Notes From All Over -- Early Afternoon Edition -- February 16, 2021

Olympics 202One: it's being reported by CNBC that Japan, which will begin vaccinating tomorrow, will not require vaccination for athletes or spectators. Earlier the IOC had suggested all athletes would require vaccination "to save the Olympics." Perhaps this remains in flux.

 

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Retirees: Which State Is Best?

Retirees: best states in which to retire. These lists are incredibly ridiculous but they are always fun. 

This is from MoneyRates via Yahoo!Finance.  The ten data sets used:

• cost of living: okay
• property taxes: okay
• unemployment: why would retirees care? Sure, some relevancy but it's far down the line.

• safety: okay, but generally retirees will pick safe places regardless of the state to which they move
• violent and property crime (2): okay, but generally retirees will pick safe places regardless of the state to which they move

• nursing facility capability: perhaps
  life expectancy: by the time in the life expectancy for any retiree has already been determined; where the retiree moves will hardly affect the retiree's own life expectancy
  health care costs: maybe; Medicare is the great leveler

And the results? 

Using those criteria, the best state for retirees:

• Iowa
• West Virginia
• Arkansas
• Mississippi
• Florida
• Kentucky
• Connecticut
• Missouri
• Alabama
• Rhode Island

The five worst:

• Colorado
• California
• Washington
• Nevada
• Alaska
  

One would think amenities, hobbies, quality of life, would be a bit more important. 

But Iowa, the #1 state for retirees? I love Iowa, but give me a break. Mississippi, Alabama, West Virginia. 

North Dakota, at #14, outranked Washington State, Oregon, California, Colorado, Nevada, and Texas. As much as I love North Dakota, I don't see retirees preferring North Dakota to these states.

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EVs vs Fracking

Exxon Mobil: energy demand, three drivers.

Link at WSJ. 

The Joe Biden administration will be piling a lot of chips on electric cars, the most popular and least useful way of fighting climate change. How much do the cars you and I drive actually contribute to emissions?

Don’t ask the Union of Concerned Scientists, an EV promoter habituated to quickly changing the subject to “transportation” emissions. Many inventories also ignore the full range of greenhouse emissions, focusing on CO2 to foster a nevertheless-untenable illusion that passenger cars provide leverage over a global climate problem. No matter how you fiddle the data, personal EVs are a single-digit factor and belong low on any sane list of priorities.

If the Environmental Protection Agency is right, the average light vehicle racks up 11,500 miles a year and sits idle 96% of the time. The World Resources Institute says passenger vehicles account for 7.5% of all emissions, but this includes buses, taxis, etc. Rental cars average 31,000 miles. Other fleet vehicles average 23,000 or more. Heavy trucks average 63,000 miles. One finding that appalled fleet operators is that their vehicles spend up to 33% of their time idling, which is not how people treat their personal vehicles.

The International Energy Agency in 2016 estimated that if 50% of all new cars were electric, petroleum use would continue to grow because of “trucks, aviation and the petrochemical industry and we don’t have major alternatives to oil products there.”

Exxon Mobil estimated more recently that if all new cars were electric by 2025, and the world’s entire fleet were electric by 2040, liquid-fuel demand in 2040 would be the same as 2013’s.

Few talk about it, but mining battery-related minerals generates emissions too. An electric car that’s sitting in your garage, not displacing a significant amount of gasoline-powered transportation but still sucking power out of a wall socket, can be a net emissions contributor when all is said and done.

I no longer have a dog in this fight but it's interesting to watch.