Ideology: noun; a set of ideas, beliefs and attitudes, consciously or unconsciously held, which reflects or shapes understandings or misconceptions of the physical, social, economic, and political world.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc: logical fallacy; supposition about cause that mistakenly assumes that a thing was caused by something else that occurred before.
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We are living through a time of rampant ideology masquerading as irrefutable scientific truth. To be critical is to forfeit your place in polite company, or worse. Any tactic is allowed by this most recent class of moralizers in pursuit of what now can only be described as a crusade, even exploiting the innocence of a little girl: Greta Thunberg, with a history of serious emotional and mental problems (see below). It’s grotesque.
This isn’t a piece about Greta Thunberg, but she represents the lengths ideological crusaders will go to achieve their ends. Famous as a climate-change activist, her adolescent zealotry extends to all things of the Left. Right now, she is in a bit of hot water with Israeli authorities for siding with a cause whose leadership organizations engage in mass infanticide, beheadings, rape, and torture. On X, she wrote, “Today we strike in solidarity with Palestine and Gaza.” Well, the Israeli Education Ministry is on strike against Greta by removing any mention of her in the nation’s curricula, and as an “education role model”. Dah! What would you expect in regards to someone who can’t find it within herself to condemn the beheading of babies?
There she is holding a sign “Stand With Gaza” surrounded by other young zealots displaying “Free Palestine” and “Climate Justice Now”, which means that the young and naïve can fluidly shift from one radical cause to another.
These are not geniuses, far from it. Yet, she has thrust herself at the tip of the spear of the lunacy. “Climate justice”? What can be crazier than to hinge our livelihoods and very existence on a set of naked beliefs rooted in a partisan hypothesis of impending doom and call it “science”? You can’t go from rising levels of atmospheric CO2 and a gradual warming trend all the way to earth-on-fire, jeremiads on extreme weather, and mass extinction. This is more than post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc on steroids. It’s on fentanyl. There’s an evidentiary chasm between the symptom (warming temps) and the prescription (net zero on carbon).
Further, it’s unlikely that the attendant government takeover of life in the U.S. in pursuit of this promised land would achieve much good, given the fact that the rest of the world is too much in love with the prospect of air conditioning and cheap energy.
Notice to everyone: China left the Paris Climate Accords, and they’ve averaged 2 new coal-fired generating plants per week over the past 7 years (see below). Hello, somebody in Gavin Newsom’s office please pick up the phone. He’s traipsing to Beijing seeking climate deals.
Of course, none of this has stopped that epicenter of leftism, California, from working to ruin the lives of its residents. California Attorney General Rob Bonta has joined with other opportunistic alarmists to sue the oil companies out of existence (see below). It’s the tobacco strategy. Tobacco kills and so do fossil fuels according to Bonta and the now 20-year-old Greta Thunberg. Any time something bad happens in the ecosystem, it’s thrust into the climate-change vortex, which then produces the predicate to go after the oil companies for fun and profit.
Everything from drought to wildfires is placed at the feet of evildoers in corporate America, despite the fact that any inductive connection between event and alleged culprit is thin to nonexistent. Take the wildfires. Mediterranean climates are notorious for prolonged droughts. Tree ring analysis shows many in Alta California, usually lasting 10 to 20 years, some much longer, in the last 1,200 years (see below). Usually, articles that mention the fact make the politically obligatory deference to the official climate-change orthodoxy, but filter out the political tripe and there stands the regular drought recurrences.
The next question is, what is being done to reduce the resultant pile of dead understory and trees from being ignited by lightning or California’s seemingly growing army of miscreants? Answer: nothing! The California forestry industry is a midget of its former self (see below). It has shrunk to half its pre-1990 size. So, little help there.
Instead, the clowns in Sacramento weaponized the utility industry to be the arsonist of choice. They have longed to chain the state’s population to solar panels and windmills. As such, the unavoidable trade-offs of “transition” hit the fan. The entire state-regulated power industry was shepherded into net zero and that left fewer resources for the hardening of the grid. Maintenance languished and, voilà, poorly maintained lines and transformers spark fire deluges in hillsides overgrown in dry vegetation. Goodbye Paradise, Ca.
Hawaii likens itself to a miniature California (see below). It pioneered the same path to net zero by date certain and it had its own Paradise experience. Lahaina was nearly swept away in flames. As expected, the climate change drum was beat till the skin came off the kettles. In reality, Maui is well-known as an island of multiple microclimates (see below). The western side is dry and plagued with non-native, invasive grasses just waiting for a spark from their own carbon copy of California’s rickety grid. That grid languished as state regulators pushed Hawaii Electric into net zero by 2045. That ugly word, trade-offs, rose in full force as more of one thing – transition to renewables – led to less of something else, a safe and reliable grid.
The power industry in those Meccas of left-wing governance decayed and conflagrations ensued. What they’ve done to the distribution of electricity, they are chomping at the bit to do to your ability to get to work, the kids to soccer practice, a vacation to Yellowstone, or your ability to affordably get things from Amazon. Personal transportation is their next target, while the commercial version is looming larger in the revolutionaries’ crosshairs. Step by step, a century and half of development of the internal combustion engine is to be blotted out in a mad dash to electric vehicles (EVs). Amazing that the geniuses have decided to do this at a time when they’ve made the provision of electricity unstable and dangerous. Go figure.
More and more information is coming to light on the madness of this scheme. A review of the pros and cons of EVs would be enlightening. On the pro side, it has fewer parts in comparison to the many in a regular power train – and, maybe more importantly, it serves as an emotional salve to the cadre of alarmists. As for the con, it’s a glorified golf cart. Sure, it seeks to imitate all the conveniences of its fossil-fuel powered uncle, but, remember, the a/c, heater, audio system, the massive computer systems, and plethora of servos and sensors run down the battery making a mockery of its range. And that’s not all.
Like the climate-change boosterism in all manner of weather talk, nonetheless, you can cut through the puffery to get a true picture about the EV in many sources (for instance, see below). For example, that battery is the heart and soul of the vehicle . . . and a problem. Those lithium-ion batteries, for optimal performance and longevity, should be kept charged between 20% to 80% of their capacity, which means that 40% of their capacity and subsequent range is off-limits. Draining to near zero and overcharging are crippling for the things.
And, oh, if you live in Phoenix or Bakersfield, the batteries decline in efficiency and longevity in those long, hot summers. Don’t park them on the hot pavement for long stretches. What’s true in the scorching heat also applies to the bitter cold climes along the Great Lakes, the Rocky Mountain zone, the Great Plains, and Alaska. Today’s EV lithium-ion packs are finicky. Ideally, the EV is best suited for the moderate temps along the narrow stretch of the California coastal plain. And, coincidentally, that’s where most of the state’s population, votes, and passion for leftist causes resides, and, to no surprise, enthusiasm for EVs.
All of the above, and fast charging (often called level-3 charging), will wreak havoc on the battery’s life span. If you don’t relish an hour or more for charging on that road trip, and the 3-hour or more wait if there is a line, you might be tempted to jump at an open fast charge station (minimum 15 minutes to get back on the road, an hour or more for a full charge). Fast charging degrades the batteries in like manner as the daily consumption over an adult’s lifespan of a fifth of whiskey, a pack of cigarettes, and the habitual shooting up of opioids/fentanyl turning a 50-year-old into an 80-year-old.
You see, the heart of the EV are the batteries, and when they go bad, it’s $20,000 to replace. Junk the car, to go along with the hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of others piled and lined in fields across the fruited plain if Biden, Kerry, and company get their way. That brings us back to trade-offs: mountains of cash in R and D to make the 1,000-pound battery packs covering most of the length of the car less of a hazard and embarrassment, and, of course, none of that cash will be available for advancements in what actually works.
That’s how central planners function. They are political activists for what they call the “truth”. The “truth” is actually a set of political dogmas wrapped around a few facts so as to discredit those still practicing some semblance of rationality. If their dream of an EV world is chock full of problems, just pump more money into the scheme. Remember, it’s government. In other words, inflate the trade-offs and hide the fact. And life inevitably gets poorer.
Indeed, it will translate into a life less appealing and prosperous. Think of all the money shoved into making the batteries work as effectively as a fossil fuel engine. The current lithium-ion batteries are a joke – heavy, combustible, long charging times, fast-charging degradation, limited range, temperature sensitivity, etc. That leads to the activists’ search for the current iteration of the holy grail, the solid-state battery. Toyota has big dreams for the things (see below), and so does everybody else wishing to lick the boots of the fashionable climate utopians in power.
Not so fast. The holy grail has holes in it. The solid-state battery has more lithium in it than its heavy and cumbersome lithium-ion cousin. And lithium is rare – “much less common than 25 of the first 32 chemical elements” (see below) – and hardly ever appears in nature in a pure form. Thus, it requires much more energy-intensive processing to produce, whose energy will come from God knows where. Regardless, getting it and making it usable is a very expensive process with a high potential for broad environmental damage. Is anyone up for trading one environmental problem for another, possibly one more serious?
That’s not all. After herding the population into solid-state EVs, an expanse of the older batteries will accumulate in junk yards. One can only hope that the assemblage won’t be in places susceptible to deluges of rain; the things will combust into an unquenchable firestorm. Further, the combination of the natural lithium scarcity, alongside a government-induced inflation of demand, will make lithium prices skyrocket. It’s already begun.
The recycling of those old batteries will be necessary to make the contraption practical. The only problem is that recycling the things is another one of those distant will-o’-the-wisps. Jordan Lindsay, research and innovation manager at Minviro, a U.K. consulting firm, puts it succinctly:
“One of the issues with solid-state is that we’re going to have to get better at recycling lithium. Currently, with lithium-ion batteries, you can recycle nickel, cobalt, manganese pretty well—aluminum and copper from the cell components pretty well. But, graphite and lithium are the issue. They’re the sticking point from wholesale, closed-loop battery recycling.” (see Tim Stevens below)
The unavoidable consequence is that of an even more bloated trade-off. More alternatives will be sacrificed to make this central planner’s dream a reality.
It’s not that the EV can’t be made into a more widely used option, if enough resources are tossed into the money pit. Nearly anything becomes a possibility at that point. But think about it. Huge swaths of the rest of the world won’t play along. So, CO2 will continue to gather in the atmosphere regardless of whether we can virtue signal with our EV fleet or not. Rather than throw good money after bad, why not continue along the path of greater and cleaner fossil-fuel efficiency? What about carbon capture? Rather than junk fossil fuels, junk the climate-change commissars.
If a state like Rob Bonta’s, or nations beholden to the rantings of a 20-year-old emotional wreck, wish to bury their places in politicized nonsense, so be it. But don’t let them get away with calling it “science”. It’s no different than the ideologies peddled by the Jacobins in the Reign of Terror or the Marxists in Petrograd under Lenin. With the same result – misery.
RogerG
Read more here:
* “Opinion: Her mother’s memoir reveals the extent of Greta Thunberg’s suffering”, Brad Polumbo, Washington Examiner, in the The National Post, March 3, 2020, at https://nationalpost.com/opinion/opinion-her-mothers-memoir-reveals-the-extent-of-greta-thunbergs-suffering-and-exploitation
* “China is building six times more new coal plants than other countries, report finds”, Julia Simon, NPR, March 2, 2023, at https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-six-times-more-new-coal-plants-than-other-countries-report-fin
* See the Superior Court filing, County of San Francisco: Rob Bonta v. Exxon Mobil, Shell, Chevron, ConocoPhilips, American Petroleum Institute, et al, at https://oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press-docs/FINAL%209-15%20COMPLAINT.pdf
* “California Drought: Some Have Lasted Longer Than 200 Years, Scientists Say”, Paul Rogers, Mercury News, August 12, 2016, at https://www.mercurynews.com/2014/01/25/california-drought-past-dry-periods-have-lasted-more-than-200-years-scientists-say/
* For more from the federal USDA: “California’s Forest Products Industry: A Descriptive Analysis”, Todd A. Morgan, Charles E. Keegan III, Thale Dillon, Alfred L. Chase, Jeremy S. Fried, and Marc N. Weber, July 2004, at http://bber.umt.edu/pubs/forest/fidacs/CA2000.pdf
* “ENVIRONMENTALISTS DESTROYED CALIFORNIA’S FORESTS”, Edward Ring, California Policy Center, September 10, 2020, at https://californiapolicycenter.org/environmentalists-destroyed-californias-forests/
* “Hawaii’s Microclimates: How One Island Can Have Many Weathers”, Hawaiians, at https://www.hawaiians.com/hawaiis-microclimates-how-one-island-can-have-many-weathers/
* “Did Climate Change Cause Maui’s Wildfires?”, Veronique De Rugy, National Review, August 17, 2023, at https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/did-climate-change-cause-mauis-wildfires/
* “A Simple Solution to End Frivolous Climate Lawsuits”, Jonathan Lesser, National Review, October 13, 2023, at https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/10/a-simple-solution-to-end-frivolous-climate-lawsuits/
* “How long do electric cars last?”, by iSeeCars, Kxan.com, October 9, 2023, at https://www.kxan.com/automotive/how-long-do-electric-cars-last/
* “Electric Vehicles: Toyota’s Battery Charge”, Andrew Stuttaford. National Review, October 25, 2023, at https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/electric-vehicles-toyotas-battery-charge/
* “Solid State Battery Tech For EV Cars: Challenges Lie Ahead”, Tim Stevens, Motortrend, March 10, 2023, at https://www.motortrend.com/features/solid-state-ev-car-batteries-challenges/
* “10 Cool Facts About Lithium”, Anne Marie Helmenstine, PhD, ThoughtCo, November 3, 2019, at https://www.thoughtco.com/lithium-element-facts-608237