The Replacement of Hydrocarbon-powered Vehicles

The North American "War Between the States", from April 12, 1861 to  May 26, 1865, ostensibly fought to eliminate slavery from new western territories, resulted in the death of over 600,000 men and boys and billions of dollars in property destruction. The fact is that every slave in the US could have been purchased, as they, private property all, had once been, by parties interested in giving them their freedom. The death and destruction could have been avoided. That option was never explored.

A similar situation is developing now. The production and sale of internal combustion engine vehicles is scheduled to be prohibited in some jurisdictions in the future. There will still be many thousands of hydrocarbon fueled vehicles on the road after the prohibition takes effect. What of them? 

The current thinking is that these vehicles will be allowed to operate until they have reached the extent of their reliable usefulness, however that might be determined. It would also be simple for motor vehicle agencies to refuse to license banned vehicles. Another possibility would be that at some point their continued use would be forbidden and all ICE vehicles would face mandatory destruction. The schedule might resemble that of the Carter presidency when drivers could purchase gasoline only on dates that corresponded with numerals on their license plates. Owner compensation might be part of such a circumstance but that would be an overly optimistic view. The exact plan won't be broadcast.

In fact, as the years dwindle before the prohibition date, compliant citizens will cease to purchase ICE vehicles, not knowing how long they would be able to legally drive them.  Manufacturers will no longer make them. Used cars will leap in price. The change-over to EVs will be a fait accompli. No vote of the subjects will have been taken.

The Whig elites of government and their crony capitalist  partners won't be inconvenienced by this development. On the contrary, it will propel them to an economic wonderland. It won't matter that, for the ordinary person, travel will be more expensive and circumscribed. Unemployment at the most basic levels will increase. The subjects will be taxed even more to maintain the insane subsidies that enable the installation of new age power generation supposedly making the EVs practical. That's the future.  

 

  

A White Tiger Mauls Joe Biden

 

time.com

Remember back to October 3, 2003? During the performance at the Mirage Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, Roy Horn was very seriously injured when his trained white tiger Mantacore attacked him. The Siegfried and Roy show ended that night and the 267 people in the production became unemployed.

A similar outcome will be the result of replacing Biden as the Democratic nominee in the next presidential election after the white tiger of the debate has done his damage.  The immense staff that surrounds Biden and doubtlessly influences any decisions that he's allowed to make will be out of a job, at least temporarily. Sure there'll be positions for them in various government agencies, as faculty members at coastal universities, lobbyists, corporate board members and media talking heads. But it won't be the same without the prestige of regularly walking into the White House.

 The new candidate will have his or her own circle of acolytes. Already the political class that inhabits the Maryland-Virginia tidewater are plotting their future on the candidate they think is most likely to end up next to the nuclear football. It will be interesting.   

Whig activity in New Mexico

The Escalante Power Station near Prewitt, NM pumped out voltage from 1984 until 2020 when its near-by coal supply ran out. It quickly became a candidate for alternative forms of energy production and is now going through the motions of becoming the first-of -its- kind power house to reduce natural gas to its atomic constituents and use the hydrogen to produce the heat that produces the steam that turns the turbines that generate the electricity that powers televisions sets and AV chargers.

Of course, none of this would be possible without the Whig technique of getting the taxpayer to finance the development of profitable infrastructure, in this case the Inflation Reduction Act, and federal subsidies as high as the mountains and wide as the sky. Newpoint CEO Wiley Rhodes says Escalante will need almost 80 billion standard cubic feet of gas per day and that, from an economic perspective, these tax credits are vital to make the project work. 

In a free market, the project wouldn't be viable. What would be viable would be the conversion of a coal-fired power producer to a plant that would directly convert the 80 billion cubic feet of gas to electricity, like a typical power house. But that wouldn't involve giant federal subsidies and tax credits.

While Blackstone, subsidiary Tall Grass Energy and Newpoint Companies and political cheerleader Democrat Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham tout the pluses of the project, the interested observers, mainly the local native Americans, are skeptical and remember the many minuses in past resource exploitation in the area and on their property.

 

brianleddyphoto.photoshelter.com

Bird Deaths In India

The Delhi government reports that the death of three peacocks, the Indian national bird, last Tuesday brings the total number of fatalities to 27 at the Palam air force station since June 4, possibly from heat stroke. It's also possible that the environment of the area, mostly covered in concrete, and lack of food and water, are also factors in the deaths. The high temperature there in the last week has been 92F.

 

 

birds-infoa2z.blogspot.com

The 155 mm Howitzer

Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth recently made a tour of a new General Dynamics plant under construction in Mesquite, Texas. The $1 billion facility will be one link in a supply chain created to fill part of a void in military expendables needed by the US and Ukraine, in this case 155mm artillery shells. Ukraine fires thousands of them daily from US made M-777 howitzers toward the Russians.

The US plans to triple production of the shells to 100,000 monthly by the end of 2025. The completed casings will be shipped to places like Camden, AR, to be filled with propellant and then Army warehouses or Ukraine. The equipment in the plant is supplied by a Turkish firm and the robotics by a Chinese-owned German company.

In the case of 155mm howitzer shells, their place in the US defense picture is unclear. It seems unlikely that these weapons would actually be used in a military defense of the US mainland itself. A physical invasion of the country would be the only opportunity for their deployment. It's often said the military is always preparing to fight the previous war and in this case that seems to be true. 

Does anyone really expect that divisions of Russian or Chinese infantry and artillery will somehow arrive in the US with the equipment and munitions to subdue the country? It's possible that some future enemy could fire on the US from submersibles, aircraft or even space-based weapons but in a future kinetic war howitzers would be useless in defense. In fact, future battles are more likely to be fought on a digital battlefield, like the recent cyber-extortion of automobile sales software in the US.

The reality is that these and other weapons are needed, or thought to be, in various smaller conflicts across the globe in which the US has a perceived interest. No howitzers will be based in Tennessee or Arizona or North Dakota.

An interesting aspect of this situation is Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth herself. Particularly concerned with the role of the military in climate change, she has this to say:

  “The Army must adapt across our entire enterprise and purposefully pursue greenhouse gas mitigation strategies to reduce climate risks. If we do not take action across, across our installations, acquisition and logistics and training, our option to mitigate these risks will become more constrained with each passing year.”

No information on the new General Dynamics munitions plant in Mesquite, TX, being powered solely by non-hydrocarbon energy. 

Some of this information from the Wall Street Journal 

The Coming US Election

The campaign for the most powerful position in the free world isn't simply between a doddering old senile and a blow hard convicted felon. It's also, as it has been historically, between their factotums and deputies. Oddly, the principal candidates are never required by the media or anyone else to designate who the members of their regime would be. Announcements of appointments aren't made until after the election.

 

indianexpress.com

No mention was made during the previous campaign that the transportation boss would be former McKinsey figure and South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg.

 

apnews.com 

Rachel Levine was selected by Biden to take the post of assistant secretary for health in 2021 and confirmed by the senate.

 

alphanews.org 

Sam Brinton was the the deputy assistant secretary of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy until mistakenly claiming the wrong luggage at a midwest airport.

 

crumpe.com 

Karine Jean-Pierre is the first black, openly gay White House press secretary.

 

 

jta.org 

Openly gay deputy to the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Ned Price.

 

vice.com 

Shawn Skelly, retired transexual navy officer now the  Assistant Secretary of Defense for Readiness.

 

 

Tyler Cherry, left, and Jakob Stronko  Credit...Cassidy DuHon and Laura Scheidt NY Times

Tyler Cherry has moved up from a post at the Dept. of the Interior to one covering climate issues for the White House communications department.

On the basis of the personnel employed we have some idea of those that will have important roles in government should the current regime be retained. However, there's been no word from their opponents on who is in line for these spots should they take over. It's wrong for a political party that will fill significant posts after an election to omit mention of the most likely appointees. It's even more wrong for the media to fail to demand the names and background of these candidates for publication.   

Lithiuim Battery Factory Explodes In Flames

 

photo: dpa

At least 22 fatalities in an explosion and fire at a lithium battery factory Monday south of Seoul in South Korea.   

Hans Magnus Enzensberger And Normality

2. Regression. A liking for the garden gnome and for pinball, for skittles, disco, horoscopes, and Suzuki is not, as the enlighteners believe, willful ignorance or the systematic stupefacation of defenseless masses. No historic lag is crying out to be made up. It's the poor victims of manipulation who are silently but energetically refusing every kind of instruction. Not for any price do they want to be raised to a higher level of culture, of taste, of political consciousness, that is, to where the particular spokesman of the day is standing.

     The majority doesn't turn away to superstition, sport, and entertainment by mistake, because it doesn't know any better; it does so quite intentionally. Escapism is a well-defined strategy. The illusory is systematically and deliberately sought out. Regression is a staple food. A tabloid newspaper is indispensable because it is meaningless, not despite being so; for the important things we call history have always confronted us, in our capacity as majority, in only one form; as impositions.

 

Hans Magnus Enzensberger, In Defense of Normality, Zig Zag, The Politics of Culture and Vice Versa, The New Press, NY, 1997, pg. 301

faz.net        

The Climate Envelope

 

pinterest.com 

ASHRAE, the American Society of Heating and Refrigeration Engineers,  has determined the best conditions for indoor comfort, which is roughly 77 degrees fahrenheit at 15% relative humidity. It seems that a higher temperature, say 95 F,  would never be comfortable at any RH, which is probably true in an indoor situation.

It's obvious that humans can live and prosper in a variety of climates ranging from the chilly Arctic to  torrid Saudi Arabia. Inupiats that move from the shore of the Chukchi Sea live comfortable, happy lives in suburban Miami. Every white man that works at Prudhoe Bay year around came there from a much warmer climate, maybe Oklahoma or Texas. Many immigrants from sub-tropical Viet Nam and Laos and Somalia, a little more than 5 degrees north of the equator seem to do OK in places like wintry Wisconsin.

 

planetjanettravels.com

Climate changes over time, of course. In fact, no one knows for sure if conditions will be warmer or cooler in the future, which is when climate change will be apparent. If it does get a little warmer over a couple of centuries will anyone really notice the fact? The life span of one human isn't long enough to measure climate change. Sure, everyone remembers cold winters of the past and hot, dry summers, too. That's no indication of climate change. It's also likely that any climate change that does occur won't be distributed equally over the globe.

So, don't worry over climate change. You'll never know how much or which way. And it won't matter anyhow. There are bigger problems in store. 

Determine Climate Change The Easy Way

 

ici.radio-canada.ca

There are a number of big box retailers with a national, or even international presence. Home Depot has 2,335 locations, Walmart has 10,586 stores worldwide. Target operates 1,956 discount department stores in the US. Lowe's Companies, Inc. has 1,969 home improvement stores in the US and Canada. Costco Wholesale Corporation has 838 stores around the world.

All of these facilities, and many other similar units of other retailers, are heated and air conditioned year around.  In most cases the HVAC is operated remotely from the corporate headquarters. Since they've all been in operation for some years and generally follow a similar design, the corporate records will have shown any changes in demand for heating and cooling through gas and electric consumption and the price paid for this energy. 

It would be easy for the all-powerful government to demand the records of utility usage by the country's biggest retailers and determine, by the kwh or btus consumed, if the climate has changed and by how much. In fact, it's difficult to believe that some bureaucratic agency hasn't already retrieved this information and analyzed it. If not, why not? And, if so, why don't we know about it? 

  mashed.com   

The facilities management people at Home Depot should be well aware of changes in the HVAC demands of all their properties since those changes have a direct effect on their bottom line. They actually know if the climate is changing and how much. 

Financing Ukrainian Defense

Speakers for the G-7 nations meeting at Apulia, Italy have released a communique detailing their ideas about a number of important challenges. One of particular interest is this:

 "Russia must end its illegal war of aggression and pay for the damage it has caused to Ukraine. These damages now exceed USD 486 billion, according to the World Bank. It is not right for Russia to decide if or when it will pay for the damage it has caused in Ukraine. Russia’s obligations under international law to pay for the damage it is causing are clear, and so we are continuing to consider all possible lawful avenues by which Russia is made to meet those obligations."

One of these avenues will be the confiscation of Russian assets outside the country, something that's unlikely to be met voluntarily by Russia.

Another aspect of the Russia-Ukraine affair is the ongoing finance of the Ukrainian defense by the G-7, NATO and the western bloc. Much of this contribution is in kind, weapons and ammunition, with an attendant dollar figure, perhaps in hope that the Ukrainians, or better yet the Russians, can repay whatever the ultimate amount may be. 

Won't the Ukrainian logic be, as in much of the West, that Ukraine is merely the front line of a defense of the West itself against the existential threat posed by imperialist Russia and that any expense is a genuine contribution to the survival of freedom for everyone? The West is making an inexpensive commitment to its own survival. 

But, if this is the case, why do monetary terms enter the discussion at all? Isn't possible that any of those states contributing to the Ukrainian arsenal can confiscate those assets from their own manufacturers? If the defeat of Putin's hordes is a matter of life or death for the West, financial considerations become meaningless.  

The White House Administration

 

prweek.com

There may not be a real point in a genuine census of the personnel employed in the White House but it's difficult to ignore the fact that a number are openly homosexual. Statista.com says that 7.9% of Americans  identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. 

Openly sexually deviant people were probably fairly unusual in government, both before the psychology industry identified them as mentally ill in 1918 and listing them as such in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders by the American Psychiatric Association in 1952. Political pressure by gay rights activists resulted in a vote by the APA board of trustees removing sexual deviance from the list of mental disorders in 1973, although a condition called  ego-dystonic sexual orientation took its place until 1987. 

Since 2013 there has been no diagnostic that includes nonheterogenous sexual activity as an illness.

Of course, regardless of whatever position the psychology business might take, flexible as it may be, it would be morally wrong to despise and abhor sexual deviants just as it would be to have a similar attitude to the blind, the deaf or someone with a wooden leg. Ultimately, this is because they had no choice in the matter. No one chooses to be blind. If sexual deviancy is a genetic or environmental product, as it's generally considered to be, rather than a choice, why should it be a matter of "pride"? It makes sense to be proud if one is an astronaut or successful author or accomplished scientist, things that are achievements. But if an individual is born black, Chinese or homosexual there really isn't anything meaningful to take pride in. No individual achievement occurs in one's birth.

Ultimately, is it in the best interests of the country to have people who were only a short time ago considered basically handicapped making and implementing government policy?

 

Responsible Decision Making

Elke Weber is a professor at Princeton University's Center for Policy and Research on the Environment.

Professor Weber's specialty has been identifying the psychology of decision-making in the assessment of risk by individuals and groups, especially in response to climate change.

Her organization is tasked with discovering why the unwashed masses take little interest in the prospect of a changing climate or actually disbelieve the theory and how to change their minds.

 

elke-u-weber.com 

A major figure in American psychology, the lady professor is a Phd from Harvard, a member of the National Academy of Science, and has been president of the  President of the Society for Neuroeconomics, the Society for Mathematical Psychology, and the Society for Judgement and Decision Making. We don't know how much she actually knows about atmospheric chemistry and physics but her specialty is no longer psychology, a term that has gone out of fashion and been replaced by "behavorial science".

An interview with El Pais has given her a chance to distribute her word goulash of pop psychology.  

 

The Whigs Haven't Re-emerged, They've Been Here All-Along

The Whigs were a political party active in the UK at times during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. They were the descendants of Cromwell's Roundheads, Puritans, anti-Catholics, anti-monarchists, anti-free traders obsessed with fighting the French and Spanish and building an international colonial empire. Their philosophical leader was John Locke.

In 1833 a group of US politicians called themselves Whigs, perhaps in respect to their English forebears or as an indication of the similarity to their beliefs. These Whigs were the architects of the "American System" and their leader was Henry Clay of Kentucky, a professional politician.

 rallypoint.com

Clay's "American System" involved federal income from tariffs used on projects meant to serve regional interests, canals, roads, eventually railroads. Clay and others, but not everyone, felt that by-passing free enterprise and using federal funding to create local infrastructure was the best way to quickly develop the country and extend it to the west, replacing the indigenous natives with European immigrants.

The Whigs eventually failed at the ballot box and their most ardent members joined the Republican party, bringing along the American System. Abraham Lincoln was an effective proponent of it, especially in regard to the government financed expansion of the railroads.

The tenets of the American System have been completely accepted by the US government and population. It's normal procedure now. One modern justification of government spending is defense, needed to protect the US from foreign adversaries. The interstate highway system is known to the government as the  Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways. In a conflict similar to WWII equipment and men would be able to be moved across the country with dispatch, facing any invader. People now seem to believe that no travel would be possible from Omaha to Denver without the involvement of the federal government.

Now all US politicians are Whigs. There's little opposition in the Congress to any administration spending billions of public money on projects that the general public neither understands nor favors. Taiwanese semiconductor TSCM has been awarded $11.6 billion in grants and loans to construct fabs in Arizona. Intel has received $8.5 billion in grants and as much as $11 billion in loans for a similar purpose. 

There may not even be a verifiable total available of the subsidies meant to spur the elimination of hydrocarbon electrical generation with offshore wind turbines and thousands of acres of farmland covered by solar panels. The US Dept. of Energy, led by former Michigan governor, attorney, University of California professor and Canadian Jennifer Granholm, has spread around over $7 billion to various research institutions to further the production and adoption of hydrogen gas in whatever way it can be used to replace hydrocarbon energy. 

NASA, another Whig department of the US government, gets millions to spread the influence of the US beyond its terrestrial location into the boundless regions of the cosmos, as if this would be seen as a wise investment by the man on the cul de sac. Of course the public is told that space exploration has positive side effects, GPS and satellite communications, for example, which, if beneficial, would be provided by private investors in a free market economy, if such a thing actually existed.

So the Whigs are not political dinosaurs, made extinct by a changing environment. Instead they have evolved into a more effective organism.    

Batteries

 This picture is of 53 battery-powered DeWalt reciprocating saws and some other similar battery-powered tools for sale at a Habitat for Humanity thrift store, each for $30. None of them include a battery. The fact is, that since the production and sale of the batteries and connectors to these tools are protected by patents and sold exclusively by DeWalt, when the batteries no longer hold a charge, replacing them is as expensive as buying an entirely new tool with new batteries. DeWalt has changed the configuration of the batteries in their next generation of tools so batteries that will fit these will no longer be manufactured. They are junk.

It's not hard to imagine the same situation with electric vehicles, actually it's inevitable. The battery of a future EV will fail before its structure and motors. But, as with hydrocarbon-powered vehicles, changes will be made to components, including the batteries, that will preclude their use in older cars. Patents will protect all manufacturers of all the batteries and replacing an older one will be expensive or more likely impossible, just as it is with a DeWalt drill. The DeWalt tools in the picture are miniatures of older yellow Teslas, still usable if economical power were available but motionless in the financial and legal circumstances.     

Alaska's Pristine Rivers Turning Rusty

pristine /prĭs′tēn″, prĭ-stēn′/

adjective

1. Remaining in a pure state, without human alteration.
   "a pristine stream."
2. Remaining free from dirt or decay; clean.
   "pristine mountain snow."

3. Of, relating to, or typical of the earliest time or condition; primitive or original.

 

 Emily C. Dooley, of the University of California, Davis, brings to our attention the phenomenon of rusty-colored water that seems to indicate that anthropogenic climate change is melting the Alaskan permafrost, allowing the water produced to mingle with minerals, which then flow into existing streams and discolor them, to the disgust of aircraft passengers flying by. Gee, whiz.

 

The reality is that of the large portions of Alaska where permafrost is found only those areas with an overlay of aggregate are significant. Frozen, solid rock isn't much different, geologically, from unfrozen solid rock. In order for there to be meaningful permafrost the ground in question must have been unfrozen for many thousands of years, the minerals that make up that ground will need to have been ground up from larger rocks to make the sands, gravels and clays that are associated with the frozen water they hold.

 

For permafrost to exist to any extent it's generally accepted that a mean annual temperature of 28F must exist in the area for several years.

 

Just as there is an element of ambiguity in the term pristine, so too is there in the word permafrost. It doesn't mean ground that is frozen forever, simply ground that is frozen for more than a couple of years in succession. The surface of most, perhaps all, permafrost, thaws during the summer. This is the "active layer". The frozen ground beneath it may be only a few feet or hundreds of feet thick. The permafrost on Alaska's North Slope extends to a depth of about 1400 feet.

Rusty colored water from small creeks running downhill into larger streams is nothing new. It's always been the case, as any local can verify. And there's nothing pristine about Alaska's rivers or any other rivers anywhere. These streams scour the land they run through carrying immense loads of silt downstream and eventually to the sea, regardless of the climate at any given time.

  

In Floridas's Heat, a Fountain of Youth

 

 The weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal has a photo (not this one) on the front page of some children playing in a sprinkler during the unspeakably agonizing heat Friday in St. Petersburg, FL.

The caption attached reads: "Chill Out: Brothers Chaddon, 4, left, and Chadarion Ellis, 2, of St. Petersburg cool off in the spray of a water jet while visiting the St. Pete Pier on Friday as temperatures rose into the 90s."

One can't help but think that rather than a normal example of summertime childhood behavior, this was more of the media propaganda meant to emphasize the increasing heat that human-caused climate change has plastered over the world.

Looking back in time, at temperature records for St. Pete, we find that in the Ice Age era that included 1964, 60 years ago, the high temperature for June 15 was 98F. On eleven different occasions in June of that year the high reached or exceeded 94F. On June 1 the official high was 90F. It seems very unlikely that the June temperatures on the Florida Gulf Coast are significantly different than they were 60 years ago. 

The Pontifical Academy of Sciences

The Pontifical Academy of Sciences is the sponsor of a "workshop" that's attracting an international cast of movers and shakers to the Vatican from May 15-17.

 

 pas.va Pontifical Academy of Sciences

The idea is for the illustrious attendees, for example California governor Gavin Newsom and Massachusetts governor Maura Healy, to not only put the brakes on global warming but also enable the underlings to endure it until it's been brought to a stop. Pope Francis is the steward of God's earth and needs the help of everyone to maintain it. Other dignitaries will include John Kerry, NY governor Kathy Hochul, and Boston mayor Michelle Wu. 

The Catholic News Agency says:    "The conference will also include mayors from some of Europe’s largest cities, including the mayors of Rome, Paris, and London, as well lawmakers from Asia and Africa, researchers and academics from the world’s leading universities, and representatives from international organizations such as the United Nations and the World Health Organization.

The program notes that one of the main outcomes of the summit will be the drafting of a “Planetary Climate Resilience” protocol in which all participants will be “cosignatories.” 

The protocol will be “fashioned along the lines of the Montreal Protocol” and will “provide the guidelines for making everyone climate resilient,” the program states.

At one time the Papacy did pretty much rule the entire Western world, see Pope Alexander VI's bull inter caetara of May, 1493 that set the stage for the Treaty of Tordesillas  in 1494 and Spain's colonization of South America. 

While there are many followers of Roman Catholicism and the Pope, whoever he might be, is it wise to follow his lead in matters entirely scientific, as this situation seems to be?

 

 

Pontifical workshop update:  Massachusetts governor Maura Healey sits between US FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell and Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo at the workshop in Vatican City on May 15-17. Mayor Hidalgo isn't in the photo, having perhaps gone outside for a smoke.  

Words From Professor Ian Plimer

Professor Emeritus of Earth Sciences at the University of Melbourne in Australia, Ian Plimer points out the hyperbole and mendacity of the "renewable" energy devotees. Scientists such as Plimer are accused of being foot soldiers in the armies of "big oil" and other hydrocarbon fuel institutions but no one ever seems to question the alliances of the prophets of doom like Al Gore and his associates in the zillion dollar business of gathering in taxpayer subsidies in the fight against an imaginary foe.