MEMO to Those who voted for the GOP

MEMO

To: Those who voted for the GOP
From: The scientific community
Date: From now until eternity
Re: Don't fuck with our planet

You don't get to vote on the periodic table.

You don't get to vote on the strength of the electromagnetic interaction.

This is the basis for chemistry, including the chemistry of the atmosphere.

Greenhouse gases are transparent to visible light but absorb infrared light. Atoms (like argon) and homonuclear diatomic molecules (like O2 and N2) cannot absorb infrared light. This is fundamental physical chemistry. You don't get to vote on that.

The major non-precipitating greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are first and foremost, CO2; then methane (natural gas), and oxides of nitrogen. All three now have very large man-made sources that need to be reduced. You DID get to vote on that, and you blew it.

Global warming is not a hoax. It is real.

Global warming is not our worst problem. Worse problems like severe economic inequality, racism, misogyny, war, and nuclear proliferation come to mind. You DID get to vote on that, too, and you voted for more!

Global warming is not our worst problem but it makes all of our other problems worse. The US military considers global warming a major threat to our national security.

A coalition of 25 military and national security experts, including former advisers to Ronald Reagan and George W Bush, has warned that climate change poses a “significant risk to US national security and international security” that requires more attention from the US federal government.

and

Last year, the Department of Defense called climate change a “threat multiplier” which could demand greater humanitarian or military intervention and lead to more severe storms that threaten cities and military bases and heightened sea levels that could imperil island and coastal infrastructure. In January, the Pentagon ordered its officials to start incorporating climate change into every major consideration, from weapons testing to preparing troops for war.

How has the GOP responded?

This new focus has not been warmly welcomed by Republicans, with Colorado congressman Ken Buck proposing an amendment that would bar the Pentagon from spending money on adapting to climate change.

“When we distract our military with a radical climate change agenda, we detract from their main purpose of defending America from enemies like Isis,” Buck said in July.

This is crazy talk.

Without a concerted effort to reduce our carbon emissions, the world will soon (by 2028 or so) have more than enough greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to warm the planet by 2°C or more, with devastating results.This will be like a slow cooker, not a fast one, so it will be another decade or so until the inevitable happens before the middle of the century. These are the consequences of putting another 1000 Gt of CO2 into the atmosphere since 1880. This is fundamental physical chemistry. You don't get to vote on that.

As John Abraham wrote in The Guardian, "Anyone who voted for Trump shares the responsibility for the climate damages resulting from his presidency".

You cannot hide from this responsibility. We will not let you forget. Nor will our ALL of our children (yours, too). Nor their children. Nor their children.

It is on you.

Vote as if your life depended on it. It does.

The Paris accords are now international law.[1]

Under the agreement, all governments that have ratified the accord, which includes the US, China, India and the EU, now carry an obligation to hold global warming to no more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels. That is what scientists regard as the limit of safety, beyond which climate change is likely to become catastrophic and irreversible.

It is clear that Trump would not honor any such agreement.[2]

The Paris Agreement on climate change—the groundbreaking new global climate pact—comes into force on November 4. If Donald Trump is elected four days later, he has said he will “cancel” it.  

In OnymousGuy's opinion, this would push the world into climate disaster by the end of the century.

Since this issue is paramount, Onymous Guy has tried to answer some key questions about global warming and climate change.

Is 2°C of warming "a dangerous amount of warming"?
How much warming have we had since the beginning of the industrial age?
How close are we to 2°C of warming?
What is in the air now?
When do we hit the carbon ceiling?
Could it get worse?
Will Republicans in office help?
What can I do to make a difference?

Is 2°C of warming "a dangerous amount of warming"? Far too dangerous.

Here are some of the consequences.[3]

A rise of 2°C is considered the most the Earth could tolerate without risking catastrophic changes to food production, sea levels, fishing, wildlife, deserts and water reserves. Even if rises are pegged at 2C, scientists say this will still destroy most coral reefs and glaciers and melt significant parts of the Greenland ice cap, bringing major rises in sea levels.

“We have had a global temperature rise of almost 1°C since the industrial revolution and have already seen widespread impacts that have had real consequences for people,” said climate expert Professor Chris Field of Stanford University. “We should therefore be striving to limit warming to as far below 2°C as possible. However, that will require a level of ambition that we have not yet seen.”

Does this sound dangerous to you?

How much warming have we had since the beginning of the industrial age? Far too much.

Globally, the average temperature has increased by 1°C since 1880, but this includes the seas as well as the land. We live on land, not water, and most of the population (about 89% of it [4]) lives in the northern hemisphere, which has 68% of the world's land area.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Global_hemispheres.svg

 Land in the northern hemisphere has already experienced 2°C (that is 3.6°F) of warming since the 1880s.

Source: https://tamino.files.wordpress.com/2016/10/nasa_land_nhem_1yr.jpg

Remember that this is an average temperature increase, and fluctuations can easily double that, so the population in the northern hemisphere has seen an increase in the frequency of days that are 4°C warmer on the average.

Source: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_17/dice.gif

James Hansen, former director of , wrote[5] that these very warm days are ten times more likely:

An important change is the emergence of a subset of the hot category, extremely hot outliers, defined as anomalies exceeding +3σ. The frequency of these extreme anomalies is about 0.13% in the normal distribution, and thus in a typical summer in the base period only 0.1-0.2% of the globe is covered by such hot extremes. However, we show that during the past several years the global land area covered by summer temperature anomalies exceeding +3σ has averaged about 10%, an increase by more than an order of magnitude compared to the base period.

Cool days still occur, but with less frequency. Very warm days occur more frequently than in the past. The effect of warming is seen in the shift of the distribution of temperature anomalies as shown below.

Frequency of occurrence (vertical axis) of local June-July-August temperature anomalies (relative to 1951-1980 mean) for Northern Hemisphere land in units of local standard deviation (horizontal axis). Temperature anomalies in the period 1951-1980 match closely the normal distribution ("bell curve", shown in green), which is used to define cold (blue), typical (white) and hot (red) seasons, each with probability 33.3%. The distribution of anomalies has shifted to the right as a consequence of the global warming of the past three decades such that cool summers now cover only half of one side of a six-sided die, white covers one side, red covers four sides, and an extremely hot (red-brown) anomaly covers half of one side. Image credit: NASA/GISS.

Hansen et al. emphasize that, while weather might dictate where such heat waves occur, the increased frequency is due to global warming.

Specific meteorological patterns help explain where the high pressure regions that favor high temperature and drought conditions occur in a given summer, but the unusually great temperature extremities and the large area covered by these hot anomalies is a consequence of global warming, which is causing the bell curve to shift to the right.

The most obvious consequences include an increase in the frequency and intensity of forest fires, heat waves, and increased mortality.

Source: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_17/

Wang et al [6] have studied various temperature scenarios and have reported that up to 40% of the land area could experience "extremely hot" summers. (σ is defined in terms of local variability)

If the global mean temperature increases 2°C relative to the pre-industrial level, “extremely hot” summers are projected to occur over nearly 40% of the land area (multi-model ensemble mean projection). Summers that exceed 5σ warming are projected to occur over approximately 10% of the global land area, which were rarely observed during the reference period.

 Percentages of global land areas hit by summer temperature extremes.

The time series spans from 1901 to 2005. The thick lines are the results of 26 individual models averages. The shading in the plots denotes the 1σ uncertainty range of the 26 CMIP5 models.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0130660.g002

 They add the caution

The area that experiences summers with warming of 5σ or more above the warming target of 2°C is likely to maintain rapid expansion of greater than 17%/°C. To reduce the impacts and damage from severely hot summers, the global mean temperature increase should remain low.

How close are we to 2°C of warming? Far too close

Chris Mooney, science correspondent for the Washington Post, wrote

Right now, due to causes ranging from deforestation to transportation, the world is emitting about 52.7 billion tons, or gigatons, of carbon dioxide equivalents per year as of 2014. That’s mostly just plain carbon dioxide, but it also includes emissions of methane, nitrous oxide, and other greenhouse gases that are converted into units comparable to carbon dioxide. If you leave those out, the pure carbon dioxide emissions are about 36 billion tons per year.

However, to hold global warming below 2 degrees (at least with good odds), the world can emit no more than 1,000 gigatons of carbon dioxide from the year 2011 onwards — the famous carbon budget. And given that it’s 2016 already, that number has already shrunken a good bit, by about 150 gigatons.

What is in the air now?

Here's the math. For non-SI folks, a metric tonne is 1000 kilograms (kg) or a megagram (Mg). A thousand metric tonnes is a gigagram (Gg), and a million metric tonnes is a teragram (Tg).  One thousand million metric tonnes (a gigaton) is a petagram (Pg) or 1000 Tg, and a thousand gigatons is an exagram (Eg).

The total mass of dry air in the atmosphere is 5148 Eg [8] or 5,148,000 Gt , and we currently have about 400 ppmv (that is, parts per million by volume) CO2 [10], so the atmosphere currently contains about 3122 Gt CO2. The effect of methane, NOx, and other greenhouse gases boost this to 485 ppmv CO2e, adding another 664 Gt CO2e.

Here are some conversion factors [9]:

(1) 1 ppmv of CO2= 2.13 Gt of carbon. * (44.01/12.011) = 7.80 Gt CO2e

so the current amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is 3129 Gt CO2.

(2) 400 ppmv CO2 = 400 ppmv*7.80 Gt/ppmv CO2 =  3129 Gt CO2

and

(3) (485-400)=85 ppmv CO2e = 85*7.80 Gt =  664 Gt CO2

When do we hit the carbon ceiling? Too damn soon.

The carbon ceiling is one thousand Pg CO2 equivalents (CO2e) or1000 Gt CO2e

We are currently emitting about 52.7 Gt CO2e per year, and this will probably increase to about 60 Gt/year by 2030. At the current rate of 52.7 Gt CO2e per year, we hit the carbon ceiling in 19 years from 2011:

time = (1000 Gt  CO2e / 52.7 Gt CO2e per year)  = 19.0 years. 

We hit the 2°C limit nineteen years from 2011. That is 2030.

We hit the 2°C limit in 2030, and as soon as 2028 if emissions continue to increase at the current rate of about 0.7% /year.

That soon.

Could it get worse? Yes.

Kevin Anderson, Deputy Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, UK, has written extensively about the consequences of the "business as usual" scenario, which leads to 4°C of warming or more by the end of the century. The consequences will be dire [11].

Across many sectors—coastal cities, agriculture, water stress, ecosystems, migration—the impacts and adaptation challenges at 4°C will be larger than at 2°C. In some cases, such as farming in sub-Saharan Africa, a +4°C warming could result in the collapse of systems or require transformational adaptation out of systems, as we understand them today.

What would this mean for the world? Anderson is not sanguine. [12]

Source: http://tinyurl.com/5ub7cfn

Can you imagine what 12°C (21.6°F) warmer would feel like in New York City in August? If you grew up on the East Coast in the '60s and you remember those August days when it was 90°F with 90% humidity, what do you think it would be like with 110°F with 90% humidity? Humans cannot live in that.

We must avoid 4°C of warming at all costs. In Anderson's view, this is "incompatible with an organised global community".

Will Republicans in office help? No.

In 2013, The Yale Program on Climate Change Communication reported on the results of a national survey of 726 adults who recently identified as a Republican or a Republican-leaning Independent.[13]

Here are the main conclusions (and remember this was three years ago, before the astonishingly hit years of 2015 and 2016):

A Majority Think Climate Change is Happening and Support an American Response to the Issue
A majority of respondents (52%) think climate change is happening, while 26% think it isn’t, and 22% “don’t know.” When presented with one of two conservative arguments saying America should respond to climate change, a solid majority (62%) say America absolutely should (23%) or probably should (39%) take steps to address climate change.

Only 1/3 Agree with Republican Party Positions on Climate Change and 1/2 on Energy
Only a minority of respondents agree with the Republican Party’s position on climate change (35%),
while a slight majority of respondents agree with the Party’s position on meeting America’s energy
needs (51%).

Elected Leaders are Perceived as Unresponsive to Respondents’ Views about Climate Change
Few respondents (less than 20%) think people like themselves have influence over what elected officials think or do regarding climate change. 

Here is the bottom line: Not even Republican voters support Republican office holders on climate change.

What can I do to make a difference? Vote, and vote the GOP out of office.

On Tuesday, November 8, the USA will decide on its next president. The election will also decide if the country will head into the 21st century leading the world in reducing carbon emissions, or if it will instead turn its back on science and become an outlaw nation determined to pollute the world at will, dragging every other nation into a hellish world unfit for humans where they now live by the end of the century.

Vote for Clinton. Don't forget the down-ballot votes. Vote out every climate-denying Republican, out of the Senate, out of the House, out of every Governor's office, out of  all our state houses and senates, out of every county, and out of every municipality. Sweep them away. Were they to remain in office, we would be headed to 4°C of warming by the end of the century.

Is this the future you want for your grandchildren? Your vote will make this difference.

References
[1] Paris climate change agreement enters into force, The Guardian, Thursday 3 November 2016 22.35 EDT
[2] The global climate-change agreement is about to take effect — but a President Trump could endanger it, Business Insider, Nov. 2, 2016, 10:52 PM
[3] World will pass crucial 2C global warming limit, experts warn, The Observer, Saturday 10 October 2015 17.30 EDT
[4] The Southern Hemisphere, Wikipedia
[5] The New Climate Dice: Public Perception of Climate Change, James Hansen, Makiko Sato, Reto Ruedy, NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Science Briefs, August 2012
[6] Changes in Extremely Hot Summers over the Global Land Area under Various Warming Targets, Wang L, Huang J, Luo Y, Yao Y, Zhao Z (2015) PLoS ONE 10(6): e0130660. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0130660
[7] The world is racing to stop climate change. But the math still doesn’t add up,
By Chris Mooney November 3,(2016), Washington Post.
[8] The Mass of the Atmosphere: A Constraint on Global Analyses, Kevin E. Trenberth and Lesley Smith, 2005:  J. Climate, 18, 864–875, doi: 10.1175/JCLI-3299.1.
[9] Frequently Asked Global Change Questions, Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, http://cdiac.ornl.gov/pns/faq.html
[10] NOAA's Annual Greenhouse Gas Index, http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/aggi/
[11] Four degrees and beyond: the potential for a global temperature increase of four degrees and its implications, Mark New, Diana Liverman, Heike Schroder, Kevin Anderson
Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 2011 369 6-19; DOI: 10.1098/rsta.2010.0303. Published 29 November 2010
[12] Climate Change: Going Beyond Dangerous, Kevin Anderson, July 2011,Tyndall Centre, Manchester, UK.
[13]  A National Survey of Republicans and Republican-leaning Independents on Energy and Climate Change, 2013, Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

The time to act is now, and yes that means politics

This article published in Nature Climate Change last February has received scant attention, to the world's detriment.

Differences between carbon budget estimates unravelled

Joeri Rogelj,    Michiel Schaeffer,    Pierre Friedlingstein,    Nathan P. Gillett,    Detlef P. van Vuuren,    Keywan Riahi,    Myles Allen    & Reto Knutti

Nature Climate Change 6, 245–252 (2016) doi:10.1038/nclimate2868

The authors' state "Current CO2 emissions are about 40 GtCO2 yr−1, and global CO2 emissions thus have to be reduced urgently to keep within a 2°C-compatible budget."

Let me put these numbers in context. A ceiling of 590 GtCO2 will be reached in less than 590/40 years, that is June, 2031. That is pretty darn close.

Here are things that will make this deadline date move closer to us, most significant first:
- the Supreme Court ditches the Clean Power Plan (but at least that seems unlikely)
- the GOP retains control of both the House and the Senate and remains firmly opposed to additional measures reducing carbon emissions (unfortunately, this seems quite likely, although the Senate might flip for 2016-2018)
- weak adherence to the Paris accords

Here are things that we can do to make this deadline move further into the future:
- vote for progressive Democrats at the local, state, and federal level
- fight hard for redistricting to win back the House after the 2020 census
- start talking NOW with your friends about the importance of climate change as an issue
- give money to candidates who will make a difference and give until it hurts.

and this is probably the most important thing
- convince our legislators that decarbonizing the economy must be a priority in local and state spending for the foreseeable future.

I am assuming that each of us is doing what we can individually to make our family carbon footprint as small as possible, so take that to heart.

In my opinion, the politics of global warming is the battleground of the next decade. We should join with our brothers and sisters at Standing Rock and support their fight [1], and stand side by side with Bill McKibben [2]:

"If we’re going to have a chance of dealing with climate change, it means mobilizing in ways that we haven’t in a very long time. And one of the points of writing this first piece for the New Republic this year was to demonstrate that at least that was possible. If you go look at how America mobilized during World War II, the industrial might that we brought to bear, and then you do the calculations, it’s at the outside edge of possible that we could, in the short time that we have, build enough solar panels and wind turbines. But it’s going to take the same kind of focused effort."

"We literally can’t build anything else and stay within those limits—no Dakota pipeline, no new coal mines in Australia, none of the things that our political leaders—I mean, Justin Trudeau in Canada two days ago green-lighted a massive LNG project on the British Columbia coast. In the light of this new climate data, it’s completely clear that these things, we just can’t do. We can’t drain most of what’s in the fields that we’ve already got in production. But as that dwindles, we have to be replacing it, day by day, with renewable energy instead."

If the carbon lobby and its servants in the GOP can delay for the next decade, then we are doomed and will sail past the 2°C mark, past 3°C and beyond into a punishing hell of warming for those who survive our foolishness.

The time to act is now. #putapriceonit and #keepitintheground. Act now #orleg.

References
[1] Taking a Stand at Standing Rock, DAVID ARCHAMBAULT II. AUG. 24, 2016 
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/25/opinion/taking-a-stand-at-standing-rock.html?_r=0

[2] As Earth Reaches Frightening CO2 Milestone, Bill McKibben Calls for War on Climate Change, SEPTEMBER 30, 2016,
http://www.democracynow.org/2016/9/30/as_earth_reaches_frightening_co2_milestone

Tamworth, New Hampshire

Jim has a few pictures from Tamworth, New Hampshire.

Just before sunrise

Walking by a brook in Wonalancet

Whiteface and Passaconaway

Lake Winnipesaukee from Castle in the Clouds

Crepuscular rays at sunset

Early morning light

Jim confronts a loon - not the denier type

At Heart Lake, near Lake Placid, NY.

It looks like Jim got pretty close to a loon at Heart Lake, in the middle of Adirondacks State Park in upstate New York.

He sent a few other pictures.

Sunset at Heart Lake after a storm

Just another sunset

Avalanche Lake and Lake Colden from summit of Algonquin

Miniature 'shroom in the alpine zone on Algonquin

Getting ready to hunt

Silhouette after the storm

Onymous Guy looks into his crystal ball and is starting to get worried

Source: CAP Reform.eu

I have found it difficult to convince people who should know better that we are going to hit the carbon ceiling much sooner than most people think. [Don't take my word for it, see for example A lower limit for future climate emissions or Electricity emissions surge by 5.5% since removal of carbon price, if you are looking for evidence of a more immediate nature.

Here in Oregon, we pride ourselves on being ahead of the curve, using a lot of green energy (mostly salmon-killing hydro), and legislating moving away from coal (our per capita carbon footprint is still 15.1 Mg CO2e per capita, still much higher than the world average).

I spent the day yesterday in Salem at Willamette University's Clean Power Forum, where the head of the state Global Warming Commission and others spoke to mostly students and a few faculty like me. I was whelmed and underwhelmed, not overwhelmed.

Near the end, I said that I didn't think much of Oregon's climate targets, because they were so unambitious, that Secretary of State Kerry had said over a year ago that we needed to de-carbonize the economy by 2030, and what was being discussed (50% reduction by 2040) didn't look anything like that.

Source: The Guardian

There is an inadequate sense of urgency in these people - and these are activists and supporters!

A look into my crystal ball predicts that we have until 2031, perhaps 2035 before we hit the world-wide carbon ceiling, that warming in the El Nino cycles of the '30s will be so devastating that some rogue nation will start pumping SO₂ into the atmosphere, and we will see the Paris accords start to unravel.

 I am not in a state of panic, nor despair, but...

[By an odd twist of fate, Salem was filled with smoke from nearby field burning - I am guessing that the Air Quality Index was in the upper 200s].

UPDATE: Maybe the geo-engineers will strike sooner, rather than later.

An unusual property of the integers

Source: Wikipedia

 How does one explain the age of Methuselah?

The meaning of Methuselah's age has engendered considerable speculation, but no widely accepted conclusions.

…
Interpretations of the Bible following Biblical literalism take Methuselah's 969 years to be 969 solar years. Some literalists suggest certain arguments for how this could be: early humans had a better diet, or a water vapor canopy protected the earth from radiation before the Flood.

…
Some believe that Methuselah's extreme age is the result of an ancient mistranslation that converted "months" to "years", producing a more credible 969 lunar months, or 78½ years, but the same calculation applied to Enoch would have him fathering Methuselah at the age of 5 using numbers from the Masoretic Text.

Such conundrums are unnecessary.

The reason is simple: Millenia ago, the integers were much closer together than they are now.

Not only does this explain the extreme age of Methuselah and others, the same logic can be used to solve other important riddles:

The age of the Earth

While scientists argue that physical evidence leads to the inevitable conclusion that the Universe is 13.7 billion years old, more or less, and the Earth itself is 4.54 billion years old, Biblical scholars and noted scientists such as Isaac Newton thought the Earth was created around 4000 BC. These are reconcilable if one assumes that, prior to the 6^thday of Creation, the integers experienced something akin to the inflationary expansion of the early universe:

"The fact that O is between 0.1 and 1 today means that in the first second of the Big Bang it was precisely 1 to within 1 part in 10^{60}".

The value of π

Mathematicians argue that π possesses an infinite number of non-repeating decimals, 3.14159265358979...

[I use the mnemonic - attributed to Richard Tolman at Cal Tech -  "Yes, I need a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy sessions involving quantum mechanics" to remember π to 15 decmials as shown above.]

This could be interpreted as 3 plus a fraction that is small now and was smaller years ago - so small that in 1879 it was nearly legislated that the value of π was exactly 3.

The Easter Island statues 

It is well-known that the Rapa Nui people had erected large states, perhaps as large as 270 tons:

Moai are monolithic human figures carved by the Rapa Nui people on Easter Island in eastern Polynesia between the years 1250 and 1500 CE...

The production and transportation of the 887 statues are considered remarkable creative and physical feats.[5] The tallest moai erected, called Paro, was almost 10 metres (33 ft) high and weighed 82 tons; the heaviest erected was a shorter but squatter moai at Ahu Tongariki, weighing 86 tons; and one unfinished sculpture, if completed, would have been approximately 21 metres (69 ft) tall with a weight of about 270 tons.

Since the integers were much closer together 3600 years ago than they are today, the mass of such statues would have been much less, easily manipulated by the Rapa Nui, whose physical condition was surely improved by frequent canoeing over large expanses of open ocean [citation needed].

As one can see, there are an infinite number - surely a denumerable number - of similar problems easily resolved by applying the same reasoning.

I wish I could take credit for this, but I cannot. The inspired absurdity - the integers were once much closer together than they are today - is due to Peter Doan, now Associate Research Professor in the Hoffman groups at Northwestern.

Bravo, Signore Doan!

Please, before you reply or comment, note the date of this post.

Mr. Big turns 30k, and yes, EVs really are cheap

Jim and his spouse bought an EV back in 2013, a 2014 Chevrolet Spark EV. Jim is not ordinarily a first-wave technology fan, but he was pretty sure the costs were low and it could be a very green choice. They had done research on EVs for two months before making their decision. This was the first Spark EV sold in Oregon.

Source Wikipedia

They called their car "Mr. Big", after the Rocky & Bullwinkle character, not the "Sex and the City" character. In spite of his small stature, Mr. Big cast a large shadow, and scared the bejeesus out of Boris and Natasha.

Mr. Big recharging at work.

Just like Rocky and Bullwinkle's character, the EV Mr. Big is diminutive (it is a small four door, four passenger car), but, according to Jim, he casts a large shadow that scares the bejeesus out of the carbon lobby ("The Kochs Are Plotting A Multimillion-Dollar Assault On Electric Vehicles").

I  asked Jim about what it's been like to own and drive an EV over the last three years. Here is what he reports.

Pros

• The marginal cost of  operation is extremely low, $0.0936/mi (insurance, recharging, tires, car wash, maintenance)
• Maintenance costs are very close to zero, aside from replacing the tires
• Regenerative braking makes power use very efficient and brake wear almost non-existent. Mr. Big has been averaging 4.65 mi/kWh, much more than other EVs.
• Recharging is amazingly cheap and easy. The recharging rate on a 110V line is about a net gain in range of 6 miles per hour of charging time. On a 240 V line, the rate is 13 miles of increased range per hour of charging time. Jim averages a fuel cost of about $0.018/mi. Gas even at $2/gal is at least five times that.
• Use of renewable energy for the power source makes the lifetime carbon footprint of an EV much less than that of a similar conventional vehicle. The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that "A 2014 Chevrolet Spark EV charged in zip code 97219 using an average energy mix for Oregon produces about as much global warming pollution as a gasoline vehicle getting 111 miles per gallon," emitting 62 g CO2e/km, (98 g CO2e/mi), about one fourth of the net emissions from an internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle of similar size. According to the US Energy Information Energy, Oregon has an average energy mix of about 349 lbs/ MWh. At Mr. Big's rate of energy consumption, this energy mix is  21 g CO2e/km (34 g CO2e/mi), so use of a green energy source reduces Mr. Big's lifetime carbon footprint to 41 g CO2e/km, (64 g CO2e/mi), one sixth of the emissions of an ICE. Those are total lifetime comparisons, not marginal comparisons.
• Mr. Big has 10 CPUs!
• Mr Big is very fun to drive, with great acceleration. Only another EV can pull away from a traffic light more quickly. And there is no traffic ticket for too fast an acceleration!
• It is a great commuting car, excellent in the city, easy to park, and QUIET.
• It is great for 95% of the driving that Jim and his spouse do, but...
  

Cons

• Initial costs are substantial -73% of the projected 6 year total cost of $34,400 for Mr. Big (standard vehicle price, destination charge, paint and fabric protection, clear shield [protection against road debris], 6 yr warranty, less the federal tax credit, Clipper Creek charger).
• The auto sales people will not tell you the bad news: you will probably not get a full tax credit of $7500. The $7500 federal tax credit is a non-refundable tax credit; that is, the credit is limited to the lesser of $7500 or the amount you paid in federal income taxes in the year of purchase. In Oregon in 2014, only the top 30% of income earners filing jointly would have qualified for the full amount of the federal tax credit. 

 

Source: http://wallpapercave.com/w/U4C1fZi

More Cons

• Mr. Big has 10 CPUs! Since CPUs are known to fail, Jim and his spouse did the unthinkable - they bought the extended warranty, which added $2351 to the initial cost, and yes, Jim included that in his lifetime costs.
• Electronic devices misbehave every now and then. Just once, and only that once, Jim was a few miles from home at the start of his 36 mile commute to work, when Mr. Big, who had started with a full 21 kWh charge battery pack,  reported that it had only two miles of range left! A very disappointed Jim drove Mr. Big back home. Jim is a chemist, so he knew that it was a first-year student exercise to figure how how much energy it took to vaporize a block of ice (Converting 1.00 g of ice at 0.00 °C to water vapor at 100.00 °C requires 3.01 kJ of energy). A complete discharge of the 21 kWh battery would have been enough energy to vaporize a 25 kg block of ice, and Jim had witnessed no such event. The next day at the dealer, a scan of the on-board CPUs revealed no errors, so it was a momentary glitch.
• The standard portable recharging unit from the manufacturer failed two times in the first 10,000 miles, so Jim bought his own from Clipper Creek. It has worked flawlessly over the last 20,000 miles (and yes, Jim included that in his lifetime costs).
• Mr. Big is a white car. White cars need frequent washing, especially in the rainy season in Oregon. Jim has spent more washing Mr. Big (at places that re-use their wash water, of course) than he has spent on maintenance.
• The range really is limited, and you will get stuck if you exceed it. Jim scared his spouse once, but just that once, by driving Mr. Big on a long trip through the wine country, and they made it home with one mile of range left. Jim pointed out that they had in fact made it home, but that argument did not carry the day,

The bottom line: Leasing an EV is now inexpensive, as low as $200/month. These are great commuting cars. If most people knew how little maintenance an EV required, they would demand more EVs.

Oregon makes historic move away from coal - thank your legislators

source: http://ecowatch.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/bigcoal3.jpg

Oregon's legislature has become the first state in the USA to mandate a transition away from coal. The pressure on the governor to not sign it will be all from the right.

Is it enough? Probably not, but it is an important step in the right direction.

Be sure to thank all of your legislators, as well as Speaker of the House Tina Kotek, House Majority Leader Jennifer Williamson, Senate Majority Leader Ginny Burdick, and Senate President Peter Courtney.