Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Disagreements are healthy; personal attacks are not.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Republicans in disarray!

You’re just a puppy masquerading as an old coot.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

The arc of the moral universe does not bend itself. it is up to us to bend it.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

The low info voters probably won’t even notice or remember by their next lap around the goldfish bowl.

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

The republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

They don’t have outfits that big. nor codpieces that small.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

If you’re gonna whine, it’s time to resign!

Human rights are not a matter of opinion!

Radicalized white males who support Trump are pitching a tent in the abyss.

You are here: Home / Politics / Education / Friday Evening Open Thread: Purported ‘University of Austin’ Is BAAACK!

Friday Evening Open Thread: Purported ‘University of Austin’ Is BAAACK!

by | 125 Comments

This post is in: , ,


Reader Interactions

125Comments

  4. 4.

    R-Jud

    “PragerU for failed NYT columnists” is a sick burn.

     

    (Aside: if you’re into podcasts and hate wellness woo, Michael Hobbes co-hosts the truly excellent Maintenance Phase. Genuinely brightens my day when it appears in my feed.)

  6. 6.

    Another Scott

    OpenThread? AlJazeera:

    Gaza City – Israel attacked the besieged Gaza Strip with warplanes on Friday, killing at least 10 people including a commander of the Islamic Jihad group and a young girl.

    Taysir al-Jabari, a commander of the al-Quds Brigades, the military arm of the Islamic Jihad, died in an air raid on an apartment in the Palestine Tower in the centre of Gaza City, the group said.

    The health ministry in Gaza said at least 10 people were killed including al-Jabari and a five-year-old girl. At least 55 people were wounded and being treated at hospitals as a result of the Israeli raids.

    […]

    AlJazeera:

    * The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) fired more than 100 rockets at Israel from the besieged Gaza Strip after Israel pounded the enclave with missile strikes, killing 10 people including a senior commander.

    * Earlier on Friday, Israel launched a series of attacks across the Gaza Strip, killing Taysir al-Jabari, a commander of the Al Quds Brigades, the military arm of Islamic Jihad.

    * Among those killed was a five-year-old girl, while 65 others suffered various injuries, according to the Gaza health ministry.

    * The Israeli attacks followed days of tension with Islamic Jihad after the arrest of senior Palestinian leader Bassam al-Saadi in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin.

    Cynics/Realists have noted that Israeli elections are November 1. Netanyahu’s block apparently is leading in the most recent polls.

    :-(

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  7. 7.

    zhena gogolia

    I hope sab is doing okay. I feel for her, as my own husband is having to deal with my glacially slow recovery from hip replacement.

  8. 8.

    Phylllis

    I’m actually surprised that our republican candidate for Secretary of Education here in South Carolina, Ellen Weaver, is not attending the U of Austin to get her Master’s Degree (required by state law for the position), which she has to have by election day in November. I guess I should be impressed that she has instead selected her alma mater, Bob Jones University, known for its academic rigor, to complete this degree in six months time.

  9. 9.

    Hungry Joe

    @R-Jud: Hobbes also co-hosted, with Sarah Marshall, the astonishingly informative, hilariously wonderful, and wonderfully hilarious podcast “You’re Wrong About.” Sarah now carries on without him; it’s not quite as good, but almost.

  10. 10.

    germy shoemangler

    Bari Weiss's fake university put out a video bragging about holding a two-week summer course pic.twitter.com/OphRtq27Cf

    — Michael Hobbes (@RottenInDenmark) August 4, 2022

    ok hear me out: the point isn’t that it’s a fake uni. the point is that the Right takes care of their propagandists. their media people are well-funded and comfortable while the people they crush chase patreon subs. https://t.co/pAmCYxfxN8

    — Wagatwe Wanjuki 🇰🇪 🇧🇸 (@wagatwe) August 4, 2022

  11. 11.

    SpaceUnit

    @Suzanne:

    He’s being too charitable.

    A more simple and likely explanation is that the Russians have dirt on Greenwald and turned him into an asset.

  12. 12.

    germy shoemangler

    @Another Scott:

    Wow, we were watching TV news today and they mentioned this story but they left out the part about the little girl.

    The whole tone of the story was that this was a legitimate response to violence from terrorists.

    So much for tv news.

  13. 13.

    germy shoemangler

    @Suzanne:

    Glenn never really lost his way because he never had a way to lose.  He started out horrible.  What he did as a lawyer was indefensible.

  15. 15.

    germy shoemangler

    we rarely discuss how much money is given directly to people on the right and that reinforces an unequal playing field.

    it’s hard when comfortable millionaires direct harassment to a Black woman living paycheck to paycheck.

    that’s a key power differential continuously exploited

    — Wagatwe Wanjuki 🇰🇪 🇧🇸 (@wagatwe) August 4, 2022

    they got paid to do a fake uni and now we’re talking about them for free…who really has the last laugh in this situation? 🤷🏾‍♀️

    — Wagatwe Wanjuki 🇰🇪 🇧🇸 (@wagatwe) August 4, 2022

  19. 19.

    germy shoemangler

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Long thread, but:

    49) The most disturbing aspect of Greenwald’s advocacy on Hale’s behalf, however, involved the viciousness with which he attacked Hale’s critics, as well as the strange and frankly dishonest twists of logic and rhetoric he deployed. It went well beyond the usual legal advocacy.— David Neiwert (@DavidNeiwert) May 20, 2019

  21. 21.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @germy shoemangler: involved the viciousness with which he attacked Hale’s critics, as well as the strange and frankly dishonest twists of logic and rhetoric he deployed.

    That’s just GG’s signature style.

  29. 29.

    Danielx

    Harking back to previous thread: WaPo sez jury awards 45.2 mil in Alex Jones trial. Way to close the afternoon!

    And beaten to it.

     

  30. 30.

    JWR

    Just glanced at the uaustin site, and the only names I recognize at all are these four:

    FOUNDING TRUSTEES

    ANDREW SULLIVAN
    LARRY SUMMERS (even the liberal!)
    DAVID MAMET
    ANDREW YOUNG

  31. 31.

    Roger Moore

    @SpaceUnit:

    I think you’re being too charitable.  Greenwald has always been of the right; he first made a name by defending literal neo-Nazis.  When he criticized Republicans, it was almost always from a right libertarian position, not from a left wing position.  When he got the Snowden material, he did his best to portray everything as being Obama’s fault, even though the material was for stuff done under W.  The question people should ask isn’t when he turned to the right but why anyone ever thought he was anything but right wing.

  34. 34.

    gene108

    @Roger Moore:

    The question people should ask isn’t when he turned to the right but why anyone ever thought he was anything but right wing.

    I found about Glen reading Slate during the early portion of the Iraq War. He was critical of GITMO and other abuses Bush & Cheney pulled during this time period.

    Edit: Opposition to the obvious BS Bush&Co pulled to get us into Iraq, the violation of our long standing practice to not torture POW’s, the twisted logic they used to defend this, and other abuses got some not terribly liberal people on our side. Greenwald and Maher are two examples. I’m sure there are more.

  35. 35.

    germy shoemangler

    @gene108:

    Greenwald was in favor of the Iraq war back then.  I don’t think he mentions that anymore.

    I had not abandoned my trust in the Bush administration. Between the president’s performance in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the swift removal of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the fact that I wanted the president to succeed, because my loyalty is to my country and he was the leader of my country, I still gave the administration the benefit of the doubt. I believed then that the president was entitled to have his national security judgment deferred to, and to the extent that I was able to develop a definitive view, I accepted his judgment that American security really would be enhanced by the invasion of this sovereign country.

  38. 38.

    Lyrebird

    @JWR: Luttwak was accused by the Ukrainian government and press orgs of promoting RU propaganda, that’s the only reason I have heard of him.

  45. 45.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Suzanne:

    I’m afraid the writer here specifically praises Greenwald’s integrity, so I am thrown at the first curve.  From at least the beginning of the Obama presidency Greenwald would omit details from his arguments that he had to know, and which completely negated them.  He misrepresented the facts he did include constantly.  And he engaged in no debate, but instead built insulting straw men of his enemies and attacked those.  His saying that liberals who scorned his praising Ron Paul were motivated by not wanting to admit we like killing babies leaps to mind.

    Beginning with such a false view of Greenwald invalidates the rest of his reasoning automatically, I think.

  48. 48.

    Poe Larity

    A decade or so ago, one of my cousins’ kids told me he wanted to join the Marines. I asked why, and he said “you can only destroy things from the inside”.

    This is before Thiel scholarships, so I suggested the Koch track. He wouldn’t do it.

    Nephew really, really wants to move to Austin, but the apt scene is insane. Might as well be Lake Geneva. But if UofA would pay… Conflicted, as he’s more susceptable to the dark side even if he loves the Beto.

  51. 51.

    Lacuna Synecdoche

    Jessica Shortall via Anne Laurie @ Top:

    The clock tower they show to make it look like a real college with a real campus is the old Parkland Hospital grounds in Dallas, which now just houses office buildings.

    Ummm, okay … but why would Texans associate towers with college?

    On August 1, 1966, after stabbing his mother and his wife to death the previous night, Charles Whitman, a Marine veteran, took rifles and other weapons to the observation deck atop the Main Building tower at the University of Texas at Austin, and then opened fire indiscriminately on people …

    Oh.
    That’s why.​​

  53. 53.

    Gin & Tonic

    @zhena gogolia: I had a somewhat less invasive surgery and it took over six months of physical therapy to get back to something approximating normal. Be patient and do your exercises faithfully.

  54. 54.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Lyrebird: No he wasn’t. Somehow he made it onto a Fox News list of people who’d been sanctioned (or shamed, really) but if you read the original doc from the UA gov’t, Luttwak was not on it.

  55. 55.

    RSA

    This is like just basic university stuff what are they bragging about??

    Not even. Anyone who’s taught professionally at a real university as a professor or instructor knows that there’s responsibility to go along with the authority of teaching a class.  These people are the academic equivalent of toddlers dressing up in their parents’ clothes.

  60. 60.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @R-Jud: Spot on! Maintenance Phase just won a Wired award for science podcast. It is most excellent and Michael Hobbes’ Twitter is well worth following.

  61. 61.

    zhena gogolia

    @Gin & Tonic: I’m trying. I heard too many success stories beforehand. Plus my first two weeks seemed miraculous. Thanks for the pep talk!

  70. 70.

    Alison Rose 💙🌻💛

    LOL Jones is big mad, y’all

    Mr. Jones posted an Infowars video on Friday evening on the social network Gab complaining about the video coverage of the courtroom, mocking the judge and a plaintiffs’ witness and calling the proceedings “beyond any kangaroo-rigged court ever.” He claimed that his personal net worth was below $5 million (an economist testified on Friday that the total net worth of Mr. Jones and Free Speech Systems, the parent company of Infowars, was likely between $135 million and $270 million).

  73. 73.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Alison Rose 💙🌻💛: I’m guessing that he’ll be as cooperative about making payments as he was about releasing documents during discovery.

    Actually I’ll go farther and guess that he’ll fund-raise successfully off this result.

    So BJ lawyers, what happens when he never pays a penny of the judgement?​​

  76. 76.

    kalakal

    @zhena gogolia: My wife had a knee replacement 6 months ago. It’s tough but stick to those exercises and it’s well worth it. She’s not a 100% yet but her life is so much better, she went for a long time just getting worse, more and more pain, less & less mobility, even had to change her car from a manual to automatic transmission. The first period is really tough but it is worth it

  79. 79.

    Librarian

    Niall Ferguson should be drummed out of the historical profession. He is a fraud and a charlatan.

  81. 81.

    Another Scott

    @Steve in the ATL: It still applies!  :-)

    CarandDriver – 2019 Model 3 40,000 mile long-term test:

    For example, in our best month, August 2020, we averaged 107 MPGe over 1812 miles. Our worst was February 2021, when we averaged 55 MPGe, almost 50 percent worse, over 1182 miles. The difference? The average temperature in February was 27 degrees, while in August it was a balmy 79. Cold temperatures obviously work the cabin heater more and also make charging less efficient. Even parking outside in wintry weather uses energy to keep the pack from getting too frigid. On one bitterly cold night when the mercury dipped down to 5 below zero, the Model 3 consumed 5 percent of its battery capacity just sitting overnight trying not to freeze.

    […]

    Our overall 83 MPGe average, achieved over a 57/43 percent split in favor of home charging (we expect most owners to do far more charging at home), equates to a cost of 8 cents per mile—on par with a car running on regular gas and getting 50 mpg.

    […]

    C/D FUEL ECONOMY
    Observed: 83 MPGe

    EPA FUEL ECONOMY
    Combined/City/Highway: 116/120/112 MPGe

    (Emphasis added.)

    They’re lead-foots, but still that’s a pretty big difference.

    YMMV!!

    ;-)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  82. 82.

    zhena gogolia

    @kalakal: Everyone told me, “The hip is so much easier than the knee!” I guess not in my case. Oh well. You tend not to hear about the less stellar cases.

  85. 85.

    Geminid

    @Kristine: The Democrat in the Oklahoma Senate race, Kendra Horn, was a member of the talented House Class of 2018. She became the first Democratic Rep elected from Oklahoma in 8 years, and the first from the Oklahoma City based 5th CD in 40 years when she beat the incumbent by 4,000 votes. She could not hold on in 2020 and lost by 12,500 votes.

    The 48 year old Horn is a talented politician willing to fight an uphill battle. It’s an open seat, and her likely opponent is Rep. Markwayne Mullin.

  86. 86.

    Ken

    @Geminid: Markwayne

    That unhyphenated mess is familiar. I’m sure he was mentioned here on BJ a couple years ago. But do I really want to be reminded why…?

  87. 87.

    Kent

    @Suzanne:Speaking of intellectually dishonest grifters, did anyone else see this Damon Linker piece about “How Glenn Greenwald lost his way“?

    Selective skepticism?  That is just a fancy esoteric way of saying that he is biased as hell and in the tank for one side but not the other.

    GG isn’t “selectively skeptical”.  He’s just a toady and a tool.

  88. 88.

    Ohio Mom

    @zhena gogolia: What happened to sab? I took some time off from Balloon Juice and missed that news.

    On another note, I have never heard of any of these giant intellectuals scheduled to teach at Bari Weiss College. Something to be thankful for! Eight less irritants in my life.

  89. 89.

    kalakal

    @zhena gogolia: My wife’s surgeon said that too. Personally I think they’re all tough. We’ve a friend who’s had both hips done, with the first she says at 4 months she was in despair and at 8 full of hope. She had no hesitation when it came to getting the second one done

  92. 92.

    kalakal

    Amongst the intellectual giants listed is that David Mamet the playwright? Or a different David Mamet of whose existence I was previously unaware?

  97. 97.

    kalakal

    @zhena gogolia: Yes, that got to my wife, ‘the first 2 weeks’, ‘the first 6 weeks’ ‘after 3 months you’ll be there’ etc. Now it’s a year which seems realistic to me. I have to say though that the improvement is real, after about 4 weeks she was not great but better than before the op. The reason they stress the exercises so much in the first few weeks, and they are tough, is to get the scar tissue to form in such a way as to not impede mobility, scar tissue doesn’t bend or stretch well. According to the surgeon it takes about 5 months for the deep wounds to properly heal. I hope you’ll see continual small but real improvements day on day, it’s really hard and so very wearing as it just goes on and on.

  99. 99.

    scav

    I do wish Deidre McCloskey had more self-respect than to participate in such an endeavor — for multiple reasons.

    Still, amusing to see her in the company of the anti-woke battalions.

  100. 100.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Mamet went nutty after 9/11? or is it a longer term thing?

    @prostratedragon: huh? wuh? Andrew Young the civil rights activist and former mayor of Atlanta?

  101. 101.

    NotMax

    OT.

    Needed to pop outside today to run a few small errands locally. Rolled up to stop at a red light behind a vehicle with the license (not a vanity plate) MAD 666.

    Also too, neighborhood gas station prices have plummeted since July by a whole dime from the high they’ve held steady at for months.

    ;)

  103. 103.

    Nettoyeur

    @zhena gogolia: Been there twice. 3-4 months of relative helplessness punctuated by physical therapy. The a year of more physical therapy to recover gait.

  104. 104.

    J R in WV

    @zhena gogolia: ​

    And there are different types or styles of hip replacement, with different incisions and approaches, and for all I know perhaps different devices to install, depending upon your specific joint problem.

    One friend went to a surgeon quite some distance from his home, because he used a newer technique, which for Jim appeared to be much less difficult to recover from. He isn’t a doctor, but worked in administration of health insurance and so was up on that level of detail…

    As everyone else has said, keep up with the PT, exercises, don’t over do things, take care, get well, keep us posted so we can hope hard you will do well~!!~ ;~)

  108. 108.

    Ohio Mom

    @zhena gogolia: Thanks. Not surprised that sab is finding the caretaking overwhelming, my experience has been that hospitals push you out way too soon.

    Yeah I know, the sooner you are out, the less likely you are to pick up a nasty bug but most of us don’t have health care professionals in our families, we are related to amateurs. It’s a lot of stress on them.

  109. 109.

    Martin

    Lot of hyping up of the reconciliation bill. I don’t remotely see how it can achieve 40% reduction by 2030. There’s a lot in there for electric cars – but auto companies are forecasting that they can’t build EVs faster than we’ll be adding cars overall. In other words, there will be more gas cars in 2030 than there are now, even with the best case scenario for EV production. And those EV numbers require quite a few new, very large mines be built to source the resources needed – and the mining industry doesn’t seem to believe the market will be there. In part because the EV forecasts are based on falling battery prices (they’re currently rising) which in order to be true will require that the mines can operate more efficiently than the mining companies believe they can do, so they don’t believe the demand will be there at the price needed to operate the mines. Federal funds won’t change that.

    The available numbers suggest that EVs are a dead end by 2030 and we’ll need a different transportation solution – likely trains and other forms of mass transit.

  110. 110.

    The Lodger

    @Another Scott: GM wouldn’t sell (lease?) its first series of EVs outside of the warm-weather belt in California and Arizona. Nice to see some progress with the temperature issue. I wonder how they will do in areas where there’s severe winter weather.

  111. 111.

    Geminid

    @Ken: Markwayne Mullin was discussed here about a year ago after he visited Afghanistan during the evacuation from Kabul.

  112. 112.

    CaseyL

    @Martin:

    The available numbers suggest that EVs are a dead end by 2030

     

    ???!!!

    That seems unlikely, unless you mean “current EV battery design and technology.” There is a lot of ongoing research to improve that, and some small, experimental car companies are even playing around with cars that run on battery and solar power. The solar cars are running up against a state-of-the-art limitation in solar cells (they can only generate a minimal amount of power) but the designers are working like crazy to come up with better, more efficient solar cells.

    This strikes me as an exciting time to be a designer of alternative-energy automobiles: so much is going on, in so many different directions at once.

  114. 114.

    Geminid

    @Martin: I think the projected 40% reduction would be the total reduction of carbon emissions if the programs of the IRA were added to the reductions in all areas, transportation and other, that we are already on a path to achieve. The effect of the IRA would be some fraction of 40%.

  116. 116.

    HumboldtBlue

    @Jay:

    Yeah, following threads on Twitter, Amnesty International has really fucked this up. The director in Ukraine resigned yesterday, citing their bullshit blaming of the Ukrainians for Putin’s war.

  117. 117.

    Another Scott

    @Martin:

    (repost) Science.org:

    The backers—Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D–NY) and Senator Joe Manchin (D–WV), who had initially balked at the cost—announced that the draft bill would ensure U.S. carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions would fall by 40% by 2030, compared with 2005.

    Sponsors of the bill, which must still pass the full Senate and House of Representatives, might be expected to oversell its impact. But energy and climate modelers have now scrutinized its 725 pages and concluded the 40% claim is about on target. They plugged key provisions, including subsidies for renewable energy and tax cuts for electric vehicles, as well as controversial incentives for the fossil fuel industry, into their models. Two such models conclude that if the bill becomes law, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions would fall by about 40% by 2030, although only part of that stems from the bill alone. One model also finds that the renewable energy subsidies will likely create 1.5 million jobs and prevent thousands of premature deaths from air pollution, especially in disadvantaged communities.

    “It’s a historic step, no doubt about it,” says Marshall Shepherd, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Georgia and former head of the American Meteorological Society. “It really does a lot to enhance the transition to a renewable energy economy.”

    U.S. emissions have been falling by about 1% per year since 2005, when emissions peaked, largely because of replacing coal power with wind and solar power, as well as natural gas, and rising fuel economy in light cars. But this pace is nowhere fast enough to meet President Joe Biden’s goal of a 50% to 52% cut in emissions by 2030 relative to 2005, pledged as the U.S. contribution to the Paris accord’s goal of holding global temperature rise to 1.5°C.

    […]

    To evaluate the climate impacts of the legislation, Jenkins and other modelers simulate the entire U.S. energy system from the smallest electric vehicles to nuclear plants and add the proposed policies to see how they impact CO2 emissions. Scientists also fold in results from other models that focus on factors such as the impact of agricultural policies on two other causes of greenhouse warming: methane emissions from livestock and nitrous oxide released from fertilized fields. Modelers put everything together to forecast emissions trends, says modeler Ben King of Rhodium, an independent research firm.

    Just a day after the bill was released, Rhodium posted preliminary estimates on its website. The topline result: a 31% to 44% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 2005. Compared with current policies, that’s an additional drop of 7 to 9 percentage points. Variables such as the price of natural gas account for much of the uncertainty: If gas prices drop, utilities might favor gas over renewable power, slowing the decline in carbon emissions.

    […]

    More at the link.

    What’s important is that it is a major step in bending the curve.

    On EVs, there’s still a lot of work to do to figure out how to make the market sustainable. But the work is being done. E.g. on battery recycling, Science.org again (from May 2021):

    “In terms of economics, you’ve got to disassemble … [and] if you want to disassemble, then you’ve got to get rid of glues,” says Andrew Abbott, a chemist at the University of Leicester and Thompson’s adviser.

    TO EASE THE PROCESS, Thompson and other researchers are urging EV- and batterymakers to start designing their products with recycling in mind. The ideal battery, Abbott says, would be like a Christmas cracker, a U.K. holiday gift that pops open when the recipient pulls at each end, revealing candy or a message. As an example, he points to the Blade Battery, a lithium ferrophosphate battery released last year by BYD, a Chinese EV-maker. Its pack does away with the module component, instead storing flat cells directly inside. The cells can be removed easily by hand, without fighting with wires and glues.

    The Blade Battery emerged after China in 2018 began to make EV manufacturers responsible for ensuring batteries are recycled. The country now recycles more lithium-ion batteries than the rest of the world combined, using mostly pyro- and hydrometallurgical methods.

    Nations moving to adopt similar policies face some thorny questions. One, Thompson says, is who should bear primary responsibility for making recycling happen. “Is it my responsibility because I bought [an EV] or is it the manufacturer’s responsibility because they made it and they’re selling it?”

    In the European Union, one answer could come later this year, when officials release the continent’s first rule. And next year a panel of experts created by the state of California is expected to weigh in with recommendations that could have a big influence over any U.S. policy.

    Recycling researchers, meanwhile, say effective battery recycling will require more than just technological advances. The high cost of transporting combustible items long distances or across borders can discourage recycling. As a result, placing recycling centers in the right places could have a “massive impact,” Harper says. “But there’s going to be a real challenge in systems integration and bringing all these different bits of research together.”

    There’s little time to waste, Abbott says. “What you don’t want is 10 years’ worth of production of a cell that is absolutely impossible to pull apart,” he says. “It’s not happening yet—but people are shouting and worried it will happen.”

    Don’t be so gloomy. ;-)

    Seriously, technological change is hard and there will be big winners and big losers, and it’s not easy to know in advance who will be in which bucket. Here’s hoping that regulatory capture and stupid patents and trademarks don’t end up trapping us with damaging solutions though… (Insert long boring digression about computer operating systems and “look and feel” and “per computer license agreements” and “network effects” and …)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  118. 118.

    Dan B

    @CaseyL: My partner is an EV and battery nut so we watch a lot of experts and get reports on the new tech.  It looks like it will take years for some great stuff to make it to market but there are some baseload storage systems, Sand, and CO2 storage for two, that can be rolled out very rapidly and cheaply.  They’re much cheaper than every other battery technology.  For EV’s there are batteries that don’t need Lithium or the other nasty metals.  Scaling up is the challenge.

  120. 120.

    Martin

    @CaseyL: There’s two problems here:

    1. The raw material supply needs to increase a LOT just to keep up with the growth of internal combustion (ICE) car sales. By 2030, it’s expected we’ll have 320M more gas powered cars on the road. EV sales can’t keep up.
    2. The overall costs are preventing a sufficiently rapid fleet replacement – both of the vehicles, in part because consumers are demanding larger and more expensive vehicles, and also the charger network build-out isn’t happening because there’s no economic answer there. The lack of charging capacity for longer trips and for renters is holding demand back.

    There are no sales projections – dollars or units, and no EV charger projections that get us anywhere close to the target by 2030. Relying on something to get invented in the next 7 years isn’t realistic. It takes 5 years just to bring a model to market.

    EVs are not intended to address climate change. They’re intended to address a flagging auto market. The only way to hit the targets is to reduce the total number of cars. Even just a reduction to one vehicle per household would go a very long way, with other trips shifting to bikes, walking, mass transit, etc. All indications are that we’re going to invest about $2T in EVs and will then realize that there aren’t enough additional trillions to get there and that money should have been invested in other solutions. For instance, in Europe, e-bikes sales are about half the size of auto sales. European automakers almost all now have ebike divisions or investments. They seem to know their car sales aren’t likely to survive this.

  121. 121.

    Martin

    @Another Scott: The problem is that every previous estimate of emissions reduction from fuel economy proved wrong. People traded their old 25MPG hatchback for 25MPG SUVs. The mix of vehicles purchased wasn’t stable as the models predicted, and EVs are only showing that will continue. Sure, that F-150 Lightning doesn’t burn gas, but it’s also about 50% heavier than a base non-electric F-150. Why does that matter? Because road infrastructure costs are proportional to the 4th power of the mass per axle. Increase the mass by 50% and you increase the road costs by 4x. That’s 4x as much asphalt and concrete – more if the dimensions of the vehicle expand and need larger lanes, parking spaces, etc. What we save in tailpipe emissions we are shifting to road construction and maintenance emissions – brake dust, tire wear – both of which are themselves major emission sources.

    And this increased road infrastructure costs are bankrupting cities and preventing mass transit being built out. I wish this would work, but the industry experts that a decade ago were swearing that EVs would solve the problem are now saying ‘nope, won’t work’. If we shifted to lighter rather than heavier vehicles, this would mitigate the EV charger demands, would make it easier to provide solutions for renters, would reduce the battery supply needed, and mitigate those other factors, but there isn’t a single EV being made that is lighter than the median ICE weight.

    You solve climate change through efficiency – not by hauling ever more tons of steel with you to the grocery store and hoping that shifting the power source to the grid will mitigate all of the resulting problems. The goal needs to be better payload ratios for transit, and the current EV direction is the opposite of that.

  122. 122.

    barbequebob

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: My fantasy is that he has to pay all the $59 or so  million to the Sandy Hook parents and gets it by fundraising/donations from GOP/Trump supporters so that those funds can be used for good, and not go to support GOP/Trump.

  124. 124.

    Another Scott

    @Martin: You make good points, but it’s pretty easy to change the trajectory from that path.  EV cars don’t have to weigh 6000 pounds.  Pickup trucks don’t have to either.

    It’s my understanding that the tax code gives strong incentives for businesses to buy 6000 pound trucks for work. E.g. Up to $25,000 of the purchase price can be deducted if the vehicle has a GVW of between 6,000 and 14,000 pounds. We can change those tax incentives, especially for tiny “companies” that are LLCs mostly for the tax writeoffs.

    I too am a big fan of electric bikes and greater mass transit and greater efficiency. Electric bikes need bike lanes (too many people on bikes get killed in traffic). Transit needs infrastructure. Both take time and are expensive. Cars and trucks need to be replaced in a rotating basis so that has to be a big part of the solution, and improving efficiency will help a lot.

    200 years from now, the transportation network in the USA is going to be very different, but getting there is going to be an extended transition and we need to be working on all the pieces.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

Comments are closed.