Category Archives: Business

Business, Culture, Environment, Technology

Going Green

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I own an electric vehicle. Call me Mr. Environmental Sucker. Here’s the issue.

The battery in my Nissan Leaf is going “Tango Uniform” as the folks in the military say. The car was originally touted as having a 100 mile range. Right now I’m limping around with about 50 miles of range and it’s still decreasing as time goes on. The simple solution should be, replace the battery. Here’s the problem.

Car companies would rather sell you a new vehicle instead of extending the life of an older model. What Nissan has been doing is raising the price of a replacement battery to make fixing the car unaffordable. According to kbb.com the car has a private party value of $5000. The trade-in value is half of that, around $2,700. How much is a new identical replacement battery from Nissan? About $10,000!

There are some shops that will replace the battery with a used battery from a wrecked newer car and prices vary from $5000 to $9,500 depending on the capacity of the used battery. The upper end batteries are almost double the capacity of the original battery, increasing the range to 160 miles, which is an improvement.

At this point, I’m not sure if spending more money on the electric car is worth it. On top of the repair costs, here in the People’s Republik of Kalifornia, the electric company has raised the rate of electricity. At peak times the charge is about $0.58 per kilowatt-hour. Compare that to the national average of about $0.12 per kilowatt-hour. If the battery were 100% efficient in charging (which it isn’t) and I was able to get the full 100 miles per charge (which I can’t) it would cost $14 to drive the 100 miles, best case. With gas at about $3.00 per gallon, the equivalent “gas mileage” is 21 miles per gallon. An equivalent sized gas car gets 30 or more miles per gallon, which means the gasser is 50% more cost effective to drive.  My bigazz, four-wheel drive, diesel pickup averages better than 25 miles per gallon beating the electric car on cost effectiveness.

Given all that, I have no idea what I’m going to to with my electric car.  Anyone want an electric vehicle?  I have a “Green New Deal” for you.

As an owner of an electric vehicle, “Going Green” means that “Green is Going out of my wallet“.

Business, Culture, Environment, Science

Where Are The Global Warming Alarmists?

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Pfizer has announced that they will have 1.3 BILLION doses of their China virus vaccine distributed in 2021. Why has the Alexandria ‘Occasional Cortex‘ crowd NOT been screaming bloody murder about this?  Why not a peep from Al ‘I created the Internet’ Gore?  Where’s John ‘Swift boat’ Kerry?

Here’s the ‘inconvenient truth‘.

The vaccine needs to be shipped and stored at -70 degrees Celsius. This requires a special freezer that some sources say will cost $20,000.00. Pfizer and the CDC are recommending NOT to buy these specialized freezers. Instead they are recommending a cold storage box that is continually refreshed with cheaply available ‘DRY ICE‘.

What is DRY ICE? It’s Carbon Dioxide (CO2) in a solid form. DRY ICE has a surface temperature of about -109 degrees Celsius and turns into a gas (a process known as sublimation, that is it goes from solid to gas without melting to a liquid) at about -78 degrees Celsius. It’s never a liquid hence the term DRY ICE.  Perfect for storing the new vaccine.

The 1.3 BILLION doses will most likely need several POUNDS of DRY ICE to ship and store the vaccine.  The DRY ICE (remember it’s CARBON DIOXIDE, CO2) will eventually turn to gas and go, oops, into the atmosphere. BILLIONS of pounds of CO2 will end up in the atmosphere and CO2 is the GREEN HOUSE GAS that causes the “EXISTENSIAL THREAT” to the world according to the Occasional Cortex crowd and all the other alarmists.

Let’s randomly pick a modern country, say SWEDEN.  They put out about 26 BILLION pounds of CO2 annually.  If it takes 10 pound of DRY ICE to store a dose of vaccine over the whole distribution process, that would be 13 BILLION pounds of CO2 or HALF of the ANNUAL CO2 emission of the COUNTRY OF SWEDEN.

Save the people, kill the world?

Where’s the OUTRAGE?

Business, Culture, Environment, Government

What Is The Cost?

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This morning as I was preparing breakfast, I was thinking about changes that have happened because of the Chinese virus.

More and more foods are packaged in plastic and foam plastic to protect us from the virus. My bagels which I used to buy in bulk and place in a paper bag are now individually packaged in plastic bags with a twist tie. Before the virus, I put my bagels in a reusable container and recycled the paper bag. Now because the thin plastic bags used to “protect” my bagels are not recyclable, they just go into the landfill. Plastic bags are made from those “evil fossil fuels” that the Climate Nazis want to ban. What is the “carbon footprint” of using more and more non-recyclable bags?

The same problem arises at the grocery store checkout. Earlier in the pandemic it was illegal to bring in your own reusable shopping bags because of FEAR of spreading the virus.  Now if you bring in your own bags no one in the store is allowed to touch them and you must bag everything on your own. I don’t mind doing that but when I have a lot of groceries it can slow the checkout down as the workers aren’t allowed by law to help. I noticed that almost no one brings their own bags into the store and more of those evil non-recyclable bags are used.  Again, what is the “carbon footprint”?

At a restaurant no sit down dining is allowed, at least in this “woke” state of Kalifonia. Take out is the only way to get restaurant food. And what is that food packaged in? Styrofoam containers  which are about the most environmentally unfriendly of plastics and non-recyclable plastic bags,. Styrofoam is not allowed into the recycle stream here in the most “woke” of states. At a small restaurant I patronize the owner has stacks of cases of Styrofoam containers as all of his orders are now takeout only.  Once again more and more “evil fossils fuels” converted into plastics that end up in the landfill.  You guessed it, what is the “carbon footprint”?

According to Crazy Uncle Joe Biden and his cohorts we’re all dead in less than 9 years because of the “EXISTENTIAL THREAT from the  “carbon footprint” of the United States that is causing ALL of the global warming.

Why is it I don’t hear one peep from all the Green New Dealer Climate Nazis about the how we are accelerating the destruction of the world because of pandemic fears?   Where is our savior, the learned Alexandra Occasional Cortex, in this dire time of need?  Why is she not speaking out?

Or is the more important “EXISTENTIAL” problem to cause MISERY, FEAR, and PANIC in order to get President Trump out of office?