Looking for their lost keys

Tony Heller's video explains that virtue signaling supersedes reality:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCJmN5E1LIo

Annual CO2 emissions (click to enlarge)

Arctic ice averages (click to enlarge)

EV policies

"Despite some of the greenest electricity on Earth, a Norwegian still needs to get 45 years of use out of his imported EV battery (expected life 15 years) to offset the global CO2 cost of producing it."

https://www.wsj.com/articles/gm-doesnt-tell-the-truth-about-electric-vehicles-auto-industry-climate-policy-92e25d01?mod=WTRN_pos4&cx_testId=3&cx_testVariant=cx_171&cx_artPos=3

Excerpts:

GM Doesn’t Tell the Truth About EVs

If the U.S. and allies become failed states, blame their energy and climate delusions.

By 

Holman W. Jenkins, Jr.

March 8, 2024

Normal market logic goes out the window when company leaders are indulged and even required to say fantastical, unrealistic things about the future. I’ve long borrowed the term “sophisticated state failure” for the Western world’s energy policies. Because government must always be seen doing something, nonsense ideologies, even when spoken purely for effect, end up “gamified” (made a game of) in government programs. Thus the Obama auto bailouts: They left Detroit permanently dependent on artificially inflated pickup profits to subsidize loss-making electric vehicles served up as a gesture by the political class.

The resulting program, the Biden Transportation Department was legally obliged last year to admit, fails any cost-benefit test. Climatewise, the truth is even sadder.

Dollar for dollar, subsidizing EVs for Americans is a subsidy to the rest of the world to use more fossil energy and cause more emissions, a reality that can’t escape political notice forever.

Take Norway, portrayed in GM ads as EV heaven. As a Morgan Stanley research note first observed two years ago, Norway has seen no decline in oil consumption related to EVs, though users receive thousands of dollars in annually recurring subsidies and EVs accounted at the time for 64% of new-car sales.

The reason is increased use and ownership of gas-powered cars, especially for trips that EVs aren’t suited for.

Now comes an update from the natural-resource consultants Goehring & Rozencwajg that only darkens the picture. Despite some of the greenest electricity on Earth, a Norwegian still needs to get 45 years of use out of his imported EV battery (expected life 15 years) to offset the global CO2 cost of producing it.

As I’ve noted before, secretly even the Biden administration knows the truth about all this. Get ready for a colossal irony. Europe’s emissions peaked in 1979, America’s peaked in 2005, and China’s are expected to peak as soon as next year. The reason wasn’t energy policy. Peak emissions happen because of slowing population and economic growth plus the normal, uninterrupted, market-driven hunt for energy efficiency (which can certainly include cost-effective investment in renewables).

Unfortunately, global energy efficiency, which was improving by 1.9% annually for more than a decade, has been growing at only half that rate since 2021.

The numbers, from the French research firm Enerdata, may be distorted by Covid, but recessions and economic crises usually accelerate growth in energy efficiency. By stimulating more energy consumption overall, by stimulating inefficient solar and wind investments, which occasion large emissions-creating increases in mineral mining for less energy output, it’s distinctly possible our poorly designed green subsidies work just like poorly designed fossil-fuel subsidies. They make emissions worse and slow progress toward a global peak, which I’ve long argued is closer than previously thought.

Well-adjusted humans have an instinct to avoid embarrassing persons in positions of authority, whether it’s Ms. Barra embarrassing the politicians who control her life or journalists embarrassing Ms. Barra. But it’s not like Detroit executives in the past haven’t been successful even when willing to say the U.S. fuel mileage regime is nuts; if the government wants people to buy high-mileage or electric vehicles, it should implement a gas tax.

Lake Mead and climate change

 

NotKennyRogers

@NotKennyRogers

A brief history of how global warming destroyed Lake Mead in Nevada: 2021: "So far so good." 2022: "Oh no...global warming is destroying the lake!" 2023: "Global warming is getting worse and the lake is almost dry and will never recover!" 2024: "Oops, never mind. All good."

Patrick Moore: hysteria... was a complete fabrication

The scientific method has not been applied to the CO2 theory of global warming.

https://x.com/wideawake_media/status/1793191428404699504

Wide Awake Media

@wideawake_media

·

11h

Greenpeace co-founder, Dr. Patrick Moore: "I am firmly of the belief that the future will show that this whole hysteria over climate change was a complete fabrication."

CO2 is not only good, it is essential.

Burying old wind turbine blades

A few observations by Wide Awake Media.

Wide Awake Media

@wideawake_media

·

5h

"Environmentally-friendly" wind turbine blades being buried in a landfill site because their 20-year lifespan is up and they can't be recycled.

Wide Awake Media

@wideawake_media

·

5h

These wind turbine blades have come to die at a wind turbine graveyard in Texas, USA. They've outlived their 20-year lifespan and can't be recycled. How very "green" and "renewable".

Wide Awake Media

@wideawake_media

Australia: Almost 4000 acres of prime agricultural land are replaced by more than a million solar panels. Is this one of the reasons for the globalist war on agriculture? Are they deliberately putting farmers out of businesss so they can use the land for inefficient solar panels, instead of high-yield food production?