I find this interesting because part of the thrill of one of these ultimate driving machines is the sensory overload. The sounds and smells are as much a part of the thrill as is the rush of being pushed back into the seat when you push down the loud pedal (accelerator for the under educated).
I’ve been to races for 6 decades now. You can smell the exhaust, tires and hear it before you get to the track. You don’t get that from a station wagon or an SUV.
Even if I lost my vision, I’d only not be able to see how sleek and fast they look. My other senses would say it’s a real car.
Fortunately, even though it is ridiculous E-Fuels, at least they aren’t going to plug in a 911.
I still open the window of my car just to hear them drive away.
With many automakers transitioning from petrol-powered vehicles to electrified ones, Porsche and Ferrari are pursuing a new strategy by concentrating on the advancement of eFuels to preserve gas-powered engines. This decision follows the European Commission’s delay last week of the proposed 2035 ban on new internal combustion engine vehicles as the commission prepares to carve out a role for eFuels after 2035.
“Porsche and Ferrari’s status as national icons was enough to move their governments to challenge the EU plan last week just days before a scheduled vote,” Bloomberg wrote.
Germany’s Transport Minister Volker Wissing told the European Commission that he would withhold support for the approval of the new engine standards to end the sale of new combustion engine cars unless there were a plan for eFuels post-2035. Italy also threatened to fight the reforms.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen met with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Sunday, discussing a comprise that would likely involve eFuels.
Germany and Italy are home to the world’s top sportscar manufacturers. There has been growing opposition against Brussels’ plan to ban petrol-powered engines. That’s because who in their right mind would purchase an all-electric Porsche 911?
The alternative route, mainly for sportscar brands, is the development of eFuels as a climate-neutral way to preserve combustion engines—just something about the sound of a twin-turbo V-8 or V-6 that captivates motorheads.
While most carmakers are pouring tens of billions into the EV shift, Porsche has also invested in an e-fuel plant in Chile, partly because the manufacturer doesn’t plan to make its 911 sports car with a plug. Operating combustion-engine vehicles in a climate-neutral way could also help speed up the decarbonization of the transport sector, according to a Porsche spokesman. Existing vehicle stock should be included in the push to lower CO2 emissions faster, he added. Ferrari has said it’s pursuing alternative fuels to keep making combustion-engine cars that preserve its heritage.
Proponents of e-fuels, say they’re essentially renewable electricity that’s been converted into a combustible, liquid fuel. To make it, scientists combine captured carbon dioxide with hydrogen that was split from water in a process powered by renewable energy, creating a synthetic hydrocarbon fuel. When burned in a combustion engine, the e-fuels create carbon dioxide. But since it was made from previously captured CO2, they argue it’s climate neutral.
We’ve outlined the growing resistance among vehicle brands and motorsport organizations that are firm in their belief the combustion engine will be sticking around for years to come.
The gig is up on sustainable energy, even for the staunchest of supporters. Before the discussion begins on those who are having to scramble to get ready for winter, China and India are laughing. They are expanding coal mining and coal power plants and are the worlds largest polluters. Still, the weenies who bought the (money laundering) Global Warming story are going to pay the most this winter.
Despite the fanfare surrounding wind and solar, the world’s dependency on fossil fuels is increasing. Last week, Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said that the world is now “transitioning to coal.”
Saad al-Kaabi, Energy Minister of Qatar, says, “Many countries particularly in Europe which had been strong advocates of green energy and carbon-free future have made a sudden and sharp U-turn. Today, coal burning is once again on the rise reaching its highest levels since 2014.”
They are right. Global coal demand will reach an historic high in 2022, similar to 2013’s record levels. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), “Global coal consumption is forecast to rise by 0.7 percent in 2022 to 8 billion tons…. Coal consumption in the European Union is expected to rise by seven percent in 2022 on top of last year’s 14 percent jump.”
Coal will continue to be a sought-after energy source as “rising gas prices after 2030 will make existing coal-fired generation more economic,” the IEA says. Global energy demand will grow by 47 percent from now through 2050, and oil is expected to be the major source of energy.
Analysts are projecting “a huge gas-to-coal fuel transition in power and industrial sectors” of Europe. Yes, not gas to renewables, but gas to coal. In fact, the European Union’s coal consumption grew 16 percent year-on-year for the first half of 2022. European countries imported 7.9 million tons of thermal coal in June, more than doubling year-on-year. Annual coal imports are expected to reach 100 million tons by the end of the year, the highest since 2017.
Even in the most developed economies of the West like Germany and the UK, fossil fuels continue to dominate as the only dependable source of energy. Germany is set to become the third highest importer of Indonesian coal in 2023, ranked just below coal-guzzling China and India.
AP says, “Coal, long treated as a legacy fuel in Europe, is now helping the continent safeguard its power supply and cope with the dramatic rise in natural gas prices caused by the war.” Rather than wind or solar, it is coal that is keeping the lights on in Europe.
So the Greens lied to us about the nuclear power plant issue!
The Greens assured us again and again that it would not make sense to continue operating the nuclear power plants. We would have “no electricity problem,” said Economics Minister Robert Habeck, Environment Minister Steffi Lemke and Green Party leader Ricarda Lang, like a mantra. But that was a lie that was spread against the advice of experts: This is proven by 166 documents from the environment and economics ministries, which environment minister Steffi Lemke (Greens) had to hand over to the Die Welt am Sonntag and the Cicero on application [both are behind a paywall].
Explosive: Robert Habeck and his Federal Ministry of Economics and Climate Protection refused to hand over the documents, which they are legally obliged to do! He wanted to cover up what Welt was able to prove anyway: the Greens lied to us in the nuclear debate — and neutralized experts who wanted to tell the truth.
The files show how Habeck and company put their crude anti-nuclear ideology above the security of supply in Germany: Against the advice of their own experts. Experts in Habeck’s ministry “obviously” considered the continued operation of the remaining nuclear power plants to be the right, sensible decision — Habeck ignored them. Just like the Ministry of the Environment, which apparently let a letter from the BMWK [Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection] experts go straight into the wastepaper basket, ignoring the words of the experts as well. When the head of the “Society for Reactor Safety”, which is close to the ministry, criticized the phase-out of nuclear power, he was quickly muzzled by State Secretary for the Environment Christian Kühn (Green Party) and was no longer allowed to comment.
Ever since signing the Paris climate agreement, Vietnam has shown interest in reducing its dependency on fossil fuels, introducing in recent years a slew of measures to cut consumption.
However, in what is considered to be a major U-turn, Vietnam’s government announced last month that it will increase coal imports for the next 13 years.
Critics of fossil fuels, including most mainstream media, are out of sync with the world’s energy realities. They are consistently premature in their celebrations of the emission-reduction promises of developing nations like Vietnam only to see commitments yield to the need to meet growing energy demand with coal, oil and natural gas. Even developed economies like Germany and the UK have ditched — or suspended — grandiose plans for “carbon-free” utopias to fend off social unrest or economic collapse.
In a new strategy drafted to develop the coal sector, Vietnam’s Ministry of Industry and Trade says that it will increase annual coal imports to as much as 83 million tons during 2025-35.
This decision is a marked departure from ambitious emission-reduction plans that the country seemed keen to embrace, thus delivering another blow to the international campaign against fossil fuels.
Vietnam’s consumption of coal has increased rapidly in the last decade largely to generate electricity — from 27.8 million tons in 2011 to 38.77 million tons in 2015 and 53.52 million tons in 2021. Demand for coal is projected to peak at 125-127 million tons in 2030, mainly due to growing needs in power generation and in the cement, metallurgy and chemical industries.
For countries like Vietnam, there is no option but to increase fossil fuel consumption in the coming decades. Coal, oil, and gas together represent the most affordable, dependable, and abundant source of energy. In fact, a majority of the world’s primary energy comes from these fuels.
The favored technologies of climate alarmists — wind and solar — cannot meet energy needs of large populations. What little electricity they do produce is intermittent and expensive. So, developing countries cannot reduce fossil fuel consumption without a significant compromise in power reliability and economic growth. The consequences of energy shortages due to the anti-fossil fuel stance is greater in developing countries where poverty is still rampant.
Coal consumption correlates closely to Vietnam’s growth in gross domestic product (GDP). The doubling of consumption between 2011-21 tracks with a steady increase in the rate of growth over the same period.
#NBADJT
Also, it must suck that Trump said this would happen if they relied on Russian oil.
I’ve stayed away from talking about Biden, like I stayed away from Trump. I’m not going to try to change anyone’s opinion of either, nor will I change mine. Politics is poison, so I’ll talk economics instead (OK, I’ll make a few sarcastic points because, that’s why).
I do see how this problem can easily be solved.
Today, the President announced that he’s opening up the strategic oil reserve to bring down the prices. This is little more than a band aid to a problem rather than a solution. That reserve was meant for a crisis, of which we are not in right now. By crisis, I mean an attack, an actual climate disaster like a hurricane or a non man made disruption in fuel production.
When taking office, he shut down production of fossil fuels via the Keystone Pipeline, Fracking and other independent (of other countries) production of oil. All was done in the name of sustainable sources and devices like electric cars. What is not said is that the generators of electricity are fossil fuel based, even for a Tesla. Also not said is we are not ready for decades to leave oil as a base for our energy and electricity needs.
Irony, hypocrisy and sarcasm, all in one.
The cynical me steps back and looks at the executive orders signed and it seems that Biden is just against anything the previous president did. Lots of presidents do that. One of them was energy independence. Recently, he asked the Saudi’s to produce more for us, although we have the ability to be the largest producer and exporter. They thumbed their noses at us.
To me, if you produce more, the price would go down. It seemed to work a couple of years ago and there is no reason not to have it work again. Stop the restrictions on fracking (which helped reduce our carbon footprint btw), get rid of the restrictions on fracking and get rid of the bureaucratic laws against our being energy independent and the price goes back down. It has nothing to do with production anywhere else, other than driving down the price worldwide.
It would be a step in the right direction of inflation reduction.
Tapping the strategic oil reserved leaves us with our pants down in the case of an actual emergency.
I’m pretty sure most who have an IQ above a grain of rice could see this and know I’m stating the obvious.
Do I expect this to happen? Not a chance. I lived through lines during the Carter years and expect the same to happen until production returns. It’s simple economics.
It’s time to put pettiness aside and do what is right for the people of the country. It’s not getting better than it was. Cutting fuel costs would be a good start.
Note: I’ve edited this to accurately represent what really happened at the Green and Sustainability effort during my tenure at this job. It has died because once the fury of Green passed by, nobody cared about it. That accurately reflects the real position by everyone in the company that I worked with except the executive who got paid for running it. I don’t think he cared either once the assaignment was over because he moved on and it was dropped.
I was given a stretch assignment for Green IT at IBM this year. A stretch assignment means you get another job without the extra pay, or layoffs just happened and a person now has to do the work of 2 since they don’t want to backfill, or the powers that be don’t feel like you have enough to do so they use this as retribution. In this case it’s mostly the second one because they know I can deliver when others can’t, so they dump stuff on me frequently.
I have a lot ahead of me, thus the title of this blog post. The hardest thing about this assignment is that I know that IBM doesn’t really believe in it (and there is only a small faction of nuts in the company trying to get buy in). The entire premise is almost 100% hype for corporate responsibility and image rather than any actual product or offering. I really wasn’t given a choice whether I wanted to do it and I certainly will do my job, but as you can see in the details below, it’s hard to believe in something when it’s based on bullshit. I see through it and I know that TPTB are just being politically correct to avoid the (very small but politically damaging) social justice warrior hostage taking out there.
During the Major Analyst Conference we did in November, I had to get this nonsense into all the Smarter Planet materials to show (SJW and PC) compliance (so as to not get the Jessie Jackson-ish extortion treatment by the Al Gore crowd). It turns out to be a bunch of nonsense that is made up to try to fool the press and analysts into thinking IBM actually does something in the Green space.
It all started out with trying to be politically correct about global warming, since IBM really isn’t and has the carbon footprint of China (or Al Gore’s 2 houses and jet setting around the world). Now, everyone has started shying away from the words “global warming” once the world saw through that as a lie and ineffective, they renamed it Sustainability. That means you wrap up all the things that tangentially have something to do with being sustainable, since it is a nebulous name and concept and voila, you claim sustainability.
Once the word sustainability gets found out as a fraud as part of the global warming and money grabbing hoax, you then call it Smarter Planet or roll it up into that campaign and somehow you are politically correct, even if you aren’t really doing anything different (which IBM isn’t). We had to sell this crock to the press and analysts who wanted so badly to be able to charge extort us for pretending to buy our baloney of offering something in this space that resembled eco-friendliness. They were compliant in our scam as long as there was money.
The worst thing is having to deal with the idiots out there who buy into this Gaia religion like Tom Raftery of Greenmonk and James Governor of Redmonk and Greenmonk. Our executives in a briefing after a different Green Day analyst conference in London actually called James a wanker and Tom a whiner after the event due to their outbursts and views as they interrupted the entire day. Greenmonk has since gone dormant for lack of money, facts and believable content on climate. Their credibility was shot when they wanted a carbon tax at a dollar a pound. James told me the real truth was he wanted to make money while trying pretend that they were doing it to save the planet, making money being the operative words (see the above extortion tactics). I put the Dilbert cartoon in specifically for O’Reilly, Raftery and Governer – the 3 stooges.
The net of it is that IBM is pretending to be a player in this shell game but is a pseudo player. Fortunately, the analysts and press who are pushing it are just bully’s, but know as we all do that the evidence is not there, so they make up new stories when the lack of facts expose the wild goose chase de jour.
Too bad it is all a farce and IBM’s offering is equally a load of hogwash.
THE WORLD IS FLATTER, BUT NOT LIKE YOU THINK.
That is right, the real flat earther’s are the one’s who buy into this farce of “sustainability” like Greenmonk whose job was to suck around for money. Another dissembler Tim O’Reilly, who couldn’t defend global warming with anything other than “climate science is hard” (or I have no real facts so I’ll call you names), while condemning those who don’t believe in it wrong without any proof of his position was another nut I had to deal with. None of either’s positions are based on anything but computer climate predictions of which none have come even close. they based their position on the IPCC report. It now comes out that The IPCC; Never Has So Much Been Made Out of So Little by So Many at So Great A Cost. In other words it was a money transaction that had nothing to do with climate other than earth worshipping. Any other “climate facts” are 50 years in the future, which is an even bigger joke since real meteorologists can barely predict the weather next week. I could be convinced of global warming if there was one little thing called evidence. What I find unfathomable is the lack of backbone by IBM to stand up to this money grabbing extortion theme by these pseudo experts.
As it turns out, I had tweeted in response to Tim’s crisis about the rising tides that I didn’t believe him, but would accept his facts if he had any. Like all good climate warriors, he made ad hominem attacks on me and in a more harmless statement, said that I got all my information from Fox News (I don’t watch any news as my career with the media already told me that the press are biased). The only real facts about the state of Climate issues are found at What’s up with That unlike Tim who had no facts like all climate warriors.
As it turns out, the tides are receding Tim and here is the evidence. The waters on the island of Tuvalu (the tidal benchmark) are receding. This is one of the crisis places of the world that was supposed to be drowned along with the Statue of Liberty. So Tim, your views are biased and calling people flat-Earther’s because they don’t sign up for the pseudo science you have bought into is ridiculous, like your views.
Epilogue:
I got out of this assignment because I couldn’t lie for the company, nor lie to myself by doing something I didn’t believe in and realized was a lie. It’s lost its mojo because both the premise of Sustainability and climate change are based on predictive models that aren’t true. The fact that IBM doesn’t really do anything (other that trying to keep up with the Jones) was too much for me to take, and claim any sense of honesty. My credibility is more important than getting a paycheck for lying. I’d never make it as a politician.
I left the position right before a green conference where Al Gore was the speaker. It was the second time in my IBM career that I made a conscious decision to avoid him so as to not listen to his spew about global warming, nor be disappointed in humanity by seeing so many people being fooled by this scam based on redistribution of money to the climate warriors.
I told James that it was good that Gore wasn’t president on 9/11/2001 as he couldn’t lead a lottery winner to any bank (other than his bank account), let alone a nation in a real crisis. Being a good liberal, he was offended since he knew it was true and couldn’t defend his hero. He, like Biden and Cheney were only impeachment insurance for their respective presidents.
So having to lie to defend Climate anything, especially at IBM when I understood the facts makes it hard to be green. I’ve moved on to something I can be honest about.
The position went away as it became “under the guise of everything is sustainable” – (more lies) that we didn’t need a person babysitting it anymore. The real truth is that it didn’t develop into an issue like diversity that a company could be blackmailed into payment or bad PR due to non-compliance. It just went away as did the fake committment to global warming by my employer.
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Delusions of Adequacy 