Boris, here’s why net-zero emissions by 2050 just aren’t worth it

By Christopher Monckton  of Brenchley

At the forthcoming Glasgow global-warming chunderama, Boris Johnson – under the baneful, Lucrezia-Borgia influence of his crazed, extremist wife – will try to persuade other Western nations to follow him in committing economic hara-kiri by promising to galumph towards net-zero greenhouse-gas emissions over the three decades between now and 2050.

Here is why our friends and allies in Europe, America and the Commonwealth should resist the blubbering, bombastic blandishments of Boris the blond, Borgia-battered blunderbuss.

Net-zero just isn’t worth it. Let us do the math that no government seems to have done. It is not very difficult – but the results are astonishing.

For 30 years the annual growth in net anthropogenic greenhouse-gas forcing has been near-perfectly linear at 0.033 Watts per square meter per year, or 1 W m–2 over the 30 years:

Therefore, on business as usual, with no abatement of greenhouse-gas emissions, one might expect another 1 W m–2 of global warming over the 30 years 2021-2050, la Johnson’s target date for the economic extinction of the West. A straight-line reduction to zero over the next 30 years would abate half of the 1 W m–2 emissions growth that would otherwise have occurred on business as usual.

IPCC (2021) predicts 3 K final warming in response to 3.93 W m–2 doubled-CO2 forcing. Its implicit midrange equilibrium-sensitivity parameter is then 3 / 3.93, or 0.76 K W–1 m2.

However, in 1850 equilibrium global temperature was 287.5 K, comprising 255 K emission temperature and 24.2 K feedback response thereto, and 7.6 K direct warming by preindustrial noncondensing greenhouse gases and 0.7 K feedback response thereto.

On that basis, and assuming – as climatology implicitly does [see footnote] – that system response is near-invariant with temperature, one would expect just 0.1 K feedback response to the 1.05 K direct warming by doubled CO2.

That 1.05 K direct doubled-CO2 warming is the product of the 0.3 K W–1 m2 Planck reference-sensitivity parameter and the 3.52 W m–2 CMIP6 models’ mean doubled-CO2 radiative forcing given in Zelinka et al. (2020, supplementary matter).

Therefore, final doubled-CO2 warming, roughly equivalent to all anthropogenic warming this century, will not be 3 K but little more than 1.1 K. Sure enough, the rate of warming since the end of the Second World War has been equivalent to little more than 1.1 K century–1:

If radiative forcing continues at the previously-established rate, there is no particular reason to assume a substantially greater centennial-equivalent warming rate than that. Indeed, there has been no global warming at all for 7 years 4 months (cue screeching) –

If one should indeed only expect 1.1 K final warming in response to 3.52 W m–2 doubled-CO2 forcing, the equilibrium-sensitivity parameter will be only 0.31 rather than IPCC’s 0.76.

Therefore, if IPCC is right about forcing and warming, even if the whole world went net-zero by 2050 the global warming forestalled by then would be only 0.5 x 0.76 = two-fifths of a degree. Correcting IPCC’s overblown estimates, make that 0.5 x 0.31 = one-sixth of a degree.

In reality, the warming forestalled will be a lot less than that. For 80% of all new emissions are in developing nations, such as China and India, which both have space programs but are nonetheless exempt from the restrictions laid down in the Paris climate accords.

The Western nations account for only 20% of new emissions. Therefore, even in the highly unlikely event that all the nations of the West actually achieved net-zero by 2050 (dream on: it won’t happen), the warming mitigated by 2050 would be only 1/13  degree (or 1/32 degree if IPCC is wrong).

And how much global warming will be mitigated by 2050 by shutting down the British economy alone? The answer is 1/220 degree if IPCC is right; 1/540 degree if not.

The direct cost just of British net-zero – even if it were attainable, which it is not – would be $4.2 trillion by 2050, according to the national electricity-grid authority. For various reasons, that is a howling underestimate, but let us ride with it for now.

In that event, the direct cost of achieving the 1/32 to 1/13 degree mitigation if all the nations of the West were to shut themselves down by 2050 would be $70 trillion. If the whole world were to shut down, make that $350 trillion.

On the same basis, the cost of abating the 4 K global warming that the usual suspects predict on business as usual this century would be $3.7 to 9 quadrillion.

These calculations are not particularly difficult. They are summarized in the table. The fact that IPCC, UNFCCC and governments have not done these calculations speaks volumes about the savage, irrational, nihilistic, purely partisan and nastily totalitarian attack on the West that the climate-change narrative represents.

But that is before taking indirect costs into account. Already, heavy manufacturing is being driven out of the West by mad climate-change policies and ending up in China or India, where electrical power costs one-sixth of what it does here. Worse, China, chiefly through its illegal occupation, enslavement and ruthless racial suppression of Tibet, already controls 70% of the world’s known reserves of lithium, cobalt and other rare metals necessary to the batteries in Tesla’s electric buggies.

It is also quietly buying placeholder stakes in the 30% of lithium reserves that it does not already control. It is now doing a deal with the Taliban to take control of the large lithium reserves recently found in Afghanistan. And it is buying placeholder stakes in lithium mines from Cornwall to south-western Greenland, where – for instance – it holds a 9% stake in Greenland Minerals’ recently-discovered lithium reserves.

In short, China is bidding fair to corner the global market in rare-earth metals. And if the West follows Slobberchops in his daft net-zero ambition, it will make itself utterly dependent on China for the strategic rare-earth metals without which its electric buggies won’t work.

And all this is before one counts the cost of doing away with real autos and replacing them with golf-carts. The problem with batteries is that they are heavy. Very heavy. Batteries add 25-30% to the weight of a buggy, reducing its fuel efficiency to something like what it was in an auto of the 1950s. Not exactly a ground-breaking advance, then. Energy is scarce enough as it is, without wasting as much as a quarter of it on shifting batteries around.

And don’t get me started on electric trucks. If you download the specs for the Tesla milk-float, you will find a curious, highly significant omission. Nowhere is the load capacity given:

And that’s a problem. For the maximum all-up weight of a truck on U.S. roads is 80,000 lb, or 36 tons. Of that, by the time one takes the massive weight of the batteries into account, the tare weight of a Tesla milk-float will be around 33 tons, leaving less than 3 tons for cargo.

Contrast these milk-float figures with those for a real semi. The tare weight is 35,000 lb, so that the semi can carry 45,000 lb of cargo, almost seven times the 6000 lb carrying capacity of the Tesla milk-float. Now, a pint of milk weighs 1 lb, and the weight of the bottle and a share of the crate weighs another 1 lb. So the Tesla milk-float will be able to carry about 3000 bottles of milk, about twice the capacity of the milk-float below – and nothing else:

Does no one in the climate establishment ever do even the most elementary sums? Net-zero is simply not worth the hassle, the prodigious expense or the strategic exposure to China.

Footnote: How climatology’s system response is near-invariant with temperature

Method 1: Lacis et al. (2010: above) say feedback response is 3 times direct warming by greenhouse gases, implying 4 degrees’ final warming after feedback response for each 1 degree of direct warming before feedback response.

Method 2: In 1850 the three components in the 287.5 K equilibrium surface temperature were the 255 K emission temperature, the 7.6 K direct warming by preindustrial noncondensing greenhouse gases and 24.9 K total feedback response. Since 24.9 K is about 3 times the 7.6 K direct warming by greenhouse gases, climatologists imagine final warming is about 4 K for each 1 K direct warming.

Method 3: Zelinka et al. (2020) show 3.52 W m–2 midrange doubled-CO2 radiative forcing as the mean of 15 CMIP6 models, implying 0.3 x 3.52 = 1.05 K direct warming by doubled CO2. Zelinka et al. also show 3.9 K midrange final warming by doubled CO2 in the same models, again implying close to 4 K final warming for each 1 K direct warming.

So if you don’t think climatologists should make predictions on the basis that system response is near-invariant with temperature in the industrial era, don’t whine at me about it. Write to IPCC. It is official climatology that makes the implicit assumption of near-invariance.

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leitmotif
August 27, 2021 3:36 am

“Boris, here’s why net-zero emissions by 2050 just aren’t worth it”

Because the GHE is a load of tosh.

griff
Reply to  leitmotif
August 27, 2021 8:04 am

It is as certain as gravity.

don’t float off now…

Reply to  leitmotif
August 27, 2021 8:55 pm

Leitmotif has made an ass of himself. Consider the position in 1850. The global mean surface temperature was 287.5 K, of which 255 K was the emission temperature that would have prevailed on Earth if there were no greenhouse gases in the air at the outset. The remaining 32.5 K was the natural greenhouse effect, comprising 24.2 K feedback response to emission temperature, 7.6 K direct warming by preindustrial noncondensing greenhouse gases and 0.7 K feedback response to the direct greenhouse-gas warming.

If that 32.5 K was not caused by greenhouse gases, what was it caused by?

Alan Tomalty
Reply to  Monckton of Brenchley
August 28, 2021 2:55 am

My Lord, The calculation of the 255K was using the Stefan Boltzmann equation which in itself is only valid for a solid surface emitting IR. 2nd in your calculation you assumed that the earth did not have an atmosphere to arrive at the 255 K. But to calculate the 255K in the Stefan Boltzmann equation you assumed that the earth has an atmosphere. The only valid method is to use comparisons of the moon and the earth. If you do that you will find that the earth would be much colder w/o an atmosphere as Ned Nickolov did in his 2 papers. Ned may very well be wrong in his assertion that it is gravity together with the sun that produces the heating of the earth, but in his calculation of the temperature w/o an atmosphere, his moon/earth analysis is very compelling.

Reply to  Alan Tomalty
August 28, 2021 5:37 am

Mr Tomalty has not, perhaps, understood that our approach is to accept, for the sake of argument, all of official climatology except what we can formally demonstrate to be false. In dozens of papers throughout the literature, 255 K is given as the Earth’s emission temperature. Therefore, we use climatology’s value, plus or minus 15 degrees’ uncertainty.

And we are not concerned with the Earth without an atmosphere. We are concerned with the Earth as it stood in 1850. The Earth without an atmosphere would have no clouds. Therefore, the albedo would he half today’s value (Stephens 2015), from which it is not difficult to calculate, using the Stefan-Boltzmann equation, that the Earth’s surface temperature would be 271 K or thereby (Lindzen, 1994).

It is precisely because, for the sake of argument, we accept so much of official climatology that we force it to confront its error, rather than being diverted into side-channels that lead nowhere.

leitmotif
Reply to  Monckton of Brenchley
August 31, 2021 12:26 pm

The sun cannot melt ice but back radiation can?

I see.

leitmotif
Reply to  Monckton of Brenchley
August 28, 2021 3:47 pm

Stop talking bollocks, Brench. You’re worse than Willis with your stupid back radiation hypothesis.

Where is your evidence that it is a real forcing. I’ll save you time, there isn’t any.

August 27, 2021 3:44 am

“blubbering, bombastic blandishments of Boris the blond, Borgia-battered blunderbuss.”

An accurate description
to which we should add .. Tyrannical totalitarian traitor.

Sara
August 27, 2021 4:29 am

“the blubbering, bombastic blandishments of Boris the blond, Borgia-battered blunderbuss.” – article
That’s a lot of alliteration for a little mitigation to get aggravation off your chest.

So if I understand this, Boris is setting out to ransack his own country the way the Goths (Ostro and Visi both) and Huns and other looters and pillagers did the Empire, although they only touched the surface.

Boris, you’ll be sorry you ever listened to that cackling hag.

And the world becomes a junk pile of used and broken gear because some idjit politician’s girlfriend tickles him in the right places.

I can only hope the slime that now rule Afghanistan wake up one day and find that their entire landscape has been poisoned by China. Oh, I know that’s mean as hell of me, but they agreed to China’s terms with no forethought to the consequences. After all, opium is their only real product and doesn’t pay nearly as much as renting out mining rights to a looting, pillaging neighbor next door. If China flattens every mountain in Afghanistan, I do not care. Let them.

All of this is slowly morphing into a Very Very Bad Ending to a Tale of Sordid Stupidity.

Some things simply never, ever change.

At least my palantir works nicely right now.

JP Kalishek
August 27, 2021 6:07 am

Always remember, Musk is in the business of making money for playing his rockets (so he can make money off NASA et al), not making sense of what the nutters like Boris want. He just gives them something to spend it on.

griff
August 27, 2021 8:03 am

By the way, Lord M, whatever happened to you getting Scotland Yard in to investigate some climate paper or other as yo mentioned in your last article’s comments?

Reply to  griff
August 27, 2021 1:21 pm

Poor Griff is rightly terrified that when Mr Plod looks at the way the supposedly learned climate journals are acting as gatekeepers for climate Communism some collars will be felt. As I have already explained – do try to pay attention – on the first of the two previous occasions on which our paper was rejected without any of the reviewers addressing the main points at all, I consulted a senior police contact, who asked me to obtain two more rejections from journals, made on an improper basis. The paper is now before the third journal – and has been there for almost nine months. It is, perhaps, proving rather more difficult to refute than Griff would like. If the third journal acts as improperly as the first two, the matter will be reported to the police via my senior contact, who fully understands the seriousness of what has been going on. He was also particularly interested to learn that IPCC is refusing to activate its error-reporting protocol when errors are reported to it. He has asked me to provide the evidence of its failure to respond not only to us but to another scientist who had drawn IPCC’s attention to another serious error, but also without reply. The net is closing.

I should make it quite clear that if a genuine and material error in our paper is found then we shall accept the position. So far, that has not happened.

John Phillips
Reply to  griff
August 27, 2021 4:17 pm

Griff,

His Lordship amusingly claims he will bring legal proceedings against a journal if they decline to publish his paper.

Not sure what possible offence would have been committed but since when have facts and logic been any kind of barrier to bluster?

Never gonna happen.

MarkW
Reply to  John Phillips
August 27, 2021 5:46 pm

I see you know as little about how the legal system works as you do about how climate works.
The legal system moves slowly, always has, but it’s getting worse in recent decades. Various legal actions against Mikey Mann have been going on for decades. One was finally tossed when the judge finally lost patience. The other is still waiting for discovery to complete,

Reply to  John Phillips
August 27, 2021 8:50 pm

Poor, hate-filled Mr Phillips, realizing that he has devoted himself to a cause that is nonsensical, now whines that I am proposing to bring legal proceedings against a learned journal. But I am proposing no such thing. I am proposing – on the advice of a very senior police contact – to report the climate scam, in which the journals are playing their part, to the police here and internationally as the largest fraud in human history. The evidence is very substantial, and goes far more widely than just the unprincipled refusal of two journals to review our paper fairly and of one journal to get on with reviewing it at all.

My police contact, on realizing how elementary is the error by climatology that has led to the climate scam, and on seeing how evasive are climatologists when confronted with the error, said that a pattern of fraud was arguably present and that the serious fraud unit would be particularly interested to examine it. I used to investigate frauds on behalf of HM Government, so I have some working experience of fraud. And the pattern of misconduct in climatology when confronted with its error gives the police a pathway into investigating the entire climate nonsense.

John Phillips
Reply to  Monckton of Brenchley
August 28, 2021 2:47 am

whines that I am proposing to bring legal proceedings against a learned journal. But I am proposing no such thing. 

the history of peer review for our paper is scandalous. I have already discussed it with a senior police contact. He is waiting for me to attract just one more rejection which, in the opinion of my distinguished co-authors, is not a sound, scientific or justifiable rejection, whereupon he will pass the file to the fraud squad and to Interpol, which is now investigating the climate scam.
 
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/07/08/how-to-constrain-unconstrained-global-warming-predictions

when Mr Plod looks at the way the supposedly learned climate journals are acting as gatekeepers for climate Communism some collars will be felt.
 
Sure sounds like threatening a fraud case to me… 😉 Never gonna happen.
 
Academic journals, of course, have absolute discretion over what they choose to publish or not. Some routinely do publish review comments but there is absolutely no obligation, legal or otherwise to give reasons for rejection.
 
Magically, every time Lord Monckton discovers an error in mainstream climate science it is in the direction of ‘we have nothing to worry about’. They have all been wrong so far but maybe this is finally on the money, and it actually makes sense to talk about feedback from unvarying emission temperature. 
But I know where my money is. Roy Spencer and Lord Monckton cannot both be right. 

Reply to  John Phillips
August 28, 2021 5:29 am

Mr Phillips seems to have the closed mind of a totalitarian. It will be for the public authorities, not for me, to decide whether a fraud case is appropriate. And, as I have explained, Dr Spencer is not expert in control theory and, like nearly all climatologists on both sides of the debate, does not understand the elementary error that climatologists have made. Indeed, he does not even understand that control theory is universally applicable to all feedback-moderated dynamical systems, including climate.

He does have something of a history of attacking those who find errors in climatology’s methodology. For instance, he attacked Dr Frank’s paper on the propagation of uncertainty in models, which makes them entirely useless as predictors of global warming. For he knows no more of elementary statistics than he does of elementary control theory. That is the curse of increasing overspecialization in the sciences. And that is why, having discovered climatology’s error of control theory, I drew together a team of climatologists and control theorists to investigate it.

Only a totalitarian would argue, as Mr Phillips does, that Dr Spencer must be right because he has a piece of paper to say that he is a climatologist and I don’t. Even if one were to overlook Mr Phillips’ feeble-minded argument from appeal to authority – which was exposed 2400 years ago as a logical fallacy – we have experts on our side whose combined experience and pieces of paper trump those of Dr Spencer.

Climatology’s error of physics is not particularly difficult to understand, provided that one has a sufficiently open mind and a willingness to think a little, rather than clinging with a sort of malevolent desperation to the sinking ship that is catastrophic anthropogenic global warming.

Can Mr Phillips come up with a proper, scientific argument of his own against the error we have identified? Or an economic argument that shows it is worthwhile to bankrupt the West that he so hates for the sake of forestalling what, even if climatology were right, would be only one-thirteenth of a degree of warming over the next 30 years?

If not, let him fall silent. He is adding nothing to the debate except demonstration after demonstration of a sullen and disfiguring prejudice.

John Phillips
Reply to  Monckton of Brenchley
August 28, 2021 9:31 am

Only a totalitarian would argue, as Mr Phillips does, that Dr Spencer must be right because he has a piece of paper to say that he is a climatologist and I don’t.

I never argued any such thing, I find Dr Spencer’s arguments – inter alia that it makes no physical sense to treat emission temperature at equilibrium as a forcing – to be rather more compelling than the response (‘Dr Spencer is wrong’). But I am not going to get into the weeds, better people than I have tackled this.
 
Argument from authority is a fallacy, however when the argument is that an entire discipline has made a fundamental error, and the claim is being made by someone with little or no training in that discipline, backed up by shadowy anonymous experts, I turn to Sagan and ‘extraordinary claims’, etc. I also step back and consider a little history
 
Of course being serially wrong in the past does not prove this latest argument is similarly wrong, but I will eat my hat if this paper does not disappear without a trace, and we never hear from either Interpol or the Fraud Squad. (ROFL).

Make up your own minds. Choose wisely.
 
Anyhow I’ve been told I should fall silent, only too pleased to oblige.

Reply to  John Phillips
August 28, 2021 10:14 am

Mr Phillips continues to fail, and fail abjectly, to address the scientific argument. He asserts, without evidence, that I have been proven wrong in the past. Well, we all make mistakes: Mr Phillips, in everything he writes, is evidence of that.

In 1850 the equilibrium surface temperature of 287.5 K comprised 255 K emission temperature and 24.2 K feedback response thereto, plus 7.6 K direct warming by greenhouse gases and 0.7 K feedback response thereto.

The feedback responses are distributed proportionately between the two components – 255 K and 7.6 K – in the 262.6 K reference temperature in 1850 because feedback processes are inanimate. They cannot, at any particular moment, decide that they will not respond to 33/34ths of reference temperature, but that they will respond excessively to just 1/34th of it.

To imagine, as Dr Spencer and Mr Phillips do, that feedbacks cannot respond to emission temperature is – in the words of our professor of control theory – to imagine that the Sun is incapable of evaporating water.

Since the error is strikingly elementary, if Mr Phillips had not been so desperate to cling to the climate-Communist Party Line he would have been able to see for himself how silly it is of him to appeal to the authority of Dr Spencer, who is not a control theorist.

Mr Phillips whines that he has not been told who our co-authors are. Well, our professor of control theory has been threatened by his university, another co-author has been dismissed from his university, another has had a vicious campaign mounted against him in the Marxstream media and another has been bullied into resigning his tenure – all because they put their names to our paper.

We are having to be very careful until everything is in the hands of the police. But Mr Phillips, if he were not blinded by hate and totalitarian prejudice, would realize that the malevolent mistreatment of our co-authors would not have happened if there had been an error of any significance in our paper: for if there had been, we should not have persisted with it. Our co-authors are suffering not because we are wrong but because we are right, and the climate establishment cannot face that inconvenient truth.

Dodgy Geezer
August 27, 2021 8:17 am

We have the example of the Xhosa cattle killing movement in 1856 to show us that human societies are quite capable of wiping themselves out by following a blind belief promulgated by a few activists.

A little while earlier the Chincha people are believed to have created the Lines at Nazca as a way of calling on the gods to supply them with more water, since the region was undergoing climatic change to a drought condition. Future archaeologists will view our windmills in much the same way – though they will not find any marked climate change associated with them…

August 27, 2021 8:33 am

China is not WOKE like the US Dem/Progs, but is FORWARD THINKING, based on REAL POLITIK.

Navalny, a tool of the West, mouthes the West’s WOKE mantras to maintain support.
Russia, under Putin, is FORWARD THINKING, based on REAL POLITIK.

This is a revealing article, but the explanations not entirely clear to me.
I like its conclusions.
The article needs to be revised for layman clarity

Regarding capital cost. Here is an excerpt of my article with turnkey estimates for the US and World

WORLD AND US PRIMARY ENERGY CONSUMPTION AND CAPITAL COST
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/world-total-energy-consumption

World energy consumption is projected to increase to 736 quads in 2040 from 575 quads in 2015, an increase of 28%, according to the US Energy Information Administration, EIA. 
See URL and click on PPT to access data, click on to page 4 of PowerPoint
https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/ieo/

Most of this growth is expected to come from countries not in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD, and especially from countries where demand is driven by strong economic growth, particularly in Asia.
 
Non-OECD Asia, which includes China and India, accounted for more than 60% of the world’s total increase in energy consumption from 2015 through 2040.

August 27, 2021 9:24 am

The driver shown in the Tesla milk float is “Bubba J”.

As all Bubba J fans know, he would *Never* drive a Tesla truck to deliver milk; he would only use it to deliver beer. And the 0-60 performance is important so the beer will be delivered quickly to all the NASCAR fans so they will have plenty of cold beer before the start of the next race.

See here for the best of Bubba J.

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  Alan Watt, Climate Denialist Level 7
August 27, 2021 10:52 am

I thought that it was Alfred E. Neuman.

Reply to  Clyde Spencer
August 27, 2021 12:31 pm

Bubba J. without a doubt. Click the link above to see for yourself. Bubba J. is a better choice in this case anyway.

The difference between “Boris J.” and “Bubba J.” is that Bubba is an intentional parody of himself.

Carlo, Monte
Reply to  Clyde Spencer
August 27, 2021 3:23 pm

Or Howdie Doodie.

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  Carlo, Monte
August 27, 2021 9:24 pm

You’re dating yourself! 🙂

Beagle
August 27, 2021 9:56 am

The first 2 paragraphs could have been written by Boris himself, well his style anyway.

meab
August 27, 2021 12:37 pm

Don’t get me wrong, as I’m the first to say that the Tesla Semi is a scam, but Lord Monckton’s estimates for the cargo capacity of the Tesla semi are wrong. The Tesla semi is a scam but only partially because it’s cargo capacity is lower than a diesel semi.

Look this just isn’t hard. Here are the numbers. A diesel semi gets 6.4 mpg of diesel, diesel has 40 KWhrs of energy per gallon. A truck diesel operates at about 40% thermal efficiency, so it uses 2.5 KWhr/mile. Remember that number, 2.5 KWhr/mile, because Tesla falsely claims that their semi will use just 2 KWhr/mile.

Tesla is offering 2 different range models, a 300 mile range and a 500 mile range. Let’s take 500 miles as the range needed to do long distance trucking – that’s about 8 hours of driving at 62 mph.

To go 500 miles would require 1250 KW hrs or 13 of Teslas 100 KWhr battery packs at 1300 lbs apiece. 16,900 lbs of batteries. Compare that with the weight of a semi truck’s motor (2900 lbs) + transmission (700 lbs) or 3600 lbs. The rest of the drive train of a diesel truck (drive shaft, differential, etc. is comparable to the weight of the electric truck’s charger, motors (about 400 lbs for 4 large electric motors)

So,a diesel semi’s tare weight is 35,000 lbs leaving 45,000 lbs for cargo, the Tesla semi will have a 32,000 lbs cargo capacity. That’s bad because a trucking company will have to own 3 Tesla trucks for every 2 diesel trucks they replace. 3 drivers instead of 2.

The other reason that the Tesla semi is a scam is that Tesla batteries can only be fully charged and discharged about 600 to 900 times before they degrade significantly. To prevent degradation Tesla batteries are recommended to be charged when they drop below 20% and only charged to 80%, rendering the 500 mile range only 300 miles – useless for long distance trucking. But, if you use 100% of the battery, it will degrade in 2 to 3 years also rendering the battery useless for long-distance trucking as the driver couldn’t possibly stop after 6 or 7 hours of driving to charge for 2 or 3 hours and then resume driving.

Reply to  meab
August 27, 2021 1:23 pm

MEAB,

The Tesla semi is more aerodynamic
The electric drive train is more efficient than diesel
The semis will have the new, more efficient battery cartridges

Semis would be dead, if not for the new units; the reason it was delayed, will be built in Texas, sometime in 2022.

One kWh AC from wall plug, minus charge loss of at least 15%, more if truck is refrigerating while charging, gets 0.85 kWh DC in the battery.
Tesla states 2 kWh/mile, but should state 2 kWh DC/mile

Moving from a to b, has various drags, wheels, road surface, wind, etc.

Your comments about 20% and 80% are spot on, i.e., range is a lot less to preserve battery life.

Reply to  Willem post
August 27, 2021 3:41 pm

MEAB,

It is important to compare modern vs modern

Modern, latest model semi’s get 10 mpg; per google

It takes 128,488 Btu/gal of diesel, LHV, to drive 10 miles, or 12,849 Btu/mile from the tank.
A very small percentage of the Btus are needed for on-board auxiliaries.

It would take 4.43 kWh AC from the wall plug to have 3.765 kWh DC in the battery, or 12,855 Btu/mile from the battery.
A percentage of the Btus is needed for on-board auxiliaries, about 10% in summer, much more in winter.

The above is true, if all items, such as (truck gross curb weight + cargo) are the same for both semis, and both have high aerodynamics, etc.

However, the Btus from the battery are used by a much more efficient (60%, electric vs 40%, diesel), drive train, which would significantly reduce kWh DC from battery/mile, and from the wall plug.

There is no free lunch, when counting Btus.

Meab
Reply to  willem post
August 27, 2021 5:11 pm

What you’re missing is that all semi-trucks ALREADY use aerodynamic aids. That’s included in the 6.4 mpg number. Only small efficiency improvements can be had from even more advanced aero. The newest most efficient diesel trucks don’t get 10 mpg, you made that up. The most efficient ones actually on the road get about 7.5 mpg and they do it with the best aero and by increasing their thermal efficiency by running at a lower, nearly constant RPM. They are 45% efficient. Run the numbers – 7.5 mpg, 45% efficiency, is 2.4 KW hr / mile – only slightly better than my 2.5 number. So you would need 12 battery packs, not 13, saving 1300 lbs and increasing the Tesla’s cargo capacity to 33,000 lbs.

The rest of your post is a combination of made up numbers and muddy thinking. If the electric drivetrain was only 60% efficient it would need a much bigger battery, not smaller. Electric drive trains are more like 95% efficient – my analysis assumed 100% – so my numbers are likely to be, if anything, slightly conservative. It appears that Tesla’s scam worked on you.

Reply to  Meab
August 27, 2021 8:51 pm

MEAB,
Just getting out of battery takes about 5%, then to the DC motor which has an average efficiency of 95%, peak efficiency is higher, then to the drive assembly, then to the wheels.

The overall loss is much greater than 5%

We need to compare road test vs road test of modern, new vehicles, otherwise it is not apples to apples.

New diesel road tests show 10 mpg, just google.

Reply to  Willem post
August 28, 2021 3:13 am

For your files

ELECTRIC TRANSIT AND SCHOOL BUS SYSTEMS NOT COST-EFFECTIVE IN NEW ENGLAND AND CANADA
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/electric-bus-systems-likely-not-cost-effective-in-vermont-at

Dennis
Reply to  Meab
August 27, 2021 9:03 pm

Explain how aerodynamics work for tracks hauling very heavy loads up hills or mountains averaging maybe five kilometres an hour under escort, travelling vast distances on gravel roads with corrugations that shake everything apart at speeds greater than eighty kilometres an hour or less on back roads that have not been graded for some time?

And how much energy saving is achieved by the not very big payload Tesla truck at the recommended 90 KMH road speed maximum 100 KMH?

I have been followed by a Tesla S sedan on a motorway slip streaming behind my 4WD diesel SUV at a genuine 110 KMH speed limit, after about one hundred kilometres up and down hills the Tesla slowed down and dropped far behind, I have no doubt that battery energy had been dropping alarmingly.

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  Dennis
August 27, 2021 9:37 pm

How do you make the truck aerodynamic when it is hauling something like a wind turbine blade or something like a couple of high-voltage transformers and are just sitting on the bed, unenclosed?

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  Meab
August 27, 2021 9:33 pm

So you would need 12 battery packs, …

When the battery packs are new. It is probably a good idea to provide reserve power so that the system is more likely to fail slowly and not catastrophically.

Clyde Spencer
Reply to  willem post
August 27, 2021 9:30 pm

There is no free lunch, when counting Btus.

That is generally true, particularly in nice weather. However, it tends not to be true in the Winter in cold climate because that 40% diesel efficiency provides ‘free’ waste heat to heat the cabin and de-ice the windshield.

Reply to  Clyde Spencer
August 28, 2021 3:09 am

Clyde,

Right, all bets are off in the COLD CLIMATES of northern areas of the US and almost all of Canada.

In Norway lots of people drive EVs, largely because of:

1) VERY HUGE subsidies and other bennies, such as free parking and no tolls and driving in reserved-for-transit bus lanes, a huge time saver in Oslo.

2) Gasoline at about TEN DOLLARS PER GALLON.

Reply to  meab
August 27, 2021 1:26 pm

Well, the evidence that I have seen is that the Tesla milk-float will weigh about 33 tons. Tesla’s claims for new, lighter batteries etc. have been made so often in the past, but without delivering on the promises, that I’ll believe the new batteries when I see them. Either way, the Tesla semi will not be an economic method of transport, and I strongly suspect that Musk knows this but is counting on the “Democrats” to ban real semis altogether on the pretext of Saving The Planet, but with the real aim of utterly destroying the economy of the nation they so viscerally hate.

Meab
Reply to  Monckton of Brenchley
August 27, 2021 4:42 pm

I used the actual weight of Tesla’s 100 KWhr battery used in the Model S.

Spence
August 27, 2021 1:19 pm

What process did you use to arrive at the claim that EV’s are getting fuel efficiency of 1950s model automobiles?

Reply to  Spence
August 29, 2021 8:20 am

Elementary arithmetic.

H.R.
August 27, 2021 5:43 pm

Christopher Monckton, you’re going to have to put on some lipstick and a skirt and then vigorously wiggle your tail if you ever hope to get Boris’ attention.

Appeals to reason aren’t going to cut it with Boris.

Reply to  H.R.
August 28, 2021 5:13 am

Well, we’re going to try to get some Parliamentary scrutiny of climatology’s errors.

H.R.
Reply to  Monckton of Brenchley
August 28, 2021 4:58 pm

Ah, I see you’ve already accounted for that fly in the pudding.

Besides, high heels are a pain to walk around in just to get the eye of the PM. It’s just not worth it.

Wise tactics you’ve chosen.

Reply to  H.R.
August 29, 2021 8:20 am

Trouble is, the average MP or Peer is so terrified of the savage and lavishly-funded campaign of reputational assaults to which he would be subjected if he spoke out that he tends to keep holy silence. But it is worth trying to bring some common sense to the debate.

You can see just how feeble the responses of the usual trolls here have become. They now understand perfectly well that climatology is in error and that, therefore, there is no climate “emergency”.

What is sad is that even climatologists on the skeptical side of the debate, though unable to find any substantive objection to our result, simply won’t admit that they’ve all made so large a mistake. No one wants to know. So quadrillions will be squandered and the West may well go under – which is, after all, the real objective of the climate fanatics.

AGW is Not Science
August 27, 2021 7:20 pm

It’s worse than you think – because all of these assumptions, which is all they are, about the “effect” of CO2 on temperature, are implicitly based on an assumption that is completely ignored. The purely hypothetical effect of CO2 on temperature assumes all other things held equal, which they are not. And the “feedbacks” are negative, offsetting feedbacks, as demonstrated by plenty of empirical observation that show CO2 “driving” nothing and NO empirical observations that show CO2 having any effect. They double down on their hypothetical bullshit by assuming positive, amplifying feedbacks never empirically demonstrated to exist.

So although your math may indeed show, even generously accepting the hypothetical bullshit, that “net zero” is is not worth the economic hara kiri, we should be further pushing back on the notion that even the immeasurably small amounts of hypothetical warming that would be hypothetically reduced are even anything real and scientifically demonstrated. Because they are not.

John Phillips
Reply to  AGW is Not Science
August 28, 2021 2:21 am

They double down on their hypothetical bullshit by assuming positive, amplifying feedbacks never empirically demonstrated to exist.”

The main positive feedback is water vapor and that has been observed, measured and found to be in line with model projections.
 
https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.182.6212&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Reply to  John Phillips
August 28, 2021 5:09 am

Mr Phillips is not, perhaps, aware of the wider literature on the water-vapor feedback. The models predict that the water-vapor feedback will be negligible near the surface, but will be very strong in the mid- to upper troposphere, where they all predict a “hot spot” in the tropics, where temperature will increase at altitude at up to twice the rate observed at the surface.

However, except in one or two datasets that are questionable, the predicted hot spot is not observed. Therefore, the water-vapor feedback cannot be as strong as the models purport to find.

But the simplest argument against a large total feedback response – without which global warming will be small, slow, harmless and net-beneficial – is that climatology incorrectly defines feedback as responding only to perturbations, such as the direct warming by anthropogenic and natural greenhouse gases. But climatology’s definition – and this appears to be universal throughout the literature on both sides of the debate – does not also state that feedbacks must perforce also respond to the far larger emission temperature.

Climatology’s mishandling of feedback, and its consequent false prediction of four times as much global warming as is tenable after correction of its error, is described in the footnote to the head posting.

Consider the position in 1850. Equilibrium global mean surface temperature that year was 287.5 K, comprising 255 K emission temperature and 24.2 K feedback response thereto, plus 7.6 K direct warming by preindustrial noncondensing greenhouse gases and 0.7 K feedback response thereto.

Thus, the 287.5 K comprised a reference temperature (before feedback response) of 255 + 7.6 = 262.6 K, and a natural greenhouse effect of 24.2 + 0.7 = 24.9 K. The system-gain factor, the ratio of the 287.5 K equilibrium temperature in 1850 to the 262.6 K reference temperature, was thus a little below 1.1.

However, climatology makes the mistake of omitting the 255 K emission temperature from the numerator and denominator of the system-gain factor, because climatologists, when borrowing feedback math from control theory, a branch of engineering physics, did not realize that there was a feedback response to emission temperature.

So, instead of the correct system-gain factor of (255 + 32.5) / (255 + 7.6) < 1.1, climatology imagines that it is 32.5 / 7.6 > 4. This is an elementary and grave error. The magnitude of the error may be appreciated when one realizes that the entire history of climate up to 1850 had produced a feedback response of only 0.7 K to the 7.6 K direct warming by preindustrial noncondensing greenhouse gases, but that the CMIP6 models’ midrange 3.9 K equilibrium doubled-CO2 sensitivity implies 2.85 K feedback response to just 1.05 K direct doubled-CO2 warming.

Climatologists were fooled by the size of the natural greenhouse effect – about 32.5 K – into imagining that it comprised 24.9 K feedback response to 7.6 K direct warming by preindustrial greenhouse gases. That is why, in paper after paper, they say they expect final warming to be three or four times direct warming. But they are simply wrong. They did not know enough control theory to realize that at any given moment, such as 1850, the feedback processes then present must, at that moment, respond equally to each degree of reference temperature and thus proportionately to each component therein.

The error is that elementary. It is not really surprising that climatology is very reluctant to admit it, and that, on the previous two occasions on which we have submitted our paper setting out the error, the reviewers have been meticulous in not addressing it at all. However, in the end the truth will out, and no amount of pious recitation of papers embodying or influenced by the error on Mr Phillips’ part will make any difference whatsoever.

An open mind is so much more attractive than an open mouth.

John Phillips
Reply to  Monckton of Brenchley
August 28, 2021 7:49 am

Several times now Lord Monckton has claimed that in rejecting his paper, the reviewers have not addressed the main point. Oddly and coyly he has not actually shared the reviews [to my knowledge]. I invite him to do so in the spirit of openness, but I don’t suppose he will take up the invitation.

“The amount of surface temperature change in response to that energy imbalance is, by definition, the climate sensitivity, which in turn depends upon feedback components. You can call the feedbacks anything… maybe “temperature sensitivity parameters” if you wish. Feedback is just a convenient term that quantifies the proportionality between an imposed energy imbalance and the resulting temperature change response, whether it’s for a pot of water on the stove, the climate system, or anything that is initially at a constant temperature but then is forced to change its temperature. Christopher’s claim that the Earth’s effective radiating temperature (ERT) to outer space (around 255 K) itself causes a “feedback” makes no sense to me, because it isn’t (nor does it represent) a “forcing”. Feedbacks, by the climate definition, are only in response to forced departures from energy equilibrium”

Neatly put by Dr Spencer. The finding of error contains a basic misrepresentation. No amount of bafflegab will change that.
 
From <http://www.drroyspencer.com/2018/03/climate-f-words/>&nbsp;

Reply to  John Phillips
August 28, 2021 10:01 am

Dr Spencer is simply wrong. Climatology’s definition of feedback, on which he unwisely relies, is incorrect, in that it excludes the feedback response to emission temperature.

Like it or not, feedback processes are inanimate. They cannot decide – say, in 1850 – that they will respond only to an arbitrarily-selected and minuscule fraction of the reference temperature then obtaining, for they must respond equally to each degree of reference temperature, and thus proportionately to each component therein.

The reference temperature in 1850 comprised two components: the 255 K emission temperature and the 7.6 K direct warming by (or reference sensitivity to) the preindustrial noncondensing greenhouse gases.

Therefore, the feedback response to the 255 K emission temperature was 24.2 K, and the feedback response to the 7.6 K direct greenhouse-gas warming was 0.7 K.

Therefore, Mr Phillips, instead of lazily appealing to the authority supposedly represented by Dr Spencer, who is evidently not a control theorist or he would not have written what he did, should try to imagine a plausible scenario in which the feedback processes present in 1850 were somehow capable of deciding that they would not respond at all to the 255 K emission temperature but that they would respond, and with absurdly exaggerated vigor, to the remaining 7.6 K of reference temperature.

There is no such plausible scenario. Therefore, climatologists – including Dr Spencer – are simply flat-out wrong when they attribute all of the 24.9 K feedback response in 1850 to the direct warming by greenhouse gases.

How can feedback processes distinguish between one degree of reference temperature and another? The answer is that they can’t, for the good and sufficient reason that 1 = 1.

John Phillips
Reply to  Monckton of Brenchley
August 28, 2021 11:10 am

No reviews, then.

Reply to  John Phillips
August 29, 2021 8:15 am

No reviews have yet addressed climatology’s central error. The editor of the most recent journal from which we received reviews said we had satisfactorily answered all the reviewers’ points [which were footling: for instance, one reviewer said he disliked the conclusion and thus refused to read the paper itself], but that his fellow editors would not allow this or any paper coming to so inconvenient and embarrassing a conclusion to be published. He has confirmed he will be saying as much to the fraud-investigating authorities in due course. He commented that this was a situation that required the most thorough investigation.

John Phillips
Reply to  Monckton of Brenchley
August 29, 2021 9:08 am

Yeah, as I predicted we will not be allowed to read the actual reviews…..

Reply to  AGW is Not Science
August 28, 2021 5:13 am

AGWisnotscience should appreciate that the greenhouse effect is indeed real and substantial. Consider the position in 1850, when the equilibrium global mean surface temperature was 287.5 K. But the emission temperature – the temperature that would prevail on Earth in the absence of any greenhouse gases in the air at the outset – is only 255 K. If there is no greenhouse effect, what caused the 32.5 K further warming in 1850 that is known to climatologists as the natural greenhouse effect?