Electric Bus limitations
Aircraft chocks are small wedges triangular in shape placed in front of and behind the aircraft's wheels lightly in contact with the tyre to prevent an aircraft from moving when parked.
The wheel chocks are commonly used to prevent an aircraft from accidentally rolling and colliding with other aircraft and damaging its parts, protecting the ground crew from harm during handling operations and protecting nearby infrastructure.
Never did I relate it to school buses, though, but I am learning that it's a thing in many states. Buses are heavy, so it does make sense. Some state regs are just for inspections or some if the bus is parked on a grade or out of the bus yard with the driver gone.
Even parking a school bus, particularly an expensive green electric one, is no longer as simple as "park," parking brake, and turning off the key.
Apparently, if you forget to throw chocks around the wheels, these buggers will roll on you. And that's just for starters.
Maine’s Democratic Congresswoman Chellie Pingree (CD-01) on Wednesday applauded the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for announcing a $7.7 million round of grants for Maine schools to purchase electric school buses.
...However, the electric school buses in Maine that have already been purchased under this program have been plagued with mechanical failures and dangerous malfunctions, leading to several of the “zero-emission” buses being pulled off the road.
In December, Winthrop Public Schools reported that they were struggling to keep their fleet of four electric school buses on the road due to water leak issues and heating system failures — just weeks after they were purchased.
Leaky windshields letting water pour into an all-electric vehicle - sounds like a manufacturing issue.
The state police unit that does safety inspections had themselves quite a time writing up violations on the new buses.
...Last summer, the Maine State Police Vehicle Inspection Unit noted a number of problems with the electric buses, from loose body rivets and an inoperative driver’s auxiliary fan to a power steering hose that rubbed on a bracket and a malfunctioning rear emergency door check.
Vinalhaven’s electric school buses have also been identified as having side body damage in the form of broken rivets and a lack of wheel chocks, which are blocks that prevent the bus from rolling when parked.
A "lack of wheel chocks."
Now, like I said, I quickly dug through several states' school bus manuals and I see chocks mentioned when the bus is undergoing an inspection - which makes perfect sense. Also the "parked on a grade" thing. New Hampshire is school bus chock happy, which is probably prudent.
When you consider electric buses are weighing in at almost two tons more than your average 72-passenger diesel school bus?
Chocks might be pretty damn important.
A lot of those considerations came into play when New York Governor Kathy Daffy Hochul announced she was dumping $100M into electric school buses for her state. The practical side of the upstate people was triggered.
...The Empire Center For Public Policy estimates the cost shift to an all-electric school bus fleet between $8 billion and $15.25 billion. Meanwhile, 2025 budget projections already predict a state deficit.
...Then there’s the cost of new infrastructure, like charging stations.
Electric vehicle are heavier — a typical 72-passenger diesel school bus weighs 24,300 pounds and a 72-passenger electric bus weighs 36,000 pounds. That means more wear and tear on municipal and state roads, Weber said.
Electric vehicle ranges are also shorter. Sanchez said the district wasn't sure if the buses would last entire routes under the current system the district uses.
And electric vehicles are less efficient in cold weather like upstate New York experiences in winter, critics say.
But never mind that, say the cultists. Who cares if the windshields leak, the brakes seize, or the kindergarten bus runs out of charge when it's -15°F? Hell, those buses didn't have heat most of the time anyway. Tell those kids to toughen up!
Last year, Vermont seemed to have some real range issues with its modern electric marvels.
I don't know that I'd be all hep to have my kid on one in the winter. I mean, they can't carry a 60 lb backpack full of books and a ruck of survival gear just in case the bus Schlitzes the bed on a frosty mountain road.
New electric school buses lose up to 80% range in winter
New electric school buses cost roughly double their diesel-powered counterparts upfront and they lose up to 80% of their range in cold temperatures, the Vermont Electric School and Transit Bus Pilot Program Report indicates.
...Some brands – especially the Blue Bird model – seemed to have more serious issues than others with performance in cold temperatures. All of them had issues with charging equipment.
It states, “Some brands performed well in winter, and some failed to perform at all. Among the buses that were in-service in the winter, some buses performed better than others. Charging equipment performance remained a persistent issue for all sites year-round.”
...“As temperatures dropped, vehicle range reduced in a relatively linear manner. At zero degrees Fahrenheit, the Lion bus ranges had dropped off by 30-40% of the nominal range advertised by the manufacturer. For Blue Bird buses, the range loss at zero degrees was closer to 80%,” it states.
...Nonetheless, the report by the Vermont Energy Investment Corporation (VEIC) indicates that there is serious consideration to move forward.
“It is feasible to operate electric school and transit buses in Vermont even in cold weather and varied terrain,” the report claims.
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Is America Ready for ‘Degrowth Communism’?
Green/Left destructivess writ large
Kohei saito knows he sounds like a madman. That’s kind of the point, the Japanese philosopher told me during a recent visit to New York City. “Maybe, then, people get shocked,” he said. “What’s this crazy guy saying?”
The crazy idea is “degrowth communism,” a combination of two concepts that are contentious on their own. Degrowth holds that there will always be a correlation between economic output and carbon emissions, so the best way to fight climate change is for wealthy nations to cut back on consumption and reduce the “material throughput” that creates demand for energy and drives GDP.
The degrowth movement has swelled in recent years, particularly in Europe and in academic circles. The theory has dramatic implications. Instead of finding carbon-neutral ways to power our luxurious modern lifestyles, degrowth would require us to surrender some material comforts. One leading proponent suggests imposing a hard cap on total national energy use, which would ratchet down every year. Energy-intensive activities might be banned outright or taxed to near oblivion. (Say goodbye, perhaps, to hamburgers, SUVs, and your annual cross-country flight home for the holidays.) You’d probably be prohibited from setting the thermostat too cold in summer or too warm in winter. To keep frivolous spending down, the government might decide which products are “wasteful” and ban advertising for them. Slower growth would require less labor, so the government would shorten the workweek and guarantee a job for every person.
Saito did not invent degrowth, but he has put his own spin on it by adding the C word.
As for what kind of “communism” we’re talking about, Saito tends to emphasize workers’ cooperatives and generous social-welfare policies rather than top-down Leninist state control of the economy. He says he wants democratic change rather than revolution—though he’s fuzzy on how exactly you get people to vote for shrinkage.
This message has found an enthusiastic audience. Saito’s 2020 book, Capital in the Anthropocene, sold half a million copies. He took a job at the prestigious University of Tokyo and became a regular commentator on Japanese TV—one of the few far-left talking heads in that country’s conservative media sphere. When we met up in April, he was touring the northeastern U.S. to promote the new English translation of the book, titled Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto, and planning to appear on a series of panels at Georgetown University to discuss his ideas. One day during his New York stint, we visited the pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, where a young protester named Tianle Zhang spotted him and waved him over, telling Saito he’s the reason he’s applying to graduate school. They took a selfie together, and Saito posted it on X.
Saito’s haters are just as passionate as his admirers. The right-wing podcaster James Lindsay recently dedicated a three-hour episode to what he called Saito’s “death cult.” Liberals who favor renewable energy and other technologies say Saito’s ideas would lead to stagnation. On the pro-labor left, Jacobin magazine published multiple articles criticizing degrowth in general and Saito in particular, calling his vision a “political disaster” that would hurt the working class. And don’t get the Marxist textualists started; they accuse Saito of distorting the great man’s words in order to portray Marx as the OG degrowth communist.
It’s understandable that Saito provokes so much ire: He rejects the mainstream political consensus that the best way to fight climate change is through innovation, which requires growth. But no matter how many times opponents swat it down, the idea of degrowth refuses to die. Perhaps it survives these detailed, technical refutations because its very implausibility is central to its appeal.
Economic growth, the French economist Daniel Cohen has written, is the religion of the modern world. Growth is the closest thing to an unalloyed good that exists in politics or economics. It’s good for the rich, and it’s good for the poor. It’s good if you believe inequality is too high, and if you think inequality doesn’t matter. Deciding how to distribute wealth is complicated, but in theory it gets easier when there’s more wealth to distribute. Growth is the source of legitimacy for governments across the political spectrum: Keep us in power, and we’ll make your life better.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/05/kohei-saito-degrowth-communism/678481/
**************************************************UK: Green Election Candidate Claims Islamic State Is Run by Mossad
Just another Green loony
A Green Party election candidate is caught up in an antisemitism storm over social media posts slamming “Jew lovers” and alleging that the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad is behind the Islamic State. The Mail has the story.
Joe Belcher, who is standing in the Aldridge-Brownhills seat in the West Midlands, also denied a controversial mural showing “hooked-nosed Jewish bankers” playing monopoly off the backs of the poor was “antisemitic”.
Mr. Belcher, the treasurer of the local party branch in Walsall, shared a link to an article by “the real Syrian Free Press” – a pro-Assad website – suggesting ISIS was run by “Simon Elliott, a Mossad agent”.
He also posted other links to pages about “Rothschild bankers” and shared a link to a video by controversialist David Icke, suggesting Jeremy Corbyn might be a “savior [who is] going to turn the country around to a more fair and just society” before he became leader of the Labour Party.
The Green Party told MailOnline that “allegations of antisemitism will always be carefully considered using our robust internal disciplinary procedures”.
But a spokesman declined to say whether Mr. Belcher was facing disciplinary proceedings after we presented him with our dossier. …
He is the latest party candidate to express extreme views. …
Last week, a controversial Green Party councillor who shouted “Allahu Akbar” after being elected to a city council repeated the declaration of faith, boasting it had made him “infamous”.
Mothin Ali, who has previously claimed Hamas “had a right to fight back” against Israel, claimed he was being made a “scapegoat” to distract from “war crimes” being committed in Gaza. …
Amid fears of a rise in sectarian politics fuelled by the crisis in the Middle East, former Labour Cabinet minister Lord Mandelson accused the Greens of becoming a “dustbin” for “disgruntled hard-leftists”.
https://dailysceptic.org/2024/05/29/green-election-candidate-claims-islamic-state-is-run-by-mossad/
**********************************************Australia: What is the ‘energy transition’?
For Labor, it is a transition to renewables. For the Liberals, it is a transition to nuclear power and renewables.
As part of the transition, Labor wants nothing to with nuclear power; the Liberals support it. Labor dislikes coal; it is not clear what the Liberals think about coal.
Both aim to reach Net Zero greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050.
There is a much simpler and more effective transition at hand – a transition to coal, nuclear power, and natural gas, with little place for renewables and no place for Net Zero.
Underlying this approach are the following considerations:
coal, nuclear energy and natural gas are the only ways of providing baseload electricity in Australia – meaning in practice, reliable, around-the-clock, low-cost electricity
wind and solar energy cannot provide such electricity
The proposed coal-nuclear-gas transition is the centrepiece of a campaign planned by a group in the Latrobe Valley, provisionally called the Coal-Nuclear-Gas Alliance.
The alliance will focus on three key actions.
The first action is the development of a new coal plant in the Valley and the refurbishment of the Loy Yang A and B coal plants, using high-efficiency-low-emissions (HELE) technology.
Such technology is not only more efficient than current technology, but also results in a lowering of greenhouse-gas emissions from coal plants of up to 30 per cent.
Further coal capacity in Australia is vital.
It will take until at least the 2050s for nuclear power to become a significant component of overall electricity generation in Australia.
And coal will not be replaced quickly by natural gas, which is in short supply in the eastern states and, in any case, has historically been more expensive than coal or baseload electricity.
The second action is to offer the Valley as the location for Australia’s first nuclear power plant.
Should this be supported in the Valley, the political task of introducing nuclear power in Australia will be greatly facilitated.
The third action is the promotion of natural-gas development in the Valley.
This requires the reversal of the state government’s effective banning of gas exploration and production in Victoria and of the federal government’s recent interventions in the eastern states’ gas market, including the price caps introduced in late 2022.
The Latrobe Valley is probably better placed than any other region in Australia in successfully addressing Australia’s energy future.
It has enough coal for over 500 years of electricity generation.
It can offer sites for a nuclear plant close to transmission lines and with a workforce to operate such a plant. One possible site is Yallourn (the coal resource currently being mined at Yallourn will be exhausted by the mid-2030s).
In addition, Gippsland has significant untapped natural-gas resources. In the words of journalist, Robert Gottliebsen, it is one of ‘three major fields that will end the shortage of gas for domestic market’ in Australia (the other two being Narrabri in NSW and the Surat Basin in Queensland).
Tapping these resources opens the possibility of gas becoming price competitive with coal for baseload electricity and, even if this is not the case, of making a major contribution to gas use outside the electricity sector.
What are the arguments against wind and solar power?
The first is their intermittency. Theoretically, it may be possible to overcome this with battery support. However, such support would be impossibly expensive if applied to the grid as a whole, taking account of the need to allow for wind and solar droughts and the enormous battery stock required (over 5,000 times the current stock).
Second, wind and solar farms are proving to be high-cost.
For example, wind and solar farms are typically distant from the grid and thus often require substantial new transmission infrastructure. This is expensive.
In addition, they entail significant over-building – to illustrate, if a coal-fired power plant of, say, 1,000 megawatts is to be replaced by wind and solar farms, the capacity of these farms will need to be well over 3,000 megawatts because they only produce electricity for around 30 per cent of the time.
Furthermore, electrical engineers refer to costs associated with frequency control when wind and solar power are fed into the grid.
Up to the early 2000s, Australia had among the lowest electricity prices in the world, with coal being responsible for over 80 per cent of our electricity production.
Since then, the role of coal has steadily declined and retail electricity prices have increased nearly twice as fast as overall consumer prices. Australia no longer has cheap electricity by world standards.
Third, the expansion of wind and solar farms requires radical changes to Australia’s countryside. In the words of former chief scientist, Alan Finkel (who supports renewables), ‘think forests of windfarms carpeting hills and cliffs from sea to sky; think endless arrays of solar panels disappearing like a mirage into the desert’.
Protest movements are spreading around the country strongly opposing such outcomes.
For those critical of the idea of supporting coal, nuclear power, and gas, a simple question can be asked: How else do you ensure that Australia has access to reliable, low-cost electricity, a critical component of any modern economy?
The coal-nuclear-gas campaign emerging from the Latrobe Valley is at an early planning stage. To succeed, it will need to be well financed and to develop a detailed plan for mobilising support, including grass-roots support in the Valley and other parts of Victoria and political support in Melbourne and Canberra.
Last year’s referendum on The Voice exposed a large gap between grass-roots views on the issues involved and the views of those seen as opinion leaders – political parties, major corporations, universities, the media and environmental organisations.
Does a similar gap exist in the case of energy policy? And will it increase if (as is feared) electricity supplies become less stable, electricity prices keep rising and regional protests against wind the solar farms become more widespread?
If so, a shake-up in energy policy lies ahead, with the Latrobe Valley well placed to lead the way. If it can do so, other regions are likely to follow (e.g. Hunter Valley in NSW, Surat Basin in Queensland)
https://www.spectator.com.au/2024/05/a-new-energy-transition-coal-nuclear-and-natural-gas/
***************************************My other blogs. Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM )
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)
https://awesternheart.blogspot.com (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Jim Hansen and his twin
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