This Is Stupid

The left is claiming that so much ground water has been pumped out of the Earth, that it is causing the planet’s rotational axis to tilt and is contributing to global warming/climate change. This is absurd, for multiple reasons.

First, the amount of water humans have pumped out is claimed to be 2.15×10^12 tons. The entire planet has a mass of 5.97×10^21 tons. The mass pumped is equal to 0.00000000036% of the mass of the planet, or 3 parts in 10 billion.

However, that mass didn’t simply disappear- the water is still here. In fact, with the exception of a couple of thousand gallons that went into space on spacecraft, man hasn’t removed any water from the planet. That isn’t what the idiots interviewed for CNN had to say:

In 2016, another team of researchers found that drift in Earth’s rotational axis between 2003 and 2015 could be linked to changes in the mass of glaciers and ice sheets, as well as the planet’s reserves of terrestrial liquid water.

In fact, any mass change on Earth, including atmospheric pressure, can affect its axis of rotation, Seo told CNN in an email.

The water that has been pumped out of the ground, the ice sheets, the glaciers, all of that mass is still here. It didn’t disappear.

The redistribution of groundwater tilted Earth’s rotational axis east by more than 31 inches (78.7 centimeters) in just under two decades, according to the models. The most notable driver of long-term variations in the rotational axis was already known to be mantle flow — the movement of molten rock in the layer between Earth’s crust and outer core. The new modeling reveals that groundwater extraction is the second most significant factor, Seo said.

31 inches in 20 years. That works out to 1.55 inches per year, with the circumference around the poles of about 15,800 miles, or just over 1 million billion inches. This means that the “shift” in the rotational axis is one part in a million billion. They use the position of Quasars to measure the position of Earth’s rotational axis. (this paragraph was edited to correct the error you see as a strikethrough)

The current gold standard for measurements of Earth’s rotation vector comes from very long baseline interferometry (VLBI), which involves radio receivers around the world. The receivers use the slight differences in the times at which they detect sudden changes in the microwave emissions from very distant quasars to precisely determine their own positions. This information allows them to monitor small changes in Earth’s orientation with respect to these far-away objects. But it can take days to translate VLBI observations into the final, useful results. A rotation sensor at a single location could provide an independent measurement and could allow the data to be available continuously.

It’s a pretty precise measurement. They claim that they can use that to determine shifts in the rotational axis going back to the 1800’s.

Future models can use observations on Earth’s rotation to illuminate the past, Seo added. “The data is available since the late 19th century,” he said. With that information, scientists can peer back in time and trace changes in planetary systems as the climate warmed over the last 100 years.

Since quasars weren’t discovered until 1960, the means of measuring the rotational axis were limited until that time, and precise measurements of the Earth’s rotational axis were impossible to within 1 part per million, which is the precision needed to detect a 1 inch per year shift. In fact, the first measurement of the change of the rotational axis of the planet wasn’t made until 2011.

This is junk science.

Can’t Legislate Math

As the left continues to crow that we need to switch to electric vehicles to save the planet, they are overlooking the fact that the nation just doesn’t have the electrical generating capacity to do that. As I post this, two thirds of the nation is facing the possibility of blackouts due to insufficient power generation capacity to handle the power demands of air conditioning that deals with the summer heat. Why? Because the nation’s electrical generating companies have been closing coal and oil fired power plants rather than pay for expensive repairs and upgrades caused by the government’s efforts to deal with “climate change.”

By 2035, automakers will have turned away from the internal combustion engine. The electric grid doesn’t have the capacity to charge all of those new cars, trucks and buses. This will cause an increase in electric demand that would require 50% more electricity than we generate now. There isn’t enough land area to rely on wind and solar for our current needs, much less adding that much more.

For example, Florida is second in the nation in electric vehicles with over 100,000 of them, but ranks 42nd in the infrastructure needed to charge them with 24 cars in the state for each charging station.

Because F- You, I’m Rich

Bill Gates made some comments on why he will continue using a private jet while demanding that you stop producing so much CO2 by driving to work. His comments boil down to, “Because I’m rich, that’s why, you peons.”

Well, I buy the gold standard of, funding Climeworks, to do direct air capture that far exceeds my family’s carbon footprint and I spend billions of dollars on … climate innovation. So, you know, should I stay at home and not come to Kenya and learn about farming and malaria? I’m comfortable with the idea that, not only am I not part of the problem by paying for the offsets, but also through the billions that my Breakthrough Energy Group is spending, that I’m part of the solution.

It isn’t an either or situation. If he really believes that he is helping, he can still help without flying all over the world in a private jet. Also, we have seen the Climeworks people on this blog before. It’s a bullshit grift that purely exists to take money from gullible people.

This is like most green energy/climate stuff- you can’t get more out of a process than you put into it. These companies are collecting billions, and Bill Gates gets to go on being a hypocritical asshole.

Environmental Shell Game

There is an old physics joke that goes like this: “There’s this farmer, and he has these chickens, but they won’t lay any eggs. So, he calls a physicist to help. The physicist then does some calculations, and he says, um, I have a solution, but it only works with spherical chickens in a vacuum.”

The joke here is that theory frequently ignores reality. In order for the theory to match reality, one has to assume that things like irregularly shaped chickens living in contact with the real world don’t exist, because they make it impossible for theory to match reality. Which brings us to today’s post.

The claims about EVs are that they are more efficient than internal combustion engines. The claims are that even an F-150 gets an equivalent to 65 miles per gallon. What are they using for an equivalent? Some bullshit math that is purely theoretical and has no basis in reality? Or are they representing the actual facts?

The EPA is the one who decides, through what they call ‘advanced computer modeling’ what the Miles Per Gallon equivalent is for each car. The EPA says one gallon of gasoline contains 115,000 BTUs of energy–which equates to 33.7 kilowatt-hours, equaling 3,412 BTUs per KW-hour.

A natural gas powered generator like this one uses 301 cubic feet of gas to generate 20 kilowatt hours of electric power. Since  1 cubic foot of natural gas = 1,037 BTU, then one KW of electricity costs 15,606 BTUs to create in the real world. What this means is that the EPA is claiming that electric generation is almost 5 times more efficient in theory than it is in practicality. Why? Because a lot of the energy in that natural gas is lost to inefficiencies like friction in the bearings, hysteresis losses, and other things in the generating process that generate heat.

Perhaps it’s more efficient in large power plants? Nope, it turns out that large powerplants are inefficient as well.

In theory, 3,412 Btu of thermal energy is equivalent to 1 kWh of electric energy. For existing coal-fired power plants, heat rates are typically in the range of 9,000 Btu/kWh to 11,000 Btu/kWh. 

There are also line losses. That is, the electric lines, transformers, and other parts of the electric grid have their own losses caused by imperfect conduction and distribution. Physics is a bitch.

The game that they are playing here is obvious. They are taking the theoretical value for gasoline and electricity and ignoring the losses that occur due to inefficiencies in generation and transmission of electricity so that they get a number that far overstates the efficiency of electricity, making EVs seem far more efficient than they are.

This is why that F-150 that is supposed to be the most efficient pickup truck only has a range of 58 miles when towing a boat. My F-150 with its 36 gallon fuel tank has a range of over 300 miles towing my 18 foot pontoon boat.

Since we know that they are vastly overstating the efficiency of electric vehicles, that calls the environmental value of electric vehicles into question. Even using the EPA’s faulty metrics, one must drive an EV for over 20,000 miles before it becomes ‘greener’ than than an internal combustion powered vehicle. This is due to the toxic and environmentally unfriendly battery.

The thing is, the battery must be changed out much sooner than the engine in an ICE powered car. The US government requires that a battery on an EV be warrantied for 8 years or 100,000 miles. That is apparently the limit for batteries, as one Florida family recently discovered. I once had a car with over 250,000 miles on it. I still saw it driving around town for years after I sold it.

Over all, I think that there is a shell game being played with EVs. They are not nearly as efficient or as environmentally friendly as we are being led to believe. So the question remains: Why are we being misled, and to whose benefit?

Physics- Trust the Science

An Electric Vehicle company is claiming that their electric school buses are “sending energy back to the grid to help conserve and reduce emissions.” They do nothing of the sort. All they are doing is returning a portion of the energy that they used in being charged back to the grid.

Energy is not created or destroyed, it merely changes form. In changing form, some of that energy is converted to heat, and is thus lost. Charging the bus causes losses as the batteries heat up. When the busses discharge into the grid, more energy is lost. Then the bus has to be charged again in order to be driven, meaning that even more energy is lost.

I don’t know if the left is stupid or thinks we are. On second thought, perhaps it is the left who is stupid, because they actually believe that it is possible to have perpetual motion devices. I guess arts majors don’t know anything about the First Law of Thermodynamics.

They Want You to Suffer

After it was pointed out that, should Americans switch to electric cars, it would require 4 times more electricity to charge them than Americans use on air conditioning, CNN tells us that we don’t need air conditioning because Europe doesn’t use it.

Let’s begin with a geography lesson. Berlin, the town where the author of the article lives without air conditioning, is at 52.52 degrees north latitude. The entire continental US is south of that line. The closest North American city to that latitude is Calgary, in Alberta, Canada, which is located at 51 degrees north.

Rome is located at about the latitude of Boston. Atlanta is on the 34th parallel, which places it as far north as Beirut and Tripoli. Orlando is near the 29th parallel, which places it as far north as Kuwait city. Miami is near Luxor, Egypt in latitude.

During the summer, Rome is ten degrees Fahrenheit cooler than Miami, on average. Hell, in Arizona it gets too hot for airplanes to fly. The US is warmer in summer, and colder in the winter than most of Europe.

Right now, all I am seeing on the news is the people in Europe whining like little bitches about how hot it is over there, because it is 100 degrees in the afternoon. Here in central Florida, we call that June, July, and August. They are closing roads because it looks like this:

Pussies. Our roads look like that when they are new. And what’s this about house fires? Do British homes spontaneously combust at 100F?

So Europe can go fuck themselves.

German Green Energy

This is how Germany went green by becoming woke. It’s a model that we are going to follow. Step one, close half of your nuclear plants:

Step two, replace them with Solar and Wind:

Step 3, go woke by refusing all Russian natural gas:

Step 4: Now that you are going broke, switch to coal

Yeah! Way to fight the fight.

Unlimited Cosmic Powers

The Key deer is a subspecies of the whitetail deer. They only live on one small island of the Florida Keys. At one point, there were only 75 of them left. Now, there are more than 750. This has been such a success story that the Florida Fish and Wildlife Service wants them removed from the endangered species list. The director of the FWS wrote:

This determination is based on the best available scientific and commercial information, which indicates that the threats to [Key Deer] have been eliminated or reduced to the point that the species no longer meets the definition of an endangered or threatened species.

Florida Fish and Wildlife Service Director Leo Miranda

The left can’t have that. Instead of being happy and taking the win in saving an endangered species, they need emergencies to give themselves power. So they insist that the deer are still endangered by climate change, and use 2017’s Hurricane Irma as evidence that climate change is going to wipe out the deer. They claim that rising sea levels will wipe out the deer in 100 years unless we do something.

Never let a crisis go to waste when there is money to made and power to be wielded.