A reality check on electric cars: Arithmetic required

During the Obama Administration a regulation was passed requiring all automobile manufacturers to achieve an average efficiency for all their vehicles of 54 miles per gallon by the year 2025. President Trump recently canceled the ordinance recognizing such a requirement could never be reached without sacrificing the safety of the drivers which we will attempt to explain. A simple tutorial requiring a little arithmetic follows, and the fallacy of the benefits of electric cars will slowly dissolve.

The energy in gasoline is not appreciated. An automobile that gets 40 miles per gallon uses only six tablespoons of gasoline traveling each mile. As good as that sounds, cars cannot be perfectly efficient. There must be friction resistance just to get them going and there is no avoidance of aerodynamic resistance.  Sports cars tend to have smoother machined parts that does reduce friction and account for the greater cost. This is true in bicycles as well. On a bicycle your body will feel the difference between a $500 bicycle and a $2500 bicycle.

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Big Oil to the Coronavirus Rescue

Look whose products are crucial for fighting off Covid-19.

Trump has few alternatives to Yucca

The Trump administration bailing on Nevada’s Yucca Mountain as the nation’s long-delayed nuclear waste storage site has exposed the reality that the United States does not have viable alternative solutions.

“It’s clear we don’t have a way forward for a repository of nuclear waste at the moment,” said Rodney Ewing, a professor of nuclear security and geological sciences at Stanford University.

Until recently, the Trump administration had proposed funding to restart the licensing of Yucca Mountain despite a political onslaught from Nevada’s political delegation fighting against the site ever being completed.

President Trump, due to face voters this year in politically important Nevada, flipped the script with a tweet this month that seemed to take Yucca Mountain off the table. He said previous administrations “failed to find lasting solutions,” and he committed to exploring other “innovative approaches.”

His subsequent budget proposal vaguely pledged to initiate “processes to develop alternative solutions” by working with states and other stakeholders.

The administration plans to form an interagency working group to determine more precise next steps. In the few details described in the budget, the White House indicated that Trump supports the implementation of an interim storage program and research on “alternative technologies” to handle nuclear waste.

Democrats running for president also uniformly oppose Yucca Mountain, but they have not clearly articulated an alternative.

Under the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, the federal government promised nuclear power plants that it would handle the waste. The law, amended five years later, directed the Energy Department to take possession of the nation’s spent nuclear fuel and dispose of it in a deep geological repository at Yucca Mountain.

“We have seen every kind of ‘other than Yucca’ proposal,” said Jordan Haverly, director of energy and environmental policy for Republican Rep. John Shimkus of Illinois, a longtime Yucca supporter. “All of them talk about these great new ideas, but eventually get to a point where Yucca is still the law as mandated by the Nuclear Waste Policy Act.”

Indeed, alternatives to handle the nation’s 80,000 metric tons of radioactive spent fuel from commercial nuclear power plants have not yet borne fruit.

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Texas Is About to Go Blue! Never Mind

Democrats were sure they’d flip a state House seat this week. They weren’t close.

Energy Paradoxes Put Europe in a Precarious Position

Is Donald Trump ‘profoundly unconservative’?

No. It doesn’t match his shrinking regulations and limiting government

by Allan H. Ryskind   Allan H. Ryskind, a former editor and owner of Human Events, is the author of “Hollywood Traitors” (Regnery, 2015)

December 31, 2019

Prominent liberal Fareed Zakaria insists that Donald Trump “has been profoundly unconservative” because he’s abandoned what “Republicans used to call the core of their agenda — limited government.” But it’s hard to take the charge seriously, even though some conservatives have sent his piece around for comment to see if he’s onto something. Yet no politician in recent memory has restricted the reach of government at both the federal and state level more than the current occupant of the Oval Office.

Mr. Trump’s drastic shrinking of federal economic regulations, opening vast expanses of federal lands for energy exploration, drawing overseas businesses home with tax breaks and passing major tax cuts for corporations and individuals have generated an explosion of well-paying jobs, personal wealth and soaring wages, as well as the lowest level of unemployment for minorities on record. Some 7 million new jobs have been created during Mr. Trump’s presidency and more than 100 million American shareholders have watched the market jump 55 percent since his election.

You’d think Mr. Zakaria would be celebrating Mr. Trump’s low-tax, pro-growth economic agenda as not only core Republicanism but virtually Reaganesque. Increasing prosperity by stimulating market forces without enacting high taxes and big government programs is, of course, how conservatives try to keep government limited.

Mr. Zakaria concedes that Mr. Trump has delivered what conservatives have wanted in the realm of “social and cultural policy,” such as “appointing judges, tightening rules related to abortion and asylum, etc.” but suggests they have little to do with taming the Leviathan.

Really? Stacking the courts with judges steeped in the philosophy of federalism is, of course, precisely the way to limit government on both the economic and cultural fronts. Mr. Zakaria may ignore the threat, but Democratic Party presidential candidates, along with their media support groups, are panicked over the president’s court selections.

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Congress echoes Trump EMP concerns, Iran weapon feared

President Trump has made preparing for an electromagnetic pulse attack cool.

Long met with eye-rolling, the growing threat of an EMP attack on the nation’s electric grid and military bases by Iran or other foes has suddenly gone mainstream following Trump’s March executive order to assess the risks of a man-made or natural EMP hit.

The latest evidence was in the just-passed 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, which adopted Trump’s action and ordered the National Guard to draw up a plan to thwart disaster from an EMP.

And several states are moving even faster. Wyoming just produced its blueprint to respond to an EMP assault that could knock out electricity, water services, hospitals, ATMs, cellular phones, and even vehicles for months.

“These are big and very important results,” said Peter Pry, a longtime champion of EMP preparation and adviser to the White House and military. “Things are taking off. This is a significant change, in a positive way,” he told us.

For proponents of developing protections from EMP, the fight has been a decadeslong slog. Trump has taken the threat seriously, though it’s unclear if his national security team shares his concerns, especially after EMP preparation proponent John Bolton was ousted as the national security adviser.

Also, some insiders fear that a strong lobbying campaign from the electric utility industry, which does not want to spend money to upgrade its infrastructure, is working to dull the president’s executive order.

Stakeholder’ Capitalism in Action

By the left’s lights, PG&E is a perfect corporate citizen. Liberal California pols attack it anyway.

WATCH: Australian Broadcaster Takes Down The Spoiled Climate Protesting Students In Epic Fashion

Posted at 1:00 pm on September 21, 2019 by Brandon Morse

Alan Jones, an Australian broadcaster for Sky News had some choice words for students taking part in the climate protests that occurred on Friday, which featured these students ditching school in order to push the “we’re all going to die” narrative so beloved by the church of climate change.

Jones had a harsh reality check for these students, who he noted demand better action by people and government in the name of saving the environment (Jones calls it a “hoax”) while they themselves refuse to give up their own cushy lifestyles. His words came in the form of a letter which Jones said he might send to Al Gore.

“It says this: To all the school kids going on strike for climate change, you’re the first generation who have required air conditioning in every room. You want TV in every room, and your classes are all computerized. You spend all day and night on electronic devices,” said Jones

“More than ever, you don’t walk or ride bikes to school,” he continued, “but you arrive in caravans of private cars that choke suburban roads and worsen rush hour traffic.”

“You’re the biggest consumer of manufactured goods ever, and update perfectly good expensive luxury items to stay trendy,” said Jones. “Your entertainment comes from electric devices. Furthermore, the people driving your protests are the same people who insist on artificially inflating the population growth through immigration which increases the need for energy, manufacturing and transport.”

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