Category Archives: Energy and Climate Change

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Our American Revolution began around Boston; now Bostonians are saddled with an authoritarian government that they chose for themselves! Somehow, I lack sympathy for Bostonians, who should have known better.

We have previously reported, several times, on how wealthy New Englanders, people with the money to do what they want, choose to heat their homes and cook their food, and just enjoy the good life, even though the climate activists don’t want people to have that choice. Today’s left appear to be pro-choice on exactly one thing.

Well, it’s one thing when the activists don’t believe that people should have the choices most wish to take, but something else entirely when someone with governing power thinks that way.

‘Barrier To Entry’: Dem Mayor Bans Fossil Fuel Use In New City Buildings, Eyes Residential Buildings Next

Story by Nick Pope • Tuesday, August 1, 2023 • 7:13 PM

Democratic Boston Mayor Michelle Wu signed an executive order Monday banning new construction or renovations of municipal buildings that would use fossil fuels, according to the Boston Herald.

Monday’s executive order is part of Wu’s broader efforts to implement a similar ban on fossil fuel use in new residential buildings, according to the Boston Herald. Wu stated that “Boston will continue using every possible tool” to counter climate change, according to a Monday press release, but a de facto ban on fossil fuel use in new residential developments could impose higher costs, Greg Vasil, CEO of the Greater Boston Real Estate Board, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The potential ban on fossil fuel hookups in the city’s new residential buildings “is going to be a real barrier to entry” for developers “to build what they want to build in Boston” if enacted, Vasil told the DCNF. “It would definitely drive up costs,” Vasil continued, adding that “there’s a desire to satisfy campaign promises without understanding the economic situation.”

And that’s the main point, “a desire to satisfy campaign promises without understanding the economic situation.” Michelle Pewarski[1]Mrs Pewarski, like so many leftist women, does not respect her husband enough to have taken his name, but we at The First Street Journal do not show the same disrespect, and always refer to married … Continue reading is an activist, who understands what she wants to do, but hasn’t the first clue about reality.

Wu won the mayor’s election in November 2021, in part by running on a promise to deliver Boston a “green new deal.” Her administration intends to apply for a Massachusetts state program that will permit ten communities in the state to prohibit gas hookups in new buildings, according to the Boston Herald.

In April, Boston’s city council approved an ordinance which requires new residential buildings in the city to feature electrical wiring that will allow for future conversion to electricity and to connect to solar power, according to the Boston Herald. Wu’s office estimates that around 70% of the city’s overall emissions are attributable to buildings, according to the Monday press release announcing the signing of the executive order.

The latter paragraph notes a policy that makes some sense. It is far less expensive to add the additional wiring to allow a future owner to convert from gas heat, ranges, and water heaters to electric appliances during the construction phase, than to have to add the wiring later during a remodel. When we had a propane — there is no natural gas service this far out in the countryside — water heater installed to replace the on-its-last-legs electric one in 2018, I left the 10-2 wiring for the old water heater in place, though I did disconnect it from the circuit breaker panel. I did remove the wiring for the old electric range, but I did that because it was poorly installed, not because I objected to it being there.

But Mayor Pewarski, like so many other of the activists, has no idea what she is doing. The only region of the country in which electricity is the predominant method of heating homes is the southeast, for two reasons:

  1. The propane fireplace that is our secondary heat source.

    With many rural residents living outside of areas served by natural gas, it is far easier and less expensive to get electricity to a house than it is natural gas.

  2. The southeast has generally milder winters, in which electric heat pumps have a better chance of keeping up with heating demand.

In my travels around eastern Kentucky, especially since we added propane to our formerly all-electric home, I notice other homes which have propane tanks, and there are a lot of them. I do not know how many of those houses primarily heat their homes using propane, or how many are like us, using a propane appliance, in our case a propane fireplace, as supplemental heat for really cold days, or backup heat for those times when the power fails.

A cheery fire in our wood stove in Jim Thorpe.

We learned our lesson the hard way! On Christmas Day of 2002, a heavy, wet snow at our house in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, knocked out electric service, and our fuel-oil powered steam boiler, which supplied the radiators, would not work without electricity. Power was restored in approximately 30 hours, but on that cold, snowy day, we couldn’t cook, couldn’t bathe, and it got down to 50º F inside our 1890 Victorian home. We later added a nice wood stove, which did not require electricity to operate, but it sure would have been nice to have had that before we lost sparktricity!

It was early Monday morning, March 12, 2018, when we received five inches of heavy, wet snow, as well as ice, at our farm in Estill County, Kentucky, and we lost electricity, in our all-electric home, sometime before 4:30 AM. No, I’m not relying on memory; I’m actually kind of obsessive about recording things in my At-A-Glance Daily Diary, and I have a whole shelf of them, dating back to 1986, missing only 2001’s, which was lost somehow.

Fortunately, it was 42º F and sunny outside by afternoon, which helped some, but it still got down to 52º F inside the house. My wife, having to work the following day, drove to Lexington to stay at our daughter’s apartment, so she could do something really radical like take a shower in the morning. There was just enough sort-of warm water in the water heater for me to take a quick shower on Tuesday morning. While my wife could leave, I had to stay at home to care for the critters.

Our remodeled kitchen, including the propane range! All of the work except the red quartz countertops was done by my family and me. Click to enlarge.

To make a long story short, we finally got sparktricity back at 4:54 PM on Thursday, March 15th. It had gotten as cool as 37º F inside the house, though warmer in my bedroom, which I heated with sunshine through the window and my own body heat. The high for that day was 58º F, so that helped some. I wonder how bad things would have gotten if we had lost power for 4½ days in mid-January.

We had planned on remodeling all along, because our house was a fixer-upper when we bought it, and Mrs Pico had stated, early on, that she wanted a gas range, but we hadn’t begun the remodel quite yet. That end-of-winter power loss was enough to persuade us that we needed supplemental heat here as well.

We are not wealthy, nor even well-to-do, but at least we are not as poor as many people in eastern Kentucky. Had someone like Mayor Pewarski been in governing authority around here, we would not have had the choice of installing propane utilities to keep us warm in the winter when the temperature gets too low for the heat pump to keep up, or the power knocked out, which can happen for days at a time in rural areas like ours.

The liberals in Boston gave Mrs Pewarski 64% of their votes, and she had made no secret of her support for the cockamamie ‘green new deal,’ so it’s difficult to argue against the notion that they have gotten exactly what they deserve. Perhaps they didn’t know the specifics, didn’t understand that she would use government power to ban future natural gas hookups, but anyone who looks has to know that today’s left are all about force, are all about trying to impose their choices on other people. That this has happened in Boston, the cradle of our liberty, and the area in which our American Revolution began, is just an added insult to the American dream.

References

References
↑1 Mrs Pewarski, like so many leftist women, does not respect her husband enough to have taken his name, but we at The First Street Journal do not show the same disrespect, and always refer to married women by their proper names.
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How wealthy New Englanders fight #ClimateChange A family which showed some sense.

West Roxbury project house, before remodel. Photo by Meg Reinhardt. Click to enlarge.

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. and if the previous sentence seems familiar, it should, because I used it just eight days ago.

Now, yet another house in that show has caught my attention, the 1894 Victorian in the West Roxbury neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts project, in which architect Derek Rubinoff, his wife Robyn Marder, and their two teenagers, Zach and Aria, went for a full remodel after a call to a painter revealed that the “decades-old cedar clapboards had started to rot,” meaning that the entire exterior would need to be stripped and redone.

While I couldn’t find the cost of the project, realtor.com informs us that, in June of 2023, the median home listing price was $727,000, while the median sales price was only slightly lower, at $720,000.

Noting as we have previously that the global warming climate change activists want to ban gas heating, gas ranges, gas water heaters, and all other gas appliances, to save Mother Gaia, when the series began to run on the Magnolia Network — which I like, but never should have been sold to Chip and Joanna Gaines — I paid close attention, to see if these wealthy New Englanders went along with the proposals for trashing gas appliances for electric.

And, at least in one respect, they tried a little bit. In Season 43, Episode 20 of This Old House, the show’s plumbing and heating expert Richard Trethewey showed us that the family added a heat pump for central air conditioning and heating when it wasn’t too cold outside, but they retained the original gas furnace for the depths of a Massachusetts winter. The kitchen tour, shown in Episode 25, appeared to show — the perspective I had was poor — that the family had opted for an electric, possibly induction, range top. The ovens, separate units on a different wall, could have been either gas or electric.

So, what did this family do? Well, they went at least half-way toward meeting the activists’ goals, by adding the heat pump to the system. But, like other New England families who could, they were smart enough to keep a newer, though still existing, natural gas furnace as at least a backup; they were not going suffer a too cold house during a New England winter!

Under Governor Maura Healey, a Democrat, there are proposals for a new statewide building code in which the use of natural gas systems could — not immediately would — be banned in new construction by municipalities, and includes the interesting, and I believe smart, provision that new home construction should be pre-wired for conversion from natural gas to electric appliances should future homeowners want to make a change, without the need for expensive rewiring. It also mandates wiring be put in place for electric automobile charging units, though it does not require that those units be installed.

Mandates? I don’t like them at all. But I do believe that these are simple and relatively inexpensive things a builder should do to increase the value of a new home

When we replaced our already-failing electric water heater with a propane one, I left the wiring in place, just in case it was ever needed in the future, though I disconnected it from the electric panel. I have also said that, were I building homes, I would include the wiring for electric car chargers, because that’s far cheaper to do during construction when the walls are open, than to retrofit such into an existing structure. I have long planned to include such wiring in my garage before I fully enclose the walls, simply to add resale value, because the breaker, wiring, and NEMA 14-50 receptacle just aren’t that expensive.

I can’t complain about the Rubinoff family and how they spent their money. They did add features to the home that would make sense for those worried about global warmingclimate change, but they also showed that they have some actual sense, in maintaining a gas hookup and heating system capable of keeping the place warm when it gets bitterly cold. Considering that they are heating their home the same way we do, a heat pump — which was already in place when we moved here, though the unit had to be replaced after being destroyed in the 2021 flood — but with a propane fireplace for backup when the power fails or it gets too cold outside for the heat pump to keep up, yeah, I believe they have acted wisely. But in wintry New England, the government should never mandate electric-only heating systems.

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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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‘Progressivism’ is for the wealthy

The Democratic primary for the Philadelphia mayoral nomination is over, the ‘progressive’ — a term William Teach defines as ‘nice fascist’ — candidate lost, coming in third, and the #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading left are trying to spin it.

The Real Lesson for Progressives in Our Philadelphia Mayoral Defeat

by Nathan J Robinson | Wednesday, May 17, 2023

In Philadelphia’s Democratic mayoral primary, Cherelle Parker has decisively defeated her opponents. Those included progressive Helen Gym, who had the backing of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The triumph of Parker, a moderate, raises the usual question about whether today’s voters are more inclined toward centrism or progressivism and why; Politico, for example, called the primary nothing less than the “next battle for the soul of the Democratic Party,” serving as “a test of the strength of the national progressive movement.”

It’s easy to portray Parker’s victory as a message sent by voters in favor of “tough on crime” policies. During her campaign, Parker had promised to put more police officers on the streets and condemned the “lawlessness” of the city. The working class Black neighborhoods that have been hardest hit by gun violence tended to support Parker.

Mr Robinson, the Editor-in-Chief of Current Affairs magazine, a very much leftist publication, seems shocked, shocked!, to find out that the victims of crime want to be protected from crime.

But city politics are always complicated, and we should be careful about stories that emphasize a single issue.

Indeed, Parker isn’t quite the equivalent of a “tough on crime” Republican, and while she’s controversially advocated “stop-and-frisk” practices, she’s also spoken of the need for “restorative justice” and endorsed reformist District Attorney Larry Krasner when he first ran for his position in 2017. Tellingly, both the local Fraternal Order of Police and the National Black Police Association endorsed one of Parker’s opponents.

Parker is also a highly experienced politician with the backing of major local power players. She received major endorsements from local labor unions. If progressives are looking for a clear takeaway from this race, “progressive candidates can’t win if major local unions aren’t supporting the progressive candidate” is just as important as anything about the politics of crime and policing. After all, Chicago’s Brandon Johnson recently won the city’s mayoral election while openly rejecting “tough on crime” politics in a city plagued by gun violence. But Johnson was a union organizer with the powerful Chicago Teachers Union (CTU). In cities where organized labor is still strong, the key lesson here might be that a progressive candidate who wants to win cannot afford to have major unions endorsing their opponent.

Uhhh, how did Mr Robinson miss that Helen Gym Flaherty had the strong endorsement of the teachers’ union in Philadelphia?

There are still some important takeaways about crime and policing. First, clearly at least some voters who are alarmed by the city’s ongoing violence found reassurance in Parker’s promises to keep people safe. Parker offered a clear and detailed public safety plan. Those progressives who don’t think “more police” is the answer to gun violence (and I count myself among them) can’t afford to let pro-police candidates be the only ones with clear policies. The slogan “Defund the Police” was ill-conceived, not because reallocating police funding is a bad idea, but because it emphasized what the progressive movement was against (harsh policing) rather than emphasizing what it was for (good schools, good jobs, good housing, healthy communities).

Oh, so Mr Robinson does support defunding the police, but simply recognizes that the slogan was “ill-conceived.” He likes the idea, but doesn’t want to be too explicit in telling the truth about it.

Progressives who want to win in areas suffering from widespread violence need a strong pro-safety message, with an emphasis that more incarceration and more safety are not synonymous.

Here’s where Mr Robinson clearly gets lost in the weeds: like Mrs Flaherty — though she carefully avoided saying it in this campaign — he supports “reallocating police funding, and he is supporting the very things Mrs Flaherty claimed to be, but the candidate was very light on the details about how she was going to pay for all of her promises.

And, quite frankly, more incarceration and more safety are synonymous: the criminal who has already been locked up for past crimes isn’t out on the streets committing more, and District Attorney Let ’em Loose Larry Krasner’s decarceration ideas, very much supported by Mrs Flaherty, left criminals out on the streets to kill other people .  .  . and Philadelphians knew that.

That Ameen Hurst, accused of murdering four people in different rampages, had escaped from jail and was on the loose on election day probably didn’t help ‘progressives.’

The Philadelphia Inquirer tried to analyze Mrs Flaherty’s defeat as well, and actually got a lot of things right:

Progressive mayors have won elections in Boston, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Here’s why Philadelphia’s race was different.

Although Helen Gym ran to help working people, her biggest appeal was to wealthier voters in Philadelphia.

by Julia Terruso and Anna Orso | Thursday, May 18, 2023 | 5:00 AM EDT

National progressives were looking for another big win in Philadelphia this week, but Cherelle Parker, a moderate Democrat born and raised in the city’s Northwest section, won the historic nomination.

Progressive political celebs had lined up behind Helen Gym, hoping she might continue a wave of mayoral victories in Boston, Los Angeles, and Chicago.

“We’re taking this movement from the West Coast to the East Coast!” U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told an amped-up Gym crowd at a rally on Sunday.

Ultimately, with 94% of votes counted, Gym came in third place in the Democratic mayoral primary, trailing Parker and former Controller Rebecca Rhynhart and frustrating progressives who hoped to propel gains in recent years into the city’s biggest office.

Further down:

While Gym ran to help working people — she often said she was running to change the way people live — her biggest appeal wound up being with wealthier voters in the city.

Gym won 29% of the vote in precincts where people made an average of $100,000 and more and just 11% in precincts where the average income was less than $50,000 a year, an Inquirer analysis shows.

In wealthier districts, like Center City and affluent parts of the Northwest, Gym almost certainly split votes with Rhynhart, who ran an effective campaign as a budget wonk and problem solver.

Mr Robinson had noted that Cherelle Parker Mullins won the nomination with about a third of the total vote, because the city allows a plurality to win, without a runoff election between the two top vote getters to achieve a majority. Yet he somehow failed to mention that, if Philly did have a runoff system, Mrs Flaherty, who finished third, wouldn’t be in it! Brandon Johnson, the newly elected mayor of Chicago, won the runoff election, but finished second in the initial ballot; if Chicago allowed plurality winners to win, he wouldn’t be mayor.

But the bigger part — other than the fact that Mrs Mullins is black and Mrs Flaherty is of Korean descent, in a city that voted along racial lines — is that Mrs Flaherty’s ‘progressive’ campaign claimed to be for “working people,” but much of her support came from wealthier ones. Mr Robinson, himself a millionaire, like so many other white liberals with money, just don’t seem to realize that the things they advocate don’t actually make much sense to poorer and working class people. Mrs Flaherty’s strong support of policies to attack global warming climate change can only mean greater costs for the hundreds of thousands of Philadelphia row homes which use natural gas for heating in the city’s cold and snowy winters. Advocating policies to reduce warming eighty years from now is a program for those who don’t have to worry about money, not for those who are concerned with putting food on the table tonight, or being able to pay their rent or mortgage next month.

‘Progressive’ politics are for the wealthy, for the people who just don’t have to worry about money, for people whose lives are already mostly safe and secure . . . and Philadelphia is the poorest of our nation’s ten largest cities. While all of the Democratic candidates were on the liberal side, Mrs Flaherty, herself wealthy due to her husband, was the only true ‘progressive’ in the race, and two of the Democratic candidates finished ahead of her.

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.
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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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28½ hours without power The patricians propose and enact, and the plebeians have to work and pay for it

The propane fireplace that is our secondary heat source.

With some serious windstorms, but no tornadoes, we lost sparktricity at about 3:30 PM on Saturday; it was finally restored at 7:59 PM Sunday. It was dry, sunny and warm enough, about 70º F during the day, but down to 42º F Sunday morning. Because we prepared for this during our 2018 kitchen remodel, we had a propane range, water heater, and fireplace. While the range required electricity to use the oven, the stove-top still worked, albeit we had to use a match to ignite the burners. The water heater and fireplace do not require electricity, though the blower, to better circulate the fireplace’s heat does.

It’s the end of March, and spring, not winter. But losing electricity for thousands of rural customers in what was a windstorm, not snow, not ice, and not a tornado, points out once again that electricity service is our nation’s most vulnerable-to-the-weather utility. Imagine not eastern Kentucky and our relatively mild weather, but upstate New York in the winter:

Fact or fiction: Here’s what NY Gov. Kathy Hochul wants to do with gas stoves

by Jon Campbell | January 26, 2023

By now, you’ve probably seen the headlines, the cable news segments, the social media posts — all about the latest culture war to engulf New York and the nation: the future of gas stoves.

“Out-of-touch politicians and bureaucrats in Albany are moving forward with a BAN on gas cooking stoves,” read a petition from state Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt, a Republican.

Or on Fox News: “Gov. [Kathy] Hochul, Democrats, if you mess with my gas stove, you’ll get burned.”

The national debate was ignited earlier this month by comments from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, which raised — and later walked back — the possibility of a ban on gas stoves amid growing concerns over research connecting them to childhood asthma. A day later, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul unveiled a plan of her own to crack down on fossil fuels, including a ban on gas hookups in new buildings.

There’s more at the original, and it’s not behind a paywall.

Under Governor Hochul’s proposals, existing buildings with gas ranges and water heaters could keep them, and even replace them with gas appliances when they go bad. But here’s the real kicker:

The second proposal does not apply to gas stoves, according to the governor’s office. Hochul wants to phase in a ban on the sale of new fossil fuel-powered heating equipment in New York, beginning with smaller buildings in 2030 and larger buildings in 2035.

So, while the Governor would allow people to replace the smaller gas appliances with newer gas appliances, the heating equipment, the part which keeps New Yorkers alive during the Empire State’s brutal winters, could not be replaced with heating oil or gas furnaces. I’ve got a big mental picture of people using their gas ranges to keep from freezing, not exactly the wisest thing to do, but in extremis, people will do what they have to do.

When we lived in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, where winters can be tough, if not as bad as in New York, our heating system was a heating-oil powered steam boiler for radiators. Radiators meant pipes for the steam, as you can see when I was tiling our kitchen floor during a remodel, in the left corner, but the 1890 house did not have forced air heating ducts. If you have to replace your heating system with a heat pump based one, that means the installation of forced air heating ducts, not a fun thing, not an inexpensive thing, and not a nice thing at all in an older, Victorian home such as we had.

But that apparently doesn’t matter to the Governor; she has money and she’ll always be nice and toasty warm, but if you’re one of the working-class, paycheck-to-paycheck plebeians, it’s a big, big deal. Then, when the power fails during a heavy snowstorm in January, as happens with some frequency, well, too bad, so sad, must suck to be you!

Of course, your gas or heating oil furnace also requires electricity, but not as much as an electric heating system. Our heating oil boiler used a single 110-volt, 20 ampere circuit for the ignition and oil pump; a gas forced air system would have a similar demand for the blower motor and ignition. Those could be easily powered by a basic, gasoline-powered generator you can buy from Home Despot.

Our heat-pump based system in our new Kentucky home? It uses two 220-volt, 50 amp circuits, and if you need a backup generator to run that, it’s not going to be a smaller, home-owner type generator!

This is the difference between the patricians and the plebeians: the patricians propose and enact, and then the plebeians have to work and pay for it, and live with the added burdens Our Betters place on us.

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There are still a few customers without electricity in Kentucky

We noted on Monday that thousands and thousands of Kentuckians were still without electricity following the previous Friday’s major windstorms. These weren’t in the mountains of Appalachia, but in the flatter, and wealthier, parts of central and western Kentucky.

Well, guess what? It’s Wednesday evening, and while the number of customers without electricity has certainly dwindled, it hasn’t reached zero yet.

Updated: Will power be restored in Kentucky on Wednesday? Here’s what KU says

by Christopher Leach | Wednesday, March 8, 2023 | 11:24 AM EST

Power restoration efforts in Fayette County along with all of Kentucky are expected to be mostly completed by Wednesday evening, according to Daniel Lowry with LG&E and KU.

The company previously said it expected to have power restored to everyone in Lexington and Louisville by 11 p.m. Wednesday. Lowry said there will likely be some customers without power Thursday morning but most everyone affected by Friday’s major windstorm should get power back by Wednesday evening.

Lowry added that if a resident doesn’t have power by Wednesday evening, it’s because the circuit they’re on was heavily damaged from the storm, which was determined to be the third largest weather event in LG&E and KU’s in the last 20 years, according to Lowry.

According to Lowry, 760 poles were broken from the storm. LG&E and KU also received reports of 3,400 wires down due to the storm.

There’s more at the original.

I probably wouldn’t have written on this, until I saw this story from William Teach of The Pirate’s Cove:

Surprise: Government Inefficiency Slowing Up IRA Spending On Electric Lines

By William Teach | March 8, 2023 | 10:30 AM EST

Not only is the Inflation Reduction Act not reducing inflation, it’s being jammed up because government is slow. And, guess which party is represented the most in the federal and state governments?

Biden’s climate chief: ‘Delays and bottlenecks’ slowing IRA spending

U.S. President Joe Biden’s top climate advisor says the United States needs to build electricity lines at double the current pace, blaming a sluggish permitting process for delaying vital arteries for the nation’s clean energy transition.

“On average, interstate gas pipelines that require environmental impact statements are approved nearly twice as fast as transmission lines requiring the same,” John Podesta told energy executives at the CERAWeek by S&P Global conference on Monday. “We don’t have that time.” (snip)

However, when it comes to building new electricity lines and other projects, he describes a permitting process “plagued by delays and bottlenecks.”

“Plenty of delays happen at the state and local levels, and those need to be addressed. But there is plenty that we can do and must do federally,” Podesta said, adding that he and U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm are tracking the pace of more than 20 key electricity transmission projects.

There’s more at the original.

While needing government permits to restore previously existing service isn’t slowing down Kentucky Utilities and Louisville Gas and Electric, I’m old enough to remember when rural electrification was still a thing. No one needed any stinkin’ permits, just string them wires up and get ‘lectricity to the country folks!

But now, as the Biden Administration wants us to electrify our utilities, to get rid of natural gas and propane and heating oil for heating, water heating, and cooking, and to replace gasoline-and-diesel-powered vehicles with plug-in electrics, were going to need a lot more electric capacity, both in generation and transmission. Yet since the 1960s, there have been federal, state, and local regulations designed to preserve nature as much as possible, and putting up power poles and stringing more wires is going to come into conflict with all of that. You can count on thousands of lawsuits seeking to delay additional transmission wiring from the usual suspects.

Unless the new wiring is put underground, a much more expensive and time consuming process, the new wires will be just as vulnerable to severe weather as existing service. We noted in Monday’s article that it wasn’t that cold in the Bluegrass State then, but the weather changed on Tuesday. Monday’s high in the mid 70s turned into highs in the lower 50s, and freezing temperatures overnight, temperature ranges which are normal for this time of year in the Bluegrass State.

Unless there are further problems, KU and LG&E should have power restored to all customers on Thursday, but that still leaves the problem that future storms will knock out power again and again and again.

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The electricity is out in parts of the Bluegrass State

On Friday, March 3rd, a severe windstorm blew through the Bluegrass State. There was some serious damage in several places, but though we had some pretty high winds near where I live, our farm suffered no damage at all. The road leading to our farm saw some trees downed, and one of the parishioners at our church said that her son had seen the roof blown off of his farm equipment storage shed, but, overall, it wasn’t too bad for us.

Then I saw the tweet screen captured on the right.

We didn’t lose power at the farm. It flickered a time or two, but that was it. We did lose the internet for about half an hour.

When I saw Evelyn Schultz’s tweet, I figured that I’d get a more detailed story from what my best friend used to call the Lexington Herald-Liberal, so I went to their website. Following a real belly-laugh at the website opening, in which a daily, except for Saturday, newspaper had a heading which still said it was March 3rd, which I screen captured here at 8:10 AM EST on Monday, March 6th, I found this one:

Updated: Major power outages persist across Kentucky. KU explains long Lexington outages

By Taylor Six | Sunday, March 5, 2023 | 9:05 PM EST

More than 100,000 customers throughout Kentucky were still without power Sunday evening as a result of a Friday windstorm – which one power company labeled as the third most damaging weather event in 20 years for their services.

According to the Kentucky Utilities website, Friday’s weather impacted more than 300,000 customers across their service area and brought down 2,500 power lines. It also broke more than 230 utility poles. This windstorm ranks behind the 2009 ice storm and the 2008 windstorm in terms of the number of customers affected and total system impact.

“We have every resource responding to this event, including an additional 1,500 resources from other utilities,” KU said on its website.

As of 10:30 a.m. Sunday, 70,000 KU & LGE customers were still without power statewide, according to Daniel Lowry, a spokesman for KU. In Lexington, he said about 38,000 were still without power.

Read more here.

As I have mentioned several times previously, electricity is our most vulnerable-to-the-weather utility. Water, sewer and natural gas utilities are run through underground pipes, but electricity is delivered via overhead wires. Even in the newer subdivisions in which electric lines are buried, power comes to substations via overhead wires.

The propane fireplace that is our secondary heat source. It sure is nice on really cold days.

Now, it’s not that cold this morning; my weather station told me that it was 38.8º Fahrenheit at 8:00 this morning, but it was slightly below freezing yesterday, at 30.1º F. I’m guessing that by Sunday morning, the people without power and who depended on electric water heaters, weren’t able to enjoy hot showers in the morning, weren’t able to have a hot breakfast if they had an electric range, and were pretty heavily bundled up in their own homes if they depend on electricity for heat. That, after all, happened to me in early March of 2018,[1]Working from memory, I have previously said that it was January of 2018, but I recently looked at my 2018 diary, and found out that it was actually March 12-15, 2018. when the sparktricity failed for 4½ days following a heavy snow-and-ice storm. Since we were remodeling anyway, we added a propane range, water heater, and fireplace, so if the power fails again, we’ll still have heat, hot water, and cooked meals.

But remember: the Biden Administration wants people to get rid of natural gas utilities and depend exclusively on electricity, all to fight global warming climate change!

It’s March, and with the arrival of meteorological spring, temperatures aren’t bitterly cold in the Bluegrass State. But winter weather is still persisting in large parts of the United States, in the inland west, the northern midwest, and New England. people in those regions, when the power fails, can face life-threatening conditions. More, it isn’t always spring when the power is down; it can happen at any time, including the depths of winter. What the climate activists want is for people to just plain die, because that would be the result of a multi-day power outage in upstate New York or Minnesota or Denver if the left get their way. The truth is simple: they really don’t give a damn about the people!

References

References
↑1 Working from memory, I have previously said that it was January of 2018, but I recently looked at my 2018 diary, and found out that it was actually March 12-15, 2018.