Climate and Weather

Looks like Scott Pruitt is getting rid of 97% of the bullshit,
Scott Pruitt Will Propose A Regulation To Keep ‘Secret Science’ Out Of EPA

b586829fc1ba5bdd70696834e9388332_400x4002.jpeg

Michael Bastasch


11:06 AM 04/24/2018




The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) plan to end the use of “secret science” to craft regulations will take the form of proposed regulation, making it harder for officials to skirt around or future administrations to repeal, The Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.

Administrator Scott Pruitt first announced his ban on “secret science” in a March interview with TheDCNF. Pruitt will unveil the new policy on Tuesday in the form of a proposed rule, which, if finalized, will make it harder for future administrations to repeal.

“We need to make sure their data and methodology are published as part of the record,” Pruitt told TheDCNF in March. “Otherwise, it’s not transparent. It’s not objectively measured, and that’s important.”

Pruitt is scheduled to announce the data transparency proposal Tuesday afternoon, in the first time releasing specifics of the new policy. A proposed rule must go through a comment period before it can be finalized.
 
Just because this place is so negative, I'm going to post a positive story for once.
Well I wish it was talking about American companies making money off of electric buses and not Chinese ones, but you get the point.

Electric Buses Are Hurting the Oil Industry
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-23/electric-buses-are-hurting-the-oil-industry

Electric buses were seen as a joke at an industry conference in Belgium seven years ago when the Chinese manufacturer BYD Co. showed an early model.

“Everyone was laughing at BYD for making a toy,” recalled Isbrand Ho, the Shenzhen-based company’s managing director in Europe. “And look now. Everyone has one.”

Suddenly, buses with battery-powered motors are a serious matter with the potential to revolutionize city transport—and add to the forces reshaping the energy industry. With China leading the way, making the traditional smog-belching diesel behemoth run on electricity is starting to eat away at fossil fuel demand.

The numbers are staggering. China had about 99 percent of the 385,000 electric buses on the roads worldwide in 2017, accounting for 17 percent of the country’s entire fleet. Every five weeks, Chinese cities add 9,500 of the zero-emissions transporters—the equivalent of London’s entire working fleet, according Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

All this is starting to make an observable reduction in fuel demand. And because they consume 30 times more fuel than average sized cars, their impact on energy use so far has become much greater than the than the passenger sedans produced companies from Tesla Inc. to Toyota Motor Corp.

Keeping It in the Ground
Cumulative global fuel displacement by e-buses and passenger EVs

Source: Bloomberg New Energy Finance

For every 1,000 battery-powered buses on the road, about 500 barrels a day of diesel fuel will be displaced from the market, according to BNEF calculations. This year, the volume of fuel buses take off the market may rise 37 percent to 279,000 barrels a day, about as much oil as Greece consumes, according to BNEF.

“This segment is approaching the tipping point,” said Colin Mckerracher, head of advanced transport at the London-based research unit of Bloomberg LP. “City governments all over the world are being taken to task over poor urban air quality. This pressure isn’t going away, and electric bus sales are positioned to benefit.”

China is ahead on electrifying its fleet because it has the world’s worst pollution problem. With a growing urban population and galloping energy demand, the nation’s legendary smogs were responsible for 1.6 million extra deaths in 2015, according to non-profit Berkeley Earth.

Putting It Back
Global fuel demand displaced by e-buses

Source: Bloomberg New Energy Finance

A decade ago, Shenzhen was a typical example of a booming Chinese city that had given little thought to the environment. Its smog became so notorious that the government picked it for a pilot program for energy conservation and zero emissions vehicles in 2009. Two years later, the first electric buses rolled off BYD’s production line there. And in December, all of Shenzhen’s 16,359 buses were electric.

BYD had a 13 percent of China’s electric bus market in 2016 and put 14,000 of the vehicles on the streets of Shenzhen alone. It’s built 35,000 so far and has capacity to build as many as 15,000 a year, Ho said.

1600x-1.jpg

A worker charges an electric bus in Shenzhen.
Photographer: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg
BYD estimates its buses have logged 17 billion kilometers (10 billion miles) and saved 6.8 billion liters (1.8 billion gallons) of fuel since they started ferrying passengers around the world’s busiest cities. That, according to Ho, adds up to 18 million tons of carbon dioxide pollution avoided, which is about as much as 3.8 million cars produce in each year.

“The first fleet of pure electric buses provided by BYD started operation in Shenzhen in 2011,” Ho said by phone. “Now, almost 10 years later, in other cities the air quality has worsened while—compared with those cities—Shenzhen’s is much better.”

Driving the Revolution
China electric bus sales

Source: Bloomberg New Energy Finance

Other cities are taking notice. Paris, London, Mexico City and Los Angeles are among 13 authorities that have committed to only buying zero emissions transport by 2025.

London is slowly transforming its fleet. Currently four routes in the city center serviced by single-decker units are being shifted to electricity. There are plans to make significant investments to the clean its public transport networks, including retrofitting 5,000 old diesel buses in a program to ensure all buses are emission-free by 2037.

1600x-1.jpg

A BYD Co. double-decker electric bus at the EV Trend Korea exhibition in Seoul on April 12.
Photographer: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg
Transport for London, responsible for the city’s transport system, declined to comment for this article because of rules around engaging with the media ahead of May local government elections.

Those goals will have an impact on fuel consumption. London’s network draws about 1.5 million barrels a year of fuel. If the entire fleet goes electric, that may displace 430 barrels a day of diesel for each 1,000 buses going electric, reducing U.K. diesel consumption by about 0.7 percent, according to BNEF.

Ramping Up
Top-10 European electric bus fleets, 2017

Across the U.K. there were 344 electric and plug-in hybrid buses in 2017, and BYD hopes to be picked to supply more. It has partnered with a Scottish bus-maker to provide the batteries for 11 new electric buses that hit the city’s roads in March.

Falkirk-based manufacturer Alexander Dennis Ltd. began making electric buses in 2016 and has quickly become the European market leader with more than 170 vehicles operating in the U.K. alone.

More work is on the horizon, with London’s transport authority planning a tender to electrify its iconic double-decker buses, Ho said.

“The tech is ready,” Ho said. “We are ready, we have our plants in China, and Alexander Dennis in Scotland is geared up for TfL. Once we’re given the word, we are ready to go.”
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Sheriff Joe said:
Do you know how much cleaner the air would be if there were no illegas in LA?
Click to expand...

Spola is now worried about the " ordinance " he supported for Weed/Vaping and other destructive
" Natural " drugs that emit harmful emissions ten times worse that standard pollutants.... sold to
the public under the guise of " Creating " revenue for the State and Local municipalities....
The consequences of Rump Nuzzling with the likes of Gov Jerry Brown and others is now coming
home to roost.....Not only are the " Pot " Shops destroying the communities, but they are reeking
havoc on the Law Enforcement thru out the State...." Sanctuary " State Policies are bad enough on
Officers without having to deal with every other loaded car driver it seems....
Shit coming out the windows faster than the tailpipe of the cars.....
 
APRIL 26, 2018
Eco-nuts: Environmentalism can't progress until people try to reproduce with trees
By Roger Taylor
Just when you thought the radical environmental movement could not possibly get any stranger, another absurdity comes along. A few years ago, Professor Elizabeth Stephens at U.C. Santa Cruz published something she called the Ecosex Manifesto. She encouraged her art students to have sex with the Earth. This involved tree hugging and licking, writhing in the mud, and many other bizarre behaviors.

Now Professor Sarah Ensor at the University of Michigan is fully embracing this and has proposed that people start erotic relations with plants. She believes that environmentalism cannot fully develop without these "relationships."

These people seem to have a fondness for trees. I suggest they focus on conifers, also known as Gymnosperms, for their naked seeds. I wonder if they hope their ideas will take root and germinate into another new branch of academia. I suspect, however, they will remain little more than a splinter group.

There are some caveats that I am not sure these academics have thought through. How does a plant give consent, and what would be an inappropriate plant age? Would it be anything beyond a sprout? And if abuse is involved, do we need police undercover raids to curtail this? They would probably have to hire some stinging nettles or nubile Venus flytraps.

They have proposed that areas be set aside, away from prying eyes, for these proclivities. I must admit, I do not want to know what goes on behind closed garden gates in the flower beds, otherwise known as botanical boudoirs. Perhaps this intimate attention paid to plants will embolden them. I wonder if the extreme left, for which the Second Amendment is anathema, fully understands that all flowers are packin' pistils.

Will garden catalogs be too provocative and be forced to have plain brown paper covers? Will there be ratings from G to X?

With new plant empowerment, there is a storm brewing. It involves the most diverse and oppressed of the plant world: weeds. Just look at the perfect, cultivated yard. Do not be fooled, for that is botanical totalitarianism. Every blade of grass has to be the same color and height as all the others. No individuality is allowed. Weeds are called weeds because we have not found a use for them. They don't call themselves weeds. Every time they peacefully move into a lawn, they are treated with chemical warfare. Where is the United Nations? They just want to be loved for who they are.

I don't cotton to any of these newfangled deranged notions. The purveyors of Ecosex just sound like really lonely people to me, and I feel a little sorry for them. Maybe they need some ecological counseling. They need to relearn the philia of their own phylum. They need to turn over a new leaf.

Roger Taylor is a physician in private practice. He received his medical degree from the University of Chicago. He has a plethora of interests.
 
Sheriff Joe said:
APRIL 26, 2018
Eco-nuts: Environmentalism can't progress until people try to reproduce with trees
By Roger Taylor
Just when you thought the radical environmental movement could not possibly get any stranger, another absurdity comes along. A few years ago, Professor Elizabeth Stephens at U.C. Santa Cruz published something she called the Ecosex Manifesto. She encouraged her art students to have sex with the Earth. This involved tree hugging and licking, writhing in the mud, and many other bizarre behaviors.

Now Professor Sarah Ensor at the University of Michigan is fully embracing this and has proposed that people start erotic relations with plants. She believes that environmentalism cannot fully develop without these "relationships."

These people seem to have a fondness for trees. I suggest they focus on conifers, also known as Gymnosperms, for their naked seeds. I wonder if they hope their ideas will take root and germinate into another new branch of academia. I suspect, however, they will remain little more than a splinter group.

There are some caveats that I am not sure these academics have thought through. How does a plant give consent, and what would be an inappropriate plant age? Would it be anything beyond a sprout? And if abuse is involved, do we need police undercover raids to curtail this? They would probably have to hire some stinging nettles or nubile Venus flytraps.

They have proposed that areas be set aside, away from prying eyes, for these proclivities. I must admit, I do not want to know what goes on behind closed garden gates in the flower beds, otherwise known as botanical boudoirs. Perhaps this intimate attention paid to plants will embolden them. I wonder if the extreme left, for which the Second Amendment is anathema, fully understands that all flowers are packin' pistils.

Will garden catalogs be too provocative and be forced to have plain brown paper covers? Will there be ratings from G to X?

With new plant empowerment, there is a storm brewing. It involves the most diverse and oppressed of the plant world: weeds. Just look at the perfect, cultivated yard. Do not be fooled, for that is botanical totalitarianism. Every blade of grass has to be the same color and height as all the others. No individuality is allowed. Weeds are called weeds because we have not found a use for them. They don't call themselves weeds. Every time they peacefully move into a lawn, they are treated with chemical warfare. Where is the United Nations? They just want to be loved for who they are.

I don't cotton to any of these newfangled deranged notions. The purveyors of Ecosex just sound like really lonely people to me, and I feel a little sorry for them. Maybe they need some ecological counseling. They need to relearn the philia of their own phylum. They need to turn over a new leaf.

Roger Taylor is a physician in private practice. He received his medical degree from the University of Chicago. He has a plethora of interests.
Click to expand...

I've known several women who "like to go camping" in my life time. Funny the things that make different peoples hearts go pitter patter.
 
What time is that crook running the EPA speaking to Congress? I'm guessing it's going to be fun to watch, so I might have to tune in.
 
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