people as slovenly, unwashed, and lacking hygiene is false.

There’s much more at the original, with the author telling us that medieval Europeans were more ‘civilized’ than we imagine, but it still points out one thing: that before the evil white men Miss Fonda blames for global warming climate change, the vast majority of people were living in small huts, heated solely by burning wood, and most died by their forties . . . if they lived even that long.

There’s a scene in one of my favorite movies, The Lion in Winter, in which Peter O’Toole, as King Henry II, arises in the morning and breaks the ice on the top of the bowl of water to splash water on his face.

Indoors.

There was no glass in the small window into the castle’s bedroom, and the bed was heaped with furs — and Jane Merrow as Alys, the Countess of Vexin — due to the brutal conditions in which even kings lived.

It was, of course, those wicked, wicked men that the lovely Miss Fonda wants jailed who discovered and refined the fossil fuels which enable modern transportation, which moves us from place-to-place, so that we are not stuck within a few miles of our homes for all of our lives, which fueled the modern industry which, among other things, enabled the creation of the motion-picture industry which made her wealthy, and which cooks our food and heats our homes. Without all of those things, we’d still be like Henry II, breaking the ice off the water vessel in the morning.

Then there’s Sophia Kianni, who bills herself as the “Youngest UN Advisor” She believes that:

The three most important things you can do when it comes to climate change are:
• Talk about it!
• Join an organization that amplifies your voice, and
• Advocate for system-wide change

Of course, she had just previously said that:

Focusing on individual choices around air travel and beef consumption heightens the risk of losing sight of the gorilla in the room: civilization’s reliance on fossil fuels for energy and transport overall, which accounts for roughly two-thirds of global carbon emissions

The lovely Miss Kianni, who has shown us photos of her having jetted off to Denver, Washington, DC, jetlagged somewhere, Poland, and Boston, and is wealthy with a net worth of approximately $3 million, doesn’t want anyone to focus on her travel, but the ability of everybody else to travel.

The left apparently believe that we can run and power our country entirely on hopes and dreams, never realizing that completely electrifying our country, with all power being generated without the use of burning fossil fuels, would take decades, several decades. We would have to completely change all automobiles in the country, and not just replace every oil, gas, coal, and trash-burning power plant in the country, but build hundreds additional ones, to meet the power demands of vehicles, homes, businesses, and industries which had previously used natural gas and heating oil. Yes, it could be done, but not until Miss Kianni is old and grey.

Yet somehow, some way, she does not believe that her individual choices send a message, a message of do as I say, not do as I do, because she certainly doesn’t want to change her lifestyle. Miss Fonda? She’s 85 years old, so the years left to her on Mother Gaia are few, but if she has told us that she’s willing to go back to the 12th century, and break the ice on her morning water bowl, I’ve somehow missed it.

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Shockingly, our infrastructure is nowhere close to ready for government-mandated plug-in electric vehicles!

Should it really be any surprise that, as politics have pushed ending fossil fuel usage to fight global warming climate change emergency, not everything is proceeding in an orderly manner? From Popular Mechanics:

Giant Wind Turbines Keep Mysteriously Falling Over. This Shouldn’t Be Happening.

The taller the turbine, the more epic the tumble.

  • Turbine failures are on the uptick across the world, sometimes with blades falling off or even full turbine collapses.
  • A recent report says production issues may be to blame for the mysterious increase in failures.
  • Turbines are growing larger as quality control plans get smaller.

by Tim Newcomb | January 23, 2023

Oops! Via National Wind Watch. Click to enlarge.

The taller the wind turbine, the harder they fall. And they sure are falling.Wind turbine failures are on the uptick, from Oklahoma to Sweden and Colorado to Germany, with all three of the major manufacturers admitting that the race to create bigger turbines has invited manufacturing issues, according to a report from Bloomberg.

Multiple turbines that are taller than 750 feet are collapsing across the world, with the tallest—784 feet in stature—falling in Germany in September 2021. To put it in perspective, those turbines are taller than both the Space Needle in Seattle and the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C. Even smaller turbines that recently took a tumble in Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Wales, and Colorado were about the height of the Statue of Liberty.

The story continues to tell readers that the manufacturers of these ever-larger turbines — the larger the turbine blades, the more wind energy they can capture — are experiencing all sorts of quality control and manufacturing problems, as these things are being rushed to market, to meet politically ginned-up demand.

The illustration I used? I did a Google search for collapsed wind turbine, and got about 1,250,000 results. Examples abound.

Machinery fails. That’s just a fact of life, modern machinery requires routine maintenance, and things can fail. Structures like wind turbines, set atop tall, slender towers hundreds of feet into the air, catch a lot of kinetic energy, and the wind turbines are designed not just deflect that energy, but to absorb and capture it. That is a tremendous amount of physical stress, on every part: the tower, the blades, the mechanicals inside the turbine housing, and the foundation. Imperfections, cracks in concrete footings, several different things can lead to such failures.

There are other problems, as well:

America is on a fast road to adopting electric cars. Philly is already falling behind.

Charging stations in every cranny of the city will transform public thoroughfares as profoundly as street lights and underground sewers did a century ago.

by Inga Saffron | Saturday, May 20, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

Ever since Henry Ford turned automobiles into a mass market commodity, the parking and fueling of cars have been seen as two distinct activities, carried out at different times, in different places. That’s about to change.

See? I subscribe to the Inquirer so that you don’t have to! I’m not certain why the newspaper would restrict a labeled Opinion article to subscribers only, but it did.

Last month, the Biden administration rolled out new regulations intended to dramatically ramp up the production of electric vehicles and reduce our reliance on the gasoline-powered variety, a major contributor to climate change. The new rules put America on a very fast road to an all-electric future: In just seven years time, 60% of all new cars sold in the United States will have to run on batteries.

And Philadelphia isn’t remotely ready to handle them.

It’s easy to think of electric cars as simply old wine in new bottles; all we have to do is just trade in our gas guzzlers for EVs and that will be that. But because EVs now take four to six hours to fully charge, Philadelphia will need tens of thousands of spots where car owners can park and plug in. Providing charging stations in every cranny of the city will transform our public thoroughfares as profoundly as streetlights and underground sewers did a century ago.

Let’s be clear about this: when Inga Saffron, who writes about buildings and design for The Philadelphia Inquirer, tells us that “EVs now take four to six hours to fully charge,” she is writing about 220-volt 40-or-50-amphere at-home chargers. 480-volt commercial charging stations can do so in around an hour, while 110-volt at home units can take longer than the night. Charging times naturally vary based on the charging unit, the age of the vehicle’s battery, and how much charge remained in them when charging began.

Since few Philadelphia car owners have garages or private parking spaces, it seems likely that the city’s future charging network will end up in that public nether land between the curb and sidewalk. Unless the city takes a strong hand in the design and placement of electric chargers, we could soon see a land rush as people claim curb space for ad hoc charger installations, resulting in the same kind of chaos we had with streeteries. And given the amount of street furniture already vying for curb space — traffic signs, mailboxes, bike racks, and Big Bellies — the visual clutter would be extreme.

The “public nether land between the curb and sidewalk”? In many Philly neighborhoods, there is no such thing: the sidewalks extend from the front of the rowhouse right up to the curb. Parking in many of Philadelphia’s cramped, working-class neighborhoods is challenging, with many cars parked on sidewalks, because there’s just nowhere else to park.

South Carlisle Street, Photo via Google Maps, click to enlarge.

According to Zillow, 2543 South Carlisle Street sold for a quarter of a million dollars, $247,000 to be precise, and it had no parking. The photo shows that cars are lined up on one side of South Carlisle, but half of the street has no parking place in front of it at all, and there is no alley parking behind the units. The people on the side of South Carlisle with parking could, I suppose, install charging ports on the fronts of their homes, or perhaps underneath the small sidewalks to right at the curb line, to avoid the trip hazard of a charging cord across the sidewalk, but if you live on the side, the odd-numbered side, without parking, you’re just s(omewhat) out of luck. You might snag a parking place across the street, if you’re lucky, but you won’t be able to install a car charger. And if you did, roving bands of junkies would snag the power cords while you were charging your car overnight, to sell the copper for their next fix.

The good news is that the Kenney administration is finally starting to think about the massive changes that will be necessary once electric cars go mainstream. The Office of Transportation, Infrastructure, and Sustainability hopes to hire an EV specialist before (Mayor Jim) Kenney’s term ends this year, its policy director, Christopher Puchalsky, told me. But that doesn’t mean transportation officials are committed to building a charging network.

“Electric vehicles are an industry problem,” not a city one, Puchalsky said. “We can’t be in a situation again where the city has to accommodate itself to the car.” This time, “we want to make transit a priority.”

Translation: the city will use this to force more people to use SEPTA buses and subways. That may not be a choice a lot of people would like.

The most wryly amusing part of all of this: plug-in electric vehicles are most useful in urban areas, where people have shorter trips, than for those of us out in rural areas, but people in rural areas usually have more garages and other areas in which they can park their cars and safely install chargers for them. 🙂

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I’ve said it before: today’s left are pro-choice on exactly one thing! Now Joe Biden wants to regulate your dishwasher

Remember the commercial in which mom washes the dishes before putting them in the dishwasher, and the little girl asks, “So what does the dishwasher do?”

Now, I will admit it: we clean the dishes before they go in what we call the dishrinser, because I’ve installed a couple of dishwashers in my lifetime, and considering the dishwasher drain lines, and the fact that I would have to be the one to clean them or change them if they got clogged, that simply seems the best way to avoid disaster. And now Joe Biden wants to make things worse!

Now Biden is going after your DISHWASHERS: Appliances would have 27% less power and 34% less water in new White House crackdown to fight climate change

  • New rules will force dishwashers to meet harsh water and energy efficiency targets

  • It marks the latest chapter in Biden’s war on appliances that his administration claims will save Americans money

  • The DoE quietly slipped out the rule changes ahead of Cinco de Mayo festivities on Friday

by James Franey | Monday, May 8, 2023 | 1:10 PM EDT | Updated: 3:45 PM EDT

Joe Biden will face fresh accusations of meddling in the lives of American households after his administration announced a green crackdown on dishwashers.

His Department of Energy quietly released tighter rules for the home appliances on Friday afternoon as millions of people across the country prepared to celebrate Cinco de Mayo. . . . .

The rules, which form part of the administration’s climate change agenda, would slash water use by more than one-third and cut energy use limits by 27% for dishwashers in the U.S.

Any changes would only apply to new models on sale once the new rules have officially come into effect, expected to be 2027.

The new rules would force manufacturers to limit dishwashers to using 3.2 gallons of water per cycle, far below the current federal limit of 5 gallons.

There’s more at the original.

Now what would all of that do? If you have to cut the amount of water used, then you have to be using something else to clean the dishes, which has to mean better detergents and higher-pressure pumps. Reducing the amount of water used means less water in which to suspend solids cleaned from the dishes, which means an increase in clogged drain lines. This could be a bonanza for plumbers!

And if energy use limits are to be decreased by 27%, how are engineers going to get more pressure out of the pumps?

Of course, water isn’t actually saved by this, because water isn’t lost. Using more water simply means that more grey water goes into the sewer, to be cleaned at the water treatment plant, or into the septic tank, where it is filtered out through the drain field and returned to the soil. Some may evaporate into the atmosphere, where it is eventually returned to the ground as rain or snow.

This also means an increase in the price of new dishwashers, because all of the new engineering has to be paid for, but the activists have never cared about the costs to consumers.

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You will drive an electric car, and you will like it! Suck it up, buttercup, and do as you are told!

A former co-worker of mine liked to use the expression, when telling someone to do something he didn’t want to do, “and you will like it.” That’s how I see the actions of the Biden Administration to force plug in electric vehicles on American consumers. Do Americans really want them? All-electric vehicles — excluding hybrids — were 5.8% of all new vehicles sold in the US in 2022, up from 3.2% in 2021. At least as of now, buying a plug-in electric vehicle is not something most Americans would like to do.

From The New York Times:

E.P.A. Is Said to Propose Rules Meant to Drive Up Electric Car Sales Tenfold

In what would be the nation’s most ambitious climate regulation, the proposal is designed to ensure that electric cars make up the majority of new U.S. auto sales by 2032.

by Coral Davenport | Saturday, April 8, 2023 | 11:00 AM EDT

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is planning some of the most stringent auto pollution limits in the world, designed to ensure that all-electric cars make up as much as 67 percent of new passenger vehicles sold in the country by 2032, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Also see: William Teach: Good News: Brandon’s CAFE Standards To Drastically Increase

That would represent a quantum leap for the United States — where just 5.8 percent of vehicles sold last year were all-electric — and would exceed President Biden’s earlier ambitions to have all-electric cars account for half of those sold in the country by 2030.

It would be the federal government’s most aggressive climate regulation and would propel the United States to the front of the global effort to slash the greenhouse gases generated by cars, a major driver of climate change. The European Union has already enacted vehicle emissions standards that are expected to phase out the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035. Canada and Britain have proposed standards similar to the European model .

At the same time, the proposed regulation would pose a significant challenge for automakers. Nearly every major car company has already invested heavily in electric vehicles, but few have committed to the levels envisioned by the Biden administration. And many have faced supply chain problems that have held up production. Even manufacturers who are enthusiastic about electric models are unsure whether consumers will buy enough of them to make up the majority of new car sales within a decade.

That last quoted line is the telling one: “Even manufacturers who are enthusiastic about electric models are unsure whether consumers will buy enough of them to make up the majority of new car sales within a decade.” Or, in my former co-worker’s phraseology, you will buy one, and you will like it!

What’s that you say? A plug-in electric car is not really a good choice for you? Suck it up, buttercup, and do as you are told!

Not your choice? I’ve said it many times before: the left are pro-choice on exactly one thing!

Michael S. Regan, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, is expected to announce the proposed limits on tailpipe emissions on Wednesday in Detroit. The requirements would be intended to ensure that electric cars represent between 54 and 60 percent of all new cars sold in the United States by 2030, with that figure rising to 64 to 67 percent of new car sales by 2032, according to the people familiar with the details, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information had not been made public.

Now, how does that work? The most obvious way would be to force manufacturers to produce 60% or more of their new vehicles as plug-in electrics, but production of them does not mean that they would sell in such percentages. What happens if Ford produces 6 million plug-in electric and 4 million internal combustion engine vehicles, but American consumers choose to buy out the 4 million ICE vehicles but only a fraction of the electrics sell? Ford would have to cut the price of the electrics to the bone, perhaps below manufacturing costs. How long can the company sustain such losses?

A 2019 Chevy Dolt Bolt electric vehicle caught fire at a home in Cherokee County, Georgia, on Sept. 13. Source: Cherokee County Fire Department. Click to enlarge.

Electric vehicles have their problems, the most obvious is charging them. If you live in a decent house, with a garage or secure parking space and ample electric service to install a charger, you can recharge overnight. But with urbanization, something the left want to see increase, a lot of people don’t have that garage or secure parking space. Here in the wilds of eastern Kentucky, I’ve seen plenty of homes with just 100 amphere electric service, and while it would be possible to have an electric car charger on one of those, you’d lose the ability to use an electric range or electric heater or clothes dryer while you were charging your Chevy Dolt. The only realistic way to charge at hole is to have 200-amphere electric service installed, and if you don’t have it, that means a licensed electrician to do the work.

Rapidly speeding up the adoption of electric vehicles in the United States would require other significant changes, including the construction of millions of new electric vehicle charging stations, an overhaul of electric grids to accommodate the power needs of those chargers and securing supplies of minerals and other materials needed for batteries.

Rapidly speeding up the adoption of electric vehicles in the United States would require other significant changes, including the construction of millions of new electric vehicle charging stations, an overhaul of electric grids to accommodate the power needs of those chargers and securing supplies of minerals and other materials needed for batteries.

All of which the Biden Administration plans on doing, but all of which also requires that private companies decide to make such investments. Can anyone build a commercial charging station before the electric grid to support it is in place?

It was December of 2021 in which I last stopped at the Wawa at the junction of PA-61 and I-78 in Pennsylvania, where there were six Tesla electric car charging stations, none of which was in use, and twenty-four — if I remember correctly — gasoline pumps, all of which were in use, with a line for next at some of them. Imagine: 24 vehicles not taking 5 to 10 minutes apiece to fuel up and go, but spending 45 to 75 minutes each recharging. It might be great for Wawa, selling more coffee and sandwiches, but perhaps less great for the people having to spend that time there. And if your Tesla is getting near a flat can, and you are stuck in line waiting for a charging station, you might get rather annoyed.

The trips I used to have to make between Pennsylvania and the Bluegrass State? I’m a pretty steady — and perhaps slightly heavy-footed — driver, and could make the trip in around 9½ hours, including one stop for fuel in West Virginia. If rather than my gasoline-powered 2010 Ford F-150 with a 36-gallon fuel tank, I had a 2023 Ford F-150 Lightning, I’d have to make two hour-long charging stops on the 624 mile trip, and I’d still arrive with less than a 50% charge.

The 9½ hour trip just became 11½ hours, if not more. And I’ve had the privilege of paying $60,000+ for the truck! F(ornicate) that!

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How wealthy New Englanders fight #ClimateChange

It was last January that we noted the Westerly Ranch House project on one of my favorite shows, This Old House.

The [ughh!] Magnolia Network is, this Saturday morning, running reruns of This Old House, season 41, originally broadcast in 2019-2020, a major, expensive, remodel of a home in Westerly, Washington County, Rhode Island. Westerly is a beach resort town which in the 2020 election gave 55.6% of its votes to Joe Biden; Washington County as a whole voted 58.57% to 39.20% for Mr Biden.

And what did the obviously wealthy homeowners, in liberal Rhode Island, in a show originally meant for the liberal Public Broadcasting System, choose for this project? One episode shows the installation of a 1,000 gallon underground propane tank, for their heating system, their water heater, their range, and their fireplace.

Now we return to another This Old House project, the Seaside Victorian Cottage, in Narragansett, Rhode Island. According to Wikipedia, voters there gave 5,333 votes, 59.1% of the total to Joe Biden, and only 3,551, 39.3%, to President Trump in 2020. Now, I don’t know how the obviously well-to-do homeowners specifically voted; there’s always a chance that they were smarter than the majority of their neighbors and voted for Mr Trump.

This series was hard dated: the initial walk-through was just prior to the COVID panicdemic beginning, and ran through the summer and into the fall of 2020, as the Democrats were running on global warming climate change, and touting their proposals to fight it and dramatically reduce or eliminate the use of fossil fuels.

But one thing I noticed, and for which I specifically looked, was the energy source they planned. And there it was, in the second episode — season 42, episode 6 — the remodeling contractor said that there would be a 1,000 gallon propane tank installed in the back yard. Richard Trethewey, the plumber and HVAC expert for the show, showing us in a later episode, that a new, modulating gas furnace was installed.

Yup, once again, those wealthy New Englanders aren’t going for electric heat pumps, but warm, dependable gas heating for the cold, Rhode Island winters. Their HVAC system appears to allow the large, new exterior condensers to be used for heating as well, but the gas furnace is new and in place.

More, the homeowners had a new, fairly sizable gas fireplace installed, as you can see in the photo to the left. More, they had a gas fireplace installed outside, on their backyard patio.

The kitchen features an oversized Wolf gas range.

Episode 9 has Mr Trethewey telling us about the water heating system. The homeowners are going with a more efficient ‘instant’ hot water system, but, anticipating higher demand, they’ll have three instant hot water units, all gas fired, linked.

The final show of the series showed us, very briefly, that a new, large propane-powered generator had been installed in the back yard, so the homeowners wouldn’t have to worry about losing sparktricity in a New England nor’easter.

Now, I certainly don’t begrudge the homeowners for the opportunity they had, and the money they were able to put into a dilapidated home. I was unable to find a value on the house, but similar homes in the area are valued at over a million bucks. But the city of Narragansett, which has an historical commission very interested in keeping the exterior of the home in keeping with the neighborhood, and local city permit agencies, apparently had no objection to the extensive use of propane in the remodeled home.

So, when I read how the climate change activists want to push people to “Electrify (their lives) in 2023 to fight climate change,” I note that the people who can afford to remodel extensively in high cost areas love them some natural gas or propane service!