Many thanks to the new subscribers this past week! As we slouch toward November you will be slathered with all kinds of media muck. Or not, if you choose to forego all ties to society. That option has crossed my mind quite often; a little cabin somewhere remote, hunt my own food, gather berries, burn dead wood in my cast iron stove, no phone, no internet, no communication. Uhhhh, yeah, right. I like tacos and Netflix too much. So, since I’m staying in the neighborhood, and as a citizen who is invested in our society, and who benefits from the government as do all citizens, I’m compelled to make an attempt to unravel the questionable for my own understanding and pass it on to you.
There was the worry that if he came from the famous He Dog family who helped to defeat Custer he might try to do something famous. He knew it was always a grave danger to raise your head up above others. People who get their names and picture in the paper are always fucked and always get picked on. The rule was to run to the forest at any sign of ambition. He once saw four men fishing together which is three too many. —“Brown Dog” Jim Harrison
1.
Many of you may have seen this meme making the rounds on social media a month or so ago.
The text that accompanied the image was thus:
An example of ‘net zero’ madness This is a Tesla battery. It takes up all of the space under the passenger compartment of the car. To manufacture it you need: --12 tons of rock for Lithium -- 5 tons of Cobalt minerals -- 3 tons of mineral for nickel -- 12 tons of copper ore You must move 250 tons of soil to obtain: -- 12 kg of Lithium -- 30 pounds of nickel -- 22 kg of manganese -- 15 pounds of Cobalt To manufacture the battery requires: -- 100 Kg of RAM chips -- 200 kg of aluminum, steel and/or plastic The Caterpillar 994A is used for the earthmoving to obtain the essential minerals. It consumes 264 gallons of diesel in 12 hours. Finally you get a “zero emissions” car. Presently, the bulk of the necessary minerals for manufacturing the batteries come from China or Africa. Much of the labor for getting the minerals in Africa is done by children! If we buy electric cars, it's China who profits most! BTW, this 2021 Tesla OEM battery is currently for sale on the Internet for $4,999 not including shipping or installation. Update: What’s very interesting about a public post is the sheer number of ‘sparse’ or dead accounts that come out of the woodwork in ‘support’ of such an industry and then start saying how bad the petrol and oil industry is. Now let’s get this straight, the oil industry is not squeaky clean and there are very obvious downsides but these electric vehicles are NOT the answer.
I recall being skeptical at the time—I might’ve even googled around for some clarification or sources to confirm or deny these allegations. Then it slipped away as these things do.
Then this week a man named (in many circles people use ‘called’) Daniel Breton laid out a pretty good rebuttal to the above claim. As a disclaimer, Breton is President and CEO of Electric Mobility Canada, the unifying and authoritative voice for the transition to electric transportation across Canada. He’s a former Quebec minister of the environment, sustainable development, wildlife and parks, and was the first elected official in Canada to be in charge of a government strategy for the electrification of transportation in 2012.
Point #1 is that the image provided is NOT the battery image found in most Tesla Model 3 and Ys today. This is what a Tesla Model Y battery looks like today.
Point #2 is that the basic Tesla Model Y battery uses exactly 0% cobalt, as stated in the link in point #1.
He goes on to refute, with sources, the rest of the claim above but I won’t bore you with it here. Check it out on Breton’s Facebook page for his entire text. Just to add some ‘fuel’ to the fire, he also pens on his page a post that pictures a car’s typical gasoline tank and says, Here's a tank of gasoline car. During the lifetime of a single petrol-powered car that consumes 8 liters/100 km, approximately 656 tonnes of bituminous sand will have to be extracted to fill this tank.
For any kind of energy production there will be waste, and consequences. My take is that the faster we can shift away from fossil fuels the better for the little chillins that will inherit this ol’ world.
2.
Another meme making the rounds:
So check out this interesting article from the Guardian by Matthew Cantor that details the weird but true history of cereal - from anti-sex campaigns to mind control. He goes on to write, Like all good stories, the history of cereal begins with an anti-masturbation campaigner. My belief all along.
3.
The stink surrounding the resignation of Claudine Gay is palpable. In January of 2021, Harvard removed the MAGA supporter Elise Stefanik, a Harvard graduate, from its Senior Advisory Committee. Harvard Kennedy School Dean Douglas Elmendorf wrote in a letter, “Elise has made public assertions about voter fraud in November’s presidential election that have no basis in evidence, and she has made public statements about court actions related to the election that are incorrect. Moreover, these assertions and statements do not reflect policy disagreements but bear on the foundations of the electoral process through which this country’s leaders are chosen.”
So is it any surprise that Stefanik has a bit of a revenge streak? She demanded yes-or-no answers to questions that have multiple layers.
Claudine Gay: … free speech extends —
Rep. Elise Stefanik: It’s a yes-or-no question. Let me ask you this. You are president of Harvard, so I assume you’re familiar with the term “intifada,” correct?
Claudine Gay: I have heard that term, yes.
Rep. Elise Stefanik: And you understand that the use of the term “intifada” in the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict is indeed a call for violent armed resistance against the state of Israel, including violence against civilians and the genocide of Jews. Are you aware of that?
Claudine Gay: That type of hateful speech is personally abhorrent to me. …
Rep. Elise Stefanik: Well, let me ask you this: Will admissions offers be rescinded or any disciplinary action be taken against students or applicants who say “from the river to the sea” or “intifada,” advocating for the murder of Jews.
Claudine Gay: As I have said, that type of hateful, reckless, offensive speech is personally abhorrent to me.
Khalil Gibran Muhammad, professor of history, race and public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, said in an Amy Goodman interview “What we saw happen here with this campaign against Claudine Gay, where plagiarism became the pretext, kind of like a Black motorist with tinted windows being stopped only to look for drugs so that they could be incarcerated as part of a war on Black people during mass incarceration, that is the context where Christopher Rufo, who initiated the critical race theory, anti-woke campaign, has now culminated in yet another victory with taking down Claudine Gay over a very, very minor offense within academic context.”
Also this: Bernie Steinberg, executive director of Harvard Hillel from 1993 to 2010, said, “During my long career as a Jewish educator and leader — including thirteen years living in Jerusalem — I have seen and lived through my community’s struggles. Now, as an elder leader, with the benefit of hindsight, I feel compelled to speak to what I see as a disturbing trend gripping our campus, and many others: The cynical weaponization of antisemitism by powerful forces who seek to intimidate and ultimately silence legitimate criticism of Israel and of American policy on Israel. In most cases, it takes the form of bullying pro-Palestine organizers. In other [cases], these campaigns persecute anyone who simply doesn’t show due deference to the bullies. The recent effort to smear our new University President, Claudine Gay, is a case in point. I applaud the decision by the Harvard Corporation to stand by Dr. Gay amid the ludicrous charges that she somehow supports genocide against Jews, and I hope Harvard will continue to take a clear and strong stance against any further efforts by these powerful parties to meddle in university affairs, especially over personnel decisions.”
In terms of the very wealthy financiers and major donors influencing the outcome, Robert Reich lays it out quite nicely. “I can understand the frustrations of these donors. But to use their influence to force the ouster of these university presidents is an abuse of power. It sets a dangerous precedent of megadonor intrusion into university life. Yet not until now have major donors so brazenly used their financial influence to hound presidents out of office for failing to come out as clearly as the donors would like on an issue of campus speech or expression. As a Jew, I also cannot help but worry that the actions of these donors — many of them Jewish, many from Wall Street — could fuel the very antisemitism they claim to oppose, based on the age-old stereotype of wealthy Jewish bankers controlling the world.”
And in Tucson we have the very white University of Arizona President Robert Robbins and Athletics Director Dave Heeke who worked together to create the recent financial waterfall, spending close to $2 million on renovations to Robbins' skybox suite, $2 million on upgrades to the football coaches' offices/meeting rooms/barber shop, nearly $3 million at Hi Corbett, $13 million buy-outs for failed football coaches.
No firings or resignations, just taking it out on faculty and staff. Fuuuuu…
4.
I got word that many of you are dying to know about the conflicting stories about how the greenhouse gas methane is responsible for roughly 30 percent of the increase in global temperature since the Industrial Revolution and is often described as 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide. So for you folks, read this:
Raymond Pierrehumbert, a professor of physics at the University of Oxford and a member of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board, explains why describing methane as “80 times as potent as carbon dioxide” is inaccurate and misleading and why the widespread hope that sharp cuts to methane emissions will bring about immediate and significant reductions in global temperatures is both wrong and distressing.
So this is not to say that eliminating methane emissions is bad, because it does help. But what’s really damaging is fooling yourself into thinking that eliminating methane has as big an impact as eliminating carbon dioxide. This becomes materially bad if you have a trading scheme that actually allows a company to trade carbon dioxide for methane on this 80 times figure, because then that winds up being a nightmare scenario, where some company will abate a certain amount of methane and then claim huge credits. It’s good to reduce methane. But we shouldn’t exaggerate how big a part of the problem this is. Because if you use this 80 times figure, it completely exaggerates the amount of avoided warming that’s possible with even the most aggressive action on methane.
It’s a mass delusion and wishful thinking, based on a fundamental failure to understand the different ways that a short-lived gas like methane affects the climate versus a long-lived gas like carbon dioxide. The basis of the fallacy is the total amount of warming you can avoid by any likely amount of methane reduction is small, compared to what needs to be done. And it just comes from a fundamental lack of understanding of basic climate physics.
Tiny Tidbits of Goddamn!
1. More than a third of US adults say Biden’s 2020 victory was not legitimate. Say what? Reporting in a WaPo poll, the Post said that among Republicans, only 31% now say Biden’s win was legitimate – down from 39% in 2021. The poll also showed Republicans becoming more sympathetic to the January 6 rioters and more likely to absolve Trump of responsibility for the attack. Analyzing the poll, Aaron Blake, a senior political reporter for the Post, said it mostly showed that Trump’s message over the 2020 election and January 6 had resonated with voters already disposed to believe it. Goddamn!
2. Arizona’s Kari Lake, who’s been rubbing herself up against the Donald (eeeuuwwwww), now must prove her claims that county Recorder Stephen Richer is a crook. It's called accountability. All this after the Honorable Jay Ryan Adleman ruled that Lake does not have a First Amendment right to call Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer a criminal. Goddamn!
And now…
Thanks for the info on the car batteries. Very helpfu.
“… little cabin somewhere remote, hunt my own food, gather berries, burn dead wood in my cast iron stove, no phone, no internet, no communication.” And let us not forget the chickens and the rabbits.