Posted on 07/27/2022 4:18:15 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Connecticut is a small state, so you may not be paying sufficient attention to its heroic efforts to save the planet. Count on the Manhattan Contrarian to bring you up to date on the latest developments.
On Friday (July 22) Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont signed the just-passed bipartisan Clean Air Act for the state. Lamont and other state officials gathered in New Haven in 90+ degree heat to celebrate the great accomplishment. A State Senator named Will Haskell, who is a member of the legislature’s Transportation Committee, took the occasion to make the main point:
We cannot wait for Washington to step up and save the planet!
But how exactly is Connecticut going to accomplish that? After all, it has a population of only about 3.6 million. Its greenhouse gas emissions are in the range of about 41 MMTCO2e per year, which is well less than 0.1% of total world annual emissions of about 49,000 MMTCO2e. You could zero out Connecticut’s emissions entirely, and it wouldn’t even amount to a rounding error in the world total. Indeed, the increase that occurs each year in China’s CO2 emissions is a multiple of Connecticut’s total emissions. (According to Our World in Data here, from 2019 to 2020, latest years given, China’s CO2 emissions went from 10.49 to 10.67 billion tons, a one-year increase of about 180 million tons, or well more than four times the total annual emissions of Connecticut.)
But our heroes in Connecticut are not going to let such mere statistics discourage them. They have a plan. And the plan, included as the central feature in the new Clean Air Act, is to electrify the state’s fleet of vehicles, particularly its city buses and school buses. Here is state Transportation Commissioner Joe Giuletti speaking at the July 22 event, quoted in the New Haven Register:
“There are approximately 800 buses that we are responsible for at the DOT that are being replaced with no-emissions electric models. They’re quieter, they emit no emissions and they last longer,” Giulietti said Friday.
Governor Lamont also issued a statement emphasizing that the new law would bring about conversion of all the state buses to electric within a few years:
In addition to the electric state-run buses, public school buses will also shift to electric models, according to the governor’s statement. The Clean Air Act will also prohibit the procurement of diesel-powered buses after 2023, according to the statement.
I particularly enjoyed this statement from Transportation Commissioner Giuletti, this time quoted at the website of television station WTNH:
Department of Transportation Commissioner Joe Giulietti remarked, “it’s so nice to hear a bus that’s behind you that’s not making the noise or emitting any of the air, either the propane or the diesel fumes.”
Note the clear implication that Giuletti has never actually ridden on one of these city buses himself, nor would he ever deign to do that. City buses are for the little people. It’s just that when he gets near one, he wants it to be more suitable to his elite esthetic.
The New Haven Register added that the new electric bus program represents a build-out of a pilot program that began with the delivery of some 12 electric buses in 2020. The Register quotes Connecticut Transportation Department spokesman Josh Morgan:
“The first battery electric buses came into service in the fall of 2020,” Morgan said. “Today, there are 12 electric buses in Connecticut. . . .”
And then, as luck would have it, on the very next day, July 23, one of those 12 electric buses already in Connecticut’s fleet suddenly exploded into flames while sitting in a parking lot in the town of Hamden. Here is a picture of the event, courtesy of the Hamden Fire Department:
It’s really quite something when one of those big lithium-ion batteries suddenly explodes into flames. As usual with these lithium fires, they couldn’t extinguish it with water or anything else, and they just had to let it burn itself out.
“Lithium ion battery fires are difficult to extinguish due to the thermal chemical process that produces great heat and continually reignites,” Hamden fire officials said.
Fortunately, no one was on the bus, and it was out of service on a Saturday morning.
The Connecticut officials reacted to the incident by immediately pulling the entire electric bus fleet from service. The Register quotes CT Transit spokesman Josh Rickman:
“The importance of rider safety is demonstrated by taking these buses out of service and ensuring a thorough investigation is completed prior to any redeployment of the fleet,” Rickman said.
No word as yet as to when, if ever, the electric buses may go back into service. Perhaps Connecticut may have to look around for some other way to save the planet.
When the sun becomes a red giant star then all of this will still be just as moot as when the “save the planet” action happened in the first place.
Batteries are less efficient at storing power than gasoline. They lose some of their power at all times no matter what. Like on weekends when they’re not used. Call it “shelf life.” Much more energy is needed to generate the electricity than is found in gasoline. But because the vehicle is “zero emissions” they think they have done something good.
““There are approximately 800 buses that we are responsible for at the DOT that are being replaced with no-emissions electric models. They’re quieter, they emit no emissions and they last longer,” Giulietti said Friday. “
The pic says all.
Never is there a discussion of spontaneous combustion.
Never park anything like that in your garage.
These people are deranged. A bunch of nonsense worshiping children who facilitate child molestation.
It’s a funny thing, but when I woke up this morning I wondered which state of the union would step up and save the planet. Connecticut popped into my mind immediately.
My BIL retired from GM, but still follows them. He said that their new Ultium battery platform was designed to minimize fires by separating the many sub-cells with fire-resistant partitions.
He claimed that one of the problems with big lithium batteries and fire is that as one cell goes up, it melts the structure around it, causing internal short circuits, which cause the adjacent cells to catch fire, in a chain reaction.
True? I dunno... but sounds consistent with the way these things sometimes burn and burn and burn.
It is amazing to me that these climate warriors actually think they can control climate down to a minute carbon particle and to also actually control what the sun does (by all that I have read). DO they even stop to realize that the earth itself, naturally releases methane gases.
The sad joke is that few people in CT even TAKE the bus. Most of our jobs are suburb to suburb, not suburb to central Hartford or New Haven. Note the relative small sizes of CT’s largest cities (and shrinking!).
Buses are just a huge boondoggle, and trains (except Metro North, but only to New Haven) are worse.
Lamont and other state officials gathered in New Haven in 90+ degree heat to celebrate their stupidity!
I do not know why they would celebrate their gullibility. The dominant greenhouse gas affecting climate change is water vapor in conjunction with the Sun and its associated activity (Sunspots, flares, etc.).
The Sun has been the cause of climate change for millions of years. Democrats cannot change that no matter how much money they spend.
Jackasses
I used to live downwind from a “green” ethanol plant.
The worst air pollution you could imagine. An acidic smell that toasted your nostrils every morning.
I think everyone at every level of .gov should be forced in to EV’s.
Looks like a lot of carbon in that black smoke.
Batteries are like 80% effective. That means, every charge/discharge cycle, you are loosing about 20% of the energy. Just in the batteries!
Are you hot?
Burn the frak up.
lulz.
Good game.
Just a dumb question, but without the warmth of an ICE engine, how are they heating these busses in the winter? And running the AC in the summer?
I guess for the politicos it just ‘comes out of the wall outlet’ and that’s all you need to know.
Before I retired (and before I mostly worked at home) I used to take the commuter bus to Hartford.
(The post Covid work at home movement now has most of those buses empty, btw.)
It felt like Jim Crow in the Deep South.
The white people used the commuter bus to drive from their leafy suburbs into the city skyscraper offices in the morning and then back in the evening.
The black and brown people were on the city buses that went within areas of the city of Hartford.
The reason the CT liberals have to do so much virtue signaling is that they rule in one of the most segregated states in the country.
Their secret—use “Save the Earth” posturing to keep their outer suburbs and rural areas free from development—don’t want the peons moving out there.
After a while the hilarious lies become background noise, kinda like birds singing every morning.
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