Great News for V8s and ICE Vehicles in General

[exm]

What climate hysteria went wrong in Europe - do tell as I live here and am not aware of any such hysteria?

Europe’s Green Energy Rush Slashed Emissions—and Crippled the Economy

European politicians pitched the continent’s green transition to voters as a win-win: Citizens would benefit from green jobs and cheap, abundant solar and wind energy alongside a sharp reduction in carbon emissions.

Nearly two decades on, the promise has largely proved costly for consumers and damaging for the economy.

Europe has succeeded in slashing carbon emissions more than any other region—by 30% from 2005 levels, compared with a 17% drop for the U.S. But along the way, the rush to renewables has helped drive up electricity prices in much of the continent.
Germany now has the highest domestic electricity prices in the developed world, while the U.K. has the highest industrial electricity rates, according to a basket of 28 major economies analyzed by the International Energy Agency. Italy isn’t far behind. Average electricity prices for heavy industries in the European Union remain roughly twice those in the U.S. and 50% above China. Energy prices have also grown more volatile as the share of renewables increased.

It is crippling industry and hobbling Europe’s ability to attract key economic drivers like artificial intelligence, which requires cheap and abundant electricity. The shift is also adding to a cost-of-living shock for consumers that is fueling support for antiestablishment parties, which portray the green transition as an elite project that harms workers, most consumers and regions.

Energy analysts say it makes strategic sense for a continent that lacks the abundant oil and gas riches enjoyed by the U.S. and some other regions to diversify its energy sources. In some cases like Spain, blessed with lots of sunshine, or Nordic countries, with abundant hydro power to provide energy when its wind farms fall silent, the transition looks promising. France’s reliance on nuclear energy is helping it keep costs down.

But in much of the region the transition is at risk of backfiring, adding to economic stagnation.

“We are hemorrhaging industry,” said Dieter Helm, an economic policy professor at Oxford University who has advised U.K. governments on energy policy.

British chemical company Ineos said in October it would close two plants in western Germany because of high energy costs. In recent days, Exxon-Mobil said it would close its chemical plant in Scotland and threatened to exit Europe’s chemicals industry, saying green policies made it uncompetitive.

Across the continent, demand for electricity has fallen over the past 15 years in part because energy is so expensive. With production also declining somewhat and infrastructure lagging, companies that are looking for more power are hitting roadblocks.

In Ireland, the state grid operator imposed an effective moratorium on new data centers—which underpin cloud computing and AI—until 2028, after existing data centers drained over a fifth of the country’s electricity supply last year.

Jerome Evans, the CEO of a German data-center operator, sought to expand his two data centers in Frankfurt, Germany’s internet crossroads. The local power provider told him he would have to wait a decade, until 2035, for the energy to power them.

Some of Europe’s high energy prices aren’t the fault of policymakers or the green transition. Prices for natural gas surged after the pandemic and again after Europe heavily reduced imports of gas from Russia following its invasion of Ukraine.

But a good chunk of the increase is thanks to the shift to renewables, say business executives and some economists.

While sunlight and wind are free, harnessing them entails significant infrastructure investments, including in battery storage for when the sun isn’t shining or the wind blowing, and vast redundant capacity. These additional costs, obscured by subsidies and carbon taxes, mean energy prices in places like Germany and the U.K. are likely to remain higher than other countries for years to come, some economists say. The stubbornly high prices, Helm said, suggest it’s the overall system cost driving prices.

Aurora Energy Research, a consulting firm, estimates a “clean power” system in the U.K. would only start saving bill payers money from 2044. It’s a similar story in Germany. By that point, the economic damage done to Europe could be severe.

In some places, the political consensus on the energy transition—once driven by dire climate warnings—is starting to crack.

Even with broad support on the continent for mitigating climate change, right-wing populist parties in France, Germany and the U.K. that are opposed to renewable energy targets and subsidies are gaining support. Germany’s government recently decided to build new gas-fired power plants. Diplomatic disputes between European countries have erupted over energy policy in recent months, while Norway’s coalition government collapsed after a revolt over the adoption of proposed EU rules to increase renewable energy.

High-profile net-zero projects are being postponed or scrapped, notably those involving green hydrogen, which the EU placed at the heart of its green plans as a possible fuel for heavy industry and means of energy storage.

“You can’t afford, in top global competition, to be ideologically driven in the way you decide the energy system,” said Ebba Busch, Sweden’s deputy prime minister and energy minister. Busch has criticized Germany for relying too heavily on solar and wind power, which means it sucks up energy from nearby countries on dull days, driving up prices.

“Without energy we have no industry, and without industry we have no defense,” she said.

The ‘or’ strategy
Europe has pursued a different strategy in its green transition than any other region. The U.S., China, India, Brazil and others took an “and” strategy: They are aggressively rolling out renewables and simultaneously building fossil-fuel power plants on a grand scale.

Europe largely took an “or” strategy: It raced to replace fossil fuels with solar, wind and biomass by taxing carbon heavily, subsidizing renewables and closing scores of fossil-fuel power plants.

Britain, which pioneered the use of coal for energy, last year became the first large industrialized country to shut all of its coal-fired power plants. It has also banned new offshore oil-and-gas drilling. Denmark plans to eliminate gas for home heating by 2035. Around one-fifth of Germany’s municipal utilities plan to shut down their gas networks in coming years, according to an October survey by the utilities’ trade association.

The effect was to cut back on a major source of energy before any other is fully up and running.

Many European consumers and businesses are now stuck in the worst of both worlds. They are still at the mercy of electricity prices linked to the cost of imported fossil fuels while also shouldering big upfront costs to overhaul grids to handle the intermittent renewable power.

In the U.K., the cost of procuring and delivering electricity accounts for just over half of domestic electricity bills, with the rest made up of an array of levies and carbon taxes, including subsidies to pay for renewables and grid upgrades. These levies have risen faster than wholesale energy costs like natural gas in the past decade, according to the Resolution Foundation, a think tank.

Polls show half of British consumers are planning to ration energy use this winter as they struggle with wholesale electricity costs that are 80% higher than the U.S.

Dina Ingram, an office administrator in London, used to turn on the central heating in her four-room house for long stretches. Now in winter she can only afford to have it on for three hours a day. She doesn’t heat her bedroom at all.

“I get angry,” said the 62-year-old, who attributes the high prices to corporate greed.

Europe’s decision to slash fossil-fuel use is unusual historically, economists say. In earlier energy transitions—from wood to coal, or coal to oil—countries continued to use the outgoing fuel while adding the new fuel on top. Worldwide, wood and coal are being burned in larger quantities than ever, thanks mostly to China.

The policies could even unintentionally result in higher emissions globally, some economists and chemical industry executives say. If European factories close as a result of high energy costs, their production is likely to be replaced by imports from places like China, where the carbon footprint for those products is far higher—even before shipping is calculated, according to Oxford Economics.

Broken promises
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Former U.K. Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised in 2020 that the country would become the “Saudi Arabia of wind,” producing clean power that he said would be cheaper than coal and gas.

Britain’s Labour Party has stayed the course, vowing that household energy bills will fall £300 a year, or around $400 annually, by 2030. But energy executives recently testified to Parliament that electricity bills would likely rise a further 20% in real terms by that date—even if the price of inputs like natural gas were to fall. Executives cited “noncommodity factors” like the cost of the new grid.

To try to shield consumers, the U.K. government announced last week it will pay a pricey renewable subsidy with general taxation rather than loading it onto people’s bills. Britain is also racing to expand its nuclear capacity. It last opened a nuclear reactor in 1995.

Parts of the green transition have proved unexpectedly costly. When Scotland’s biggest offshore wind farm opened in 2023, it was feted as a symbol of Britain’s push into a new era of cheap low-emissions energy. But today, British taxpayers spend tens of millions of pounds a year for the Seagreen wind farm to not produce electricity.

Why? If the wind farm was left constantly on, it would send big pulses of energy from northern Scotland to southern England that would fry the U.K.’s aging grid.

Last year, the farm’s 114 turbines in the North Sea were disconnected more than 70% of the time; a gas plant in southern England fired up instead to meet local electricity demand. The tab British consumers paid to “balance” the grid totaled £2.7 billion last year—a cost expected to rise to £8 billion by 2030. Borrowing costs have also risen, making capital-intensive offshore wind far more expensive.

“Very clearly the cost of the transition has never been admitted or recognized,” said Gordon Hughes, a professor at the University of Edinburgh and a former adviser on energy to the World Bank. “There is a massive dishonesty involved.”

The continent’s cash-strapped governments now face a difficult choice: Press ahead with a rapid transition, or slow it down to save money but risk prolonging the pain.

Goldman Sachs Research expects Europe will have to invest up to €3 trillion, or $3.48 trillion, in power generation and infrastructure over the coming 10 years—roughly double what European countries spent in the past decade. That’s a big ask for governments already facing tighter budgets due to an aging population, higher military spending and higher interest bills on debt.

Waiting for a tipping point
Proponents of renewable energy argue that high prices will prove transitional. Since sunshine and wind are free and abundant, renewables will ultimately be cheaper once the new infrastructure is built, they say, while it will continue to cost money to dig oil and gas out of the ground. If enough renewable energy and battery storage is brought onstream, fossil fuels will no longer set the price of electricity and costs will fall away.

“Energy costs in the future will be a lot lower,” once Europe’s renewable system is up and running, said Jacob Kirkegaard, an economist in Brussels with the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

The problem is getting to that point, Kirkegaard said.

Some green entrepreneurs in the U.K. have started pushing politicians to ensure the oil-and-gas industry can help ease the transition. Greg Jackson, founder of Octopus Energy, which has championed wind farms, called on the U.K. to renew offshore oil-and-gas exploration in the North Sea, so that it doesn’t have to ship gas in from across the globe. Dale Vince, founder of Ecotricity and a climate activist who used to fund the protest group Just Stop Oil, wants lower taxes for existing oil-and-gas projects in the North Sea.

“I think the outlook is poor if we don’t get bold and reform our energy market,” said Vince. He believes the green transition will pay off but says more needs to be done to stop companies building the new green grid from price gouging.

The Tony Blair Institute, the think tank founded by the former British Labour leader, is calling for carbon taxes on natural gas in the U.K. to be suspended for five years to help lower electricity costs.

Some prominent economists and industry executives have recently cast doubt on whether renewables will ever be cheaper in places like Germany and the U.K. that aren’t blessed with abundant sunshine and have bet big on wind. Onshore wind turbines in Germany produce around one-fifth of their total theoretical output. Solar panels in Germany and the U.K. use only around 10% of their total theoretical output.

“I have not seen any plan that facilitates green electricity in central Europe at competitive costs,” said Miguel López, CEO of German industrial giant Thyssenkrupp.

Helm, the Oxford professor, argues renewable energy will remain more expensive than fossil fuels because the overall system is more cumbersome. The U.K. used to meet its electricity demand with 60-70 gigawatts of power capacity. Now, the country requires twice as much capacity, 120 gigawatts, to meet slightly lower demand—not to mention the additional storage facilities and interconnector supplies to and from continental Europe.

Twenty years ago, the U.K. was the most competitive location globally for Huntsman, a Texas-based chemicals manufacturer, thanks to cheap North Sea energy, said CEO Peter Huntsman. Over the past decade, the company sold off most of its U.K. assets, reducing its staff there from more than 2,000 to around 70.

“The whole value chain has gone,” Huntsman said.

Source

Sponsored

 

[agreywolfe]

what it boils down to is simply confusion paralysis

Renewables will never offset enough power generation to replace oil and coal. and people are to cowardly to accept nuclear which can replace oil and coal, make more power, and be safer. (more people die from fossil fuel extraction and pollution per year than have ever died due to nuclear power)

Nothing we do with cars will ever truly offset the CO2 they emit. The ICE is only a portion of the CO2 emitted by vehicles, you also need to consider the sheet metal, the tires, and even the roads we drive on, they all contribute to CO2 generation.

nobody wants to suffer a hit on the economy because theyve had it so good for so long. nuclear is expensive and scary, EVs are expensive and cant go as far on a charge, new FF power plants are able to make way more power than renewables.

theres no solid answer to climate change so every just defaults to "nothing" because thats the easiest solution

 

[Zig]

what it boils down to is simply confusion paralysis

Renewables will never offset enough power generation to replace oil and coal. and people are to cowardly to accept nuclear which can replace oil and coal, make more power, and be safer. (more people die from fossil fuel extraction and pollution per year than have ever died due to nuclear power)

Nothing we do with cars will ever truly offset the CO2 they emit. The ICE is only a portion of the CO2 emitted by vehicles, you also need to consider the sheet metal, the tires, and even the roads we drive on, they all contribute to CO2 generation.

nobody wants to suffer a hit on the economy because theyve had it so good for so long. nuclear is expensive and scary, EVs are expensive and cant go as far on a charge, new FF power plants are able to make way more power than renewables.

theres no solid answer to climate change so every just defaults to "nothing" because thats the easiest solution

You mean they haven’t figured out how to distribute the replaceable nuclear power puck (catalyst about the size and shape of the common smoke/co detector) while preventing the potential for exploitation?

back to the future is a slow process.

 

[Gregs24]

Europe’s Green Energy Rush Slashed Emissions—and Crippled the Economy

European politicians pitched the continent’s green transition to voters as a win-win: Citizens would benefit from green jobs and cheap, abundant solar and wind energy alongside a sharp reduction in carbon emissions.

Nearly two decades on, the promise has largely proved costly for consumers and damaging for the economy.

Europe has succeeded in slashing carbon emissions more than any other region—by 30% from 2005 levels, compared with a 17% drop for the U.S. But along the way, the rush to renewables has helped drive up electricity prices in much of the continent.
Germany now has the highest domestic electricity prices in the developed world, while the U.K. has the highest industrial electricity rates, according to a basket of 28 major economies analyzed by the International Energy Agency. Italy isn’t far behind. Average electricity prices for heavy industries in the European Union remain roughly twice those in the U.S. and 50% above China. Energy prices have also grown more volatile as the share of renewables increased.

It is crippling industry and hobbling Europe’s ability to attract key economic drivers like artificial intelligence, which requires cheap and abundant electricity. The shift is also adding to a cost-of-living shock for consumers that is fueling support for antiestablishment parties, which portray the green transition as an elite project that harms workers, most consumers and regions.

Energy analysts say it makes strategic sense for a continent that lacks the abundant oil and gas riches enjoyed by the U.S. and some other regions to diversify its energy sources. In some cases like Spain, blessed with lots of sunshine, or Nordic countries, with abundant hydro power to provide energy when its wind farms fall silent, the transition looks promising. France’s reliance on nuclear energy is helping it keep costs down.

But in much of the region the transition is at risk of backfiring, adding to economic stagnation.

“We are hemorrhaging industry,” said Dieter Helm, an economic policy professor at Oxford University who has advised U.K. governments on energy policy.

British chemical company Ineos said in October it would close two plants in western Germany because of high energy costs. In recent days, Exxon-Mobil said it would close its chemical plant in Scotland and threatened to exit Europe’s chemicals industry, saying green policies made it uncompetitive.

Across the continent, demand for electricity has fallen over the past 15 years in part because energy is so expensive. With production also declining somewhat and infrastructure lagging, companies that are looking for more power are hitting roadblocks.

In Ireland, the state grid operator imposed an effective moratorium on new data centers—which underpin cloud computing and AI—until 2028, after existing data centers drained over a fifth of the country’s electricity supply last year.

Jerome Evans, the CEO of a German data-center operator, sought to expand his two data centers in Frankfurt, Germany’s internet crossroads. The local power provider told him he would have to wait a decade, until 2035, for the energy to power them.

Some of Europe’s high energy prices aren’t the fault of policymakers or the green transition. Prices for natural gas surged after the pandemic and again after Europe heavily reduced imports of gas from Russia following its invasion of Ukraine.

But a good chunk of the increase is thanks to the shift to renewables, say business executives and some economists.

While sunlight and wind are free, harnessing them entails significant infrastructure investments, including in battery storage for when the sun isn’t shining or the wind blowing, and vast redundant capacity. These additional costs, obscured by subsidies and carbon taxes, mean energy prices in places like Germany and the U.K. are likely to remain higher than other countries for years to come, some economists say. The stubbornly high prices, Helm said, suggest it’s the overall system cost driving prices.

Aurora Energy Research, a consulting firm, estimates a “clean power” system in the U.K. would only start saving bill payers money from 2044. It’s a similar story in Germany. By that point, the economic damage done to Europe could be severe.

In some places, the political consensus on the energy transition—once driven by dire climate warnings—is starting to crack.

Even with broad support on the continent for mitigating climate change, right-wing populist parties in France, Germany and the U.K. that are opposed to renewable energy targets and subsidies are gaining support. Germany’s government recently decided to build new gas-fired power plants. Diplomatic disputes between European countries have erupted over energy policy in recent months, while Norway’s coalition government collapsed after a revolt over the adoption of proposed EU rules to increase renewable energy.

High-profile net-zero projects are being postponed or scrapped, notably those involving green hydrogen, which the EU placed at the heart of its green plans as a possible fuel for heavy industry and means of energy storage.

“You can’t afford, in top global competition, to be ideologically driven in the way you decide the energy system,” said Ebba Busch, Sweden’s deputy prime minister and energy minister. Busch has criticized Germany for relying too heavily on solar and wind power, which means it sucks up energy from nearby countries on dull days, driving up prices.

“Without energy we have no industry, and without industry we have no defense,” she said.

The ‘or’ strategy
Europe has pursued a different strategy in its green transition than any other region. The U.S., China, India, Brazil and others took an “and” strategy: They are aggressively rolling out renewables and simultaneously building fossil-fuel power plants on a grand scale.

Europe largely took an “or” strategy: It raced to replace fossil fuels with solar, wind and biomass by taxing carbon heavily, subsidizing renewables and closing scores of fossil-fuel power plants.

Britain, which pioneered the use of coal for energy, last year became the first large industrialized country to shut all of its coal-fired power plants. It has also banned new offshore oil-and-gas drilling. Denmark plans to eliminate gas for home heating by 2035. Around one-fifth of Germany’s municipal utilities plan to shut down their gas networks in coming years, according to an October survey by the utilities’ trade association.

The effect was to cut back on a major source of energy before any other is fully up and running.

Many European consumers and businesses are now stuck in the worst of both worlds. They are still at the mercy of electricity prices linked to the cost of imported fossil fuels while also shouldering big upfront costs to overhaul grids to handle the intermittent renewable power.

In the U.K., the cost of procuring and delivering electricity accounts for just over half of domestic electricity bills, with the rest made up of an array of levies and carbon taxes, including subsidies to pay for renewables and grid upgrades. These levies have risen faster than wholesale energy costs like natural gas in the past decade, according to the Resolution Foundation, a think tank.

Polls show half of British consumers are planning to ration energy use this winter as they struggle with wholesale electricity costs that are 80% higher than the U.S.

Dina Ingram, an office administrator in London, used to turn on the central heating in her four-room house for long stretches. Now in winter she can only afford to have it on for three hours a day. She doesn’t heat her bedroom at all.

“I get angry,” said the 62-year-old, who attributes the high prices to corporate greed.

Europe’s decision to slash fossil-fuel use is unusual historically, economists say. In earlier energy transitions—from wood to coal, or coal to oil—countries continued to use the outgoing fuel while adding the new fuel on top. Worldwide, wood and coal are being burned in larger quantities than ever, thanks mostly to China.

The policies could even unintentionally result in higher emissions globally, some economists and chemical industry executives say. If European factories close as a result of high energy costs, their production is likely to be replaced by imports from places like China, where the carbon footprint for those products is far higher—even before shipping is calculated, according to Oxford Economics.

Broken promises
It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Former U.K. Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised in 2020 that the country would become the “Saudi Arabia of wind,” producing clean power that he said would be cheaper than coal and gas.

Britain’s Labour Party has stayed the course, vowing that household energy bills will fall £300 a year, or around $400 annually, by 2030. But energy executives recently testified to Parliament that electricity bills would likely rise a further 20% in real terms by that date—even if the price of inputs like natural gas were to fall. Executives cited “noncommodity factors” like the cost of the new grid.

To try to shield consumers, the U.K. government announced last week it will pay a pricey renewable subsidy with general taxation rather than loading it onto people’s bills. Britain is also racing to expand its nuclear capacity. It last opened a nuclear reactor in 1995.

Parts of the green transition have proved unexpectedly costly. When Scotland’s biggest offshore wind farm opened in 2023, it was feted as a symbol of Britain’s push into a new era of cheap low-emissions energy. But today, British taxpayers spend tens of millions of pounds a year for the Seagreen wind farm to not produce electricity.

Why? If the wind farm was left constantly on, it would send big pulses of energy from northern Scotland to southern England that would fry the U.K.’s aging grid.

Last year, the farm’s 114 turbines in the North Sea were disconnected more than 70% of the time; a gas plant in southern England fired up instead to meet local electricity demand. The tab British consumers paid to “balance” the grid totaled £2.7 billion last year—a cost expected to rise to £8 billion by 2030. Borrowing costs have also risen, making capital-intensive offshore wind far more expensive.

“Very clearly the cost of the transition has never been admitted or recognized,” said Gordon Hughes, a professor at the University of Edinburgh and a former adviser on energy to the World Bank. “There is a massive dishonesty involved.”

The continent’s cash-strapped governments now face a difficult choice: Press ahead with a rapid transition, or slow it down to save money but risk prolonging the pain.

Goldman Sachs Research expects Europe will have to invest up to €3 trillion, or $3.48 trillion, in power generation and infrastructure over the coming 10 years—roughly double what European countries spent in the past decade. That’s a big ask for governments already facing tighter budgets due to an aging population, higher military spending and higher interest bills on debt.

Waiting for a tipping point
Proponents of renewable energy argue that high prices will prove transitional. Since sunshine and wind are free and abundant, renewables will ultimately be cheaper once the new infrastructure is built, they say, while it will continue to cost money to dig oil and gas out of the ground. If enough renewable energy and battery storage is brought onstream, fossil fuels will no longer set the price of electricity and costs will fall away.

“Energy costs in the future will be a lot lower,” once Europe’s renewable system is up and running, said Jacob Kirkegaard, an economist in Brussels with the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

The problem is getting to that point, Kirkegaard said.

Some green entrepreneurs in the U.K. have started pushing politicians to ensure the oil-and-gas industry can help ease the transition. Greg Jackson, founder of Octopus Energy, which has championed wind farms, called on the U.K. to renew offshore oil-and-gas exploration in the North Sea, so that it doesn’t have to ship gas in from across the globe. Dale Vince, founder of Ecotricity and a climate activist who used to fund the protest group Just Stop Oil, wants lower taxes for existing oil-and-gas projects in the North Sea.

“I think the outlook is poor if we don’t get bold and reform our energy market,” said Vince. He believes the green transition will pay off but says more needs to be done to stop companies building the new green grid from price gouging.

The Tony Blair Institute, the think tank founded by the former British Labour leader, is calling for carbon taxes on natural gas in the U.K. to be suspended for five years to help lower electricity costs.

Some prominent economists and industry executives have recently cast doubt on whether renewables will ever be cheaper in places like Germany and the U.K. that aren’t blessed with abundant sunshine and have bet big on wind. Onshore wind turbines in Germany produce around one-fifth of their total theoretical output. Solar panels in Germany and the U.K. use only around 10% of their total theoretical output.

“I have not seen any plan that facilitates green electricity in central Europe at competitive costs,” said Miguel López, CEO of German industrial giant Thyssenkrupp.

Helm, the Oxford professor, argues renewable energy will remain more expensive than fossil fuels because the overall system is more cumbersome. The U.K. used to meet its electricity demand with 60-70 gigawatts of power capacity. Now, the country requires twice as much capacity, 120 gigawatts, to meet slightly lower demand—not to mention the additional storage facilities and interconnector supplies to and from continental Europe.

Twenty years ago, the U.K. was the most competitive location globally for Huntsman, a Texas-based chemicals manufacturer, thanks to cheap North Sea energy, said CEO Peter Huntsman. Over the past decade, the company sold off most of its U.K. assets, reducing its staff there from more than 2,000 to around 70.

“The whole value chain has gone,” Huntsman said.

Source

You would be better off reading from a better source that fully understands the situation.

Electricity costs in the UK are entirely down to the price of gas as the marginal rate. Gas prices are high because of the war in Ukraine (seems to have gone unnoticed by the WSJ) and our renewable sources are cheaper than the gas. Our lights stay on just fine.

Here is a far better explanation

What’s driving energy prices in the UK: decarbonisation and (still) gas dependency | E.ON News

 

[Gregs24]

what it boils down to is simply confusion paralysis

Renewables will never offset enough power generation to replace oil and coal. and people are to cowardly to accept nuclear which can replace oil and coal, make more power, and be safer. (more people die from fossil fuel extraction and pollution per year than have ever died due to nuclear power)

Nothing we do with cars will ever truly offset the CO2 they emit. The ICE is only a portion of the CO2 emitted by vehicles, you also need to consider the sheet metal, the tires, and even the roads we drive on, they all contribute to CO2 generation.

nobody wants to suffer a hit on the economy because theyve had it so good for so long. nuclear is expensive and scary, EVs are expensive and cant go as far on a charge, new FF power plants are able to make way more power than renewables.

theres no solid answer to climate change so every just defaults to "nothing" because thats the easiest solution

We have no oil or coal derived electricity in the UK. Many European countries are the same.

We are building nuclear power stations in the UK

 

[Gregs24]

Whenever I hear "the science is settled" or "it's safe and effective" I lose a smidgeon more trust is the system.
And, they've done it to themselves.

Of course paranoia can cause you a lot of harm too. Evidence based science is just fine - the problem comes when you don't believe the evidence but prefer to believe fairy stories.

 

[Gregs24]

Interesting thread. Bottom line, it’s all about the money!

I have to say I don’t give chit, because 100 years from now, it will not make any difference for 99.999% of population alive today. You, me, even children born today will be gone.
Sleep well tonight.

Lucky not everybody has the same don't give a shit attitude.

 

[Gregs24]

"The science is settled" has much in common with the "No True Scotsman" fallacy.
Climate change is real
we have to do something right now (or we'll all die)
And again, over 50 years it's morphed from "the coming ice age" to "global warming" to "climate change".

The climate change is real camp can tolerate no dissent, no discussion, no disagreement, even from those who realize and admit the climate is different now than it was 100 years ago, or 1000 years ago. But any attempt at discussion, or clarification is met with dismissal and some form of "no serious intellectual" believes the climate is not changing and we have to do something.

In other words - No True Scotsman.

If you are a scientist and follow scientific methods, the science is never settled. If it were, we would still be bloodletting to cure the common cold.

On the contrary the science is very settled as we now know for certain the bloodletting will not cure the common cold. We know this because scientific research has proven this based on evidence.

As mentioned before there is no 'change' from global warming to climate change as the first leads to the latter and is a better description based on evidence.

There is no 'camp' either when it comes to serious scientists, the evidence is clear, the Earth is warming - fact. It is warming faster than it ever has before - fact. The cause of it is clear based on many detailed bits of evidence including the source of the CO2 in the atmosphere - fact. It is caused by burning fossil fuels - fact. The presence of political extremes from Greta to deniers doesn't reflect reality - neither of the extremes are correct. Just because you don't like the evidence doesn't mean it isn't true.

The ONLY difficult bit is where that leads in the future in terms of our climate which is changing. It will change, maybe quite dramatically for some people but the effects will be different depending on where you are in the world and what you eat.

No, we will not all die, but some of us will starve or have to relocate to a part of the world where we can still grow food, the rich will survive the poor will die.

 

[Gregs24]

Not to mention ironically how awful EVs will end up for our planet. Who's going to want to spend $10k-$20k to replace the battery in a Tesla however many years down the line, sooner than later with fast charging, when it dies while the whole car is worth $8k-$12k? Planned obsolescence garbage that will rot in a landfill. I remember when you could take your appliances like vacuums into a repair shop. Now when it brakes people just throw it away and get a new one.

You really need to do a bit of research on EV's rather than just posting drivel like that. The EV battery lasts the life of the car and then some when it gets repurposed or recycled. This is not propaganda it is reality backed up by evidence from millions of EV's on the road with millions of miles and years under their belts.

 

[smurfslayer]

Sadly, it’s not good news. No global manufacturer is going to retool due to a US President rolling back standards by executive order which the next President can undo by their own executive order. Do you realize the financial gamble that would take? And it would take them two years to make the changes anyway and by that time they risk the next President bankrupting them with their own executive order nullifying Trumps. The only way this is good news is if it becomes law by passing it as legislation.

I believe your understanding is not correct. CAFE is regulation ; aka CFR based so a regulation would need to be promulgated to overturn it. This is not an executive order (well, technically, POTUS is ordering EPA to develop and promulgate a new regulation ), rather this would be a regulation updated in the code of federal regulations or CFR.

Subsequent administrations may revisit regulations, but it is a much, much more involved process, almost immediately followed by a court challenge and then an appeal. Previously, before Chevron deference was overturned, statistically 97% of federal regulations were sustained in court, with ATF/BATFE being the outlier, and something like 8 or 9% overturned in court (because ATF have a history of being fast and loose with facts ). Now, it's anybody's guess how it will play out because if the new standard is challenged and some activist judge decides, no, 50mpg is SETTLED SCIENCE!!! well, then an appeal and the settled science will have to be litigated.

Anyway, short story long, the CFR is being updated by EPA. Unlike E.O.'s, violations of the CFR can carry the same penalty as violating a law. Regulations must have a citation to and nexus to an enabling statute and must operate within the bounds of that statute or risk invalidation.
Enabling statute passed by Congress
Congress delegates enforcement and regulatory authority to the agency.
agency promulgates regulations to effect the policy of the statute. Their actions should be directly or sometimes indirectly authorized by said statute.

On the contrary the science is very settled as we now know for certain the bloodletting will not cure the common cold. We know this because scientific research has proven this based on evidence.

As mentioned before there is no 'change' from global warming to climate change as the first leads to the latter and is a better description based on evidence.

There is no 'camp' either when it comes to serious scientists, the evidence is clear, the Earth is warming - fact. It is warming faster than it ever has before - fact. The cause of it is clear based on many detailed bits of evidence including the source of the CO2 in the atmosphere - fact. It is caused by burning fossil fuels - fact. The presence of political extremes from Greta to deniers doesn't reflect reality - neither of the extremes are correct. Just because you don't like the evidence doesn't mean it isn't true.

The ONLY difficult bit is where that leads in the future in terms of our climate which is changing. It will change, maybe quite dramatically for some people but the effects will be different depending on where you are in the world and what you eat.

No, we will not all die, but some of us will starve or have to relocate to a part of the world where we can still grow food, the rich will survive the poor will die.

Thank you for perfectly illustrating 'no true Scotsman' to us as well as confirming there is simply no room in the climate change camp for any dissent, debate or discussion. You are either a believer, or a heretic.

I am relieved to now find out that only the poor will die if we don't enact the climate change wish list.

 

[exm]

We have no oil or coal derived electricity in the UK. Many European countries are the same.

We are building nuclear power stations in the UK

I didn't realize you're from the UK. Nothing wrong with it, but it explains some of your views. I'll agree to disagree with you in this discussion. Cheers.

 

[Gregs24]

Thank you for perfectly illustrating 'no true Scotsman' to us as well as confirming there is simply no room in the climate change camp for any dissent, debate or discussion. You are either a believer, or a heretic.

I am relieved to now find out that only the poor will die if we don't enact the climate change wish list.

Erm, it is always the poor that dies when food becomes scarce.

You seem to have decided I'm in a 'camp' but that is not true. I'm not an extremist and simply follow the evidence which you seem to choose not too?

Would you like to provide evidence that the facts I stated are not true? Otherwise your views are looking very flaky?

 

[Gregs24]

I didn't realize you're from the UK. Nothing wrong with it, but it explains some of your views. I'll agree to disagree with you in this discussion. Cheers.

You stated something that wasn't true - forgive me for correcting you

 

[Puddinpop]

Coun

Lucky not everybody has the same don't give a shit attitude.

Put me in that I don't give a shit attitude category. It's hilarious to me that this subject is even brought up on a Mustang forum.

 

[Bikeman315]

Coun
Put me in that I don't give a shit attitude category. It's hilarious to me that this subject is even brought up on a Mustang forum.

No problem with posting on the forum, as it is automobile related, but it should have gone into one of the Lounge sub forums.

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