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Electric busses spontaneously combusting in China. Public transportation now!

Anti-democratic, insurrectionist and terroristic Normal Americans will not, as the narrative goes, give up their world-destroying lust for fossil fuels.  Therefore, their moral and intellectual betters, the self-imagined elite, must force them for their own good, which they are incapable of embracing, and for the actual survival of the planet.  By raising the price of gas and heating fuels to unaffordable levels, even by killing tens of thousands of them, even millions, when they freeze to death in winter or fry in summer, deplorable, insurrectionist Normals will be forced to buy electric vehicles they can’t afford.  They’ll be forced to replace their gas furnaces with electric furnaces they can’t afford.  They’ll be forced to buy solar panels and massive, prone to fire and explosion backup batteries for their homes, neither of which they can afford.

NOTE:  Life has once again intruded on writing, and I’ll be busy this weekend, so I’m posting this, the Saturday article, and Sunday Funnies a a bit early.

It all has to happen within eight years, or ten years or 12 years, or the planet is doomed, just like the planet was doomed until the passing of another arbitrary, hysterical, apocalyptic climate deadline and the establishment of the next arbitrary, hysterical, apocalyptic climate deadline, and we really mean it this time.  Destruction!  Doom!  A new ice age!  Global temperatures soaring nearly a whole degree—centigrade by the end of the century–maybe!

Among the problems with this utopian narrative, and they are legion, is no one pushing it acts as though they believe it, nor seem to understand how anything is produced and from where electricity comes.  Actually, they probably don’t care.  Electricity powers the production of everything, and electricity doesn’t produce electricity.  Nor do climate hysterics, who have never built or maintained anything, have any idea if their narratives will work, and again, they don’t care.

This is an inevitable consequence of D/S/Cs thinking, such as it is.  As I’ve so often written, their ideology, and the policies it births, are perfect, flawless, non-falsifiable.  The product of the morally and intellectually perfect, they cannot possibly be wrong, and trifles like physics, economics, and human nature cannot stand against them.  When their policies inevitably fail that is merely a failing of their inferiors who cannot properly perceive exalted, manufactured reality rather than the real reality they pitifully inhabit, the climate deniers.

The supposed failure can only be because not enough money has been spent for the policy’s wonders to fully manifest.  Or not enough time has passed, or the language–the messaging–touting the policy needs to be tweaked a bit, or Normals have magnanimously been allowed to continue to exist, and in their fear, stupidity and evil have opposed the policies of the self-imagined elite.  Or, worst of all, Donald Trump, and right behind him, Ron DeSantis.

The normal progress of science, particularly the technology it produces that will supposedly utterly change how we power modern society, would absolutely require feasibility studies and demonstration projects to ensure the new technology that will transform everything actually works.  Francis Menton at The Manhattan Contrarian explains how that’s going:

But will the coming fossil-fuel-free system actually work to provide the energy we need to run our modern economies? There are very substantial reasons to think that big problems are inevitable, the main one being that wind and solar generators don’t produce anything most of the time, and can’t be ramped up on demand at a time of need.

So surely, there must be multiple small to medium-scale demonstration projects around the world showing exactly how this fossil-fuel-free future system can be accomplished, and how much it will cost.

Actually, and incredibly, no.

As I’ve previously written, climate hysterics have no idea from where electricity comes.  They apparently think electricity produces electricity.  For example, speaking of the recent Florida hurricane disaster, they ignore the horrific reality of millions trying to flee a state without electric power in electric vehicles by observing the Ford Lightning pickup can power a home.  And when that battery is depleted within hours?  From where will the electricity come to recharge it so it can power a home?  Oh, and EV batteries immersed in water, particularly salt water, explode and burn, and the fire cannot be put out.  One must  merely stand far back and watch their obscenely expensive wonder vehicle melt into the ground.

In the real world, any serious person proposing a major transformation of the energy system would begin with a functioning demonstration project to establish feasibility and cost. in the 1880s, when Thomas Edison wanted to start building central station power plants to supply electricity for his new devices like incandescent lightbulbs, he began by building a prototype facility in London under the Holborn Viaduct. When that was shown to work, Edison quickly followed with a larger demonstration plant on Pearl Street in Lower Manhattan that supplied electricity to only a few square blocks.  Only after those had been demonstrated as successful did a larger build-out begin.

Similarly, the development of consumer nuclear power began with small government-funded prototypes in the late 1940s and early 1950s, followed by larger demonstration projects in the late 1950s and early 1960s.  Only in the late 1960s, twenty years into the effort and after feasibility and cost had been demonstrated, were the first large-scale commercial nuclear reactors built.

But hey, we don’t need no stinking proof a green energy world will work. We’re saving the planet by impoverishing and killing everyone—except the self-imagined elite—in it!  Consider this from Steven Hayward at the American Mind:

Modern environmental regulation is the most expensive species of regulation, routinely imposing billion-dollar solutions to million-dollar problems. The only resource environmentalists think is unlimited is other people’s money, not adhering to their own general principle that when you’re wasting resources you’re harming the environment in aggregate.

It may help to understand this perverse aspect of environmentalism by recognizing it as a species of radical egalitarianism, as the political scientist Aaron Wildavsky never tired of arguing, in which the environment is actually a secondary concern. (Or as Roger Scruton put it, ‘Radical egalitarians are not satisfied with a policy that does not have a world-transforming character.’) A supreme irony emerges from this: environmentalists constitute the largest obstacle to dealing with changing climate patterns from whatever cause. The more severe you think those changes may be in future decades, the more you should be dissatisfied with the climate policy regime environmentalists have demanded.

When you’re transforming the world, you have to break some eggs–lives.  Pete Buttigieg is more than willing to do that: 

Host Neil Cavuto asked, ‘Secretary, as you know, much of the power was out across half the state of Florida for a while. Much of it has resumed, sir. But it did make some folks think, boy, these electric vehicles that are being pushed, between what happened in Florida and the grid that was compromised to the point where California Gov. Newsom (D) wanted people to cool it for a while on when and how often they charged their EVs, do you think this reminds folks that we’re not ready or the EVs are not ready for prime time?’

Buttigieg responded, ‘Well, actually, I think this is a great example of one of the many benefits of those tools. You know, I was just at the Detroit Auto Show a couple of weeks ago. One of the things that was very impressive about some of the vehicles that we saw, including, for example, the pickup trucks that are on the market — entering onto the market right now, is that their power can actually flow both ways. So, in an extreme event, from a neighborhood resiliency perspective, they can actually work, basically like a generator, except that you don’t have to have diesel ready for them. What they’re doing is they’re using the battery capacity to power a home, and in that sense, could be very useful in a scenario like this. Look, I don’t think anybody thinks that we’re ready here, sitting here in 2022 for a scenario where, overnight, there is some instant transition to electric vehicles.’

Cavuto then cut in to ask, ‘You want to do so by 2035, right? In some states like California…in New York, we want to do so by 2035. You think we’d be ready to do that?’

Buttigieg answered, ‘Well, yeah, I mean, GM said they’re not even going to be making anything but electric vehicles after 2035. So, if the United States of America can’t execute a transition like this over the course of more than a decade, I don’t know what to tell you, this is America, of course, we can do something like that. Different states have different approaches.’

Ah.  So he does think we can make an instant transition to electric vehicles.  In terms of completely changing the way we power our homes, industry and vehicles, 13 years is an instant, particularly when green energy doesn’t work and can’t replace our current methods of power generation.  But then again, Buttigieg thinks roads are racist, so there you go.

Would you, gentle readers, buy a car that has had no reliability and safety testing?  Baby formula made with unknown ingredients—if you can find any at all?  We’re being forced to accept an economy, and a standard of living, based on technology that doesn’t work, that doesn’t have sufficient raw materials to make it work, that is too expensive for Normal Americans, that will sharply limit individual mobility and liberty and that will enrich our enemies while simultaneously impoverishing us.

What could possibly go wrong?