U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris has marshaled $3.2 billion in corporate pledges to tackle the factors that drive some Central Americans to migrate to the U.S., according to her office, an effort she will tout at the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles https://t.co/0D3kioETbl
— Reuters (@Reuters) June 7, 2022
The House Select Committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol is working with a former ABC News television executive to help with the planning for their upcoming hearings, according to a source familiar with the committee's plans. https://t.co/hxJ1nwPZtj
— CNN (@CNN) June 6, 2022
Rep. Liz Cheney’s remarks come days before the committee begins prime-time, televised hearings throughout June that will feature live witnesses, taped interviews with key figures — including Trump family members — and previously unseen video footage. https://t.co/KtqENki9ga
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) June 5, 2022
COVID-19 Coronavirus Updates: Monday / Tuesday, June 6-7
Baud
Via Reddit
NotMax
‘@Baud
Provision of enough of a cushion to assuage utter desperation is a plus?
Who knew?
//
Wish I’d held on to the newspaper clipping from decades ago, which in summation was headlined:
“Study shows those who are rich, young and healthy happier than those who are poor, old and sick.”
Dorothy A. Winsor
@NotMax: Hey, some researcher got a grant to do that!
Good for the Ds for working with someone who understands TV production. I want these hearings to have impact.
Baud
@NotMax:
If the poor, old, and sick were happy, what incentive would they have to become rich, young, and healthy?
WaterGirl
@NotMax: @Dorothy A. Winsor:
When I was in college, I remember learning about a study that cost $2,000 (a lot more money back then than it is now!).
They wanted to know why little kids fall on their tricycles, and it turns out that they lose their balance!
Who could have known????
Baud
@WaterGirl:
Bullshit. They were pushed!
NotMax
And now for something completely different.
Imagine seeing this approaching in your rear view mirror.
;)
artem1s
Happy Antifa Day!
June 7
Ken
@NotMax: We all saw the pictures of the Tesla truck when they first came out.
Soprano2
I want to thank everyone for their condolences on my stepson’s death. We’re still kind of in disbelief and processing it all. That said, I also appreciate all of the advice I got from people here on Sunday. We’ve decided that for now we’re going to let the investigative process play out. I always have the option to hire someone to look into it if we think the police didn’t do their job. They say they are investigating his death, so we’ll see what they come up with. There’s a lot of fear from his friends on Maui that the police will rush to judgement and say he died by suicide because they want to sweep it under the rug – I’ve been told by more than one person that a lot of people there “just disappear with no explanation”, and they don’t try too hard to find one because it’s “bad for tourism”. NotMax would have a more informed view on that than I do, but it sounds at least plausible to me. They are all convinced that there is foul play of some kind involved in his death, because they say he wouldn’t go to the place where his body was found (evidently in some sugar cane fields where a lot of meth heads are known to hang out right across from $4 million homes, Maui is a weird place!), and that he didn’t have anything to do with any drugs other than alcohol and sometimes pot. Tomorrow I’m going to see a police officer I know; I’m going to ask her advice about how to make sure the police do a thorough investigation without pissing them off. We all want answers about what happened to him, because it was sudden and unexpected and the circumstances are strange to say the least.
Don’t want to hijack the thread, but I wanted to let everyone know what I decided after I asked for advice. One of his friends said she has a reporter friend who wants to do a story about John for the Maui News; I think that would be a good thing, get it more in the public eye. Evidently a lot of people in Paia knew and cared about John, he’d been there for a long time, and they want to know what happened to him.
Soprano2
@NotMax: Oh wow, I would definitely do a double take.
Baud
@Soprano2:
for a definitive resolution.
Jeffro
“Fox ‘News’ won’t carry the Jan 6th hearings, unlike all the other networks” makes for a great short FB post, Tweet, blog post, or email. It never hurts to remind the RWNJs in one’s life that they are idiots who prefer propaganda to news, or to remind the ‘independents’ and/or low-info normies in one’s life that Fox is not news.
NotMax
‘@Ken
You mean the Vaporware Model X?
Link above predates that by a bunch o’ stardates.
;)
Soprano2
I’m not surprised Fox won’t cover the insurrection hearings; they don’t want to allow unfiltered truth about it on their network. Their viewers might learn something, and they certainly can’t have that happen!
Jeffro
@Jeffro: (And to alert all parties that this is not a rehash of the second impeachment – there is a lot of new info about a broad conspiracy, directed by the disgraced one-term former president*, to overturn our 240+ year democracy)
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Soprano2: Thanks for the update. Not hijacking a thread at all!
NotMax
‘@Soprano2
You said a mouthful. Gospel truth.
zhena gogolia
@Soprano2: It sounds as if you’re taking the right steps. I hope you get some answers.
OzarkHillbilly
It’s going to take a while, maybe years. Be patient with yourselves.
Geminid
@Jeffro: A lot of that new information came from Mark Meadows, before his belated decision to stop cooperating with the Commitee. Meadows gave up a safe seat in Congress when he was drawn by trump’s trash magnetism. I bet he wishes he could play that move over. Meadows isn’t talking much now, but I read that he said recently that he and his wife “have been humbled.”
Ken
I briefly thought of composing a reply in the style of a Musk cultist, but decided I wouldn’t be able to emulate it properly.
(“Musk cultist” isn’t good; it could be confused with a sect that uses weasel glands in their rituals. Maybe “Elonites”? “Tesla True Believers”?)
OzarkHillbilly
@Ken: How’s about just “Suckers”?
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone
Geminid
@Soprano2: I read that John Fetterman has an ad up and running on TV stations including Fox News affiliates in Pittsburgh, Scranton, and Johnstown.
NotMax
‘@Ken
Judges will accept
Muskian
Muskhead
Musklust
and MOZ (short for Move over Zeus, there’s a new god bestriding Olympus).
:)
Soprano2
@NotMax: I always told John that he lived a weird life. He talked to Larry Ellison on the phone once to tell them that Mana doesn’t take pie orders, but he can come and buy pies if he wants them. He had no idea who Larry Ellison is, just some dude to him. He said a blond rock star almost ran over him in her car once, he wasn’t sure if it was Christina Aguilera or Britney Spears.
Soprano2
This is an interesting Twitter thread that I found to have a lot of truth in it. If only reporters could understand how true it is.
O. Felix Culpa
@Soprano2:
Funny, I was just reading that thread and wondering if I should post it. :)
Spoiler alert: Republican messaging boils down to white male supremacy and Wilhoit’s Law, which the MSM accepts as normal, with a lagniappe of only Dems have agency.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Soprano2
@O. Felix Culpa: GMTA, huh?
O. Felix Culpa
@Soprano2: Definitely!
NotMax
‘@Soprano2
“Good morning, Thule Airbase!’
//
skerry
On June 6, 2022, President Biden invoked the Defense Production Act (DPA) to boost the domestic production capacity of critical clean energy technologies including heat pumps, solar panels and building insulation. The Presidential directive strengthened the resiliency of our supply chains for heat pumps, building insulation solar photovoltaic (PV) panels and their key components, as well as other clean technologies.
Soprano2
@zhena gogolia: Thanks. I appreciated your perspective as the relative of a murder victim. I don’t think these people understand what they’re asking of me when they ask me to hire someone to investigate this, especially when the police haven’t even had a chance to do anything yet! They are all telling me that the police aren’t going to do the job before anything even happens, and I’m not willing to make that assumption. I also want to say that I’m so sorry for what you went through, it’s pretty awful.
artem1s
@Geminid:
Oh boy, usually fundispeak for “I’ve been saved and am going to start my own
churchcult”Kay
I feel like he ran on “crime is out of control!” when it had gone up in some categories but not others, so people now believe that “crime is out of control!” (understandably- that’s what he told them) and he hasn’t fixed it and worse, he probably can’t “fix it” since he exaggerated the problem to begin with. He can’t fix a (partly) invented crime wave because it is imaginary :)
It’s like how conservatives can never fix voter fraud although they have passed tens of laws to stop voter fraud over the years. They exaggerated the problem so understandably can’t fix it and literally will never be able to fix it.
The lesson for me is while panics may be useful short term, they’re ultimately losers as issues.
Brachiator
@Baud:
But this massive failure of a government program happened during the Clinton administration. Was this when he was trying to appease Republicans by “ending welfare as we know it?”
Things have gotten a little bit better. People with some medical issues continue to receive benefits and there is some kind of notification system to let people know that benefits might end.
This is maybe another endorsement of universal basic income, and better programs to help children and families become more productive.
OzarkHillbilly
@NotMax: How’s about Muskoxen?
Ken
@OzarkHillbilly: Muskovites?
OzarkHillbilly
@Ken: Ooooooo, I like that.
Denali
‘@O Felix Culpa,
It’s all about who has the power.
Brachiator
@Soprano2:
You can only try to do the best you can.
Take care.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: That’s how he’s different from Trump–Trump could simply say he’d solved the problem and his fans would immediately believe him.
Matt McIrvin
@NotMax: The Model X is the “crossover SUV”-styled one–it’s been around for a while though it had a lot of production delays that I think were caused by the insistence on gimmicky doors. The pointy boxy one that’s still vapor is the Cybertruck.
I think the conventional car manufacturers are eventually going to smoke these oddball EV startups. But it took them a while to be convinced there was a market here.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
Well, different from all conservatives. Conservatives have spent the last twenty years passing laws to stop voter fraud yet every single cycle they claim it’s growing with the sort of culmination in the Trump insanity where the whole fucking Party joined in to claim massive fraud. None of their voters ever wonder or ask about this. Do their anti voter fraud laws not work? How is voter fraud still growing?
They can’t “solve” voter fraud because it’s a nearly wholly imaginary problem. That works for them- I don’t see it working for Democrats. He could have just said “up in these areas, down in these” and still been the law n order candidate. There was no need to invent a massive crime wave.
Ruviana
@NotMax: You had a headline from DougJ decades ago?
Geminid
@OzarkHillbilly: Muskmeloons?
different-church-lady
What, is Fox pleading the 5th?
Professor Bigfoot
@NotMax: I was thinking “Musk oxen,” but that maligns an entire species of hard-working creature.
sdhays
@Kay: I believe he insisted on getting paid in BitCoin, so my conclusion is that he’s just a not very bright, not very serious person.
I suspect NYC residents are going to start missing the dependable mediocrity of the de Blasio years.
Joe Falco
Just a moment ago, the mobile site gave me the option to edit someone else’s comment as if it were my own comment.
Betty Cracker
Anyone have an opinion on WaPo suspending Dave Weigel for a month without pay because he retweeted a dumb sexist joke? (“All women are bi. You just have to figure out if it’s sexual or polar.”) I think it’s bullshit.
Professor Bigfoot
@Matt McIrvin: This. They’re finding out that building good, safe, reliable, maintainable cars that people want to drive ain’t that easy.
The big guys have literally been doing that for… well, the past century and in that time they have learned a lot.
Absolutely guaranteed Old Man Ford’s outfit is gonna smoke Tesla, if the General doesn’t buy ‘em first (after the stock price goes down to what that company’s actual valuation can support).
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Betty Cracker: It’s disrespectful. Not professional. Specifically violated the social media conduct standards of the organization he publicly represents.
If he worked for my organization I’d give him a job-related consequence too.
(Edited to add stuff)
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
My reaction is that a month seems a little long, but there should be consequences.
Ken
@Betty Cracker: I could face the same consequences, or worse, at my place of employment for conduct violations. Note plural, however; suspension or termination would be after repeated violations, after each of which I would have been warned that my behavior was unacceptable. Perhaps Wiegel has some history of which we are unaware.
Kay
@sdhays:
Oh, God. See that’s a deal breaker for me :)
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I like him a lot as a reporter – his work- it’s traditional political reporting and interesting- and I think it’s ok. My thing is they all use Twitter to promote their own work and their employers, and that comes with risk when they fuck up. They can’t just take the upside. If they won’t want to use it to promote their own work they don’t have to but they want to, because it benefits them.
They have to decide if this is a commercial platform for them or a personal platform. I think it’s commercial for media and writers.
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
Ultimately, the best EVs may require unconventional thinking and new kinds of companies.
I was recently watching a review and road test of the new BMW i4. Electric Series 4 Grand coupe. I think I got that right. There were a couple of things I noticed as the car guy talked about the car exterior.
The front grill is purely decorative. So were the air intakes on sides of grill. Just molded plastic inserts. The car also had shortened fake exhaust “pipes” in the rear. None of this made sense for an electric vehicle.
I wonder if they used the body template of a conventional car and then made an electric vehicle. I also wondered what they might do differently if they designed a pure electric car from the ground up.
The car seemed to drive well and had great acceleration. But the car guy kept noting that because of the weight of the battery, the car did not handle as well as a gas auto. I wonder if this might be something that other drivers would also note. Nothing dangerous, maybe a different road feel.
Some of the early automobile manufacturers had originally made bicycles. And early cars looked like carriages because it was assumed that this is what people wanted.
But at some point you gotta have designers and engineers who see and build an EV that reflects something new. Conventional car companies may not be up to the task.
different-church-lady
@Joe Falco: I NEVER SAID THAT!!!
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: There is a twitterer who goes by the handle of “SaladShooter” who dredged up a bunch of slimy Wiegel tweets. Someone else said that the Post would not have been suspended Wiegel if he had not been warned for priors, and this may well be the case.
Mangy Jay has a typically thoughtful commentary on the suspension, which is where I encountered Saladshooter’s “Wiegel Greatest Hits” collection.
OzarkHillbilly
@Geminid: Heh, I like that too.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Because to a certain extent these are “brands” right? That sounds awful but it shouldn’t- I don’t resent in anyway that they promote their work – Twitter is a natural fit for media and writers. But that’s constraining, too. It comes with a price.
Honestly one of the big reasons I like him is he manages to cover Democrats without treating them like some freak show. It’s just straight “here’s the candidate in OH 13, here’s some interesting background on her other races” There’s no Grand Theme or Theory, thank fucking God :)
Matt McIrvin
@Professor Bigfoot: One big problem they do have to solve is that traditional car dealers really, really, really don’t want to sell electric cars, because they make less money on service. If the car company makes them sell them, the salespeople will flat-out tell you not to buy them–if you so much as look at the car in the showroom, they’ll start badmouthing them. Probably the dealers aren’t giving them commissions. I’ve seen this in person. It’s why Tesla went for different sales models.
Hybrids are fine with them, because they require basically as much regular service as conventional cars. The brakes do last longer.
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: Electric cars with long-range batteries tend to be quite heavy vehicles, but some of these reviewers do seem to like the handling of Teslas, specifically, because their battery basically occupies the floor of the car, making the center of gravity very low.
The styling is evolving–many early EVs went out of their way to look weird, but the first successful ones all had fake grills and such to look like conventional cars. But now, they’re moving beyond that and ditching some of the fake-ICE-car styling.
Tesla seems to keep getting in their own way by acting like a “disruptive” tech startup. Their safety culture, particularly, is inadequate–car companies have spent longer dealing with these issues, though they had to be dragged kicking and screaming to every major innovation.
Soprano2
@Kay: The other factor in the imaginary “voter fraud” problem is that what they regard as “voter fraud” is “black people in cities voting”, so of course nothing will ever be done about it! That’s how they can keep using it as an issue, over and over, and never really solve it, because their voters know what they’re really talking about. Their voters think “As long as large numbers of black people in cities vote there will be massive fraud, which is all the fault of Democrats, so of course Republicans can’t fix it”. And of course reporters will never talk to them about it bluntly like this, so they can keep up the obfuscation and be taken seriously when they really shouldn’t be.
I talked to a man who told me he thinks the voters in downstate Illinois should have more say in how the state government runs. I said well they already have a say, they vote and send people to the state legislature. He said but that’s not enough, Chicago runs everything, they should have more say. I said but that’s where all the people live, how do you suggest we do that? He had no ideas about that he was willing to share, but if I had to guess it would be something like “we should count votes by how much land mass each voter has”, or something dumb like that, so that it would weight the votes of white people more than those of non-white people. They never want to say this out loud, but it’s what they’re thinking. “The votes of God-fearing, land-owning, white Christian taxpayers should count twice as much as the votes of black people in the cities” is the kind of thing they tell each other but will never tell you.
Baud
@Soprano2:
This.
Kay
@Soprano2:
That’s a good point. I’ve followed it so long that I can recall when moderates advised Democrats to go along with voter ID because that would address the concerns of conservatives and they would stop discrediting elections. I watched the Ohio leg debate on voter ID and that was a popular opinion on the center Left -make a deal. Give them ID and they’ll back off. It seems quaint and old fashioned looking at what has happened since.
Let’s just say that didn’t work! :)
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: There’s a huge fight over this, because car dealerships have gotten the government to make it illegal for car makers to sell cars directly to the public. Planet Money did a podcast about it, and how exactly what you say is a problem for electric cars – there aren’t many repairs needed on an electric vehicle, so there’s not much servicing for the dealer to do, so they don’t make much money on them.
Brachiator
@Matt McIrvin:
Tesla is not my model for an EV car company. But again, a lot of the institutional knowledge of conventional car companies may not be as relevant to the world of electric cars. And as you note some car companies had to be forced to think about safety.
Also I heard someone cite a report that suggested that pure EVs may put most auto mechanics out of business. They may need to be retrained for other jobs. And dealers who don’t want to sell EVs may find that there are new services and features that add value to electric cars. Again people are thinking horseless carriage, not automobiles.
Soprano2
@Kay: They’ll never back off, because there is no law that will ever fix what they believe the actual problem is – black people in cities vote, and they vote for Democrats. That’s the actual “problem” they are talking about when they talk about “voter ID”, but of course no reporter will ever get them to admit it (although after seeing what Billy Long said in an interview, someday one of them might be dumb enough to say it out loud!). For some reason (gee, I wonder what it is), no reporter ever feels compelled to ask any Republican why they don’t try to get non-white people in cities to vote for them. It’s almost as if reporters think the “average” voter every politician should want to appeal to is a white, straight, Christian, rural man, and all other voters are those “others” we don’t need to be concerned about. *rolleyes
ETA – One wrinkle is that now most Republicans have moved on to “any election not won by a Republican had massive fraud and is suspect”, and there is absolutely no way to fix that! It goes along with that Twitter thread I posted earlier today – only when Republicans win are elections valid and fraud-free, is what they are telling their voters.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: They’ve got this intuition that white guys are normal real Americans, so any politician who doesn’t have the majority of white guys is illegitimate.
In most states in the US white people (if not white men) are a plurality, and it’s intuitive, but wrong, to think that the majority winner would naturally win the majority of the largest racial group. It does mean that a coalition that depends on a lot of unified minority groups, plus a minority of whites, is always going to strike a lot of white Americans as an illegitimate winner. Somebody must have cheated!
(But when it comes to gender, of course, men aren’t even a plurality.)
Betty Cracker
Agree Weigel’s tweet was inappropriate, especially considering he uses his account for work. He un-retweeted it and apologized, which he absolutely should have done. The month’s suspension w/o pay strikes me as overreacting, and I think they did it to appease a Twitter pile-on, which is gross.
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: Yep, that’s what the obsession with “rural diners” is all about. Funny how they never felt the urge to go to a barbershop or beauty shop in a city to talk to people about why they voted for Biden! It’s because they don’t think those voters are important.
Soprano2
@Betty Cracker: Could be, or it could be this is one in a long line of similar offenses, and they simply couldn’t look away and do nothing this time. I like his reporting too, but retweeting that tweet showed extremely poor judgment. I think sometimes they forget that their work account is not their personal account. This kind of thing is one reason why I make it a policy not to be Facebook friends with people I work with.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2:
Republicans have noted for decades that many non-white people are temperamentally culturally conservative and ought to be receptive to a cultural appeal based on religion, traditional sexual and child-rearing mores, etc. There have been metric tons of ink spilled on the potential here. Sometimes they do make some headway.
But their only theory for why they don’t have the black and brown vote already is basically that these people are dumb and lazy and the wily Democrats tricked them with promises of handouts. Couldn’t possibly be that the Republican Party is the current home of the most virulent white racists.
Geminid
@Soprano2: These reporters never seem to interview people at Starbucks, either. Plenty of Trump voters there; maybe the reporters don’t like telling on their own. Instead, they act like some domestic version of National Geographic.
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: That’s true, but reporters don’t constantly ask them about it in the same way they ask Democrats things like “Why don’t Democrats appeal to working class (white) voters anymore? What could you do to get those voters back?” (They never say “white”, but it’s implied in the question.) It’s rare to hear a reporter ask a Republican the inverse of this question.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Twitter pile ons are gross. Now we’re stuck with the NYTimes talking to like the GOP county chair as a man on the street interview. A rich, thematic view of America that is just LOADED with assumptions and opinion. Yuck.
It should alarm them all that one reporter out for a month is such a big deal. Why is there only one?
VOR
@Brachiator: Yes, many services for internal combustion engines simply aren’t needed for EVs. No exhaust therefore no mufflers or muffler shops. No oil changes so goodbye to an entire ecosystem of oil change shops. Regenerative braking means brakes don’t wear out as fast. Dealers are scared of these changes.
Brachiator
@VOR:
It is understandable that dealers would be afraid of these changes. The same might be true of auto mechanics who will lose their jobs.
Other changes will ripple through the economy.
gvg
@Soprano2: Why the heck would he think that tweet is OK even in a private account. It was REALLY over my line. Something is wrong with him IMO.
If he says that in a tweet, what does he say to his female coworkers? Women he interviews? Even if he doesn’t say it to you, would you want to be interviewed by him?
BellyCat
@Baud:
Incredible study! Thanks for linking.
Soprano2
@gvg: Not saying it was OK, it was gross. I’m only saying that when you do something like that ON YOUR WORK ACCOUNT, your workplace has to respond to it. These guys seem to forget that their work life and private life should be separate.
The Lodger
@NotMax: how about the Eloi?
Geminid
@Brachiator: The changes will be gradual, if for no other reason than raw materials constraints. Delivery fleets will transition the quickest, personal automobiles more slowly.
Paul in KY
@Soprano2: Hope you get the true answers into his death! So sorry for your family.
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: A crass joke, but not month-without-pay level, for sure.
Sounds like the kind of joke a pro comedian probably said about 20 years ago…
RaflW
I know Jay Rosen is preaching mostly to the choir, but he had a short thread up about how Fox is openly saying they aren’t a news network and their peers should really pay attention to that. But he mostly hammered on the idea that their viewers were weak and Fox knows they need to protect their snowflakes (not Jay’s term).
Brachiator
@Geminid:
Major technological change is rarely as gradual as people want to believe. But who knows. I hope I am around to see electric vehicles become popular.
ETA. There is a famous photo of a stretch of 5th Avenue in New York Illustrating the adoption of the automobile. In 1900 there is only one car in the very crowded street. The rest of the traffic is buggies and horses. In 1913, there is only one horse in the even more crowded street.
Gravenstone
@Soprano2: In summation, Republican mindset:
1. You are not the boss of me
a. “You” being defined as anyone not a Republican cult member
2. I am damned well the boss of you
a. see point 1
eta: formatting is weird. You can’t put a tab into a comment, and when you try to manually enter spaces to start a line, they are removed on posting
SWMBO
@Soprano2:
My FIL was murdered in October 1997. They didn’t make an arrest until February 1998 when they pulled over a car and the woman driver was a babbling meth head. She had worked as a waitress in a restaurant that my FIL frequented. She and her boyfriend killed him and another man that night to get enough money to buy a lab and set up their own meth factory. She told them where to find the gun, what had happened and what they did before, during, and after their crime spree. The cops didn’t find the killers, they turned themselves in (sort of). It was a horrible time when no one knew who had done it and everyone was a suspect. I don’t wish that on anyone. The only advice I have for you is to care for yourself and your family first. Don’t worry about what anyone else thinks or says. Put yourselves first and remember you are all going through the same horror with different points of view. Be kind.
Calouste
@Betty Cracker:
I think he should feel lucky not to get sacked. Implying that most, if not all, women have a mental illness is gross.
Geminid
@Brachiator: I don’t want to believe that the shift to electric cars will be gradual. I’ve just read that the world’s capacity to provide lithium and other key minerals will be a constraint on a rapid transition to electric vehicles. That doesn’t mean we won’t see 50% or more of personal vehicles being electric ten years from now, just that the impact on dealers and mechanics will be gradual although steady.
Decarbonizing heavy transport and industrial processes like steel and glass making will be tougher. Biofuels and hydrogen-based fuels may provide the concentrated energy required. I see a lot of skepticism about hydrogen, but I read that the EU envisions a big role for hydrogen in its future energy economy, and I think this is based on realistic scientific and engineering projections.
Lkmk
@Ken: I like Muskies. Resemblance to a certain Democratic Senator 100% intentional.
Soprano2
@SWMBO: Oh man I am so sorry you had to go through that. I do know that there are a lot of murders that are never solved. Just this week it’s the 30th anniversary of Springfield’s three missing women case. I figure they’ll never know what happened to those women unless someone makes a deathbed confession. They disappeared without a trace in June 1992. I appreciate the advice. I’ll be glad when we can finally get his stuff out of his room; it’s weighing on his landlord and other roommates a lot, knowing all his stuff is there and not being able to do anything about it yet.
SeattleDem
@Brachiator: two years ago I rarely an EV in Seattle, now somewhere north of 5% of the cars on the road seem to be Teslas. We took delivery on a Saturday and were one of 30 who had delivery appointments that day at that site. Once the other manufacturers get comparable range, I expect them to jump off the lot, too.
Brachiator
@SeattleDem:
You have an EV? Cool. I hope you document some of your experiences here.
Elizabelle
@Soprano2:
Sounds like a good plan. The Maui News article might get some traction. I am so sorry you are going through this.
Elizabelle
@SWMBO: I’m so sorry you lost your FIL to violence.
Calouste
@Geminid:
I wouldn’t necessarily bet on that. It will probably end up being a driver for research into alternative battery technologies that have different constraints.
Hydrogen seems like an important part of the energy mix, because it’s a relatively straightforward replacement for natural gas in a lot of industrial processes that use flames.
Geminid
@Calouste: Yes, there is already research into alternate battery technologies. Advances in materials science and other areas can circumvent shortages of lithium and other vital materials. And the results of these advances might show up in vehicles by 2030, maybe even sooner.
I am not “betting on” an absolute, lasting barrier to transitioning to electric vehicles. I am saying that beyond the tasks of installing an adequate network of charging stations, building out capacity in electrical generation and the grid, and fostering buyer acceptance, the lack of a sufficient stock of materials could mean a slower transition than the first three factors would otherwise allow. I see this as a current-decade problem (not a long term one) that will slow the phase out of ICE vehicle maintenance and repair.
Geminid
@Calouste: The EU’s hydrogen program is very ambitious. Most projects are still in the planning stage. One that caught my eye was proposed by a large electrical co-op based in Valentia, a town on Ireland’s western coast. There is plenty of wind offshore, but Valentia is distant from consumers, and there may well be a glut in electricity in a decade or so anyway. So the co-op is projecting an array of wind generators, electrolytic hydrogen producers, and storage. The idea is that periodically the hydrogen would be loaded into a tanker similar to those used now for liquified natural gas.
This stretches my belief some, but these people seem very serious and I think they work from a better base of knowledge than mine.