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Thread: CA "officials" considering a ban on all internal combustion vehicles

  1. #1

    Exclamation CA "officials" considering a ban on all internal combustion vehicles

    It Begins . . .

    https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2017/09/28/it-begins-2/

    By eric - September 28, 2017

    I expected it to happen, but not this quickly.

    California officials are, apparently, “mulling” a ban on cars with internal combustion engines, according to an article in the industry trade publication, Automotive News. If they more than mull and pass a ban, CA would be the first American state to do so – following the example set by several European states, including most recently the UK.

    Part of the reason it is happening so quickly is because of amen-corner support from American publications like Automotive News.

    Perhaps they should reconsider changing the title of their rag. Because it isn’t “news” when you editorialize – and AN editorializes egregiously in its “news” coverage.

    Have a look:

    “The internal combustion engine’s days could be numbered in California, where officials are mulling whether a ban on sales of polluting autos is needed to achieve long-term targets for cleaner air.”

    Italics added.

    Egads.

    “Polluting”? The mind of the reader instantly conjures images of respiratory masks and blue smoke coughing out of tailpipes – which one sees coming out of the tailpipes of new cars as infrequently as one finds straight-up news sans editorializing in Automotive News.

    My high school journalism teacher would have yanked my yearbook privileges had I written the sentence quoted above and tried to pass it off as “news” rather than something for the editorial page, which is where it belongs.

    AN is more-than-tacitly agreeing with the “officials” who are “mulling” a ban on internal combustion engines by conceding the premise: IC cars are polluting fiends and must be dealt with.

    How else can the sentence quoted be interpreted?

    Fait meet accompli.

    The premise isn’t questioned. No context is given. The AN editorialist does not adduce an iota of evidence to support the smear; he – perhaps she? – merely deploys the smear, which the reader is expected to swallow whole without bothering to chew.

    This is of course absolutely necessary to further the agenda of the “officials” who are “mulling” the ban on internal combustion engines – their leader being Governor Moonbat.

    It cannot be questioned whether IC engines pollute – nor how much defined.

    So, let’s do that.

    Most people who aren’t car people probably don’t know that the EPA itself awards the designation, Partial Zero Emissions Vehicle (PZEV) to internal combustion engines powering numerous currently-in-production cars. These are not electric cars or even hybrid cars. They are simply cars with internal combustion engines that emit so little in the way of harmful effluents that the regulatory Grand Inquisitor itself – the EPA – classifies them officially as Partial Zero Emissions Vehicles.

    And the rest – the ones that don’t quite meet the PZEV bar – are photo-finish close. The difference is measurable in terms of perhaps 1 percent – usually a fraction of 1 percent – PZEV vs. the not-quite-PZEV.

    There is no such beast as a new car that “pollutes” – if that word is understood to mean what it ought to mean. That is to say, what it once meant.

    Once upon a time.

    If you dial back the clock to 1966, the year before the very first (and very basic) efforts were made to reduce and control the unhealthful byproducts of internal combustion – mostly the byproducts of imperfect combustion, such as unburned hydrocarbons – you would find that, indeed, internal combustion-powered cars polluted.

    A great deal.

    Fast forward to 1975 – the first year that catalytic converters came into widespread use. These chemically converted the byproducts of imperfect combustion within the car’s exhaust system – before they reached the exhaust tip and entered the surrounding environment.

    Cars polluted a great deal less. On the order of 50 percent less.

    Consider this the lowest-hanging fruit.

    Move forward again to the mid-1980s. Fuel delivery had become infinitely more precise via the replacement of the mechanical carburetor with computer-controlled fuel injection, which could (and did) maintain the optimum air-fuel ratio at all times, continuously self-adjusting.

    Around this same time, catalytic converters got more sophisticated as well.

    Pollution declined yet again – and once again, by double digit percentages. By the early 1990s, internal combustion engines produced on the order of 85-90 percent less in the way of harmful exhaust byproducts, via the double-pronged advances in controlling the combustion process and treating the exhaust after the fact.

    Even more precise fuel delivery (port fuel-injection) and ever-smarter-engine controls chalked another few percent off the remainder.

    We are now – and have been, for the past several years – at the point that any new car’s internal combustion engine is almost “zero emissions” in terms of the harmful things that formerly smogged the skies and formerly caused health problems in humans.

    Current-year cars are 97-98 percent “clean” at the tailpipe – according to the EPA’s own standards.

    This is not 100 percent “clean,” of course. But then neither is the electric car, notwithstanding its “zero emissions” regulatory honorific. It may not emit at the tailpipe. But emissions are certainly created during the manufacture of its hundreds of pounds of batteries and at the utility generating plants that produce the electricity upon which it depends for locomotion.

    But the point here is that there is little meaningful difference between the “zero emissions” electric car and the Partial Zero Emissions internal combustion car – or, for the matter, the next-down-the-ladder IC-engined car.

    The battle has been won. All cars are extremely “clean.”

    Some, however, are more politically correct than others.

    AN does not delve into these distinctions. Instead, its writers parrot the politically correct line.

    The car press used to know about cars – and generally liked them, too. The typical car scribe was, if not a gearhead, at least a tinkerer who understood mechanical things and appreciated them, too.

    He drove – and liked driving.

    The people in the car press today are a different species. They are people such as the egregiously editorializing author of the article we’ve just dissected – and the person who urged some months ago that the Dodge Demon be banned. They seem to hate cars and loathe driving – and those who do not loathe it.

    Brock Yates is spinning in his grave.

    And my teethe ache.
    Another mark of a tyrant is that he likes foreigners better than citizens, and lives with them and invites them to his table; for the one are enemies, but the Others enter into no rivalry with him. - Aristotle's Politics Book 5 Part 11



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  3. #2
    And what the hell do they think powers electric cars? Gas emitting gay frogs powering wind mills all along California's expansive coast line and vast valleys and hills?
    The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding one’s self in the ranks of the insane.” — Marcus Aurelius

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  4. #3
    This is not 100 percent “clean,” of course. But then neither is the electric car, notwithstanding its “zero emissions” regulatory honorific. It may not emit at the tailpipe. But emissions are certainly created during the manufacture of its hundreds of pounds of batteries and at the utility generating plants that produce the electricity upon which it depends for locomotion.
    People don't think about that aspect. There are over 20 million cars registered in California. Sure California also says they want to have only green energy (non- petroleum) for their electrical grid (nice, but hard to achieve). Adding the demand for electricity to charge those 20 million cars will mean they will need to significantly increase their electric capacity (more power plants- solar and wind aren't going to give you enough).

    Then there is the problem of all those batteries- not just producing them but also dealing with them when the need replaced.

    Beyond Emissions
    The math gets trickier, though, when you include other forms of environmental damage. Electric cars need to be light, which means they include a lot of high-performing metals. The lithium in the batteries, for example, is super light and conductive—that’s how you get a lot of energy without adding a lot of weight. Other, rare metals are sprinkled throughout the car, mostly in the magnets that are in everything from the headlights to the on-board electronics.

    But those rare metals come from somewhere—often, from environmentally destructive mines. It’s not just Tesla, of course. All electric vehicles rely on parts with similar environmental issues. Even solar panels depend on rare metals that have to be dug out of the earth and processed in less-than-green ways, says David Abraham, author of the book The Elements of Power. (Disclosure: I helped edit some chapters of the book.)

    Rare metals only exist in tiny quantities and inconvenient places—so you have to move a lot of earth to get just a little bit. In the Jiangxi rare earth mine in China, Abraham writes, workers dig eight-foot holes and pour ammonium sulfate into them to dissolve the sandy clay. Then they haul out bags of muck and pass it through several acid baths; what’s left is baked in a kiln, leaving behind the rare earths required by everything from our phones to our Teslas.

    At this mine, those rare earths amounted to 0.2 percent of what gets pulled out of the ground. The other 99.8 percent—now contaminated with toxic chemicals—is dumped back into the environment. That damage is difficult to quantify, just like the impact of oil drilling.

    And, as in every stage of the process, mining has hidden emissions. Jiangxi has it relatively easy because it’s digging up clay, but many mines rely on rock-crushing equipment with astronomical energy bills, as well as coal-fired furnaces for the final baking stages. Those spew a lot of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the process of refining a material destined for your zero-emissions car. In fact, manufacturing an electric vehicle generates more carbon emissions than building a conventional car, mostly because of its battery, the Union of Concerned Scientists has found.

    “We’re shifting pollution, and in the process we’re hoping that it doesn’t have the environmental impact,” says Abraham. He believes that when you add all the environmental impacts, they still come out in favor of electric vehicles. (The Union of Concerned Scientists agrees; it found that even when you add in emissions from battery manufacturing, EVs generate half the emissions of a conventional car over the course of its life.) Still, consumers and investors should understand what it takes to make the materials that enable their green choices. “I don’t think there’s been much discussion of that,” Abraham says. “We can’t look at mining as an over-there thing and at Tesla as an over-here thing. They’re intricately linked.”

    A Tesla battery is big—the pack in the Model S tops half a ton, far bigger than anything most e-recycling outfits take—so coming up with an efficient and cost-effective recycling process will take some work, and only a few companies specialize in recycling lithium batteries right now. “The challenge that we have with recycling these rare metals is enormous,” Abraham says, “because the products that we have now use metals in such a small quantity that it’s not economic to recycle.”
    Last edited by Zippyjuan; 09-28-2017 at 01:15 PM.

  5. #4
    The states bordering Cal need to think about securing the border in case they want to control the mass exodus of people that voted all the Cal politicians in .

  6. #5
    Front page of Drudge.

  7. #6
    It feels good to be on the right side of history.

  8. #7
    Great job, Kalifornia.

    You go girl.

    Please, just go.

  9. #8
    In order to continuously expand the population of California, cars will have to be limited. You don't have a right to your own vehicle, comrades. You must sacrifice to serve the greater community.
    "Foreign aid is taking money from the poor people of a rich country, and giving it to the rich people of a poor country." - Ron Paul
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  11. #9
    On the front page, top news item, on Drudge right now.

    http://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-...176030626.html

    State Assemblyman Phil Ting is leading the push, here are a couple of comments from the article:

    But Ting said the state must be aggressive in establishing a vision for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

    “If you had told me five years ago that we might have autonomous vehicles on the road soon, I would have laughed,” he said. “The technology is moving so quickly, I don’t know if by 2040 we’ll be owning our own cars.”

    And:

    “The market is moving this way. The entire world is moving this way,” Ting said. “At some point you need to set a goal and put a line in the sand.”

    Note how that is phrased, that the “state” must “get aggressive” and “draw lines in the sand”.

    We’re just a bunch of serfs to pushed around at their whim.

  12. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty View Post
    In order to continuously expand the population of California, cars will have to be limited. You don't have a right to your own vehicle, comrades. You must sacrifice to serve the greater community.
    CALExit.

    Please.

    Go.

  13. #11
    Quote Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty View Post
    In order to continuously expand the population of California, cars will have to be limited. You don't have a right to your own vehicle, comrades. You must sacrifice to serve the greater community.
    Towards brighter future! We must all pull together as one!

  14. #12
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    I so very much hope that California does this. Please, please let this happen!

    They should also ban waves from the ocean.
    Citizen of Arizona
    @cleaner4d4

    I am a libertarian. I am advocating everyone enjoy maximum freedom on both personal and economic issues as long as they do not bring violence unto others.

  15. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by Cleaner44 View Post
    I so very much hope that California does this. Please, please let this happen!

    They should also ban waves from the ocean.
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  16. #14
    Quote Originally Posted by Cleaner44 View Post
    I so very much hope that California does this. Please, please let this happen!

    They should also ban waves from the ocean.
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment



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