Legendary Motor Developer Calls Electric Cars An “Environmental Fraud” …”Dangerous False Path”!

Professor Friedrich Indra has been retired since 2005 and is considered to be one of the world’s leading engine developers. The 76-year old used to work for Audi and General Motors.

In a recent interview with the online FOCUS news magazine he raised a lot of eyebrows by stating that he thinks electric mobility is a “dangerous false path”, claiming that the electric car “does not solve a single environmental problem” and that it “contributes nothing to climate protection”.

Indra calls the claims that electric cars are CO2-free “absurd”.

Fake efficiency

Citing an earlier stiudy by a Professor Spicha, Indra says that the well-to-wheel-CO2 of an electric car in Germany is in fact 1.6 times worse than the conventional internal combustion engine. The CO2 perforamnce of an electric car in China is even four to five times worse when it comes to consumption, and that does not mention the huge energy quantities needed for manufacturing the batteries that electric cars need, which would be enough to power a conventional automobile 30,000 kilometers, he told FOCUS.

Electric cars also have the problems of recycling the batteries, as they are a long way from being fully recyclable.

According to Indra, internal combustion engines have made “very impressive progress“, saying: “The motors are continuously getting more powerful and more fuel efficient.” The engine expert believes that the final solution is “CO2-neutral synthetic fuels. They need as much CO2 for for their manufacture as emitted when in operation.”

The “second greatest environmental fraud”

When it comes to hybrid automobiles, Indra opinion is harsh, calling the plug-in-hybrids “the second greatest environmental fraud because the determination of the fuel consumption does not even include the power that was previously needed to charge up the car.” This is how “sportscars using the technology come up with perverse values like 3.1 liters consumption per 100 km [80 mpg]”.

In the interview Indra rails against what he calls “widespread hatred against internal combustion engines” among the media and policymakers, who he says exploited the VW emissions test cheating affair to spread more hate against the internal combustion engines. He thinks the scandal was played up by the media and is “completely disassociated from fact“. Never has “industry and policymaking acted so irrationally“. He believes politicians are in for a rude awakening once the true costs start coming in.

In the meantime in some countries the market share by pure electric cars is already retreating. That’s also going to happen with the plug-in-hybrids after all the ‘rich people’ are supplied with these cars.”

He says the claimed “success” of electric cars in China and Norway is due to massive government subsidies: “No country in the world can afford that over the long-term. That will level off once again, as is already the case in Norway.”

SOURCE




Race to save badly damaged California dam before MORE rainfall

For years, Warmists blamed the recent California semi-drought on global warming.  So how do they explain the huge rainfall CA is having now?  Are we now having global cooling?  Or was it all just more dishonest propaganda?

Authorities in California were so sure the Oroville Dam was going to catastrophically collapse that they abandoned their command post on Sunday evening.

At a press conference on Monday, the Acting Chief of the Department of Water Resources Billy Croyle revealed the situation had become so perilous he ordered his staff to flee.

Officials also admitted they are in a race against time to drain up to 50-feet of water from the stricken Oroville Dam before a storm hits on Wednesday.

Almost 200,000 people were frantically ordered on Sunday to evacuate along a 40-mile stretch of the Feather River below the dam after authorities said its emergency spillway could give way.

A gaping 250-foot chasm was expected to collapse and unleash a 30ft 'tsunami' tidal wave that could have killed thousands and left nearby towns under 100ft of flood water.

Tens of thousands of panicked residents took to the freeways, causing total gridlock on the roads and sending anxiety levels soaring as they wondered if the dam would burst while they were sat in their cars.

'Everyone was running around; it was pure chaos,' Oroville resident Maggie Cabral told CNN affiliate KFSN on Sunday.

'All of the streets were immediately packed with cars, people in my neighborhood grabbing what they could and running out the door and leaving. I mean, even here in Chico, there's just traffic everywhere.'

On Monday, Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea said the evacuation below the nation's tallest dam will not end right away.

He added that they are working on a plan to allow residents to return home when it's safe - but offered no timetable for when they would be allowed to go home.

He added that so far there have been zero reports of looting in any of the evacuated towns.

Honea also said more than 500 Butte County jail inmates were safely transferred to Alameda County Jail farther south.

And as officials rushed to release water from the dam and fix the spillway, the empty abandoned cities resembled ghost towns after the forced evacuations.

SOURCE




Skeptical Mass. meteorologist fired but many meteorologists question climate change science

They observe changes in the atmosphere like astronomers study the stars, analyzing everything from air pressure to water vapor and poring over computer models to arrive at a forecast.

But for all their scrutiny of weather data, many meteorologists part ways with their colleagues — climate scientists who study longer atmospheric trends — in one crucial respect.

Many remain skeptical about whether human activity is causing climate change, as underscored by the recent departure of Mish Michaels from WGBH News

Michaels, a former meteorologist at WBZ-TV, lost her job as a science reporter at WGBH’s show “Greater Boston” this week after colleagues raised concerns about her views on vaccines and climate change. She had previously questioned the safety of vaccines and the evidence that human activity was causing global warming, both widely held views in the scientific community.

A national survey last year by researchers at George Mason University in Virginia found that just 46 percent of broadcast meteorologists said they believed that climate change over the past 50 years has been “primarily or entirely” the result of human activity. By contrast, surveys of climate scientists have found that 97 percent attribute warming to human activity.

The upcoming Atlanta climate summit offers a viable way to push back when basic science and truthful discourse are at risk.

“Weather forecasters are people, too, and their political ideology plays a role in their views,” said Ed Maibach, who directs the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason and oversaw the study. “So conservative forecasters tend to be more skeptical than liberal forecasters.”

Among those skeptics is Tim Kelley, who has issued weather forecasts on New England Cable News (NECN) since 1992.

Kelley describes himself as a “student of climate change,” but says his experience with the variability of computer models has made him skeptical that anyone can predict how greenhouse gases will change the environment in the coming decades.

“How can their computer models be better than ours?” he said. “We look at computer projections all the time, and we know how off they can be.”

Kelley acknowledges the climate is changing, but like many skeptics questions whether rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the reason. He believes most of the changes are natural, not man-made.

“I’m much less alarmed by global warming than most people,” he said. “I’d rather it be warmer.”

Kelley said he was deeply concerned by Michaels’ apparent firing.

“It’s alarming that you can be scapegoated or branded as a denier,” he said. Officials at WGHB didn’t return messages seeking comment.

Maibach, whose study was funded by the National Science Foundation, said that 99 percent of the 646 broadcast meteorologists he surveyed acknowledged that the earth’s climate is changing.

While many meteorologists are unconvinced about climate change, the profession as a whole has grown more accepting of the scientific consensus on climate change, surveys show. A study he just completed, though not yet published, found an increase in the percentage of meteorologists that attributed climate change to human activity.

In a separate survey of members of the American Meteorological Society, Maibach found that 67 percent said they thought climate change is entirely, largely, or mostly caused by human activity. About 20 percent of the group’s members work for broadcast stations.

Despite the shift, environmental advocates are disturbed about the sizeable ranks of broadcast meteorologists who remain skeptics, particularly given their public influence.

“It’s definitely concerning,” said Bernadette Woods Placky, director of Climate Matters, a New Jersey program that seeks to help meteorologists reflect climate change in their reports. The group provides broadcast-ready graphics and educational materials to 375 of the nation’s 2,200 TV meteorologists.

Placky said she tells skeptics that there’s a vast difference in the data that weather forecasters and climate scientists use in their computer models. Unlike weather forecasts, climate models are far broader in scope, she said.

“There’s a lot of misinformation out in the public, and meteorologists have a lot going on,” she said. “But they should know that climate models take into account the entire climate system.”

Paul Gross, a meteorologist with WDIV-TV in Detroit for the past 34 years, said he tries to help viewers understand that while weather is a reflection of day-to-day changes, climate change is caused by the slow accumulation of those changes over time.

“Weather is the little picture; climate is the big picture,” he said. “This shouldn’t be a politically motivated conversation that seeks to confuse the public.”

Rob Eicher, a former weekend meteorologist at WHDH-TV in Boston, said viewers shouldn’t put too much stock in weather forecasters’ views on climate change.

“It’s like asking a podiatrist for help when you have chest pains,” he said. “It’s a different specialty.”

He also pointed to politics as the cause of many skeptical forecasters, especially those who work at stations run by right-leaning owners.

“What people need to understand is that there’s a completely different set of physics in understanding weather and climate changes,” he said. “We can predict tides years and years in advance, but I can’t tell you what the wave heights will be in a few days from now. Climate deals with much larger issues.”

SOURCE




Biofuel Blunder: Navy Should Prioritize Fleet Modernization over Political Initiatives

For the past several years, the President and Navy Secretary Ray Mabus have directed the U.S. Navy to dedicate increasingly precious budgetary resources to establish a “green fleet”—i.e., to replace conventional diesel fuel for ships with biofuels harvested from organic material.

Supporters claim that instability in the fossil fuel market justifies paying more for unproven technologies, but this initiative will in effect cause fiscal instability in an already unstable Department of Defense budget.

Most Capable Fleet, Not Green Fleet

While the Navy is officially embracing biofuel use as a tool to decrease its dependence on fuels from the volatile Middle East, there are good reasons why the Navy should keep relying on conventional fuels.

Diesel Will Be Plentiful. The American petroleum sector is currently undergoing a booming revival, and new sources of fuel such as shale will decrease demand for diesel elsewhere in the U.S. economy. This will help secure sources of diesel to be readily available to the U.S. military.

No Established International Infrastructure. That could cause considerable challenges given the Navy’s global reach. It might be difficult or even impossible to refuel a “green” ship in foreign waters, because a foreign biofuel infrastructure capable of meeting the Navy’s needs is almost non-existent. Even if the U.S. builds its own supply chain for the Navy, it would still have to rely on diesel if refueling in foreign ports.

Increased Corrosion. Studies have shown that biofuels are more corrosive than regular diesel and can therefore increase maintenance costs within the Navy’s fleet.[1] This would only worsen the current fleet’s dire situation, since inspection failures are already occurring at an alarming rate within the fleet.[2] Increasing average age of U.S. fleet; delayed, deferred, and underfunded modernization; and use of fuels with potentially harmful consequences is a recipe for a fleet readiness crisis.

Increased Expenses. Biofuels are disproportionately more expensive than conventional fuels. A gallon of biofuel costs $26, whereas the Department of Defense purchases diesel at about $3.60 per gallon. Many argue that this rate will decrease over time as biofuel production increases, but in the interim, the Navy’s readiness would be further damaged by wasting precious resources on biofuels that are seven times more expensive than the Navy’s conventional fuels—not including the increased maintenance costs.

An Already Unstable Funding Environment. Even in a fiscally robust environment, biofuels are not a wise allocation of the Pentagon’s funds. The U.S. military is currently facing serious funding reductions due to sequestration, which was mandated by the Budget Control Act of 2011. Under these cuts, the Navy will be unable to sustain its current shipbuilding rate, which has already been below the necessary level for a number of years.

As defense spending is projected to keep decreasing into the future, the Navy’s budget becomes even more fragile. Naval Surface Warfare Director Rear Admiral Tom Rowden projected that the fleet could fall to 257 ships—around 50 less than the Navy’s requirement—by 2020.[3] Yet the Navy will still be required to replace the aging ballistic missile submarine fleet and maintain 10 carrier air wings, as both are the key elements of U.S. strategic posture.[4]

Biofuels currently do not consume much of the Pentagon’s topline budget; however, it is essential that the organization scrutinizes any and all programs, no matter how small or large. Fleet readiness is of utmost importance to the Navy and the security of this nation. Programs jeopardizing readiness in order to support unproven science with questionable results should be eliminated.

SOURCE




Australia's winter wheat crop looks set to be the largest ever recorded

Looks like the food shortages that Greenies are always predicting will have to be postponed once again.  From Malthus to Hitler to Paul Ehrlich to the New York Times the false prophecies never cease

It’s been a record-breaking winter season for Australian grain producers with the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) sharply revising its production estimates for wheat, barley, canola and chickpeas higher in its latest Australian crop report, released on Tuesday.

ABARES estimates that total Australian winter crop production increased by a mammoth 49% in 2016–17 to 58.9 million tonnes, some 12 higher than the previous estimate offered in December.

“The revision was the result of yields being higher than anticipated and reaching unprecedented levels in most regions,” it said, adding “generally favourable seasonal conditions pushed national winter crop production to a new record high”.

By crop, ABARES said wheat production is estimated to have increased by 45% to a record high of 35.1 million tonnes. Barley production was up even more, jumping by 56% to 13.4 million tonnes, again a record high.

Canola production rose by 41% to 4.1 million tonnes, equalling the record of 2012–13, while chickpea production increased by 40% to 1.4 million tonnes, again a record high.

A record breaking season for Australia;s major crops, and one that bodes well for agricultural output in Australian GDP.

This table shows the estimated production levels for 2016/17, comparing the results to those seen in the previous two years:

SOURCE

***************************************

For more postings from me, see  DISSECTING LEFTISM, TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC and AUSTRALIAN POLITICS. Home Pages are   here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  

Preserving the graphics:  Most graphics on this site are hotlinked from elsewhere.  But hotlinked graphics sometimes have only a short life -- as little as a week in some cases.  After that they no longer come up.  From January 2011 on, therefore, I have posted a monthly copy of everything on this blog to a separate site where I can host text and graphics together -- which should make the graphics available even if they are no longer coming up on this site.  See  here or here

*****************************************