Pirate's Cove

Interestingly, despite so many saying the Believe in anthropogenic climate change, few of them do a damned thing in their own life to practice what they preach. These same scientist moms, a rather newer group, do not talk about what changes they’re making. Weird, right?

Scientist-moms explore why climate change messaging falls flat

When Melissa Burt, an atmospheric scientist at Colorado State University, made a video about the climate crisis, it included images of her daughter, Mia.

“There’s some light within her that makes me continue to do the climate science work that I do,” Burt says in her voice-over. As she speaks, photos of a toddler — playing in the garden, sledding in fresh snow, frolicking on the beach — appear in frame. “As moms, we care about the environment they grow up in. And for Mia, I want you to know I worked hard for the change, and to make it a better place for you.”

What Burt does not say are phrases such as “net zero,” “1.5 degrees Celsius,” or even “carbon emissions.” Nor does she mention polar bears or ice caps. Climate change isn’t about politics or jargon, the video implies. Climate change is about us: Our neighborhoods, our schools, our kids.

Sooooooo, basically, politics and jargon. Right?

“From a scientist’s perspective, oftentimes we say facts, facts, facts,” Burt told Climate & Capital. “But half the time, people don’t understand what those facts mean.”

And facts alone don’t seem to spark action.

Got that? Facts are meaningless. Really, the climate cult doesn’t actually have much in the way of scientific facts on their side, so, this is not a big surprise.

Potential Energy Coalition, the nonprofit, marketing agency behind Science Moms, paid for around 1 billion online ad impressions targeting a wide variety of platforms, target audiences and geographies, closely tracking which sorts of people responded to which sorts of messaging.

“We’ve tested a lot of messages and ads to different groups of people. And we’ve found that the suburban mom was the most persuadable on lifting support or strong government action on climate change,” said Anne-Marie Kline, managing director of campaigns for research at Potential Energy.

Strong government, eh? Weird how this isn’t about politics. Now, let’s slap some strong government on the lives of the people who are for it, move it from theory to practice, see how well they enjoy it.

Read: Climate Cult “Scientist Mom” Explains That Facts Aren’t Changing People’s Minds »

Well, this is a quick change from the hardcore members of the Cult of Climastrology

Wheeler: Electric cars are not the solution to climate change

Electric vehicles are all the craze these days, representing a conscious shift in the consumer away from the dirty, polluting, archaic past of gas-driven cars. However, this transition is more lateral than progressive. Electric cars are the automobile industry trying to maintain its dominance by selling an environmentally friendly product. The problem is not what drives on our roads, but the roads themselves.

Don’t get me wrong, relative to traditional combustion engine vehicles, electric cars are almost objectively better –– especially so in Eugene, as 80% of our electricity comes from renewable sources. We’ve all heard the statistics that electric cars in the short term contribute to carbon emissions, which is true. Production of batteries for EVs requires rare Earth metals like cobalt and lithium that are environmentally devastating and dangerous to mine. Not to mention they only last for 10-20 years. Also, barring the Pacific Northwest, the vast majority of EVs will be charged with electricity still being generated by non-renewable means.

Marc Schlossberg, a professor in the school of Planning, Public Policy and Management, is not against EVs but does not buy their marketing as an environmental savior.

“Even if we have EVs, the land consumption, the disruption of urban space is still problematic,” Schlossberg said. “Replacing one form of car dependency with another does not address the economic and ecological issues that are critical for our survival.”

Well, that’s a bummer. It also shows that this is really not about climate, but, politics.

Schlossberg is right. EVs are maginalty better, but their adoption is just an obfuscation from the root causes of our warming world. The way our society is physically built, our infrastructure, is incompatible with combating climate change. Our cities are low density spawls of wide roads and single-unit housing. These unwalkable communities coerce the population into car dependency and discriminate against those who cannot operate or own a car.

Notice a pattern? Climate cultists do not like giving people the freedom to live where they want, to have freedom of movement. The “discriminate against those who cannot operate and own a car” is new one.

The new electric Ford F-150 has a battery capacity of 98 kWh, whereas the average electric bike has a capacity of 300 Wh, meaning that one electric truck battery is equivalent to approximately 325 electric bikes. Coupled with the fact that 60% of all vehicles trips are less than 6 miles, and the average occupancy of a car being only 1.5 people displays how inefficient car dependency is. Electric bikes could transport hundreds more people for a fraction of the resources and infrastructure.

Plus, add the bill for the charging infrastructure for electric cars to the list of decaying highways and bridges that are required for car dependency. Instead of, y’know, the charging infrastructure for ebikes — which is a wall outlet that already exists just about everywhere.

Oh, cool, force Everyone Else to use an ebike! Not exactly convenient when going to the grocery store.

We don’t need individual electric vehicles that operate in a tunnel beneath the city. The solutions already exist and just need more investment: trains and buses that come frequently enough that you don’t need to check a schedule and cities built for the biker and pedestrian. We can not leave our future up to the whims of CEOs operating on behalf of profit margins. Elon Musk didn’t buy the title of“founder” for the already existing Tesla company because he cares about the environment, but because he doesn’t want to be around “a bunch of random strangers.”

And, how are you going to achieve this? Legislation forcing people? Good luck with that.

Read: EVs Aren’t The Solution To ‘Climate Change’ Or Something »