Friday 29 June 2018

The myth of the 'new technology' saving the world

 Robertscribbler and his ilk are pretending that Tesla cars are going to save the world. All nonsense, of course.

The world is going to hell in a handbasket – WITHOUT TRUMP
Teslas may produce as much CO2 as gasoline powered cars

Teslas may produce as much CO2 as gasoline powered cars

28 June, 2018

Touted by some as the planet’s greenest vehicles, electric Teslas may be as bad for the environment as traditional petrol and diesel cars, the latest research reveals.

According to researchers at the UK-based climate data provider Engaged Tracking, the production of Tesla cars, as well as fossil fuel-powered plants used for generating electricity to charge the vehicles produce nearly the same amount of emissions that conventional engines do.

Engaged Tracking analysts used a different approach to studies that usually produce favorable results for electric vehicles. They explored the total emissions generated during the construction process of a Tesla Model S instead of counting how much CO2 is produced by the vehicle during its lifecycle. The astonishing results show that a Tesla is not cleaner to run than any other petrol car in Britain.

The annual emissions of a UK car is 1.5 tons of carbon dioxide, based on an average of 7,800 miles a year,” the research firm’s chief analyst Jonathan Harris told The Sunday Times. “Both the Tesla Model S vehicles we analyzed have the same emissions as an ordinary petrol car of 1.5 tons of CO2 per year.”

The researcher also compared Tesla Model S to the BMW i3, which is smaller and produces an annual emission equivalent of 1.3 tons of CO2, making it 15 per cent more efficient than the Tesla Model S.

According to Tesla, the comparison between the Model S and an average car was not fair, because the Tesla was much larger. The company said that the BMW i3 should be compared to its smaller car - the Model 3, while Model S should compete with such a vehicle as the Mercedes S-Class S500. Tesla claims Mercedes produces nearly 300 percent more emissions than its Model S.

It makes no sense to compare Model S to the average annual emissions figure for cars in the UK, because that average includes a lot of smaller models that are dissimilar to Model S,” the company said as quoted by the media. “'Any fair analysis shows that electric vehicles like Model S and Model 3 generate far less CO2 per mile than any comparable gas-powered car.”

What do you get when you take a wildfire-prone cauldron of violence, political antipathy, racial, class and gender hostility and add flamethrowers to the mix?

You get Elon Musk’s marketing gimmick/financing plan to save Los Angeles.


First 1000 Boring Company Flamethrowers being picked up today! pic.twitter.com/hBMp5fGzAB
Nothing makes your baby more zen than a few gentle puffs of a TBC Flamethrower pic.twitter.com/HewJf66hh2

View image on Twitter
Musk, you see, wants to build a series of tunnels underneath Los Angeles in an effort to alleviate the city’s admittedly horrendous traffic woes. To raise funds and awareness for this plan, Musk has decided to make and sell futuristic-looking flamethrowers.

Doing well, "saving the world" aren't we? Lol

THIRTY YEARS LATER...WHAT HAS CHANGED?


THIRTY YEARS AGO, while the Midwest withered in massive drought and East Coast temperatures exceeded 100 degrees Fahrenheit, I testified to the Senate as a senior NASA scientist about climate change. I said that ongoing global warming was outside the range of natural variability and it could be attributed, with high confidence, to human activity — mainly from the spewing of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere. “It’s time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here,” I said.

This clear and strong message about the dangers of carbon emissions was heard. The next day, it led the front pages of newspapers across the country. Climate theory led to political action with remarkable speed. Within four years, almost all nations, including the United States, signed a Framework Convention in Rio de Janeiro, agreeing that the world must avoid dangerous human-made interference with climate.

Sadly, the principal follow-ups to Rio were the precatory Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement — wishful thinking, hoping that countries will make plans to reduce emissions and carry them out. In reality, most countries follow their self-interest, and global carbon emissions continue to climb (see graph above).

It’s not rocket science. As long as fossil fuels are cheap, they will be burned and emissions will be high. Fossil fuel use will decline only if the price is made to include costs of pollution and climate change to society. The simplest and most effective way to do this is by collecting a rising carbon fee from fossil fuel companies at domestic mines and ports of entry.

Economists agree: If 100 percent of this fee is distributed uniformly to the public, the economy will be spurred, GNP will rise, and millions of jobs will be created. Our energy infrastructure will be steadily modernized with clean energies and energy efficiency.

The clinching argument for a carbon fee, as opposed to ineffectual cap-and-trade schemes dreamed up by politicians, is that the fee can be imposed almost globally via border duties on products from countries that do not have a fee, based on standard fossil fuel content of the products. This will be a strong incentive for most countries to have their own fee.

Any cap approach, by contrast, leaves the impossible task of negotiating 190 caps on all the world’s nations. Governments of some countries may keep a carbon fee as a tax. However, in democracies uniform 100 percent distribution of the funds will be needed to achieve public support.

A carbon fee is crucial, but not enough. Countries such as India and China need massive amounts of energy to raise living standards. The notion that renewable energies and batteries alone will provide all needed energy is fantastical. It is also a grotesque idea, because of the staggering environmental pollution from mining and material disposal, if all energy was derived from renewables and batteries. Worse, tricking the public to accept the fantasy of 100 percent renewables means that, in reality, fossil fuels reign and climate change grows.

The United States and Europe burned most of the global carbon budget that we are permitted to burn if climate is to be stabilized. As such, we have a moral obligation to the developing world, and a practical problem, because we all live on the same planet.

Young people are puzzled that, 25 years ago, President Clinton terminated R&D on next-generation safe nuclear power, the principal alternative to fossil fuel electricity. It is not too late. My advice to young people is to cast off the old politics and fight for their future on technological, political, and legal fronts.

It will not be easy. Washington is a swamp of special interests and, because of the power of the fossil fuel industry, our political parties are little concerned about the mess they are leaving for young people.

Young people have great potential political power, as they showed in their support of Barack Obama in 2008 and Bernie Sanders in 2016. However, it is not enough to elect a leader who spouts good words. It is necessary to understand needed policies and fight for them.

The best way to fight for the carbon fee and dividend is to join Citizens’ Climate Lobby, which now has more than 90,000 members but needs more, especially young people. CCL members are appropriately polite and respectful as they cajole politicians in Washington. If they were joined by the fire of young people that was demonstrated in 2008 and 2016, even the mighty fossil fuel industry would take notice.

The fossil fuel industry afraid of kids? They might be when they notice who is standing behind the kids: the United States Constitution. Kids are people with constitutional rights to life, liberty and property.

Many lawsuits are being filed, in the United States and around the world, on behalf of young people. They include stopgap efforts, such as a suit to block the Trump administration from opening the Powder River Basin in Montana to coal exploitation (with potential to exceed US emissions of the past 50 years), and the Our Children’s Trust lawsuit, demanding government policies to reduce fossil fuel emissions at a rate that the science indicates is needed to support a healthy climate.

Chances of winning lawsuits grow as incontrovertible evidence of climate change grows. The judiciary is less subject to bribery from the fossil fuel industry than are the other branches of government. Yet in this case, justice delayed may be justice denied. Young people cannot afford the “all deliberate speed” that followed the Brown v. Board of Education decision regarding civil rights in 1954.

Young people and old people must understand the implications of the accompanying graph. The fight to phase down fossil fuel emissions is not yet being won. We all must understand needed energy policies and fight for the future of our young people. We must use all the levers of our democracy to force the fossil fuel industry to become a clean energy industry.

James Hansen, retired director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, directs the Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions program in the Earth Institute at Columbia University.

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