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Photo: most intense moment of Winter Storm Cora sweeping through Texas right now. This is why schools in the entire DFW area have been closed today and tomorrow. Today is the worse of it. It will be much improved tomorrow. With a high of 48°F tomorrow means this deep snow won't be around on the weekend.
You can see the snow starting to drift next to the tree in the foreground.
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I'm just clearing out the inbox. This interests me not at all at the moment, but necessary for the archives.
I will post the links with little or no commenting.
Porsche, ZeroHedge, China sales slump. Link here.
China, renews car trade-in subsidy to boost hybrid, EV sales. Link here.
Honda: may delay new EV models due to Donald Trump presidency. Link here.
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EVs
Wow, this was talked about on the blog years ago -- how this would absolutely devastate the automobile industry -- trapped between the California mandates and the reality almost everywhere else. The Obama/Biden legacy/reputation, with regard to EVs, will go the way of Angela Merkel in Germany.
The years just keep getting warmer. I mean this facetiously. At first, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration told us 2016 was 0.94 degree warmer than the 20th-century average. Then the agency raised its estimate by several steps to 1 degree in 2020 before dropping it back to 0.99 perhaps under Trump influence. With Democrats back in charge under President Biden, 2016 started getting warmer again, reaching 1.03 degrees in 2023. The latest NOAA chart shows it 1.04 degrees warmer than the baseline.
Consider it a small evidence of what David Samuels, in a widely noted article, calls the legacy of Obama-era “permission structures.” By permission structures, he means a “whole of society” strategy of pressure and subtle bullying to force buy-in of Obama goals. I hit on a similar formula in 2012 when I explained that Mr. Obama imposed his will by giving voters “permission to think highly of themselves for thinking highly of him.”
One residue, which NOAA obviously participated in, was the permission structure behind today’s gathering boondoggle created by Obama-era mandated investment in electric vehicles.
A feature Mr. Samuels stresses is an Obamaesque ability to substitute new, instantly embraced ideas for old, instantly embraced ideas. In his first two years, Joe Biden justified his giant increase in EV subsidies and mandates by citing the “existential risk” of global climate change. Then that argument was junked overnight. EVs became a “strategic” technology that must be protected from Chinese competition.
Both arguments were nonsense, as I belabored here, yet were seamlessly echoed in the media in turn. Subsidizing green-energy consumption is simply to subsidize energy consumption, including fossil energy. EVs are “strategic” only for China, to reduce its reliance on imported oil in anticipation of military conflict with the U.S. For the rest of the world, including the U.S., electric cars are a consumer technology, albeit a fast-emerging and promising one. Sensibly, they’re also a technology that should have been left to consumers and carmakers to adapt and develop without distorting handouts and mandates.
The result is finally in view: a colossal self-destruction of the Western auto industry, with Germany’s at the forefront. Volkswagen is in a panic about Chinese competition to the money-losing EVs that Berlin forces the company to sell. Germany’s export-led economy is in free fall. Its bellwether auto giant, VW, is pursuing its first-ever domestic factory closures and layoffs.
Likewise, Ford CEO Jim Farley sees his company’s survival in the U.S. threatened by Chinese EVs given the tens of thousands of dollars Ford already loses on each of its government-mandated electric vehicles. The author of Germany’s auto mess, Angela Merkel, is now reviled as an unprincipled bandwagon grabber.
Don’t kid yourself.
The same reputational fate is coming for Messrs. Obama and Biden. Mr. Biden’s EV protectionism is America’s admission of defeat. The U.S. went from “Americans must buy EVs to save the planet” to “Americans must be prevented from buying cheap, high-quality Chinese EVs to preserve a government-created domestic boondoggle.”
Much more at the link.
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Local -- North Texas
High Income Areas
My oberservation: our area saw incredible penetration of Tesla EVs, including the Cybertruck, starting several years ago.
All of a sudden, everything, with regard to EVs, seems to have plateaued. I have seen no additional charging points being installed. No change in the number of service stations across the entire region.
On a daily basis, I see one -- exactly one -- Cybertruck.
Sophia, age 10, fifth grader, says she and her friends call the Cybertruck a garbage truck. That was unsolicited. She told me that as a Cybertruck passed us going in the opposite direction. She says they refer to it as a "garbage truck" because that's what it looks like to them.
Locator: 44647COFFEE.
Link here. Timing is most important but look at the amount of coffee ...
Study shows having 2-3 cups is the ‘sweet spot’ for longevity, but daytime java drinkers don’t enjoy the benefit.
Here’s some promising news for coffee enthusiasts, particularly those who prefer their caffeine fix in the morning hours. A new study examining over 40,000 American adults suggests that the timing of coffee consumption might be just as important as how much you drink when it comes to living a longer life.
Locator: 44646DEMOGRAPHICS.
Demographics tracked here.
Added today:
January 9, 2025: Xennials, 1977 - 1983. Wiki entry.
- coined 2014
- micro-generation: on the cusp of the Generation X and Millennial demographic cohorts
- analog childhood and digital young adulthood
- analog: "the big hand is on the 9 and the little hand ..."
- digital: flashing digits
- added to ODE, 2020; added to OED, 2021
- 1977 - 1983 (1980)
- 14 years old: 1994 --
- Jeff Bezos founded Cadabra, later named Amazon
- 20 years old: 2000 ("Y2K")
- dot-com bubble burst
- Compaq iPaq: first wi-fi-enabled device
- GPS authorized by Congress for public use
- personal milestones
- our first daughter: 1979
- our second daughter: 1983
Locator: 44645B.
From overseas: why does The Daily [London] Mail always do such a better job than US media. Much of the information presented here I have not seen elsewhere. Link here.
Topics on live/streaming television this morning coming out of southern California:
Southern California: local newscasters a bit more upbeat as the winds die down. From 70+ mph winds down to gusts of only 65+ mph. This was at 3:05 a.m. Pacific Time. "It won't be until late Friday night that we get a big break (with regard to wind, humidity)."
Palisades Fire: at 17,234 acres; 0% contained. Reminder: the Malibu Fire in 2018 started November 8, 2018, and was not fully contained until November 21, 2018. That fire burned just shy of 100,000 acres. Link here. The difference: the number of structures destroyed. Malibu, 2018: 1,643; Palisades, to date: 2,000+ -- which is why CNN is reporting this is the worst such fire in LA's history.
Los Angeles fire department budget cut:
With inflation: budget should have been increased by 5 to 15%; not decreased by 2%, so we have a 7 to 17% deficit / swing.
With recent history: we know that dollar damage from these fires will only get worse, which adds another 5 to 15% need. So that 2% cut is a ridiculous headline. Another example of reporters failing to ask the "right" question.
Water: it turns out that the "big story" coming out of this horrendous story did turn out to be "water." The issue was brought up first by a private realtor which the city was quick to deny.
Most amazing: water drops from the air seem to be incredibly effective. But it seems the "drops" are few and far in between. [Just after posting that, the live stream is talking about the lack of air drops. Apparently they have "one" helicopter." The city is able to drop water from the air 24 hours/day. The limiting factor: high wind, which is currently not a problem. But "one" helicopter? How many helicopters would $20 million buy?
Planning; the city was prepared for one major fire, maybe two major fires, but not at all prepared for more than that. Per LAFD chief in early press conference. Pasadena/Altadena fire chief alluded to the same: simply not prepared for the worst. With all the emphasis on global warming since 1994 and concerns for such fires, it's surprising not more was done with regard to "infrastructure" to prepare for fire situations getting worse.
California GDP / national GDP: will be interesting to watch over the next twelve months.
California housing insurance, from Bloomberg today:
The conflagrations tearing across Los Angeles are on track to be among the most expensive wildfire disasters in US history, draining insurance coffers and threatening California’s massive state-sponsored insurance program.
Losses from the fires “could push insurance markets over the brink in California,” said Michael Wara, a senior researcher for climate and energy at Stanford University and a wildfire expert.
It’s an unprecedented test of the FAIR plan, the state-sponsored insurer of last resort.
Pacific Palisades is the high-cost neighborhood at the center of the Palisades Fire.
The FAIR plan has seen its exposure there skyrocket to $5.89 billion. Its policies in one ZIP code central to Pacific Palisades grew 85% between 2023 and 2024.
Read More: Insurers of Last Resort’ Are Absorbing Trillions in Housing Risk.
At least three fires continued to spread rapidly on Wednesday, more than a day after the initial fire outbreak. The Palisades Fire destroyed 300 structures and 13,306 remain threatened. The Hurst Fire, burning northwest of Los Angeles and Burbank, has threatened another 40,000 buildings, while the Eaton Fire burning near Pasadena has endangered more than 28,000 structures.
From wiki:
Water: more and more reports coming in from reporters "boots on the ground" -- firemen have no water to put out fires.
Local: that northern Texas storm has not yet affected us in the DFW area. It's 30°F right now, at 5:09 a.m. CT.
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Back to the Bakken
WTI: $73.38.
New wells:
RBN Energy: final rules for 45V tax credit coudl help clear a path for clean hydrogen.
The long-delayed rules around the federal government’s Hydrogen Production Tax Credit (PTC), also known as 45V, had been the subject of heated debate — and lobbying — since passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) way back in August 2022. But after more than a year of speculation — and with the Biden administration in its last days — the final rulemaking has at last been published. In today’s RBN blog, we’ll look at how the final rulemaking compares with the initial guidelines established in December 2023, detail the key areas where the rules have been made more lenient, and explain why clean hydrogen still faces an uncertain future, while also previewing our first Drill Down report of 2025.
There was a lot of enthusiasm around hydrogen after passage of the IRA, with the initial guidance around the PTC widely expected to be announced within a year, or by August 2023. It soon became clear that extensive debates over the rulemaking continued inside the Biden administration and that informal deadline came and went without much notice. The initial guidance was finally rolled out in late December 2023, which closely followed a draft that was leaked a couple weeks earlier. Publication of the proposed rulemaking then began a 60-day comment period.
