In an op-ed in USA Today, headlined “Electric car benefits? Just myths“, author of The Skeptical Environmentalist, Bjørn Lomborg, calls for people to “stop our green worship of the electric car,” arguing that EVs end up costing society a lot of money while doing little to cut emissions of carbon dioxide. Even more provocatively, Lomborg claims that because EVs are, for the most part, ultimately powered by coal fired electrical generating plants, the pollution associated with cars that run on electrons will end up killing almost twice as many people as that created by gasoline powered vehicles.
He says, for example, that the total life cycle CO2 emissions of the Tesla Model S will be about 44 tons, compared to an Audi A7 Quattro’s ~49 tons. At the current trading rate of $9/ton on Europe’s carbon emissions market, that works out to what Lomborg describes as just $45 in climate benefits for the $7,500 tax credit by which American taxpayers subsidize the purchase of EVs. “That’s a bad deal,” is how the Danish professor describes it.
Lomborg’s academic background is in the field of political science, but he’s taught statistics as a poli-sci and business professor for over a decade. As a gay, vegetarian Scandinavian, he’s probably nobody’s stereotype of any kind of global warming skeptic. His 2001 book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, posits controversially that many commonly accepted environmental claims are wrong. As a result he’s been the target of accusations of scientific misconduct. Lomborg doesn’t dispute the existence of global warming and says that it’s a serious problem that needs to be addressed long-term but he asserts that our current reactions to it are not cost-effective.
From Lomborg’s editorial:
It is time to stop our green worship of the electric car. It costs us a fortune, cuts little CO2 and surprisingly kills almost twice the number of people compared with regular gasoline cars.
Electric cars’ global-warming benefits are small. It is advertised as a zero-emissions car, but in reality it only shifts emissions to electricity production, with most coming from fossil fuels.
Discuss among yourselves.
Ronnie Schreiber edits Cars In Depth, a realistic perspective on cars & car culture and the original 3D car site. If you found this post worthwhile, you can get a parallax view at Cars In Depth. If the 3D thing freaks you out, don’t worry, all the photo and video players in use at the site have mono options. Thanks for reading – RJS
It’s only global warming in the summer, it’s climate change in the winter. I would take a little global warming about now, since it was minus 14 degress here in eastern Kentucky this morning.
Where’s the global warming when you need it? Scumbag global warming.
“Where’s the global warming when you need it? ”
Not in Kentucky. I say fire-up the HELLCAT and let it idle in the driveway
In China, EVs do pollute considerably more than gas-powered cars, because of all the coal, causing high mortality due to the particulate matter.
http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/120-a230a/
In the US as a whole, as of a couple of years ago, greenhouse emissions from EVs were equivalent to cars getting 33 mpg (same source).
The portion of coal-fired electricity has dropped considerably in the last decade, from close to 50% to 39% in 2013, due largely to the fast rise of natural gas. Wind, negligible in 2000, is now 4-plus percent of US capacity.
But as for Lomborg, I take him with a grain of salt. He has been intellectually dishonest in the past, presumably because one sells more books if they trash the conventional wisdom.
Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get. – Mark Twain
“Where’s the global warming when you need it?”
Alaska:
http://www.ktva.com/january-2015-climate-numbers-for-alaska-355/
Well tell it to get it’s ass in gear. We’re freezing in record lows over here.
D’oh they rerouted it to Alaska by mistake.
Plenty of warming here on the west coast. I’ve lived in Oregon 20 years, and this February is warmer and dryer than most of the Mays I’ve experienced here.
Ok, Russ, don’t make me hate you
“this February is warmer and dryer than most of the Mays I’ve experienced here.”
So it’s 50 degrees and drizzling instead of 45 degrees and raining?
So, you’ve been here before… It’s blue and sunny, mid fifty’s.
This looks like an argument for more nuclear power.
Let the flaming begin.
Actually, no, you’re right: it is a good argument for nuclear power.
The problem with nuclear power is will power: no one wants to front the cash (and accept the responsibility) to build thorium reactors, and existing reactors are being put into the hands of private entities that DGAF when it comes to waste disposal and maintenance.
Nuclear requires, frankly, a government willing to look beyond the election cycle and make hard decisions. Coincidentally, combating climate change requires a government willing to do the same.
Good luck with that.
(side note: environmentalists who oppose nuclear power along with anti-vaccination, anti-wind-turbine and anti-GMO are, frankly, the left-wing equivalent to birthers and creationists)
“existing reactors are being put into the hands of private entities that DGAF when it comes to waste disposal”
They can’t GAF about waste disposal because there simply isn’t a practical way to deal with waste that will remain highly toxic for more millenia than human civilization has existed.
I live near Chicago, and we use to get over 60% of our electricity from fission. But now, thanks to the leftists, it’s down around 30% nuke. You should be ashamed…
Chris, I also live near Chicago, and I’m not the least bit ashamed about how much of our elec comes from nukes. Until someone figures out how to deal with radioactive waste that remains toxic for millenia, fission power is a failure that saddles the future with the costs of our profligate ways. I’ll change my mind when someone works out thorium reactors or fusion.
One of the most interesting things I got to do as a journalism student in college was participate in a ComEd drill simulating a nuclear disaster.
It involved being in a bunker somewhere on the north side and acting as the media presence for the press guy giving periodic “updates” on the situation.
Whatever it is, it’s an argument to get rid of coal power (which we’ve all known for decades.)
Stick some solar on your roof and power it that way = argument destroyed. The problem is the power source, not the car.
How would sticking a solar panel on your roof work for Oregon and Washington between October and June? Or really anywhere outside of the desert southwest? If it was viable people would do it.
I concur. In the Netherlands the fiscally favoring of EVs (typically lease cars) has costed close to 7 billion so far. That comes down to a 1000 euro per car owner, rich or poor. You might think: well, you have to sacrifice something in order to clean the air, reduce fossil energy use… Turns out that a lot of Prius’ (plural: Prii?) and alike are being exported to Eastern Europe and Russia. Thing is that after the lease has ended, those EVs aren’t particularly popular privately owned. So, in other countries the switch to green cars is actually subsidized with Dutch taxpayers money.
The discussion about “shifting” CO2 emissions to the power plant is absurd.
It takes about the same amount of electricity to refine a gallon of crude as it does to send a Nissan Leaf 30 miles. So a Sentra uses about as much electricity as a Leaf, plus the gasoline.
Yeah; he makes a lot of assumptions, and glosses over a lot of details with that statement.
Most electric cars are recharged at night. That means they are part of the base load at night; they may help keep coal plants from having to throttle down at night; but many countries have nuclear, hydro, and wind as part of their base generation as well.
It also overlooks the benefits electric cars have to the local environment during the day. By charging at night and emitting nothing during the day; they are cutting down on urban smog.
And yes, there is the power associated with refining and transporting the gasoline that a ICE car would use otherwise. Still; I do somewhat argree with his arguement; namely that the amount we are subsidizing electric cars is more than their benefit to the environment.
Exactly, electric cars are mostly useful in cities where they cut-down on smog (which is a health hazard).
Only a few countries/regions rely on coal, and those aren’t the ones that buy most electric cars (California, Japan, and France).
@jhefner: That’s fair.
Also, it is much easier to fit pollution control (which may eventually include CO2 capture) to a single source of electricity than it is to thousands of vehicles.
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bjorn_Lomborg
Good link
“Bjorn Lomborg is associate professor of statistics in the Department of Political Science at the University of Aarhus, Denmark; his books have been “hugely influential in providing cover to politicians, climate-change deniers, and corporations that don’t want any part of controls on greenhouse emissions”.
Lomborg is not a climate scientist or economist and has published little or no peer-reviewed research on environmental or climate policy. His extensive and extensively documented, errors and misrepresentations, which are aimed at a lay audience, “follow a general pattern” of minimizing the need to cut carbon emissions.”
I’m shocked. Shocked, I tell you.
Next we’ll hear about how GM’s bankruptcy was illegal.
Do not knock Bjorn’s math background, because it is in the math that the so-call climate “scientists” display their almost complete ignorance of data analysis, confidence intervals, systems modeling, and most certainly in the basic physics of CO2 (and other so-called greenhouse gases).
The physics is bunk, and we can go from there.
From what I’ve read from some of the research clowns, they’d have flunked my freshman physics class, let alone some class which had real math.
Period.
Sourcewatch is a Soros front. That’s like asking a child rapist to babysit, except that the child rapist may have a more limited scope to the harm they intend.
Lomborg is a hack, and he isn’t a scientist. Sourcewatch is just summarizing his work as a hack, and noting (correctly) that he isn’t a scientist.
Neither is Al Gore, but at least lomborg doesn’t stand to make millions off of it.
Lomborg’s salary with his US-registered non-profit is in the six figures.
On the other hand, I doubt that he is publishing this book for altruistic reasons.
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/02/07/breathtaking-adjustments-to-arctic-temperature-record-is-there-any-global-warming-we-can-trust/
At what point do the people falsifying historical climate records to perpetuate a failing AGW narrative become hacks and stop being scientists?
I didn’t know that Breitbart was a science journal.
The fact that “peer review” and “climate skeptic” appear to be mutually exclusive should be a hint that the whole concept of skepticism is bogus. The skeptics hold themselves to a low standard.
Really? Breitbart?
Sorry, you should have posted that a couple of weeks ago. Denialist myths usually get debunked after a couple of days.
http://www.factcheck.org/2015/02/nothing-false-about-temperature-data/
The AGW lobby didn’t like it that actual climate measurements didn’t support their industry, so they changed them. If you fall for the rationalizations for changing the numbers to suit the model, then your peers aren’t exactly meritorious.
I wouldn’t trust Breitbart to tell me if the sun were shining. Credibility challenged.
@Pch101 You’re right. His degree is in political science.
“Sourcewatch is a Soros front. That’s like asking a child rapist to babysit, except that the child rapist may have a more limited scope to the harm they intend”
Why do many partisans act like such complete a$$holes? Liberal kingpin obviously = child rapist. Nice one. Digging deep for that gem. Written by a notoriously grouchy internet commenter with a (legal?) background. Why, that’s like asking a child rapist to understand climate science…
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe “child rapist” is the first thing that pops into your head whenever you look for any kind of analogy.
I knew I shouldn’t have clicked on this article. I knew what I’d find here. I knew it, I knew it, yet I still clicked.
http://www.wjla.com/articles/2015/02/falls-church-man-accused-of-trying-to-hire-hitman-to-kill-young-witnesses-in-molestation-trial-11157.html
Virginia Democratic Party official arrested for child molestation hired a hitman to kill the 2 little girls to prevent them from testifying in court. This would be national news if Soros didn’t direct the media with his tentacle agencies like Media Matters and all the fake fact checkers. You’re a puppet.
“This would be national news if Soros didn’t direct the media with his tentacle agencies like Media Matters and all the fake fact checkers. You’re a puppet.”
Your source is ABC News. You try to manipulate a horrible story to support an asinine statement by saying the story was suppressed by someone powerful on the left and to support your claim you source ABC News… Huh, what?
Here’s my biggest problem with the right, you all think we’re as dumb as you and I find that insulting
Both the left and the right are just as bad, often trying to out-do each other when it comes to sinking to new lows.
In America we vote for what we want. And politics-du-jour is all in the eye of the party in power.
For the next two years, we should enjoy and take advantage of a lame-duck prez and a do-nothing Congress to achieve the things that matter to each of us.
That’s right, I forgot that child molestation followed American political party lines. How silly of me.
“You’re a puppet.”
That’s fine. You’re still acting like an a$$hole.
CJ thinks that he’s being insightful when he tosses around these hollow catchphrases of his. Tragic, yet funny.
Pch,
We could mine the TTAC archives and make a coffee table book out of these one-liners. Glossy automotive photos with quotes about how liberals, LGBTs, and owners of domestics & Volkswagens are ignorant degenerates.
Publish it with soy ink on recycled paper, just to add insult to injury.
With a foreword by George Soros.
Lie2me,
Since you don’t know the difference between national news and local affiliates, please refrain from responding to my posts in the future.
I picked that link because finding an article that included his party affiliation and didn’t open the door for ostriches to claim it wasn’t news because conservatives were reporting it left me with this one choice. This would be a big national story if the monster was anyone other than a Democratic insider. It could have been a former Jerry Springer guest, and the facts of the case would have made it grist for Oscar-worthy hand-wringing from the anchor clowns on every network.
The Washington Post also ran the story, yeah I know local market
Yeah, it’s a wonder that the story of a minor ex-party official who was convicted years ago didn’t bump Ukraine, ISIS, Iran, Netanyahu or Greece off of the front page. I mean, where are their priorities?
In other news, Ted Bundy was a Republican activist. Perhaps they should pay tribute to him at the next GOP convention.
Also, Francisco Franco is still dead. Perhaps that’s another topic that is suitable for “debate.”
“Also, Francisco Franco is still dead.”
… and Nixon’s still a crook
How dead is Franco? Just a little, or is he really, really, like, superdead? Surely this must be debated.
Also, is the fourth of July actually on the 4th of July, or is it some sort of leftist conspiracy to protect lazy people from needing to work during the summer?
I’m sure you realize this, but countering this article with an extreme left wing site provides zero benefit.
It’s as helpful as countering Rachel Maddow with something from Rush.
It’s an accurate summary of Lomborg’s work. And I didn’t feel like typing an essay on the subject, so you’ll have to live with the link.
If you have a reputable source to counter it, then provide it.
I have a feeling no reputable source is going to satisfy you. It’s easy for a person to be torn down, but not many sites are going to exist telling an audience of the merits of an individual, outside of a site that either employs said person or is edited by said person.
With my ignorance overwhelming me here, how do Scandinavian academics work, could he not possibly have done research and taken many classes regarding these sciences? Is having a four year degree a requirement to have an opinion in a certain field?
You don’t have a reputable source, I’m sure.
“Formal accusations of scientific dishonesty
After the publication of The Skeptical Environmentalist, Lomborg was formally accused of scientific dishonesty by a group of environmental scientists, who brought a total of three complaints against him to the Danish Committees on Scientific Dishonesty (DCSD), a body under Denmark’s Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MSTI). Lomborg was asked whether he regarded the book as a “debate” publication, and thereby not under the purview of the DCSD, or as a scientific work; he chose the latter, clearing the way for the inquiry that followed. The charges claimed that The Skeptical Environmentalist contained deliberately misleading data and flawed conclusions. Due to the similarity of the complaints, the DCSD decided to proceed on the three cases under one investigation.
In January, 2003, the DCSD released a ruling that sent a mixed message, finding the book to be scientifically dishonest through misrepresentation of scientific facts, but Lomborg himself not guilty due to his lack of expertise in the fields in question: That February, Lomborg filed a complaint against the decision with the MSTI, which had oversight over the DCSD. In December, 2003, the Ministry annulled the DCSD decision, citing procedural errors, including lack of documentation of errors in the book, and asked the DCSD to re-examine the case. In March 2004, the DCSD formally decided not to act further on the complaints, reasoning that renewed scrutiny would, in all likelihood, result in the same conclusion.”
-Wikipedia
I have no pony in the race I only want the truth
If people are interested, they can go to the original source material about Lomborg. There is no need to rely on an amateur aggregation site such as Sourcewatch — type his name into a search engine and start digging, there is plenty of material out there.
His work has been widely repudiated among scientists. He aims his work at laypeople because there are suckers among the uninformed who don’t know better.
I would say that his work doesn’t stand up to scrutiny by his peers, except that scientists are not his peers — he isn’t a scientist.
I know he’s a hack, but so are a lot of guys on the otherside
It’s pretty obvious no one here knows him in all likelihood have even read his book(s), including myself.
But I see the large number of people that would rather shutdown debate as opposed to treat science as theories, which it is. It’s like the dark ages all over again, say the earth is round and you get ridiculed for going against the gospel.
I’m not debating anyone. I am simply pointing out that this guy is a lousy source.
If you can demonstrate that he is a reputable source, then do it. Otherwise, stop whining.
I want debate, but I want it from credible scientists on both sides who aren’t paid to push one agenda over another. This stuff’s way too important to let it get as corrupt as it has
Scientists don’t debate climate change. It isn’t a controversial subject among scientists. The research suggests that the basic principles are correct.
It is controversial only among people who don’t know much about science. That should tell you something.
” It isn’t a controversial subject among scientists.”
Are you kidding? I can’t think of anything more controversial then what’s going on with the planet. There are no black and white answers, there are too many facets for one conclusive position
Surveys of scientists find that supermajorities among them agree with the AGW hypothesis.
If you look at peer-reviewed papers, you won’t find any that dispute climate change.
There is no controversy here.
@Hummer – debate among laypeople is hugely different than debate among scientists.
The gold standard for professionals is reproducibility of results. If you take 10 different experts in a field and they replicate the same study/experiment all 10 will come to basically the same conclusion.
The world is full of self-proclaimed experts on any topic. People seek validation of belief not truth. That is why we have over 200 Christian denominations and ISIS.
Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace is now one of their biggest dissidents. He left because he felt their policies became based on a far left political agenda.
Moore happens to have a PhD in Ecology and B.Sc. in Forest Biology.
He is skeptical that man alone is responsible for climate change.
I personally believe that climate change is a reality but am skeptical about the alleged science used by the left or right.
“you won’t find any that dispute climate change. ”
I agree, the controversy is what causes it and what can be done about it
Yeah, my friends on the East Coast are loving that Global Warming right now.
There is no controversy about what causes it. AGW = caused by humans.
There is no controversy about what to do about it: produce less carbon.
The only controversy is from laypeople, most specifically right-wing laypeople who think that covering your ears and shouting makes something worthy of “debate.”
The only thing to debate is whether we want to do anything about it or not. I just hope that the models are wrong, as we obviously aren’t willing to do very much.
“There is no controversy about what causes it. AGW = caused by humans.
There is no controversy about what to do about it: produce less carbon.
The only controversy is from laypeople, most specifically right-wing laypeople who think that covering your ears and shouting makes something worthy of “debate.”
The only thing to debate is whether we want to do anything about it or not. I just hope that the models are wrong, as we obviously aren’t willing to do very much.”
Uhh, no, there is also significant debate over what the tangible effects will be, and to what extreme we need to take actions to avoid (or not avoid) those effects.
As I noted below, the AGW hysterics have done an epicly terrible job of quantifying and predicting what bad things are going to happen, and therefore it’s hard to take them seriously when they propose extreme measure to avoid something that somehow never seems to happen.
The problem with the doom and gloom climate models is they depend on there being 400% as much warming as the CO2 itself would cause, and these predictions are being falsified.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gDErDwXqhc
“I agree, the controversy is what causes it and what can be done about it”
No, there isn’t.
I mean, unless you also accept that there’s scientific controversy about Intelligent Design or Vaccines Causing Autism.
“There is no controversy about what causes it. AGW = caused by humans. ”
Every time I see this I can’t help but think of the earth laughing and thinking,
“Stupid humans, it’s not always all about you”
Multiple Ice ages
Mass extinctions
Volcanoes that pump out more CO2 in a day than all your little cars put together in a year
Carbon footprint? do you have any idea what one 125ton Amphicoelias dinosaur leaves behind? You don’t even want to be on the same continent when that thing farts
Long before you little people got here
“Every time I see this I can’t help but think of the earth laughing and thinking,
“Stupid humans, it’s not always all about you””
Climate scientists know this. They know that nothing short of a massive asteroid strike is going to kill the planet.
To quote Carlin, “The planet is fine. It’s the people on it that are (*&*ed”
Personally, I’d rather not live, nor have my kids live through generalized crop failure, food shortages, more frequent severe weather and the occasional war.
@Lie2Me
My sentiments exactly. Humans are as unimportant as a single grain of sand on a beach in the grand scheme of things. Ad we are about the most adaptable species this planet has ever produced to date. Chances are, we will go on regardless of what happens. And if not, oh well. Nobody misses the T-Rex, and nobody will miss us in 100 million years either.
The doom and gloom is great for an awful lot of peoples pay checks on both sides of this particular argument, but ultimately I really, truly could not care less about “Climate Change”. I’ll be dust within 60 years at the outside. And I REALLY don’t care about your kids. The very best carbon reduction scheme of all is fewer humans cluttering up the place, so I am doing my part in that by not breeding.
@lie2me “Volcanoes that pump out more CO2 in a day than all your little cars put together in a year”
Actually, volcanoes put out 0.25 giga-tons per year. Humans put out 30 giga-tons per year.
Here’s an thoughtful and entertaining youtube video about the 13 misconceptions of climate change:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWXoRSIxyIU
What also matters is that humans create the tipping point.
Your dog produces CO2, but not very much. And your dog produces about as much CO2 as did his predecessors 200 years ago.
We can’t make the same claim. We produce far more of it than we used to. It’s the amount of the increase that poses the problem — the planet is not set up to handle this much of it.
“But I see the large number of people that would rather shutdown debate as opposed to treat science as theories, which it is.”
I don’t think you understand what a theory is. Gravity is a theory, but we have a good set of explanations and tests that are internally consistent. Evolution is a theory, but we have, again, test and proofs and observations that are consistent.
I’ve yet to see compelling, reproducible, consistent evidence to contradict gravity as being caused by the curvature of space, evolution as organisms changing over time as a response to stimulus, or climate change as a result of an uptick in carbon emissions.
“It’s like the dark ages all over again, say the earth is round and you get ridiculed for going against the gospel.”
No, it’s not like the dark ages. In the dark ages, you’d be burned, racked and/or excommunicated.
Now, all science asks is that you have some kind of reproducible observations that match a contradictory theory. Climate-change deniers have _nothing_ of the sort.
Someone above actually said this: “But I see the large number of people that would rather shutdown debate as opposed to treat science as theories, which it is.”
A theory, in science, is not a “guess”. It is not something someone pulls out of the arse with no evidence to support it. A scientific theory is an intellectual framework (represented by some basic principles or a series of equations) that is consistent with all the available data.I’m not sure that AGW has yet risen to the level of a theory like evolution or general relativity, though.
I’ve noticed out here on the Interwebs that there are many who confuse terminology when used in a lay context with how it is used in science or the law.
In daily conversation, a theory is just a hunch. People have all sorts of theories about trivialities (some of which aren’t even true.)
But in science, theory has a very different meaning that makes a scientific theory far more than just a hunch. There has to be a lot of evidence and testing before a hypothesis becomes a “theory.”
This provides a fairly simple explanation: http://www.livescience.com/21491-what-is-a-scientific-theory-definition-of-theory.html
Hummer,
To someone who is a leftist, an extreme left wing site is only slightly biased. This is the problem with political discourse today. People have some odd visceral marriage to their political beliefs the way I’m a Chicago Bears fan.
It’s nuts. In both cases.
If you’re so convinced that Bjorn Lomborg is a credible source, then it should be easy for you to provide something credible that contradicts the link.
The fact that you guys devote all of this energy to whining about it yet can’t provide a scrap of evidence to prove your point would suggest that you don’t have a leg to stand on. Which isn’t surprising.
Can any climate scientist promise nicer weather, higher agricultural yields or a more hospitable planet overall?
They have no raison d’etre, let alone a salient argument.
Pollution doesn’t have to be an apocalyptic event for people to desire making less of it. The climatology movement are genuinely demented people, who have not even the slightest understanding of how to motivate people to do things.
So science isn’t good if it doesn’t cheer you up.
You need big pharma for that
@Lie2me – perhaps that is why the left has pushed for legalized Marijuana.
“Up in Smoke” is more than a Cheech and Chong movie, it is a political agenda.
If you think there aren’t those on the right who are profiting from legalization, I’d say you’re wrong
@Lie2me – I read a bumper sticker once that said “In capitalism man exploits man, in communism it is the other way around”.
There are those out to make a buck from everything. Political inclination means that they approach self serving greed from a slightly different trajectory.
Why is it exactly does climate science need to motivate(manipulate) people to do things? What’s wrong with just laying out facts/findings discovered. You know, the old-school way of doing things.
“Why is it exactly does climate science need to motivate(manipulate) people to do things? What’s wrong with just laying out facts/findings discovered. You know, the old-school way of doing things.”
Climate scientists do just that. They produce reports, with reams of data behind it, backed by reviews to ensure it’s reproducible. There’s no other way to do science; that’s how the process _works_.
It’s the other side that throws up “teach the controversy” garbage based on cherry-picked facts.
Finally, it’s the media that spins both the disaster angle of the science, and gives false-balance credibility to people who have little, if any, science behind their statements.
@Pch101 – “http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bjorn_Lomborg”
Thanks for the link!
For those who dismiss that site as left wing propaganda, I didn’t need the link to smell something fishy about Lomborg. From the USA Today article, Lomborg bases his argument on:
“The researchers estimate that if the U.S. has 10% more gasoline cars in 2020,… ”
An EV adoption rate of 45% by 2020? That’s a big big if. Every year, TTAC highlights “Exxon Mobil Perspectives” and Exxon Mobil, unsurprisingly, sees a much much lower adoption of electric vehicles.
Lomborg also fails to factor in oil related accidents such as the Exxon Valdez, BP Deep Water Horizon, the Canadian oil train derailments, countless oil pipeline failures, and fracking issues.
It’s fun to watch knees so predictably jerk.
It wasn’t enough for me to say that Lomborg was accused of scientific misconduct or that his remarks are controversial and provocative. It must be made clear that Lomborg is doubleplus ungood to all right thinking persons.
You sure his name isn’t Emmanuel Goldstein?
“It’s fun to watch knees so predictably jerk.”
Of course it is.
This is a blog driven by ad revenue—if you’re not jerking knees, you’re not getting eyeballs with them. If it weren’t the case, you wouldn’t have Doug or Jack posting deliberately-inflammatory screeds (“When did BMW lose it’s mojo”? Really? Could you try any _harder_ to troll for posts?) and you wouldn’t have Cameron throwing up red meat like diesel unavailability, Cadillac’s ad-ventures and/or the GM bailout. Again.
And that’s fine. TTAC needs to stay in business
The issue isn’t that Lomborg isn’t entitled to his opinion, it’s that a) you didn’t really consider your source when you posted this, either because it’s red meat for the B&B and/or because you agree with him, which is shoddy journalism, and b) he’s not “controversial” or “provocative”, he’s just flat wrong.
My source was USA Today. It’s a major news outlet and they considered Lomborg’s op-ed to be newsworthy enough to run. The topic is of interest to our readers. I wrote an impartial account, expecting people on both sides of the issue to comment.
I understand that delegitimizing is intellectually less challenging than debating, which explains all the ad hominem stuff. There are those who if they can’t make Lomborg into a Nikolai Yezhov-like non person they will settle for calling him a hack.
Al Gore and the ex Mrs. Larry David no doubt have better scientific credentials than Prof. Lomborg.
FWIW, I’ve never really been comfortable with calling myself a journalist and considering the standards of establishment journalism (Eason, Blair, Rather, the Rolling Stone UVA Rape hoax, etc) I’m not sure that I’d want to be closely associated with that profession. I’m a writer, that’s what my last name means.
It’s fascinating how orthodox the left can be. Lomborg isn’t a climate change skeptic. He accepts that anthropogenic global warming is a fact, but he disagrees with how to approach it. That’s enough to get him kicked off the island.
Lomborg is a concern troll who has changed his tune from being a denier to being one who allegedly accepts the AGW hypothesis but doesn’t want to do anything about it.
Do you think that Holocaust denial is “controversial” and worthy of “debate,” or do you accept that it contains an agenda that gives it no legitimate place in a discussion of history?
When the Iranians hold their regular Holocaust seminars with deniers as the featured guests, do you believe that they have something that deserves to be publicized or do you presume that the motives of the hosts and the “historians” are suspect?
“Do you think that Holocaust denial is “controversial” and worthy of “debate,” or do you accept that it contains an agenda that gives it no legitimate place in a discussion of history?”
Actually, I believe that lies must be confronted with the truth. I have no trouble debating Jew-haters whether they’re neo-Nazis, Jihadis, or your lefty BDS friends.
Yes, I feel a little silly having to explain that no, Jews don’t drink the blood of Gentile children, but someone’s gotta do it.
I never subscribed to the idea of not giving your enemies legitimacy by debating them. How else can you refute their premises?
“When the Iranians hold their regular Holocaust seminars with deniers as the featured guests, do you believe that they have something that deserves to be publicized or do you presume that the motives of the hosts and the “historians” are suspect?”
Oh, I know whose motives are suspect and who would stand by while Jews and Christians are murdered by savages.
Gee, I wonder why you brought up Holocaust deniers to me, of all people. How subtle. If I was a lefty I’d call that a microagression. You know, you really should have given me a trigger warning.
“Holocaust denial”? PCH has gone full retard quickly on this topic.
>Do you think that Holocaust denial is “controversial” and worthy of “debate,” or do you accept that it contains an agenda that gives it no legitimate place in a discussion of history?<
Even when I've disagreed with you on issues, you've always made me think. And I like that. But you went full retard with this one. Seriously, you're an idiot.
Argh. Historians don’t “debate” Holocaust deniers, they refute them.
Holocaust denial is a crock. It isn’t worthy of “debate.” Some historians may go ahead and refute the BS. But they aren’t having a discussion with peers over reasonable differences — they are providing truth in response to propaganda.
Lomborg’s shtick is to claim that climate change is real, only to say that it isn’t so bad, that it has some positive features, and that nothing to address it works on a cost-benefit basis. It’s a passive-aggressive form of denial — there is nothing proactive that anyone can suggest to address AGW that he will accept.
Incidentally, Holocaust denial uses a lot of the same tactics as climate change denial. They claim that there is a mainstream conspiracy “industry” to suppress the truth, that the idea is a “hoax” and that all that they are asking for is a “debate.” (They’re also equally fond of using “research” that hasn’t peer-reviewed or subject to scrutiny, daring to equate it to better work produced by more credible people.) Funny how this stuff works.
>Incidentally, Holocaust denial uses a lot of the same tactics as climate change denial.<
Yes, because denying an historical event in which there is incontrovertible proof that six million people were murdered is exactly the same as me questioning whether the temperature of the planet might be 3 degrees cooler than you think it's going to be fifty years from now. You realize science and history aren't the same, right?
In denial of the denial. That’s cute.
Scientific work is subject to peer review, yet the climate denial stuff is never peer reviewed. Screw on your thinking cap (if you have one) and ask yourself why the deniers make their pitch to know-nothings, and not to scientists who would be able to refute them.
Pch101,
Your peers would apparently be people that equate AGW denial with holocaust denial. There’s no plurality of you that equates to a single sound mind. There is R&D done the developed world over that is collaborative and knowledge building. In recent years it wouldn’t be called ‘peer reviewed’ though, as that is a distinction saved for circle-jerks of agenda-driven campus radicals instead of professionals. If the evidence supporting said agenda were sound, there wouldn’t be falsified data, hockey stick models, failed predictions, idiots frozen into ‘disappearing ice’ and rabid attacks on anyone concerned by false data and failed predictions.
You could have made this easier by finding a credible climate change skeptic who isn’t a hack.
Oh, that’s right, there isn’t one. That must explain it.
Yes because credible scientists who believe in man made GW exist.
Global warming is 100% politics 0% science, otherwise the complete dismissal of scientific fact going against the GW agenda wouldn’t be criticized from a political standpoint but rather researched from a scientific standpoint.
The truth is Global warming is treated like a political hot potato, it is never treated as science, but rather hides under the guise of science without actual science being behind it.
There is no proof for or against global warming, it is 100% a measure in trusting the same lying sacks that tell you what you want to hear before you vote. The climate changes on its own, exploiting this before the Internet may have been scrutiny free, but with the mass of information availible it’s a parachute riddled with holes. You yourself refuse to show why you believe in GW, but are quick to look down on anyone that may have a difference of opinion.
Saying the science is settled is no different than saying you don’t have a clue what your talking about. Gravity is testable, as you get closer to the poles the affects of gravity decrease. Global warming requires you to trust a bunch of politicians that will have you believe that humans can affect earth regardless of the fact we will never in our time of existence have carbon levels as high as they have been in the past.
Science CANNOT exist when we make our beliefs into facts, the advancement of science requires us to constantly question previous evidence.
If you read anything Lomborg has written, he’s just another lukewarm moderate, who refuses to ride on the bandwagon of political extremism. For climate Nazis, a centrist is just another neutral nation ripe for total pulverization, but you’re just manufacturing more enemies.
He’s from Denmark. How could anyone possibly believe he doesn’t advocate throwing money at pseudo-socialist solutions and public works? When you’re left of a gay vegan Dane, your movement has definitely fallen pray to the absolutism of purity.
The climate inquisition has begun.
How about Freeman Dyson?
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/letters-to-a-heretic-an-email-conversation-with-climate-change-sceptic-professor-freeman-dyson-2224912.html
I’m not sure how many times that I am going to need to type “peer review” on this post before the point gets across.
@Pch101
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Bjorn_Lomborg
Awww…you’ve got your little spoon-fed take downs ready to go. Cute. Let’s try this:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Peter_Gleick
Yup. There you go. A proven liar, fraud, and so incompetent he can’t even forge a PDF file. But on this crap site, he’s all wonderful and scrubbed and science-y. Read this link, from that criminal Exxon front group The Atlantic:
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/peter-gleick-confesses-to-obtaining-heartland-documents-under-false-pretenses/253395/
Not the same guy as on Sourcewatch, is it? Funny that.
Or take this high priest of Carbontology, the (former) top carbon clown of all the EPA, John Beale:
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/12/epa-john-beale-fake-spy-cia-prison-101289.html
I know Politico is a front group for Koch and all, but my-my what a discredited loser. Let’s see his page on Sourcewatch…oh wait! There isn’t one there! Totally scrubbed his name from the entire site.
I remember when I was six-years old and Kool Aid tasted so good. You must be a kid at heart, PcH.
If Lomborg has any credibility at all, feel free to provide some evidence of it.
Nobody claimed that Sourcewatch was a definitive source for judging his work. It is simply a starting point for research — go ahead and do some that proves them wrong about Lomborg.
“He says, for example, that the total life cycle CO2 emissions of the Tesla Model S will be about 44 tons, compared to an Audi A7 Quattro’s ~49 tons. At the current trading rate of $9/ton on Europe’s carbon emissions market, that works out to what Lomborg describes as just $45 in climate benefits for the $7,500 tax credit by which American taxpayers subsidize the purchase of EVs. “That’s a bad deal,” is how the Danish professor describes it.”
But isn’t that a stupid metric? The important piece is “44 tons versus 49 tons” not what the idiotic carbon credits are trading at. You’re making less pollution overall, which is the goal.
And further, two other points: can’t we phase coal plants out to either cleaner coal plants, or Nat Gas, or something else? (Nuclear)?
Second, I really don’t care THAT much about pollution, my main goal is getting us off of ME oil (and I know WE don’t use ME oil per se, but in a comodity market we drive demand for it). The less oil we use, the less influence the ME has, and the ME is a backwards sh!thole that I’d like to see us vacate and let rot.
All we can do by limiting our oil consumption is eradicate our middle class, as the progressives have already been working on through regulations and illegal immigration. The world will use oil, as it is the key to general prosperity. What we should do is expand US production to the point that Russia and the Middle East are small players in a cheap energy market.
…What we should do is expand US production to the point that Russia and the Middle East are small players in a cheap energy market…
Go back and read what I wrote on the oil markets here on TTAC.
Making Russia and the Middle East small players in a cheap energy market would plunge 1/3 of the world into total anarchy as old systems broke down. That would have negative consequences on global security that no amount of defense spending or Patriot Act III, IV, V and VI will solve.
These countries need the revenues to keep their populations in check. There is a reason why Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Dubai don’t have ISIL problems. The average slob in those countries is less likely to want to die in glorious jihad because they have a pretty good life. Not by decadent American standards, but definitely by Middle Eastern standards.
Take that away and the puppet governments in those nations won’t be able to keep those populations in check – you also seem to ignore Russia’s own problem with Muslim extremism that extends into the Middle East – and lets not forget, by proxy, right here in the United States (Boston Marathon Bombing)
The stability of the Middle East and Russia is dependent on them being players in the oil markets. Make them bit players and between lousy security for Russian nuclear weapons and the whack jobs that are within the Pakistani government, nuclear terrorism goes from a probable if – to make no mistake about it.
You also ignore the fact that US law, that has been on the books for decades, due to national security reasons, prohibits the export of US sourced crude oil.
You’re worried about the middle class but you support crude oil exports? I see. And so those other markets that are willing to pay more, if you were a major global corporations, a Fortune 50 company what would you do? Sell your crude oil to whining, complaining, already enjoying some of the lowest prices in the world US buyers, or sell to Western Europe and Asia? Buyers willing to pay more.
Hint – big oil companies answer to shareholders that demand economic growth – and if China is growing faster than us, where is the oil going and at what price?
But I guess the average US consumer would be content paying European prices for gas – that would do wonders for the middle class.
“And so those other markets that are willing to pay more, if you were a major global corporations, a Fortune 50 company what would you do? Sell your crude oil to whining, complaining, already enjoying some of the lowest prices in the world US buyers, or sell to Western Europe and Asia? Buyers willing to pay more.”
Err, Western Europe pays more because of gas taxes. The rest of this just shows a marked lack of understanding of how a commodity market works.
“There is a reason why Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Dubai don’t have ISIL problems.”
Umm, ISIL problems are generally region-specific, in that you have to be IN an ISIL-afflicted territory to get your head chopped off. If we don’t care about those regions, no presence, no head chopping. The Saudis, OTOH, helped fund 9/11, out of, wait for it, oil profits.
You know why no one worries Haiti or Congo or Somalia is going to detonate a dirty bomb in NYC? Because those places are desperately poor and can’t fund such a thing, and are more worried about eating than hating America. Take away oil demand, and we can turn ME into the same thing, and they can just chop each other’s heads off with no effect on America.
I think I have a much better understanding of commodity markets, especially the oil industry.
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2014/12/ur-turn-truth-oil/
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2015/01/ur-turn-truth-oil-part-two-good-bad-ugly/
Let’s make this real simple OK.
The United States couldn’t flood the market with cheap oil if we wanted to.
It costs around $70 a barrel to suck shale oil out of the ground. Some wells can operate as low as $40 a barrel, that’s the basement – the mean is about $70 a barrel.
Shale oil horizontally drilled fracking operations also don’t produce for long periods of time, two years is average, five years is lucky. So there is short ROI relative to the drilling costs.
If the US “floods the market,” since it’s a global commodity (that you think I don’t understand) the global price will go down. If the price drops gets close to $40 a barrel, US production will dry up because, despite the fact you say I don’t understand commodity markets, the last time I checked, drillers, refiners, and big oil companies are in business to make a profit. They aren’t charities.
So when supply outstrips demand guess what, the supply from more expensive operations like certain countries (Iran), certain sources (Canada oil sands, deep well operations off Brazil, deep well Gulf operations in the US and Mexico, and oh ya, fracking operations in the US) get shut down because they aren’t profitable.
Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait, and for Russia certain sources, can kick most global markets into the ground. UAE and Kuwait can have prices drop down to around $20 a barrel and still turn a profit, Saudi Arabia can fight a far of attrition far longer than the shareholders of any publicly traded company can. Russia was arrogant and stupid to build their revenue models for taxation on $100 a barrel an oil, considering most economist will tell you that $80ish is healthy (how interesting, at $80 fracking operations are – profitable)
So I apparently don’t understand that it would be impossible for the US to “flood the market,” unless the United States took over the US based oil companies, made them state oil companies and had the government eat the losses.
As a shareholder of CVX I sure wouldn’t tolerate it if they hemorrhaged cash.
So sorry, the United States couldn’t bury the Middle East and Russia in low cost oil if they wanted to.
As far as your view on the cost of terrorism, how much did it cost for a pot smoking teenager in Boston to turn a pressure cooker into a terrorist device that turned a major US city upside down for almost a week?
9/11’s operational costs? Some basic flight instruction, plane tickets, and some box cutters. The commercial aircraft delivery system was free.
1993 WTC bombing? A rental truck and some homemade bomb materials from cheap, readily available chemicals.
OKC? The same.
My soon to be wife is a former Russian national. I am deep in Russian circles. They are a hard people who, outside of the western major cities are a rural, poorly educated, easily controlled group who prefer a heavy hand. Take away the government’s ability to enforce that and you’d have chaos.
Can’t fund operations? Gee, and here I do all this reading about eastern European hackers who steal hundreds of millions in USD a year, year after year, and largely go uncaught.
Coughing up the cash for a rogue nuclear weapon that was “misplaced” in a collapsing Russia or sold off by a sympathetic person in the Pakistani government is ironically, a few fat US credit card numbers away. I’m pretty sure if it ever came to it, the person selling the device wouldn’t be asking, “hey buddy, that cash is from a legitimate source right because, I’m not accepting any stolen dollars.”
But maybe the Patriot Act III will protect us — but who will protect us from our protectors?
@S2k Chris – ISIL/ISIS needs territory to function as a caliphate. They also need a Caliph who is a Muslim adult man of Quraysh descent. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi meets those criteria.
The “region specific” aspect of what you speak of is true only in context of there needs to be the right conditions for such a group to take hold and grow.
This group believes the Koran to be a literal source of all law and conduct both personally and militarily.
Your “If we don’t care about those regions, no presence, no head chopping.” is completely off base and based on what?
This group would not take hold in Saudi Arabia and most wealthy so called Muslim states. This group considers those states, leaders and even most of their residents as heretics. The “head-chopping” would continue and no one really knows how many Muslims have been killed by this group.
You obviously are only concerned about the PUBLIC executions of WESTERNERS.
Bin Ladin was Saudi and his family were investors in George Dubya Bush’s oil company BUT ISIS views Al-Qaeda with great disdain and also tends to view most of their leadership as heretics as well.
The whole “head in the sand” and hope the bad men go away approach is laughable.
A starving impoverished populace are the breeding ground for ISIS and other groups with similar inclinations.
What’s the extraction cost on all that Gulf of Mexico oil that Obama doesn’t want us to have? The oil off of Florida and California? Beaufort and Chukchi seas? ANWAR? We aren’t doing all we could do, and I find it hard to believe anything coming out of someone that adopts false narratives about our resources to justify bad policy.
Oh CJinSD there you go bringing Obama into it again. Who doesn’t want drilling in the Gulf? The Democrats? Obama? Really? REALLY?
In 1997 the Clinton Administration proposed 5.9 million acres of the Gulf of Mexico, called Area 181, to be put up for oil drilling leases starting in 2001. Leases went up but because oil prices were in the toilet, there wasn’t a lot of takers.
Ahhh, but Area 181 came within 16 miles of Florida’s west coast and panhandle. Funny thing about drill baby drill baby politicians, they want to drill baby drill, but not in my backyard. Jeb was up for re-election, and when is brother became President in 2001, he petitioned for Area leases to be canceled, because of how close they were to the Florida coast.
Bush Secretary of the Interior Gail Norton, approved the lease areas as they stood when the Bush Administration arrived in office. However, Bush (43) canceled 75% of the lease area (those closest to the Florida coast). You know, to help a brother out – literally.
http://factcheck.bootnetworks.com/article183.html
Obama doesn’t allow Gulf of Mexico drilling?
Huh. Back in 2012 he opened up 38 million acres, an area 6-1/2 times larger than Area 181 to drilling in the Gulf Of Mexico.
So if you’re having a hard time figuring this out – in less than 20 years, Clinton opened up 5.9 million new acres in the Gulf of Mexico, Bush as his second exeuctive action removed 4.425 million acres. Obama added 38 million acres.
So – last three Administrations Gulf of Mexico drilling rights:
Clinton: + 5.9 million acres
Bush (43): -4.43 million acres
Obama: +38 million acres
The easiest areas to access in the eastern Gulf of Mexico? The cheapest sources? Oh, well it turns out the GOP leadership in the region doesn’t want those wells off their coast. The record shows that.
The other leases? Mostly deep water operations that require oil to be $80+ a barrel to make sense. Key word, mostly, so don’t cherry pick a couple of new lease sites representing less than 10% of the total as an example of drill baby drill.
Unless you’re not following current events, there is MASSIVE drill baby drill going on, and there is no reason to drill in ANWR.
Heck, you’re the first person I’ve heard or read mention ANWR, including those in the oil industry, in at least 5 years.
@APaGttH – well said and correct.
China has studied why other Communist regimes have failed and they came to similar conclusions as APaGttH. You keep the great unwashed happy and everything goes along nicely.
One does not need to look further than our own countries. We have voter turnouts around 50%. Obama’s election in 2008 was 58.23% and that just happened to be a time of economic turmoil.
Did you ever think that propping up our enemies isn’t in our interest? Leftists point at China and drool over their ability to impose environmental policies even as their people choke on the filth of central planning. Let them all fail to set an example for our enemies at home.
@CJinSD – the US government has always propped up all sorts of bad boys. I mentioned that in another post.
The point isn’t so much to prop up countries through military intervention or military aid but help countries achieve a better standard of living.
A happy populace is less likely to blame you for their woes.
Where did I say you had to “prop up” enemies?
Not to mention that the Model S is an arguably much higher performing vehicle than a normal A7, you’d have to compare to an RS7 for the performance variants of the Model S. The different in CO2 emissions will then skew much more favorably for the Model S. Moreover, the point of the subsidy is that it’s a temporary measure to boost development until the time when the subsidies are no longer needed so the payoff will be long term, you can’t just count the current savings.
This was hashed out among the thoughtful wing of the environmental movement years ago.
A lot of the hype amount electric cars is wrong, but they’re still better than regular cars in environmental ner. Not only are the emissions less (because electric plants are more efficient than portable lightweigmt ICEs), EVs are agnostic about their actual fuel source.
So, by moving to an EV, you trade two really hard problems (clean power generation (+pollution +climate) and oil dependence (+geopolitics +pollution +climate) ) for the really hard problem of running a clean and stable electric grid (+pollution +climate +resiliency).
I’ve given this a lot of thought, and I’d rather focus on a clean and stable electric grid. That’s a win.
Seriously, folks, this is in the environmental FAQ. At least for anyone thoughtful enough to look it up.
Yawn.
P.S. As for those who are not thoughtful enough to look it up, you guys can have at ’em — I’m not going to bother to defend those people. But let’s not confuse the intellectual rigor and the principles/values behind the movement with the annoying idiocy of our worst members — let’s just say that the green movement does not have a monopoly on that!
@Luke42 – a stable electrical grid is critical regardless of what kind of vehicle a person drives. I read that the USA has 400 years worth of coal but is that the kind of source we want for electrical generation? I do think that overall the science indicates that there is a benefit to hybrids and EV’s.
My problem is that with my geographical location and lifestyle (North Central BC) they have limited range and practicality. Temperature plays a large role with hybrids and EV’s.
“What both graphs indicate is that there is a sweet spot where drivers see the best electric ranges between 60-75 °F (15-24 °C).”
The same study showed the best out of a Leaf at zero Celsius was 170km with an average of 102km. The Volt was best of 62 km and average of 42km.
http://www.fleetcarma.com/nissan-leaf-chevrolet-volt-cold-weather-range-loss-electric-vehicle/
The closest town to mine is 100km away. My inlaws live 135 km away. Those kind of distances kill those cars as a means of intercity transportation.
My region’s average summer Temperature ranges from a high of 21C to a low of 7.5. Fall average is 8.8C and spring 10.5 C.
Most of the year I’m outside the Temp range for peak efficiency.
I am pragmatic. How well will this technology serve me and at what cost (to me)?
There’s no reason to force people into a single solution.
I propose a thought experiment: what happens if half of the cubicle slaves who live close to work (such as myself) change to EVs for their commutes and errands. Now, suppose that everyone else continues as they are.
What does that do to the environment, climate, and geopolitical situation? What happens to the price of gas?
My answers are that we see modest but measurable improvements in environmental and climate conditions, and that the US government will scale back our involvement to in the middle east to something more like the level in South America.
@Luke42 – I agree with everything except the scale back of involvement in the Middle East to the level of South America. The USA has shifted emphasis from South America to he Middle East since the “Red Menace” is currently less of a threat.
One has to remember that the USA has had a habit of supporting some very oppressive murderous regimes due to the doctrine of “any enemy of our enemies is our friend”.
USA and British involvement in the Middle East has caused a lot of these problems to begin with. The Shah of Iran was put in place because the prior regime was going to nationalize oil. Put in a puppet dictator so big oil could continue on unfettered.
Oppress anyone and fundamentalist groups always have a knack of thriving.
I can’t see the USA or most Western countries being able to extricate cleanly from the Middle East or even to scale back to “Advisor” status.
The USA already has decreased oil consumption by improved mpg and alternative energy. Every little bit does help. Your idea will help everything but geopolitical instability unless wealthy countries chose to invest in helping impoverished countries with development as opposed to militarization.
Let’s see, today’s topic.
Global warming, electrical cars, CO2 emissions, manmade vs. climate, ICEs are better.
Oh man, does Starbucks sell popcorn? Because I want me some!
Makes your head spin, doesn’t it?
All we need is two more articles, one on Volkswagen sales and one on Cadillac, and we’d get a trifecta of commentary to carry us through the weekend!
That was yesterday, you missed it
you forgot small pickups versus big pickups ;)
Don’t forget the UAW Chatanooga article; we can’t forget the UAW….
If this is today’s Tesla takedown, it’s a bit thin. Site definitely lacking in some Cadillac misogyny, but there’s always tomorrow.
Relax everyone, we’ll all be dead sooner or later and by then, none of this bullshit will matter to us anymore!
Do you have children?
Do you want them to be subject to very quick changes in climate and the effects that could have on agriculture and society?
Personally, I’d hedge my bets on stopping or slowing climate change. Worst case? We make the world a marginally better place while inconveniencing the super-rich a little. Best case: we aren’t subject to crop failure, droughts, flooding and ocean acidification and the humanitarian ugliness that follows.
No, worst case is we wreck our economy, and my kid can’t eat cause daddy got laid off from the fossil fuels business in an irrational frenzy.
“No, worst case is we wreck our economy, and my kid can’t eat cause daddy got laid off from the fossil fuels business in an irrational frenzy.”
You’re more likely to starve because a bunch of rentiers played fast-and-loose with the banking system on an international level.
Again.
ETA: There’s not been one instance of the economy failing because of regulation (and never because of environmental ones) though you could make a case for Japan in the 1990s. By comparison, deregulation has driven the car of economy into the ditch of recession (or off the cliff of Depression) quite a few times.
It certainly won’t matter once the asteroid gets here.
Lol, another theory of mine, we do everything we can to keep the environment in check and BAM we get hit upside the head with an asteroid the size of Chicxulub and we go into another Cretaceous–Paleogene type extinction event or that super-volcano under Yellowstone Park decides to blow like a zit on a McDonald’s employee and we’re toast
*sigh*
I just hope that the asteroid is organic. I don’t want any pesticides or hormones in my space debris.
“I just hope that the asteroid is organic.”
That’s all we need is an alien life form to join our happy melt-down
I believe that AGW “deniers” are counting on some sort of Apocalypse (Asteroid, Holy War, Second Coming of Christ, You Name It) to render any action on AGW moot.
You can sense it when the oft-repeated phrase “Mankind couldn’t possibly have an effect on the Earth’s climate” is parroted.
“I guess it’s in God’s hands…”
“It’s just a THEORY”
About dog farts – that 50lb bag of chow that you bought for Fido probably resulted in a few pounds of CO2, from farm-to-pooch; think of the MILLIONS of bags of dog food that we produce. And we DON’T EAT DOGS.
Fossil fuels are so cheap, and our lifestyle is so dependent upon them that we’ll give them up when they pry them from our cold, dead hands.
Fun thread, though.
“About dog farts – that 50lb bag of chow that you bought for Fido probably resulted in a few pounds of CO2, from farm-to-pooch; think of the MILLIONS of bags of dog food that we produce. And we DON’T EAT DOGS.”
I need dogs for my emotional well-being. Beats going to a shrink or taking drugs or drinking. Their benefit is worth the few lbs of CO2
“I need dogs for my emotional well-being.” Yup, we’ve got five of them. Mutts, one and all. And they are all wonderful to have around.
Going to the vet, en masse, can be a challenge, but they willingly jump into the bed of the pickup truck, until they smell the vet’s office after we get there.
Then it’s consternation and all of them pulling me in different directions with their leashes.
The rationale behind the $7,500 in credits is not difficult to understand. They are clearly intended to promote the development of electric vehicles overall, not be a simple payment for carbon offsets. As they become more popular (and less expensive), the credit will be reduced, then eliminated.
Which is exactly what happened with hybrid cars.
Economies of scale are real, and a nudge can help get them built.
There are other factors. Extracting and shipping coal to a powerplant emits a lot less CO2 than shipping oil, refining it to gasoline, and then shipping it again to thousands of gas stations. He’s also, I believe, considering the Model S to be entirely coal powered, while only about half our power comes from coal. One also needs to consider the gradually increasing emissions of a car as it ages, while cleaner and cleaner electricity sources come online. Also, recharging at night will harvest a lot of energy that’s otherwise wasted, and perhaps one day cars or their old repurposed batteries will allow energy storage, encouraging fewer power plants and more intermittent storage.
Also, cars emit their pollution where the people live, while powerplants are more remote.
I’m also hoping electric cars will have longer lifespans
As much as I appreciate his pragmatism and general dedication to polemics, I question the validity of using eco-skepticism as a path to wealth, as much as I question the church of climatology.
To be frank, it should be obvious that electric vehicles, in their current state, are an absurd anti-pollution strategy. Transportation is a small part of man-made greenhouse gas emissions, about 15% last time I checked. Also, energy density for current battery tech is only economical compared to the steel living rooms we use to navigate our roadways. BEVs only make sense if you couple them with solar panels on your residence, but you need to be quite wealthy to throw that kind of money at the pollution problem.
Hybrid vehicles like the BMW i3 are where the real efficiency gains lie. Unfortunately, many national governments offer subsidies for electric vehicles and plug-ins so BMW put a plug on the i3 and made the engine optional. VW pulled the same stunt with the XL1, though the engine still comes standard on the VeeDub.
Carbon dioxide is plant food, not pollution. Increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere probably causes some warming of the Earth’s climate, but not an immediate crisis. Most of the proposed solutions appear to me to be an expensive power grab by one side of the political divide. Only incremental improvements in energy efficiency have been cost effective so far.
Some areas like Los Angeles have unique local pollution problems where shifting actual pollution from combustion from the automobile to a distant power plant might provide a benefit for Los Angeles residents. If Los Angeles wishes to provide local incentives for electric cars to deal with their unique local pollution problem they are free to do so. Just don’t impose those costs/incentives on the rest of the United States.
A glass of wine can provide health benefits. Therefore, it would be better to drink four bottles at one sitting, since one can never have too much of a good thing.
To carry the analogy, running along apesh!t slashing CO2 output in the hysterical belief that we “must do something, anything” also strikes me as a bit of “too much of a good thing.” Slow, measured, deliberate. That’s a reasonable response. The “It May Already Be Too Late” message you hear from the AGW crowd doesn’t strike me as promoting a reasonable response. Thus the backlash.
So you’d never brake hard to avoid a pending crash because the change in velocity would upset you.
What are you on about? That’s about the most blatant straw man I’ve ever seen.
First you’d have to prove the blatant crash, and then you’d have to prove the heavy braking is necessary and effective. None of which have been done.
Just because you don’t understand climate change doesn’t mean that it’s not happening.
Addressing it slowly because that matches your temperament tells me something about you, not about the science. The science apparently doesn’t interest you much, as you don’t care for what it says.
“Just because you don’t understand climate change doesn’t mean that it’s not happening.”
Except that all I’ve seen in the last 10-20 years has been a large number of doomsday predictions, which failed to materialize, which resulted in a giant shifting of goal posts to something else.
Remember Katrina? AGW was going to cause a record number of terrible hurricanes! And then…it didn’t. And then we were told that an absence of hurricanes was proof of AGW too. And then there’s Arctic ice, which OMG, is melting at record rates over here! But wait, it’s GROWING at record rates over there…but that’s just a local anomoly, the melting is AGW. And the sealevel was going to rise by 3″! But then it only rose by .05″. But still, AGW!
So yeah, not sure how you take a call to action based on any of that seriously, no matter how many times peons on internet forums insist the matter is “settled”.
As I noted, this is an emotional issue for you. Not much to talk about, really.
“As I noted, this is an emotional issue for you. Not much to talk about, really.”
As I noted, you’re sh!t at making or defending your point.
[Spoiler alert: next PCH debate tactic is to suggest I don’t understand the issue and should go research something. You heard it here first]
Arguing that 2+2 isn’t 4 because you don’t like your math teacher doesn’t make one bit of sense.
The science is there. You’re obviously not interested in it. I’m sorry that you don’t like Al Gore, but that doesn’t change the science. Not much to talk about.
“Arguing that 2+2 isn’t 4 because you don’t like your math teacher doesn’t make one bit of sense.
The science is there.”
Except this is the classic argument, you try to take a small generally agreed upon fact and apply it to a much larger fiction to make it real.
The proper analogy is not “2+2=4”. The proper analogy to AGW is that calories make you fat. Which can be true. However, in order to live you have to eat a non-zero number of calories (we need some CO2) and it is perfetly possible to eat a sizeable number of calories daily and not become morbidly obese, just like it’s possible to have some pollution and not have the apocolyps.
Is there some AGW? YES, we all agree (2+2=4). But if you want to tell me that every additional calorie I eat/molecule of CO2 I dump is going to make me gigantic/ruin the earth, THAT is where the debate comes in, and it’s where the AGW crowd has consistently failed to make their case that something tragic is coming, because every prediction has been wrong.
Eating too many calories will make you fat. But you don’t want to do anything about moderating your intake because we cannot predict precisely how fat you’ll be.
Sure, that makes sense. Go ahead and have that fourth bottle of wine, it’s good for you.
@S2K Chris have you not been paying attention to the crazy destructive Cyclones hitting our fellow humans in Asia recently.
Somebody said Arctic Sea ice is increasing. This is simply not true. Are there years where there is more sea ice than the previous year? Yes. Does the trend point to more Arctic Sea ice? Only if you cherry pick your data. I am working on Arctic issues on behalf the USCG; we have major issues with beach erosion (buildings falling into the sea), thawing landfills in the Arctic releasing toxins, thawing permafrost leading to buckling infrastructure, and yes melting sea ice causing hardship on animals that depend on it such as polar bears.
“To carry the analogy, running along apesh!t slashing CO2 output”
No one is saying go apes!t.
Stopping it _growing_ would be a nice touch. You could do this with increased adoption of nuclear power and non-stupid urban planning.
But apparently anything that impedes our god-given right to produce energy in the cheapest, dirtiest ways possible is wrong.
The whole ape-Shiite thing is just a device to avoid the substance of the issue.
Apparently, climate change is bunk because there are some hippies and, God forbid, libuhrals who agree with it. That some people find that to be a logical construction tells you how ridiculous this “debate” really is.
“Apparently, climate change is bunk”
No, it’s not bunk. Causes and solutions are questionable
“Question everything”- Euripides
apesh!t converts to methane which is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2.
@George B – oceans are the biggest sequestration point for CO2. We are already seeing the effects of acidification upon the oceans.
If you believe that plants are out saviour then you better turn into Johnny Appleseed on amphetamines.
I hope everyone starts to love Jellyfish soon.
@Mr. Orange – global warming means I won’t need to travel 600 miles south to find beachfront.
There is a reason why Russia, USA, Canada, and Denmark are all arguing over Arctic continental shelf.
Electric cars are still in the R&D phase, essentially. You don’t make a great return on R&D in the short run. Batteries will continue to improve, solar, wind, and other alternatives will continue to ramp up. Throwing up our hands and devoting all our resources to burning every drop of oil on the planet because electric cars aren’t solving all our problems right now is a lousy plan.
Why provide incentives to manufacture electric cars instead of providing much smaller research grants? I have no doubt that automobile manufacturers can build the rest of the electric car when the perishable and insanely expensive battery pack/electricity used starts to become cost competitive with the internal combustion engine/fuel used. Lomborg isn’t arguing not to do the research. He’s arguing that subsidizing the process of building the not ready for prime time product is a waste of money.
As a side note, I wonder what the impact of this brutally cold weather has had on electric cars? I would think it would affect range/battery life, but I’m not sure. I am also curious about how well the heat works. Anyone have any user reviews you would care to share?
@2drsedanman – I assume that the colder it gets the less efficient battery power becomes. Parasitic losses through the drivetrain would increase markedly AND how much battery power would get diverted to keeping the passenger cabin heated?
I posted this earlier in the tread….
“What both graphs indicate is that there is a sweet spot where drivers see the best electric ranges between 60-75 °F (15-24 °C).”
The FleetCarma data you posted is flawed. It says it includes Leafs from all model years. The problem is that there were a lot a changes starting with the 2013 Leaf. Different battery formulations, the addition of a heat pump, the addition of a more aggressive regen mode, and better aerodynamics.
Edit: Took another look at the FleetCarma study. Looks like it was mostly early Leafs. Pre heat pump, “lizard battery” etc.
@mcs – I was looking at some evidence for or against the theory that cold kills EV range.
It does fit what I’ve heard that EV’s don’t fair as well in colder environments. I only recall seeing a few recharging stations in my town.
My part of the world involves extremes in climate and long distances between cities and even villages. There is no business case for me to buy an EV or even a hybrid.
I’d agree with you. The range is definitely reduced – but it’s manageable. Saying that it doesn’t fare well would be an exaggeration.
Before I went with an EV, there were definitely a number of conditions that needed to be met. They’re definitely not for everyone – yet.
However, sometimes people portray them as useless in cold weather or claim there is a drastic reduction in performance. I’ve never noticed a drop in speed or lack of torque. Range is affected, but not as bad as you’d think.
I have a garage and I’m able to let the thing bake indoors with the climate control. Range is helped by heavy traffic that keeps vehicle speed down and EV range up. The fact that you can’t swing a dead duracell in my area without hitting some kind of charging station helps too. At the end of my longest commute is a massive solar array and I have plans to add my own this summer.
For most of my shorter commutes and runs to the store, I blast the heat all I want and have fun with the vehicles instant torque. Thursday I was cruising at 80 mph/128 kmph in about 25f temps on a 20 mile trip. 80 mph in silence is so cool! The car has no trouble handling it.
Sure, they have their limits, but be careful of some of these studies. New battery formulations (the lizard), pre-heating, B Mode, the heat pumps (even better if you can get by with seat heat alone), and slightly lighter weight go a long ways towards reducing cold weather range losses in the Leaf. You can’t compare an early Leaf with the current car – they look the same, but are very different.
By the way, the day I took it 50 miles non-stop in -5f degree temps, two co-workers had ICEs that wouldn’t start.
>> I am also curious about how well the heat works. Anyone have any user reviews you would care to share?
Today I went 43 miles in a Leaf in 5 degree temps this morning. I pre-heated the car (set climate control to 90) for both legs and ran the seat heater and the steering wheel heater. Toward the end of first 21 mile leg, the heat from the pre-heat ran out and I switched on the heat pump. Speed ranged from 65 mph to creeping in stop and go traffic. Most of the trip was at 65.
The return trip was in 55 mph traffic, then I switched to a 40 mph back road. The sun was out and helped the pre-heating last the entire trip home. I think I used about 60% of the battery for the round trip.
Monday I’m making a 100 mile round trip and 15 degree temps are forecast. It’s 50 miles to the destination with a huge solar array to plug in to when I get there. Three CHAdeMO Level 3 chargers along the route if I run short. I’ve made the trip in subzero temps so I’m not worried.
I think that most “Average Joes” don’t want to put a lot of thought into how much energy it actually takes for daily commutes – I applaud your conscientiousness in this arena.
The “gas-and-go” crowd will be tough to convince until a 200-mile EV debuts.
Thank you for the insight into your cold weather commute.
It seems like ALL electric car reviews (in general) are in the summer or some warm place where the negative impact of cold weather is flippantly waived off as not a bid deal. Coming from New England, cold weather performance is everything.
Glad the Leaf works for your commute despite the cold.
Lots of interesting comments! To digest all of the above, the comment about powerplants located in remote area’s with little population, and electric cars operating in big cities where the pollution is a problem is the answer. I see no advantage to electrics other than big city use.
Well, if you think about it; big city dwellers is for whom electric cars make the most sense. To give an example, I live roughly 30 miles outside the DFW metroplex, and at one point was driving 60 miles one way to work. That means when I get to work I would have to plug in, and hope it is charged enough for the trip home.
Like LNG vehicles, they make the most sense for fleet and in-town delivery vehicles that always come back to the office for a fast charge.
A person living in a rural location would have to plan all their trips to town around plugging in somewhere for the trip home; probably a long lunch or dinner at Cracker Barrel or some other place that offers free charging. It wouldn’t be worth the effort.
“if you think about it; big city dwellers is for whom electric cars make the most sense.”
Really? How would they plug in at home? Many (most?) big city dwellers park in a) an apartment parking lot or b) a parking garage or c) in the street. Not many outlets available in these places.
Well; I would imagine most of the folks who buy these can afford to live in a condo, nice suburb, or a McMansion. I just don’t see a lot of ordinary folks clamouring for an EV.
An electric car could still work for someone living on city limits; depending on the size of the city. But twenty or more miles out; not likely.
Most environmentalists would say that the great unwashed should use public transit, walk, or ride a bike; and not use an EV.
I am in the camp with those who are skeptical of this skeptic. That said, he has made a few pretty good points over the years. One I recall was his tallying of the money spent thus far on combating climate change, and how many lives could have been saved directly by using a small fraction of that amount to combat HIV in the third world. It’s good to get that kind of perspective on things now and again.
I started my day noticing a Tesla parked in my office’s parking garage (in Washington, DC), noticing that it had Arizona plates. I wonder how that happened. He certainly didn’t drive that thing here from Arizona.
The “ecological efficiency” of electric cars depends greatly on where they are used. In Norway, or the U.S. Pacific Northwest, they are truly zero pollution vehicles, since the electricity they run on is generated by hydro power. They’re probably pretty good in France, too, because France is something like 80 percent nuclear.
That said, I agree with Lumborg’s basic premise that, if there be subsidies, they should be directed to hybrids, not pure electrics. Because hybrids produce real results. The kind of fuel economy that testers have achieved with the Honda Accord hybrid is truly astounding. With hybrids, it truly is a case of fuel not being burned to move the vehicle. With electrics, it’s a case of fuel being burned somewhere else to move the vehicle.
I am offended that rich people (and who else can afford the nearly 6-figure cost of a Tesla) are getting a $7,000 tax subsidy. $7,000 is probably the average middle class person’s entire tax bill.
The whole electric car business is built on hope — hope that an effective, energy-dense battery can be designed and brought into mass production, despite the fact that battery technology is pretty mature. As we know, and some of the B&B who own them report, the Nissan Leaf battery ages very quickly. What’s the likelihood that the Tesla battery — which more aggressively discharges and recharges — will experience the same phenomenon?
As they say, “hope is not a strategy.”
Meanwhile, the subsidies for buying hybrids have been exhausted. Imagine how much fuel would be saved and C02 would not be produced if hybrids at the current state of the art were ubiquitous.
Tesla batteries seem to be aging very nicely, on the order of -6% per 100k miles or something.
EVs have regenerative braking, just like hybrids.
“I am offended that rich people (and who else can afford the nearly 6-figure cost of a Tesla) are getting a $7,000 tax subsidy. $7,000 is probably the average middle class person’s entire tax bill.”
Exactly. We are subsidizing mostly upper middle class educated people that could easily afford these cars without the subsidy.
There are cheaper EVs with subsidies, don’t make it a class thing
With non-refundable credits, you can’t get money back that you didn’t pay in. Most middle class citizens don’t pay $7,000 in income tax liability so the subsidies are worth much more to the upper middle class.
This is one of the fundamental problems with our country. Everyone has different marginal tax rates and marginal subsidy benefits, which makes reform or new policy an impossible chore, like herding cats.
Senseless and unnecessary state of affairs, brought about by unthinking tax planners who were dead before most of us were born.
The government doesn’t just give you $7k; you have to earn it yourself, and they promise not to steal it from you if you spend it on this particular item. If they weren’t going to steal $7k from you in the first place, then there’s less of an advantage.
“We are subsidizing mostly upper middle class educated people that could easily afford these cars without the subsidy.”
Another way to look at it is they are patriots. EV adopters are giving a virtual middle finger to middle-east oil, which a commenter here reminded us helped fund the 9/11 attack. I am not in a position to buy an EV (yet), but I have no problem partially subsidizing the early adopters.
This guy does say that global warming is a problem and that something needs to be done. So my question is, what does he think needs to be done?
Here are some inconvenient truths:
I’m an AGW denier and I drive a Leaf (for now).
AGW proponents never tell you that the temperatures of all the planets are rising in concert. And their answer for the ‘problem’ always involves more regulation and taxation of others.
I pour the oil from my hybrid and ICE down the sewer; I used to recycle it.
I wouldn’t have bought an EV without the subsidy, but I am against subsidies.
I usually vote R, but sometimes D. I don’t watch Fox News; CNN is better journalism, until it isn’t.
As for cars killing people, I’ll take my chances in an EV any day over a car filled with 20 gallons of gasoline. 500 ICE cars burn up every day.
“AGW proponents never tell you that the temperatures of all the planets are rising in concert”
This is probably the single most refuted AGW-Denier claim in existence, right up there with solar cycles. All the other planets are not warming, and the one that is warmed the most—Jupiter—warms because it pumps out more heat from internal nuclear processes than it gets from the sun.
Don’t you think that climate scientists who have PhDs and years of experience wouldn’t have checked this? Or that, if it was true, that there would be actual peer-reviewed science to back it up?
“Don’t you think that climate scientists who have PhDs and years of experience wouldn’t have checked this? Or that, if it was true, that there would be actual peer-reviewed science to back it up?”
They are biased if not compromised due to their need for funding. AGW has become more about politics than science, which is a shame.
Although I can’t endorse pouring motor oil into a sewer.
I see. So the US government, which has never ratified the Kyoto protocol, makes a point of funding only scientists who endorse global warning. Yes, that makes all kinds of sense.
“They are biased if not compromised due to their need for funding. AGW has become more about politics than science, which is a shame.”
So you think that Exxon Mobil, which has more money than god—not to mention billions more than NOAA, NASA and the like—couldn’t fund at least one peer-reviewed study? Just one?
So instead, this trillion-dollar industry has to stick to the kind of “teach the controversy” nonsense normally reserved for Creationists and Anti-Vaxxers? Really?
Right.
XOM is only going to fund studies which further it’s interests at the time.
“I pour the oil from my hybrid and ICE down the sewer; I used to recycle it.”
For shame. Doesn’t Walmart still take it for free?
@SCE to AUX – you pour oil into the sewer? Highly illegal and very damaging to aquatic ecosystems. BTW, where does your drinking water come from?
Not from a well. And neither does my sewer empty into the ecosystem without pre-treatment.
@SCE to AUX – your waste treatment plan has the means for filtering out hydrocarbons? BTW, storm drains run different than sewer pipes.
“As a gay, vegetarian Scandinavian, he’s probably nobody’s stereotype of any kind of global warming skeptic.”
Well that settles it. I was going to dismiss this guy as yet another know-nothing shill. But since he’s got such an impressive trifecta of instant leftist street cred (gay, vegetarian, Scandinavian), his opinion is so much more valuable to me now.
“I pour the oil from my hybrid and ICE down the sewer”
That’s just appalling.
Wow even growing up down on the farm and changing the oil in garden tractors, roto-tillers, etc. my Dad had old empty 55 gallon oil drums to dump waste oil into. They were stored in a concrete floored shed so they wouldn’t rust. Back then there weren’t even places to take waste oil we just knew better than to dump it into the environment. Once parts stores would take waste oil for free that was where it went.
I have less respect for someone who dumps oil than I do for someone who purposely modifies their diesel pickup to be able to “roll coal.”
I wouldn’t dump it into the ground, either. My sewer doesn’t go there.
@Pch101:
Appalling – why? I flush 80,000 gallons of water a year, and maybe 8 of them are oil – enough to produce 4 gallons of gasoline. None of it goes into the ecosystem without processing.
If I drove a less-efficient car and burned an extra 1000 gallons of fuel a year and the attendant ‘evil’ 19000 lbs of CO2 it would generate, you wouldn’t care.
Your point is completely illogical.
If a robber claimed to not be a criminal because he robbed “only” one out of every 10,000 people with whom he came into contact, then you would know how ridiculous that sounds.
It doesn’t matter how much other waste that you created. This is not a competition of waste products.
What matters is that you needlessly and illegally dumped a toxic substance into a sewer that wasn’t equipped to handle it. No excuse.
“I pour the oil from my hybrid and ICE down the sewer; I used to recycle it.”
Congratulations, SCE to AUX! You have found a statement that all people on here agree on, even people that don’t normally agree. That’s an awful practice.
Next point of discussion: Electrocuting kittens, good thing or bad thing?
>Electrocuting kittens, good thing or bad thing?<
Depends. My kittens or your kittens?
That seems pointless when you can just drown the kittens in the oil, then throw the whole thing into the sewer.
Was coal the source of energy to create the electricity that electrocuted those kittens?
Were they socialist kittens?
Ah, this is where the phrase “kitten kaboodle” comes from.
Those felines met a “cat”astrophic end.
Nice.
I tossed some flashlight batteries in the garbage… I’m awful :(
Tisk, tisk. Report to reeducation at once.
My local utility offers a 2 cents per kWh optional surcharge which can be purchased at 25/50/100% of total usage increments to ensure purchase of “clean and renewable energy sources.” I don’t think it will bring my carbon footprint on the car to 0, but it won’t be nearly the 49 tons claimed for the Audi.
I ran the numbers years ago on EVs, and find them at best the equal of ICE cars. Wasting a pure source of energy like manufactured electricity (from thermal plants that are only 40% efficient in the first place) on transportation is the height of societal irresponsibility to me.
Way back in the 1960s, we were taught at engineering school to utilize the energy source directly where large scale energy was needed, such as a vehicle. That is, let the energy be utilized directly, like gasoline, without refining it further such as secondarily making electricity or hydrogen, and using that. It’s inefficient. People here cr@p all over ethanol from corn for this very reason, it’s just an even more egregious example of this kind of waste.
If peacocks strutted on every lawn, unicorns farted free energy, and all electricity came from hydro and nuclear and there was a never-ending supply, sure use it in vehicles. But that’s not the case is it?
We have disconnected ourselves from logical reality and convinced ourselves we’re doing the right thing.
I’ve never professionally heard of this Lomborg guy, so he’s completely unimportant in the great scheme of things. All I read here is stupid arguments about his qualifications, plus uninformed tripe from folks who never took any advanced courses in advanced thermodynamics – why should I take notice of what librarians and accountants hold as an opinion? The Internet has made everyone with no clue on a subject into an expert and thus drowned us in low-grade nonsense based on no competency whatsoever.
Why should I pay attention to non-experts? Good Lord, you lot would look over an expert’s shoulder designing a rocket engine, and tell him from your vast fount of knowledge that the combustion chamber shape was wrong, and then toddle back to your job stocking supermarket shelves feeling as though you had done the man a great service.
Just to make everything even worse, politics is now involved and the lefts bash the right, and vice-versa, while ignoring the reality. Really, a pox on you all. Opinions on this are useless, we need some real analysis. Of course, whichever way that went, the political crackheads on the opposite side would cry foul anyway on the general basis of being difficult for no reason other than they lost. Just like the US Congress, where heads are stuck so far up their own respective anuses, where people actually go deaf and refuse to even listen to the opposing side’s arguments on principle, so is it here – no argument has ever swayed any commenter that I’ve read. No, they just go on there merry way without a clue, righteously content in their point-of-view. It’s all a pretty sad commentary on the lack of societal commitment to come together and “defeat” a common enemy. False pride instead rules the day.
And we all get precisely nowhere.
@wmba – to sum up your point, we humans do not seek truth we seek validation of our beliefs. That is human nature at its most simplest.
Our comments stand little chance of altering the opinions of those on the opposite side of the spectrum BUT we post because we find solace in the fact that there are those who will agree with even the most extreme views of ours.
Unfortunately, anyone who is so eager to provide input on a subject they know nothing about will probably be unable to grasp why doing so is a bad idea.
@brenschluss – are you replying to my comment or to that of wmba?
It’s a rule of thumb…not a rule. Car engines have to be light weigh, and only skim the high-quality energy off the top and dump the rest to maintain that weight. Stationary generators can be about twice as efficient, and also tend to run on less expensive fuel (ie fuel that required less energy to obtain). The only reason we weren’t electric all along is lead-acid batteries are heavy, and that’s what they had to work with (practically) all the way until the late 90’s. As advanced batteries become cheap, electric will become more efficient and affordable
@wmba
We are trying to move people from the highest state of middle class existence in recorded history to an even higher state. The theory and science of economic optimization have little to do with thermodynamics.
Society can accomplish more with a useful fairy tale than with a mind full of meaningless scientific facts. Perhaps, that is the most inconvenient truth of all.
@wmba
Direct use of energy is nice, but scaling can become a problem. Downsizing a nuclear steam electric plant to run a single light motor vehicle looks hard to me. The same goes for a combined cycle gas turbine. Maybe an EV with batteries is the better idea, assuming you want to use those fuel sources for some reason?
Faith in climate man made climate change is like a religion. They need it to be true or their entire worldview collapses.
@BrunoT – incorrect. Fact does not tend to alter faith.
Fact is reality but we humans try to interpret reality through emotion.
What does one BELIEVE to be TRUE and how FAITHFUL are we to our BELIEFS?
It all interrelates.
We are emotion driven creatures and logic and truth are just “Riders on the Storm”.
Science isn’t a faith.
@Pch101 – Science is not faith but there are those who have faith in science and those who do not.
We must believe that science is the way to truth.
To many it is just a play on words but in reality it is how people think.
Science isn’t a faith, it’s a methodology for testing hypotheses. It doesn’t reveal all truths, but it does provide a consistent process for debunking ideas that are obviously wrong.
Faith is, by definition, believing in something that isn’t or cannot be proven.
@Pch101 –
Wikipedia:
“Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about nature and the universe.”
Faith:
noun
1. confidence or trust in a person or thing:
2. belief that is not based on proof:
3. belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion:
4. belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.:
5. a system of religious belief:
6. the obligation of loyalty or fidelity to a person, promise, engagement, etc.:
7. the observance of this obligation; fidelity to one’s promise, oath, allegiance, etc.:
Science is not faith but one does require faith is science i.e. 1. confidence or trust in a person or thing
Guys like Bjørn Lomborg affect one’s faith in science or any system because they misrepresent fact/truth.
I agree with your comment but the problem is the fact that humans don’t make decisions based on logic and truth.
A person with a damaged Amygdala is rendered free of emotional encumbrances and subsequently can not make any decisions.
I mentioned Patrick Moore and he had made the comment (not an exact quote), “It does not matter whether or not something is true, what matters is whether or not someone believes it is true”.
“Guys like Bjørn Lomborg affect one’s faith in science or any system because they misrepresent fact/truth.”
I’m obviously aware that this guy produces disinformation.
The point is that Bruno here doesn’t know what “faith” is. He has a lot more of it than I do. This is akin to an evangelical accusing an atheist who doesn’t pray at all of praying too much.
“Science is not faith but there are those who have faith in science and those who do not.”
Yes, good thing computers and the internet were developed through prayer, if science were involved they clearly wouldn’t work and we couldn’t read your comment.
@Russycle – where have I mentioned prayer? Wikipedia:
“Prayer is an invocation or act that seeks to activate a rapport with an object of worship through deliberate communication.”
Simon and Garfunkel:
“And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made.”
How did you react the last time your computer crashed?
@PCH
You’re right. Science isn’t a faith so stop referring to faith as a “science”. Not even the hardcore religious are that dim.
“Not even the hardcore religious are that dim.”
ISIS
The People’s Temple
Need I go on?
Technically, ISIS/ISIL is not a religion.
@28-Cars-Later
Technically, ISIS/ISIL is not a religion.
Well….. um…….. yes…
But religion just like science is open interpretation and misinterpretation.
My comment was aimed at the part of the comment “hardcore religious”
Religious by definition is relating to or believing in a religion.
I didn’t specify religion but those who believe in a religion from an extreme i.e. hardcore point of view.
“stop referring to faith as a ‘science’ ”
I have no idea what that means. I’m obviously not doing any such thing.
“Faith in climate man made climate change is like a religion. They need it to be true or their entire worldview collapses.”
Substitute ‘market-based solutions’ for ‘man made climate change’ and the sentence reads about as true. Religion is belief in the face of contrary evidence, and there are a multitude of religions out there.
@clutch
Then make something better, and you’ll be free from the discovery of market-based behavior. To wit, all of our other attempts at non-market systems have ended in calamity and given virtually no benefits when functional.
TW5, my point is not that market-based solutions don’t ever work, but that they are applied in situations that don’t lend themselves to markets, yet I hear calls for letting the market work in almost every case.
Well, if you’re speaking against artificial markets for trading pollution credits, I can’t disagree. Neither does Pigou, the man who wrote the book on the economics of negative externalities and artificial markets.
It looks like our long lost alien friend Agentthex has returned and is using PHC101’s account.
The Ankara Zoo has a section devoted to dogs.
Why is everyone so afraid to name the root cause of the problem?
Too many people.
If you could magically reduce the world population from 6B+ to 3B, think of the improvements in almost every measure you can think of.
So, since we can’t magically reduce it, at least the governments that have the resources to do so could free themselves from the holy rollers (of all persuasions) and massively fund birth control and population control education worldwide.
You can either control it at the birth end, by birth control and education, or at the death end by disease, war, and famine.
Neutron bombs are kinda magic, don’tcha know.
Too many brown people, you mean. I assume liberal, upper middle class American and Western European white folks will be overrepresented in that fortunate 3B not deprived of their right to life?
How many times do Malthus, Ehrlich, etc. have to be proven totally, humiliatingly wrong before the message starts to sink in?
Yeah, but that would ruin the economy. We need more people to consume things.
“Too many people”
That’s what they told us 40 years ago.
You do realize the ultimate end result of your proposal, right? Totalitarian control of the world. Inconveniently, we always want the elimination to start with someone else, because we’re better than they are.
So, explain to me how promotion of birth control and education leads to totalitarian control of the world.
Also, explain to me where I said that brown people are less desirable than white. You actually don’t know my ethnicity, anyway, do you?
Mitochondrial DNA indicates that 97% of the world’s population is traceable back to the same African woman.
Who says science and religion don’t mix ;)
Looks like Adam and Eve were dark and Bjørn Lomborg believes in Adam and Steve ;)
“Bjørn Lomborg believes in Adam and Steve ”
Hey, Gay people are doing their part to keep the population under control and as far as 97% of everybody being related to that African woman.
Somebody needs to keep that ho in check ;-)
@Lie2me – Somebody needs to keep that ho in check ;-)
ROTFLMFAO….
Some say global warming er climate change and the subsequent ice age will take care of that pesky overpopulation problem.
But then again we will be back to breeding like rabbits to repopulate.
@turf3
Read a story by Isaac Asimov, it’s titled “Pebble in the Sky”. Isaac Asimov and Jules Verne are two of histories greatest Sci-Fi authors.
From what I remember a middle aged tailor is “zapped” into earths future in a world that is hotter. The heat was caused by nuclear war.
Anyway, form my recollection is all people on earth (USA) were only allowed to live until 60. So people retired and generally went on an extended holiday to celebrate their 60 years of life prior to their termination.
I read that book many years ago – a Jewish tailor, radioactive Chicago was called “Chica” – I think because of a partially destroyed road sign? A simple man making a difference…
Wow thanks – off to Amazon to look for a Kindle version.
@shaker,
The best sci-fi story I’ve read is a trilogy written by Peter F. Hamilton.
I think it’s called the “Naked God” series.
Anyway the first book to read is called the “Reality Dysfunction”.
Fantastic story.
Noted – Thanks!
Though I’m presently re-reading some old classics that I’ve forgotten using the Kindle App – and between work, shoveling snow, and keeping myself and the house “presentable”, there seems to be little time to actually settle in with a good read.
Too many people? Some of the worst offenders about having too many kids are right on this board. Tom Krutzer, almost all of his articles mention kids and minivans. Many guys ask questions about new cars because there “is another one on the way”. Principal Dan wants a large family (after all day in a classroom full of kids, why, why, why?). Perhaps if people were not so child greedy most cars would be sedans, there would be fewer SUVs and the nation would not use so much foreign oil.
That’s the biggest piece of convoluted logic I’ve read here in, oh maybe a day or two and just a little bit weird too
This guy is obsessed with Kreutzer and his family to the point of creepiness.
By the way, oil isn’t a ‘fossil fuel’. Nobody knows where it comes from.
Saturn’s moon Titan is covered with naturally-occurring HCs – much more than we have on Earth.
Titan was once overrun with dinosaurs.
“By the way, oil isn’t a ‘fossil fuel’. Nobody knows where it comes from.” In a thread full of laughably ignorant statements, this one might just win the booby prize. Sounds like something an evangelical preacher seized with cognitive dissonance might say.
Bill Nye the science guy tells Ellen (after she makes a fool of herself on Jeopardy) that dinosaurs lived when fossil fuels were being created. That’s what he says in Ellen’s Energy Adventure when the audience goes into the animatronic dinosaur scene. After all, if it is at Disney’s Epcot, it must be the right answer.
Jerome Corsi popularized this notion on marginal right wing websites that normally host conspiracy theories about 10 years ago. JPL recently released new measurements and interpretations of that data that indicated the methane was not being generated internally.
Motivated reasoners like Corsi are not likely to follow up with such info; they are just fine with people like you continuing to spread misinformation to defend the status quo gluttony.
In addition, as one of the few commenters here that has read the Skeptical Environmentalist (at least as much as a rational thinker could take), it’s a crock. The guy is a charlatan. Knows it, too.
SCE to AUX – By the way, oil isn’t a ‘fossil fuel’
Are we referring to sebum? or vegetable oil?
There are three major forms of fossil fuels: coal, oil and natural gas.www.energyquest.ca.gov/story/chapter08.html
And a senior farting.
Well, I guess you can just pour it down the drain, then.
After reading half of the thread to me it seems many are looking at how to manage this issue differently.
My view is, yes, the climate is changing, but for how many millennia has this been occurring? Are we now in the middle of a interglacial period? Is climate change actually going to benefit mankind?
The only benefits I currently see from climate change is all of the handouts, protection and subsidies offered.
Look at the EV/Hybrid vehicle segment from manufacturing to distribution and retail. It’s all subsidised in many countries.
It seems those who can lobby the government more effectively tend to make the most cash from the climate change debate.
This leads do we require better governance in the management of where to direct the tax dollars too?
It seems the few who benefit most are the ones converting “climate change” into money at our expense.
There are better and cheaper options than EVs to have a larger and more beneficial impact on climate change.
EVs should be kept for forklifts, golf carts and RCVs, or if you want one then you pay the real costs of owning and maintaining an EV.
I’m not against EVs, I’m against the rorting of the consumer to subsidise people like Musk and other corporations who are bleeding our nations of cash that could be spent on better ways in improving our lives.
The climate change movement is just a veil used to cloak the insular mercantile leanings of most politicians. The movement has risen to prominence as intellectuals have signed on for various reasons. For instance, many economists are content to use AGW to promote renewable domestic energy production. Many scientists have signed on because they don’t like the ecological implications of expanding the fossil fuel economy.
We have this band of useful idiots, running around and talking about climate apocalypse, but the real power behind the movement are the powerful factions in the background. Unfortunately, I suspect many of these factions are just political organizations with an obsession for controlling the behavior of others. The global government proponents certainly love the idea of man-made climate apocalypse. Nothing has given them more power.
I’m pretty simple-minded on this:
A vehicle that can turn braking energy into propulsive energy is more efficient.
A vehicle that can turn solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric or wave power into mobility is going to be better for the planet.
Doing nothing about AGW until the ‘economics’ are ‘favorable’ is gambling with the fate of the human race.
True science will always produce some contradictions to any theory – if it doesn’t, then it’s not true science. But, in true science, even a winding road will eventually lead to a larger truth.
No meaningful action on AGW will occur until Washington D.C. experiences 2 weeks of 100 degree F temperatures, AND the HVAC system in the Capitol building breaks down.
Edit: This comment ended up in the wrong place – meant to be ignored at the end of the thread :-)
How can we listen to people who assume that sentient life-forms, not chaos, is the default setting for the universe?
Life is exceptional and rare. To imagine that we can fail-safe our way to a healthier planet with happier people is the most obtuse argument I’ve heard. It’s devoid of self-awareness or fundamental understanding of our condition.
If we aren’t working to make people happier, wealthier, sexier, richer, stronger, etc., we’re just flapping our gums and adding to the hot air in the atmosphere.
How can you simultaneously believe in an impending apocalypse, yet believe that your own actions can avert apocalypse? It’s a logical impossibility, and we’ve had a device to enlighten people about this flaw in human reasoning. It’s called the crocodile paradox.
In other words, forcing people to accept the imminent destruction of our planet is in no way related to cleaning up the planet or making new devices, machines, and technologies. The AGW movement is quite literally useless. As useless as an old religious sage predict the doom of mankind for his sins.
FWIW, the Union of Concerned Scientists blog posted a response to the original article-
http://blog.ucsusa.org/usa-today-gets-it-wrong-the-benefits-of-evs-636
Some interesting points are made…
Thank you for posting that link. It saved me the time to read Lomborg’s article to see why it is a collection of rubbish. It contains exactly the same flaws as that bogus claim a couple of years ago that a Prius has higher environmental impact than a Humvee. I don’t see how any rational person can read claims by people like Lomborg, AND read an article that debunks them, and still believe Lomborg and his ilk. Anyone who endorses this claim by Lomborg exposes themselves as easily duped.
I hope some day the Lomborgs of the world are found to have been aware of their deceptions and made to answer for the damage caused by their lies, just like the tobacco executives who claimed they didn’t know their products caused cancer.
Perhaps you don’t realize how totalitarian you sound, or, perhaps you do.
Would you demand a pound of flesh or just settle for a term in a re-education facility?
Lomborg often elicits responses where the left’s TwoMinutesHate compresses into 10 seconds of text…
And to answer your question: They’ll put us in camps when they can…
“Perhaps you don’t realize how totalitarian you sound, or, perhaps you do.”
Its only totalitarianism when you disagree with it, right?
Well this escalated quickly
All kinds of new Godwin’s law material here
Totalitarian UAW trolls!
“Its only totalitarianism when you disagree with it, right?”
Welcome to Schreiber World. An angry and pompous and overwhelmingly negative place where everyone is an idiot except Schreiber.
Escalation is inevitable.
Nah, I don’t even think that lefties should be punished (other than at the ballot box) for free speech.
“Welcome to Schreiber World. An angry and pompous and overwhelmingly negative place where everyone is an idiot except Schreiber.”
Project much?
Alternatively I could ask you if you think it’s appropriate for people to be punished for expressing wrong thoughts.
Just to clarify, what you said is inaccurate. I’m on record as saying that only half of everyone is an idiot (see: IQ of 100) and that the other half of humanity is responsible for the worst ideas in history (see: communism, socialism).
Anyhow, as much bad stuff as there is in the world like Islamists beheading Christians for being Christians, my grandson is a great joy to be around and on Sunday I’m taking his aunt up to Ann Arbor to watch and hear David Bromberg play guitar, a rare treat. David’s one of the world’s best guitar players. I’m sure that we don’t agree on politics but he’s a great musician.
My kids and grandkids are healthy. My mom is in reasonably good health at 90 and still possessing most of her faculties. My embroidery business is doing okay. I have a book contract on some car history and they accepted my first chapter. I’m making some encouraging progress with the electric harmonica that I invented and I started taking guitar lessons. Maybe I’ll adopt another retired racing greyhound. The nation of Israel lives.
Life is good. L’chaim.
@Lie2me – yup.
Muslim has supplanted Nazi.
Never saw the re-education camps coming.
@Ronnie Schreiber – read up on ISIS. They have been spending most of their time beheading Muslims they consider heretics.
So far it does appear that the right has been punished at the ballot box……. but why would I want to make this discussion any more political than it already has ;)
Here is a tidbit – we see considerable strife in the Middle East among the three Abrahamic religions, namely Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. If all three monotheistic religions claim common ancestry through Abraham , then what does that mean?
The unifying characteristic of Abrahamic religions is that all accept the tradition that God revealed himself to the patriarch Abraham.
Most of the victims of terrorists in the Muslim world are Muslims. This shouldn’t be that hard to figure out.
“If all three monotheistic religions claim common ancestry through Abraham , then what does that mean?”
It means we know who that African ho that 97% of the human race is related lost her virginity to
Ronnie, I’m not projecting anything except the side of yourself you have chosen to portray here in the comments section since at least 2008 when I started visiting this site. When you disagree with someone’s political viewpoint you tend to become an incredibly nasty and condescending individual. It was a blessing when you stopped posting as often a few years ago. Frankly, the side of the political spectrum you occupy isn’t the problem for me. It’s the way you express yourself to others.
“Alternatively I could ask you if you think it’s appropriate for people to be punished for expressing wrong thoughts.”
Well, if that isn’t the cherry on top of the lack-of-self-awareness sundae. Care to look back just a few days to the ISIS commentary on Baruth’s website where you jump all over pch101 for expressing a view you don’t like, calling him a “cultural mandarin” and referring to non-violent Muslims as his “exotic new brown pets” and then writing “I understand that you’re perfectly comfortable with the deaths of a few Jews and Christians”. This is just one of many examples I’ve seen from you over the years, so ask that question of yourself.
If in the real world you truly aren’t the perpetually arrogant and dismissive partisan crank you’ve made yourself out to be on this website, please feel free to show more of your good side. It would be welcomed, even by me. But until then, this is the branding you’ve chosen for yourself.
“Ronnie, I’m not projecting anything except the side of yourself you have chosen to portray here in the comments section since at least 2008 when I started visiting this site. When you disagree with someone’s political viewpoint you tend to become an incredibly nasty and condescending individual. It was a blessing when you stopped posting as often a few years ago.”
Nope, no projection, no nastiness and condescension there, no, none any of that at all.
“Frankly, the side of the political spectrum you occupy isn’t the problem for me. It’s the way you express yourself to others.”
It’s never the money, it’s always the principle of the thing, right?
““Alternatively I could ask you if you think it’s appropriate for people to be punished for expressing wrong thoughts.”
Well, if that isn’t the cherry on top of the lack-of-self-awareness sundae. Care to look back just a few days to the ISIS commentary on Baruth’s website where you jump all over pch101 for expressing a view you don’t like, calling him a “cultural mandarin” and referring to non-violent Muslims as his “exotic new brown pets” and then writing “I understand that you’re perfectly comfortable with the deaths of a few Jews and Christians”. This is just one of many examples I’ve seen from you over the years, so ask that question of yourself.”
Wow, I have my own little anti-fan who follows me from site to site. How charming! Gonna start cataloging my Facebook posts? Perhaps be Boswell to my Johnson?
Where did I call for him to be punished? Are you really equating the give and take of an online debate/argument with advocating that Lomborg “answer for his lies”?
BTW, if Arabs are brown, can Jews at least be beige?
“If in the real world you truly aren’t the perpetually arrogant and dismissive partisan crank you’ve made yourself out to be on this website, please feel free to show more of your good side.”
Yeppers, no nastiness or condescension here either. Thanks for all the sincere, constructive criticism.
“It would be welcomed, even by me.”
Spare me your disingenuous platitudes. Nothing wrong with a little honest antipathy.
“But until then, this is the branding you’ve chosen for yourself.”
Well, at least, unlike yourself, I have the courage of my convictions to publish my views under my own name. If it means suffering the slings and arrows of sincere critics and cretins alike, so be it.
Some people don’t sleep well at night if they don’t feel like good guys doing battle with bad guys. This has little to do with science and public policy, and a lot to do with emotional fulfillment and a craving for simplistic answers.
Mr. Schreiber sees the nasty sloganeering of his conservative heroes and is just parroting them as a young boy pretends to shave because he sees his father doing it. Read some half-arsed cliched argument on Breitbart or in the National Review, and it won’t be long before he starts regurgitating their ideas and catchphrases. (They do like their soundbites.)
I use my real name when I write to the regional newspaper. More risk of reputation there than here, which isn’t saying much. So spare me your noble warrior delusions.
Follow you from site to site? There’s two places I’ve seen your comments: here and Jack’s blog. There’s a lot of readership overlap between those two places for obvious reasons. I certainly didn’t go there looking for you.
OK, here is my answer to the question of “which is greener, an EV or a gasoline-car”: I don’t care. I am not going to sit down and analyze and compare the entire supply chain and their environmental impact and energy needs. Instead, I care about one thing: which option does the job that I need and want it do while costing less? In other words “money talks and bovine refuse walks”.
See, the way I figure, what is money if not an imperfect representation of the resources that I generate and the resources that I consume? And if I spend less money on option A than option B then option A probably demands fewer resources than option B. I can already hear the counter argument: “but what about subsidies? They distort the market”. Again, I have a simple answer: “I don’t care”. Maybe it’s a simplistic view but all that means to me is that our duly elected representatives have by some miracle done their jobs and come to an agreement that me driving an EV instead of a gas car is worth $7500 to society. At the end, all I really care about is what flies out of my pocketbook. All the grander “big picture” issues are just noise when it comes time to pick what I drive.
The big issue is that the world has forgotten the GFC. We are now being bombarded with this climate change religion because a certain section of the worlds society has reasoned that if you fool some of the people some of the time there is a lot of money to be made by….trading in carbon credits.
Just like the tulip futures of 400 years ago we are now seeing the larger trading companies and the rich mouth pieces ( Leonardo DeCaprio,a “new” expert on Australia’s great barrier reef etc ) suddenly becoming enamoured of the new religion,this green religion which calls any sceptical person a Non believer and a climate destroyer.
But the real questions are; how is trading in carbon credits going to save the worlds ecological base?
Or is it simply another way to make a lot of money quickly without having to do any actual work?b (after all it is people like Al Gore who champion carbon trading)
Those who have never looked closely at the question of carbon trading should take a day or two to see how it works…and how a country such as Nigeria can buy carbon credits from Australia ,then sell them to Russia ,yet pump out millions of barrels of oil per day? it’s happening. Do your research.
I’ve previously offered my solution to the US’s contribution to CAGW, and I reiterate: nationally mandated 35 MPH speed limit. On all roads, at all times. And no possible obstructionism by Congress, as the EPA already has the power to implement it immediately. No other solution has as much potential to immediately and as thoroughly impact CO2 emissions. None.
I’ve actually read a fair part of Lomborg’s work in the past few years and what you’re saying isn’t what he’s arguing. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. He’s still vastly worried about the environment and global warming. What he is arguing is from a cost-benefit analysis that points out the long-term goals of saving the environment are worthwhile but can’t be done in a matter of years but over the course of decades.
Of course this is where he, I, and most of the community within political science diverge. His view is that we should be spending in the third world to alleviate basic welfare issues (i.e. ending devastating diseases, providing clean drinking water, etc.) while researching and spending on environmentalism in long-term (i.e. decades long) strategies. His argument isn’t quite zero-sum but he puts a hard cap on welfare expenditures within the current system because he presumes that people will not spend past that amount. I personally agree with his first half but disagree on the short-term spending because public acceptance of change is notoriously slow and if you let them get away with thinking it isn’t an issue (just look at the B&B frothing excitedly about…) they will. So you’re left with zero funding, zero long-term goals, and zero actual work done. The general community agrees with me but they’re afraid to admit that some of the claims are alarmist because revealing that people in general are stupid and greedy and if you don’t bludgeon them with the facts repeatedly they won’t move on issue is like revealing the magic trick. I rather do both, call them stupid to their face and still hit them over the head.
But I digress, feel free to keep bickering about global warming as if it isn’t real, Lomborg is in agreement with climate science he just doesn’t see it paying off right now as an economist and political scientist.
>The general community agrees with me but they’re afraid to admit that some of the claims are alarmist <
Which claims?
Proprietary secret, sorry.
I Kid, just some of the timelines. The science is founded and real but if you say we have 30 years before they’re dire people will wait 29 years and 364 days to do something about it. Basically you need to start now so the next generation will finish what we started.
You’ve summarized Lomborg quite well, even if you disagree with his cost/benefit solutions. That’s reasonable… Although many on the enviro-left consider cost/benefit analysis itself sacrilege….
I’ll concede (like Lomborg) that there’s a non-trivial chance of AGW causing horrific climate global catastrophe in 50+ years. But politically, there’s no way to control emissions without semi-totalitarian world control of energy usage. Burning carbon is simply too inexpensive (short term).
Note the solution of semi-totalitarian world control has strong potential to cause global catastrophe outside the climate realm.
I see no solution other than to muddle through and hope the future brings minor warming. Canada might become an even nicer place to live, although Bangladesh may suck even more…
Or perhaps the enviro movement could embrace the logic of nuclear power EVEN WITH ITS RISKS, because a few meltdowns is nothing compared to a 10m rise in ocean levels. But that would require sacrilegious cost/benefit analysis…
It’s complicated when you get into cost/benefit analysis stretching into the environment simply because the world isn’t so uniformly identifiable in that respect. The value of a forest is more than just lumber and habitat, it’s a complex ecosystem that we don’t know what will happen without it. Lomberg argues that science will more or less solve everything eventually and while he’s an optimist his numbers heavily skew to the eventual solving of all issues in the *future*.
It’s like saying that no matter how bad things get there is always a major advancement around the corner to fix things tomorrow which is good and actually likely right but defining how far tomorrow is,what fix actually means, and will it matter if 2/3rds of the planet’s population is suffering for the next two decades while we wait for it is getting into a dangerous territory. But again, if we do absolutely NOTHING in the mean time when the big science breakthrough does occur it will take that much longer to resolve to change. The late 19th century and the mid-20th are two very different animals from today, introducing a major technological change will take longer and be harder to justify in terms of environmental benefit without establishing some pattern of change today.
@lie2me – I’m not out to there on the bully pulpit, but I’m not afraid to admit most people are exceptionally stupid and short-sighted. So explaining the position within that context is going to create pushback but denying my enemy the pleasure of ignorance is a better terrain to fight on.
@Kevin – I don’t think the ‘left’ (for whatever that’s worth) is utterly against him, but rather disagree with his cost/benefit analysis because he devalues environmentalism of today for environmentalism tomorrow. Some of the public backlash he’s gotten from environmentalists is because he devalues their work today so it’s inevitable but from the academic community they’ve questioned his C/B analysis itself which has been reasonably evaluated and found somewhat optimistic. It’s not a hack job, but he is a biased actor (like all of us, really). Some of his outside supporters though have been big businesses who want to run with his C/B analysis to justify their continued pollution which is not what he argues either.
But again, I think he misses the point of how glacial support for these kinds of changes are. It wasn’t as if Civil Rights sprang up overnight in the US, it was from the end of WWII when Black GIs came back that the fight really gained momentum and took until 1964 to culminate in breaking the back of Jim Crow. So just as illustrative example the time it takes to get major social changes through isn’t overnight and ignoring the problem until a perfect solution shows up isn’t a workable answer either.
” I rather do both, call them stupid to their face and still hit them over the head. ”
How to make friends and influence people, huh? Great way to win people over to your way of thinking. Don’t forget a little condescension while you’re at it, that always rallies the troops to your cause
I see Xeranar actually has a balanced and well informed opinion on Lomborg from having actually read his work. I bought his book in 2001 and read it, too, and I can confirm Xeranar accurately portrays it.
The leftist fatwas against Lomborg are really quite astounding if you’re actually familiar with his work. He doesn’t dispute one iota of the science of climate change but just analyzes the cost-benefit of various possible responses.
One is certainly free to disagree – but everyone in this thread giving him the Two Minutes Hate treatment is just displaying how utterly unhinged they are.
“The leftist fatwas against Lomborg are really quite astounding”
Another one with charm and charisma
Perhaps you aren’t familiar enough with the decade-plus of abuse he’s been subjected to.
Abuse? He’s been called out on issues of credibility, how is that abuse?
Apparently, Scientific American is in the business of issuing fatwas. Who knew?
What part of “Lomborg doesn’t dispute the existence of global warming and says that it’s a serious problem that needs to be addressed long-term but he asserts that our current reactions to it are not cost-effective,” did I get wrong?
This isn’t the first time you’ve falsely attributed positions to me. If you note, I haven’t expressed an opinion in this post or comments one way or another about AGW.
A great man once said to his political enemies that they feared him gaining power because they assumed he would act like they would. Not everything in my world is political. YMMV.
I’m not serving an agenda and I’d rather write about old cars but now and then I see something in the news that I’m pretty sure will be interesting to our readers here. My first thought when I read Lomborg’s op-ed piece was, “it’s already Friday and I have a quota to fill, Lomborg and his deliberately provocative thing about EV’s killing people should provoke some comments from the B&B”. As I told Derek when I submitted it, I tried to make it as balanced as I could. I learned a long time ago that if there’s any controversy attached to a topic, I don’t have to spin things or gin them up. Just the facts ma’am, and the B&B will take it from there.
Lol, you love to “poke the bear” and you know it ;-)
“As a gay, vegetarian Scandinavian, he’s probably nobody’s stereotype of any kind of global warming skeptic. His 2001 book, The Skeptical Environmentalist, posits controversially that many commonly accepted environmental claims are wrong. As a result he’s been the target of accusations of scientific misconduct.”
He isn’t a global warming skeptic, he’s a global warming supporter/approver/whatever you want to label it. He just thinks that the C/B isn’t there currently based on the economic models which is a whole different animal from the 3% of scientists who the big businesses trot out to embrace their views on man-made global warming. Following that he has been the target of scientific misconduct by some rather large and un-environmental groups for his actual calculations which get sketchy at times.
I didn’t make it a big ‘Well, Ronnie’s a lying again!’ moment since you’re right-ward bias against my left-ward always makes me aware we tend to go head-to-head on issues. Also to be fair to you, I wasn’t aiming it so much at you as the B&B that exploded with ‘SEE! GLOBAL WARMING AIN’T REAL AT ALLLLLLLLLL!’ as they ran screaming around the house for their spouses to see the snow up in the Northeast to prove their point. It’s an unintentional thing to call him a skeptic when he’s probably one of the few middle-ground members who think global warming isn’t at pandemic-level crisis yet but is certainly an issue.
We may go head to head at times but when you write non-political articles I usually greatly enjoy them and certainly peruse 90% of TTAC without comment. Keep up the good work but watch the wording is all. :)
You don’t need to be gay, vegetarian or Scandinavian to realize that the Climate Change scare is a scam to pass more legislation restricting what you can do and to justify more taxes.
What the big media and politicians are not telling you is that the main cause on the state of the planet’s climate is not human activity but Solar activity.
Even in periods where there have been great volcanic activity increasing the levels of of CO2 far more that humans have ever seen the Earth’s temperatures were more affected by the Sun activity.
But they can not tax the Sun can they? so they scare you.
Don’t take my word for it, but for PLEASE don’t take the word of the mainstream media and politicians either!!!!
Do your own research.
“Don’t take my word for it, but for PLEASE don’t take the word of the mainstream media and politicians either!!!!”
Or you could read the IPCC report, and the studies leading into it, written by actual scientists with degrees in the fields in question.
All of which, by the way, quite clearly say the problem is anthropogenic carbon emissions and not this “solar cycles” nonsense.
dear psarhjinian,
The IPCC selected only scientists who would support the views they wanted to “prove”.
There were hundreds of scientist who send their reports on what you call solar cycles nonsense and they conveniently were ignore.
But the results of the IPCC are the only ones covered by the main-media of sycophants.
It’s amazing how many non-scientists suddenly became interested in the scientific method once the topic of global warming became The Big Thing. A sudden, intense, incredibly shallow interest.
It’s amazing how many of those self-minted scientists don’t believe in global climate change because it’s cold outside their front door in February.
I wonder how many of them would give a sh*t about the topic at all if there weren’t any possible repercussions for energy and tax policy. If that’s the case, why don’t we just focus on the policy side and stop pretending we know or care about the science?
Who was it that said that science was about believing in the fallibility of experts? Oh, right, Richard Feynman, a great scientist. There are reasons why experiments must be reproducible. People, being people, will lie and cheat. Even scientists. David Baltimore must look at Michael Mann and wonder “how did he get to be so lucky?”
A “scientist” convinced of the intellectual superiority of his scientific position but he still feels the need to sue his critics for defamation. Where better to resolve a scientific dispute than a courtroom? Surely that has nothing to do with trying to use the legal system to intimidate critics, right? Galileo weeps.
I wonder how many “environmentalists” would be singing a different tune if the internationale was still into five year industrial plans. Yeah, green like a watermelon.
That’s a lot of flailing around without ever addressing the points in my comment. If you’re married to the notion that the scientific method is so riddled with liars and cheaters as to invalidate its findings, feel free to also not vaccinate your children and teach them that humans shared the Garden of Eden with dinosaurs 6000 years ago.
Careful with those straw men, Eugene.
It’s not that the scientific method is flawed, it’s that science is performed by human beings, who aren’t perfect.
Obviously. But I selected those “straw men” for a reason, as they also have a vocal contingent of detractors who poorly understand the science but make a giant fuss because the results clash with their world view.
“It’s amazing how many non-scientists suddenly became interested in the scientific method once the topic of global warming became The Big Thing.”
Nope, it has nothing to do with the subject at hand. We all have built-in BS meters, some are more sensitive then others, but when our meters start flirting with the “red line” we all know that we either have to shift gears, slow down or blow-up
The diversity of conflicting belief systems in this world suggests our BS meters don’t know up from down. Some facts are counterintuitive; without mathematics it seems insane that the earth is spinning and rotating around the sun when we can clearly see that the sun is moving across our sky.
meh, you can do better then that
Round earth guys say “Sail west and find a new passage to India, it’s safe”
The flat earth guys say, “Don’t sail to the horizon, you’ll fall off the edge”
I think, “Ok, I won’t risk it”
I then find out that Flat Earth Insurance Co. sells a policy for falling off the edge in a sailing ship
BS meter hits the red line
Check and mate :)
I’m not going to jump into the global warming debate, but let’s have a slow clap for just how great the internal combustion engine has become. We live in a wonderous world where you can easily wring 100+ HP out of a liter of displacement, with emissions so clean they would have been seen as an impossibility decades ago. It also takes some serious abuse and neglect to turn one into a smoking polluter these days.
When I was a child in the late 70’s, cars all reeked of gasoline when they weren’t even running. You could almost always smell either your car or the car ahead of you at a stop light. Now, I get behind some seriously thrashed out vehicles and rarely if ever smell any emissions from them, and I’m a windows open in all seasons kind of guy.
You are right. I can remember ash Wednesday in the 70s, dad told us to get the ashes and me and my sisters, rather than go to church with a grouchy priest, ashed ourselves from her friends Plymouth Volare. I don’t think you can get any soot from an exhaust pipe anymore.
The next ice age is coming in plus or minus 40k years and all of this will be moot.
More about the holly scientific report of the IPCC.
This is what Climatologist Dr. Roy Warren Spencer who worked as a Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center had to said about it: “the biggest omission of the report continues to be the almost total neglect of natural forcing mechanisms of climate change” and he went on saying “(it)reveals a dogged attempt to salvage salvage the IPCC’s credibility amidst mounting evidence that it has gone overboard in its attempts to scare the global public over the last quarter century”.
Dr. Warren won’t receive the Nobel Prize for Peace for this statement.
But he is not alone.
The people and nations of the world burn all the hydrocarbons they can get out of the ground. They have continued to do so despite the global warming debate. They will continue to do so. People don’t want to be poor. If you know how much carbon a person is responsible for producing, you have a pretty good idea of how wealthy they are. The debate is moot. Carbon production will continue, effectively unabated, regardless of the debate.
The Millions Behind Bjorn Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus Center US Think Tank
google for the link
http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/06/25/millions-behind-bjorn-lomborg-copenhagen-consensus-center
Bjorn Lomborg Is Part Of The Koch Network — And Cashing In
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/06/25/3453053/koch-bjorn-lomborg-lousy-t-shirt/
is rush limbaugh running this site?
Sure. Economic constraints and scarcity of resources are just conspiracies invented by your political opponents.
Whether or not you’re actually wearing a tin foil hat is irrelevant at this point.
I trust actual scientists more than I trust gomers posting breitbart articles.