But, but, but, we’ve been told that plug-in electric vehicles are the wave of the future! From The Wall Street Journal:
Investors Sour on EV Charging Companies
EV charging companies have fallen from lofty valuations as concerns mount about their profitability
by Jennifer Hiller | Boxing Day, December 26, 2023 | 7:00 AM EST
The companies that install and operate electric-vehicle charging networks are in the middle of a building boom, but their share prices are sputtering. Continue reading
Former Democratic presidential nominees Al Gore and John Kerry are surely weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth at the news, but the sensible among us see this as great! From CNN:
The United States is producing more oil than any country in history
By Matt Egan | Updated 5:00 PM EST | Tuesday, December 19, 2023
As the world grapples with the existential crisis of climate change, environmental activists want President Joe Biden to phase out the oil industry, and Republicans argue he’s already doing that. Meanwhile, the surprising reality is the United States is pumping oil at a blistering pace and is on track to produce more oil than any country has in history.
“The existential crisis of climate change”? So many reporters keep using that word; I do not think it means what they think it means. We may have some issues with which to deal with global warming climate change, but we’re not all going to die.
Remember: human beings are the most adaptable creatures on earth, and we live everywhere, from arctic wastelands to steaming jungles to bone dry deserts, and we have done so even prior to our modern, industrialized society.
The United States is set to produce a global record of 13.3 million barrels per day of crude and condensate during the fourth quarter of this year, according to a report published Tuesday by S&P Global Commodity Insights.
Last month, weekly US oil production hit 13.2 million barrels per day, according to the US Energy Information Administration. That’s just above the Donald Trump-era record of 13.1 million set in early 2020 just before the Covid-19 crisis sent output and prices crashing.
Also read: William Teach, “Gore Effect: Maine Forced To Postpone Vote On Forced EVs Due To Power Outage“
The US is exporting roughly the same amounts of crude oil, refined fuels and liquid natural gas as Saudi Arabia and Russia. With the Saudi and Russian collusion, on which we have previously reported, to reduce OPEC’s production to raise prices, American production has helped keep those prices down.
“It’s a reminder that the US is endowed with enormous oil reserves. Our industry should never be underestimated,” said Bob McNally, president of Rapidan Energy Group.
Record-shattering US production is helping to offset aggressive supply cuts meant to support high prices by OPEC+, mainly Saudi Arabia and Russia. Other non-OPEC oil producers including Canada and Brazil are also pumping more oil than ever before. (Brazil is set to join OPEC+ next year.)
Think about what this means. Russia’s economy is dependent upon oil and natural gas exports, and Vladimir Putin wanted to use western Europe’s dependence upon Russia oil and, especially, natural gas as a weapon against NATO countries which are supporting Ukraine with money and military equipment. Without Russian natural gas, a lot of western Europe countries, much of which are at latitudes higher than our lower 48-state border with Canada, the Europeans would have gotten awfully cold during the past two winters, but American production has prevented Russia from being able to effectively utilize their energy weapon.
The climate activists want us to cease oil production, thinking that that will somehow save the world, and perhaps we can eventually develop energy systems which can truly replace oil for energy production, but, right now, that day has not come. And the United States, with its oil, natural gas, and seriously underused coal reserves, has natural resources which can make Americans in general wealthier. The activists just don’t get it: doing what they want would make Americans poorer.
Then again, if liberals actually understood economics, they wouldn’t be liberals anymore.
We have previously noted the definition of “intersectionality,” and how the perhaps less than genius thinkers on the left misuse it to tell us that all leftist causes are related, mixing together things which would curdle new milk. An interesting example is the mixing of feminism and transgenderism, hich leads to the amusing fact that, at least in some things, the best woman for the job is a man male.
Now, William Teach’s sort of favorite whipping girl, Greta “How dare you!” Thunberg, has hurt her own cause by mixing it with today’s oh-so-popular anti-Semitism. From The Times of Israel:
Climate activist Thunberg flogged for ‘crush Zionism’ chant
by Canaan Lidor | Tuesday, Kislev 15, 5784 | 6:23 PM Jerusalem Time
Footage showing climate activist Greta Thunberg chanting “crush Zionism” at a recent pro-Palestinian rally in Sweden is provoking harsh-worded criticism of her by prominent Jewish environmentalists.
If you can’t access the Times website, you can find the story here as well. You can see the original of the tweet here, which shows you the video, not just thye still in the screen capture I took ands used.
The actions by Thunberg, whom many regard as a symbol of the environmentalist movement, reflect how “large parts of ‘the left’ or ‘progressives’ have been intellectually captured by a naive, distorted and frankly bigoted anti-Zionism,” Nigel Savage, a UK-born environmental activist and founder of Jewish environmental nonprofit organization Hazon, tells The Times of Israel Tuesday.
Savage, whose Jerusalem-based group was established in 2000 and holds environmentally oriented bike rides in New York, adds: “It is a microcosm of a far larger and far greater challenge. It’s sad and disturbing.”
Now I will admit it: I can kind of see Miss Thunberg’s reasoning. In saying that Israel should be crushed, she is taking the side of poverty and savagery over prosperity and Western civilization, and if there’s one thing the global warming climate change activists hate, it’s prosperity and Western civilization, despite the fact that they are living with the benefits of prosperity and Western civilization.
I will admit to wondering how Miss Thunberg got from her native Sweden to Amsterdam without the use of fossil fuels, or from where the puffy coat and its insulation came without the use of petroleum, but I’m hardly the first person to point out her climapocrisy.
Miss Thunberg, of course, has the freedom of speech, and can say any fool thing she wishes, but I am amuse by the fact that she is hurting her own cause by siding against Israel and Jews, Jews who just might be the voters who put the Democrats over the top to control Congress and get the climate policies she wants enacted into law.
So, you go, girl! Go ahead and hurt your own cause.
As Reichsstatthalter Kathy Hochul (NSDAP-NY) seeks to ban new gas range installations in the Empire State, an ad for the ZLINE 48 in. Fingerprint Resistant Stainless Steel 6.0 cu.ft. 7 Gas Burner/Electric Oven Range (RAS-SN-48) showed up in my morning feed. We’re not in the market for a new range at all, and, at a sale price of $5039.96, marked down from $5,599.95 — “shipping calculated at checkout” — it was nothing we’d have bought anyway.
Experience Attainable Luxury® with the ZLINE 48″ DuraSnow® Dual Fuel Professional Range. ZLINE’s dual fuel range combines a high performance gas stovetop with an electric convection oven. Providing both professional aesthetics and functionality, this dual fuel stove provides the ultimate luxury experience for a fraction of the cost. ZLINE’s exclusive DuraSnow® finish features a timeless non-directional fingerprint-resistant finish, allowing you to easily combat everyday wear and tear. Achieve optimal results with cooktop cooking power from 4,200 up to 18,000 BTUs provided with sealed burners. Rely on precise and even heating for every homemade dish with an electric convection oven. Enjoy an ultra-deep oven capacity with a three-layered insulated glass oven for efficient cooking every use. With upgraded premium features such as SmoothSlide ball-bearing oven racks, dual lighting, and adjustable legs, this range is certain to wow both the chef and guests alike. Assembled with the highest quality materials on the market, this range offers a durable, scratch-resistant porcelain cooktop and ZLINE’s exclusive single piece cast iron grate. Cook with ease with StayPut Italian hinges, providing a safe baking environment to enjoy for years to come. ZLINE stands by the longevity and durability of their professional dual fuel stoves, while ensuring further protection and peace of mind with a worry-free warranty. The ZLINE Dual Fuel Range is packaged in multiple boxes and will ship out together next business day when in stock.
Of course, the Reichsstatthalter’s wealthy friends will have ways to get around New York’s ban on the installation of new gas service!
So, why did the ad appear in my feed in the first place? Noting William Teach’s story on a Washington Post article, “How fast do you have to buy EVs and heat pumps to avoid the worst effects of climate change?” and it’s first lines: Continue reading
With Thanksgiving just a week away, many people have their minds on travel plans, to visit extended family a long way away. Fortunately for us, Thanksgiving travel means a whopping 18 miles, to my sister’s house.
Screen capture by D R Pico, November 16, 2023.
Stephanie Abrams of The Weather Channel gave us an interesting map of fuel prices across the fruited plain, and it shows just what you’d expect: in states where the government wants a deeper bite into your wallet, it’s going to cost you more to visit the relatives!
Here in the Bluegrass State, the average price as shown by the American Automobile Association is $3.037 per gallon, though the station closest to me has $2.959 per gallon for regular posted. I pay close attention to Pennsylvania, where we used to live, and the average price for regular is currently $3.607 per gallon, 57¢ higher than in Kentucky.
Kentucky is right in the middle when it comes to state taxes on gasoline, 26th in the nation at 30.10¢ per gallon, while Pennsylvania is third, charging 62.20¢ per gallon. As you’d obviously guess, the Pyrite State, California, tops the list, taxing its people.
Interestingly, Illinois, which has the second highest tax rate on fuel, at 66.5¢ per gallon, shares a birder with Missouri, with the second lowest, 17.47¢. Continue reading
My good friend and occasional blog pinch hitter William Teach of The Pirate’s Cove noted on Wednesday that General Motors is cutting back significantly on its commitment to produce the plug-in electric vehicles the global warming climate emergency activists and Biden Administration have pushed:
After investing billions to adhere to President Joe Biden’s green energy agenda, General Motors (GM) is backtracking on all fronts when it comes to Electric Vehicles (EVs).
As GM was the last of the Big Three to strike a tentative agreement with the United Auto Workers (UAW), the automaker’s green energy dreams — championed by the Biden administration — have come crumbling down. Continue reading
I am wryly amused. 🙂
In the left’s rush to phase out reliable gasoline-ort-diesel-powered vehicles, sometimes the amusing happens. The City of Brotherly Love, in its desire to go green, bought 25 battery-electric buses from California manufacturer Proterra in 2016.
It didn’t turn out well:
A Proterra electric bus battery caught fire in a South Philly SEPTA depot
There have been several battery-related fires in electric buses and cars.
by Ryan W. Briggs and Thomas Fitzgerald | November 11, 2022 | 12:08 PM EST
A battery power pack in a sidelined electric bus ignited Wednesday at SEPTA’s Southern Bus Depot, occupying city fire crews for hours and delivering another possible setback to efforts to build a low-emission fleet in Philadelphia.
No injuries were reported.
The transit agency bought 25 battery-electric buses from California manufacturer Proterra in 2016, but all have been parked at the depot since 2020 after discovery of cracks in bus frames and performance problems.
That third quoted paragraph is the money line: all 25 Proterra have been parked since 2020, because they were pieces of feces had problems. A SEPTA spokeswoman confirmed that the fire’s origin was traced to lithium ion battery units inside the bus.
Further down: Continue reading
Will Bunch is a hard-left columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, a newspaper which is located in, to no one’s surprise, Pennsylvania. Joe Manchin is the senior United States Senator representing West Virginia. Though the two states do share part of their borders, West Virginia is not Pennsylvania, and Pennsylvania is not West Virginia. The distinguished Mr Bunch, however, does not seem to understand that.
In the long hot summer of climate change, how can Joe Manchin justify his love for fossil fuels?
by Will Bunch | Tuesday, August 22, 2023
In 2012, the government website for the NASA space agency — on its climate change page — published an article with this simple, search-engine friendly headline: “Could a hurricane ever strike Southern California?” The answer was a barely qualified “no.”
“The interesting thing is that it really can’t happen, statistically speaking,” Bill Patzert, an oceanographer and climatologist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab, said at the time. “The odds are infinitesimal — so small that everyone should just relax. Like 1 in 1,000. Of course, there’s always a chance.” Unlike the Atlantic and its warming Gulf Stream waters, California’s cold coastal currents are tropical-storm killers. At least they used to be.
There’s a long section here that follows — Mr Bunch angrily wrote — or at least I so judge him to have been angry, given all the internet screaming he did using boldfaced words, boldfaced words that I left in place — in which he attempts to persuade his readers that global warming climate change means that we’re doomed, we’re all doomed!
At any rate, I’ve deleted some of that, but you can read Mr Bunch’s writing in full if you follow the embedded link.
Then there is West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin — nominally a Democrat, arguably the most powerful player on Capitol Hill in the 2020s, and a profile in cowardice.
I’ve written a lot about Manchin in this space because he’s such a frustrating figure. A relic of the bygone era when West Virginia’s coal miners and rural poor were solidly Democratic, his party colleagues in Washington — especially the Biden administration — must bend over backwards to appease Manchin, since his seat would certainly go GOP if he weren’t around. But Manchin’s shtick — centered on his personal clout, as well as growing the coal-millionaire bank account that funds his Maserati and his yacht — is morally unjustifiable in a time of climate crisis.
LOL! I’m pretty sure that Mr Bunch would hate libertarian Representative Thomas Massie (R-KY4) even more, but Mr Massie’s home is off-the grid, using solar cells, and he drives a plug-in electric Tesla. 🙂 But Mr Bunch is just spittle-flecking mad that Senator Manchin drives a Maserati and has a yacht, though I haven’t heard much from him about former Senator and Secretary of State, and now President Biden’s ‘climate tsar’ John Kerry, who has private jets and owned a yacht which he berthed in Rhode Island rather than his home state of Massachusetts to avoid paying “roughly $500,000 in taxes,” though he later tried to sell it.
Manchin’s act is also a complicated one. This time last year, after rebuffing Biden on climate legislation for nearly two years, he surprised political observers by relenting and voting to pass the Inflation Reduction Act. The law includes $369 billion for efforts to curb greenhouse-gas pollution, promoting clean power plants and electric cars. Maybe Manchin understood that Biden and the Democrats needed a pre-election achievement in 2022 to keep a narrow hold on the Senate, which is the basis of the West Virginian’s clout. That mission accomplished, this dying-coal-state senator is doing everything within his power to undermine the bill he voted for, and climate action generally.
LOL! One would think that a writer with as long experience as Mr Bunch would realize that writing “this dying-coal-state senator” could, and should, be read as stating that the Senator was dying, not what he meant, that the “coal state” was dying. “This senator from a dying coal state” would have been much clearer.
Manchin has gone so far as to accuse the Biden administration of a “radical climate agenda” and suggested he could join with Republicans to undo the Inflation Reduction Act, or at least some of its key provisions. The devil is in the details, and according to an in-depth report last weekend from the Washington Post, Manchin is opposing a critical reappointment to the agency that regulates pipelines and threatening to block Biden appointees to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department.
For a whole lot of people, including a lot of West Virginians, President Biden’s climate agenda is radical. Senator Manchin is the only Democrat who has won a statewide race recently, and with his seat due up for election again in 2024, he has found himself well behind in the polls against the probable Republican nominee, current Governor Jim Justice, another ‘coal baron’. Now is definitely not the time for Mr Manchin to go against the beliefs of the majority in his home state.
Mr Bunch is right that the coal industry is dying, but it isn’t dead, and it is still important in the Mountain State. In 2018, Senator Manchin won re-election over Patrick Morrisey by 290,510 (49.57%) to 271,113 (46.26%), in a race in which Libertarian nominee Rusty Hollen took 24,411 votes, 4.17%, numbers greater than Mr Manchin’s margin of victory over Mr Morrisey.
In 2020, President Trump beat Joe Biden 545,382 (68.62%) to 235,984 (29.69%) in West Virginia, Mr Trump’s second strongest state in that election. Mr Manchin, I would remind Mr Bunch, represents West Virginia, not Pennsylvania.
More, if Mr Bunch’s position represents anyone other than himself, it represents the city of Philadelphia, not the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. In 2020, Joe Biden carried the Keystone State by 80,555 votes, 3,458,229 (50.01%) to 3,377674 (48.84%), but only because he carried Philadelphia 603,790 (81.44%) to 132,740 (17.90%), a margin of 471,050 votes. Without Philly, President Trump would have carried the Keystone State 3,244,935 (52.56%) to 2,854,439 (46.23%).
Manchin has spoken of passing his love of the outdoors to his 10 grandchildren, so why is he fighting to make it too hot to even go outside? Does a man whose ego seems to relish his frequent TV appearances care that he’ll be remembered for making the Earth uninhabitable for his grandkids, and ours? Because 100 years from now, the textbooks will portray Manchin and other men who enabled the fossil fuel industry as this millennium’s monsters of history.
This, in the end, is where Mr Bunch in particular, and the climate activists in general just don’t get it. West Virginia is, as Mr Bunch stated, a poor state, and the people of the Mountain State tend to be a bit more worried about putting food on the table tonight, and keeping a roof over their heads this month, than they are over what the climate will be 100 years from now.
Mr Bunch has a guesstimated net worth of a million bucks, nowhere close to the league of the billionaires against whom he rails, but certainly comfortable enough. If the Biden Administration mandates plug-in electric cars, Mr Bunch can afford one. If the government has to raise taxes to pay for some cockamamie scheme to build more solar and wind plants, Mr Bunch can afford it.
Living here in eastern Kentucky, I can see the things that Mr Bunch cannot. I can see the houses with no dedicated parking spot in which they could safely put an electric car charging station, and I can see the older homes which have older electric service, a 100-amphere breaker panel, which isn’t going to support both the home as it is and a 50-amp, 220-volt electric car charger.
And even that’s generous: our church recently, recently as in this spring, had to replace the electric service for the convent, which was powered by two 40-amp fuse boxes, because we had to replace the heating system, and the older service just wouldn’t support it.
Still, the Inquirer columnist ought to be able to see something of poverty. His newspaper bio states that he has “some strong opinions about what’s happening in America around social injustice, income inequality and the government.” Surely someone so interested in “social injustice (and) income inequality” ought to understand that his hometown is “the ‘poorest’ of the largest U.S. cities, with 23.3% of residents living in poverty, surpassing the next largest poor U.S. city, Houston, by 2.9%.” As the left, including his favored Mayoral candidate, Helen Gym Flaherty, wanted to get everyone changed over to electric heat pumps rather than the gas furnaces so prevalent in Philly’s poorer row home areas, he ought to understand that a whole bunch of city homeowners can’t afford the costs of such a changeover. Surely someone so concerned about “income inequality” ought to realize that in the city’s crowded rowhome neighborhoods, where tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of homes have nothing but on-street parking, that charging their cars is just not something easy and secure.
On May 11th of this year, Mr Bunch published a column entitled On CNN, lying Trump was a late-night comedian for an America I didn’t recognize, and while I care nothing about his column, the title was revelatory, because Mr Bunch told a truth he might not realize, that there is a lot of American that he just doesn’t recognize. Heck, outside of Philly, even including the collar counties, the majority of Pennsylvanians, 52.56%, voted for Donald Trump.
Our house in Jim Thorpe.
I used to live in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, fifty miles north of foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia, and the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, SEPTA, did not have a bus or train service up into Carbon County; I commuted every day. Why, then, I asked myself, was I taxed to support and subsidize the people who did have SEPTA service in Philadelphia and its collar counties. I no longer live in the Keystone State, so this story doesn’t affect me, but the question still remains: why should my old neighbors and friends in Pennsylvania, many of whom are out of reach of SEPTA’s service area, be taxed to support a system they cannot use?
SEPTA wants more state sales-tax revenue to avoid ‘draconian’ service cuts next spring
A change in the law would give SEPTA an additional $190 million from the state sales tax each year to run its buses, trolleys and subways.
by Thomas Fitzgerald | Thursday, August 24, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT
In an effort to secure desperately needed funding, SEPTA officials are lobbying for a proposal in Harrisburg that would increase by about 45% the annual share of state sales-tax revenue devoted to paying for public transportation.
If their efforts are successful, the state’s Public Transportation Trust Fund would receive 6.4% of the money generated by the sales tax, up from 4.4%, generating an additional $295 million annually for public transit operations across the state. The sales tax itself would not increase.
SEPTA estimates that it would get an additional $190 million annually, with a $65.6 million increase for Pittsburgh Regional Transit and $38.8 million more for other systems, based on the state’s funding formula, which allocates dollars to transit agencies.
“We’ll really be able to prevent a draconian service reduction and extraordinary fare increases,” SEPTA CEO Leslie S. Richards said Wednesday when asked about the proposal. “That is what we will be left with when we get to next spring, if we don’t see a way out of this looming fiscal cliff.”
Part of that “looming fiscal cliff” would be from the $75,000 per year raise that the SEPTA Board gave CEO Leslie Richards just last May:
A panel of three board members reviewed publicly available salaries for the leaders of other large transit systems to help determine Richards’ salary, SEPTA said in a statement announcing the reappointment.
Perhaps, but shouldn’t that also be based on whether Mrs Richards was actually doing her job well?
SEPTA has been plagued by delayed service and accidents, with chronic shortfalls in essential staff:
One in six budgeted engineer positions is unfilled, per SEPTA figures, and the total number of train operators and trainees is 12% lower than it was in January 2019. Funding isn’t the problem, although overall the agency is generally worried about its fiscal future.
Billy Penn also reported that workers are leaving faster than positions can be filled. If Mrs Richards cannot keep these, to use the Democrats’ mantra, “good, well-paying, union jobs” filled, what does that say about her job performance?
Early Monday morning (June 12, 2023), a Trenton train was delayed because of “manpower issues.” A park and ride service at one station on the line was repeatedly canceled last week “due to operator unavailability.” On Friday (June 9, 2023), trips on the Market-Frankford and Broad Street subway lines were canceled for lack of workers. “Operator unavailability” is frequently given as the reason for delays and cancellations, especially on certain bus lines.
The unreliable service has sparked doubts SEPTA can step in to provide a needed workaround to the highway collapse.
“SEPTA better commit to quick and significant improvements of service or the city is going to see a major exodus from any northern suburb employees,” rider Kristen McCabe of Media wrote on Sunday.
Yet, despite all of that, despite SEPTA’s inability to manage the assets and service it currently has, there’s significant political pressure to build the Roosevelt Boulevard subway line, guesstimated to cost between $2.5 and 3.4 billion, in year 2000 dollars. We have previously noted The Philadelphia Inquirer’s story in which the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, SEPTA, admitted that they had “lost control of the train cars.”
The Biden Administration and the global warming climate change activists want us to all leave our cars behind — if we would even be allowed to own them — and depend on public transportation as much as possible. The Philadelphia Tribune reported that 42% of Black households and 50% of impoverished households in Philly don’t own a car, yet SEPTA has been hit with decreased ridership:
Ridership remains well below pre-pandemic levels, and SEPTA needs those passengers back, officials say. Federal pandemic aid will run out by April 2024, and the agency depends on rider fares to make enough money to operate.
Really, who would want to depend on SEPTA? The trains are filthy, crime on board the buses and trains, and at the train and subway stations, has been increasing, and too many of the stations have become de facto homeless shelters, littered with trash and used hypodermic needles left by junkies.
That decreased ridership? It has been politically correct to lay the blame for that on the panicdemic — spelled exactly the way I see it, as a huge overreaction — and the fact that some Center City office workers who were able to work remotely during the COVID-19 shutdowns have found that pretty good, and are still doing so. But the crime and the filth are also to blame. It seems that the good Democrats in Philly, who gave 81.44% of their votes to Joe Biden, the President who wants them to use public transportation, aren’t quite so eager to ride SEPTA’s buses and trains.
And so we have Leslie Richards, $425,000 a year Leslie Richards, wanting to make the people in Jim Thorpe and Summit Hill and Mahanoy City have more of the sales taxes they pay go to help SEPTA, rather than those dollars coming back to their communities, even though Mrs Richards has proven that she cannot manage the system she oversees. SEPTA should be paid for not by the citizens of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, but by the people who use the service, and fares should be increased to support that service.
