A terrifying incident occurred in Korea on August 1, 2024, as an electric vehicle exploded in an underground parking garage, injuring multiple people and damaging over 140 cars. Watch the security footage revealing how quickly the fire spread and learn about the critical safety measures that failed. Discover the truth about lithium-ion battery hazards and what can be done to prevent future tragedies.
Starting out this post is a long excerpt from ACE OF SPADES…. a site I recommend highly, BTW. In it we see how a country is realizing the risk of allowing Electric Vehicles (EVs) into parking structures. In this case, not because of the weight, but fire hazard:
While electric vehicle sales may not amount to more than a single-digit market share, the numbers on the road are now significant enough that there is a growing conversation over whether EVs should be allowed in parking structures. Part of that discussion is about how the owners of buildings that contain parking structures can protect and insure against an unknown number of potential bombs that may be parked there at any given time.
This awful story from South Korea is likely to be repeated with growing frequency, and it is fueling the discussions I just referenced.
South Korean officials met on Monday to discuss electric vehicle safety and whether to require car firms to disclose battery brands amid growing consumer concern after an EV blaze in an underground garage extensively damaged an apartment block.
It doesn’t matter what brand of battery is in the EV, what matters is that it’s a lithium ion EV battery, which by nature is prone to runaway thermal fires.
The fire on Aug. 1, which appeared to start spontaneously in a Mercedes-Benz EV parked below a residential building, took eight hours to put out, destroying or damaging about 140 cars and forcing some residents to move to shelters.
I have previously joked about requiring a prominent warning label on the hood of EVs, cautioning about the fire hazard EVs pose to their drivers and to those nearby. Maybe it’s time to stop joking.
Images published in media of dozens of charred cars with only their metal frames remaining in the parking lot fire have fuelled consumer fears about EVs, likely exacerbated because so many people in South Korea live in apartments, often with parking lots below.
An Automotive News piece a few days ago titled “Lithium ion battery fire regulation could help heal industrywide black eye” acknowledges that consumers are becoming scared of lithium batteries, therefore help is needed from the federal bureaucracy to issue regulatory decrees that will somehow make lithium batteries safe. The piece also notes that in 2023, in New York City alone, there were 268 fires started by lithium ion batteries on various transportation devices, resulting in 18 deaths and 150 injuries. Of course, the federal government can no more mandate that lithium ion batteries stop combusting than it can mandate that straw be spun into gold.
Instead, I’d recommend that the government simply ban EVs from being allowed in any parking garages or covered structures. (And yes, that is somewhat counter to my anti-regulation ethos, but remember, Team EV tried to use the power of government to take away my gasoline-powered car, so I have every right to retaliate with the same powerful weapon.)
Here is a short video of the electric Mercedes exploding. Please note that it goes from barely smoking to a fiery explosion in just 21 seconds.
This Fortune piece dated 8/07/2024 reports that ”Several office buildings [in South Korea] have now banned EVs from entering and parking, according to notices on social media.” That’s wise.
Last month I inquired in one of my pieces about how insurance companies are dealing with the growing menace of EV fires, especially regarding all the collateral damage they can cause when they spontaneously combust. I received an email response from a gentleman named Bill Schneider who has a depth of experience at integrated facilities management, including the insurance aspect. I received this prophetic email from Mr. Schneider just four days before the Korean EV disaster.
Consider a potential BEV [“Battery Electric Vehicle”] fire in either scenario:
1.“3 plus 1” mixed-use building, where the parking deck is on the bottom floor, and that floor is below ground (so there is no way to easily remove BEVs from anything else combustible), and there are residential apartments and commercial shops/offices above the deck…or…
2.Multi-story parking deck at, say, a major airport (think one of the parking decks at DFW) where a cluster of BEVs are parked together and a fire breaks out.
Guess what? Parking deck suppression systems are nothing more than sprinklers with water in them – water that is hopelessly inefficient to quench a burning lithium battery.
Plus, with [internal combustion vehicles] gasoline is at least dispersed when sprinklers are activated – but BEV batteries are buried deep inside the vehicle chassis, meaning that when sprinklers activate, they cannot get water to the source of the fire.
Imagine the inferno if a cluster of 30 BEVs were parked next to each other in the center of the Terminal A parking deck, on the fourth or fifth floor, right in the middle of the structure. Or on the bottom floor, near a wall.
I presented this scenario to the SME [Small/Medium Enterprise] – and the industry has NO. ANSWER. This isn’t the FLS [Fire/Life Safety] industry’s fault – rather, it’s based on the constraints of fighting BEV fires, where the battery burns far hotter, and all three elements of the Fire Triangle are present in the battery (and remain present, not being able to be dispersed), and the batteries are buried so deep inside the vehicle chassis that suppression liquids cannot reach the source of the fire.
Fire marshals who become aware of the risk? They simply forbid BEVs from being parked inside a structure. Because that’s all they can do.
Fire Marshalls are empowered to limit the number of people who may enter a building for fire safety reasons. They should also be able to limit the number of EVs that may park in a building’s garage. I’d recommend the maximum number of EVs allowed in a parking garage be limited to zero. ….
An EV phobia appears to be spreading across South Korea following a mysterious explosion of an electric car.
Sky News host James Morrow, Rita Panahi and Rowan Dean discuss residents in greater Seoul moving to ban electric vehicles from underground parking lots after a parked Mercedes-Benz sedan recently caught fire.
“This is actually a real nightmare situation. This is in the car park underneath an apartment block. These things are impossible to put out,” Mr Morrow said.
“This fire torched at least 40 other cars and damaged a whole bunch more, a bunch of people in the building were taken for smoke inhalation and other injuries. Thankfully, nobody was even worse injured with this.”
AN OLDER POST
EV Car FIRE HAZARDS
Electric vehicles are on the rise across the country, and while that’s a step forward for the environment, firefighters are raising safety concerns. They say electric vehicle fires pose a number of risks, not only to the community, but also to firefighters themselves.
The truth about EVs and fire risk in our cities | Auto Expert John Cadogan
SPONTANIOUS COMBUSTION!
Ford shut down production of the popular electric truck for five weeks following a fire in Dearborn in February. When the fire was out, all that was left was soot and damaged paint. Fire departments nationwide are in training as they learn how to put out fires for electric vehicles. But an EV fire is a dramatically different and far more dangerous problem for them.
A Mercedes-Benz EQE Sedan caught fire and burned to a crisp inside a Florida homeowner’s garage last week, severely damaging the building.
The 2023 Mercedes-Benz EQE 350+ Sedan was in the garage when it caught fire on July 19. According to Jennifer Ruotolo, the EV was a loaner from Mercedes-Benz while her own car was getting serviced. She told News4Jax that the luxury electric sedan wasn’t even charging when it burst into flames – she doesn’t own a home charging unit.
“It was parked in the garage, about 22 hours and then it caught fire. I was at work. About 8:30 and my husband heard a hiss and a pop, and he went into the garage full of smoke. It engulfed in flames and exploded,” the Nocatee, Florida resident said…..
A battery fire has destroyed both of Speed ONE Racing’s electric Lancia Delta World Rallycross cars, Carscoops reports. The two Lancia Delta Evo-e race cars were reportedly in the paddock at Lydden Hill Race Circuit in the UK on Friday morning when a fire originating in one of the cars’ battery packs spread and consumed the team’s road tent, taking both cars with it. The fire shut down the World Rallycross Championship event while race authorities attempted to ascertain the cause of the fire. [….] “The fire began just before 08:45, with fire crews working hard to bring it under control and extinguish it as swiftly as possible. Regrettably, the entire Special ONE Racing area was burnt down, including both of their RX1e cars. …
Undamaged EVs are alread terrifying enough (there is no way would I ever allow one to be parked in my garage) but if an EV was in a wreck or otherwise damaged, where the heck do you store it knowing that it could erupt in flames at any time. If I were a wrecker driver I would not want to ever tow a damaged EV.
Back to Nikola, you may recall that I put it at the top of my “EV Manufacturer Dead Pool,” predicting it would be the next to go out of business, following Lordstown Motors’ bankruptcy.
Well, Nikola is getting closer. It just suspended all sales of battery powered trucks and recalled all those on the road.
Nikola said on Friday it was recalling all the battery-powered electric trucks that it has delivered to date and is suspending sales after an investigation into recent fires found a coolant leak inside a battery pack as the cause.
[….]
I have an obligation to acknowledge when I get things wrong. As noted above, I predicted that Nikola would be the next EV manufacturer to go bankrupt. I got it wrong, it was actually a Biden-touted electric bus maker that was next in line.
Proterra, an electric bus maker that has been lauded by President Biden for its U.S. manufacturing operations, has become at least the third electric-vehicle business to file for bankruptcy in roughly the past year.
[h/t to Mr. CBD for bringing this one to my attention. I think Proterra was his entry in my EV Dead Pool.]
I know! I know! [Buck waves hand furiously in the air.] I know the answer to this one!!
It’s when lithium-ion batteries are used as a power source for a vehicle rather than using a gasoline powered engine.
You’re welcome, GM.
[….]
I believe that others on the blog have already covered this next story, and I am not going to joke about it, because this awful EV conflagration took a man’s life.
A burning car carrier off the Dutch coast has been towed to a new location away from shipping lanes as part of an operation to salvage the ship, the Dutch public works and water management ministry and local media said on Monday.The freighter, which was travelling from Germany to Egypt when the blaze broke out on July 26…
Ship charter company “K” Line said on Friday there were 3,783 vehicles on board the ship – including 498 battery electric vehicles, significantly more than the 25 initially reported.
EV lithium-ion batteries burn with twice the energy of a normal fire, and maritime officials and insurers say the industry has not kept up with the risks.
Shipping companies and insurance companies have a day of reckoning coming regarding EVs. They are under pressure from the eco-left to embrace electric vehicles, but EVs are explosively dangerous, they are almost impossible to extinguish when they catch fire, and they are so fragile that the slightest damage to an EV will require it to be totaled.
WFAA reports that in the early hours of Friday morning in Plano, Texas, a Tesla vehicle unexpectedly caught fire, raising fresh concerns about the safety of electric vehicle batteries. According to the car’s owner, the incident occurred shortly after midnight in the residential area of the 2700 block of Sacred Path Road. The owner reported hearing a hissing noise from the vehicle’s battery, which had been installed just the day before. Upon checking the car, they discovered flames shooting out from the battery. (BREITBART)
TOXIC FIRES
A car catches fire every two minutes in the United States, and firefighters are well-versed in how to respond. But they face new hazards and challenges when that fire is in an electric vehicle or EV. Nearly 2 million EVs are already on the road and many believe they’re the future of driving. Though EV fires aren’t necessarily more common than standard car fires, they require a different approach from first responders (more from LOCAL 12)
Here an EV bus takes minute to fully engulf, luckily it was next to a steel and glass building and not a wood structure.
Can you imagine these fires with the amount of battery cells long-hauler trucks have?
ANOTHER PAST POST
Battery Storage Fire Flares Up For Sixth Day
From the time of the above interview, firefighters are planning on camping out there for a month!
… As of this past Tuesday, CalFire was still pouring water on and into the building while coming to the realization that “water” around lithium-ion batteries was a double-edged sword. Like Ramius tells Ryan in Red October, “Most things in here don’t react too well to bullets.” In the batteries’ case, they don’t react well to water.
…Pascua said things began to reignite Friday night.
“You have to put water on it to keep the fire confined, but that water damages the batteries also allowing them to arc starting another fire. We’re just trying to keep the public safe and keep the fire contained to the building,” he said.
The chain reaction can happen when a lithium-ion battery creates heat faster than it can dissipate. That rapid increase of temperature can then turn to fire.
But water’s all they’ve got, and, as of yesterday, they were well into multiple millions of gallons flowing without having put the fire to bed.
San Diego Firefighters have flown in experts to the Otay Mesa Battery Storage site to study the fire because they don’t know how to extinguish it. The 🔥 has already consumed 5 million gallons of water, and firefighters estimate it will take an additional 7-10 days to control,… pic.twitter.com/sVi71XW1Vy
…The firehas already consumed 5 million gallons of water, and firefighters estimate it will take an additional 7-10 days to control, using a total of 15-20 million gallons. LETHAL amounts of Hydrogen Cyanide were present in the air for 3 hours after the fire began…
All that and, as of this morning, still en fuego. ….
… As of this past Tuesday, CalFire was still pouring water on and into the building while coming to the realization that “water” around lithium-ion batteries was a double-edged sword. Like Ramius tells Ryan in Red October, “Most things in here don’t react too well to bullets.” In the batteries’ case, they don’t react well to water.
…Pascua said things began to reignite Friday night.
“You have to put water on it to keep the fire confined, but that water damages the batteries also allowing them to arc starting another fire. We’re just trying to keep the public safe and keep the fire contained to the building,” he said.
The chain reaction can happen when a lithium-ion battery creates heat faster than it can dissipate. That rapid increase of temperature can then turn to fire.
But water’s all they’ve got, and, as of yesterday, they were well into multiple millions of gallons flowing without having put the fire to bed.
San Diego Firefighters have flown in experts to the Otay Mesa Battery Storage site to study the fire because they don’t know how to extinguish it. The 🔥 has already consumed 5 million gallons of water, and firefighters estimate it will take an additional 7-10 days to control,… pic.twitter.com/sVi71XW1Vy
…The firehas already consumed 5 million gallons of water, and firefighters estimate it will take an additional 7-10 days to control, using a total of 15-20 million gallons. LETHAL amounts of Hydrogen Cyanide were present in the air for 3 hours after the fire began…
All that and, as of this morning, still en fuego. ….
If there is indeed a social revolution under way, it shouldn’t stop with women’s choice to honor their [own] nature. It must also include a newfound respect for men. It was New York City’s firemen who dared to charge up the stairs of the burning Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. The death tally of New York City’s firefighters was:
men 343,
women 0.
Can anyone honestly say you would have wanted a woman coming to your rescue on that fateful day?
Suzanne Venker & Phyllis Schlafly, The Flipside of Feminism: What Conservative Women Know — and Men Can’t Say (Washington, D.C.: WND Books, 2011), 181-182.
Former Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Michael Brown blasted officials in Hawaii over their focus on “equity” prior to a deadly wildfire.
The West Maui Land Company accused M. Kaleo Manuel, an official with the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR), of delaying a response to a request to use water to refill reservoirs used by the Maui Fire Department to fight the wildfire, Hawaii News Now reported.
A video of Manuel discussing the importance of having conversations about “equity” when it came to water use surfaced Thursday.
A state water agency in Hawaii has been accused of delaying the release of water from a traditional farm that landowners reportedly wanted to use to protect their property as the Maui wildfire spread last week.
According to the Honolulu Civil Beat, the state Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR) initially refused a request from West Maui Land, a real estate development company, to provide water to protect properties that were at risk in the area.
Fingers have been pointed at one official in particular, M. Kaleo Manuel, DLNR’s deputy director for water resource management.
According to the sources, Manuel wanted West Maui Land to get permission from a taro, or kalo, farm located downstream from the company’s property. Manuel eventually released water but not until after the fire had spread. It was not clear on Monday how much damage the fire did in the interim or whether homes were damaged.
Manuel participates in the Obama Foundation’s Leaders Asia-Pacific program and prioritizes traditional local views on water.
Honolulu Civil Beat quoted Gov. Josh Green (D) as saying that there had been some local opposition in general to using the state’s scarce water resources to fight fires. A state bill to promote the use of state and private reservoirs for fire safety was proposed in 2022 by legislators from Maui, but was not passed….
Here is this “water official” using woke buzzwords like “holistic” — they just string words together to sound important / compassionate:
(WASHINGTON EXAMINER) ….“Meet M. Kaleo Manuel, the official who refused to release water in Maui, contributing to up to 106 deaths,” Jeremy Kauffman wrote on X, citing the original article. “A Hawaiian Studies major, Kaleo prefers a traditional, holistic ‘One Water’ approach where water is revered, not used. Water requires ‘true conversations about equity.'”
Kauffman, the CEO of a bitcoin company, included a Zoom interview video of Manuel, posted to YouTube about 10 months ago.
“Native Hawaiians treated water as one of the earthly manifestations of a god,” Manuel said in the video. “We’ve become used to looking at water as something that we use and not something that we revere. … We can reconnect to that traditional value set.”….
[….]
[….]
What a douche. The LEFTlooks for religion in all the wrong places.
The government would rather blame “climate change” for the Hawaii wildfires than take responsibility for their own reckless disregard.
This event was not the result of climate change, Hurricane Dora, or an extended drought. It resulted from an unusually intense mountain wave/downslope windstorm produced by a fairly rare convergence of conditions. (Cliff Mass Weather Blog)
And Steve Milloy points out another NEW YORK TIMES article that missed an opportunity to zero in on the issue:
And THE BLAZE notes the issue with the power companies
A number of Democrats and other leftists have blamed the deadly wildfires in Hawaii on the specter of anthropogenic climate change. They may be right, but only in a perverted sense.
Like the Biden administration, Hawaii’s Gov. Josh Green (D) and both the state’s 88%-Democratic House and 92%-Democratic state Senate are ostensibly keen to “lead the globe on clean energy and climate issues.”
It appears that the efforts by Hawaii’s largest energy provider to follow suit and satisfy a Democrat-mandated transition to renewable energy took priority over alternatively pragmatic efforts to maintain its equipment and deal with the known and documented threat of fuel buildup in the form of flammable vegetation…..
All these useless policies to make politicians fell good through “messianism” [saving the planet] have consequences. Like all the other policies with a stated outcomes by the Left – they hurt those they purport to want to help.
SAINTHOOD
It reminds me of the stellar [extended] quote by David Mamet:
One might say that the politician, the doctor, and the dramatist make their living from human misery; the doctor in attempting to alleviate it, the politician to capitalize on it, and the dramatist, to describe it.
But perhaps that is too epigrammatic.
When I was young, there was a period in American drama in which the writers strove to free themselves of the question of character.
Protagonists of their worthy plays had made no choices, but were afflicted by a condition not of their making; and this condition, homosexuality, illness, being a woman, etc., was the center of the play. As these protagonists had made no choices, they were in a state of innocence. They had not acted, so they could not have sinned.
A play is basically an exercise in the raising, lowering, and altering of expectations (such known, collectively, as the Plot); but these plays dealt not with expectations (how could they, for the state of the protagonist was not going to change?) but with sympathy.
What these audiences were witnessing was not a drama, but a troublesome human condition displayed as an attraction. This was, formerly, known as a freak show.
The subjects of these dramas were bearing burdens not of their choosing, as do we all. But misfortune, in life, we know, deserves forbearance on the part of the unafflicted. For though the display of courage in the face of adversity is worthy of all respect, the display of that respect by the unaffected is presumptuous and patronizing.
One does not gain merit from congratulating an afflicted person for his courage. One only gains entertainment.
Further, endorsement of the courage of the affliction play’s hero was not merely impertinent, but, more basically, spurious, as applause was vouchsafed not to a worthy stoic, but to an actor portraying him.
These plays were an (unfortunate) by-product of the contemporary love-of-the-victim. For a victim, as above, is pure, and cannot have sinned; and one, by endorsing him, may perhaps gain, by magic, part of his incontrovertible status.
[…..]
There is a Liberal sentiment that it should also punish those who take more than their “fair share.” But what is their fair share? (Shakespeare suggests that each should be treated not according to his deserts, but according to God’s mercy, or none of us would escape whipping.)
The concept of Fairness, for all its attractiveness to sentiment, is a dangerous one (cf. quota hiring and enrollment, and talk of “reparations”). Deviations from the Law, which is to say the Constitution, to accommodate specifically alleged identity-group injustices will all inevitably be expanded, universalized, and exploited until there remains no law, but only constant petition of Government.
We cannot live in peace without Law. And though law cannot be perfect, it may be just if it is written in ignorance of the identity of the claimants and applied equally to all. Then it is a possession not only of the claimants but of the society, which may now base its actions upon a reasonable assumption of the law’s treatment.
But “fairness” is not only a nonlegal but an antilegal process, for it deals not with universally applicable principles and strictures, but with specific cases, responding to the perceived or proclaimed needs of individual claimants, and their desire for extralegal preference. And it could be said to substitute fairness (a determination which must always be subjective) for justice (the application of the legislated will of the electorate), is to enshrine greed—the greed, in this case, not for wealth, but for preference. The socialistic spirit of the Left indicts ambition and the pursuit of wealth as Greed, and appeals, supposedly on behalf of “the people,” to the State for “fairness.”….
….But such fairness can only be the non-Constitutional intervention of the State in the legal, Constitutional process—awarding, as it sees fit, money (reparations), preferment (affirmative action), or entertainment (confiscation)….
….“Don’t you care?” is the admonition implicit in the very visage of the Liberals of my acquaintance on their understanding that I have embraced Conservatism. But the Talmud understood of old that good intentions can lead to evil—vide Busing, Urban Renewal, Affirmative Action, Welfare, et cetera, to name the more immediately apparent, and not to mention the, literally, tens of thousands of Federal and State statutes limiting freedom of trade, which is to say, of the right of the individual to make a living, and, so earn that wealth which would, in its necessary expenditure, allow him to provide a living to others….
…. I recognized that though, as a lifelong Liberal, I endorsed and paid lip service to “social justice,” which is to say, to equality of result, I actually based the important decisions of my life—those in which I was personally going to be affected by the outcome—upon the principle of equality of opportunity; and, further, that so did everyone I knew. Many, I saw, were prepared to pay more taxes, as a form of Charity, which is to say, to hand off to the Government the choice of programs and recipients of their hard-earned money, but no one was prepared to be on the short end of the failed Government pro-grams, however well-intentioned. (For example—one might endorse a program giving to minorities preference in award of government contracts; but, as a business owner, one would fight to get the best possible job under the best possible terms regardless of such a program, and would, in fact, work by all legal and, perhaps by semi- or illegal means to subvert any program that enforced upon the pro-prietor a bad business decision.)*
Further, one, in paying the government to relieve him of a feeling of social responsibility, might not be bothered to question what in fact constituted a minority, and whether, in fact, such minority contracts were actually benefiting the minority so enshrined, or were being subverted to shell corporations and straw men.†
PAGE-NOTE FROM PAGE 154
*No one would say of a firefighter, hired under rules reducing the height requirement, and thus unable to carry one’s child to safety, “Nonetheless, I am glad I voted for that ‘more fair’ law.”
† As, indeed, they are, or, in the best case, to those among the applicants claiming eligibility most capable of framing, supporting, or bribing their claims to the front of the line. All claims cannot be met. The politicians and bureaucrats discriminating between claims will necessarily favor those redounding to their individual or party benefit—so the eternal problem of “Fairness,” supposedly solved by Government distribution of funds, becomes, yet again and inevitably, a question of graft.
David Mamet, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture (New York, NY: Sentinel Publishing, 2011), 134-135; 116-117, 122, 151, 154.
The same thing happened to my Forest Service initial attack crew back in 2001. We had a 5’0″ 100lbs female who wanted on our crew. We had physical standards tests we had to pass. One was a simple three mile “hike” around a high school track with a mere 45lbs and our line gear. She was simply too small and not strong enough to make the time. Our overhead wanted more female representation so they passed her anyway. All summer long she was given the cushy assignments, all while being paid the same as the rest of us. It put us a person down all summer. It also created divisions within our crew. A rookie who got to do all the easy stuff while my squad of ass-kickers had to work even harder because we were a person short (no pun intended).
I was a fireman for over 35 years I worked with several woman, most of them did not have the upper body strength to do the job. Also these were younger women. At 35 years old and cannot pass the physical exam she will be pretty much useless on the scene. She will be a burden to her fellow firefighters she will most likely transfer to a job outside of operations where she won’t have to physically fight fires. She will put other people’s life in danger because she cannot do the job, she sounds like a very selfish and self-centered person.
This comes by way of HOTAIRand makes clear that whatever the left touches, it destroys:
This promises to turn into a sticky wicket for the New York City Fire Department. One of their upcoming graduates is going to be accepted into the ranks and go to work as a firefighter despite having failed a grueling physical test multiple times. This comes as a result of recent changes to the city’s criteria for how graduates are scored.
Rebecca Wax, 33, is set to graduate Tuesday from the Fire Academy without passing the Functional Skills Training test, a grueling obstacle course of job-related tasks performed in full gear with a limited air supply, an insider has revealed.
“They’re going to allow the first person to graduate without passing because this administration has lowered the standard,” said the insider, who is familiar with the training.
Upon graduation, Wax would be assigned to a firehouse and tasked with the full duties of a firefighter. Some FDNY members are angry.
“We’re being asked to go into a fire with someone who isn’t 100 percent qualified,” the source said. “Our job is a team effort. If there’s a weak link in the chain, either civilians or our members can die.”
…..[she] failed to complete… climbing in full gear while carrying heavy equipment, rescuing victims in zero visibility, breaking down doors, and doing it all while breathing oxygen from a tank on a limited timer….
This brings to memory two quotes that bring the point home, a point that a reader on my FaceBook blog pointed out:
“Hopefully the first person she has to LIFT out of a burning building will be a feminist…because obviously it will not matter, that she is unqualified.”
If there is indeed a social revolution under way, it shouldn’t stop with women’s choice to honor their [own] nature. It must also include a newfound respect for men. It was New York City’s firemen who dared to charge up the stairs of the burning Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. The death tally of New York City’s firefighters was: men 343, women 0. Can anyone honestly say you would have wanted a woman coming to your rescue on that fateful day?
Suzanne Venker & Phyllis Schlafly, The Flipside of Feminism: What Conservative Women Know — and Men Can’t Say (Washington, D.C.: WND Books, 2011), 181-182.
Here is the “CS LEWIS” of politics:
There is a Liberal sentiment that it should also punish those who take more than their “fair share.” But what is their fair share? (Shakespeare suggests that each should be treated not according to his deserts, but according to God’s mercy, or none of us would escape whipping.)
The concept of Fairness, for all its attractiveness to sentiment, is a dangerous one (cf. quota hiring and enrollment, and talk of “reparations”). Deviations from the Law, which is to say the Constitution, to accommodate specifically alleged identity-group injustices will all inevitably be expanded, universalized, and exploited until there remains no law, but only constant petition of Government.
We cannot live in peace without Law. And though law cannot be perfect, it may be just if it is written in ignorance of the identity of the claimants and applied equally to all. Then it is a possession not only of the claimants but of the society, which may now base its actions upon a reasonable assumption of the law’s treatment.
But “fairness” is not only a nonlegal but an antilegal process, for it deals not with universally applicable principles and strictures, but with specific cases, responding to the perceived or proclaimed needs of individual claimants, and their desire for extralegal preference. And it could be said to substitute fairness (a determination which must always be subjective) for justice (the application of the legislated will of the electorate), is to enshrine greed—the greed, in this case, not for wealth, but for preference. The socialistic spirit of the Left indicts ambition and the pursuit of wealth as Greed, and appeals, supposedly on behalf of “the people,” to the State for “fairness.”….
….But such fairness can only be the non-Constitutional intervention of the State in the legal, Constitutional process—awarding, as it sees fit, money (reparations), preferment (affirmative action), or entertainment (confiscation)….
….“Don’t you care?” is the admonition implicit in the very visage of the Liberals of my acquaintance on their understanding that I have embraced Conservatism. But the Talmud understood of old that good intentions can lead to evil—vide Busing, Urban Renewal, Affirmative Action, Welfare, et cetera, to name the more immediately apparent, and not to mention the, literally, tens of thousands of Federal and State statutes limiting freedom of trade, which is to say, of the right of the individual to make a living, and, so earn that wealth which would, in its necessary expenditure, allow him to provide a living to others….
…. I recognized that though, as a lifelong Liberal, I endorsed and paid lip service to “social justice,” which is to say, to equality of result, I actually based the important decisions of my life—those in which I was personally going to be affected by the outcome—upon the principle of equality of opportunity; and, further, that so did everyone I knew. Many, I saw, were prepared to pay more taxes, as a form of Charity, which is to say, to hand off to the Government the choice of programs and recipients of their hard-earned money, but no one was prepared to be on the short end of the failed Government pro-grams, however well-intentioned. (For example—one might endorse a program giving to minorities preference in award of government contracts; but, as a business owner, one would fight to get the best possible job under the best possible terms regardless of such a program, and would, in fact, work by all legal and, perhaps by semi- or illegal means to subvert any program that enforced upon the proprietor a bad business decision.)*
Further, one, in paying the government to relieve him of a feeling of social responsibility, might not be bothered to question what in fact constituted a minority, and whether, in fact, such minority contracts were actually benefiting the minority so enshrined, or were being subverted to shell corporations and straw men.†
* No one would say of a firefighter, hired under rules reducing the height requirement, and thus unable to carry one’s child to safety, “Nonetheless, I am glad I voted for that ‘more fair’ law.”
†As, indeed, they are, or, in the best case, to those among the applicants claiming eligibility most capable of framing, supporting, or bribing their claims to the front of the line. All claims cannot be met. The politicians and bureaucrats discriminating between claims will necessarily favor those redounding to their individual or party benefit—so the eternal problem of “Fairness,” supposedly solved by Government distribution of funds, becomes, yet again and inevitably, a question of graft.
David Mamet, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture (New York, NY: Sentinel Publishing, 2011), 116-117, 12
And here is some good commentary by JULIE BOROWSKI:
…The young woman couldn’t complete the job-related obstacle course in that allotted amount of time. She only completed the course once after multiple attempts and it took her 22 minutes.
She failed and she shouldn’t be graduating.
This shouldn’t be about sparing feelings.
Look, nothing against her personally. Being a firefighter clearly isn’t for everyone. It’s physically demanding work. A firefighter who doesn’t meet the stringent physical standards could put other firefighters and civilians in harm’s way.
This comes at a time when the fire department is under pressure by Mayor de Blasio to hire more women. They have even gone so far as making the FST test easier to avoid sex discrimination lawsuits.
Unbelievable….
….It doesn’t help them that the FDNY is hiring women who, frankly, aren’t capable of performing the job because they didn’t pass the test. I’m sure the 44 female firefighters in New York City aren’t too pleased about their work being devalued.
Physical fitness tests are not sexist. It is sexist to hire someone based on their gender, though.
Typical gasoline-powered auto engines are approximately 27% efficient. Typical fossil-fueled generating stations are 50% efficient, transmission to end user is 67% efficient, battery charging is 90% efficient and the auto’s electric motor is 90% efficient, so that the fuel efficiency of an electric car is also 27%. However, the electric car requires 30% more power per mile traveled to move the mass of its batteries. (See more here)
GREEN ENERGY GRID
But manufacturing the famous gasoline-electric hybrid can be a dirty business.
Toyota studied the car’s total environmental impact from factory to junkyard.
In fact, when looking at the “materials manufacturing” phase of the car’s life cycle, the Prius was worse than the class average across all five emissions categories. (AUTO SPIES)
Also, this from Reuters a few years back to put an emphasis on Dr. Lomborg’s $44 dollars of savings subsidized with $7,500 in tax-payers monies:
(REUTERS)– General Motors Co. sold a record number of Chevrolet Volt sedans in August — but that probably isn’t a good thing for the automaker’s bottom line.
Nearly two years after the introduction of the path-breaking plug-in hybrid, GM is still losing as much as $49,000 on each Volt it builds, according to estimates provided to Reuters by industry analysts and manufacturing experts.
Cheap Volt lease offers meant to drive more customers to Chevy showrooms this summer may have pushed that loss even higher. There are some Americans paying just $5,050 to drive around for two years in a vehicle that cost as much as $89,000 to produce….
SO, to be clear… it requires A LOT MORE energy to produce the electric or hybrid car, and takes more energy to “fuel” them.
It is time to stop our green worship of the electric car. It costs us a fortune, cuts little CO2 and surprisingly kills almost twice the number of people compared with regular gasoline cars.
Electric cars’ global-warming benefits are small. It is advertised as a zero-emissions car, but in reality it only shifts emissions to electricity production, with most coming from fossil fuels. As green venture capitalist Vinod Khosla likes to point out, “Electric cars are coal-powered cars.”
The most popular electric car, a Nissan Leaf, over a 90,000-mile lifetime will emit 31 metric tons of CO2, based on emissions from its production, its electricity consumption at average U.S. fuel mix and its ultimate scrapping. A comparable diesel Mercedes CDI A160 over a similar lifetime will emit 3 tons more across its production, diesel consumption and ultimate scrapping.
[….]
Comparing Apples to Apples
[….]
Yes, in both cases the electric car is better, but only by a tiny bit. Avoiding 3 tons of CO2 would cost less than $27 on Europe’s emissions trading market. The annual benefit is about the cost of a cup of coffee. Yet U.S. taxpayers spend up to $7,500 in tax breaks for less than $27 of climate benefits. That’s a bad deal.
(See also WUWT, where Lomborg notes that “…large battery pack [cars]… avoids nothing or even *increases* total CO2 emissions”)
This post will deal with two areas, the main one will be to simply compare the lifetime environmental impact of electric cars to regular gas cars and diesel cars and their carbon footprint. I will add some newer information here as well as combining some older posts herein. The second part is simple, where does the energy come to charge these Electric Vehicles (EVs).
SUBSIDY for CARS
These subsidies mainly benefit the rich, Tesla’s increased sales are directly linked to tax breaks offered to the wealthy on the backs of gas and diesel drivers:
…This means that CDA leader Sybrand Buma’s comments that ‘prosecco-drinking Tesla drivers’ have profited from the tax break at the ‘expense of the ordinary man in the street’ are largely true, the paper said.
It points out that the subsidies for electric cars are mainly funded by higher taxes paid by petrol and diesel car owners…
Follow the sources below to subsidy sites in purchasing an electric vehicle:
California just put another $116 million toward clean vehicle rebates(source)…. Administered by CSE for the California Air Resources Board, the Clean Vehicle Rebate Project (CVRP) offers up to $15,000 in electric vehicle rebates for the purchase or lease of new, eligible zero-emission and plug-in hybrid light-duty vehicles (source).
A side note. California, as a government, does not make money like a normal business. It CAN ONLY tax people to get the money it spends. If it gets money from the Federal government, THEY [the Federal government] can only tax people or print money [weakening the dollar if it does this too much]. So, this $116-million comes from somewhere, and, is really just a redistribution of peoples money to an area the State thinks is important ~ but! is in fact, based on bad science.
TOYOTA SAYS!
So let’s start with some Prius examples. AUTOMOTIVE NEWS documents a study done by Toyota that bursts greenies bubbles:
The Toyota Prius is among the greenest cars to operate. But manufacturing the famous gasoline-electric hybrid can be a dirty business.
Toyota studied the car’s total environmental impact from factory to junkyard.
Not surprisingly, the fuel-efficient Prius was better than average in its class of vehicles in lifetime emissions of carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide and sulfur oxide, according to Toyota.
But it was slightly worse than average in emissions of nonmethane hydrocarbons and particulate matter. Toyota says this is because producing hybrid-only parts such as motors, inverters and nickel-metal hydride batteries consumes more energy and creates more emissions.
In fact, when looking at the “materials manufacturing” phase of the car’s life cycle, the Prius was worse than the class average across all five emissions categories.
One proponent (now detractor) of EVs is Dr. Ozzie Zehner who has written quite fairly on the issue of alternative energy, and has an open chapter in his book for people to read.
…An environmental activist who once pushed for EVs and now works as a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley now calls electric vehicles “unclean at any speed” in a recent article for the engineering journal IEEE Spectrum (via Weasel Zippers and UPI):
The idea of electrifying automobiles to get around their environmental shortcomings isn’t new. Twenty years ago, I myself built a hybrid electric car that could be plugged in or run on natural gas. It wasn’t very fast, and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t safe. But I was convinced that cars like mine would help reduce both pollution and fossil-fuel dependence.
I was wrong.
I’ve come to this conclusion after many years of studying environmental issues more deeply and taking note of some important questions we need to ask ourselves as concerned citizens. Mine is an unpopular stance, to be sure. The suggestive power of electric cars is a persuasive force—so persuasive that answering the seemingly simple question “Are electric cars indeed green?” quickly gets complicated.
Ozzie Zehner, who worked on the experimental EV-1 at GM before it got shelved, says some of the complications are due to the economics of science and scientific research. Most of the funding comes from interested parties, which tends to produce research that supports their positions…
The article HotAir references is actually really long, well balanced, and informative. I suggest the serious reader delve in as “Unclean At Any Speed” touches on the many aspects of the alternative energy push right now. One aspect noted in the article is the large rare-earth metals needed (mined) and energy used in the extraction of these and the destruction of large swaths of land mass in order to produce the batteries and magnets involved in EVs.
Prius vs. Hummer
I will combine a graphic from Dr. Zehner article with another noted study comparing the Prius to a Hummer (the better comparison will come later with a diesel and electric cars):
(click to enlarge)
A Prius has a life span of 100,000 miles.
A Hummer has a life span of 300,000 miles.
Over its lifetime, a Prius costs $3.25 per mile driven.
In contrast, the Hummer costs $1.95 per mile driven, and
The Toyota Scion xB costs $0.48 per mile driven.
The original fuel economy estimates for Hybrids were inflated 30% by the EPA.
One of the Prius’s battery factories causes so much environmental damage that NASA uses the lifeless land nearby to simulate moon landings.
Some have called the Hummer/Prius comparison into question, some of which is even hashed out in the comment section of the post where the bullet points are from, fine. (A diesel Hummer H2 would surely beat the total lifespan footprint of the comparison.) But the impact on the environment (note the moon-landing stat) and overall comparisons to diesel’s is what interests me. The author of the above article updated his post with this [for the curious]:
UPDATE: Apparently the Prius was only ranked #12 in overall green-ness, behind several diesels, city roadsters, and smart cars. Experts expect the ranking to be even worse next year.
This brings me to another idea noted in the aforementioned article, even given a growth pattern in alternative fuels diesel in 2030 is still projected to be the best in low impact on the environment:
Environmental Impact
This is an area that might be surprising. At face value, with high gas mileage and low emissions, hybrids seem like the easy answer. But as we have previously covered at Digital Trends, vehicles with batteries may not be nearly as “green” as is often claimed.
This is a complicated issue. Essentially, batteries – particularly lithium-ion batteries – are both incredibly energy intensive and also toxic to produce. This means that the carbon footprint for hybrid production is much larger than a gasoline-only or even diesel-powered car.
In fact, according to some studies, fully electric vehicles have a bigger carbon footprint than diesel powered vehicles in areas where most electricity is produced using fossil fuels.
Modern diesel-cars should not be compared with truck engines that blast clouds of panda-killing soot into the air. Thanks to improvements in technology, current diesel cars are comparable in terms of particulate emissions to any other gasoline-powered car. In fact Volkswagen and Audi’s clean diesel technology makes cars like the Passat TDI cleaner than 93 percent of other cars on the road.
As with price, there will be specific exceptions to this rule, but diesel is greener than hybrid technology.
So diesel hybrids are the ideal for those concerned about the environment. But the rare-earth metals and substances used to make the batteries and magnets are in much less supply than coal, oil, and the like. In fact, in the 70’s it was predicted that we would be running dry of oil this year, but in fact we have at least 200-years worth of supply, the highest ever in the history of man (see point #3). To be clear, the impact on land and energy to get these materials is worse than normal automotive choices:
This section is a response of sorts to Dr. Lomborg, who is interviewed in the opening video. And it is very simple, alternative energy sources create more pollution than they will save (carbon footprint wise).
Thousands of Britain’s wind turbines will create more greenhouse gases than they save, according to potentially devastating scientific research to be published later this year.
The finding, which threatens the entire rationale of the onshore wind farm industry, will be made by Scottish government-funded researchers who devised the standard method used by developers to calculate “carbon payback time” for wind farms on peat soils.
Wind farms are typically built on upland sites, where peat soil is common. In Scotland alone, two thirds of all planned onshore wind development is on peatland. England and Wales also have large numbers of current or proposed peatland wind farms.
But peat is also a massive store of carbon, described as Europe’s equivalent of the tropical rainforest. Peat bogs contain and absorb carbon in the same way as trees and plants — but in much higher quantities.
British peatland stores at least 3.2 billion tons of carbon, making it by far the country’s most important carbon sink and among the most important in the world.
Wind farms, and the miles of new roads and tracks needed to service them, damage or destroy the peat and cause significant loss of carbon to the atmosphere, where it contributes to climate change.
[….]
“This is just another way in which wind power is a scam. It couldn’t exist without subsidy. It is driving industry out of Britain and driving people into fuel poverty.”…
Wind power cannot meet demands, and are dependent on weather conditions, as the above graph shows. Here is a snippit of the issue at hand with Germany’s electric grid:
You can see the extreme volatility of wind power. Such volatility plays havoc with the electric grid and makes fossil fuel backup generation more expensive to run because it must constantly change production rate; it cannot be run efficiently. Those constant changes cause production of more emissions than would be produced without having to contend with the quirky wind power contribution.
Gosselin (a US citizen living in Germany, who received a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Arizona) notes that “Resistance to wind power in Germany is snowballing.” “The turbines, which the German government says will become the ‘workhorse’ of the German power industry, ran at over 50% of their rated capacity only for 461 hours [out of a possible 8,766], or just 5.2% of the time.”
In addition to the unreliable power produced by allegedly “green” wind power, it is becoming increasingly obvious that wind generation is taking a large toll on wildlife and has deleterious effects on human health.
[….]
“The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) and American Bird Conservancy say wind turbines kill 440,000 bald and golden eagles, hawks, falcons, owls, cranes, egrets, geese and other birds every year in the United States, along with countless insect-eating bats. Wind turbines killed 600000 bats last year.
“Renewable energy technologies simply won’t work; we need a fundamentally different approach.” – Top Google engineers
“We get a tax credit if we build a lot of wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.” – Warren Buffett
“Suggesting that renewables will let us phase rapidly off fossil fuels in the United States, China, India, or the world as a whole is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.” – James Hansen (The Godfather of global warming
alarmism and former NASA climate chief)
(LINK TO ARTICLE IN POWER PLANT PICS)
Put another way:
“A fundamental principle of information theory is that you can’t guarantee outcomes… in order for an experiment to yield knowledge, it has to be able to fail. If you have guaranteed experiments, you have zero knowledge” ~ George Gilder
Interview by Dennis Prager {Editors note: this is how the USSR ended up with warehouses FULL of “widgets” (things made that it could not use or people did not want) no one needed in the real world. This economic law enforcers George Gilder’s contention that when government supports a venture from failing, no information is gained in knowing if the program actually works. Only the free-market can do this. [See my post on Capitalism.]}
….But on huge wind farms the motion of the turbines mixes the air higher in the atmosphere that is warmer, pushing up the overall temperature.
Satellite data over a large area in Texas, that is now covered by four of the world’s largest wind farms, found that over a decade the local temperature went up by almost 1C as more turbines are built.
This could have long term effects on wildlife living in the immediate areas of larger wind farms.
It could also affect regional weather patterns as warmer areas affect the formation of cloud and even wind speeds.
It is reported China is now erecting 36 wind turbines every day and Texas is the largest producer of wind power in the US.
Liming Zhou, Research Associate Professor at the Department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences at the University of New York, who led the study, said further research is needed into the affect of the new technology on the wider environment.
“Wind energy is among the world’s fastest growing sources of energy. The US wind industry has experienced a remarkably rapid expansion of capacity in recent years,” he said. “While converting wind’s kinetic energy into electricity, wind turbines modify surface-atmosphere exchanges and transfer of energy, momentum, mass and moisture within the atmosphere. These changes, if spatially large enough, might have noticeable impacts on local to regional weather and climate.”
The study, published in Nature, found a “significant warming trend” of up to 0.72C (1.37F) per decade, particularly at night-time, over wind farms relative to near-by non-wind-farm regions.
The team studied satellite data showing land surface temperature in west-central Texas….
….According to Prinn and Wang, this temperature increase occurs because the wind turbines affect two processes that play critical roles in determining surface temperature and atmospheric circulation: vertical turbulent motion and horizontal heat transport. Both processes are responsible for moving heat away from Earth’s surface.
In the analysis, the wind turbines on land reduced wind speed, particularly on the downwind side of the wind farms, which reduced the strength of the turbulent motion and horizontal heat transport processes. This resulted in less heat being transported to the upper parts of the atmosphere, as well as to other regions farther away from the wind farms….
Not only do wind farms kill off high-profile bird species like golden and bald eagles and California condors, the farms also cause global warming. After hundreds of millions in blown taxpayer money and thousands of dead birds the latest research shows that wind farms cause warming. Reuters reported, via Free Republic:
Large wind farms might have a warming effect on the local climate, research in the United States showed on Sunday, casting a shadow over the long-term sustainability of wind power…
…The world’s wind farms last year had the capacity to produce 238 gigawatt of electricity at any one time. That was a 21 percent rise on 2010 and capacity is expected to reach nearly 500 gigawatt by the end of 2016 as more, and bigger, farms spring up, according to the Global Wind Energy Council.
Researchers at the State University of New York at Albany analysed the satellite data of areas around large wind farms in Texas, where four of the world’s largest farms are located, over the period 2003 to 2011.
The results, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, showed a warming trend of up to 0.72 degrees Celsius per decade in areas over the farms, compared with nearby regions without the farms.
“We attribute this warming primarily to wind farms,” the study said. The temperature change could be due to the effects of the energy expelled by farms and the movement and turbulence generated by turbine rotors, it said.
“These changes, if spatially large enough, may have noticeable impacts on local to regional weather and climate,” the authors said.
But the Democrats will continue to dump billions into the costly energy source anyway. It makes them feel good.
Can you imagine the polluted, destroyed world we would have if the left had their way with green energy?
Environazis, like all progressives, care about two things: other people’s money and the power entailed in imposing their ideology. Prominent among the many things they do not care about is the environment, as demonstrated by a monstrosity planned for Loch Ness:
A giant 67 turbine wind farm planned for the mountains overlooking Loch Ness will be an environmental disaster thanks to the sheer quantity of stone which will need to be quarried to construct it, according to the John Muir Trust. In addition, the Trust has warned that the turbines spell ecological disaster for the wet blanket peat-land which covers the area and acts as a huge carbon sink, the Sunday Times has reported.
According to global warming dogma, carbon sinks are crucial in preventing human activity from causing climatic doom.
The planet isn’t the only victim of this ideologically driven enterprise:
Around one million people visit the picturesque Loch Ness, nestled in the highlands of Scotland each year, bringing about £25 million in revenue with them. Most are on the lookout for the infamous monster, but if Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) get their way the tourists will have something else to look at: the Stronelairg wind farm – 67 turbines, each 443ft high, peppered across the Monadhlaith mountains overlooking the Loch.
Is “green” energy, particularly wind and solar energy, the solution to our climate and energy problems? Or should we be relying on things like natural gas, nuclear energy, and even coal for our energy needs and environmental obligations? Alex Epstein of the Center for Industrial Progress explains.
NEW INFORMATION on the low frequency noise made by wind farms shows a direct connection to the health of ones heart.
Interviewed in Allgemeine-Zeitung, Vahl said that the Low Frequency Noise generated by wind turbines can weaken the heart muscle and change the blood flow.
Prof. Wahl became interested in infrasound and its impact on health after a friend who lived near a wind park had complained of feeling continuously sick. It is known that all around the world people living near wind parks often experience health issues – some being severe.
The group led by Prof. Vahl conducted an experiment to find out if infrasound has an effect on heart muscle strength. Under the measurement conditions, the force developed by isolated heart muscle was up to 20 percent less.
The strength of the heart muscle is important in the event the aortic valve becomes caked up and thus more narrow. According to Dr. Vahl: “This changes the blood flow and the flow noise.”
Now researchers are discussing whether these changes can pose an additional risk to the function of the heart, the Allgemeine Zeitung reported.
Citing the results, Prof. Vahl said: “The fundamental question of whether infrasound can affect the heart muscle has been answered.”
The researchers conclude: “We are at the very beginning, but we can imagine that long-term impact of infrasound causes health problems. The silent noise of infrasound acts like a heart jammer.”
There has long been anecdotal evidence that wind turbines are injurious to human health. I first heard these stories myself on a visit to Australia in 2012 when I met several people who had experienced serious health problems from the effects of wind turbine infrasound – and had been forced to abandon their homes. Subsequently, I also spoke to people in the UK who were also victims of Wind Turbine Syndrome.
You can read the first report I wrote on the subject here.
The wind industry is a massive class action suit waiting to happen. [Especially now that the World Health Organisation has confirmed the health risks – which, of course, just like Big Tobacco, Big Wind has been covering up for years] Indeed, of all the scandals to emerge from the great global warming scam, the wind industry is in my view the worst….
GOOGLE
This realization has hit Google scientists squarely in the common sense thinking center. Google (and Apple) had grand dreams of going 100%-powered by alternative means. They have all but given up:
“Even if one were to electrify all of transport, industry, heating and so on, so much renewable generation and balancing/storage equipment would be needed to power it that astronomical new requirements for steel, concrete, copper, glass, carbon fibre, neodymium, shipping and haulage etc etc would appear. All these things are made using mammoth amounts of energy: far from achieving massive energy savings, which most plans for a renewables future rely on implicitly, we would wind up needing far more energy, which would mean even more vast renewables farms – and even more materials and energy to make and maintain them and so on. The scale of the building would be like nothing ever attempted by the human race.”
I must say I’m personally surprised at the conclusion of this study. I genuinely thought that we were maybe a few solar innovations and battery technology breakthroughs away from truly viable solar power. But if this study is to be believed, solar and other renewables will never in the foreseeable future deliver meaningful amounts of energy.
Low-Tech Magazine notes that new “research shows, albeit unintentional, that generating electricity with solar panels can also be a very bad idea. In some cases, producing electricity by solar panels releases more greenhouse gases than producing electricity by gas or even coal.” Continuing, they point out that…
Producing electricity from solar cells reduces air pollutants and greenhouse gases by about 90 percent in comparison to using conventional fossil fuel technologies, claims a study called “Emissions from Photovoltaic Life Cycles”, to be published this month in “Environmental Science & Technology”. Good news, it seems, until one reads the report itself. The researchers come up with a solid set of figures. However, they interpret them in a rather optimistic way. Some recalculations (skip this article if you get annoyed by numbers) produce striking conclusions.
Solar panels don’t come falling out of the sky – they have to be manufactured. Similar to computer chips, this is a dirty and energy-intensive process. First, raw materials have to be mined: quartz sand for silicon cells, metal ore for thin film cells. Next, these materials have to be treated, following different steps (in the case of silicon cells these are purification, crystallization and wafering). Finally, these upgraded materials have to be manufactured into solar cells, and assembled into modules. All these processes produce air pollution and heavy metal emissions, and they consume energy – which brings about more air pollution, heavy metal emissions and also greenhouse gases.
So an electrical grid powered by alternative fuels or “renewable energy is really a pipe-dream. Take the projections of that giant bird killing plant on the California-Nevada border:
….A solar power plant in the Mojave Desert that’s attracted negative attention for its injuries to birds is producing a whole lot less power than it’s supposed to, according to Energy Department figures.
According to stats from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, a number-crunching branch of the U.S. Department of Energy, the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in San Bernardino County has produced only about a quarter of the power it’s supposed to, with both less than optimal weather and apparent mechanical issues contributing to the shortfall.
[….]
As Danko points out, Ivanpah’s owners have recently sought extensions on the repayment schedule for the $1.6 billion in government-backed loans that paid for Ivanpah’s construction, hoping to delay writing checks until the firms can secure a government grant they hope to use to pay down the loan… .
In an excellent post linking to a German documentary (30-minutes) and study showing the devastation to Chili of lithium mining, we find the following:
German ZDF public television recently broadcast a reportshowing how electric cars are a far cry from being what they are all cracked up to be by green activists.
The report titled: “Batteries in twilight – The dark side of e-mobility” [now not available] shows how the mining of raw materials needed for producing the massive automobile batteries is highly destructive to the environment. For example, two thirds of the cobalt currently comes from the Congo, where the mining rights have been acquired by China. Other materials needed include manganese, lithium and graphite.
Every electric car battery needs about 20 – 30 kg of lithium.
The mining of the raw materials often takes place in third world countries where workers are forced to work under horrendous conditions and no regard is given to protecting the environment. When it comes to “going green”, it seems everything flies out the window….
The production of lithium through evaporation ponds uses a lot of water – around 21 million litres per day. Approximately 2.2 million litres of water is needed to produce one ton of lithium. (EURO NEWS)
AGAIN… here is a Facebookpost of the same thing regarding Lithium Fields:
This is a Lithium leach field.
This is what your Electric Car batteries are made of.
It is so neuro-toxic that a bird landing on this stuff dies in minutes.
Take a guess what it does to your nervous system?
Pat yourself on the back for saving the environment.
Chile, 2nd largest lithium producer, is having water-scarcity problems as this technology takes so much water to produce battery-grade lithium. 2000 tons: 1 ton.
And the current version of the “inflation reduction act” wants 100% of EV battery components produced in the US.
Lead, nickel, lithium, cadmium, alkaline, mercury and nickel metal hydride.
Batteries are a collection of things that are extremely deadly.
Alternative fuels/energy is a DIRTY BUSINESS… but the left who live in the seclusion of the New York Times and MSNBC would never know this. I can show a graph showing skyrocketing carbon emissions worldwide for the past decade and that the temperature has dropped during this time by a small amount, and it is like showing them instructions to build an IKEA bookcase with instructions written in Gaelic!
What about the impact and supply of the materials needed to produce batteries? TreeHugger has a good post that mentions some of these environmental pitfalls. These issues involve many devices we use daily (cell phones, lap-top computers, rechargeable batteries, etc.), but add to this burden a mandated or subsidized car industry:
…lithium batteries take a tremendous amount of copper and aluminum to work properly. These metals are needed for the production of the anode & the cathode, cables and battery management systems. Copper and aluminum have to be mined, processes and manufacturing which takes lots of energy, chemicals and water which add to their environmental burden.
[….]
First of all, this study emphasizes that there would be less Lithium available than previously estimated for the global electric car market. It also states the fact that some of the largest concentrations of Lithium in the world are found in some of the most beautiful and ecologically fragile places, such as The Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia. The authors note:
“It would be irresponsible to despoil these regions for a material which can only ever be produced in sufficient quantities to serve a niche market of luxury vehicles for the top end of the market. We live in an age of Environmental Responsibility where the folly of the last two hundred years of despoilment of the Earth’s resources are clear to see. We cannot have “Green Cars” that have been produced at the expense of some of the world’s last unspoiled and irreplaceable wilderness. We have a responsibility to rectify our errors and not fall into the same traps as in the past.”
[….]
The report estimates that there would be less Lithium available than previously estimated for the global electric car market, as demand is rising for competing markets, such as cellular telephones and other electronic devices. At the same time, due to a great concentration of Lithium found in Chile, Bolivia and Argentina (70% of the world’s deposits), the United States and other developed countries needing the material will be subject to geopolitical forces similar to those they have already encountered from the member countries of OPEC…
Click HERE to go to larger file (use mouse wheel to zoom in)
In an excellent article we see the projected demands on other metals involved in the battery and transit goals:
….Regarding the demand for the different minerals, in the case of aluminum, according to our results, the demand for minerals from the rest of the economy would stand out, with the requirement for batteries having little influence. Copper would have a high demand from the rest of the economy, but it would also have a significant demand from vehicles, infrastructure and batteries. Cobalt would be in high demand because of the manufacture of batteries with the exception of the LFP battery that does not have this mineral, in the case of its demand from the rest of the economy it can be stated that it would be important but less influential than the demand for batteries. Lithium would have very high requirements from all the batteries and with a reduced demand from the rest of the economy. Manganese would have an important but contained demand coming from LMO and NMC batteries, since the requirements for this mineral would stand out in the rest of the economy. Finally, nickel would have a high demand from NMC and NCA batteries, but its main demand would come from the rest of the economy.
The batteries that would require the least materials are the NCA and LFP batteries. The NMC battery has been surpassed in performance and mineral usage by the NCA. The LiMnO2 battery has a very poor performance, so it has been doomed to disuse in electric vehicles. In addition, the LFP battery, the only one that does not use critical materials in the cathode (other than lithium), also has poor performance, requiring very large batteries (in size and weight) to match the capacity and power of batteries using cobalt.
Charging infrastructure, rail and copper used in electrified vehicles could add up to more than 17% of the copper reserve requirement in the most unfavourable scenario (high EV) and 7% in the most favourable (degrowth), so these are elements that must be taken into account…..
Are Electric Vehicles really clean? | They run on dirty energy and blood of children as young as 6. | Electric cars drive human rights abuse and child labour. | China is one of the villains in this story. | Are electric carmakers equally guilty too? | Palki Sharma Upadhyay tells you.
…. lithium is also not the only battery ingredient with a dark side. Perhaps the darkest of all is cobalt, which is commonly used, alongside lithium, in the batteries of many electric vehicles.
Worse still, UNICEF estimates 40,000 of the workers in these mines are children under the age of 18, with some as young as 7 years old. Cobalt mining also comes with serious health risks. Chronic exposure to dust containing cobalt can cause the potentially fatal lung disease “hard metal lung disease.” Many fatal accidents have also been caused by mines not being constructed or managed safely.
Clearly then, in the face of such widespread environmental damage and human rights abuses, the ethics of electric vehicles is far more complicated than the expensive car adverts and glowing newspaper headlines would have us believe…..
This is pretty lame. I wonder how many people think this power just comes out of the ground? Perhaps these greentards think this is magic solar power that is leached from the sun and stored in invisible floating Tesla flywheels. Bet that went right over most heads. Anyway this is a real problem for shoppers at WalGREENS. Weather they are asked or not they are subsidizing this climate hoax and paying for the fuel that is getting these FARCE-CARS from point “a” to point “b.”
And there are a lot of tax-monies/incentives used even for the above charging stations. Wiki has some pretty good references in regards to this:
Plug-in conversion kits
The 2009 ARRA provided a tax credit for plug-in electric drive conversion kits. The credit is equal to 10% of the cost of converting a vehicle to a qualified plug-in electric vehicle and in service after February 17, 2009. The maximum amount of the credit is $4,000. The credit does not apply to conversions made after December 31, 2011.[142][149]
Charging equipment
There was (through 2010) a federal tax credit equal to 50% of the cost to buy and install a home-based charging station with a maximum credit of US$2,000 for each station. Businesses qualified for tax credits up to $50,000 for larger installations.[144][150] These credits expired on December 31, 2010, but were extended through 2013 with a reduced tax credit equal to 30% with a maximum credit of up to US$1,000 for each station for individuals and up to US$30,000 for commercial buyers.[][]
Another factor regarding optimal output and electric vehicles is hot and cold weather. I will let a wonderful WIRED MAGAZINE article explain:
…EV drivers have other factors to consider in winter weather: How far they can go, and how long it will take them to recharge.
Cold temperatures can hurt both, especially when it gets as severe as Winter Storm Jaden, which has triggered states of emergency across the country and will subject more than 70 percent of the US population to subzero temperatures over the next few days. That’s because the lithium-ion batteries that power EVs (as well as cellphones and laptops) are very temperature sensitive.
“Batteries are like humans,” says Anna Stefanopoulou, director of the University of Michigan’s Energy Institute. They prefer the same sort of temperature range that people do. Anything below 40 or above 115 degrees Fahrenheit and they’re not going to deliver their peak performance. They like to be around 60 to 80 degrees. As the temperature drops, the electrolyte fluid inside the battery cells becomes more sluggish. “You don’t have as much power when you want to discharge,” says Stefanopoulou. “The situation is even more limited when you want to charge.”
Modern cars are designed to take that into account, with battery thermal management systems that warm or cool a battery. But while an internal combustion engine generates its own heat, which warms the engine and the car occupants, an EV has to find that warmth somewhere else, either scavenging the small amount of heat that motors and inverters make or running a heater. That takes energy, meaning there’s less power available to move the wheels.
Additionally, to protect the battery—the most expensive component of an EV—the onboard computer may limit how it’s used in extreme low temperatures. The Tesla Model S owners manual warns: “In cold weather, some of the stored energy in the Battery may not be available on your drive because the battery is too cold.”…
In a conversation between EV owners and others at WATTS UP WITH THAT, a comment that sums up the above but in a short paragraph, reads:
It’s not just bigger, it’s huge. Unlike an IC powered car, where cold weather won’t really affect it much, an electric car is severely disadvantaged. Drop outside temperatures down to -10 degrees F (not uncommon in Chicago) and that 300 mile range drops to 75 miles. Commute 20 miles to work on a frigid winter morning and 20 miles home in slooow traffic in a snowstorm with lights, wipers, and defroster on hi, and you just might not make it.
And another story of Minnessota doo gooders plans failiung them:
The Twin City buses were supposed to go 150 miles on a single charge, but the actual range was closer to 75 miles.
Minnesota cities worked to shift toward clean energy in public transit, but complications from acquired electric vehicles have prompted significant overhauls and additional expenditures to keep the buses operational.
In Duluth, Minn., technicians installed diesel-powered heaters on electric buses as the city’s electric fleet struggled to perform. In 2015, the city received a $6.3 million federal grant, according to MinnPost, for seven battery-electric buses from Proterra, which were delivered in 2018.
Proterra, which went bankrupt in August, sold 550 buses. The company enjoyed outspoken support from the Biden administration, but the buses have given transit districts across the country extensive problems. Many of the buses, which were purchased with sizable federal grants, have broken down, and repairs have been slow going as a result of a lack of parts.
The Proterra buses in Duluth struggled to make it up steep hills and to keep riders warm in winter. Proterra technicians installed diesel-powered heaters on the buses and increased the battery capacity so they could handle steep hills and subzero temperatures, which degrade the performance of electric vehicles.
In the Twin Cities, meanwhile, the transit department received another $1.7 million federal grant for eight more electric buses from Canada-based New Flyer. The Twin City buses were supposed to go 150 miles on a single charge, but the actual range was closer to 75 miles. The buses further failed to meet 20% of their scheduled operating miles because of needed battery replacements. In 2021, the buses were out of service for most of the year because of charging station issues at the garage…..
Reality is a Bitch!
THE DAILY MAIL notes that “[e]lectric cars have 40 per cent less range when the temperature dips below freezing, new research has revealed.” Wow. Canadians are well-aware of the issue — as are the people in the northern states.
IN~OTHER~WORDS, this “venture is a giant boondoggle and these charging-stations would never survive outside of transferring wealth from business owners and those that drive the economy to cover this failure of a “choice.”
AGAIN:
“A fundamental principle of information theory is that you can’t guarantee outcomes… in order for an experiment to yield knowledge, it has to be able to fail. If you have guaranteed experiments, you have zero knowledge” — George Gilder
Interview by Dennis Prager {Editors note: this is how the USSR ended up with warehouses FULL of “widgets” (things made that it could not use or people did not want) no one needed in the real world. This economic law enforcers George Gilder’s contention that when government supports a venture from failing, no information is gained in knowing if the program actually works. Only the free-market can do this. [See my post on Capitalism.]}
Chuck DeVore is interviewed by Larry Elder on these (and more) topics regarding California’s regulatory arm and environmental groups and the affect they have on forest health, power grids, and the rising cost for the poor. The conversation is based in large part on these two articles:
California’s Climate Extremism: The pursuit of environmental purity in the Golden State does nothing to reverse global warming—but it’s costing the poor and middle class dearly.
In the above two article (and the ones to follow) are detailed failures of our state legislature (a super majority in both houses are Democrats) to bring California into the 21st century.
These policies of pushing alternative energy goals retards the power grid, and hurts the poor the most where it counts — the pocket book:
These are important topics that SHOULD be looked into by Californians. However, the urge to FEEL “angelic” (on the side of angels) far outweighs the reality of the road we are paving. Here is the “CS LEWIS” of politics from a related post: “Deadly Altruism Marks the Left ~ Illiberal Egalitarianism and the NYFD“
There is a Liberal sentiment that it should also punish those who take more than their “fair share.” But what is their fair share? (Shakespeare suggests that each should be treated not according to his deserts, but according to God’s mercy, or none of us would escape whipping.)
The concept of Fairness, for all its attractiveness to sentiment, is a dangerous one (cf. quota hiring and enrollment, and talk of “reparations”). Deviations from the Law, which is to say the Constitution, to accommodate specifically alleged identity-group injustices will all inevitably be expanded, universalized, and exploited until there remains no law, but only constant petition of Government.
We cannot live in peace without Law. And though law cannot be perfect, it may be just if it is written in ignorance of the identity of the claimants and applied equally to all. Then it is a possession not only of the claimants but of the society, which may now base its actions upon a reasonable assumption of the law’s treatment.
But “fairness” is not only a nonlegal but an antilegal process, for it deals not with universally applicable principles and strictures, but with specific cases, responding to the perceived or proclaimed needs of individual claimants, and their desire for extralegal preference. And it could be said to substitute fairness (a determination which must always be subjective) for justice (the application of the legislated will of the electorate), is to enshrine greed—the greed, in this case, not for wealth, but for preference. The socialistic spirit of the Left indicts ambition and the pursuit of wealth as Greed, and appeals, supposedly on behalf of “the people,” to the State for “fairness.”….
….But such fairness can only be the non-Constitutional intervention of the State in the legal, Constitutional process—awarding, as it sees fit, money (reparations), preferment (affirmative action), or entertainment (confiscation)….
….“Don’t you care?” is the admonition implicit in the very visage of the Liberals of my acquaintance on their understanding that I have embraced Conservatism. But the Talmud understood of old that good intentions can lead to evil—vide Busing, Urban Renewal, Affirmative Action, Welfare, et cetera, to name the more immediately apparent, and not to mention the, literally, tens of thousands of Federal and State statutes limiting freedom of trade, which is to say, of the right of the individual to make a living, and, so earn that wealth which would, in its necessary expenditure, allow him to provide a living to others….
…. I recognized that though, as a lifelong Liberal, I endorsed and paid lip service to “social justice,” which is to say, to equality of result, I actually based the important decisions of my life—those in which I was personally going to be affected by the outcome—upon the principle of equality of opportunity; and, further, that so did everyone I knew. Many, I saw, were prepared to pay more taxes, as a form of Charity, which is to say, to hand off to the Government the choice of programs and recipients of their hard-earned money, but no one was prepared to be on the short end of the failed Government pro-grams, however well-intentioned. (For example—one might endorse a program giving to minorities preference in award of government contracts; but, as a business owner, one would fight to get the best possible job under the best possible terms regardless of such a program, and would, in fact, work by all legal and, perhaps by semi- or illegal means to subvert any program that enforced upon the proprietor a bad business decision.)*
Further, one, in paying the government to relieve him of a feeling of social responsibility, might not be bothered to question what in fact constituted a minority, and whether, in fact, such minority contracts were actually benefiting the minority so enshrined, or were being subverted to shell corporations and straw men.†
* No one would say of a firefighter, hired under rules reducing the height requirement, and thus unable to carry one’s child to safety, “Nonetheless, I am glad I voted for that ‘more fair’ law.”
†As, indeed, they are, or, in the best case, to those among the applicants claiming eligibility most capable of framing, supporting, or bribing their claims to the front of the line. All claims cannot be met. The politicians and bureaucrats discriminating between claims will necessarily favor those redounding to their individual or party benefit—so the eternal problem of “Fairness,” supposedly solved by Government distribution of funds, becomes, yet again and inevitably, a question of graft.
David Mamet, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture (New York, NY: Sentinel Publishing, 2011), 116-117, 12
‘What we have found is it is taking far, far too much time,’ said Maj. Gen. Malcolm Frost, the commanding general of the US Army Center of Initial Military Training.
‘It’s taking three to four times as much time … just to qualify folks on the hand grenade course than we had designated so what is happening is it is taking away from other aspects of training.’
‘We are finding that there are a large number of trainees that come in that quite frankly just physically don’t have the capacity to throw a hand grenade 20 to 25 to 30 meters,’ he said.
The above was originally uploaded by myself to my MRCTV account on April 26th, 2012. I wrote a post on it on my blog with the same date. I am uploading the audio to my YouTube for easier embedding. Here is the description from the original post being updated today:
Dennis discusses the purpose of the Marines, to win. For the same reason a professional baseball team does not have women on its team is because they cannot perform as well as a man in most situations similar to the analogy of baseball and combat. If so, why not make full fledged women brigades for the front lines? Also, a woman caller who served in the Air Force mentions her not qualifying for the K-9 unit because she could not carry 70lbs. She agreed with that policy… that is, if a women cannot physically meet the demands, then, they should not be allowed into such a position.
Another caller that was in the ARMY when they integrated training points out some of the below in rough terms:
It was July 1959. With about 60 other recruits, I was being welcomed to basic training at Fort Jackson, S.C. According to John Leo’s “A Kinder, Gentler Army” (in U.S. News & World Report on Aug. 8, 1997), such a welcome is now out. Today’s Army manual dictates, “Stress created by physical or verbal abuse is nonproductive and prohibited.” Forget whether traditional adversative training produced a first-class military throughout our history.Why the changes? Partly, it’s because today’s youth are unaccustomed to discipline and authority, but mainly it’s because our lovelies want to be fighting persons. To accommodate them means the military must lower standards. Carrying a stretcher used to be a two-man job, now it’s a four-person job. The Navy finds that few of its females can manage shipboard emergency tasks such as hefting fire hoses or carrying wounded personnel up a ladder on a stretcher.
Females pass physical training because of gender-norming. Yellow lines are put on climbing ropes. Male trainees have to climb to the top, but for our lovelies the yellow line will do. As for those awful push-ups, men have to do 20 and women just six. Then there’s the “confidence course,” called the obstacle course in the pre-P.C. days. At Quantico’s Marine training facility, a visitor noticed a footstool placed in front of an 8-foot wall so no trainee would fail to climb over it.
There’s one male/female strength difference quite worrisome. At Parris Island, it was discovered that 45 percent of female Marines were unable to throw a hand grenade far enough to avoid blowing themselves up. Translated in Williams’ terms: If I were in a foxhole with a woman about to toss a hand grenade, I’d consider her the enemy.
If there is indeed a social revolution under way, it shouldn’t stop with women’s choice to honor their [own] nature. It must also include a newfound respect for men. It was New York City’s firemen who dared to charge up the stairs of the burning Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. The death tally of New York City’s firefighters was: men 343, women 0. Can anyone honestly say you would have wanted a woman coming to your rescue on that fateful day?
(Washington, D.C.: WND Books, 2011), 181-182.
To further make the point, here is David Mamet — of Glengarry Glen Ross fame — noting the above in a very erudite manner:
There is a Liberal sentiment that it should also punish those who take more than their “fair share.” But what is their fair share? (Shakespeare suggests that each should be treated not according to his deserts, but according to God’s mercy, or none of us would escape whipping.)
The concept of Fairness, for all its attractiveness to sentiment, is a dangerous one (cf. quota hiring and enrollment, and talk of “reparations”). Deviations from the Law, which is to say the Constitution, to accommodate specifically alleged identity-group injustices will all inevitably be expanded, universalized, and exploited until there remains no law, but only constant petition of Government.
We cannot live in peace without Law. And though law cannot be perfect, it may be just if it is written in ignorance of the identity of the claimants and applied equally to all. Then it is a possession not only of the claimants but of the society, which may now base its actions upon a reasonable assumption of the law’s treatment.
But “fairness” is not only a nonlegal but an antilegal process, for it deals not with universally applicable principles and strictures, but with specific cases, responding to the perceived or proclaimed needs of individual claimants, and their desire for extralegal preference. And it could be said to substitute fairness (a determination which must always be subjective) for justice (the application of the legislated will of the electorate), is to enshrine greed—the greed, in this case, not for wealth, but for preference. The socialistic spirit of the Left indicts ambition and the pursuit of wealth as Greed, and appeals, supposedly on behalf of “the people,” to the State for “fairness.”….
….But such fairness can only be the non-Constitutional intervention of the State in the legal, Constitutional process—awarding, as it sees fit, money (reparations), preferment (affirmative action), or entertainment (confiscation)….
….”Don’t you care?” is the admonition implicit in the very visage of the Liberals of my acquaintance on their understanding that I have embraced Conservatism. But the Talmud understood of old that good intentions can lead to evil—vide Busing, Urban Renewal, Affirmative Action, Welfare, et cetera, to name the more immediately apparent, and not to mention the, literally, tens of thousands of Federal and State statutes limiting freedom of trade, which is to say, of the right of the individual to make a living, and, so earn that wealth which would, in its necessary expenditure, allow him to provide a living to others….
…. I recognized that though, as a lifelong Liberal, I endorsed and paid lip service to “social justice,” which is to say, to equality of result, I actually based the important decisions of my life—those in which I was personally going to be affected by the outcome—upon the principle of equality of opportunity; and, further, that so did everyone I knew. Many, I saw, were prepared to pay more taxes, as a form of Charity, which is to say, to hand off to the Government the choice of programs and recipients of their hard-earned money, but no one was prepared to be on the short end of the failed Government programs, however well-intentioned. (For example—one might endorse a program giving to minorities preference in award of government contracts; but, as a business owner, one would fight to get the best possible job under the best possible terms regardless of such a program, and would, in fact, work by all legal and, perhaps by semi- or illegal means to subvert any program that enforced upon the proprietor a bad business decision.)*
Further, one, in paying the government to relieve him of a feeling of social responsibility, might not be bothered to question what in fact constituted a minority, and whether, in fact, such minority contracts were actually benefiting the minority so enshrined, or were being subverted to shell corporations and straw men.†
*No one would say of a firefighter, hired under rules reducing the height requirement, and thus unable to carry one’s child to safety, “Nonetheless, I am glad I voted for that ‘more fair’ law.”
† As, indeed, they are, or, in the best case, to those among the applicants claiming eligibility most capable of framing, supporting, or bribing their claims to the front of the line. All claims cannot be met. The politicians and bureaucrats discriminating between claims will necessarily favor those redounding to their individual or party benefit—so the eternal problem of “Fairness,” supposedly solved by Government distribution of funds, becomes, yet again and inevitably, a question of graft.
What this boils down to is people wanting to feel good about themselves…. but like Mamet noted, would rather not “feel good” about themselves if their own family member is involved.
I would write the Dutchess County Chamber of Commerce and just let them know this would be a bad decision for business to the wider county… maybe this will put pressure on the Arlington Fire District in the town of Poughkeepsie?
American flags were removed from three Arlington Fire District trucks Tuesday, sparking heated discussion on social media and disappointment from union members.
Fire Chief Tory Gallante was directed by the Board of Fire Commissioners to remove the flags from the backs of the trucks during Monday’s meeting. He declined to comment on specifics of why the decision was made but said he is “very disappointed with their direction.”
Arlington Fire Commissioner Chairman Jim Beretta said the board majority feel the flags are a “liability during normal operations for our people and other motorists,” and that the board had not been consulted before the flags were mounted.
The flags, which were only recently mounted on the trucks at the request of the union, were removed during a ceremony at Arlington headquarters in the Town of Poughkeepsie Tuesday.
Union President Joseph Tarquinio said he’s disappointed in the board’s direction, but “if we had to take them down, they had to be taken down the right way. At the time when the country needs unity, to do something like this … it’s next to flag-burning in my mind.”
There was an open discussion about the issue at Monday’s meeting “and each board member gave their opinion,” Beretta said.
Two board members “had no problem with it as long as it was safe and not in the way of operations,” Beretta added. Three board members “did have a problem with it for normal operations, citing liability and distraction to other motorists.”
Tarquinio is pleased with the outpouring of support — Gallante said dozens and dozens of messages have poured in from around the nation, decrying the board’s direction.
“I think (for) a lot of people … (the issue) crosses political lines, moral lines, religious lines,” Tarquinio said. “It’s the flag of this country.”…
“They look like a bunch of yahoos,” Gralinski said. “Like in the paper, like ISIS in Syria going to take over a city. I don’t think they need that big flag on the back of the truck. That’s not America to me. Those are a bunch of terrorists. So, I’m going to ask you to take the flag off that truck.” (Daily Caller)
An American flag on the back of a fire truck and decals on the truck windows is leading to a new dispute at the Central Coventry Fire District. The firefighters union said they’re being asked to take them off. “The members are very upset,” Firefighters Union President David Gorman told NBC 10 News. “I have a couple members, armed service retired, retired from the guard.”
These are organizations that accept donations that go directly to families of firefighters and police officers families who have lost their lives in the line of duty.
After authorities got the anonymous 911 call, police and firefighters fanned out quickly to try locating an infant abandoned under a pine tree in a graveyard.
They looked and looked around Mt. Hope Cemetery in Champaign, Illinois on that chilly morning and couldn’t find the baby.
But on a whim, local firefighter Charlie Heflin — listening to the developing drama over his scanner — figured he’d take a different approach.
He simply went to a different cemetery.
But again, no luck. After not locating the infant, either, Heflin started to walk back to his truck…when he got the sense he should try again.
“I heard a little whimper when I got close to the tree,” Heflin told WFIE-TV in Evansville, Indiana. “I dug down inside this real huge pine tree and found her.”…
(More at The Blaze) A fire has raged through the AIG Campus in Houston, Texas, with a YouTube video shot by an onlooker capturing the daring rescue of a construction worker by firefighters as the complex burned around them.
The clip, uploaded by user Karen Jones, was shot from a nearby building where horrified workers watched as the man sought refuge from the blaze on a top floor balcony.
As the fire spread his situation grew increasingly desperate, with the flames drawing closer to his location and plastic doors melting and peeling off the building.
The as yet unnamed man dropped down to a lower floor as firefighters rushed in with a mounted ladder to rescue him – the worker taking a leap of faith onto the ladder just moments before the fire ripped away half of the building.
The Houston Fire Department said the fire was “under control” by mid-afternoon Tuesday, two hours after it started, with all workers accounted for and no injuries reported.
More than 200 emergency personal responded to the apartment complex fire, the cause of which is now under investigation.
