Think Twice Before Buying an Electric Vehicle

 

Enrico Trigoso at BasedUnderground has a report that should make every driver think twice before switching to an electric vehicle (EV):

The corporate-controlled media is finally coming around to accepting the truth about the electric vehicle (EV) revolution, which is not even close to being as environmentally friendly as its supporters and promoters claim.

Reuters published a piece this week revealing that even the smallest EV accidents, including minor fender-benders, almost always result in insurance companies having to total the entire car. The reason for this has to do with EV batteries, which are so expensive to replace that it makes more sense to just replace the entire car.

“We’re buying electric cars for sustainability reasons,” said Matthew Avery, research director at the automotive risk intelligence company Thatcham Research. “An EV isn’t very sustainable if you’ve got to throw the battery away after a minor collision.”

The battery pack in your average Tesla, for example, costs tens of thousands of dollars to replace. The battery pack alone represents a sizable portion of the vehicle’s overall price tag, it turns out.

Tesla and many other EV manufacturers have made battery packs a structural component of their cars in order to reduce costs for end consumers – but at what cost to the environment? Unless EV manufacturers change the ways in which they incorporate battery packs into their cars, all this needless waste will continue to pile up. . . .

. . .

(Related: It will never be possible for the electric grid as it currently exists to charge everybody’s EVs once gas-powered vehicles are gone.) . . .

More at the link here.

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Wind, Solar, & Batteries: nope

Yesterday, we blogged on the Green Cult members, those environmental zealots who are actually up to something else.   As a follow-up, John Hinderaker at PowerLine explains why wind and solar power will “never work”:

Enormous amounts of money are being made by “green” fraudsters, utilities and politicians who tell us we are in the midst of a transition from fossil fuels to wind and solar energy. In fact, no such transition is underway; fossil fuel consumption is higher than ever. And no such transition will take place, ever, either in America or anywhere else in the world.

Why? Because wind and solar are both obsolete technologies. They produce electricity less than one-half of the time, a fact that will never change. How can we run a modern economy on intermittent energy sources? We can’t.

If you ask a liberal that question, his answer will be “batteries.” He will admit that wind and solar work only occasionally, but that is no problem, he will tell you, because the electricity they generate can be stored in batteries for later use.

Power can be stored in batteries, of course. We all do this every day, storing tiny amounts on our laptops, smart phones and so on. But our energy demands are almost unfathomably large, and all of the batteries in the world don’t begin to meet those needs. My colleague Isaac Orr created this graphic, which compares energy consumption in just one state in one country, as of 2019, with projected battery storage in the entire world as of 2030. You might as well rely on pixie dust as on batteries:

Click to embiggen

Much more at PowerLine here.

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The Mask of The Green Cult

 

image credit: yuuuuup8000.blogspot

“The Mask of The Green Cult.”  Sounds like a science fiction movie.  Except that it’s all around us, for real.  Adam Vicari at American Thinker starts his essay:

For decades now, you have heard leftist ear sores bloviate endlessly about "climate change."  The world will end in a decade if we don't take action now! screams AOC.  However, the more skeptical and rational among us tend to question the true motivation of the environmentalist Green cult.

The best example of a real environmentalist was probably conservationist John Muir, the founder of the Sierra Club.  Muir's work helped to establish a number of national parks throughout the country, an act that did not regress the progress of society for the sake of nature, but sought to preserve nature while simultaneously allowing industrial society to progress at a steady rate.  Thus, Muir sought to build something, while the modern environmentalist movement seeks only to destroy everything and anything that gets in the way of its climate crusade. 

Just take a look at the Sierra Club's website today, and see what its goals are for 2030.  Within the next seven years, the Sierra Club hopes to eliminate enough coal and gas in the energy sector to make for 80% carbon "pollution"–free electricity by that time, in addition to decreasing oil used in the transportation sector by 18%, ending the sale of gas appliances, and halting the fossil fuel market by banning oil and gas exports and petrochemical expansion at the same time.  This is an ambitious plan...and also a complete load of BS and magical thinking. 

Although it may not faze most people at first, notice how they call carbon a "pollutant" and claim they want to reduce it by 80% in electricity production.  Since when is carbon a pollutant?  Carbon is an element necessary to all life on earth. No organism can survive without it.  Indeed, the entire process on which all human life depends, photosynthesis, requires carbon dioxide.  In order for plants to produce oxygen for living beings to breathe, they must first collect carbon dioxide dispelled from the living being breathing the air they are producing.  Numerous studies have indicated that areas with higher carbon concentration are more green and more fertile, not less. 

So why would the Green cult want to reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere? . . . .

Why indeed?  Mr. Vicari has some good guesses.  Read his column here.

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It’s not about EVs. It’s about driving your car.

 

John Hinderaker at PowerLineBlog explains why we’ll never be driving electric vehicles:

Electric Vehicles Are Not The Future

The mania for electric vehicles is a fad that is driven 100% by government regulation. The consumer verdict on EVs has been in for a century. Some of the earliest cars were battery-powered, but they lost out to gasoline-powered cars because gasoline-powered vehicles are better.

Those who have been paying attention understand that there is zero chance that our existing motor vehicle fleet will be converted to EVs. Mark Tapscott sums up some of the reasons. I want to focus on just one of his points, the fact that the lithium batteries needed to replace our current vehicle fleet would require ridiculous amounts of mining of minerals, particularly lithium, the price of which is already sky-high. How do liberals intend to accomplish this unprecedented global mining project?

Answer: they don’t. Mark quotes from a report by an environmental organization:

This report finds that the United States can achieve zero emissions transportation while limiting the amount of lithium mining necessary by reducing the car dependence of the transportation system, decreasing the size of electric vehicle batteries, and maximizing lithium recycling.

Reordering the US transportation system through policy and spending shifts to prioritize public and active transit while reducing car dependency can also ensure transit equity, protect ecosystems, respect Indigenous rights, and meet the demands of global justice.

This is what liberal politicians are not telling you–yet. They don’t really plan to replace your car with an EV, they don’t want to replace it at all. . . .

"Transit equity"?  That's New World Order-speak for all of us peasants; the elites will travel in limousines and private jets. We'll ride the bus.  Read the rest of the column here.

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For the Planet

private jets transporting participants & guests to the conference in Davos --
to discuss the climate crisis

It’s the hypocrisy, stupid.  At Front Page Mag, Daniel Greenfield reports on what green bazillionaire tyrants like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos have in mind for us:

. . . Every time you ask a member of the private jet set about saving the planet, they begin babbling that they bought climate offsets which is like a vegan being asked about all the burgers and explaining that he pays someone else to eat soy.

If the planet is on the verge of going boom because we haven’t gone back to the dark ages yet, there’s really not much of an excuse for announcing that you can do whatever you want as long as you buy climate chips.

But these folks don’t actually believe their own hype.

Amazon’s Jeff Bezos built a mega-yacht and then funds climate stuff. Bill Gates has four jets and insists he’s not part of the problem. And how else is he supposed to get to Kenya anyway? Fly commercial? The 66,000 square foot mansion? I’m sure he’s got offsets for that too. Like paying poor people to live in shacks.

And that’s the future that our green overlords would like for us. . . .

Read the rest here.

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Neil Oliver: they are coming for your [fill in the blank]

 

Neil Oliver’s latest monologue/meditation was posted over the weekend at Conservative Treehouse.  And as usual, Mr Oliver knocks it out of the park.  His subject is the imposition of the New World Order, following the gala Davos World Economic Forum conference last week.  Here’s his opening:

Nothing less than our way of life is under threat now. A population distracted by propaganda about one existential threat after another – pandemics, nuclear war, climate crisis – is being herded into an unrecognizable future.

What was done in the name of Covid was grotesque – a violation of the rights of billions of people. Having seen what they can get away with, our so-called leaders have moved on, broadening their scope, as greedy for more as kids left unsupervised in a sweetie shop.

What is happening now, all around us, is the relentless erosion not just of our rights and liberties, but of our lives. It is so blatant – what’s happening – it’s hard to see it for what it is, which is bare-faced daylight robbery.

After Covid, the C-word that’s supposed to be on everyone’s lips … drummed into us night and day by the same complicit media that drives everything else … is climate – Climate crisis, in fact. Two c-words for the price of one.

From all sides, we are bombarded with predictions of the end of the world. Predictions, remember? Computer modelling … the crystal-ball-gazing of the scientific world. . . .

Mr Oliver’s upbeat conclusion:

The race is on. Our so-called leaders, all pumped up on the adrenaline of lockdowns and mandates, have sprinted out of the blocks for the ultimate round of Supermarket Sweep. Into their trolleys, they plan to heap every last aspect of the lives we have had.

They think they’ve got us scared enough to accept the whole damned lot of it.

Here’s the thing: I am not afraid of them.

I don’t even take them seriously.

For the video or the rest of the transcript, click here.

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Not your father’s Democrat party

This column by the inimitable Victor Davis Hanson was published a few days ago at American Greatness, and it’s a cautionary analysis:

For all Joe Biden’s talk about “semi-fascist” and “un-American,” “ultra-MAGA” Republicans, it is the Democratic Party that has far more radically changed. It is descended into a woke, neo-socialist, radically green party. And it is committed, as Barack Obama once promised, to fundamentally transforming America. How it proceeds with that agenda is now as entirely predictable as it is creepy.

And Hanson expands on the agenda and methods by category, specifically:

• Election Warping
• Projection
• Suppression
• Changing the Rules
• Asymmetries

Hanson’s conclusion:

Conservatives should be aware that they are not dealing with the party of JFK and LBJ. The Democratic Party has nothing in common with the agendas of a slick Bill Clinton and is well beyond the “fundamental transformations” of arch-narcissist Barack Obama. 

We are faced with a strictly disciplined, no-nonsense revolutionary party, well known from history that aims to change the nation into something unrecognizable by most Americans. And it feels that it has now created the means to do it.

Read the full article here.

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Neil Oliver: The era of ‘Great Pretending’

 

Image credit: peterjnorth.blogspot.com

Sundance introduces Neil Oliver’s latest monologue/meditation:

In this monologue Oliver uses two of my favorite metaphors to describe modern western civilization.  First, the Potemkin Villages constructed by political elite in their effort to make it seem like the world is something it is not. Second, the great pretending that is needed in order to sell it.

Here’s part of the transcript:

[T]he term Potemkin village has stuck and is still used today to describe the lengths to which the leaders of a failing, broken country might go in order to create the illusion of success and prosperity when the truth is altogether different.

. . .

We are no longer policed by consent. Rather the police force and it is a force now, in lieu of a service, has been bent around political or ideological will. Some protest groups are deemed good – Just Stop Oil, Extinction Rebellion, Insulate Britain, Black Lives Matter and fed tea and biscuits while they block the roads and smash windows, protected from any and all opposing views.

Others espousing opinions that fly in the face of the latest ideological kink or political dikta protests about so-called vaccines, or about lockdown or illegal immigration, often prompt the unleashing of the men on horseback, the riot shields.

Mountains of data reveal that the products marketed as vaccines are no such thing. They don’t stop infection. They don’t stop transmission. They don’t stop an infected person getting sick. They don’t keep an infected person out of hospital. And they don’t stop an infected person dying.

By any measure those products, released under emergency use authorization and demonstrably the cause of countless deaths and injuries, are, at best, a façade, a front, an optical illusion intended to make the masses move in the direction desired by the leaders.

Whatever way you cut it, those products don’t work as advertised and yet still the advertising-slash-propaganda campaigns are up and running – right now, this very minute – pushing needles into as many arms as possible, including those of healthy 6-month-old babies.

. . .

The Green agenda is not about Green, rather it is about Greed. There’s even fake meat, and fake milk, and fake cheese and scores of other fake food products besides. What else would you serve in a Potemkin village, after all, but fake food?

. . .

While more and more of the population wakes up to the lies, obfuscation, fear-porn and propaganda around the so-called vaccines, around the Green agenda, around gender politics and race politics. The majority of the news media obediently pumps out the same old tosh about “safe and effective” and “climate crisis” and “preferred pronouns” and race baiting.

But the fakery has been swiftly and shoddily constructed, without the foundation of truth. For that reason, this Potemkin village thrown up around us is flimsy and should be easily demolished, if we wish it so.  . . .

Mr. Oliver is describing Great Britain, but as many reader comments point out, it’s all happening in America as well.  The full transcript, or, if you prefer, the video, is at Conservative Treehouse here.

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Climate change prison

 

Here’s Andrea Widburg on the most recent climate change insanity:

. . . in accordance with UN and WEF climate recommendations, the city of Oxford (home to the famed university) approved plans mandating that citizens may not drive more than 15 minutes distance from their homes without permission. It’s called the “15 Minute City” and is intended to reduce auto emissions. Mostly, though, it will reduce liberty, which is what climate change madness has always been about.

. . .

Making choices based on lifestyle preferences is a perfectly sound, market-based way to go through life.

But the marketplace is not what globalists want. They want control. Certainly, that’s the case in and around Oxford, England. Word is trickling into America that both the leftist Oxfordshire County Council and the Oxford City Council have plans. Big plans.

. . .

And the conclusion:

. . . Socialism is totalitarianism, which exists under many names (theocracy, military junta, fascism, communism) but, no matter the name, the goal is always the same: Completely control a population for the benefit of a small, well-defined group of elites. In Oxford, England, with its new plan to trap people near their homes and spy on them wherever they go, we’re seeing the latest phase in the socialist crackdown that Rush [Limbaugh] identified 30 years ago.

Coming soon to a neighborhood near you.  Read Ms. Widburg’s column at American Thinker here.

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Neil Oliver on the deadly consequence of going Green

 

Neil Oliver’s weekly monologue is, once again, insightful and also unnerving. Here’s part of the transcript (via Treehouse):

Winter arrived last week – and with it a dose of reality. All that talk about wrapping up warm in the house, putting on an extra jumper, hot water bottles, full-size onesies – it’s dangerous nonsense. It might be fine for a while if you’re a healthy adult – but it’s a tragedy in slow motion for babies, young children, the elderly, the sick.

And it’s only the second week in December. It’s a long time until Spring.

Even if layering up and donning a hat were enough to keep a body going, once cold properly gets a grip of a house, it too starts to die in its own way.

The creep of dampness that takes its own toll on house and health alike. Frozen pipes – followed by burst pipes – and not enough plumbers to go round. People who can’t afford to heat their homes are likely struggling with spiking food bills as well.

All of this in a first world country that was home to the industrial revolution that changed the world for the better and lifted billions out of poverty. Now the grannies saved by locking down the world until its heart stopped beating, are sitting down to die alone of cold and hunger. It’s amazing how inventive the Establishment has proven to be in coming up with ways to invite the elderly to die miserable lonely deaths.

Our so-called leaders tell us all of it is a price worth paying – by which they mean worth paying by us, the little people. All the decisions are being made by those who have no intention whatever of spending so much as five minutes in an unheated home. Turn up the thermostat and fill out the expenses claim – that’s the order of the day for our elected representatives. . . . 

Read the rest here (or listen to the video).

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Preview: "New World Order" January Agenda

 

The World Economic Forum (WEF) will convene next month in Davos, Switzerland.  At The Dossier, Jordan Schachtel previews the agenda, i.e., to plot the next steps in the global take-over:

Each year, the WEF brings together a well-connected cadre of powerful public and private individuals and organizations behind heavily secured and invite-only doors for their annual meeting in Switzerland. Through this gathering, the global “elite” is provided a physical space to form narratives and ideas to bolster their power. The WEF is led by a comic book villain-like character in Klaus Schwab, its president. Schwab has dedicated his life to the advancement of a fascist agenda through which all power is controlled by the merger of the state and select corporate interests. 

Davos is where these corporate and governmental power centers coalesce behind big action items. Themes such as Build Back Better, The Great Reset, and ESG were facilitated and advanced by Davos-connected entities.

This year’s Switzerland confab will be titled, “Cooperation in a Fragmented World.” The major themes for the gathering will include (along with my interpretation for what this stuff actually means in plain English):  

1.    “Addressing the Current Energy and Food Crises in the context of a New System for Energy, Climate and Nature”

Essentially, the WEF wants you to eat bugs while energy becomes unaffordable due to the purposeful destruction of the global reliable energy sector. The “green transition,” as they call it, is necessary to save the world from ending. If you have questions about the climate change narrative, you’re an evil “climate denier.” Just ask Greta!

Read all the rest of the “themes” to be rammed down everyone’s throats ~ click here.

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VDH: Totalitarian Wokeism

 

Victor Davis Hanson knocks another one out of the park. His “Wokeism is A Cruel and Dangerous Cult” at American Greatness begins:  

Wokeism has been described by its critics as the omnipresent use of race—and to a lesser extent, gender—to replace meritocracy and thus ensure equality of result. What follows from implementing that ideology are reparatory actions to reward those of the present by atoning for the injustices done to others in the past. 

Some see it as an update of 1960s cultural Marxism fads. Others scoff that it is just a return to 1980s-style political correctness. 

Still more see it as the logical successor to 1990s-type race, class, and gender obsessions—albeit with a shriller and more dangerous Jacobin, Soviet, and Maoist twist. Wokeism’s hysteria also invites comparisons to the Salem witch trials and McCarthyism. 

But few have described wokeism as the cruel creed that it is. 

Wokeism’s natural logic is to destroy the lives of people of both genders, of all races, and—if need be—those of every age, all to leverage an otherwise unworkable ideological agenda. It is nihilist and destroys everything it touches. It tears apart foes and friends alike, whether by fueling media-driven hatred of Donald Trump or faux-deification of the disaster that is now Joe Biden. 

One of the take-away quotes: "Equity in our Orwellian world is not equality, but payback." The full article is here. Recommended.

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