Best Energy Picks - July 13, 2024

Readers pass along a lot of stuff every week about natural gas, fractivist antics, emissions, renewables, and other news relating to energy.

Jul 13, 2024

This week’s best energy picks:

EV Inferno: Tesla Goes Up In Flames At PA Charging Station — Lessons in How to Handle Climate Protesters, by Ted Cruz— Enviros Collect Nearly 10X as Much Money as Fossil Fuel Advocates — Let's Have Some Heat Have Perspective! — and much more.

EV Inferno: Tesla Goes Up In Flames At PA Charging Station

Car fires are not that unusual but EV fires happen for no obvious reasons and are anything but typical fires:

A routine car fire call in Upper Allen, Pennsylvania, turned into a complex firefighting operation when crews discovered the blaze involved a Tesla at an electric vehicle charging station.
A massive response from multiple fire departments including a hazmat team was required to safely extinguish the blaze.

CBS 21 reports that on Monday evening, the Upper Allen Fire Department responded to what was initially reported as a standard car fire at a local Sheetz convenience store.
However, upon arrival, firefighters quickly realized they were dealing with a more challenging situation: a Tesla electric vehicle engulfed in flames at a charging station.
Unlike conventional gasoline-powered vehicles, EVs contain large lithium-ion battery packs that can reignite even after the initial fire appears to be extinguished.
This characteristic requires firefighters to adopt specialized tactics and often prolongs the time needed to fully secure the scene.
The Upper Allen Fire Department and crews from nearby departments immediately began battling the flames upon arrival.
Their initial efforts focused on controlling the visible fire, but the real challenge came after the main blaze was subdued.
Firefighters then had to address the car’s battery, which posed an ongoing risk of reignition. To mitigate this danger, they employed specialized techniques to cool and douse the battery pack.
As celebrity car enthusiast Jeremy Clarkson explained in 2023, one thing that makes EV fires so dangerous is the “thermal runaway” that occurs within lithium-ion batteries:
Clarkson also pointed out the difficulty in extinguishing fires in electric vehicles, citing an incident where an electric car burned for days due to a phenomenon known as “thermal runaway” in the battery pack.
“The electrical car that Richard Hammond rolled down a hill while filming for the Grand Tour burned for days. And then, after the fire had died down, something in the battery pack called ‘thermal runaway’ caused it to rear back up again. And this went on for weeks,” Clarkson explained.

How much more of this will take place before the politicians who sign onto this crap without thinking, throwing money and laws aimed at forcing us all into EVs realize they were co-opted by grifters? How many parking garages, EV carrying ships, parking garages and EVs have to erupt in fire before sanity returns?

Hat Tip: E.S.

Lesson in How to Handle Climate Protesters, by Ted Cruz

I've always like Ted Cruz. This is how he handled climate protesters at a recent event where he was a speaker:

China is by far the world’s leading carbon polluter, according to The Carbon Brief, and the country permitted an average of two new coal plants per week in 2022, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air.
The U.S., meanwhile, reduced its carbon dioxide emissions by about 17.5% between 2005 and 2022, according to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data. Many energy sector experts have credited the natural gas boom of the late 2000s as the primary driver of this reduction, as a boom in affordable, cleaner gas allowed the country to reduce its reliance on coal.
Between 2005 and 2022, U.S. energy production from natural gas approximately doubled while coal use decreased, and U.S. natural gas consumption increased by about 46% over the same time period, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data.
Cruz “will not be intimidated by climate protesters who ignore basic realities,” a spokesperson for the senator told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Great job, Ted!

Hat Tip: S.H.

Enviros Collect Nearly 10X as Much Money as Fossil Fuel Advocates

I have written about this numerous times. Environmental and climate activists have access to billions of tax-exempt dollars from NGOs themselves funded by ultra-rich far-left special interests such as the Rockefeller family. The swamp the debate, in fact, as this article demonstrates:

Climate activists often paint “big oil” as a group of powerful corporations spending billions of dollars to spread a message that protects and advances their industry, while those with a countering message paint themselves as humble grassroots underdogs.
The data gives that narrative the lie. A Just the News analysis of 2021 tax documents of major anti-fossil fuel environmental and climate nonprofits shows that for every dollar that was received by oil and gas industry groups and climate-skeptical conservative and libertarian nonprofits, $9.60 went to nonprofits who fight against the use of oil, gas and coal.
“The media and activist groups would like you to think the only reason people use oil is because of really good advertising and lobbying by oil companies, neither of which is true. Our advertising is lame and our advocacy is always outspent and certainly outnumbered,” Tim Stewart, president of the U.S. Oil and Gas Association told Just the News.

**Assets of Six Rockefeller Family NGOs Funding Environmental Causes, Source: ProPublic Non-Profit Explorer**

A sample of fifteen large environmental groups whose mission, campaigns or focus involves campaigning against fossil fuels to stop climate change shows they had $5 billion in gross receipts in 2021, according to the groups’ 990 nonprofit tax forms.
Gross receipts, according to the Internal Revenue Service, are the total amounts the organization received from all sources during its annual accounting period, without subtracting any costs or expenses.
The same year, the ten largest oil and gas industry groups took in $373 million in gross receipts. Eight large conservative and libertarian nonprofits that defend the coal, oil and gas industries took in $145 million in 2021. Combined with industry groups, they had $519 million in gross receipts in 2021 — one tenth the amount anti-fossil fuel groups took in.

Follow the funding of any supposedly grassroots environmental, and you’ll find it ultimately comes from outrageously wealthy individuals who are grifting, pursuing political power or assuaging their personal sense of guilt as trust-funders.It's the biggest scandal imaginable and it happens under our noses every day.

Hat Tip: R.N.

Let's Have Some Heat Have Perspective!

I heard the other day that the recent heat wave had produced the highest temperature in the United States ever at 120 degrees Fahrenheit. It was ABC News so I did believe a word of it, of course, and I was correct:

The United States has experienced severe heat waves this summer, breaking daily temperature records and causing dangerous consequences like wildfires nationwide.
This graphic shows the hottest and coldest temperatures ever recorded in the United States. Data was sourced from the National Centers for Environmental Information.
Extreme heat is a deadly phenomenon, responsible for approximately 1,220 fatalities each year in the United States.

The hottest temperature ever recorded in the country was an astonishing 134.4°F (56.7°C) in Death Valley, California, on July 10, 1913. This stands as the highest ambient air temperature ever recorded on the surface of the Earth. However, this reading, along with several others from that period, is disputed by some modern experts.
Death Valley has a subtropical, hot desert climate characterized by long, extremely hot summers, short, warm winters, and minimal rainfall. Its extreme dryness is due to its location in the rain shadow of four major mountain ranges.

Funny how the media distorts things, isn’t it?

Hat Tip: D.S.