Proclivities wrote:
The big push for the 'transition' is coming from the Democratic Party in the USA and the left-of-centre parties here in Canada: Liberal, NDP, Greens.

Some of the crazier rhetoric that is blaming every twitch and turn in weather on human-caused climate change is coming from politicians from those parties and their supporters.

The approach is what I call the 'War on Drugs' approach.   Essentially leave demand alone and attempt to sabotage or block production and distribution.  It is to be expected because the of importance of the cheap energy entitlement.   Support for exceptional US policies is strong in both Democratic and Republican camps.  

My big concern is that this approach is creating unrealistic expectations and alienating lots of people.   Ultimately there is even less support for the 'transition'.  

What are the concrete results in some cases?     Natural gas pipelines are blocked so people continue to rely on propane and fuel oil.   Yet, natural gas should likely be viewed as a key strategic transition fuel for several reasons.  Example:  expanding nuclear energy to provide sufficient base load will take many decades and will be at least initially very expensive.

 kurtster wrote:

Short term thinking: I can drop my trash on the street; it’s just one piece.
Long term: I should pick up after myself or the streets will become filthy.

Short term thinking: I should mine and burn all the fossil fuels I can find no matter the cost to our land and people’s health.
Long term: That supply of dead dinosaurs is finite, and its supply and cost is controlled by others; if I really want freedom I need another more accessible supply of energy.


Or I could rephrase that all as Goofus and Gallant?

 black321 wrote:
See, Biden can't do anything right. Don't know how you put up with the incompetent, evil genius he is.

 kurtster wrote:

I think the oil producers are doing OK:


U.S. crude oil production climbed to a record 13.2 million barrels per day last week, government data showed on Thursday, topping the previous peak set in 2020 before the coronavirus pandemic decimated global oil demand. 

In the year following the COVID-10 outbreak, weekly output tanked by more than 3 million bpd to a low of 9.7 million bpd, as producers reduced production to match the sharp decline in demand.

Drillers were briefly spurred back to their wells after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which rallied U.S. oil futures to their highest in over a decade at $130 per barrel in March 2022.

However, drilling has slowed again despite U.S. President Joe Biden putting pressure on oil companies to increase production as markets grappled with the ramifications on energy supplies of the war in Ukraine.

https://www.reuters.com/articl...

 Proclivities wrote: 
The entire push in the USA is originating from the democratic party.  The platform is death to petroleum and all internal combustion devices, be it automobile engines, stoves, furnaces, turbines, etc.  Biden began on his first day with killing the XL pipeline and has kept ongoing closing pipelines and killing domestic production.  Better to import from our enemies than produce at home.

The EV is the party panacea.  Plain and simple.

Isn't there a more appropriate thread for this discussion?  Even the over-simplified and inaccurate, "bitter-old-guy-grumbling-at-the-end-of-the-bar" meme which started it doesn't offer a connection.  Electric vehicles are manufactured and sold all over the planet (more sold in China and Europe (each) than the US) - not sure what the Democratic Party has to do with it.

 ScottFromWyoming wrote:


Seriously - ANYTHING TPPF has a hand in should be accompanied by the great rolling of eyes and a soupçon of righteous indignation...for example: https://www.texasaft.org/uncat...

 black321 wrote:

There's definitely been a lot of cart-before-the-horse going on. The Hummer with a 170-mile range before requiring an overnight charge on 220, dropping to half that range or less in a Wyoming winter (the batteries drain themselves in cold weather because they have to keep themselves heated). Still, there's a guy with his name on our waiting list because he wants a prestige vehicle on his ranch that's way the hell out in the middle of nowhere to go along with the ranch vehicles. He can pay guys to drive to town and fill up but that takes 5 or 6 gallons for the trip. Of course he can have a tank up there, and does, but EV is a more elegant solution for him.

The Toyota Mirai is a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle available in California. Well it's available in Wyoming too but there's no place to fill up. Not sure what the cost of a fillup is, but Toyota covers the first $15000 worth, or 6 years. I wonder how the performance is at elevation vs sea level. 

 kurtster wrote:

What's in that loss? Depreciation of prior capex? 1x items? I'm not doubting that they lost $, but so does every startup...and EVs are still in the startup phase.
Demand is softer than expected putting downward pressure on price. Management also said:
"We also remain bullish on Model e and our EV future, but clearly, the market is a moving target. I'm optimistic because customers are smart and are rational, and for many of them, EVs are a great choice."

Ford Cuts EV Investment After Losing $36,000 On Every EV Sold In Q3

This means that Ford lost around $36,000 for every electric vehicle it sold in the quarter, surpassing its estimated $32,350 loss per EV in the second quarter. For the entire year, the carmaker expects a full-year loss of $4.5 billion for its EV unit.
...
As a consequence of "appropriately balancing the pace of EV investment with the pace of customer demand," the company said it is scaling back about $12 billion in planned EV investments.

 R_P wrote:
Boy, that clean energy costs soooo much....

The staying power of fossil fuel subsidies

 ScottFromWyoming wrote:
Oh noes, subsidies!

Also, denier crock:

In October 2017, the White House announced that President Donald Trump had selected Kathleen Hartnett White to serve as chair of the Council on Environmental Quality. White is a fellow at TPPF. A climate change denier, White has said that climate change does not exist and that United Nations findings on climate change are "not validated and politically corrupt."^<22><23> She has argued that carbon dioxide levels are good for life on Earth, that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant, and that "fossil fuels dissolved the economic justification for slavery."^<24> In February 2018, the White House confirmed their intention to withdraw their nomination of Hartnett White as a senior advisor on environmental policy.^<25><26>

Crockster fare.

 kurtster wrote:

lol Texas Public Policy Foundation. Now do gasoline! Figure in the costs of eminent domain for pipelines and rail transport, keeping BLM lands "public" so they can be drilled, pollution cleanup shucked off onto the public, etc. etc.

'Overcharged': Major Study Shows True Cost of Owning an EV, 'Fueling' Equal to $17.33 Per Gallon

 islander wrote:

I meant to emphasize that the two MAGA candidates knocked each other out, allowing a guy in that 2/3 of Wyoming GOP voters did not support. AND YET the party rails against ranked choice.

 ScottFromWyoming wrote:

A hangnail.  As you get more people understanding the system, your bog standard guy might have made the 2nd choice on a lot of the middle of the road voters lists too. chicken/egg - no too few people participate in the primaries because no one likes the candidates. We need more engagement, but everyone hates the system so they don't engage. Half the people don't get their preferred guy, so they think the system sucks (they are right), but if 65% of the people got their first or second choice...  It's not a perfect (or even great) system, but what we have now is a cancer that's killing us.

 islander wrote:

Both teams like to fantasize that they'll always be able to get to 50% and then they do whatever it takes to get there, and once they have, they don't need to form any alliances, they can just steamroll their way around. So they fight it.

Our current governor won with 35% of the primary vote... he's a bog-standard republican, but he had two MAGAs* fighting it out and they each took 30%. So Ranked Choice would have put one of the ugh candidates in. 

*Of those, one is now a US Representative, and the other is dead. Comme çi, comme ça.

 haresfur wrote:

I do not understand the resistance to this idea. Even with the issues that are legitimate, it is SOOOOOO much better than the status quo. It's like if Cancer had an obvious cure, but 1 out of 50 people get a hangnail when they use it so everyone just keeps on going with cancer, because hangnails suck right?

Sen. Menendez returns to New York court to enter plea to new conspiracy charge