I wish we were having a white Christmas this year, but Mother Nature decided otherwise. This isn’t the first time we’ve not had snow for Christmas and I doubt it will be the last. However, I have a feeling she’ll be making up for it the rest of the winter, particularly if the weather prognosticators are right. I know I’m looking forward to it.
==+++==
I haven’t been the only one saying the used EV market is dead. Now Bloomberg is saying the same thing.
The shift away from cars with dirty combustion engines is running into a new hurdle: Drivers don’t want to buy used electric vehicles, and that’s undermining the market for new ones, too.It also doesn’t help that some of these used EVs may require a battery pack replacement a couple of years down the road. A replacement pack can run between $10,000 and $25,000, if not more. Why would anyone buy a used EV if it’s likely they’d have to shell out that kind of money to keep it on the road?
In the $1.2 trillion secondhand market, prices for battery-powered cars are falling faster than for their combustion-engine cousins. Buyers are shunning them due to a lack of subsidies, a desire to wait for better technology and continued shortfalls in charging infrastructures. A fierce price war sparked by Tesla Inc. and competitive Chinese models are further depressing values of new and used cars alike, threatening earnings at rivals like Volkswagen AG and Stellantis NV.
It makes no sense.
Then there are those who believe all they have to do is reprogram you in order for you to buy into Evs even though many of those same people have chosen to ignore an electrical infrastructure that is incapable of providing the electrical power needed to charge all those EVs, one that will not be upgraded to meet that need.
==+++==
Speaking about electrical power, it looks like the Osage Nation in Oklahoma has won its case in a federal court in Tulsa, with a federal judge ordering a Rome-based wind energy corporation to remove all 84 wind turbines built on Osage tribal property against it wishes and in violation of a court order which prevented the corporation from mining rock on the tribe’s property.
The Osage Nation won a massive ruling in Tulsa federal court on Wednesday that requires Enel to dismantle a 150-megawatt wind project it built in Osage County despite the tribe’s repeated objections. The tribe’s fight against Rome-based Enel began in 2011 and is the longest-running legal battle over wind energy in American history.If this is how alternative energy companies are going to act when it comes to building their projects, then maybe they shouldn’t be allowed. That also goes for those who oppose non-renewable energy projects because of feelz or because they don’t fit the Green Energy narratives. They are quite often the same folks who will complain when they see their electric bills double or triple or when rolling blackouts become the norm. Too often they are incapable of seeing it was their actions that set these events in motion.
As reported by Curtis Killman in the Tulsa World on Thursday, the ruling grants the United States, the Osage Nation, and Osage Minerals Council permanent injunctive relief via “ejectment of the wind turbine farm for continuing trespass.”
The decision by U.S. Court of International Trade Judge Jennifer Choe-Graves is the culmination of 12 years of litigation that pitted the tribe and federal authorities against Enel. During the construction of the project, the company illegally mined rock owned by the tribe, and it continued to do so even after being ordered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to stop. Instead of halting work, the company sped up construction. Enel must now remove the 84 turbines that it built on 8,400 acres of the Tallgrass Prairie located between Pawhuska and Fairfax. Removing the turbines will cost Enel some $300 million.
Under the Osage Allotment Act of 1906, the tribe owns the rights to the minerals beneath the land it bought from the Cherokee Nation in the late 1800s. Those mineral rights include oil, natural gas, and the rocks that Enel mined and crushed for the wind project. By mining without permission, the company violated the tribe’s sovereignty. Choe-Graves concluded that Enel “failed to acquire a mining lease during or after construction, as well as after issuance of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision holding that a mining lease was required” in 2017. She continued, saying the company’s “past and continued refusal to obtain a lease constitutes interference with the sovereignty of the Osage Nation and is sufficient to constitute irreparable injury.”
==+++==
This is something I had to include as it appeals to the nerd/science geek in me:
==+++==
And that is the abbreviated news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the last preparations for Christmas are being made, the last presents are being delivered, and where I have some family to go spend time with on this Christmas Eve.