Category Archives: carbon
War on Coal
Trump ended Obama’s war on coal, as promised. Come to think of it, I don’t know why Obama declared the war in the first place. Or why Hillary signed on for it. The natural gas industry went to war against coal for them. Gas is cheap, clean, and – despite President Obama’s efforts – plentiful.
So, looks like a rout.
Tesla Autopilot Crashes
I got to drive a Tesla once. It was cool. Like driving one of the HO slot cars I had as a kid.
But I think I’d be queasy about letting the car drive itself. There are those who say it’s a great innovation. Like speed control on steroids. But the car can kill.
Tesla Autopilot Crashes
The WSJ reports Tesla is being investigated by the SEC for not informing shareholders of a fatal crash involving its autopilot system.
Update:
Daily Beast says Tesla is misleading about autopilot safety. If you don’t brake it’s your fault because your weren’t paying attention. If you do brake it’s your fault because you were driving.
Holman Jenkins says the autopilot feature has been around since 1995. It’s basically cruise control and the driver still has to pay attention.
Coal Country Candidate
Bernie Sanders beat Hillary Clinton in the West Virginia primary 51.4% to 35.8%.
Before the primary an unemployed coal miner confronted Hillary for acknowledging that her policies would put a lot of coal miners out of work. She claimed that her remarks were taken out of context. Here are her remarks in context from Politifact:
So for example, I’m the only candidate which has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean renewable energy as the key into coal country. Because we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business, right?
And we’re going to make it clear that we don’t want to forget those people. Those people labored in those mines for generations, losing their health, often losing their lives to turn on our lights and power our factories.
Now we’ve got to move away from coal and all the other fossil fuels, but I don’t want to move away from the people who did the best they could to produce the energy that we relied on.
Aside from EPA mandates, coal is being displaced by a cheaper and cleaner fuel – natural gas produced by fracking.
End of Coal
Two stories lured me off from the campaign trail for today.
Peabody Energy, the world’s biggest coal company, filed for bankruptcy. President Obama promised to drive the coal industry into bankruptcy. As it happens, the fracking industry is driving coal into bankruptcy. Natural gas is cheaper and cleaner than coal. Obama hoped to replace coal with renewable energy.
The other story is that, SunEdison, world’s biggest renewable energy company, is also preparing to file for bankruptcy.
The Real Winner
Host Steve Harvey misread his cue card and named Miss Columbia Miss Universe but the real winner was Miss Philippines.
Real Winner
President Obama thinks he was the real winner of Paris Climate Accord. But only the United States is on the hook for real carbon cuts in the deal.
Benny Peiser, director of the Global Warming Policy Forum calls Obama the unilateral Climate Warrior. He says, in the WSJ, that Obama made “an unconditional pledge to cut carbon emissions 26-28% by 2025 no matter what China, India, and the rest of the world do.”.
