{"id":383395,"date":"2025-06-16T10:17:31","date_gmt":"2025-06-16T08:17:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=383395"},"modified":"2025-06-16T10:17:33","modified_gmt":"2025-06-16T08:17:33","slug":"morning-midas-and-chums","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=383395","title":{"rendered":"Morning Midas and\u00a0Chums"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From Climate Scepticism<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By\u00a0Jit<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

EVs and fire risk in car carriers<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regular readers may have noticed that my humble offerings have been scant of late. Well, the fact is, I\u2019ve been distracted by working on a book. But Jit, you\u2019re always working on a book. Yes, but this one is non-fiction. When I write fiction, I just make stuff up. When I write non-fiction, Dr. Pedant here has to make sure that every thing I say is true, or sufficiently caveated that it is at least not misleading. And this particular project, which will probably see the light of day in about 2027 the way things are going, and sell north of ten copies, is particularly irksome in that regard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More on that another day. Today, I wanted to talk about the Morning Midas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Morning Midas caught fire about ten days ago. It was carrying cars, and some of them were EVs, and some hybrids. Was the fire caused by a lithium battery? I don\u2019t know. The crew probably knows, but they don\u2019t appear to be going freelance and telling us, no doubt much to the relief of their employers. For there may be a tussle at some future point re: who is going to pony up: the shipper, the cargo owner, or their insurers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One way the media has of making us believe certain things is to filter out the events they deem unhelpful to whatever line they hold. Of course, they already filter out events that are not very newsworthy. That\u2019s their job. But it must be tempting to move the line between newsworthy and not newsworthy based on your preferred narrative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As far as I know, the Morning Midas fire has not been mentioned by the BBC. It is either not newsworthy, or (the cynic says) not helpful owing to the whiff of lithium in the sea breeze.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Was it an EV? There is circumstantial evidence to support the theory. Top of these, to my mind, is the fact that the crew had to abandon ship. Several news sources have hinted darkly that an EV battery lit the spark. News.com.au<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The floating inferno is said to have been caused by the lithium-iron batteries in the 70 electric vehicles on board \u2013 batteries that are can cause fires that can burn for weeks. [sic.]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Hinting not only darkly, but illiterately too. The same top-drawer outlet:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2026said to have started in the deck where the EVs were being ferried.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

And<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Local media reports said lithium-iron batteries from one or several of the electric vehicles on board may have been the cause of the blaze.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

It doesn\u2019t help that a degree of misinformation is swirling around the event, as these snips from searches under \u201cnews\u201d for \u201cMorning Midas\u201d demonstrate:<\/p>\n\n\n

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The Midas was not full of EVs, nor were there 3,000 on board. According to Shipwreck Log<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Morning Midas<\/em> departed from Yantai, China with over 3100 vehicles with 65 electric and over 600 hybrid vehicles\u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

As John Cadogan noted in the wake of the Fremantle Highway fire (2023), in a real sense, it doesn\u2019t really matter whether an EV caused <\/em>the fire. The point is that once a fire has begun, EVs represent a cargo that is far more dangerous than other vehicles. The one cannot be extinguished by carbon dioxide, when the other can. One of Cadogan\u2019s vlogs on the topic:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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