Early Adopters

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• Still remembering the diesel back ups that South Australia had to put in after blowing up the coal fired power station and switching to renewables. One really doubts how such a system can possibly sustain a huge fleet of electric vehicles as well as present consumption.

  Its present approach seems to be screaming:

  why won't you buy our surplus power when the sun shines and the wind blows

  why don't you provide us with back up power when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow

  we're sacrificing for YOU when we have renewable power. Where's the money. NOW!!!!

• The UK has recently fired up its coal power stations because the wind stopped blowing, to in part power or in this case not power this couples' electric car, all in pursuit of lower CO2 emissions. The irony would be side splittingly funny, if it wasn't for the fact that Germany has in recent years increased its burning of lignite, a high CO2 emitting fuel, wind or no wind and its economy marches, or perhaps in the time of Corona more accurately limps, forward more assuredly than does the UK’s.

  Meanwhile the UK could be sitting on perhaps as much as 300 years worth of high energy density low(ish) carbon natural gas. Of course no one can be sure how much energy lies under our feet because of the PM's pandering to the Greens/XR and probably also to his fiancé.

  A recent study showed that 50,000 miles need to be driven in an electric car before any CO2 savings are made compared to a conventionally powered vehicle. This is without factoring in the higher purchase cost of an electric car, somewhat hidden by the government offering our money to the purchaser, which requires more economic activity on our part, which in itself entials CO2 emissions. The CO2 cost of creating a network of chargers and maintaining them is probably small but not tiny. Bearing this in mind the suggested banning of the sale of conventionally powered vehicles in a decade hardly seems like a sane proposal.

  However, underlying these arguments is a twofold unanswered dilemma, firstly it is not proven, only claimed, that the small amount of anthropocentric CO2 emitted is contributing to significant changes in climate. That human CO2 emissions are causing a significant change to the climate remains only a hypothesis. Secondly assuming that CO2 is changing the climate, it has not been proven that it is doing so negatively. Nearly one quarter of the world's landmass is permanently frozen, in the Northern Hemisphere winter that rises temporarily to nearly one third. Permanently frozen areas support incredibly low levels of flora and only a small rise in temperature would allow for the re-forestation of almost unimaginably large areas, which would create huge "carbon sinks" which some like to call trees.

  The assumption that a small amount of warming would be catastrophic is just that an assumption. It is one that cannot be proven, bearing in mind that the climate is cooler than it was recently, geologically or even historically. It should hardly need repeating that Greenland was not so long ago partially green with pasture, as well as forested and that grain was grown for bread making, nor that Mediterranean soft fruits and vines flourished in Northumberland and Cumbria. Just a little further back in time, the Cradle of Civilisation bloomed when the world was warmer and may not have done so had it been cooler.

  Although there is no proof that man is changing the climate significantly, or indeed that temperature variations are abnormal, it has been proven that the tiny amount of anthropocentric CO2 emissions is contributing to a greener planet by helping plants recolonise deserts. However wonderful deserts are and however enjoyable camel trekking is, few could rail against smaller areas of arid emptiness.

  Perhaps most importantly, the UK's anthropocentric CO2 emissions account for just 1 part in a million of the atmosphere. To try to put that in economic terms, if a Town Council had a budget of 1 million pounds, would anyone notice if an incompetent clerk lost one pound perhaps by miss typing? Probably not. Whereas it is likely that the town's population might notice that on windless days their homes were dark and cold and that their cars wouldn't start. They might also get rather angry if their elderly parents died of hypothermia and they lost their job because their employer could not afford high cost carbon free power.

  Underlying all human progress is the ability to increase returns with less energy, the cooking of food allowed less time for chewing and more efficient digestion, the invention of the spear thrower allowed for more calories to be collected with less effort; jumping ahead somewhat the internet allows for a message to be sent around the world at a millionth or less of the energy cost just seven generations ago. Whereas generating electricity, especially when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine, in some faraway place, piping it down to a charging point and then storing it in a low density high cost inefficient battery does the exact opposite of what humans have been doing incredibly successfully for the last three million years.

  Carbon is the building block of life, fossil fuels are just that, built blocks that were once life, they are a high energy density form of stored solar power. Human beings by refusing to use them are breaking a natural cycle, previous life forms took carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, they stored the carbon in their bodies which were laid to rest in the ground; humans can continue this cycle and release the carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere from whence it came, helping flora grow and in turn helping feed fauna. The reward that humans can reap from their toil by playing their part in this natural cycle of life is dense abundant energy; energy that can be harnessed to eliminate disease and poverty, increase life quality and expectancy, further knowledge. Of course they could choose to simply simply fool around, watch Netflix or in a worse case scenario the BBC; never-the-less energy gives choice, dense energy forms give more choice and provide more opportunity.

  Electrification of the UK's road network is just part of a net zero carbon emissions policy, gas cooking and gas central heating will have to go, pets will have to be put down, cows killed and ultimately to really achieve the goal of net zero everyone in the UK will have to suffocate themselves, human exhalation being 40,000 parts per million CO2.

  The two early adopters of a low energy density powered vehicle achieved a transit of Bournemouth at approximately one tenth of a mile per hour, only about twice as fast as the world's record breaking gastropod, their CO2 emissions, including food consumed and breath exhaled would have been far more than a Rolls Royce making the same transit in two and a half minutes. They might do themselves, all gastropods record breaking or otherwise and indeed the rest of the planet a favour by selling, to a gullible member of Extinction Rebellion, their useless lower energy density electric vehicle and instead buy a decent and likely longer lasting petroleum powered V8.

  • If you check Gridwatch, last week coal-fired power stations (despite being a much reduced energy production sector in the UK) generated more energy than solar and wind combined.

• At present electric cars only marginally make sense because of the massive state subsidies.
  You get £3k off at purchase
  You don't pay car tax
  Electric Company cars are income tax free
  Electricity get 5% tax rather than the c 200% tax on petrol.
  And they still sort of only just sometimes make sense.
  Not particularly cleaner for the environment though - pollution equals off at between 50k and 100k miles and the electric car pollution is all front loaded, plus battery and motor production involves little kiddies strip mining african rare earth metals.
  It does enable one to be rather smug though.

  • Odd that domestic electricity incurs 25% tax, presumably someone in government could explain the disparity, I certainly can't.

• We're trying to stop carbon dioxide production, yet at the same time the covid vaccine rollout is threatened by a shortage of carbon dioxide.

• If, as an entrepreneur, you want to open a roadside filling station, you need the capital, the premises, planning permission, get the equipment, then you phone a wholesale supplier of motor fuel and arrange your deliveries of fuel which arrive by tanker.

  If on the other hand you want to open a roadside electric charging station, who do you phone to get the electricity delivered and how do they bring it?

• Something tells me that this couple didn't choose an electric Porsche for practical reasons.

• "It’s the sort of thing that the wretched planner politicians never think about. And I have no doubt that between now and as we get more electric cars, others will emerge that no-one has thought of. Some of which may derail the whole thing. If you want to stop people doing a thing, tax it (Pigou taxes) and let the market figure out how.”

  And there’s your problem. If you ask one of the wretched planner politicians they’ll say you can’t do that because you never know what the bastards might come up with.