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In seeking to understand climate risks, modeling of worst-case “business as usual” paths put the world on a path to 5C (five degrees celsius) / 9F (nine degrees fahrenheit), or more, warming within the lifetimes of people on earth today. Well, their lifetimes if they survived the enormity of climate catastrophes and disruptions that warming would create. Primarily due to the renewables (and efficiency and …) revolution, those worst-case scenarios have become increasingly unrealistic and even unhelpful. The high-end scenarios are more in range of 3C (<5F) and, more realistic extrapolations of technology progress lead to <2.5C (without additional, significant policy initiatives). Good — even if inadequate — news that warming won’t be nearly as bad as quality analysis. And, good news that it has been human actions that have made these changes. (E.g., after creating the problem we, humanity, actually have agency to address the problems we’ve created.)

However, despite that good news, the reality is that humanity has changed the climate through (primarily) fossil-fuel burning and, no matter the efforts to reduce and reverse the carbon pollution, humanity is already facing climate catastrophes that will worsen in the years and decades to come. And, at the same time modeling is showing less drastic temperature increases in the century to come, improved scientific knowledge and understanding (due, in part, to real-world events) makes clear that the impacts of lower temperature increases will be more significant and dangerous than what was modeled just a few years ago.

The Washington Post‘s Scott Dance’s A new climate reality: Less warming, but worse impacts on the planet provides an excellent half-page discussion of this.

Accelerating solar and wind energy adoption means global warming probably will not reach the extremes once feared, climate scientists say.

[Editorial note: “Scientists say …” is a horrible journalistic editorial practice. While, perhaps, true this really isn’t truthful. “Say” is a rather soft word that, often, in common parlance is used to question implicitly and/or undermine statements. (“He said, she said …”) Like writing “scientists believe” rather than “scientists conclude”, writing “scientists say” moves this away from conclusions based on research and analysis into a softer conceptual world.)

At the same time, recent heat, storms and ecological disasters prove, they say, that climate change impacts could be more severe than predicted even with less warming.

The Optimistic-Pessimist that I am: Optimism driven by clean tech fostering less severe temperature increases tempered by pessimism about the impacts of any temperature increases.

Researchers are increasingly worried about the degree to which even less-than-extreme increases in global temperatures will intensify heat and storms, irreversibly destabilize natural systems and overwhelm even highly developed societies. Extremes considered virtually impossible not long ago are already occurring.

Scientists pointed to recent signs of societies’ fragility: drought contributing to the Arab Spring uprisings; California narrowly avoiding widespread blackouts amid record-high temperatures; heat waves killing tens of thousands of people each year, including in Europe, the planet’s most developed continent.

It’s an indication that — even with successful efforts to reduce emissions and limit global warming — these dramatic swings could devastate many stable societies sooner, and more often, than previously expected.

Dance continues with some good discussions of, for example, the risks of weather extremes’ impacts even in a less (horrifically) extremely heated world climate.

While, in many ways, a good article there is a significant and glaring gap that is all too often glossed over in discussions about climate change. No matter what humanity does related to emissions, even a magical net zero tomorrow and achieving a net-negative global society by the day after tomorrow, we face inexorable — and accelerating — sea-level rise for the coming decades (and, sadly, likely centuries). And, counter to human action and increased knowledge and improved modeling reducing the forecasted future temperature increases, improved understanding is increasing the likely (and, for planning purposes as nearly as important, potential high-end) sea-level rise that humanity will face within the coming decades and century (within the timeframe of things already and being built today).

As John Englander of the Rising Seas Institute has laid out clearly in High Tide on Main Street and, more recently, Moving To Higher Ground: Rising Sea Level and the Path Forward, the IPCC projection of three feet of sea-level rise by 2100, as a worst case, was/is simply unrealistic and derives, in no small part, in explicit leaving out of key sea-level risks from the forecasting due to modeling difficulty. (The “Antarctica Asterix”: potential sea-level rise from Antarctic ice sheet melting is simply left out due to uncertainty about how to model this.) Rather than three feet by 2100, that three feet is quite possible (maybe even probably) by perhaps 2060 and 7-10 feet likely by 2100 with a viable worst 2100 case perhaps more in the range of 20 feet than 3.

The rising seas, as John eloquently discusses, will have significant impacts on geography, human geography, and human civilizations. There is a useful adage about climate change: humanity faces three choices: address (mitigate by reducing emissions), adapt (invest to deal with the changes), and suffer (the consequences). Investing in the first is cheaper, more effective and the need for the second which is critically for reducing the extent and nature of the third. Reality is that all three will occur, the question has been the balance between the three (and decades of delayed and inadequate efforts to address climate change have driven increased need for adaptation and worsened today’s and tomorrow’s suffering). When it comes to the Rising Seas, the reality is that while mitigation of emissions is critical for where sea level rise will peak a century or centuries into the future, the key issue is our choices and actions between adaptation and suffering in the decades (and centuries to come).

Regrettably, around the world, there continues to be massive investments in threatened area that either seems utterly oblivious to the inevitability of sea-level rise or, nearly as bad, incorporates unrealistically optimistic (or, perhaps, not nearly pessimistic enough) projections of future sea-level rise.

Every day that passes with infrastructure investments in at-risk areas without adequate addressing sea-level risks worsens the suffering to come. While there are numerous reasons this occurs, one key one is the near absence from public understanding and discussions that [to paraphrase auto advertising] ‘tomorrow’s sea level isn’t our father’s sea level’. The seas are rising … no matter what we do. Until, and unless, we understand this and incorporate it into society’s planning and investments, tomorrow’s suffering will be (far) worse than it needs to be.

Hurricane Fiona hit Puerto Rico’s power system hard enough that, for awhile, 100% of grid power services were cut off. Not a single utility customer was receiving power from the grid. That bleak reality doesn’t mean that 100 percent of Puerto Ricans (or, well, crypto buds avoiding taxes by residing in Puerto Rico) were without power. Many — individuals, businesses, and communities (community centers) — have generators, chugging away to provide electricity in the face of horrid normal service outages and in the face of major disasters. Those generators rely, of course, on diesel which is difficult to get amid and after a disaster (with shortages already reported in Puerto Rico post Fiona).

Increasingly, however, renewable energy has been making its mark. Renewables, of course, don’t eat up logistics and don’t, amid an emergency, require shelling out desperately needed cash to fuel them. While, regrettably, distributed renewables were made the centerpiece of Federal assistance post-Maria and haven’t had strong support from PR’s electric utility (which continues to push for large gas-fired plants).

Even without that support, there are over 40,000 distributed solar systems are connected to the grid, up over 8x since before Hurricane Maria, and there are untold additional set-ups that aren’t grid connected. Per a recent IEEFA report, “Households have installed more than 250 megawatts (MW) of distributed rooftop solar since September 2017.” These are providing near 4% of Puerto Rico’s electrical generation–more than utility-scale solar.

Increasingly, these aren’t just solar panels but also have storage and power management to foster reduced power usages in the face of grid collapse (such as amid Fiona) and failures (which, sigh, has been happening all too often even amid nice weather).

And, these systems have been working.

In the southeastern coastal city of Salinas, which was in the center of Fiona’s path and likely saw some of the storm’s worst damage, environmental attorney Ruth Santiago said her solar system also kept her lights on throughout the storm. “That’s why I’m charging my phone and making lunch and that kind of thing, but no one else has power,” she told me, apologizing as the beep of a timer chirped in the background. 

“Sorry,” she said, “that was just my oven going off.”

The same goes for a gas station in Utuado, a pharmacy in Patillas and a community center in Arecibo. All of them had installed solar panels and battery storage this summer and none lost power during the storm

And, quite literally saving lives. Consider this fire station:

 in the coastal city of Guánica, the local fire station managed to keep its lights and critical communications systems running during the storm thanks to a system of 52 solar panels and four Tesla Powerwall batteries. …

the Guánica fire department had been able to receive four emergency calls as Fiona lashed the island’s southern coast. During previous events such as Hurricane Maria and a 2020 earthquake — before the fire station had its solar-plus-battery system — firefighters were unable to receive calls over the radio during outages and instead had to rely on people yelling for help.

“The solar system is working beautifully! We did not lose power all throughout the hurricane.”

What a contrast that is to grid-connected facilities and to those reliant on expensive to run, loud, and fuel logistics dependent generators.

Now, the reality that solar is keeping the lights on for 100,000s of Puerto RIcans is a reality that too few of their fellow citizens around the country are aware of. This CBS story is a rare exception where (roughly at 5:45 in the video) solar power is discussed in terms of not just how it can but how it is delivering clean, affordable, reliable and resilient power for Puerto Ricans today and how it can do so for even more tomorrow.

Puerto Ricans support solar and other moves toward greater resiliency. It is past time for their fellow citizens, notably the Federal government (and, especially, FEMA), to help them achieve this.

Related: Hurricane Fiona and the imperative of Disaster 4R principles for Puerto Rico (and beyond).

When it comes to climate action, the focus is all too often on physical actions (put solar on roof, eat less meat, and so on). These actions are, quite legitimately, examples of what we all can and should be doing but aren’t necessarily the most critical individual action. After voting (at all levels and opportunities) like climate change matters, perhaps the most important individual action is to talk about climate change and about the necessity for serious action to address the climate crisis.

As recently published in Nature Communications, a study laid out how and why “just talk about it” really matters. While a super majority of Americans (66-80%) support climate action, the super-super majority (90%) don’t realize that and significantly underestimate public support for action, thinking that a minority (about 40%) support climate action. Just a few hours after reading this study, at a(n outdoor) dinner party at my house, a passionate grass-roots political activist who has placed climate as core to his engagement made clear that that 90% includes even seemingly well-informed people when he made a comment along the lines of “only half of Americans” support climate action, discounting entirely that even roughly half of self-identified Republicans support (at least somewhat serious) moves to address climate.

So, if you understand the criticality of the climate crisis and the necessity for action to address it, there is a simple rule to follow: Just talk about it!

Five years after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, the island is dark.

Five years after Hurricane Maria and, despite billions spent (hard to write “invested”), the grid is devastated.

This did not have to be. It should not have been.

Between Trump grandstanding (paper towels anyone?), profiteering and corruption, (racist) indifference, incompetence, misguided thinking and planning, and a myriad of other issues, there has been a near-utter failure to leverage Maria’s devastation as an opportunity to build a cleaner, less expensive, and more resilient Puerto Rican power system. The Biden Administration has a chance to flip the equation and, through the application of a basic principle, change the game in Puerto Rico and across the United States (and, yes, globally) as to how to leverage disaster response to lessen the future necessity for and costs of disaster relief. That principle:

Disaster 4Rs

Disaster 4Rs calls for integrating responsiveness investments and actions across the three phases post-disaster (relief, recovery, and reconstruction) with a guiding principle throughout those phases: resiliency.

When it comes to the post disaster space, a core lesson from hundreds of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief operations is that effectiveness (saving lives, reducing future risks, efficient resource use) requires coordination across organizations and coordination across phases.

By ‘phases’, these can be summarized as the Three Rs:

• Relief: Life saving and getting minimal functions going for preserving life and reducing damage risks.
• Recovery: Help society move into a functioning stage so that people don’t need to leave and outside assistance can be reduced.
• Reconstruction: Measures to boost economic and social strength to pre-disaster (or better) levels.

In terms of efficient resource use and increasing the odds for a successful outcome (which includes a lesser likelihood of having to do another relief operation tomorrow), integrating across these phases as much as (reasonably) possible is key.  If one can do something in the “relief” phase that  contributes to “recovery” and is lays foundations for “reconstruction”, to use a baseball analogy, it is like hitting a triple.

For example, think housing. Whether earthquake, war, or a hurricane, disasters often devastate housing stock and displace people. Tarps and tents are great for immediate shelter and are (relatively) low cost and easy to deploy. While fantastic for relief, tents are marginal for recovery, and perhaps even negative for reconstruction. Instead of tents, deploying container-housing unit, like the US and allied militaries have used in places like Bosnia-i-Herzegovina and Iraq, blends from relief (quickly on site, quick to install) into recovery (housing elements that can stay around awhile).

Now, a container is more expensive than a tent — but that is a lasting investment rather than a (hopefully very) temporary path to the problem. A less expensive option comes from leveraging disaster-focused architectural options that can put local labor to work and leverage local materials to have permanent structures up in a day with about the same amount of transported in materials and total financial cost as occurs with a tent (and far less than a container). 

That lead to a fourth R: Resiliency: if that measure helps contributes to the potential for reducing future risks, investment returns are truly hitting a grand slam. Staying with housing, deploying container units and building locally with plans and ways to incorporate these into rebuilt infrastructure with high-wind and earthquake resistance makes that ‘shelter’ investment into a grand slam home-run solution. .

Distributed renewable energy is the blaring example of how to integrate across Disaster’s 4Rs  As the grid gets knocked down, in places around the world, the diesel generators kick in and disaster relief organizations send in even more generators. That translates into high-cost and high-pollution demand for diesel fuel — which, by the way, undermines the Three Rs through resource demands (transportation of that diesel fuel that conflicts with other demands on the logistics’ system and, of course, the cost of fuel strains limited financial resources).  With the price revolution in renewables (especially, in this context, solar photovoltaics (pv) and associated systems), the costs of going ‘green’ across phases, rather than using polluting diesel generators, is significantly advantaged to the clean energy option.

And, unlike the diesel generator, it is quite straightforward to integrate a solar system across the 4Rs. Deploying distributed systems that have the ability to grid-connect become, as the grid reestablishes itself, part of the grid system – generating electricity throughout all phases and providing assurance of (at least limited) electrical services in the face of the next disaster.

And, also unlike the diesel generators, such renewable energy systems boost economic prospects in the recovery and reconstruction phases: free electrons from the sun not only save money compared to imported diesel, they also don’t contribute to transportation bottlenecks and lessen resource requirements in grid investements.

Hurricane Fiona has shut down the Puerto Rican electrical system. Almost certainly, generators and diesel fuel for generators will be a major element of early relief deliveries.  Solar panels should be a major element in US government relief efforts.

Just as with Hurricane Maria, Hurricane Fiona’s impact on Puerto Rico is hard to fathom – there is likely not a single sector, not a single community without major (even crippling) damage.  Energy is critical to the 3Rs across all these sectors. Looking at Puerto Rico’s electricity situation, any honest analysis would conclude (differing, of course, as to specifics designs, how much, ..) that a rapid deployment of micro-grid solar would prove a Disaster 4Rs grand slam.

President Biden’s team — leveraging resources already legislated in the Infrastructure and Inflation Reduction Act bills along with disaster relief resources — should put together a (large) package for making distributed renewable energy (including storage) core to Fiona disaster relief. A relatively modest, in the face of the travesty of Puerto Rico’s power system and Maria’s/Fiona’s damage, $200 million program over 18 months would drive roughly 200 megawatts of solar capacity along with significant amounts of battery storage. Done right, this program would create well-compensated employment while boosting Puerto Rico’s capacity for additional distributed energy deployment while reducing the island’s cost of and pollution from generating electricity while enhancing resiliency against and reduce damage from future climate-crisis enhanced hurricanes.

Disaster 4Rs isn’t just for Puerto Rico

For US disasters, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) needs to update its approaches — clean energy systems need to be a growing part of the ‘fly away’ kit for helping get emergency power to communities blacked-out by disasters (like New York/New Jersey post Sandy and New Orleans post Ida).  And, the US government requires an integrated approach to this so the ‘fly-away’ solar is done in a way that enables rapid creation of renewable-powered micro-grids, ready to be hooked into a reestablished grid, to address relief that facilities recovery and contributes to reconstruction.   And, the installations should proceed down a path so that the next time a climate-enhanced disaster hits the community, the solar keeps the lights on and lowers the costs/challenges of that next disaster’s 3Rs … truly a grand slam payoff.

“What was your solar installation’s ROI?”

This was a question recently posed to me packaged with context issues (is solar financially sensible, discussing Chinese panels, solar panel production pollution (without mention of coal’s pollution), and otherwise). When I began to a typically geekish ‘it all depends’, the interjection: no, what was YOUR solar system’s return on investment. The quick answer: about (under) three years.

In other words, an over 20 percent per annum, year-in, year-out return. This is an extremely high ROI for a (mainly) low-risk investment. And, that is an after-tax ROI.

Upfront, that ROI is unusually good and not replicable in most circumstances today even though solar on the rooftop remains a good to excellent low-risk investment for most people in most circumstances.

However, the quick “about three years” answer obscures complexities and provides a distorted window to support 2022 decision-making about solar installations. Join me, after the fold, for a quick exploration of some of those complexities. (Though, to be clear, not all will be discussed. For example, there are many complexities re taxes (both decreasing and increasing taxes) that are a labyrinth not to be lost in.)

From Tuesday’s Texas primary, the Republican primary for Texas Railroad Commissioner (TRC) has led to a runoff that might be the raciest election campaign of 2022.

An editorial note, first and foremost, 
SUPPORT LUKE WARFORD,
the D candidate
even while watching  the R runoff (with one candidate clearly better (or, well, not as bad)).
As to Luke, here is his campaign kickoff ad

As quick background, the Railroad Commission of Texas (RCT also known as TRC) is one of the more (most) important energy and environmental bodies (certainly at state level) in the United States (and hasn’t had any regulatory authority over railroads since 2005). The RRC, essentially, runs energy issues — outside electricity — in Texas with, critically for climate-change issues, the power to regulate and enforce regulations as to methane (“natural gas”) wells (including purposeful dumping of methane and leakage from production).  To say that they have been underwhelming in protecting the public and addressing climate change issues in their duties is a gross understatement of the problems.  This year’s RRC election and whether the Republican incumbent remains in office could have a major impact on this in the coming years.

There are growing numbers of courageous people confronting Putin’s War of Aggression.  From Ukrainians, of all ages, taking up arms to Russians protesting on the streets despite police brutality and large numbers of arrests, they are taking on various forms of personal risks to Just Say No to the invasion of Ukraine.   Across Russia, thousands of scientists are signing on — literally hundreds to over a thousand more every day — to an open letter against the war.  To be clear, every single one of them knows that they are risking loss of jobs and persecution but they are making their opposition to the War public despite those risks.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is a front organization, in essence, for pay-to-play corporate interests to get slavish state legislators to submit cookie-cutter, lobbyist-written legislation in state after state after state. From promoting for-profit prisons to criminalizing exposure of factory-farm animal-rights abuses to anti-labor, the ALEC legislative agenda promotes privatization of profits and socialization of costs. With the Republican takeover of the Virginia House of Delegates and Governor’s mansion, ALEC had the door opened to push their anti-society agenda on issue after issue. The Democratic Senate’s Brick Wall has put the kibosh to many of these destructive items passed by the extremist House Republicans.

Today, there is a major waypoint in one of ALEC’s focus arenas: undermining efforts to act on climate through promotion of fossil-foolish agenda items. The Virginia Senate’s Agriculture, Conservation and Natural Resources Committee is scheduled to vote today on HB 1257 which is the Guarantee the Right to New Methane Polluting Stranded Assets in Buildings Act. Promoted with an appeal to ‘protect a person’s right to choose’, HB1257 would ban Virginia localities from enacting bans on future natural gas installation in the built infrastructure. ALEC has been using conservative, anti-science state legislatures to preempt more liberal communities seeking to move to protect local health and pursue tools to reduce climate (and other) emissions. The most fruitful path for the United States to boost its economic performance, improve human health, increase energy resiliency and security, and act to remove emissions is to “electrify everything while cleaning up the electricity supply”. Banning natural gas in new construction, a path adopted in an increasing number of localities and states, is a key part of this strategy.

Preventing this is a key objective of the methane (incorrectly called “natural gas”) industry. Building gas connections to new buildings opens the door for decades of additional sales with building (home, commercial, industrial) owners facing future dilemmas as to whether to stay with polluting and increasingly expensive to operate gas appliances or take the significant financial cost to retrofit and eliminate their methane stranded assets. Far more efficient (financially, energy, and otherwise) is to not dump money into gas hookups and go all-electric from the get-go. HB1257 wants to preempt local communities from even having the right to consider whether this is the best path forward for their community.

If you wish to urge Virginia Senate legislators to reject HB1257, here is a quick tool to contact the Committee’s Senators.

As the international community struggles with paths to respond and deal with Putin’s illegal war of aggression against Ukraine, looking to reinvigorate the Joint Common Plan of Action (JCPOA) (-Russia) agreement could provide an interesting part of the package. In addition to reducing potential Iranian movement toward Putin in a ‘coalition of the sanctioned’, ending of Iranian sanctions could reduce pressures in the global oil market (e.g., help contain/reduce price increases) due to Russia sanctions and could help reduce Russian revenue streams from oil exports.

Iranian oil exports are the range of one million barrels a day (mb/d) currently under the sanctions’ region with the portion exported going at a discounted rate to, for example, China (under the table) as part of sanctions’ busting efforts.

Iran has kept some exports flowing despite sanctions as intermediaries find ways to disguise the origin of the imports. Tanker tracking companies say China is the destination of most of those shipments.

Ending the sanctions, already well underway in discussions prior to Russia’s invasion, has the potential to lead to a rather rapid growth in Iranian oil exports from 1 to 2.5 mb/d. That additional Iranian oil could replace about one-third of Russia’s oil exports (which were about 4.3 mb/d in 2021) and ease the international (European, North American, developing world) economic pain created by serious sanctions against Russian oil and natural gas exports and revenues.

While the sanctions on Russia will foster new sanctions-busting activities (expanded Russian fossil fuel (oil and methane (natural gas)) exports to China at discounted from legal market rates seem likely), the United States entering back into the JCPOA offers the potential for somewhat fencing in Iranian nuclear weapons development activity while ending Iranian oil moving at discounted rates to global prices in ways that potentially are subsidizing the Chinese economy to the tune of $2-3B per year (with price discounts estimated to be between $4-$10 per barrel).

Bringing Iran back under international nuclear inspections and agreements is a risk-reduction move. The value of this is seriously increased

To be clear, this is not part and parcel of moves to address the climate crisis and accelerate the clean energy transition. A well-thought through engagement with Iran would include agreement for significant Iranian investment (using the resources from increased oil export revenues) in electrification, clean power, energy efficiency, and other moves to act on climate. And, while boosted global fossil-fuel use and production is not in humanity’s interest, a clean electron powered Iranian economy would free up more of Iranian production for export into the global market and help reduce ONG price pressures on global economic activity due to sanctioning Russia for Putin’s War of Aggression against Ukraine.

Imagine adopting “Democracy dies in darkness” as a motto, and then running opinions echoing those who’ve dedicated their lives to blowing smoke–literally.

The DC area, yet again, made global news through a massive traffic clusterf–k during a snowstorm as I-95, in Northern Virginia, got so clogged that drivers were stuck upwards of an entire day. Not surprisingly, in addition to climate denier joking about ‘where’s global warming’, anti-electric voices stepped up with false assertions. Rather than truthful discussion of how EVs can keep their drivers warm (especially with heated seats) for days if stuck and making clear that people in internal combustion engines (ICE) vehicles regularly die from asphyxiation when tailpipes get clogged by snow, it is too easy to find anti-clean energy diatribes making false assertions that ICE cars are safer if stuck in the snow. Sadly, but not surprisingly, The Washington Post prominently joined this crowd with a piece from passionately dedicated anti-electric vehicle editorial writer Charles Lane.

Every time our outdated systems for managing *all the things* fail — TX's winter gas crisis; summertime CA grid shutoffs; decapitation of all transportation in a VA storm — at least one mope with an audience will opine that if we try to improve, everything will just get worse. pic.twitter.com/p8DWDkgMVZ

— John Upton (@johnupton) January 5, 2022

Here, as a guest post from Climate Denier Round Up, is a dissection of Lane’s truthiness-laden column.

Imagine Electric Cars Stuck In Snow Instead Of Gas Ones,
Washington Post Acting Just Like Online Trolls

No one wants to get stuck in traffic. Or in the snow. Getting stuck in an all-day traffic jam because it snowed, well, that’s pretty much the worst. And that’s exactly what happened in Virginia this week, when thousands of people spent all day stuck on the highway after a severe snowstorm turned a jackknifed semi from a relatively routine highway occurrence to a major SNAFU.

Fortunately, everyone was okay. But imagine if they weren’t! Wouldn’t that have been terrible! Imagine if zombies had attacked while they were stranded, or if a horde of chuds emerged from the frozen sewers to convert everyone to Scientology, or, and this may be worst of all …

What if the cars stuck in the snow were all electric???

Everyone would surely be dead, or something!

At least that’s what the Washington Post editorial writer Charles Lane is scared of, judging by a column on Tuesday that turned a rightwing meme into his weekly column. “Imagine Virginia’s icy traffic catastrophe – but with only electric vehicles,” implores the headline, as though the issue here were a lack of access to electricity and not, you know, an overturned semi and snowfall that prevented emergency responders from doing their jobs.

The basis for his scary story? A trucker tweeted that he gave someone “driving a Tesla” some water and blankets. Apparently this anecdote “illustrates an important point: If everyone had been driving electric vehicles, this mess could well have been worse.”

Except, of course, that’s not true at all. As both Reuters and Politifact pointed out last year when rightwing shitposters pushed the same scare story, EVs are fine when stuck in traffic jams because sitting there doesn’t run down the battery. (And a reply to the trucker that Lane must have missed linked to a video showing a fully charged EV keeping warm for 70 hours at -3C.)

Idling your gas car does burn fuel though, something that even Lane acknowledged, writing that “of course, cold also affects the performance of gas-powered vehicles; many were left stranded in Virginia after they ran out of fuel or their batteries died.”

Oh!

Nevertheless, Lane used the Tesla driver for his clever kicker complaining that EVs aren’t already cheaper, easier and better than gas cars, saying that like that driver “on I-95 in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, we’re not there yet.”

Except the Tesla family probably drove off fine, but a bunch of people who didn’t have electric vehicles were stuck, by Lane’s own accounting!

Still though, apparently old cars have the advantage because it’s easier to deliver gas to stranded motorists than charge an EV. But that’s only because gas is currently the norm! Can you imagine if the situation were reversed, and gas cars were replacing electric cars?

How would you possibly convince people that toting around gallons of liquid explosives is the safe and easy alternative to a battery or extension cord?

More realistically though, why is the Washington Post publishing this kind of nonsense? Do they really think that double-fact-checked memes are the sort of content deserving of their pages? Worse, are they aware that they’re offering the exact same sort of content as climate denial blogs? Watts Up With That ran a functionally identical post asking readers to “imagine you were stuck in an EV,” and the professional industrial disinformation peddlers at CFACT, who also are just begging people to ignore that it’s gas cars that got stuck and instead “imagine electric vehicles in bad weather.”

And of course, for the coup de grace, you know you’ve gotten something badly wrong when it’s approvingly tweeted by Steve Milloy from his “@Junkscience” account, a handle that originates in his work for Big Tobacco to oppose regulations on smoking in the ‘90s.

Imagine adopting “Democracy dies in darkness” as a motto, and then running opinions echoing those who’ve dedicated their lives to blowing smoke–literally.

NOTEs:

• For a related discussion, see Climate Denier Roundup’s Dec 2021 piece “While both options stink, you’d Be Better Off Getting Stranded In The Snow With An Electric Car than an ICE vehicle“.

“While an internal-combustion car’s engine stays on and burns fuel while idling, electric vehicles use little battery power when at a standstill.” … an EV battery could power the average house for two days, and that even half-charged, an EV battery could provide 10 to 15 hours of heating. And, of course, don’t forget: an electric F-150 can power a wedding!

A gas car, on the other hand, burns gas just sitting around, making it less efficient than an electric vehicle.

Most efficient, though, and a great way to avoid getting stuck in traffic jams all together, if we were to get really serious, is of course public transit.

• For a taste of truth, Tesla might use 10% of its battery capacity to keep a stopped car warm for 7-9 hours of warmth.

• And, from ILSR’s John Farrell

• See this Tesla owner’s discussion of Which is better when stuck in a traffic jam in winter: combusion vehicle or Tesla? comparing his Hyundai Tucson with Teslas in terms of heating demand if stuck in a snow storm.

My Hyundai would use (1.6l * 0.6) = 0.96 liters every hour while idling.
So with a full tank, it could generate heat for (62 liters/0.96 liters per hour =) 64 hours.

Model 3s and Ys have a 82kWh battery … only needs 735 watts to maintain temperature.
… can run the heater for 111 hours.

• A Tesla driver (two cars) was sparked by Lane to do a test and, well, heating the cabin to 60 degrees when it is 15 degrees outside, a full charge would keep the car heated for “about” 60 hours.

The pinned comment to his video:

A pregnant woman from the Facebook Tesla divas group posted… “Hey Divas, I hope you’re all doing well. Monday at around 5pm I was in traffic heading home on 95 south in Virginia and got stuck due to the snow storm. I ended up stuck in traffic for 16hrs! Thank goodness for my tesla. I was initially at 74% when I was able to get home I was around 61%. It was a nightmare being stuck in the traffic jam but I’m glad I was stuck in my tesla. I turned on camp mode and napped for a bit.”

Update: 17 Jan: An excellent eye-witness discussion from an EV driver who was caught on I95;

I am especially grateful that I was driving my EV when I got stuck on I-95. I watched countless vehicles slide across the road, but my EV expertly navigated the ice. While fellow drivers burned gasoline running their engines to stay warm, my EV intelligently directed power solely to temperature regulation—I did not have to inefficiently burn fuel to power my entire engine in order to keep us safe. As other drivers then fretted about their dwindling gas reserves, my EV intuitively monitored my power supply, giving me the peace of mind that other drivers did not have. Throughout my entire experience in the I-95 quagmire, I knew exactly how much power my EV was using, how much power remained in its battery, and how far I could drive. …

When the traffic nightmare finally ended, gas-powered vehicle drivers scrambled to wait in long lines at snowed-in and overwhelmed gas stations, but my EV’s navigation system directed me to a nearby open charger; these charging stations were conveniently installed every ten miles along the traffic corridor. Despite the extreme conditions my EV endured that day, I nevertheless made it to the charger with a fifty-mile range surplus.

From that author, Dan Kammenan, his letter to the editor in the Post.

This disaster was precipitated by snow and poor management, not EVs. Let’s not forget that pollution from gas-powered vehicles is exacerbating extreme weather. Fortunately, my EV performed admirably during this crisis. But if everyone drove EVs, perhaps we would have avoided this debacle in the first place.

As to Lane …

Sadly, there is little reason to expect reality to interfere with Lane’s anti-EV ideology.