Search






Jeff's Amazon.com Wish List

Archive Calendar

December 2024
M T W T F S S
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
3031  

Archives

The future is in electric vehicles!

— Which, evidently, will need to be refitted so that they can run on, say, gasoline. Once the electricity is all used up and the coal plants all bankrupted and shut down, I mean.

Progress!

GenOn Energy Inc. plans to close five of its older coal-fired power plants in Pennsylvania over the next four years.

The company, based in Houston, said Wednesday that tough new environmental rules make it unprofitable to operate the plants, which generate a total of 3,140 megawatts of electricity. The plants are in Portland, Shawville, Titus, New Castle and Elrama. Two plants in Ohio and one in New Jersey will also be closed. The company said the timeframes are subject to further review based on market conditions.

The Sierra Club said in a statement that closing the plants will prevent about 179 premature deaths, 300 heart attacks and 2,800 asthma attacks each year.

“Above all, this is a win for public health and for families who have been breathing polluted air from these outdated plants,” said Bruce Nilles, Senior Director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign.

And a loss for those who relied on the plants for power, jobs, and the like, and who don’t believe the junk science that strains to turn correlation into causation for political purposes.

But really, that’s just nitpicking.

(h/t JD)

9 Replies to “The future is in electric vehicles!”

  1. Ernst Schreiber says:

    Solar panels and pinwheels attached to tiny little generators (the kind you find an a hobby store) will keep your battery charged.

    And really, in Barak Obama’s america, isn’t owning a personal vehicle a privilege? The kind they reserve for high party officials.

  2. leigh says:

    So, how long until we see the Rickshaw become a means of transportation in major cities?

    Jobs, baby!

  3. Ernst Schreiber says:

    It’s our own fault really. What with the way we’ve greedily consumed more than our fair share of the planet’s limited resources.

    We need to be punished.

  4. leigh says:

    Too Calvinist for my tastes. I think I’ll leave all the lights on.

  5. batboy says:

    I wonder what people were dying of in the 14th century? That is, after all, where the Sierra Club wants us, right?

    I foresee a day when we’ll mostly be peasants, living off subsistence farming, ruled over by our horse-riding betters, the Sierra Club.

  6. dicentra says:

    the junk science that strains to turn correlation into causation

    They don’t even have correlation, e.g., the Vostok ice core shows CO2 levels rising 800–1200 years after the atmosphere warms.

    Plus all this.

    Instead, they insist that certain special trees whose rings don’t reflect local temperature variations (as Mann calculates it) must needs be “teleconnected” to the global climate instead.

  7. Squid says:

    So, how long until we see the Rickshaw become a means of transportation in major cities?

    You’re joking, right?

  8. leigh says:

    Well I thought I was, Squid.

  9. Pellegri says:

    I wonder how they came by those numbers and what their correlation and error are. Because if they’re as bad as the ones on a recent article in Science about ~le climate~, they’re literally just inventing numbers.

Comments are closed.