Day: May 24, 2026

Green Energy Cultists Meltdown Over Proposed EV Road-Use Fees

Albert Gore III, the son of former VP Gore, serves as the Executive Director of the Zero Emission Transportation Association and is unhappy with this development.

From Watts Up With That?

From Legal Insurrection

Albert Gore III, the son of former VP Gore, serves as the Executive Director of the Zero Emission Transportation Association and is unhappy with this development.

Posted by Leslie Eastman 

Regular Legal Insurrection readers will recall that I have been tracking the slow-motion collapse of the great electric vehicle experiment for years.

I reported on the Biden administration’s laughably failed promise on tens of thousands of charging stations.

Blue states slammed the brakes on California-style EV mandates once the math simply stopped computing, while Ford took a staggering $19.5 billion hit as it zapped production of its all-electric F-150 Lightning.

Finally, there was a serious market reckoning that saw EV registrations plunge 41% ry after federal tax credits were finally yanked.

In short: the government picked a winner, forced it on the American people, and the American people said: “No, thank you.”

Now, with EV ownership having been subsidized, mandated, and cheered by the green-energy zealots for the better part of a decade, Congress has decided that EV drivers ought to start paying for the roads they use, which is something every gasoline driver has quietly done at the pump all along.

As my colleague Mary Castain noted earlier this week, bipartisan House legislation introduced this week would impose a $130 annual fee on electric vehicle owners and a $35 fee on plug-in hybrid drivers, rising incrementally to $150 and $50, respectively, with the revenue directed at the Highway Trust Fund.

I think Legal Insurrection readers will be shocked to discover green energy advocates are deeply unhappy with this potential new rule.

Albert Gore III, the son of former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, serves as the Executive Director of the Zero Emission Transportation Association (ZETA). He is unhappy with this development.

But auto industry and environmental groups said the fee was substantially higher than the average fuel taxes paid by owners of gasoline cars. All electric vehicle owners would pay the same flat rate, whereas owners of vehicles that run on gasoline or diesel pay more if they drive more.

The fees make it harder for people to escape soaring fuel prices by buying an electric vehicle, said Albert Gore III, executive director of the Zero Emission Transportation Association, an industry group whose members include Tesla, Rivian and Lucid. His group estimated that most Americans paid $73 to $89 a year in federal fuel taxes.

Sales of used electric vehicles, which cost about the same to buy as similar gasoline-powered vehicles, have soared after the war in Iran raised fuel prices about 50 percent.

“This unduly penalizes people for making that choice,” Mr. Gore said. “I don’t argue that the number should be zero, but the number should be fair.”

Zero Emission Transportation Association’s Executive Director Albert Gore bashes the $130 EV fee proposed in the highway bill as “a punitive tax that would disproportionately impact adopters of electric vehicles, with no meaningful impact on maintaining the HTF.”

— Chris Marquette (@ChrisMarquette_) May 18, 2026

Ironically, the peril is so great to the green energy cultists that they are now complaining about affordability and have prices. This complaint comes from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC):

“This legislation is a punch in the gut to the millions of Americans struggling to pay higher prices at the pump.

“With Americans demanding more affordable transportation options as gasoline tops $4.50 a gallon this bill would impose an onerous new fee on electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids, while slashing investments in new EV chargers.

Hot Air’s Beege Welborne takes issue with how the elite media are presenting this development:

I love the verbiage: EV drivers could be FORCED to pay.

Oh, really? Nothing like what American taxpayers were FORCED to pay to develop and manufacture these things, not to mention finance the handsome subsidies to both the car companies and the consumer to get someone – ANYONE to buy the damn things.

And now we’re going to whine about having a yearly, tiny little $10 or so a month fee after all the bragging about not paying for gas, ete. that these insufferable snots do?

Gas taxes pay for the roads EVs drive on that EVs do not and have never paid for.

What we are witnessing isn’t some great injustice visited upon virtuous EV owners, but an overdue collision with economic reality.

After years of subsidies, mandates, media cheerleading, and regulatory muscle-flexing, the bill has finally come due. Suddenly, the same crowd that insisted EVs were the inevitable future is aghast at the notion of paying a modest share for the infrastructure they use.

The irony is rich: the “fair share” rhetoric cuts both ways, and now that it does, the enthusiasm for it is fading fast.

It turns out Americans weren’t rejecting EVs out of ignorance or obstinacy. Rather, they were rejecting a top-down experiment that never made practical or financial sense.

We will see if the proposal is actually passed by the US Senate, which tends not to support matters that are practical or fiscally sensible.

OFCOM’s Clampdown on Free Speech

The Government’s state censor, OFCOM, is now actively attempting to clamp down on any debate about climate change that challenges establishment orthodoxy.

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

The Government’s state censor, OFCOM, is now actively attempting to clamp down on any debate about climate change that challenges establishment orthodoxy.

Two decisions by OFCOM this month have made this crystal clear.

Climate Change is a Hoax – Trump

The first concerns a GB News interview with President Trump, in which he called climate change a “hoax”.

According to the Telegraph:

“GB News is facing an investigation over claims it broke broadcasting rules by failing to challenge Donald Trump when he called climate change “a hoax”.

Ofcom said it had launched an investigation into a re-run of a GB News interview with Mr Trump for the midday broadcast of The Weekend

The regulator previously declined to launch an investigation into the original airing of the same interview 12 hours earlier, on GB News’ The Late Show Live, stating the programme had featured “alternative perspectives” as part of a panel discussion.

The new investigation concerns a second screening of the sit-down interview on Nov 15. OFCOM is expected to examine the surrounding content shown alongside the interview.”

I am not quite sure what right OFCOM think they have to challenge anything a foreign leader says. The President is fully entitled to his views and, whether OFCOM like them or not, the public have a right to hear them and make their own judgement.

Interviews with foreign leaders are broadcast on all channels, and they often include incorrect statements and outrageous views – is the BBC, for example, now expected to dispute everything that Putin, Xi or von der Leyen tells them that sounds a bit dodgy?

And it is the BBC, of course, who regularly report propaganda from Hamas or the Iranian regime as if it were factual and without any challenge at all.

Interviews with foreign leaders tend to be deferential, unlike ones with our domestic politicians, who we expect to be grilled. The public want to hear what Trump and the rest have to say, not listen to interviewers’ gotcha questions.

Was what Trump said controversial? Yes.

But the BBC has often broadcast equally controversial claims from the alarmist side of the climate debate.

Take, for instance, one Greta Thunberg!

In 2019, BBC Radio 4’s Today programme aired a pathetically servile interview with the then 16-year old schoolgirl, during which she made several outlandish, factually incorrect claims, including that climate change was an “existential crisis”. No serious scientist believes this to be true.

She also blamed climate change for starving polar bears and causing environmental damage. But at the time of the interview, it was already known that polar bears were thriving, with numbers having risen since hunting was banned in the 1970s. And whatever the cause of environmental destruction, it certainly is not the weather.

Thunberg then went on to incorrectly state that “most emissions are not caused by individuals”, but by corporations and states.

At no stage during the interview was she challenged about any of these claims. Nor did the programme offer the chance for other guests to present different views.

For some reason, OFCOM never investigated the BBC for their egregious failures.

It’s Heresy To Criticise The Met Office

Much more chilling though was OFCOM’s decision last week to uphold a Met Office complaint against Talk TV.

Last October, while still working for Talk TV, Mike Graham interviewed the highly respected energy analyst, Kathryn Porter. Most of the interview concerned high energy costs imposed by Net Zero, but at one point the conversation turned to the poor quality of the Met Office’s weather station network, with Porter commenting:

And the other thing is that some of these weather stations that do exist produce junk data. There’s one I think in Regents Park or St James’s Park, one of the London parks, where the equipment is surrounded by a concrete wall and right next to a diesel generator. So, obviously, there’s a huge amount of heat being both created in that little space and contained by this wall and, obviously, that equipment is going to record higher temperatures than it would on the other side of the wall….you shouldn’t use a weather station that’s in such a compromised position. And then they will say, ‘oh, well, you know, it’s, it’s so much hotter than it was in the past’.

OFCOM outlined the Met Office’s complaint:

Ms Porter suggested that Met Office weather stations produce “junk data”. The complainant said that this was untrue, and that it had a “world-class network of over 350 land-based weather observation sites”. It explained that each station is located in accordance with World Meteorological Organization (a UN Agency) best practice

OFCOM upheld the Met Office’s claim that they had been unfairly treated, but significantly made no judgement about the accuracy of Porter’s claims. If the Met Office is using shoddy scientific practice, it should surely be exposed, whether they like it or not.

So, was Kathryn Porter right about junk temperature data?

In 2024, the Met Office were forced to admit,following a FOI request, that most of their temperature station network was not fit for purpose. Of the 380 sites in their network, 297 were classified as Class 4 or 5, based on the World Meteorological Organisation -(WMO)- classification system:

The WMO classification system has five classes based on siting, with “1” being pristine and “5” worst of all. WMO explain the factors that can cause poor ratings:

They specifically state that class 5 sites should not be used for climatological purposes:

A class 5 site is a site where nearby obstacles create an inappropriate environment

for a meteorological measurement that is intended to be representative of a wide area (at least

tens of km2)

Yet that is exactly what the Met Office does. Those 380 meteorological stations are used to calculate regional and country-wide average temperatures. When you hear claims that last summer was the hottest on record, remember that the temperatures were based largely on data from sites which have been artificially heated by as much as 5 degrees because of poor siting. The Met Office assure us that they know the UK’s average temperature to a hundredth of a degree!

The Met Office’s claim that “each station is located in accordance with World Meteorological Organization best practice” is an outright lie. Best practice is to NOT use junk Class 4 and 5 sites.

According to the WMO, Class 5 sites can have added uncertainty of up to 5C. Class 4s are little better with uncertainty of 2C, and even Class 3s can add 1C to underlying temperatures.

Plenty of examples have been found of just how poorly sited many Met Office stations are – next to roads, car parks and airport runways, in suntraps and even in the middle of heat reflecting fields of solar panels. Some are even located in walled gardens, which were built deliberately to create a warm micro climate!

Kathryn Porter’s comment, “So, obviously, there’s a huge amount of heat being both created in that little space and contained by this wall and, obviously, that equipment is going to record higher temperatures than it would on the other side of the wall” sums the issue up perfectly.

Lying to OFCOM is surely a serious offence and they should immediately reverse their decision, apologise to Talk TV and hold the Met Office to account.

Threat to Free Speech

The implications for free speech, from the Talk TV decision in particular, are chilling.

The statements made on the Mike Graham show were not incorrect in any way. The suggestion that criticisms of the Met Office cannot be broadcast because they might be offended is preposterous and a threat to free speech.

OFCOM’s bias in this case is there for all to see in their findings. Kathryn Porter, they say, is “described as an independent energy analyst”. She is not “described” as one, she is one. OFCOM then proceed to dismiss the Daily Sceptic as a reliable source of information.

At the same time, they clearly regard the Met Office as being beyond criticism, a fountain of truth.

There are similarities here with OFCOM’s attempts to shut down debate during the pandemic; any criticisms back then of lockdowns, facemasks or jabs were quickly suppressed by OFCOM. Now it seems that challenges to the establishment climate and Net Zero orthodoxy are also going to be suppressed.

An exaggeration?

Just two months ago, OFCOM announced that they are reopening investigations into three Talk TV programmes broadcast last year, which they had already looked into and found no issue with. Since then they have been pressured by Jolyon Maugham’s Good Law Project and as a consequence reopened them.

All three programmes featured guests offering their personal opinions about Net Zero and climate change. Everyone is entitled to their opinion and have the right to express it. But not for much longer, if OFCOM get their way.

Their plan is now clear. If you put enough pressure on the likes of GB News and Talk TV, they will stop inviting these pesky sceptics onto their shows. In other words, censorship by the back door.

It is truly Orwellian. Who is to determine what is correct and what is not correct? OFCOM, BBC Verify, the Government?

We might just as well go the whole hog, and have a Ministry of Truth!

Calculating Earth’s Albedo, Part 2

What is the best way to compute albedo from CERES data?

From Andy May Petrophysicist

By Andy May

It came up in the comments on my last post, CERES Albedo. What is the best way to compute Earth’s albedo? The CERES data is supplied as a 1° x 1° latitude/longitude grid. It is widely accepted that Earth’s global mean albedo is around 30%. The question is then: What is the best way to estimate it using the CERES satellite data? There are two basic ways. One is to use the average solar radiation arriving at the top of the atmosphere (CERES EBAF variable “solar_mon”), which is about 340.2 W/m2 and divide that into the total solar shortwave radiation (SW) leaving (reflected from) the Earth (toa_sw_all). Using these two numbers we get an albedo of about 29%.

The second way is to compute the albedo for each of the 64,800 one-degree latitude & longitude cells and then compute the area-weighted global mean of all the albedo calculations. When this is done, the albedo is 31.3%. Statistically this is the same as the 29% calculation because the errors in measuring solar_mon and toa_sw_all are large (> ±2 W/m2), plus we do not know how much solar longwave radiation (LW) is reflected, but the problem is worth examining. Figure 1 shows the elements. Click on it to enlarge it and show it in full resolution.

Figure 1. Three calculations of Earth’s albedo.

The spreadsheet on the left of figure 1 shows the area-weighted yearly means for the CERES outgoing SW and the incoming solar radiation. Dividing the first column by the second results in the last column, labeled “conventional gm albedo.” The basic calendar year cell-by-cell area-weighted albedo global average albedo is next and labeled “cbc albedo.” The next column (“cbc rm36 albedo”) is computed by taking a 36-month running mean (centered) of both toa_sw_all and solar_mon, then computing a month-by-month and cell-by-cell albedo, then extracting an area-weighted global mean albedo from that dataset for each year. In terms of yearly global mean albedo, it matches the year-by-year and cell-by-cell calculation closely.

The set of maps in the middle of figure 1 show that the two cell-by-cell albedo calculations are very similar for 2025. The simple “SW out/solar in” calculation is the same value for every cell and the important detail we see cell-by-cell is hidden in the global mean.

The right-hand maps and graph show the 25-year trends that result from the two ways of computing the cell-by-cell albedo means. The upper trend map shows areas of decreasing albedo in either light yellow or blue. Areas of increasing albedo are shown in orange to red. The year-by-year albedo changes in the upper trend map are plotted in red on the graph at the bottom right of figure 1.

The middle right trend map is the trend in albedo after taking a 36-month centered running average. Notice it is almost a mirror image of the upper year-by-year trend map. Taking the 36-month running mean has offset the very active albedo data and reversed its slope, as shown by the blue line in the lower right corner of figure 1.

Conclusions

Essential details of the global albedo distribution are lost when using global averages as is done in the conventional calculation. Taking a running average of either the components of the albedo calculation or the computed albedo causes a shift and a change in slope in the albedo trend.

The best way to compute global albedo is to do it cell-by-cell and then make an area-weighted global mean of the cell-by-cell albedo values. I prefer to use calendar yearly means to remove seasonality because running means distort the trends. This means the best estimate of albedo, using CERES data, is 31.3%. This is also the best way to determine the albedo trend (the red line in the graph).

Even HBO knows you can’t build in California

California faces no shortage of criticism from policy analysts. Whether you look at its high electricity and gas prices, resulting from its “green” approach to energy that has caused the state to lose 17% of its refining capacity over the past seven months and reduce natural gas’s use in electricity generation at a time of growing demand, or its barriers to build that have led to an overpriced and underpromised high-speed rail system and housing shortage, there are many avenues of attack.

Benon, France – December 30, 2018: Woman watching tv serie produced by HBO which we see logo at the show begening. HBO is an American multinational entertainment company part of the WarnerMedia group

From CFACT

By William Rampe

California faces no shortage of criticism from policy analysts. Whether you look at its high electricity and gas prices, resulting from its “green” approach to energy that has caused the state to lose 17% of its refining capacity over the past seven months and reduce natural gas’s use in electricity generation at a time of growing demand, or its barriers to build that have led to an overpriced and underpromised high-speed rail system and housing shortage, there are many avenues of attack.

Knowledge of the burdens California imposes on producers and developers has become increasingly pervasive throughout American society, providing evidence that the famous phrase, “politics is downstream of culture,” also works in reverse. Exhibit A: HBO’s Euphoria, whose Season 3 premiere amassed 8.5 million viewers in the first three days after release.

One should be forgiven for questioning what a show that takes the amount of drama, drugs, sex, and violence to a new extreme — and then even further — would have to do about public policy. Believe it or not, however, the showwriters decided to make California’s strict environmental standards play a key role early in the season. Specifically, a major part of the plot hinges on the inability to build on the site of an endangered flower.

Without going too deeply into the show’s plot or revealing too many spoilers, Nate Jacobs (played by Jacob Elordi) runs a real estate construction company that is trying to build a senior-living home, but runs into trouble when some “white fritillaries” are found on the site. This discovery causes the project to halt construction until an environmental review can be conducted at the site, setting off a chain of events that leaves Jacobs in debt and misery.

While this situation involves significant dramatization, the basic facts match reality. Commonly known as the fragrant fritillary, the flower is listed on the California Native Plant Society’s List 1B: 1-2-3, a classification that denotes that the flower is “rare, threatened, or endangered in California; rare but found in sufficient numbers and distributed widely enough that the potential for extinction is low at this time; endangered in a portion of its range; and endemic to California.” Because it is listed as “rare, threatened, or endangered,” if a developer encounters a fragrant fritillary, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) requires a local or state agency to address how the project will affect the flower in environmental documentation before construction.

Passed in 1970 — the same year as the federal National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) was signed into law — the CEQA “requires that state and local agencies disclose and evaluate the significant environmental impacts of proposed projects and adopt all feasible mitigation measures to reduce or eliminate those impacts.” Like NEPA, it “applies to projects undertaken, funded or requiring an issuance of a permit by a public agency,” invoking different levels of review depending on the level of the environmental effect. For instance, a “detailed” environmental impact report (EIR) is required when an agency “finds substantial evidence that the project may have a significant effect on the environment.” EIRs involve a multi-step process of notice, draft, public review, and certification before a project can move forward, and the report must include a mitigation monitoring and reporting program.

The problems with the CEQA resemble those with NEPA. Procedural requirements lead to substantive delays and costs as interest groups weaponize the law to obstruct projects they dislike. Examples of projects delayed by the CEQA include a food bank and a housing project for the homeless. According to a 2022 report by the Pacific Research Institute, agencies take between 13 and 38 months longer to approve projects subjected to an EIR. Importantly, this doesn’t include litigation, which could take anywhere from eight months to two years. And because California’s courts grant almost anyone “beneficially interested” in a project standing, the chances of substantial projects facing lawsuits are increased. Even without lawsuits, the risk of litigation adds an extra layer of expense and time that project developers have to be wary of, which can create enough uncertainty that some projects never even start.

Both CEQA and NEPA attempt to perpetuate the conditions where “man and nature can exist in productive harmony,” but they result in an unproductive “harmony” of quiet work sites and full courtrooms. By allowing a flower that’s not even at risk of extinction to stand in the way of economically beneficial projects through longer reviews and opportunities for litigation, California makes it clear that human welfare is subservient to nature.

It should be no surprise that knowledge about California’s woes has seeped into its very own media industry. The state’s present policy outlook stands in sharp contrast to its cultural and commercial dominance, embodied by Hollywood and Silicon Valley, respectively, and that paradox should inevitably raise some eyebrows. Until California reverses course and becomes a hub for development and production once again, it will remain a state where it makes sense to wonder what could have been.

This article originally appeared at Real Clear Energy

Waste of the Day: Radioactive Wasted Money

The Department of Energy could save up to $229.2 billion over the next several years by changing the way it disposes of nuclear waste, according to the Government Accountability Office. A vague and poorly understood law from the 1980s makes the process overly burdensome and expensive.

From Watts Up With That?

By Jeremy Portnoy

Topline: The federal government is so prone to excessive spending that it is even wasting money on waste itself.

The Department of Energy could save up to $229.2 billion over the next several years by changing the way it disposes of nuclear waste, according to the Government Accountability Office. A vague and poorly understood law from the 1980s makes the process overly burdensome and expensive.

Key facts: The Department of Energy is in charge of treating water, soil, equipment and more that were contaminated from nuclear weapons production during World War II and the Cold War. 

Disposing of “high-level” radioactive waste is time-consuming and expensive. It must be stored for years to let some of its radioactivity decay, and then it is buried deep underground. “Low-level” waste, which has less radiation, is easier to get rid of. It gets placed in a steel or concrete drum and is buried just a few feet below ground.

Waste of the Day 5.22.26
Open the Books

But, according to the GAO, the definitions for each kind of waste are ambiguous and have not been updated since 1983. There is no standard way to measure what federal law considers “highly radioactive.”

To be safe, the Department of Energy errs on the side of classifying nuclear waste as high-level. It spends billions every year on the expensive storage and burial of waste that would likely be classified as low-level if the 1983 law were updated. The department told the GAO that otherwise, it might be sued by environmental advocacy groups for not following a strict interpretation of the law.

Nuclear waste treatment plants are located in New York, South Carolina, Idaho and Washington. The Washington site alone could save up to $210 billion in 14 years by classifying 80% of its high-level waste as low-level without sacrificing safety, according to the GAO. The other three sites could save a combined $19.2 billion.

Search all federal, state and local salaries and vendor spending with the world’s largest government spending database at OpenTheBooks.com. 

Summary: Congress should consider updating the legal definition of high-level radioactive waste if cost savings can be realized without compromising safety.

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com

This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.