By Paul Homewood
h/t Paul Kolk
Get your long johns out!
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
November 22, 2024 at 05:48AM
Author: Iowa Climate Science Education
By Paul Homewood
Democracy only matters to CCN when the vote goes their way!
“Crushing.” “Decisive.” “Overwhelming.” Those are some of the adjectives news stories have used to describe Donald Trump’s election triumph. Trump himself said in his victory speech that the American people had given him “an unprecedented and powerful mandate” to enact his agenda, a claim repeated by his political allies. As regards climate change, that agenda includes “drill, baby, drill,” withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, and other policies that would further overheat an already dangerously overheated planet.
Credulous early news coverage spread the narrative that Trump won a massive victory, but the ultimate vote count tells a different story. With some states still completing their final tally, Trump is projected to win less than half of the popular vote — 49.87%, at last count. Which means that more Americans voted against Trump than voted for him.
Trump did, however, score a resounding 312 to 226 victory in the Electoral College, and he’ll have narrow Republican majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate. In terms of governing power, there’s no question that he won big.
But governing power is not the same as a popular mandate, and it’s important for journalists not to conflate the two. Of course Trump and his allies want to claim a popular mandate: If everyone believes that, it’s easier to implement his agenda. But that’s not what the final vote count reveals.
Meanwhile, public opinion surveys show that 74% of Americans (and 89% percent of people around the world) want government action against climate change. Separate surveys show that roughly 70% of the public want to know more about climate change. (US-based journalists can find the exact percentage for your area here.)
As journalists, our job is to prioritize what our audience wants to know. Trump’s return to the White House complicates that task, as newsrooms are bound to be stretched by the ensuing chaos and Trump’s threats to “go after” media he doesn’t like. Climate news may get folded into existing stories more. If so, it will be more important than ever that all journalists, not just dedicated climate reporters, make the climate connection to the news of the day, whether it’s extreme weather or mass deportations, affordable insurance or public health.
As long as humans burn more oil, gas, and coal, as Trump wants to do, extreme weather will keep hitting harder and more often. The public already wonders what’s going on, what role climate change might be playing, and what they can do to protect themselves. That’s the story we journalists have to keep telling — one for which, sadly, we’ll have plenty of news pegs over the next four years.
https://coveringclimatenow.org/from-us-story/does-trump-really-have-a-mandate/
I don’t remember them questioning Joe Biden’s mandate for his trillion dollar Green New Deal, fraudulently labelled the Inflation Reduction Act, which only passed the Senate thanks to Kamala’s casting vote!
But CCN are not interested in democracy, only pushing their climate agenda. They are even prepared to lie:
CCN was set up to coordinate climate coverage, and now has hundreds of news outlets faithfully propagating their lies:
It was originally set up in 2019 by four left wing news outlets, including the Guardian. And, surprise surprise, it is funded the usual assortment of left wing foundations:
It is little wonder that the credibility of the media is at rock bottom.
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
November 22, 2024 at 05:40AM
By Paul Homewood
h/t Paul Kolk
Nothing ever seems to deter Ed Miliband, the green commissar of this Labour government. He has already brought back the boiler tax, adding a few hundred pounds to the bill for anyone unlucky enough to need a new heating system this winter. Now he is relaxing the size and noise restrictions on heat pumps, allowing them to screech through the night. At this rate, the typical British city will be turned into a cacophonous heat pump farm, with a few pale, sleep-deprived humanoids trapped inside. But hold on. This is crazy. In reality we are doubling down on a failing technology, and risking civil unrest in the process.
For a man who typically despises any form of deregulation, Miliband makes one crucial exception. If it is part of his net-zero crusade then it is perfectly fine. Too big? Never mind. Too noisy? No problem. Too expensive? What does cost matter when the planet has to be saved? We already have subsidies for heat pumps, quotas and taxes on the traditional alternative. Now they will be allowed to fill the night with noise as well.
And yet, there are two big problems with Miliband’s decision. To start with, why are we obsessing over a technology that doesn’t seem to work very well? If your dishwasher sounded like a fighter jet with the afterburners switched on we might suggest the boffins in the lab figured out a way to make it quieter. If mobile masts took up half the street we’d ask the manufacturers to go back to the drawing board and make them smaller.
Heat pumps may or may not be the best way of moving towards carbon neutral home heating. But if we are going to install millions of them, then surely they need to be fit for purpose, in the same way that any other mass market product should be? Pumps need to be quiet, compact, and cheap. Until they are, they either need to get better, or else we need to look at alternatives.
Instead, we will risk splitting communities apart. Relations between neighbours can often be fraught at the best of times. There are arguments over parking, parties and fences. Now we can add heat pumps to the list. If one house is keeping the whole street awake with its heating that hardly seems reasonable, but presumably the self-righteous eco warriors will insist it is OK, and will have the Government on side.
Nor does it stop there. Miliband also wants us to do our washing at three in the morning to even out the load on the grid. But if a rackety drier wakes up half an apartment block in the middle of the night, that hardly seems reasonable either. Likewise, cabling for electric cars now runs across many pavements, but it is easy to trip over, and we surely would not allow that it was not part of the green crusade. Very soon, communities will be at war with one another, arguing about every new rule handed down from Westminster, until tempers are stretched beyond breaking point.
That is crazy. We can debate whether climate change is an imminent catastrophe, and whether the UK, accounting for less than one per cent of global emissions, really needs to lead the world in combating it. But regardless of that, surely we can all agree that whatever technologies we adopt for the transition to carbon neutrality need to be cheap, effective and safe, and mustn’t disrupt the communities in which we all live. Miliband doesn’t seem to care about any of those tests – and instead appears intent on driving the country to the brink of civil unrest.
via NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
November 22, 2024 at 05:24AM
From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
Ford won’t be the last.
Ford has announced it will cut 800 jobs in the UK over the next three years.
The move is part of a major restructuring programme, which will see 4,000 posts closed across Europe as a whole.
The company said it had to act because of difficult trading conditions, including intense competition and weak demand for electric vehicles.
However, the cuts will not affect its manufacturing sites in Dagenham and Halewood, or its logistics base in Southampton. Ford said it hoped to make the majority of job cuts through voluntary redundancy.
“Making this announcement isn’t something that anybody wants to do, and I appreciate it will have a very significant impact on our employees,” said Lisa Brankin, managing director of Ford of Britain and Ireland.
“It’s not the news anyone wants to hear at any time. So our aim is to try to deliver this through voluntary redundancy.”
Ford has 5,300 employees in the UK.
The restructuring plan will remove 15% of its workforce. The majority of them are expected to be administrative or product development roles.
This is the second round of cuts to hit Ford’s operations in Britain in less than two years. In March 2023 it said 1,300 jobs were to go, a fifth of its workforce, most of them at the Dunton site.
The latest announcement comes at a time when car manufacturers across Europe are struggling.
Among the issues they face are high energy costs, weaker than expected demand for electric cars and growing competition from Chinese manufacturers.
Many of the continent’s biggest names, including Volkswagen, Mercedes Benz and BMW have seen their profits tumble this year.
Volkswagen is even contemplating the closure of factories in Germany, a step that would be unprecedented.
“The automotive industry is going through a period of massive disruption at the moment,” explained Ms Brankin.
“We’ve got unprecedented competition, regulation and lots of economic headwinds”
Those pressures are hitting Ford at a difficult time. The carmaker is attempting to move away from its past as a mass-manufacturer of cheap “runabouts”, and position itself as more upmarket brand, focused on electric cars. Last year, it stopped making the Fiesta after nearly five decades.
In addition to the cuts in the UK, Ford will be shedding 2,900 jobs in Germany and another 300 in the rest of Europe.
Meanwhile in Britain, the government is coming under intense pressure from the car industry over rules designed to force them to build more electric vehicles. The issue is due to be discussed at a meeting between industry and ministers on Wednesday afternoon.
Under the so-called Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) Mandate, which came into force this year, at least 22% of cars sold must be classed as zero emission. If manufacturers fail to hit their quotas, they could face fines of up to £15,000 per car.
A number of carmakers are already struggling to meet their targets, although there are flexible mechanisms built into the rules which should allow them to avoid fines for the moment.
But the quota is due to rise to 28% next year, and to 33% in 2026 – being ramped up each year after that to hit 80% by 2030.
Manufacturers insist this is happening too fast. Although sales of new EVs are rising – with one in five cars sold in October being battery powered, they say this is misleading.
They claim demand for electric cars simply isn’t high enough yet, forcing them to offer unsustainable discounts in an effort to meet their targets.
Some are calling for the government to water down the quotas, in order to give them more time.
Others say it needs to offer greater taxpayer-funded incentives for electric cars, and to do more to reassure car buyers that enough charging infrastructure will be built.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20626dy9d6o
All three of the problems identified – EVs, energy prices and competition from China – can be directly laid at successive governments’ doors.
As was obvious from the beginning, there never was enough demand for EVs for the mandated targets to be achieved. Manufacturers have been forced into offering unaffordable discounts for EVs, and are now cutting back on ICE cars, so as to artificially increase the ratio of EVs. Even then, some will still not meet ZEV targets, and carrying the deficit forward is a mug’s game.
And it was equally obvious that banning the sale of petrol/diesel cars would open the door to cheap Chinese EVs. All we were doing was throwing away the technological advantages that UK and European manufacturers had built up over the years.
Energy prices, of course, speak for themselves.
Unless the EV madness is abandoned and electricity prices reduced to competitive levels, both the UK and European car industries will be much smaller in ten years time.
via Watts Up With That?
November 22, 2024 at 04:08AM
