Buzz Smith: Snake Oil EVangelism

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- May 16, 2024

On social media, one Buzz Smith appeared, bragging about the new EV truck he had ordered. He was getting criticism, and I chimed in. The cowboy-looking fellow has his picture and “Getting ready for the electric pickups!” But here is his normal Facebook picture:

I responded how EVs had never been competitive with this link.

He responded: “Yeah, electric technology hasn’t changed a bit in the last 120 years, GeeZ!” To which I replied that the situation was the same now as then: relative energy density and the weight of batteries. I also shared that the average price of an EV was $55,000 versus $35,000 for a conventional vehicle with this link.

He then replied: “The difference is the public now knows what Exxon knew in 1977, that their product was going to change the climate….”…

EV Forcing: 21 Problems

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- May 14, 2024

In conclusion, the article ends, “the journey towards adopting electric vehicles as a sustainable alternative to fossil fuel-powered transportation is fraught with complex challenges, particularly concerning the environmental and ethical implications of battery production.”

Thomas Edison strongly advised Henry Ford to go internal combustion engine (ICE), not electric vehicles (EVs) in the late 19th century. EVs dominated the market until the advantages of ICE prevailed more than a century ago. Yet multi-pronged government intervention at the expense of taxpayers and ICE owners is desperately trying to create an industry that consumers do not like.

The economic and environmental problems of EVs are on full display–and the mainstream press is not afraid to report on them (unlike with on-grid wind and solar). A shining example of this was a recent article in Auto Overload (May 11, 2024): “21 Unfortunate Electric Vehicle Flaws That No One Is Discussing.”…

Alarmism Now – and Then (Modern Malthusianism in its 6th Decade)

By Robert Bradley Jr. -- May 9, 2024

“Many people think that the threat of ‘global warming’ arose only towards the end of the twentieth century…. Climate change, either natural or anthropogenic, has been discussed from the classical age onwards, evolving from the expected benefits of climate engineering to today’s fear of global disaster.”

– Hans von Storch and Nico Stehr, “Climate Change in Perspective,” Nature, June 8, 2000, p. 615

It is all gloom, what Michael Mann cautioned against as “doomism.”[1] Such alarm has been the mainstream narrative—and wrong—since the 1960s. And warnings about how exaggeration can backfire (New York Times: “In Climate Debate, Exaggeration Is a Pitfall“) have been thrown to the wind in the futile, costly pursuit of Net Zero.

This post presents the climate alarm quotations of today with the quotations from Paul Ehrlich and the Club of Rome in the late 1960s/early 1970s for historical perspective.…