California Dreamin’ . . .

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It’s ironic that the state which birthed and came to define the car culture – cruising on Friday nights, the Beach Boys, Ronnie and the Daytonas – has become the state most hostile toward them.

No more little GTOs really looking fine or little Deuce coupes. Hell, no more Hyundais  . . . unless they’re battery powered.

Here’s Phil . . .

Under the terms of a fatwa crafted by Phil Ting – a member of the California General Assembly from San Francisco – the only new vehicles which will be legal for use on California roads beginning in 2040 will be “clean” vehicles.

“Clean” defined in interestingly incoherent – and arbitrary – terms.

Ting isn’t talking about the actually dirty byproducts of internal combustion – almost all of which have been sequestered and never leaves the tailpipe. That’s been true for decades. He is talking about carbon dioxide, which has become the commie-under-the-bed of our era.

C02 is a gas (and an inert gas) but hardly dirty. It doesn’t foul the air; it doesn’t make it harder to breath. It is a naturally occurring component of the atmosphere – and if it is “dirty” then so are oxygen and nitrogen.   

But C02 is the one impossible to sequester byproduct of internal combustion – which gives it value as the unanswerable trump card of those who need a pretext for banning the cars which they loathe.

This includes electric cars.

One wonders whether Ting groks this – or is just another useful idiot.

EVs do not emit C02, of course.

But the utility plants which produce the electricity which makes them go certainly do. Unless powered by nukes (can’t have that) or unicorn farts or Zero Point energy out of the vacuum – neither of which are online yet or foreseeably.

So if the object of the exercise is to cork up sources of C02, won’t those dirty coal and oil-fired utility plants have to be corked, too? And if they are corked, where will millions of “clean” electric cars obtain the electricity they need to make them go?

Ting does not say. Maybe because he has not thought.

He does say:

“Until you set a deadline, nothing gets done . . . it’s responsible for us to set a deadline 23 years in advance.”

Responsible?

Assuming you buy into the shibboleths, particularly the one about carbon dioxide being “dirty” and the alleged – and allegedly catastrophic – effects on the planet resulting from fractional increases in atmospheric concentrations of C02.

Leave that aside for a moment.

2040 is much closer than it sounds because the car companies – like the Titanic – cannot turn on a dime. It takes years to design a new car and get it ready for the marketplace. And the parameters for new designs are based – these days – at least as much on regulatory fatwas as on market trends.

For instance:

The marketplace hasn’t induced the car companies to “silent recall” most of their six cylinder (and larger) engines – you may have noticed this trend – and replace them with very small fours, very heavily boosted by turbochargers, to recover the power lost by the physical downsizing of the engines.

Nor has the marketplace demanded direct injected engines that turn themselves off automatically every time the car rolls to a stop.  Or automatic transmissions with nine and ten speeds that provide no benefit to the vehicle owner but plenty of liability – in the form of weird operating characteristics (all that up and down shifting) and premature economic obsolescence when they fail and the cost to replace them is disproportionate relative to the worth of the car.

Nor easily-damaged and expensive-to-fix aluminum bodies.

Et cetera – and more to come.

These things have been put into production solely in anticipation of the 54.5 MPG fuel economy fatwa that is scheduled to go into effect beginning with the 2025 models.

If California – the largest single market for cars in the United States – passes a law forbidding the sale of cars powered by internal combustion beginning in 2040, the entire industry will have to make plans on that basis as well.

And that will mean the abandonment of the internal combustion engine long before the actual ban goes into effect. No point investing in new engine (or transmission) technologies – which take years to develop, test and make ready for production – when you know ahead of time that all your efforts will simply be thrown away, including the millions (if not billions) spent on R&D, tooling and so on.

If the California General Assembly actually passes this bill and it is signed into law by Governor Moonbat – who has already expressed enthusiasm – it will mean that the current crop of new cars will be the last generation of new cars.

Of IC-powered new cars, at any rate.

There will be minor updates of the cars currently in production, to keep them as fresh as feasible – but it would be economic suicide for a car company to make any major investment in a technology that will no longer be legal to sell in the biggest market in the country just a few product cycles down the road from now. Particularly if other states follow California’s example, which several probably will.

So the car industry will transition to “clean” electrics – which aren’t.

Meanwhile, C02 will continue to be emitted – just not at the tailpipe. Unless Ting, et al also go after the smokestacks, which they no doubt will. Which – absent the unicorn farts or Zero Point energy pulled out of the vacuum – will mean the end of the EVs, too.

You are maybe beginning to see the picture.

. . .

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69 COMMENTS

  1. It’s “Moonbeam”, Eric, but your characterization of this fruitcake that has ‘served’ FOUR terms as Governor is correct. Others have pointed out the Brown family’s tie to Indonesian oil interests so I won’t repeat them here. Yes, Jerry Brown is a rich boy with his idiotic ideas to turn the one “Golden” State into a haven for flowers and unicorns. The rest of the Dummycrats are quite content to have him occupy the Governor’s mansion; it’ll be interesting to see them scrap over who replaces him as he’s (thankfully) term-limited out.

    For all practical purposes, California has all but outlawed the teenager and his “hot rod”, financed by the kid bagging groceries or pumping gas. Just deal with the DMV and the California Air Resources Board, ironically acronymed ‘CARB’ in building a custom rig, never mind that in terms of actual emissions it might be CLEANER than similar permitted vehicles. Further proof that the “Granola” state (so named because of the fruits, nuts, and flakes) has its head up its ass is how they’ve all but waged war on diesel vehicles. And never mind the many different fuel formulations and the higher fuel taxes, which actually hit the working poor and the small businesses much harder, never mind how the Dummycrats profess to have their interests at heart.

    This year, there will be a trial balloon floated to vote for independence from the USA; which will have no actual effect (unfortunately, California hasn’t embraced the erstwhile Confederacy) save to assess the sentiments of Californians. I’m sure there’s many, especially in many a “red” state in “flyover country”, that would say, “by all means, go, and don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out!”. However, there is yet another political movement, a revival of an idea floated about 75 years ago. As so many Northern California counties (I live in Placer) feel that they’ve little in common with LA, San Diego, the O.C., the Bay Area, and Sacramento itself, and likewise so many across the state line in Oregon feel that Salem and “Portlandia” ignore their interests, there is a movement to create a new state out of those two adjacent parts of CA and OR, which would be called “Jefferson”. So, yes, let “Calipornia” secede from the United States, and those of us which would rather become part of Jefferson will counter-secede back to the Union. Then we’ll wait and watch the new ‘nation’ become a Third World hell-hole.

    http://soj51.org/

  2. I do see a subtle reason why these politicos put these edicts so far into the foreseeable future: They know that they will be dead (literally) by the time full implementation occurs.

    Yes, I am joking (a little bit) when I say that, but politicians thrive on finding ways to take from some and give to others without affecting their personal cut out of the pie. As H L Mencken said over 100 years ago: “An election is just an advance auction of future stolen goods.”

  3. Not sure just how factual this is (it comes from a guy running for governor of California), but….

    http://shellenberger.org/news/2017/12/3/my-faith-in-doubt-why-im-running-for-governor-of-california-part-three

    The gasoline price manipulation could very well be a consequence of yet another dirty Brown deal, I thought.

    Brown has a record:

    Brown’s father raised millions for the Indonesian military dictatorship in the late 1960s. In exchange, the Brown family was rewarded with the sole oil import contract from Indonesia;
    After he was elected governor, Brown manipulated environmental laws to prevent competition to his family’s Indonesian oil import monopoly;
    In 1979, the New York Times published a front-page article about an FBI investigation into unreported contributions from Mexican oil and gas dealers to his campaign in exchange for kickbacks from California energy developers;
    And Brown has kept open the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage center which directly benefits his sister, who serves on the board of the one of the country’s largest natural gas companies.

    It is pretty well known that Al Gore set up a carbon tax trading desk before he started pushing for cap-and-trade legalization. No reason to think that Jerry Brown doesn’t hang out in the same circles and have the same ideas. And why wouldn’t a gas and oil company be in favor of shifting electricity production to unreliable and pathetic “renewable” sources, they can’t compete with natural gas anyway?

    If any of these idiots were serious they’d be making it easy for nuclear power to compete instead of allowing any fool with a grudge to stop a plant from being built.

    • True this. Cap and Trade has been a great windfall for those evil oil corporations the same way the Affordable Care Act has been a godsend to Health Insurance stock prices.

    • Yup, the most strict and crazy greenies want the human population slashed, some want to under 500 million, yes, worldwide. Of course they think they need to be the ones left………

  4. dadgummed eedjits… don’t they realise that “fossil fuels_ are made of …CARBON? And WHERE does that carbon come from? Dummies, it comes from the AIR… as in, the carbon dioxide IN the air. Without that, no plants grow. Without plants, no animals can grow. End all carbon dioxide emissions, life on earth comes to a screeching halt. LIterally. These guys musta been stoned when basic biology was taught in grade school.. they never learne,d or forgot, or more likley are wilfully ingnoring the “carbon cycle”. I’d like to give some of these clowns a little lesson in understanding carbon and plants.. by taking a baseball bat, made of carbon from trees, which fixed carbon from the atmosphere to make the wood, and work over their empty crania for a while. Maybe knock a bit of sense into those vast caverns of foolishness.

    And the PEOPLE of that insane state ELECTED THEM? Now THERE is the root of the problem.

    • Government schools tell them CO2 is bad so they vote for people who say CO2 is bad. People generally do not think. They repeat what they hear. IMO Nothing gets better except for temporary bright spots until government loses the schools.

  5. Great! (if it passes)
    More air pollution @ the Grand Canyon & other natural wonders due to the massive new COAL fired power plants which will be required to power “zero emission” vehicles in California.
    Out of sight, out of mind, as far as the Hollywood types & Gov. Moonbeam are concerned.

    How about “zero emission” container ships, while we are at it?
    Let’s get Elon Musk on the “massive battery” technology right away!
    Or maybe atomic powered cargo ships?
    Works for aircraft carriers, right?
    So why don’t we have them *NOW*, eh?

    • i’m sure that some of them actually think that way, but the elephant in the room is the fact that CO 2 is as necessary to life on this earth as water, and CO 2 levels are dangerously low. No one disputes that CO2 levels are at around 400 parts per million. Historically, granted we’re talking ancient history; CO2 levels were in the tens of thousands of ppm which turned the earth into a veritable paradise.
      Commercial greenhouse farming operations usually grow three to four times as much as a farmer growing on open ground, and when CO 2 levels get down to 150 ppm, ALL live on this planet becomes extinct. How low do they want to go, and how to they plan to keep CO2 levels at a sustainable level to keep us alive?

  6. So – Federal Border Patrol will be driving electric cars out in the desert to hunt down felons. Somehow this doesn’t seem effective but maybe that is the plan. Disable ICE and Border Patrol.

  7. Has anyone done a study showing how many new electric power plants would have to be built to power a nation of 200 million cars and trucks? The electrical equivalent of hundreds of millions of gallons of diesel and gasoline used daily in America alone must be staggering.

    • The answer is there won’t be 200 million cars and trucks.

      The lack of power will also be used to get to the point that rationing and limiting the power generated to increase prices forces the peasants off the road.

      • Not if they open the marketplace. There will be tons of money to be made to supply the extra demand.

        Of course, they will never open the marketplace to energy.

  8. The factory hard case for one of my pistols has a large sticker on it that reads “Not Legal in the State of California”. That just adds to its appeal for me.

    • I think you just hit on the solution.

      Keep manufacturing cars for the other 49 and just tag them with “this vehicle not legal for sale or use in the state of California.”

  9. I rather like Mr. Peters columns on the Burning Platform but I guess there is a reason I have to read them here.

    Yes it is sad. Little Deuce Coup was a facsinating song. It made it clear that if you knew enough and had some money you could make your car ‘better’. Its probably safe to say that the Beach Boys sold more after market parts than any other musical group in history. My heroes in high school were the boys who could put a 289 Ford power plant into an Austin Healy 3000. They were ‘smart’ in a good way!

    • Interesting to compare the car songs of the Beach Boys, and Jan & Dean.

      The drivers of J&D’s cars were often females, like the High School girl who “got her daddy’s car,” and went “cruising the hamburger stand,”…….and the Little Old Lady From Pasadena. And the girl was driving a (presumably stock,) T-Bird, while parked in the little old lady’s garage was a “Brand New Shiny Red Super-Stock Dodge.” No aftermarket wrenching.

      Or did the Beach Boys do “Fun Fun Fun” first? Or did Brian Wilson write it, then just “give” the song to Jan & Dean? Or was that song in question actually “Surf City?” It’s all getting hazy in the fog of history. 🙂

    • the REAL crazies were the ones dropping smallblock chev engines into those cars. Funny thing.. dumping that long and monstrously heavy Standard Six they cadged from the tractors when the works first built the 100/6 in about 1957, later the 3000 models, not only more then doubled the horsepower, but pulled enough weight out of, and further back from the front wheels, those “tractors” no longer “plowed” any more… that is, they no longer understeered. Pretty close to neutral balance. Of course, those hot Chev powerplants never returned the great fuel ecomony of the stock cars…. mid to high 30’s per gallon. Perhaps a well tuned 260 or 289 could come closer.

  10. Just to clarify….older cars will not be forbidden from driving the roads in 2040. But from that point forward, only Kali certified “clean” vehicles will be legal to sell as new cars? That still totally sucks.

    For the last 3 years, I’ve encouraged my friends who are tax paying, legal citizens of that state to leave soon, before Kali builds it’s own version of The Berlin Wall, to prevent the escape of them…and their assets. They used to think I was just being snarky. But since the San Fran court verdict that it is OK for illegal aliens to murder white American women….they are beginning to wake up and smell the toxic brew.

    • No, ICE cars will not be allowed to be registered at all in California. They will have to ban them in Oregon and Washington as well for this to work.

  11. Done worry too much Eric… Am sure there will be some sort of exemption for him and his buddies so they can all get their V8 Suburbans (probably armoured) on the grounds of national security or something…. God forbid anything happen to them… who will look over us plebs then……

  12. Eric wrote:

    “You are maybe beginning to see the picture.”

    Crystal clear.

    The future of humanity is superfluousness: billions of unneeded people, displaced by AI systems, all kept under control in the Borg Hive collectives of inner cities, shuttled around in drone cars, in drone planes, drone trains, all happily consuming their way to government approved happiness on UBI credits, while under total surveillance.

    HG Wells called them “Eloi”.

    • It’s only a matter of time before the world’s population consists of:

      1 – Internet billionaires.
      2 – 10 billion poor people.
      3 – Maybe like five or six guys with the right combination of skills and experience to actually get a middle-class job.

    • You can see the glimmerings of this future in the mega cities of east Asia like Hong Kong and Tokyo, except that most of the residents there are “productive” worker bees taking mass transit to/from work, and the rich few glide along in their Rolls Royces.

  13. Humans, and all other forms of life on the planet, are carbon based. Only a Luddite LibTard could think that the very building blocks of all life on earth are “pollutants”. Liberals are a unique and very deadly combination of gross ignorance and calculating evil.

    • Try breathing some carbon monoxide and then tell me that the very building blocks of life, in certain compounds, can’t be considered “pollutants”.

      • try breating straoight 100% oxygen for a day or two and you wil find how toxic THAT gas is when not in proper balance. Same goes for nitrogen, and hydrogen, too.

        The God who made this earth designed the perfect blend of gasses for the atmosphere to sustein both plant and animal life.. else this dirball would be a flaming desert by now.

      • The problem with Californians is that they think the rest of the country if not the rest of the world would do well to copy things that solve uniquely California problems or are favored only by Californians. It’s a bad form of control freakism that thinks everyone else should be like them and has their issues.

        Generating electricity outside of the LA basin makes sense because of the geography there. It would be a property rights issue in a free society just like all pollution issues. As such the geography would likely cause power plants to be located elsewhere to comply with not harming the neighbors. But for most places this need not apply.

        • Calfornians over-estimate their importance and the effect on the rest of the country and the world. I keep hearing how CA is the eighth, then seventh, and so on largest ‘economy’ in the World…never mind that it’s part of the USA and likely things would be far different IF it were it’s own country, which Whitley Strieber, in his 1984 novel “WarDay”, happened as a consequence of a “limited” nuclear war between the USA and the USSR in 1988. What was left of the Federal Government occupied only half of the Federal Building in Los Angeles, the rest being leased out to California. A book with a happy ending…

  14. i do not need them telling me what I need for a vehicle what I really need is a 1/2 ton 4wd V8 auto pick up no Abs air bag no electronic crap It just needs to haul my boat go to the lumber yard take my trash to the dump pull a random tree out of the woods I only travel about 5000 miles per year can some one just build what we need

    • Sure they can build it. They built millions of them in the early 90’s and they were the most reliable pickups you could buy and still are. I need an ext. cab for Cholley Jack and meters and tools and such. I have a short bed now and won’t have another since it’s the only one I’ve ever had. I’d rather have a 3/4 T because of the axle, brakes, and such but GM half tons are pretty stout….and reliable. I’d rather have a diesel but the old 350’s just went forever….and still do. I like the body style better, the ride better, the handling better and the egress and ingress one hell of a lot better. R 12 a/c and very little to no electronics. They have great a/c, reliable PW’s and locks and good frames. Dodges would be nearly as good if you could hear yourself think in one.

      My one ton diesel 4WD, ext. cab, long bed got better mileage than my 4WD short bed Nissan. 1/2 t models got over 20 mpg often in 2 WD with ext. cab and a 350 auto. Pickups only got bigger and thirstier and less reliable after the early 90’s. The 5.7L GM’s got less mileage, less miles per engine and more electronic problems. It’s easy to see the apogee of pickups.

      • I currently have a 4.8l 2001 gmc half ton with the floor shift for 4wd the only thing I do not like about it is the front hubs lock in 4lo wish it had manual hubs so I could back the boat around on hard surface most of the gm trucks I have had get around 17 mpg except the old square body I had that had a built 350 that got around 12mpg but it was the best plow truck with the straight front axle

  15. Enron had it right.

    These Commiefornians are going to push their power generation out-of-state, and then run on all EVs.

    Take control the market that sells them their power that they now have to import, and then jack up the prices. Make them pay dearly for their stupid irrational denial of reality.

    Side benefit: choke Screwgle and Faceplant where they live

    • It’s sad because most Californians would not be in favor of this. It’s the hipster type people who do not rely on actual vehicles or can afford to buy high dollar hybrids and EV’s.

    • It’s not the hipsters, they’re generally harmless and spend all their money on coffee.

      I’ve lived in California for 20 years now, in Silicon Valley, and I see two types advocating this. The first type is the affluent, educated tech type. Their job involves building complex systems and being praised for their intelligence. It results in a form of arrogance where they believe society is a system that they can engineer, and believe that their intelligence is higher than that of ordinary man. The second kind is the tree hugging nut. These people generally have a good white collar job, are guilty of their high income, and need to “do something”. They’re very liberal on the political scale, their head is generally empty, and the think vaccines are a conspiracy.

      Then, there’s everyone else who works for a living who doesn’t have the luxury of buying more expensive things to feel good about themselves. These are not the people who have a voice in politics.

      This state is imploding. It’s a beautiful place with a lot of wealth, but they’re draining it down, all the while letting critical infrastructure rot, and our politicians are busy fighting who gets a pension bonus and who gets to use which bathroom instead of addressing real problems.

        • Because they’re authoritarian do gooders. They shouldn’t have mandated them, but I think you’re foolish not to vaccinate. Then again, maybe I have the perspective of living in poor parts of Africa and seeing people die from diseases we don’t have here because of vaccines.

            • Salt contains sodium, that explodes in water. It also contains Chlorine, that’s a deadly poison. Why don’t people die choking and explode when they put salt on their food?

              Vaccines contain thimerosol and aluminum in the same way. Your body metabolizes it, and you pee out 100% of the mercury the same day. I lined up for my thimerosol based smallpox vaccine so I wouldn’t die, it was a good trade off.

              Pepto bismol is busmuth, a mineral. When you cook in cast iron pots, you eat iron. None of this is harmful.

              • Aluminum crosses the blood-brain barrier… ever wondered why Alzheimer’s and nervous system disorders (Parkinson’s, etc) are so prevalent?

                Mercury is peed out? Got any reality based information to back such statements up?

                A future laden with health issues is a guarantee if you choose to subject yourself to that crap.

                Just for fun (and it is a fun one) check out a skit called The Flu Shot, done by Canadian Air Farce, on YouTube.

                • Actually, yes, I have wondered. Best as I can tell, it’s because people are living longer, we diagnose those diseases better, and we’re all prescribed statin drugs in our older age to reduce cholesterol, which have been show to damage the brain, unlike vaccines, where the link is present only in conspiracy nut circles who can’t accept that Andrew Wakefield was a corrupt charlatan.

                  • So statin drugs show damage to the brain. Pick your poison. Big Pharma manufactures all of it, for a pretty big buck- it is not about health at all. I won’t tell you that the link about that is present only in conspiracy nut circles… that would be silly.

                    • Dad’s been on blood pressure meds for about a decade now. He has all the signs of dementia or maybe alzheimer’s, but mom won’t do anything about it. Some days I can’t even talk to him it is so bad. He knows something is very wrong with his memory but because the damn doctors are the “experts” and I’m a college dropout my opinion is worthless.

                  • Do actual research on Dr. Wakefield, instead of just taking the first google result. He, and the other respected doctors persecuted with him, were victims of a witch hunt. There was a three year “trial” which wasn’t a real trial because it wasn’t a real court. It was the British General Medical Council court, which is parallel to the real court system, in the same way that the Nazi People’s Court operated in parallel to the real German court system.
                    Just a few years ago the GMC went after another doctor who defended her patient’s choice to not vaccinate her children, and the lady fought back. The result was that the GMC official position is now that vaccines are not necessary for good health.

                    • Hi Chris,

                      We live in a time when a little paranoia with regard to anything the government and big corporations are up to is the best vaccination there is. I am particularly suspicious of the pharmaceutical industry, which I rank right up there with the insurance mafia. They are invariably up to no good.

              • Now what if you’re a very young child with a immune system that is still developing and instead of a few vaccines for deadly diseases you’re facing a series of vaccines for all sorts of diseases, some of which are a nuisance but usually not much more than that while others are contracted through various adult behaviors.

                Not every vaccine is a small pox risk/benefit ratio, but politically it’s made that way.

    • We in what will become Jefferson will put a sluice gate at the Feather River and charge “California” a buck a gallon for the water coming out of Lake Oroville.

  16. Reality will eventually come back on this witch hunt over Co2.

    Economic reality that is.

    CO2 is NOT a “dangerous’ gas. WE BREATH CO2 out. Plants eat it.

    This Environmental dogma will run the same course as other dogma in history. Like the one the “banned” Alcohol and gave rise to the mobs.

    IT is time get off this merry go round. (I will keep my 1994 Firebird and fight any attempt to “outlaw” my car too!

    • Sad but my parents will fortunately pass away before they have to experience the nightmare of driverless cars and all electric vehicles which my wife and I will see in our time. Cash will be banned too.

    • heres how to wind up a lefty tree huger for fun….. tell him that a big V8 truck is very green…. they will tell you its not…. you tell em it gives off a lot of CO2, and that its good for plants and trees….. hence why its green… he wont be able to process and rationalise it….. and that will drive them nuts 😀

      • When accosted with sneers and commentary from the California/Oregon fruitbats here in occupied Arizona, I like to point out that whichever of the “ecological disaster” hot rods I am driving is far more environmentally friendly than their Priuses (Pri-i? What in the hell is the plural?) or other eco-mobiles. My cars are 86 and 54 years old, respectively and largely assembled from recycled parts. How many ecowagons will ever make that claim? The Model A paid off it’s “carbon debt” when Al Gore was leaving the “Inconvenient Truth” in his diapers. During the construction of the Comet, I found that in virtually every junkyard I had to wade through a sea of Prius/Leaf/etc in order to find a Fox-body Mustang or a Grand Marquis. Not much likelihood of repairing all that plastic economically – just total it and walk away. All this environmentalism is nothing more than a religion for the extremely simple minded.

    • I too will fight it, but not in court or through voting. Mass civil disobedience is the best way to fight. When they tell you you can’t, do it anyway.

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