Bridenstine Nomination to Run NASA Remains Blocked in Senate
Rep. Jim Bridenstine
Bloomberg has an update on the impasse in the Senate over the Trump Administration’s nomination of Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-OK) to become the next NASA administrator.
Bridenstine has been blocked by all 49 Senate Democrats. Florida’s Congressional delegation enjoys an outsized influence on NASA because of Cape Canaveral, and Senator Bill Nelson, who flew on the Space Shuttle Columbia in 1986, isn’t a Bridenstine fan. His colleague Marco Rubio, the junior senator for the Sunshine State and a Republican, doesn’t want Bridenstine, either. With fellow Republican John McCain of Arizona absent for cancer treatment, that leaves confirmation 50-49 against….
Beyond [Acting Administrator Robert] Lightfoot, the lack of movement on Capitol Hill effectively leaves NASA leadership to Scott Pace, executive director of the National Space Council, which [Donald] Trump revived last summer. The council has taken a direct role in overseeing NASA’s priorities, including the administration’s 2017 directive to return astronauts to the moon, but doesn’t have the same hands-on role an administrator would. Bridenstine has attended both National Space Council meetings, in October and last month, but only as an observer.
Rubio has argued that the NASA post shouldn’t be occupied by a politician, particularly one with stridently partisan positions. “It’s the one federal mission which has largely been free of politics, and it’s at a critical juncture in its history,” he told Politico in September.
Bridenstine, a member of the highly conservative House Freedom Caucus, has drawn Democratic opposition for his views on gay marriage and abortion rights, as well as past statements dismissing climate change. And he may have rubbed Republican Rubio, and possibly McCain, the wrong way on account of his past support for their primary opponents.
In the 2016 presidential primaries, Bridenstine, a former Navy fighter pilot with an interest in space issues, produced several advertisements supporting Texas Senator Ted Cruz in his failed quest for the Republican nomination. Those ads criticized Rubio, also a candidate, for his position on immigration and attacks on Cruz. Rubio has reportedly denied a connection between Bridenstine’s past barbs and his opposition to the NASA nomination. Bridenstine also supported McCain’s Republican rival, Kelli Ward, in a fierce 2016 primary campaign that McCain eventually won.
Read the full story.
142 responses to “Bridenstine Nomination to Run NASA Remains Blocked in Senate”
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Ok here’s the solution give up on bridenstien and nomomate someone like Lightfoot.
Actually, I am getting close to wanting this to play out far further. Giving up on Bridenstine, either to get committee votes from the SLS/Orion coalition, or from the Greens and their Democrat playmates, or both, would mask the explicitly politicized nature in which NASA has been treated since 1972. Let it become *obvious* that powerful players in Congress are *not* interested in a strongly pro-spaceflight NASA Administrator. Let it become *obvious* that they view NASA as a money funnel, to either academia’s progressives, or to the Florida, Alabama, Texas aerospace serf voters.
Then we will see how things fall out in the succeeding 4 years. NASA HQ without a NASA Administrator will look any different than today??? I don’t think so. That alone will tell people how much there exists no coherently purposeful NASA. Will we reform this particular government hierarchy by feeding it more money? I don’t think so.
I expect this is planned to be an issue in the mid-terms, which is why President Trump is giving the Democrats lots of rope on it, the better to hang them with it later ?
No he’s giving himself the rope, because everything is about him, that means everything is on him as well, if you try to take credit for everything you’re going to get the blame for everything as well
What, exactly, would that “everything” be that Trump will be blamed for? Ceasing Obama’s endless assaults on the American economy? I suspect Mr. Trump will not mind, in the least, being “blamed” for that.
Given that NASA human spaceflight efforts have been largely rudderless for decades, I say another year isn’t going to matter much in the larger scheme of things. NASA has gotten by with an Acting Administrator for over a year now. I say let’s make it two years. After the 2018 mid-terms, the Senate R-vs-D balance should be more favorable to Mr. Bridenstine’s approval even allowing for monolithic Dem opposition and that of one or two personal grudge-holders on the R-side.
I dont think reps are held in high favor right now they lost a couple seats in special elections since 2016, Yes one of them was because he was up against Moore, but the other had much more respectable competition and Trump endorsement and still lost,
Keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better. November will be here soon enough.
First, NASA has not been rudderless. The issue is that CONgress controls the tiller. And these idiots will jib, instead of tack, when.on a beat. And that is their good side.
Secondly, the Rs are likely to lose control of both houses at the next election. That is normal, but in this case, more than enough will be out about the treason by trump/pence and it will cloud this election further than trump already has.
No argument about Congress. But U.S. HSF has been marking time for the last 40 years. As you note, NASA isn’t really who gets to steer, but Congress, even if it technically has control of the tiller, hasn’t elected to make any decisive steering inputs either. Actual HSF progress has taken a very distant back seat to pork distribution over this interval.
I see no real basis for assuming Republican loss of either house in 2018. It is typical that the sitting President’s party loses some House seats during midterm elections, but swings large enough to transfer party control of the House are not “normal.” The Dems would have to pick up roughly two dozen House seats this year to eke out even a bare majority. I really don’t see where that many turnovers would come from.
The last genuine “wave election” for the House occurred in 1994 when a swing of 54 seats firmly transitioned the House from a default-Democratic to a default-Republican body. In the 60 years previous to 1994, Republicans took the House only briefly under extraordinary circumstances. Since 1994, it has been the Democrats who’ve required the extraordinary circumstances.
In 2006 it was the pre-Surge Iraq War “quagmire.” In 2008, it was Obama. Even then, the Dem gains did not compare with those the Reps chalked up in 1994. And said gains proved ephemeral.
Perhaps the mere fact of Trump’s still being in the White House will prove an extraordinary enough circumstance to allow Dems to retake the House in 2018, but I see no indications of such movement. After spending pretty much the entirety of 2017 screaming like mad things and searching frantically for a magic word that would make Trump go away the progressive Left have nothing to show for all their histrionics but a modest rise in Trump’s popularity numbers.
The demographics of the U.S. House simply don’t work for Democrats anymore. Except for CA, the bluest states have been losing population to redder states. CA’s population growth has hugely decelerated and may well reverse over the next 20 years, especially if improved border control reduces the number of arriving illegal immigrants.
Since the 2010 redistricting, the Democratic Caucus in the House has averaged 13 seats smaller than during the 1994-2006 interval. Another such downward increment can be expected following the 2020 census. Democrats like to blame this on Republican “gerrymandering,” but the truth is that Democratic “self-gerrymandering” accounts for nearly all of it. Democrats are simply packing themselves, ever more tightly and monolithically, into their long-time urban strongholds.
The Senate is an essentially hopeless case. Democrats are playing defense to a hugely disproportionate degree in 2018 – 25 contested seats vs. 8 for the Reps. Republicans seem very likely to pick up a minimum of 5 Senate seats in 2018. It could conceivably be as many as 10.
You seem a generally fairly rational sort with the signal exception of your goofball politics. I hope you realize that this whole Trump-Russia thing is a complete fiction.
I used to work with the intel world. That group is hard core Conservative.
Believe me, when I say that the intel world not giving clearance to nearly all of Trump’s ppl, along with them flat out saying that he has been talking to Russia PRIOR to election, means that they are out and out telling you that he is a f***ing traitor.
There is NOTHING fictional about it.
As to the house and senate, I believe that those of us in the middle, who were faced with horrible choices before, are going to say no to Trump and his ppl. Simple as that. The far edges will vote their ppl in (dems/gop), but they are not the ones that actually decide. It is the middle that does.
The intelligence community is very right-wing at the rank and file level. As the old saying goes, reality has a conservative bias. And the intelligence rank and file love Trump. They cheered enthusiastically when he visited CIA HQ shortly after taking office.
The higher-ups are another matter entirely. And it’s the higher-ups that invented all this crapola about Trump and Russia. It’s a tissue of lies from top to bottom. What we have here are the senior management of several executive branch departments infested with treasonous partisans at the top who have – in combination with the leadership cadre of the Democratic Party – decided to run the duly elected President of the United States out of office. There has been, in essence, a slow-rolling coup attempt underway ever since Trump was elected. There are hundreds of career bureaucrat Deep State types – and not a few Democratic elected officials – who richly deserve to get a blindfold and a last cigarette for their roles in this travesty.
As for the November election, how charming that you imagine yourself to be “in the middle.” Based on what you write about politics in these forums you seem to be a more-or-less standard-issue far-left-progressive with the usual galloping case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
It is true that Independents – not “the Middle” – are often the swing votes in elections, but Independents broke big for Trump in 2016 and, despite the mainstream media frothing at the mouth for 16 months, very few seem to have peeled off in the interim. Trump’s latest initiative to target dumped imports of steel and aluminum, for example, is just going to cement the loyalty of all those former Democratic-voting blue-collar types who went for Trump in 2016. The jump in job availability and in wages since Trump took over, and the tax cuts, also contribute. These are people the Democrats had safely in their pockets for 80 years and now they’re gone and aren’t coming back.
Lightfoot is currently openly pushing anti-scientific, anti-space-exploration ideology. NASA needs a new administrator ASAP.
https://www.inquisitr.com/4…
Your link led me to a Musk slamming article, if he’s against SLS we need him,
He’s a New Spacer and that scares NASA.
http://spacenews.com/qa-wit…
Q&A With Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.)
by Dan Leone — December 21, 2014
“and his push to privatize any part of the U.S. space enterprise that appears ripe for it.”
“But we need to start pilot approaches for things like commercial GPS
radio occultation satellites that can augment current data and
potentially lead us to a day where we are not so reliant on
billion-dollar, monolithic satellites.”
And this is of course what scares NASA, its Congressional Pork huggers, and the Old Space industry.
While that is a REALLY good theory, I don’t think the people involved are operating even at that low level of pocketbook thinking. It seems more like this is all just grade-school name calling “she has the wrong letter after her name!”, “he said something MEAN about me in the past!”
There are concerns on his past views on climate science, while he has supposedly changed his views on it, it IS a concern given the Trump administration’s attacks on that field.
While some people are genuinely concerned about that, the fact that 100% of Senate Democrats feel that way and 0% of Senate Republicans cite that tells me that ain’t what’s going on.
probably not, but the fact that those concerns and lack of scientific background even exist to justify it means he’s the wrong choice for the current political climate, this is a symptom of Trump’s refusal to compromise on hot button issues leading to constant party lining,
At the risk of seeming churlish, The Democrats control neither the White House nor either house of Congress. It strikes me that “refusal to compromise on hot button issues” is pretty much the entirety of the Democratic platform these days. But the Democratic Party enjoys no divine right to rule without respect to actual election results – contrary to what seem to be the beliefs of many of its stalwarts these days.
Its close enough to 50/50 that compromise on hot button issues instead of doubling down is necessary for anything to happen as Rs have the white house compromise is on them as they have less risk of losing votes if they do negotiate where as with Ds giving up anything makes them look spineless
Ah, yes, “What’s ours is ours and what’s yours is negotiable.” I don’t think the 2018 elections are likely to be very favorable to that line.
Rubio, a GOP, is opposed. And I suspect that more GOP would vote against if they had to vote.
Rubio’s motives are personal. Bridenstine actively opposed his 2016 presidential candidacy. Space policy, science policy – any policy – is quite beside the point.
Which only account for less than 10% of NASA’s budget. Talk about the tail wagging the dog.
less than 10% of the budget but to something that is treated as more political than it has any right to be, science shouldn’t be about political parties, facts dont care if they are inconvenient to certain people, the fact that climate science is very inconvenient to fossil fuel industry makes it a partisan issue,
And the fact that the fossil fuel industry is so inconvenient, in its energy output for industrial society to continue to expand around the world, makes it highly targetable for anti-industrial progressives. Once “the rich” became an overworked target, this was the next target of opportunity.
you dont have to be anti industrial to want to move away from fossil fuels when possible,
Why? If it’s there let’s use it. Latest reports are that Texas has enough oil with the new recovery technologies to supply the U.S. for 500 years.
global warming, putting too much of anything in the environment uncontrolled is NEVER a good thing, it doesn’t matter if there is enough to do it, it doesn’t mean we should, and we should solve it WITH industry not against it. Coal is dying anyways, more by market forces than anything, let it die. Oil has cause numerous environmental disasters in extraction and transport that if for no other reason should be enough to trim our use a bit.
The much-vaunted renewables have their environmental costs too. But those tend to be day-in, day-out background noise and not sudden headline-grabbers like an oil spill, tank car derailment or explosion on an off-shore oil rig.
Later addendum: CO2 emissions into the atmosphere are not entirely “uncontrolled.” Green plants “control” CO2 by eating it. When there’s more to eat, they eat more. Crop yields are up since atmospheric CO2 concentration has increased. So is growth of non-agricultural vegetation.
Most of environmental damage from renewables is in manufacturing and that just means manufacturing regs are needed.
The legions of birds who die of mid-air blunt force trauma while attempting to cross wind farms and the others who get flash-broiled over solar-thermal sites might disagree.
It’s a good thing for your favored government regs that Pres. Trump’s tax and trade policies seem likely to keep more manaufacturing of all kinds in the U.S. instead of, in essence, subsidizing its exit to places like China – which is, of course, justly famous for the stringency of its environmental regs and the draconian zeal with which they are enforced.
Windmill designs and location, as for solar that only applies to some concentrated solar thermal
There aren’t that many really good surface sites for wind farms and most of those are quite popular with local bird populations. Alternate siting is not a solution. It’s true there isn’t much solar thermal capacity out there at present. Bird deaths are one reason.
Birds get killed trying to fly through windows all the time, so long as it’s kept manageable, windmills i don’t think are a huge deal
If windmills could actually contribute significantly to the country’s energy needs, I might take the same position. But they don’t and won’t. Their output is sporadic and their service lives are pathetic. I live near a lot of windmills here in So. CA. A really quite astonishingly high percentage of them seem to be out of service and abandoned.
Depends on where you live
GAO just came out with a report that says Obama era regulations actually made money and jobs compared to what they cost industry to implement.
Link.
But given what Trump has been able to do for the U.S. economy by simply ending a lot of Obama-era regulation, I’m gonna call bullcrap on this one.
it came up on my google feed and i am trying to find it again
As for trump, he disincentized domestic solar in effort to protect coal so he’s helping no one really
If that means he has taken steps to end federal subsidies, that’s a good thing. I’m tired of do-gooders trying to strong-arm the rest of us into doing economically injurious things through bribery. Rooftop solar needs net utility billing as a way to level the playing field, but it shouldn’t be getting subsidies.
Ending federal solar subsidies hardly constitutes a way to “protect” coal in any case. It isn’t rooftop solar that’s eating coal’s lunch, it’s fracked natural gas. Those chips need to fall where they may.
Except he hasn’t, coal and oil still get a LOT more subsidy than renewables ever have received
Explain that to me. I didn’t drink the green Kool-Aid.
Coal and oil have lots of “permanent” subsidies 2017 a reported $20.5 b for instance, some is to keep unprofitable coal plants running, others are to control gasoline prices and others are because of pork,
Specifics and details would be nice. Lacking same, I think I’m more than entitled to assume your $20.5 billion number came out of some tree-hugger’s anal archive. Given the total size of the U.S. energy market, though, even a genuine annual subsidy of $20.5 billion amounts to little better than loose change.
https://www.google.com/amp/…
That was just one, a quick Google search can find pretty high numbers
Broken link.
That’s unfortunate
One thing to consider California has energy surplus problems, so windmills might not make economic sense currently there
Given that CA gets a third of its electricity from other states, and that this proportion has been rising, “surplus problems” are the one thing CA most assuredly does not have anent energy.
And sells excess solar
Link.
CA has been a large net importer of electricity for decades. There is no “excess solar” if by that you mean excess to CA’s overall annual needs.
Not overall annual some days of the year more is produced than can be used occasionally to the point where they have to pay to get rid of it
Happens about 4 days a year
Renewables are speeding up coals end, add battery farms and consumer end storage be it ev or home/plant battery and you can build up a very resilient and cost effective grid with renewables and nat gas, counting biogas, sewage gas, landfill gas and industrial byproduct syngas as nat gas because of compatibility, eventually as the technology develops nat gas fuel cells using waste heat to power either a turbine, Stirling generator or centralized heating or some combination thereof
Wind used in distributed power settings can often be less impactful to birds, i personally think that a mix between distributed power and centralized is the way to go, and renewables excel in distributed power, logistically centralized does have advantages but having significant distributed elements enables resilience and better settings for various renewable power sources, distributed storage also helps makes it easier to handle peak loads on transmission infrastructure
Renewables are irrelevant to coal’s decline. Renewables have been around for decades and made no significant dent in coal’s share of generating capacity. Fracked natural gas, on the other hand, has proven to be the coal-killer app.
Storage is almost by definition distributed because, other than pump storage, no technology is anywhere near capable of the level of storage that would be needed for an entire power grid of any real size at an affordable price.
At what cost?
As it is, EVs are ~$ to comparable ICE vehicles;
Out perform them when built by companies that want to;
and are cheaper to run and maintain.
E semi trucks are very likely going to bury diesel semi trucks since payback is less than 3 years.
Trains are flipping to electric and Nat gas.
So, other than chemical product, what use will there be for oil since it is too expensive.
And all those EVs just put more CO2 from coal in the air. Plus the environmental damage their Lithum batteries produced. And the CO2 it takes to produce those Lithum batteries. And then the environmental impact of the exotic metals used…
https://science.howstuffwor…
“Toyota admits that the production of its lightweight Prius requires more energy and emits more carbon dioxide than the production of its gas-only models. The major reason is because hybrids like the Prius include more advanced components than a conventional car, including a second electric motor and heavy battery packs.”
“One of the reasons China could sell lithium so cheaply was because it widely ignored environmental safeguards during the mining process. In the Bayan Obo region of China, for example, miners removed topsoil and extracted the gold-flecked metals using acids that entered the groundwater, destroying nearby agricultural land. Even the normally tight-lipped Chinese government admitted that rare earth mining has been abused in some places. A regulator at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in China went so far as to tell The New York Times, “This has caused great harm to the ecology and environment” [source: Bradsher].”
Future generations struggling with Lithium and exotic metal pollution may well wished we stayed with gasoline.
Remember when Ethanol was going to be the gasoline replacement until someone figured out it actually took 2 gallons of oil to make one of Ethanol?
First off, other than China and Australia, coal is a small fraction of electricity. Here in America, we are at 30% and dropping.
Secondly, lithium batteries are a none issue as they do less damage than oil, and are recycable.
Finally, what I spoke about was economics and desirability. Do u want a cheaper to buy and run vehicle that outperforms what you own today? Our Tesla costs are such that gas would have to be .80/gal to be comparable. Maintenance costs are a fraction.
So, why would a sane person go with ICE ?
lack of garage space, with harsh winters for charging, thats the only reason,
No, it’s not the only reason. But shame on me for not adding the essential marginality of EV’s in cold climates to my previous list – and me born and raised in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Gettin’ old.
For me its the only reason. Weighed against better preformance, less maintenance, less operating costs, however it’s not a major reason
If it has kept you from indulging your tree-hugger-ish nature, it’s a major reason.
Not really, as that may change by the time i need a new car
Your tree-hugger-ish nature or the difficulties attending EV ownership?
Difficulties of an ev making sense for me may no longer exist when i need a new car
Then I think you ought to figure on driving your existing ride for quite a bit longer.
I do, but if an ev isnt my next car its definitely the one after, as an investment lower cost per mile makes it make a lot of sense
Living, as I do, in the Greater L.A. area, I might go for a nice used Tesla Model 3 a few years down the road myself. I still don’t expect any significant recharging infrastructure in my immediate vicinity by then, but there ought to be some in the much pricier beach cities a few miles to my west.
Whatever befalls, I’ll be driving the current beater until it dies of anything that costs more to fix than it would set me back to replace. After that, it will be strictly a matter of economics. If the EV numbers don’t work, it’s Hyundai again.
Should I be fortunate enough to be able to move to Texas in the interim, it’ll probably be Hyundai anyway. Both gasoline and electricity are significantly cheaper in TX than in CA. The disparity is only likely to worsen in future years. Wherever I am, my decisions will be based solely on minimizing overall outlay. I have no margin for tithes to Gaia.
Your last two sentences precisely sum up long term answers to energy, vehicle choice, imports, and myriad other economic questions that are twisted in political process. The consumer is smart and self interested. The demonstrators outside against Walmart have far less influence than the customers spending inside.
Quite right. I fairly often am one of those Wal-Mart customers by the way.
We have figured out that even with insurance figured in, our Model S that we bought used at 50K, will cost us less than .30 / mile. That includes the vehicle, insurance, the fuel (and we assumed that we paid for it all, even though we get it free if we want), the maintenance, the tires, and wipers. Regular ICE vehicles are going to cost you .35-.50 / mile. And the .50 / mile is for something comparable to our MS.
I’m glad that’s working out for you. My operating costs per mile are much higher than yours, but that’s because we have to pay CA rates for liability insurance and gas and the wife and I drive very little anymore. Given that residential electricity rates in CA are about the 5th-highest in the country – and 50% or so higher than yours in CO – it’s far from obvious that we’d save anything even if we could magically swap our current ride for an EV.
And not because i am a tree hugger, i just don’t like paying for gasoline.
Neither do I. Mostly because I do it at the extortionate rates prevailing here in CA – including the recent bump in state taxes (last fill-up: $3.18/gal.). But, given what my electricity bill has been lately just for lighting, computing, laundry and cooking, adding personal automotive transport to the bill would sink me for sure.
Actually it’s estimated in most of the country the cost of an ev is equivalent to .80 per gallon
Estimated by whom?
unfortunately thats second hand knowledge,
Tesla’s and most EVs do just fine in Norway, Northern Canada, and Alaska.
So, I think that your argument loses.
Batteries work via chemical reactions. Lower temperatures lower chemical reaction rates. The impact on individual makes and models of EV’s varies, but all are impacted by cold weather. A Nissan Leaf, driven in MN in the winter, has 35% less range than the same car driven in CA. Teslas also suffer range decreases in cold weather, but their batteries are quite sizable compared to those in most other EV’s. Given that most people don’t drive as much in winter as at more clement times of the year, cold-weather Tesla drivers don’t seem to see much of a range problem. For other makes of EV’s, YMMV – quite literally.
You forgot Germany, Russia, Japan, Korea (both North and South) and Eastern Europe. I could go on. Coal is hugely important to electricity production many places in the world. Chile and Israel both use a lot of coal. So do other countries than Germany even in Western Europe.
As previously noted by others, original production of lithium is often a nasty business. Given that recycling also tends to be a nasty business disproportionately taken on in 3rd-world countries and the poorer provinces of China, I see no reason to expect that lithium’s potential recycleability is going to make things much better over at least the next several decades.
A sane person might go with ICE – at least outside the tonier districts of major cities – because the low end of the ICE vehicle market offers many bargains for the non-affluent that the EV market, thus far, does not. The Tesla Model 3 is not going to change that situation much until used Model 3’s start showing up in significant quantities. Get back to me when Tesla – or anybody else – starts making an EV car that’s price-competitive with a Hyundai Accent.
Then there’s also the matter that the less affluent and rural areas of the U.S. – most of the country, in other words – has no significant recharging infrastructure as yet and won’t for a long time to come despite Elon’s best efforts. Gasoline is easy to come by even in poor ethnic ghetto neighborhoods. I know this because that’s where I buy mine. Recharging stations, not so much. Right now – and for quite some time to come – EV’s are an affectation of the well-to-do.
Actually, I did not forget those nations.
Germany, Japan, South Korea, and MOST of Eastern Europe run about 40% coal. Japan and Germany are growing a bit, but, most others are dropping. Yeah, Poland is running some 80%, but they are a SMALL nation. They MIGHT add several GW over the next 10 years. Maybe.
Russia, and South Africa are BOTH heavy users of coal, but again, they are relatively small users of electricity. SA is adding more, but that is due to the push from China.
Russia is not. In fact, they are adding more Nat gas, and atomic, and dropping their coal.
The real issue is CHina and Australia. BOTH are heavy users of Coal, but Australia is cutting way back on it. In addition, unlike CHina, they have decent scrubbing that happens. China does not (hence why they are the most polluted nation on the planet).
In the end you can continue to argue for ICE vehicles, but it will come down to economics. Tesla’s EVs are as cheap/cheaper than comparable ICE vehicles to buy. Then add in the fact that electricity is cheap in the west compared to fossil fuels. With our .08/kwh charge at nighttime, it is like paying .60-.90 / gal of gas. Maintenance is a fraction of what ICE vehicles costs. Probably the worst part of our MS, is the insurance. It was fine until a bit ago and the insurance companies DOUBLED their rates. So now, tesla is pushing their own insurance and it is forcing the insurance companies to drop theirs. The question is why did insurance companies raise their rates? Supposedly, it is to get paid before they are forced to drop it to the lowest rates. Apparently, the insurance companies fear what AP (and not just tesla, but all companies) is going to do to insurance for cars; make them obsolete and unneeded.
I’m all about the economics. World coal consumption has plateaued or declined recently. Fracked gas has way more to do with this than all the tree-hugger prating about AGW.
Again, EV’s (mainly Teslas) have made some inroads in the luxury vehicle markets, but EV’s are not yet at a point where they can economically compete on a sticker-for-sticker basis with low-end ICE vehicles. That day may come, but it seems to me to be two decades or more distant right now.
Insurance companies do all kinds of things for all kinds of reasons in setting rates. Despite their pose of rigid rationality and actuarial rigor, insurance companies are as inclined as any business – or individual – to reflexive bouts of panic and fight-or-flight reflex. Teslas had a few high-profile battery fires and traffic fatalities a few years back. That may have accounted for a sudden doubling of rates. If Tesla is now offering its own insurance, that would seem to be an appropriate market-based response to a sudden case of the yips on the part of legacy insurance providers.
By “AP” do you mean “autopilot?” If so, you are right that driverless vehicles will bring huge changes to every part of the vehicle business in the vendor, user and third-party services sectors. Collision and liability insurance rates should fall. A lot of body and paint shops will fold.
BTW, the last part was another false news thing from the far right.
https://www.wired.com/2011/…
BTW, coming along and modifying your post and making it about HYBRIDS, and no longer about EVs, is very telling.
You might want to take another look at the article you linked. Little tidbits like “more than 100% reduction” and “is now more than break even” might suggest a certain lack of rigor.
I won’t argue how much oil to produce, though I will note that a source that requires subsidy is economically suspect.
Your source is the one with misleading information.If you note it makes a lot of statements about “advances in how it could be produced” instead of how it is produced. I consider the Union of Concerned Scientists as a more reliable source.
https://www.ucsusa.org/clea…
“The lifecycle emissions of ethanol—from seed to tailpipe—depend on how the ethanol is made and what it is made from. The best ethanol can
produce as much as 90 percent fewer lifecycle emissions compared to
gasoline, but the worst ethanol can produce significantly more lifecycle
emissions than gasoline.”
It is just as with EV. If you assume the electric power comes from PV then its “clean”. But in reality most electrical power comes from coal, which puts more CO2 in the air than gasoline. The add in the emissions from the power loss in transmission to the charging station.
And then Phys.Org, another science website has a more recent study.
https://phys.org/news/2017-…
Corn better used as food than biofuel, study finds
June 20, 2017, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
“For the first time, researchers at the University of Illinois have quantified and compared these issues in terms of economics of the entire production system to determine if the benefits of biofuel corn outweigh the costs.”
“Using corn as a fuel source seems to be an easy path to renewable energy,” said Richard Yuretich, the NSF program director for Critical Zone Observatories. “However, this research shows that the environmental costs are much greater, and the benefits fewer, than using corn for food.”
Aren’t we suppose to take the advice of scientists?
And NPR reports of the environment impacts that resulted from the Ethanol boom. I could not find the link to the original AP study.
https://stateimpact.npr.org…
AP: Environmental impacts of ethanol may outweigh the benefits
“Five million acres of land set aside for conservation —
more than Yellowstone, Everglades and Yosemite National Parks combined — have vanished on Obama’s watch.
Landowners filled in wetlands. They plowed into pristine prairies, releasing carbon dioxide that had been locked in the soil.
Sprayers pumped out billions of pounds of fertilizer, some of which
seeped into drinking water, contaminated rivers and worsened the huge
dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico where marine life can’t survive.
The consequences are so severe that environmentalists and many
scientists have now rejected corn-based ethanol as bad environmental
policy. But the Obama administration stands by it, highlighting its
benefits to the farming industry rather than any negative impact.”
Note – This is National Public Radio reporting this on this AP study.
only if the region you live in gets power almost entirely from coal, most dont,, most power is generated via Nat Gas, cobalt can be economically recycled,
Natural gas is certainly displacing coal at a rapid clip, but coal still accounts for roughly 1/3 of U.S. electricity generation.
30% and dropping
The most recent number I could find was for 2015 and it was 35%. Coal is going to be with us in a non-trivial way for some time yet.
most recent was Jan 2018, and it was 30%. 2017 was 30%.
And as long as nat gas remains cheap, and with UNSUBSIDIZED wind already cheaper than coal, it means that coal has ZERO chance.
I’m inclined to agree that the future of coal doesn’t look bright, but renewable energy sources have virtually nothing to do with that – it’s abundant and cheap fracked gas that’s killing coal.
Wind will be a significant adjunct power source in windy states, especially large windy states (Great Plains) with small populations and/or large, windy, sparsely-populated areas within heavily populated large states (TX). But wind is never going to be a baseload technology anywhere because it’s too variable. Even mass, cheap storage – which doesn’t exist – wouldn’t change that.
Oh, please!
Show me an EV that can be had for the price of a Hyundai Accent. Or even for twice the price.
There are, as yet, no EV semis to do the alleged burying. Tesla’s has been delayed. When it arrives, it may eventually put Peterbilt, Kenworth, et. al. out of business, but it won’t be anytime soon. Technology will certainly change long-haul trucking hugely over the next quarter-century, but it will be driverless technology, not EV technology, that dominates the changes.
There is no significant movement toward either self-contained or catenary electrification of railroading in the U.S. Natural gas I can believe, but even that is going to take awhile to displace any significant percentage of diesel prime movers.
Ok, first off, I never said that there was an EV comparable to each ICE model.
In fact, I said that EVs are similar $ to comparable ICE vehicles. That means that you compare a Model 3 to a BMW 3 series, Audi A4/A5; Caddies, Lexus, etc.
MS are compared to BMW 5/7 series/Audi A7/MB S series. etc.
You do not compare either M3 or MS to a Hyundai Accent.
Here is MS sales in America;
https://electrek.co/2017/05…
https://cleantechnica.com/2…
Back in 2014, it was beating all of them, but just barely. Now it outsells them COMBINED.
Now, MS is outselling competitors in Europe:
https://qz.com/1212279/tesl…
http://europe.autonews.com/…
BNG has been moving to LNG for sometime, and are supposed to have it done in the next couple of years.
https://www.google.com/sear…
As to Tesla semis, they are not due until 2019. However, they are on the road right now, running between Nevada and CA. There are already over a 1000 pre-ordered and once they prove how they run, then I think it is fair to say that they will have many more.
As to Peterbilt, Kenworth, etc, they are all throwing mega $ at doing Electric Semis as well.
In fact, multiple EV semi truck are due out over the next 2 years.
BMW, Audi, Lexus and Cadillac are all luxury brands, not everyman vehicles. You simply reinforce my point that the economics of EV production do not yet permit real price competition in most of the car market. That may change over time, but it is going to be a slow process.
So will be the adoption of EV technology for long-haul trucking. All vehicle markets are dominated by their respective average replacement cycles. Long-haul trucks may see faster EV adoption as their replacement cycle is only a fraction that of cars and light trucks, but it’s still not going to happen overnight. And the practicality of EV heavy trucks in cold climates has still to be proven. I don’t expect to see any Teslas on Ice Road Truckers anytime soon.
Actually, BMW 3 series, A4, etc are Everyman cars. They, like TM3, are $30-60k.
The difference is with TM3, the operating costs are a fraction of the ICE vehicle cost.
Are these 15K cars? Nope. Not yet. BUT that is coming in just 3-5 years.
Regardless, in 2 years, ICE passenger vehicles sales will plummet. Even now, car sales are slowing, but in particular, all of Tesla competitor vehicles have slowed way down. The reason is that they used to have a great depreciation, but now depreciate faster than a GM. Nobody wants to buy a 60k car and then see it’s value at 20-30K 2 years later. That is why model S/X/3 are selling so well. That is also why all of the European car makers are now busting a gut to make EVs to beat Tesla.
I think a Tesla able to compete on price with an ICE Hyundai Accent is probably a minimum of 15 years away, not 3 to 5.
You’re delusional if you think ICE vehicle sales will “plummet” in just 2 years. The luxury segment of the U.S. car market absorbed a majority of the 100,000 Teslas built last year and about 2 million of all other brands. Tesla is going to be many long years, if ever, in getting to any sizable share of the U.S. car market, never mind the rest of the world.
The Euros are, indeed, all developing EV’s as are the U.S.-based legacy brands. But I would not describe their efforts as exactly gut-busting in their urgency.
ok, I am delusional. Just like I was when I believed in Musk and SpaceX.
So, Lets wait and see.
By End of 2020/2021, there will be a HUGE plummet in ICE vehicle sales.
As previously noted, the competitive situation in the car market in no way resembles the competitive situation in the space business. You seem to entirely lack a grasp of just how much inertia there is anent major industries like autos.
no, I do NOT miss the inertia.
That is why it will be 2020/2021 that all ICE car sales plummet.
Even now, the car sales HAVE slowed down for the last 2 years;
https://www.statista.com/st…
And that is with the economy doing just fine.
Here are all non-commercial vehicles;
https://www.statista.com/st…
U can see that it drop last year and 2018 is already much lower than 2017.
Economics will be dictating this. EVs will dominate within several years. Simple as that. Fight it all you want, but you will miss a golden opportunity.
You misunderstand me – fairly typically, it seems. I have zero interest in “fighting” EV’s. If they take over the personal transport market, I’m fine with that, at least as long as the gov’t keeps its thumbs off the scales.
But the long-term trend in annual car sales is that we are finally returning to the rates that were typical for several years preceding the onset of The Great Depression 2.0. From the 90’s on, U.S. car demand – absent the aberrant Obama years – was flattening because the increase in U.S. population was roughly offset by the longer useful lifespans of typical automobiles. People keep their cars an average of almost 12 years now. That would have seemed like science fiction in the 60’s.
2018 probably will be down a bit from 2017. The election of Pres. Trump seems to have stoked a bit of a spike in new car sales as his economic and regulatory policies rolled out. Now things are getting back to something resembling the pre-Obama normal.
Annual ICE vehicle sales have varied a lot over the years. Almost none of this variation has been due to a sudden massive shift to EV’s. That isn’t going to happen by 2020 or 2021 either.
Like most progressives, you have a seriously aberrant grasp of cause and effect anent most things, but especially anent economic things.
Oh, last 2 things.
1) the EV semis are a non-issue. They WILL be taking over regular semi trucks. In this case, the EVs costs the same, delivers 500 miles which is about the length of what a truck can go before it is required to pull over for a break. Then charge for 40 minutes and do another 400 miles. And at .10 / kwh, it is a fraction of the costs of diesel. And Tesla is looking at charging .07 / kwh.
2) I would think that as somebody that witnessed how SX has massively changed the market place due to economics, and not really due to massive new technology, that you would realize that EVs will take over ICE. Tesla is doing to ICE car makers, what SpaceX has done to all rocket makers.
Heck, SX was not even the first to land back on solid ground. Lunar module comes quickly to mind. So, does all of the automated landers.
And oddly, it is tesla that has the most interesting new tech out of the 2 companies.
The SX analogy doesn’t hold for the good and sufficient reason that Tesla has yet to achieve competitive economics anent the largest portions of the personal vehicle market. SX has a roughly order of magnitude cost advantage over legacy launch vehicle providers. The minimum production cost of a Tesla EV, though, still comfortably exceeds the selling prices of low-end ICE vehicles, never mind their production costs.
SX also had the advantage of going up against a sleepy and stodgy industry. The world auto industry is neither of those things.
I think Tesla will continue to make decent progress, but it’s not going to pull off any 85-yard touchdown passes. It’ll have to grind out its gains three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust-style.
Actually, in the first 5 years of SX, they were not economical either. It took until fairly recent times for them to be ‘economical ‘ and not need outside help.
Tesla is the same way. The M3 will make the difference. In particular, they should be hitting 250K cars / year by end of June and then over 500K before end of year. According to accountants, around 400K/year of M3 is when Tesla is fully profitable and with their prices continuing downwards.
And when it comes to the 20-25K car, all that is missing is high-end production, which will be this year.
250K cars/yr. is over 20K cars/mo. Tesla is not going to be anywhere near that production rate by June. With luck, it may manage to achieve the 5K cars/mo. number it was looking to have achieved in 4Q 2017 and didn’t. Mass production of vehicles is not easy. Tesla is climbing a steep learning curve, but it has a long way to go before 5-figure/mo. production rates become routine. That won’t happen until next year, at best, and maybe not then.
Perhaps not, but it sure seems to help.
Not at all, renewable is mostly free energy, which can power huge factories, that make batteries to power evs to demand more energy which can come from renewables, industrial at its core, if anything protecting coal is anti industrial as industry requires evolution to function
Renewables are anything but free. The infrastructure for both wind and solar energy is quite pricey, especially compared to fossil-fired baseload capacity given the sporadic nature of renewables and the low efficiency of their pricey infrastructure. Absent massive – and insanely expensive – storage infrastructure, renewables are completely unsuitable as a replacement for fossil-fired baseload capacity.
Or for nuclear-driven baseload capacity for that matter – as the Green-addled Germans are now discovering to their considerable cost.
As soon as you choose to take the King/Queen’s dollar you become part of politics. That is why most of science was funded with private money before the Cold War.
Environmental groups take in billions and with the cost of spacecraft falling thanks to free enterprise they are perfectly welcome to start launching their own satellites.
yes but we aren’t at that point yet and a lot of the work involves sensors that need to be developed, that’s r&d cost and skills that aren’t easily available.
I am sure the researcher’s at universities will take private money if offered to develop them. NASA has no lock on the technology. Of course the universities won’t be able to charge the high overhead they do on tax payer funding from government grants 🙂
no but NASA adds an inherent “credibility” and as a result at least for now they are one of the better paths for the research to be done, they also know what it takes to do it and have the contacts and resources that an environmental group likely wouldn’t have. Does it have to stay like that? No, but in the near term its that or nothing.
The organized Left pretty much specializes in taking over institutions that have developed credibility, then suborning them to their own purposes in the hope that they can ram their illiberal agenda through before anyone notices that formerly credible institutions have become zombies.
Wow.
To be fair, the left is fairly inept. They can not do a fraction of the things u attribute to them.
And as to AGW, most on the far right quit talking smack after kock bros paid the last group of respected scientists on the far right, to destroy the AGW argument, who after going through all the data, refuted the kock Bros and jumped sides.
That alone should be enough for a sensible person.
And if that traitor does not get his way, wrt SATs, namely oco3, then China will be shown to emit 50-100% more than what is attributed to them.
Institutionally, the opponents of the Left have been the more inept. Since unionization of public employees was first enabled in the 60’s, the Left has turned most government agencies into Democratic Party auxiliaries. The Left has also captured essentially all of K-12 public education, nearly all of academe and nearly all of media. Charitable foundations, especially the really big ones, are also lopsidedly Leftist in their missions and grants. These are hardly matters subject to serious dispute.
Those would be the Koch brothers by the way (the name is pronounced like that of the well-known brown fizzy beverage or the equally well-known Peruvian Marching Powder). Or at least the two who are libertarian, Charles and Dave. There are actually four Koch brothers, but the eldest, Fred, is a collector of manuscripts and a philanthropist who has never been high-profile political. Dave’s twin brother Bill is also largely a political non-player who is best known for sponsoring a number of America’s Cup yachts in the 90’s and for an occasionally disorderly personal life.
There are plenty of scientists skeptical of AGW orthodoxy who have never taken any money from the Koch bothers or anyone else in furtherance of their views. Given that so-called “deniers” have now been all but run out of any academic positions in institutional Climate Science, skeptics of AGW with current academic appointments are chiefly located in departments that are, shall we say, Climate Science-adjacent, such as Chemistry, Physics, Computer Science, Mathematics and Statistics.
Still, I would be interested in any links you can provide anent the alleged Koch brothers initiative you describe. I will be doing some looking of my own as well.
https://www.google.com/sear…
First off, living in Douglas County, Colorado, I know the Kock bros all too well. They funded a major effort to destroy public schools in our district, which lowered our home values before getting all of their bastards thrown out of here. However, the damage has been done and it will take decades to regain back decent teachers. Charles & Dave are NOT what I consider true Libertarians, but certainly fund the current GOP and created the nightmare that we have. While they did not fund Trump, they pushed him into the current tax re-write which is a total disaster. And Bill Koch lives here in Colorado and actually is the only sane one of the group. Disorderly? Nothing like those 2.
Secondly, few of the ‘scientists’ that are ‘deniers’ are connected with weather or climate. Even Muller of the above study is NOT a weather/climatologist. BUT, he is one of the FEW that is respected. The others are mostly junk scientists who have absolutely no clue of what they are talking about.
But, The kock bros funded Richard Muller who was at that time, the only real scientist that spoke about against AGW. However, when they got the data and looked over the code for about a year and ran the simulations, he flipped to the other side and now claims that AGW is not only real, but a real disaster in the making. All of which we can see with current storms.
Of course, with the far right fighting against it, that was a huge hit, but I would actually blame the far left for their fighting nuke power, as well as allowing China to add 700 GW of new coal plants JUST TO CHINA. That does not include what they are adding to other nations.
As a knee-jerk progressive, it is unsurprising you are no fan of school choice. I see where a slate of pro school choice members was elected to your county’s school board in Nov. 2013. The ensuing alleged destruction of public schooling seems not to have adversely affected Douglas County property values as you allege. They’ve been rising smartly since 2012.
As for the arch-demons Charles and Dave, what is this weird fascination you have with misspelling and even de-capitalizing their last name?
Wow. U continue to make assumptions because of your being so far right.
I’m a fan of school choice. I went to Catholic high school, and 2 of 3 of my kids attend charter schools. What I’m opposed to is public money going to schools that want to teach their own. Otherwise, are u good with money going to satanic and madrasas schools?
And had u looked up Zillow and looked at 7 years ago, u would have found that Doug co was fastest growing and our house values went up fastest in the state. Now, our house values go up, but very slowly. Otoh, cherry creek and Littleton screamed by us, and even Aurora passed dougco. That is scary.
And knee jerk progressive? Just because I call out gop and traitors? Nope. I am no longer registered as Libertarian, but am a GDI. And will likely continue voting mostly middle of the road.
No assumptions involved. The property value graph for Douglas County I posted is from a major real estate website. The growth rate of real estate values in Douglas County is leveling off, but to a level roughly equal to the growth of the U.S. national economy. Property values that rise appreciably faster than that are unsustainable as we discovered back in 2007 and, before that, in the early 90’s. Before Douglas County’s valuations started back up in 2012, they had fallen precipitously over the preceding four or five years.
The faster growth in property values in counties closer to Denver than Douglas County is unsurprising as well. Property in major metro areas and in well-established suburbs does usually rise in value faster than in places farther out. At least it does so long as the population in those places continues even a modest rate of growth. I gather that that is the case in the Greater Denver area.
You are, in essence, fine with private schools as long as they teach the same left-wing verities as public schools, it seems. The whole idea of private schooling is to teach differently than the statist norm. I don’t think any Satanists are likely to open a charter school in Denver. Satanists aren’t noted for being very flush or for caring much about education for that matter. Nor have Paki-style madrassas exactly swept all before them in the U.S. Besides, as a prog in good standing, aren’t you supposed to worship diversity?
You seem oblivious to the wholesale fraud and conspiracy at the center of latter-day so-called “Climate Science.” If the laboriously cooked “facts” alleged about “Climate Change” are “inconvenient” to the fossil-fuel industry, they are less so than the convenience of the alleged “Climate Change Crisis” is to the agendas of transnational socialists who intend to ride this phony crisis into total control of the world’s economy and politics. The already amply-demonstrated fiction of much “Climate Science” demonstrates that this whole tissue of lies was ginned up for explicitly political purposes.
what happened to “the most important planet to study”
I presume you refer to Earth? I don’t know whom you’re quoting there, but it isn’t me. Not that I disagree with the general sentiment, I’ve just never said that.
Sorry, but you are way wrong there.
No, I’m not.
Me, I think that’s more in the nature of a feature than a bug.
In a way, it is about to be.
Kyoto was a joke and Paris is an guarantee that temps are going up 2+C.
As such, we need to prepare for it.
Agree both Kyoto and Paris were jokes. But it’s far from obvious that global average temperature is rising at all. The surface data says so, courtesy of two or more decades of “adjustments.” Satellite data failed to confirm. The solution of the Climate Change Mafia to this embarrassment is to “adjust” the satellite data too.
I’m all in favor of preparation when the thing one is preparing against is real. If Climate Change is largely – or totally – a mirage, though, “preparation” would be a pointless waste. I’m not really in favor of foregoing preparation for something that might actually be a real danger in order to piss away money on a “crisis” entirely invented by the political Left to advance their world socialist agenda.
Bridenstine has repeatedly stressed these smallsats would supplement but not replace larger government weather satellites like GOES-S.
True, but it still goes again the big flagship science crowd at NASA.
Which has nothing to do with how CONgress critters vote.
You forgot that Rep. Bridenstine owned a Rocket Racing team.
https://www.youtube.com/wat…
Cool
No more anti-science guys, please
The problem is thats the majority when they hear something they don’t like. And also the Scientific community has ALWAYS had plenty of people who are corrupt and who are political.
I woudn’t go so far as to say that Science has always had plenty of people who are corrupt and political, but it sure does these days.
Being highly skeptical of AGW orthodoxy is hardly the same as being “anti-science.”
Both parties push anti-science, on different subjects. You just have to prioritize which anti-science you think is worse.
Here’s a very-relevant example of anti-science coming from the left:
https://www.inquisitr.com/4…
And NASA under Lightfoot is currently SUPPORTING these kinds of anti-science, anti-space-exploration beliefs.
The “space exploration = patriarchy” meme is world-class idiotic to be sure, but it’s only very tangentially anti-science. A more consequential example would be the sizable chunk of American Leftists who are anti-vaxers.
Another would be the completely incoherent beliefs those on the left variously express about gender and sexual orientation. Gays and lesbians, for example, have long claimed – accurately – that their orientations are innate. Most bi-sexuals seem to agree. But much of the rest of the LGBTQ-wah-da-do-dah “community” is equally insistent that gender is fluid and can be volitionally changed like one’s socks – or fishnet thigh-highs as the case may be. And even believers in the innateness of their particular orientation are quite likely to also profess the orthodox left-feminist belief that gender roles are socially constructed.
I’ve often maintained that one of the defining characteristics of any long-time leftist is the ability to withstand doses of cognitive dissonance that should be fatal to an African elephant, never mind a human being.
A fake equivalency. The Democrats are not perfect, but by and large they support and respect science. The Republicans are defined by their lack of respect and hostility toward it. It’s a central tenant of their approach to governing.
I’m sure you believe all this garbage, but none of it happens to be true. Republican lack of respect for climate science derives from the fact that current climate science is in no way respectable. Some religious Christian Republicans don’t believe in biological evolution. But that’s also true of a lot of Democrats including the vast majority of the U.S. black population. In general, the further left a Democrat is, the less he or she tends to respect science. Science is about unraveling the mysteries of reality. Leftism is, to a pretty good first-order approximation, about denying reality in all sorts of ways.