Do we really need to buy an EV?

Happy Friday!

Here in Texas, it appears that we will have a bang-up weekend. As I sit here at noon on Friday, the current temperature is 70F degrees or 21C. The sun is shining, and I have lots to do just in case we get another cold snap before Halloween.

You might wonder why I am focusing on the weather.

Not all that long ago, there was something called the Star Registry. This company would pick a star and give it your name or any name you choose for a fee. As proof, they would send you a pre-printed certificate with the star’s coordinates and, of course, your name.

While it might be the perfect gift for someone who has everything, it is possibly one of the largest scams around until now.

Climate change is one of the scare tactics that ‘scientists’ and other hucksters use to change the behavior of the masses. You will see protestors who could not tell you what CO2 stands for, spending their valuable energy protesting cheap energy to put in place that the globalist wants to control.

The simple facts are that there are wars, so the defense companies can sell better weapons. Yes, real people are killed, and lives are lost on both sides, but those that want the money from the sales or creation of weapons will push the need for such things.

We here in the states are told that certain world leaders are evil. They…you possibly are told that the American president is evil. The lies continue; if money is spent and the media has something to perpetuate hate, nothing will change.

Emotional tragedies sell air time. The game goes on, whether it is for a pillow or some drug that has you ask your doctor if death is right for you.

This latest scam to stop climate change is a device that extracts carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air and, through large equipment, shoves the gas deep into the earth, where it will never harm another soul. They want you to buy carbon credits as gifts for the person with everything.

The earth already handles CO2 handily by using it as food for plants, trees, and so on. In return, the plants emit something called O2 or oxygen. Huh… Don’t we need oxygen to breathe to live?

The protestors should be fighting the people who are destroying the rainforest or those who harvest timber to the point of leaving barren land to be washed away in the rain.

As far as electric cars are concerned, I think there is far more under the hood than they tell us. ‘Under the hood is a metaphor. I want to know how much pollution is created when making these batteries. I would also like to know where these raw materials come from. I would also like to know who is mining these materials. Now add to those facts this little nugget. When the batteries no longer work, what happens to them? Is there a company that is going to dig a large hole in the earth and put the inert material back in the soil?

Before you rush out and make Elon any richer, we should know what the life cycle is of those batteries.

The exciting thing about fossil fuel is that it is renewable. “What…TW, you are crazy.”

Well, no, not really; I am a writer and think creatively.

Fossil fuel is named because it was created by dead plants and other biological things like animals.

The CO2 that we emit today feeds the plants, which will eventually become fossil fuels. Time is the operative word.

We have the means to destroy all human life on this planet. We also have the nut jobs that think there can be winners and losers with nuclear bombs.

Using the variable time in the life equation, we already have ample evidence of what happens when nuclear material is mishandled. Chernobyl is 34 years after the accident, and we only have another 20,000 years to wait before the land is habitable again. That is twenty thousand years!

If any imbecile launches a nuke of any kind, it will take eons before that target area is safe to inhabit. Those bombs used in Japan were woefully inefficient. What is the cancer rate in Japan these days? Do we believe that the radiation only affected Japan?

If you could afford a Geiger counter that correctly identifies the types of radiation you are exposed to daily, you would find that radiation from Chernobyl, Fukashima, and other sources would be all around you, including your food.

That milk on your Wheaties contains radiation. How much radiation does it take to bastardize your DNA in cells to grow cancers that are malignant enough to end your life?

That’s where we are, folks.

I find it fascinating that doctors will order a CT scan as their first diagnostic test, which is equivalent to 50 chest x-rays, without looking for a less dangerous method to get the image they think they need.

We pollute our environment for money. Those that dumped tons of DDT in the Pacific Ocean by Catalina Island are not paying the price for their treachery. They were fined. They were fined less than the cost to properly dispose of the poison. The manufacturer that dumped the tons of DDT went out of business. This happened through the ’60s and ’70s. With no regard for humans and animals, they found a way to care for their little problem. DDT has a half-life of 35 to 65 years.

If Greta wanted to complain about something, that is one I would support. The real question is, what are other people doing with their toxic leftovers from manufacturing? I am more concerned about countries that don’t give a shit about what they allow into the environment.

Now we circle back to the batteries in these EVs.

Where are the defunct batteries going?

Recycling these batteries is the only real option, but the challenges are daunting. What toxins will be released in the process of recycling them? What toxins will be put into landfills?

What toxins are released, creating batteries?

Is it possible we are attempting to fix something that doesn’t require fixing? Are we inventing yet another star registry?

-Best

About the cover… One of my best sellers.

Tesla Loan Forgiveness

Firstly, you have little control over what the government does with your tax dollars after they rob you of them. Democrats tend to tax and spend more than Republicans, which is why most people vote conservative folks into office.

VOTE is all the control you have. You can protest peacefully provided you get a protest permit to gather etc.

I worked my way through school and paid for it as I went.

When the government decided to back the loans for college, colleges took advantage of that, raising the tuition cost. Many ivy league schools have huge surpluses thanks to government intervention.

Anything the government touches appears to turn to shit. You need to look no further than the DMV or attempt to speak with a knowledgeable person at the IRS.

Loan forgiveness is not what it sounds like. The debt is still there; it is transferred to the taxpayers who may or may not have even gone to college.

There are many on social media gleefully boasting of voting for Biden on the promise he would forgive student debt. AOC is running in the same lane. She wants it to go even further. It is too bad that she is that clueless about economics.

What emotional trigger words can we use to sway voters?

Election season is always messy and ugly and sours the whole voting process. Everyone is a skunk. So, we hold our breath and vote for the skunk that is the least stinky. Does that sound like you?

I don’t listen to their words so much as look at what they have done in the past.

In keeping with #climatechange, California and Virginia will ban the sale of gasoline-powered cars. California certainly does not have the power grid for that endeavor, but the sound bite will resonate with the climate change people.

I don’t think it wise to only have an electric car. As your daily driver, it might make sense to purchase one, but which one is the question?

If, for instance, you are in Florida or near the Gulf of Mexico, a storm is headed your way. Evacuation routes are packed with people attempting to escape harm’s way. I can envision traffic stalled because EVs ran out of electricity, and the charging stations were underwater. How many lives do you think it will cost?

Imagine 100 miles of cars, trucks, and so on stuck because they ran out of electricity. We have seen this during white-out snow storms, but now you have the EV to consider. How does super cold or super hot weather affect the battery life?

FEMA will plead ignorance, telling the president, who could have predicted that?

I think a long-range gasoline car, probably a truck or large SUV, should be in the garage of those who might need to evacuate.

If it were me, I would have a motor home filled with diesel and ready with the ability to tow the Tesla.

That was a joke when the government passed this last bill to reduce inflation. The bill will most certainly drive the US economy into recession.

Here is the plan. Late in 2023, go out and purchase a top-of-the-line Tesla. Much like that college degree in feminine studies you paid a quarter million for, you might as well buy the most expensive model Tesla on the market.

You are saving the earth, after all.

If enough people do this and figure out that they cannot afford a $4,000 a month car payment, they would be loud, and it would be an issue. Then we could get the candidates to incorporate a Tesla loan forgiveness for those of us who did our best to help solve climate change. The sky is falling mantra was why we did it. Could it be that we need to breathe fresh air into the science behind climate change?

In all my years, I would never consider borrowing money that I could not pay back in a timely fashion. I am self-made. I didn’t need a degree in accounting to know how to manage money.

The government is piss poor at managing the budget. Buying votes appears to be the goal, and it might work.

Currently, we have a used car shortage. Could the cash for clunkers program under Obama have contributed to this scenario?

One other thing about EVs

I have found that older electronic equipment is a bad investment. If something goes haywire while attempting to repair it, you might find that those special chips are no longer available.

EVs are rife with special chips or proprietary devices. How long will Tesla or other manufacturers keep parts on the shelf?

I think the KISS method should be employed when building cars. Keep it Simple Stupid.

A hundred grand for a car that might not even last ten years is a lot of money.

-Best

The Green Dream

As a writer, I must confess that the news of the day has a detrimental effect on the creative process. With the Covid fiasco fading into the sunset, we have another disaster on the horizon. The media teases us with the phrase nuclear war. What would happen if? Could we survive? And the list goes on as to the stupid bullshit they promote for clicks or ratings.

One nuke gets turned loose, and the world as you know it is over. There are so many nukes in the world we could destroy the planet a hundred times over.

Have you ever wondered why people spend so much time and money on inventing better ways to kill each other than to just get along?

Gas prices topping $4 a gallon should be cause for alarm for most people. There is a push by the ‘squad,’ a progressive doltish bunch of politicians, to save the planet by using ‘green energy.’

There is nothing new under the sun, and this is true of this bunch of uninformed individuals who most certainly will be financially rewarded for pushing this agenda.

Here in the US, under the Bush regime, we were forced to give up Freon, a very efficient coolant for something that uses more energy to produce similar results that are much harder on the equipment.

Since it uses much higher pressures to achieve similar BTUs as freon, the equipment wears out faster, and often the coils used for transferring heat develop leaks.

This loss of freon was all predicated on a lie that we were destroying the ozone layer. In truth, the fluorocarbons in freon are much heavier than nitrogen-oxygen, so they don’t make it up high enough in the atmosphere to do any damage to the ozone layer.

I would love to know why other countries are still using freon if this was such a hair-on-fire issue. Do you suppose their leaders could not be purchased as easily as ours?

Then we had the light bulb fiasco. Replacing .25 cent bulbs with $12 bulbs would save the world. Yeah, they failed to mention that those bulbs contained mercury. They cannot simply be tossed into the garbage when they don’t live up to their expected lifetime. In fact, they are much more of a hazard to the environment than plain old incandescent bulbs ever could be. They also have been known to start fires.

Someone got rich from it. Now we have the LED bulb, which could also be a fire hazard. Dissembling failed or dead bulbs from infant mortality have proved shoddy workmanship to be the issue.

There is no secret that lawmakers pick winners and losers. Those who are for sale are the ones that lobbyists make sure to get the money. Special interests groups buy your lawmakers.

Isn’t there a branch of our government that is to look out for the consumer?

Both Russia and Ukraine are pumping tons of disinformation, ‘propaganda’ into society. My personal feelings on the matter are to stay the hell out of it. We don’t know the truth. Some of the videos I have seen look as though they came from a movie. Cell phone video and Hollywood quality video are distinguishable. Some of those videos seem to be cinematographically perfect, i.e., lighting and composition. Question everything.

The nightly news is rife with emotional triggers, but are they real? If you follow social media, you can see what they block, censor, or otherwise removed. From there, you can guess that whatever they don’t want you to see, you probably should see. Our lawmakers need to stop taking money from big tech. Our lawmakers work for us, not them.

If we were to take the world events at face value, it is no secret that the Biden, Bernie Sanders, and the Squad agenda are to have energy costs skyrocket. There are tons of money to be made in going green. This was also the Obama dream to move this country to forms of energy that would take us out of the competitive market for manufacturing or keeping up with other countries that use coal.

The fallacies are plenty, but for time and typing sake, let’s just tackle the EV.

At fifty-six thousand for an EV automobile, the price is way out of the range of most people. Unless you plan on revamping Hitler’s Volkswagen initiative, re-inventing the people’s car with batteries instead of a clunky 60 horse engine, I just don’t see it.

Batteries are the problem with an EV.

The chemicals needed to create batteries are not in the US like they are in China and even the middle east. Batteries have a finite lifetime, and then what do you do with them? Currently, a replacement set of batteries cost between $15K and $26K depending on your car.

When you leave your home with your EV fully charged, it is the equivalent of starting out your day with less than half a tank of gas. That, of course, varies by the age of the batteries and how much of a charge you have on them.

Here is one of many problems that the squad has not entertained.

Let’s say you are in Florida. The weather folks tell you that there is a hurricane headed your way. Like many others, you hop into your EV and head north out of the path of the storm.

Someone or maybe several someone’s stalls because their batteries were not charged or capable of taking a full charge. The main highway out of the affected area is blocked. Soon you too are out of juice because you run your AC while waiting for the traffic jam to clear.

It’s not like you are going to pull into an affected area and hunt for a charging station; the lights are already out due to the storm.

The technology is not ready for prime time, and it is way too expensive. Mayor Pete was a disaster in his hometown and is clueless when it comes to his job in this administration. If he knew anything at all, we would not be in the supply chain mess we are in.

Elon Musk is a visionary, bright person, and I would love to hear his take on what I have laid out.

Currently, we need to turn our oil and gas folks lose to do what they do best. Biden and company forcing our dependence on foreign oil is a disaster in the making.

If Russia is guilty, as the news portrays, then why in God’s name are we giving them $700 million a day for their gas? If what we see on the news is factual, he should be punished for his aggression. I would wager there is much more to it than what we hear on the news.

Biden did this. He is the cause for most of our economic woes. I don’t care how you voted. I would love a few mean tweets right now instead of an inflation rate at over 7.5% and energy prices increasing very quickly.

If Trump was still in office, I don’t think Ukraine would be under assault by Putin. I am certain that the PRK would not be testing missiles and that our inflation rate would not be at 7.5% and climbing.

All these economic woes roost with those who can least afford them, you and I. Large companies are not going to take the hit. They will pass them down to you.

Just possibly, you should turn your backyard into a victory garden.

If that term escapes you, look it up, and while you are there, learn some history. If we would teach history and critical thinking skills, people might just pay attention to how they vote. Your vote matters.

Cheers!