- From the “and if you believe that” file, one of us was recently searching for the dreaded airplane flights and was offered one, transatlantic, with “Below average CO2” in an appealing green box. What, was it a zeppelin? No. Just an advertising ploy.
- We note that Scientific American editor Laura Helmuth has now resigned, presumably over her election-night obscenities though officially just to “take some time to think about what comes next” and, she added, “go bird-watching.” For our part we are not gloating; it would have been much better for her to mend her ways in time. But the problem wasn’t just election night. It was turning Scientific American, like so many of America’s once-proud elite institutions, into a shrill and unreflective woke publication across the board. If something good is to come of this debacle, it will be due to recognition, there and not only there, that nobody is well-served by such a narrowing of the mind and widening of the mouth.
- We have repeatedly suggested that politicians seeking to redesign entire economies and societies should be regarded with particular skepticism if they fumble much easier tasks. And thus we point out, or rather Blacklock’s Reporter does and we pass it along, that Canada’s former environment minister, now at Natural Resources and apparently unaware of the change, presides over a department that “to date has subsidized about six percent of the charging ports it predicts Canada needs to comply with electric vehicle mandates” at a cost so far of, er, $1.2 billion. Would you let this man force us all to drive EVs? Do you trust his judgement as to what will work, and how hard it might prove, on a cosmic scale?
- Speaking of tunnel vision, the Canadian government keeps finding more ways to shovel money at EVs and insist that one day we will thank them. But evidently today is not that day. Focus groups convened by that same government to prove they are great and popular found instead, Blacklock’s Reporter again reveals, that a lot of Canadians think they are too expensive, would not lead to a jobs boom, and their manufacturing has a very dirty footprint (or tire print). As J. Budziszewski said, people are logical, slowly. And if the Canadian government were just a bit less dogmatic it might be too.
- A Net Zero Watch press release complains that “Another windfarm surpasses £1 billion in subsidy payments”, the fourth in Britain to do so. And here we were told renewables were now cheaper than conventional fuels. But also just think of what else might have been done with those enormous sums, starting with leaving them in the pockets of the people who had them to begin with. Politicians start with a dream, and when it goes sour they too often refuse to admit it and instead prop it up. But the cost to the rest of us, including the poor to whom this money does not go directly from their fellows in charity or via the state, and the middle class whose power bills keep skyrocketing because politicians don’t know what “cheap” even means, is enormous. And how much are politicians’ delusions really worth anyway?
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20 Nov 2024 | News Roundup
Broken record time...There is NO PLACE on earth where renewables have resulted in cheaper energy costs for the consumer,the general public.Only the opposite,higher bills.Yes,there are some individuals or very small groups that have achieved savings using renewables,but even this claim is suspect at times.You can't scale up renewables to power regions or provinces,you will always need fossil fuel back up.Adding costs galore,frequently starting and stopping your alternate system causes more wear and tear on those systems.(Think what starting and stopping your car too frequently does to the moving parts especially the starter.)And storage batteries would cost Trillions,not Billions(many energy experts,engineers have written extensively on this subject,such as Francis Menton,Mark Mills,Roger Pielke Jr,to name just three).
"...what else might have been done with those enormous sums, starting with leaving them in the pockets of the people who had them to begin with..." The reality of the modern bankrupt welfare/warfare state is that the pockets from which the theft of taxation is occurring are from those who have yet to be born thus imposing no related burden on today's accordingly motivated voter.
EVs are part of a technological side track that, together with wind and solar energy, will eventually fade away in the West because there is no real environmental or economic reason for them. They exist only because of vast amounts of politically-induced subsidy which sooner or later must itself fade away because fossil-fuel induced climate change is largely a hoax, at least as it is presented to us today. The only place where EVs, wind and solar energy may persist for some time is China, and this is only because China has very little oil of its own but large amounts of coal and other relevant minerals and has very little concern with the environmental degradation resulting from their mining and use.
"...what else might have been done with those enormous sums, starting with leaving them in the pockets of the people who had them to begin with..." I’m pretty sure those pensioners that have had their winter fuel allowance cut could think of something else to do with that money…