On Tuesday, the US Department of Energy announced it would offer a direct loan of up to $6.57 billion (including $5.975 billion of principal and $592 million of capitalized interest) to finance Rivian's EV factory in Stanton Springs North, near the City of Social Circle, Georgia. The project was shelved in early March over the urgent need to reduce costs.
"Today's announcement reinforces the Biden-Harris Administration's commitment to strengthen the nation's manufacturing competitiveness, helping ensure American businesses remain global leaders in the rapidly expanding EV industry," the DoE wrote in a statement.
Democrats in the White House are spending taxpayer funds like a drunken sailor ahead of Trump entering the White House in less than two months. The Trump administration may claw back the money the Biden team is dishing out as lifelines to struggling companies.
We view the DoE loan as a lifeline for Rivian, considering it has been unable to meet production and sales targets and has burned through $19 billion since going public in 2021. The cash crunch forced the startup to pause construction of the Georgia plant in March.
The new Georgia plant could help Rivian boost the production capacity of more affordable models. The R1 vehicle costs $70,000 or more, which is unaffordable for the typical consumer because of high interest rates and elevated inflation.
"This loan would enable Rivian to more aggressively scale our US manufacturing footprint for our competitively priced R2 and R3 vehicles that emphasize both capability and affordability. A robust ecosystem of US companies developing and manufacturing EVs is critical for the US to maintain its long-term leadership in transportation,"
This nonsense — borrowing money from our descendants and people who hate us to fund climate boondoggles — has to end.
This article lays bare the fact the Paris Agreement was not serious in any respect:
The final deal at COP29, however, laid bare the key contradiction inherent in these types of climate agreements. That is, China, the world’s biggest polluter and largest emitter of carbon emissions by far, is not required to pay anything; it is only “encouraged” to do so in the COP 29 agreement.
Thus, the country that emits more carbon into the world atmosphere than even the United States and the European Union combined is not required to contribute anything financially to help alleviate the worldwide costs of its own pollution. In fact, as part of the earlier Paris process, each country was required to make a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) as to how it would contribute to the fight against climate change.
The United States pledged to cut overall greenhouse gasses by 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025, a goal which it is presently on track to meet. China, however, argued to link its NDC to its economic activity, meaning that China is actually permitted to increase its total carbon emissions until approximately 2030, while the rest of the developed countries must, as noted, cut their emissions through 2025, at least.
Meanwhile, as China continues to pollute, other countries are now being told they must collectively pay $300 billion each year to help offset the impacts of CO2 emissions caused by themselves, but also caused by others.
The reason for such imbalance lies in the belief that richer countries should pay more to offset the costs of climate change than poorer countries, regardless of their actual or relative contributions of greenhouse gases into the environment.
It’s a social program, in other words, not an environmental one.
Further evidence that surface temperatures across Greenland have been cooling for around 20 years has emerged with the recent publication of findings from a group of Thai scientists and mathematicians. Processing 31,464 satellite recording from 2000-2019 over the entire area, they found that the average temperature fell by 0.11°C.
This is said to indicate a “non-significant change in LST [land surface temperature]”. The latest evidence of actual cooling over a significant area of the Arctic will not be news in scientific circles since it backs up previous findings of recent temperature falls. But the information is of course kept out of the mainstream since it casts doubt on the key Net Zero scare about soaring sea levels caused by the catastrophic melting of the Greenland ice sheet.
There are some crumbs of comfort for alarmists since the Thai authors found that the ice-free sub-regions of Greenland are warmer than the ice-covered sub regions. But perhaps not – the authors attributed it to “population density”. Urban heat yet again corrupting the temperature data, even in Greenland. The illustration below charts the temperature record for all areas of Greenland.
The World Economic Forum recently reported on a study that predicted a “total collapse” of the Greenland ice sheet within a few months. This suggestion is only slightly more ludicrous than the scares routinely published to induce mass psychosis in populations with the aim of promoting a collectivist command-and-control Net Zero solution.
The biggest failing of the climate movement, so to speak, has been all the exaggeration, of course. The members of the cult and the corporatists enabling them still haven’t grasped that essential fact and, therefore, are steadily losing credibility. If they had proceeded along the lines of Judith Curry they might be achieving some things, but they insisted on the hype and rejected anyone and everyone who didn’t adopt their agenda with enthusiasm. The result has been what we saw from John Kerry last week, when he became a caricature of himself.
Yes, that’s it, isn’t it? It's all so blatantly dishonest and so tiring:
The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain, but only in My Fair Lady. On October 29 and 30, 2024, however, it fell elsewhere with tragic consequences: the loss of over two hundred lives and widespread damage in the Valencia region.
Almost as surprising as the downpour’s intensity was the rush by agencies in this space to conclude it was caused by the bogeyman apparently driving all natural disasters today: “climate change”.
An alternative explanation is that the weather gods were up to their old tricks. After all, a so-called extreme weather event (EWE) happens somewhere in the world every day. So the probability was high they might conjure up one just a week before COP29, as indeed they did last year. Storm Bettina made landfall in Eastern Europe on November 28, 2023, just days before COP28, the annual UN climate conference. It too was attributed rather promptly to nasty anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions…
Evil Weather God?
The UN Secretary-General, António Guterres, had a familiar message for them: immediate steps must be taken to cut [carbon dioxide] emissions, “safeguard people from climate chaos”, and “tear down the walls to climate finance”, especially given what he described as this year’s “masterclass in climate destruction”. It was déjà vu all over again.
COP29 is yet another attempt by the developing world to monetize the climate and raise “trillions of dollars to protect lives and livelihoods from the worsening impacts of climate change.” Yet most countries were silent on the irony of China’s chutzpah: the world’s largest coal consumer, biggest solar panel manufacturer and now space explorer, still claiming developing country status and putting its hand out for billions of dollars of free money.
Distressing stories all. Difficult to choose which one is the most discouraging. Hopefully we're entering a period where the "sky is falling" movement will be seen for what it is, i.e. an unholy blend of misinformation, ignorance and scam.
If you want an entertaining succinct endorsement for our fossil fuel based economy watch the scene in the 3rd episode of Landman. In it, oilfield boss Billy Bob Thornton schools a hotshot young attorney about the necessity of petroleum today and for the foreseeable future.
Distressing stories all. Difficult to choose which one is the most discouraging. Hopefully we're entering a period where the "sky is falling" movement will be seen for what it is, i.e. an unholy blend of misinformation, ignorance and scam.
If you want an entertaining succinct endorsement for our fossil fuel based economy watch the scene in the 3rd episode of Landman. In it, oilfield boss Billy Bob Thornton schools a hotshot young attorney about the necessity of petroleum today and for the foreseeable future.