Remember the American love for the open road? That paean to American freedom built on the automobile but made possible by highways that also enabled trucks to deliver goods to just about any location quickly and safely? Hot cars are still popular today, as evidenced by the fact that the “Fast and Furious” movies have generated about $2 billion in ticket sales in the U.S. and another $5 billion worldwide. Formula 1 reported revenues of more than $3.2 billion in 2023, with profits up by 64%. In 2021, the Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), which governs world m ..read more

The following is a guest article by Jeremiah Poff. When I was a college student in the dilapidated industrial city of Steubenville, Ohio, I frequently would wake up to the smell of sulfur clinging to a heavy morning fog, thanks to the fumes spewed into the air by nearby industrial factories. I mention this not to disparage Steubenville, a town that once exemplified the American manufacturing dream but has since suffered greatly amid a decades-long economic decline. Rather I mention it because, over the four years I spent smelling the same stench each time I walked to a morning clas ..read more

The current obsession with decarbonization had its roots in the reaction to the amazing post-WW2 period, when ordinary workers were able to own a house and a car. I was a student in the 50s and early 60s. Mockery of the poor taste and materialism of these people was endemic. With the Vietnam War, things got amplified, as the working class got drafted while students sought draft deferments (students, during this period, were still a relative elite; the massive expansion of higher education was only beginning). They justified their behavior by insisting that the Vietnam War was illegitimate, w ..read more

The energy-poor nation of Ethiopia has just become the first in the world to ban the import of all non-electric automobiles. This despite the fact that barely half of Ethiopian citizens have any access to electricity. Other sources say that number may be as low as 30 percent. On the other hand, electricity in Ethiopia is cheap – just six-tenths of a cent per kilowatt-hour for households and 2.1 cents/kWh for businesses, compared with 15.6 cents and 15.2 cents, respectively, worldwide. Electricity is cheaper than gasoline (about $2 per liter). Cheap, that is, until the rea ..read more

How bad is the EV business? Ford Motor Company just reported that the operating loss it incurred on its EV business in 2023 exceeded its total profit for the year. That shocking fact comes directly from the company’s earnings report, which carried the headline, “Ford+ Delivers Solid 2023…” The Dearborn-based auto giant had an operating loss (also known as EBIT, or earnings before interest and taxes) of $4.7 billion on its EV business last year. Meanwhile, the company reported net income (profit) of just $4.3 billion, on revenue of $176 billion. The company also reported operating in ..read more

Plug-in electric vehicles (EVs) are great so long as generous taxpayers can afford to buy them for us and we don’t plan long winter trips to visit wayward brother Bubba who barely eeks out enough poultry chicken feed to sell inflationary $11 sandwiches to other country rubes at his local bar and grill. https://unsplash.com/photos/black-and-silver-car-on-parking-lot-O63S96_qn8c According to an October 2023 Texas Public Policy Foundation report, “Overcharged Expectations: Unmasking True Costs of Electric Vehicles,” as much as $48,000 of the real cost of an average U.S. 2021 model year ..read more

EN: Dr. Roy Spencer serves thoughtfully on the Cornwall Alliance Board. What follows is a response to Gavin Schmidt’s blog post at RealClimate.org entitled Spencer’s Shenanigans in which he takes issue with my claims in Global Warming: Observations vs. Climate Models. As I read through his criticism, he seems to be trying too hard to refute my claims while using weak (and even non-existent) evidence. To summarize my claims regarding the science of global warming: Climate models relied upon to guide public policy have produced average surface global warming rates about 40% grea ..read more

Electric vehicles have been all the rage among politicians at least since President Barack Obama’s first term in office, but they’ve never really caught on among the unwashed masses, who actually want their cars to deliver them to their destinations in comfort in a timely fashion, toting everything and everyone they might want to take along, without blowing up while parked and burning down their residences in the process. In truth, EVs had been tried and rejected long before that, largely because of the same problems they still have: low range and high cost. The first electric vehicle, a loc ..read more

In January the Securities and Exchange Commission withdrew a proposal to list and regulate “natural asset companies,” which would have allowed such companies to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange, allowing them to raise investment capital through the stock market.  The Cornwall Alliance applauds that decision but also expects that those who supported the proposal will be back again in the future, promoting something different in name but largely the same in substance. Consequently, we’re glad to offer our readers this analysis, by attorney George S. Whitten, of why natural asset co ..read more

In September of 1920, shortly after Hugh Ross’s book Weathering Climate Change was published, a prominent Christian leader asked me what I thought of it. Not long after that, two other prominent Christian leaders asked me the same question. Here is how I responded: I’ve read, over the past 15 years or so, over 50 complete books (and parts of 100 or more others) and many thousands of articles, hundreds peer reviewed, on the science, and over 30 books (and parts of 20 or so others) and many thousands of articles, scores peer reviewed, on the economics, of climate change and climate ..read more