The Week’s Worst Climate Stories (When EVs Explode?)

Your weekly inoculation against the eco-madness

As we’ve continually noted here at Restoration News, the news of the world will ramp up the crazy in 2024 as the presidential election looms. The climate insanity has only gotten more ridiculous, and we’re here to mock it. The good news about all the bad news is there will always be plenty of it to fill this column every week. As fighter pilots like to say, it’s a target-rich environment.

Big Philanthropy has shown its willingness to throw millions of dollars into climate journalism, so 2024 promises to be one of the craziest years in memory in terms of what Big Journalism will blame on the climate.

This week, we have more electric buses failing due to winter, battery-powered ferries failing, solving climate change by 3D-printing meat instead of growing it naturally, children suing the government over phantom constitutional rights, and more snow due to global warming. Also, a bonus electric bus story—this one is explosive!

(RELATED: Why Is Joe Biden Screwing Seniors To Subsidize Electric Vehicles?)

Despite, that, there’s one bit of good news this week—at least one rental car company has realized the folly of electric vehicles (EVs) and has made a move to get out of that morass.

Let’s get to it.

Don’t Pay the (Electric) Ferryman

A ferry in Scotland, purchased in 2012 for €10 million, garnered praise for reducing emissions with its hybrid technology. Switching between battery and diesel power lowers the ship’s emissions by 20 percent over standard diesel-powered vessels. The problem? The battery failed in September 2023, and a replacement may not arrive until mid-2025. That means the boat will have to rely solely on diesel power. Apparently, the Scottish government was so eager to reduce emissions that they ignored advice and jumped all in on early hybrid tech with heavier batteries—and now a battery replacement is no longer available.

A professor at Edinburgh University consulted prior to approval of the project blasted the government, saying he advised against adopting early hybrid battery tech that used extremely heavy batteries, as well as hull design flaws. He presented government officials with a pre-print of a paper he had submitted to a peer-reviewed journal with these facts. Instead of taking his advice, the officials attempted to block the publication of his research, which showed the model the government chose would cost 259 percent more than a standard diesel ferry over its life cycle.

Evidently, no evidence will be accepted, no matter how true, which interrupts The Narrative.

Walking In A Winter Wonderland… Because the Bus Broke Down

Another week, another story of a northern nation adopting electric buses that don’t run in winter. This time, the Swedish town of Skellefteå had to cancel most of its bus routes last week, due to extreme cold temperatures. The town, located in the northern part of Sweden, saw high temperatures drop to -15°F last Friday, which caused their entire 100 percent electric bus fleet to shut down to be “brought in to warm up,” so they can ensure as much traffic as possible. (Ed. note: Maybe they’re counting on global warming to solve that problem?)

Will we ever see city officials in towns that experience winter wise up and stop wasting taxpayer money on electric buses? Don’t hold your breath.

Mystery Meat to Save the Planet, If You Can Stomach It

Apparently there’s something called the Protein Problem, at least according to the Associated Press. They’re so concerned about the dilemma of human consumption of nutritious meat that they’ve launched a whole reporting project on it, putting a vegan reporter on the beat. As the “climate engagement manager,” her job appears to be to drum up as much fear about global warming as possible.

That’s where meat comes in:

Plant-based alternatives to meat have been around for several years, and as a vegan who has tried plenty of them, I can say the options are more numerous than ever—and better than they once were. A much newer alternative to traditionally produced meat is lab-grown, or lab-cultivated, meat that comes from actual animal cells. Scientists and start-up companies are working furiously to scale up this idea.

As our intrepid young reporter notes, some people see cows as an existential threat to the earth, and lab-grown or plant-based meat could potentially assuage the guilt of those who consume cheeseburgers. She claims “climate scientists” have long said “eating more plants and fewer animals” would help reverse climate change. She may be confusing her veganism with climate science, but who cares, she’s on a roll!

Despite her quoting an official-sounding agency of the United Nations, no evidence exists that agriculture has done anything to increase methane emissions over those naturally happening by animals all over the globe.

Experts say, some people believe, climate scientists tell us—buzzphrases used to sell us all kinds of crazy stuff. Has anyone else noticed the writing has gotten significantly worse as the panic porn ratchets up ever more?

And anyway, if meat is so awful, why do these people spend so much time, energy, and resources trying to make artificial substances grown in a lab resemble it?

Oregon Climate Kids Lawsuit Overcomes Failure to Launch

In 2015, a nonprofit called Our Children’s Trust recruited child plaintiffs for unprecedented lawsuits across the United States arguing that the government “has failed to establish a constitutional right to a stable climate.” The youth plaintiffs were encouraged to sue their governments because, as Our Children’s Trust states, “We trust democracy.” From the group’s website:

As advocates, our job is to make sure children’s voices are heard in courts of law, telling judges the stories of their burning lungs, lost homes, their hope, and their fear. It’s our job to obtain enforceable remedies against governments that are harming children and generations to come the politically silent majority.

It has taken 8 years, but their initial lawsuit in Oregon has finally advanced, with the plaintiffs mostly now in their mid-20s. According to corporate media outlet KGW 8:

On late December, U.S. District Court Judge Ann Aiken ruled against the Department of Justice’s most recent attempt to have the case dismissed. 

‘This catastrophe is the great emergency of our time and compels urgent action,’ Aiken wrote of climate change in her opinion, calling the government’s climate strategy an ‘unhurried, inchmeal, bureaucratic response to our most dire emergency.’

In allowing the case to proceed, the presiding judge said, “This catastrophe is the great emergency of our time and compels urgent action.” Blind justice in action.

A similar trial by Our Children’s Trust, Held v. State of Montana, appears ready to move forward in 2024 as well. Despite their ridiculous legal theories, these trials have the opportunity to have an enormous impact on all Americans should the plaintiffs prevail.

Don’t Believe Your Lying Eyes, Snow Storms Are Disappearing

“Don’t be fooled, snow is becoming a thing of the past.” That’s the actual headline of an actual opinion piece written by a Bloomberg opinion editor.

He breathlessly cautions us that all those snowstorms we saw over the first week of the new year were merely an illusion. He warns that those storms we saw will happen less frequently, and that snow has become scarce in the United States due, of course, to climate change. He seems not to have noticed El Nino, never mind the massive snowfall all over Europe last month, never mind the record ice growth in both the Arctic Sea during the winter, and the summer ice coverage in Antarctica. He says snowpack in the Sierra Nevada mountains seems low this year, completely ignoring that it set a record with dozens of feet only a year ago.

Read this piece if you’d like to learn how the language subtly changes to cherry pick facts while ignoring any evidence contrary to the preconceived conclusion. Once you recognize their tactics, you’ll start seeing them everywhere.

Another Lithium Victim in London

On January 11th, commuters during the morning London rush hour scrambled as a double decker bus exploded and burst into flames. The explosion totaled the bus, leaving a charred wreck of broken glass and burned and twisted metal. Luckily nobody was injured. Witnesses reported a loud bang, followed by a large fire in the rear of the bus that took some time to extinguish.

(RELATED: Will Biden Subsidize China’s EV Factories in Mexico?)

The Daily Mail reported statements from witnesses to the inferno:

The response was very fast by the emergency services. The fire crew started to tackle the blaze at the back of bus where the fire was burning very aggressively—it blew out the back of the bus at the bottom and top.

It took a long time for them to get it under control with flames flying out the back of the bus that often had a blue hue to them. The smoke was really thick and blew down the high street.

The fire crews put out the flames but continued to soak the battery at the back of the bus for another hour or so due to it overheating and regularly were using a heat gun to check its temperature. Very glad no one was hurt.

Another witness, Roderick Cameron, tweeted a photo of the flames and said: ‘Not what we expect to see on the school run. Bus on fire—and the fumes are awful.’

This isn’t the first time an electric double decker has caught fire. In May 2022, two caught fire in a bus garage.

When will officials learn these things are dangerous?

Finally, a little bit of good climate news.

Hertz So Bad

In a major strategic shift, rental car company Hertz announced it will sell off at least one-third of its EVs, 20,000 in total. Bloomberg reported the national rental car chain will revert back to gas-powered vehicles, citing customer demand and skyrocketing maintenance and charging costs:

Hertz Global Holdings Inc. plans to sell a third of its US electric vehicle fleet and reinvest in gas-powered cars due to weak demand and high repair costs for its battery-powered options.

The sales of 20,000 EVs began last month and will continue over the course of 2024, the rental giant said Thursday in a regulatory filing.

Hertz will record a non-cash charge in its fourth-quarter results of about $245 million related to incremental net depreciation expense.

The dramatic about-face, after Hertz announced plans in 2021 to buy 100,000 Tesla Inc. vehicles, underscores the waning demand for all-electric cars in the US. EV sales growth slowed sharply over the course of 2023, rising just 1.3% in the final quarter as consumers were put off by high costs and interest rates.

(READ MORE BY JEFF REYNOLDS HERE)