Just what it says
Ie, swift and blinding violence.
JUST IN: Camera man takes out Climate activists who stormed the stage during live broadcast at Sweden’s “Dancing with the Stars” finale..
— Chuck Callesto (@ChuckCallesto)
No word on whether the idiot Climate Change (formerly Global Warming, formerly Global Cooling, formerly The Weather)™ “protesters” were permanently maimed or not, but one can always hope. Via Ace.
Better sit down before reading this astonishing dog-bites-man story.
Jane Fonda Blames Men for Climate Change: ‘We Have to Arrest and Jail Those Men’
Hollywood star Jane Fonda made the outrageous claim Friday that climate change is being caused exclusively by men, specifically white men, adding that “those men” must be arrested and jailed.
Because of COURSE they are. I mean, who else could it possibly be?
She also blamed the “patriarchy” and “racism” for global warming.
Speaking at a career retrospective at the Cannes Film Festival in France, Jane Fonda promoted her radical climate activism efforts, saying the world has “about seven, eight years” to cut fossil fuel consumption in half.
She also said “poor people of color” as well as populations in the southern hemisphere will be hit hardest by global warming.
“It is a tragedy that we have to absolutely stop. We have to arrest and jail those men — they’re all men,” she added, according to a Deadline report.
Later, Fonda continued her anti-male climate harangue.
Yep, hittin’ on the usual shitlib suspects just as you would expect her to, no surprises whatsoever here. Stupid bint is phoning it in at this point, no doubt due to her advancing senility. There’s so little of any real interest here, I thought I’d try a thought experiment just for shits and giggles.
“It’s good for us all to realize, there would be no climate crisis if there was no
racismLeftism. There would be no climate crisis if there was nopatriarchyAWFLs,” she reportedly said. “A mindset that sees things in ahierarchicalirrational, chaotic way.White menLiberal women and minorities are the things that matter and then everything else [is] at the bottom.”
Fixed it for ya there, Hanoi Jane. Proving once again that some of us live and learn, while others are content to just live.
Oh, think I was kidding about her age? Well, better think again.
YIKES! If anything, I was being too kind to the raddled old bag. We’ve come a loooonnnng way from Barbarella, baby.
Gotta say, I liked her a lot better back then. She was still dumb as a box of hair, mind, but at least then she knew when to just shut the fuck up and git nekkid. Which puts every stripper on Earth WELL ahead of her in terms of overall intelligence, decorum, and just plain good sense now.
1
1
2Borepatch has put together the most masterful, comprehensive debunking of the Climate Change (formerly Global Warming, formerly Global Cooling, formerly The Weather)™ scam I believe I ever have seen, anywhere. No excerpt, just go read the whole thing.
God help us all if all the truckers finally realize just how much power they have over this faltering NiNO (Nation in Name Only), and decide to start exercising it.
Honestly, I kind of look forward to it, in a way.
HIGHWAY TO HELL
Trucks run America. Heavy trucks move the stuff we buy and sell along the largest highway network in the world. They clean our streets, control our disasters, fight our fires, and rush to our rescue during emergencies.In the medium-heavy (Class V-VIII) truck world, trucks fall into two categories: “On Highway,” the trucks you see pulling trailers across the country, and “Vocational”, the dump trucks, cement mixers, ambulances, fuel trucks and a dozen other variations that keep every town in this country operating. Most these are powered by diesel. Diesel engines are ideal for commercial purposes, being more reliable, more durable, and with better fuel economy than gasoline. Over 99% of all trucks working in America today have diesel engines. Without these, nothing moves. Not food, not goods, not our industry, and certainly not our economy.
California, as usual, is leading the “Green” charge. This month, the California Air Resources Board voted 14-0 to pass a law that will ban the sale of diesel trucks in California by 2036. The board warned citizens that “the time for putting public health second to the economy is over.” The new law also stipulates that all trucks operating in the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach (home of 50% of US foreign trade) must be zero emission by 2030.
“Putting public health second to the economy”—oh, how I love that line. Tell me, genius, how healthy you think we’re gonna be when the food stops coming in, medical supplies and prescription meds become unavailable at any price, and nobody can buy any of it anyway because they lost their jobs when the economy goes kerblooey? Stupid shitlib doesn’t seem to realize that the two are inextricably linked; when the one goes pear shaped, the other will be drastically impacted, and not for the better either. Every. Single. Time.
As the bumper sticker says: if you have it, a truck brought it. It’s as true now as it ever was, representing a hard, implacable reality in which residents of California will soon be getting an up close and personal schooling when your moronic PC folly kicks in fully and long-haul truckers begin to refuse to go to the Golden State, no matter how much they’re offered to do so.
America is a behemoth. The United States faces logistical challenges greater than that of any nation in history. The distance from Los Angeles to Washington DC is roughly the same distance as Madrid to Moscow. Despite some local attempts to regionalize food production, feeding Americans is still a national effort. The ability to transport food, medicine, and spare parts across the vast American continent can only be achieved by trucks. Highway trucks move 75% of the nation’s freight from city to city, and from region to region. Everything you buy, everything you eat, and every medicine you take has at least one truck involved in the transportation chain.
Truck manufacturers don’t have the technology to replace diesel engines with equally capable zero-emission engines, nor the production capacity to replace the soon to be illegal diesel engines. The United States also does not have the electrical infrastructure to support that many Lithium Ion Battery vehicles. For decades we have depended on these engines to sustain us, and they have not failed.
Which is probably what shitlibs hate the most about them: they simply work, far better than any other technology humanity has ever come up. There’s a reason, after all, that the world abandoned windmills, electric vehicles, and solar power a century or more ago: those outdated, primitive technologies are incapable of powering a First World economy.
Instead of making what works better, we are about to attempt to replace all of them with vehicles that are four times the cost, but only capable of doing a quarter of the work…at best. Large fleets are already slowing, and in some sectors companies are cancelling existing “green” orders in favor of procuring diesel engines while they still can. CEO’s are doing the math, and recognizing that virtue signaling is not worth bankruptcy. But the damage may already be done.
When we think of military vehicles, we imagine tanks and jets, but logistics is what wins wars. For every tank, there are a half dozen support vehicles. Fuel tankers, runway sweepers, water trucks, and wreckers are all bought commercially off the shelf from civilian truck manufacturers. Every vehicle the military buys needs to be capable of running JP8 fuel: a high sulfur fuel, which simplifies military supply requirements and enables military vehicles to run on even the dirtiest local fuel sources. Government mandated changes to emissions have created a technology gap between the civilian and military markets. Sensors in modern trucks can no longer survive with high amounts of sulfur in JP8, and so manufacturers have begun to stop making trucks capable of running on a JP8 engine.
Progressives don’t want solutions that avoid a collapse.
Annnnnd BINGO, we have ourselves a correct answer, folks!
The ongoing logistical nightmares caused by the government’s response to COVID-19 is just a prelude to the horrors of this potential future. Factories that can’t get enough components, hospitals that can’t get repair parts on time for life-saving equipment, crops dying in the field while the people starve…That’s where we’re heading.
Yep—because that’s where the idiot Left is pushing us, whether we will or no. When you get down to the nutcutting of almost every problem, impasse, or issue, no matter what it might involve on the surface, that’s what it always comes down to. What we have here is not a diesel problem, an economic problem, nor even a climatic one; we have a Leftist problem, plain and simple. Until we’ve dealt with that fundamental issue, unequivocally and forcefully, all the others and more will continue to plague us.
(Via WRSA)
81The author’s conclusion is spot-on, incontestable, and utterly priceless.
Senator warns about 1,200 year drought, torrential rains soak Front Range
Climate anxiety is so prevalent among the younger generation who are brainwashed to think they’ll die unless the planet is rid of modern conveniences and meat products, they’re turning to substance abuse to escape depression.It’s no wonder, when we have the likes of U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet warning his Twitter followers of an impending 1,200-year drought across the West.
Upon further investigation with informed scientist Dr. Google, it turns out we’re not facing a 1,200-year drought, as clearly signaled by the torrential rains sweeping the Front Range.
As The Guardian explains, weather climate has actually been around for centuries, but the last drought of this magnitude in Colorado and the southwest was the year 800 A.D.
Tim Kohler, an archaeologist and professor at Washington State University, says the current megadrought is different from prehistoric dry periods. “This one seems to be more severe than any of the previous droughts and just as long,” he says. “But the really bad news is all the previous megadroughts took place without the influence of increasing greenhouse gases. Now we are playing a new ballgame and scientists don’t know what to expect.”
In other words, the current drought that scientists say is the cause of climate change, is just like the drought we had 1,200 years ago before climate change. Only this is more serious, because we don’t know what to expect, because of climate change.
TA-DAAAH! A real masterpiece of pretzel-contorted Leftard “logic,” wouldn’t you say? Climate Change (formerly Global Warming, formerly Global Cooling, formerly The Weather)™: is there ANYTHING it can’t do? Apparently not, no. In light of where I ran across this one, what can one possibly say but: Heh. Indeed.
(Via VP Stephen Green)
Again, that is, this time from the shitlibs and their preposterously unworkable “Green energy.”
Conservative watchdogs highlight ‘alarming’ surge in whale deaths as wind farms grow off NY, NJ coasts
Conservative watchdog groups ran a guerrilla-style ad campaign on the Jersey Shore for Earth Day, drawing attention to a surge in whale deaths amid the growth of offshore wind farms.Beachgoers in Atlantic City on Saturday looked on as a single-propeller plane carried a message waving from a banner — “SAVE-WHALES-STOP-WINDMILLS.ORG” — and drivers heading out of town saw a billboard with the same message and a picture of a dead whale washed ashore.
The Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow and the Heartland Institute sponsored the ads to highlight the potential threat that wind turbine development poses to whales, dolphins and other aquatic life.
The campaign comes after a ProPublica report last week found that federal regulators in the Biden administration have downplayed environmental risks to greenlight “an unprecedented expansion for offshore wind” projects — including tax incentives through the president’s Inflation Reduction Act for renewable energy developers.
Pics of the aforementioned ads included at the NYPost link, and they’re truly wonderful. Well done, guys, and good on ya for turning the Left’s own twipe back on ‘em and hosing ‘em down good with it like this.
2And it always will be.
1540 Experts Agree There Is No Climate Emergency
There is no climate emergency. As I have been saying for years, the climate change agenda to end fossil fuels is merely a fraudulent cause intended to gain power. The Global Climate Intelligence Group (CLINTEL) is an independent foundation founded in 2019 by emeritus professor of geophysics Guus Berkhout and science journalist Marcel Crok. “The climate view of CLINTEL can be easily summarized as: There is no climate emergency.” Over 1540 experts respected in their independent fields have joined CLINTEL to spread the message that there is no scientific data to indicate that climate change is political propaganda.“Climate science should be less political, while climate policies should be more scientific. In particular, scientists should emphasize that their modeling output is not the result of magic: computer models are human-made. What comes out is fully dependent on what theoreticians and programmers have put in: hypotheses, assumptions, relationships, parameterizations, stability constraints, etc. Unfortunately, in mainstream climate science most of this input is undeclared.
To believe the outcome of a climate model is to believe what the model makers have put in. This is precisely the problem of today’s climate discussion to which climate models are central. Climate science has degenerated into a discussion based on beliefs, not on sound self-critical science. We should free ourselves from the naïve belief in immature climate models. In future, climate research must give significantly more emphasis to empirical science.”
We MUST question why governments across the world are fighting tooth and nail to eliminate fossil fuels and our way of life as we know it. Why are we following the World Economic Forum’s 2030 agenda to save a planet that does not need saving? Why are we allowing our elected officials to spend endless funds on an imaginary cause? Everything has a cycle, including the weather. So while the climate may be changing, there is absolutely nothing humans can do to alter the course of nature, and those stating otherwise are lying.
1540 experts, pshaw. In Amerika v2.0, they’re the wrong experts according to TPTB, so you should just ignore ‘em. Alternatively, you could take Bayou Pete’s advice:
So, when you hear politicians and pressure groups demanding that we sacrifice this, or that, or the other, in the name of “climate change”…remember that they’re all lying through their teeth.
Yup, that’s about the size of it—whether the lies issue from the yaps of “elected” officials, bureaucrats, “experts,” or the gooberment’s bought-and-paid-for “scientists,” we’d all do well to consider the source before swallowing a single word of the snake-oil they’re peddling. Need more proof? Howzabout this, then, in commemoration of *gag puke* Earth Day:
Bald Hedgehogs and Witch Executions: Remembering Earth Day’s List of Promised Calamities
Hello everyone! Allow me to wish you a joyous Happy Earth Day!This means, of course — because this is an environmentalist national holiday, after all – that there is nothing at all happy or joyous about today because we need to focus solely on doom and the promise of our demise. Hey, don’t scream at me; this is the consensus of the scientific community.
Welllllll — in actuality, it is really more the consensus of the media covering the scientific community — but this is serious stuff! So long as you don’t analyze their claims, that is. This is because in the mad rush to report on anything and everything that can be connected to planetary calamity, they do not exactly do the research.
Why is so much of the “settled science” data so contradictory? I may be more open to these claims on which scientists are all on the same page if they did not keep offering up pages of conflicting promises.
Let’s start with those sharks I mentioned earlier. Recall how they will be attacking us more frequently? We are also told they will be attacking us less, as a result of global warming. Or, climate change. This only sends us down a long and winding path of unsettled certainty with global alterations. Basically, we see that when science reaches a fork in the road the answer is “Take it.”
Let us look at the effects on our beaches. AGW will make the oceans saltier; also, it will lead to the oceans becoming lower in sodium at the same time. The change in climate is promised to make ocean waves much bigger. It is also having a negative impact by making the waves…uh, well much smaller. Also, global warming is going to have a diminishing effect on coral reefs. The good news is something will help the reefs grow; global warming.
Part of the reason we’ll be heating up is due to an increase in clouds which will have heat-trapping effects. Another reason we’ll be heating up is there will be fewer clouds, no longer trapping heat but we will roast in the sunlight. UNLESS – that increase in clouds will reflect that sunlight and shade the planet. OR, we’ll see a decrease in clouds altogether…which means they will NOT be trapping the heat…nor will they reflect the sun, which is either bad or good, depending. Truthfully, when it comes to discussing climate change, just avoid any mention of clouds at all; you will just make the doomsday prophets cranky.
Obviously, as we heat up it means there will be less snow, but that means fewer avalanches. Except, we are also promised mountain regions will also experience more avalanches. Not sure how the math works out on that one. Probably best to just hope for the best.
No no no NO; yer doin’ it wrong, see. You should all be scared to death, or at least out of your wits. Because after all, fearful, witless sheep are much easier to herd, corral, and above all, shear.
Many, many supporting links salted throughout that last excerpt, of which you should read the all, including as it does a huge selection of doomsday predictions which failed to pan out that I hadn’t heard of before.
Glenn puts forth a modest proposal.
Biden’s latest target in his war on appliances: air conditioning units
Is there a war on appliances? Or is it a war on you?
I’d tell you to keep your cool, but that’s going to be hard when Team Biden takes away your air conditioner.
And the Biden administration certainly has an appetite for regulating household appliances in a way that seems calculated to make your life worse.
Now, in the latest episode of Team Biden’s “war on appliances,” the Energy Department has turned its attention to air conditioners, specifically room air conditioners of the sort used disproportionately by poor people, minorities and the elderly to keep cool in summer heat.
New energy-efficiency regulations promise to make these units more expensive for consumers and potentially less reliable and less effective at, you know, actually cooling things off.
As Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas) tweeted: “They’re after our stoves, our washing machines, and now, our air conditioners. Funny you never see them coming after private jets. The only goal of the ‘green’ agenda is making you SUFFER! That’s it!”
It does seem the common thread in all these environmental proposals is making ordinary people’s lives worse. Especially senior citizens’ and minorities’.
They point to climate change and the environment. But if those problems are bad enough to justify putting our most vulnerable citizens at risk during summer heat waves, I think we need to see that our most powerful citizens share in their sacrifice.
Therefore, I have a proposal of my own: Ban air conditioning in Washington, DC.
Sure, it’ll be less comfortable. But let’s face facts: We won two world wars with a capital city that was largely devoid of air conditioning.
Now there’s air conditioning everywhere in DC, but is the government working any better?
Oh, it’s working exactly as intended. It’s just that the Serf Class definition of “working better” differs greatly from that of the Master Class; in truth, they’re diametrically opposed. For Them, the sole criterion for judging such things is whether any given measure, program, or restriction increases their own power, wealth, and control over Us, not whether it actually improves a damned thing for the lowly subjects they so disdain and despise.
Ban A/C in the Swamp? Sure, why not. But we won’t really be making solid progress towards improving our lot until we ban THEM. Which is where the torches, pitchforks, pikes, and gibbets come into the picture.
Then turn blue and die already, you silly bint.
Greta Thunberg Threatens to Hold Her Breath Until Evil World Leaders Capitulate To Her Demands
MFNS – After the utter embarrassment of the uncovering of a recent deleted 2018 tweet predicting the world could no longer be saved in 2023, the provocative pig tailed propaganda purveyor of climate panic, far left activist Greta Thunberg, has put the world on notice that she intends to hold her breath until her climate change demands to stop using fossil fuels are met she told the press.
“I will hold my breath until you evil rat bastards capitulate to my demands. Failure to do so will result in my demise as well as mother Earth and you will burn in HELL!
Do You Understand!!??”
For a little background:
In June of 2018, the high school dropout tweeted a quote from an article predicting, “climate change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years.” In other words, the point of no return is 2023. In other words, nothing can be done if we do not stop using fossil fuels by 2023.
Well, if nothing can be done, that means the entire environmental movement might as well pack up and go home.
This is the 54th prediction these enviro-fascists have had to take back. 54 dire predictions about the environment, and not one of them—not one!—has come true. The environmental movement is 0-54. We should all eat bugs, give up our air conditioning, and turn to socialism due to climate change (which is a hoax) because this 0-54 group says so?? What’s more, should we take this weird, little scold who didn’t finish high school seriously? – John Nolte
Greta took no questions as she then excused herself to rush to meet her reservations for a first class, climate controlled private compartment on mass transit powered by fossil fuel produced electricity to continue the fourth year of her ‘How Dare You’ tour.
The Nolte column cited above includes, purely in the interest of fair play, this non-comprehensive list:
LIST OF DOOMSDAY PREDICTIONS CLIMATE ALARMIST GOT RIGHT
NONE.
ZIP.
ZERO.
NADA.
BLANK
DONUT HOLE
NIL.
NOTHING.
VOID.
ZILCH.
Accurate, too.
41You had me at hello.
It’s Time To Admit It: EVs Are EVIL
We’ve had enough of the left’s guilt-tripping anyone who drives a gasoline-powered car. If anyone should be ashamed, it is those who are smugly plugging in their cars each night.
They are the ones responsible for raping the planet, poisoning entire communities, enriching genocidal tyrants, and creating a massive hazmat problem while doing nothing to stop “climate change.”
Does that sound harsh?
Here’s one recent bit of evidence. A Bloomberg investigation found that the aluminum Ford is using to build its “eco-friendly” EV pickup comes from Brazil.
“There, in the heart of the Amazon, rust-colored bauxite is being clawed from a mine that has long faced allegations of pollution and land appropriation,” it found. A class action lawsuit against the mining company accuses it of polluting the water, causing cancer, hair loss, neurological dysfunction, birth defects, and increased mortality.
While all cars use aluminum to cut pounds, EVs use far more to offset the enormous weight of the batteries themselves.
“For consumers seeking to lower their carbon footprints, the environmental and social costs of electric vehicles may be greater than they realize,” Bloomberg says.
No kidding.
Here’s the dirty, rotten truth about EVs.
Follows, a deft and copious skewering of the dirty, rotten pieces of junk, winding up thusly:
It’s time to end this hypocrisy.
It’s time to admit that EVs are being wildly oversold.
It’s time for EV owners and manufacturers to answer for the environmental and human rights crimes they are bankrolling in the name of “climate change.”
It’s time for those of us who drive gasoline-powered cars to take pride in the fact that our vehicles are safe, efficient, reliable, and don’t require ritual human sacrifices to build.
Amen to all that, with great big bells on. As I said: you had me at hello.
1We have to be dragged into it against our will, kicking and screaming.
Road Trips in Our Long-Term EVs Have Been…Interesting
Broken chargers, full charging stations, single-digit temperatures, and optimistic range estimates have tested our patience.
While winter has seen many travelers stranded at airport check-in counters this year, MotorTrend editors have been braving the open road in our expanding fleet of long-term electric cars, trucks, and SUVs. During road-trips, MT’s Slack channels often become a de facto logbook of our exploits, capturing the headaches and small victories of long-distance EV driving in real time. Here’s a lightly edited look at how our drivers have fared in the 2022 Ford F-150 Lightning, the 2022 Rivian R1T, the 2022 Volkswagen ID4, the 2022 Lucid Air Grand Touring Performance, and the 2023 Hyundai Ioniq 5 when holiday travel peaked, the weather and temperatures turned nasty, or they simply headed to far-flung destinations.
If you thought that was tons o’ fun, just wait till our antiquated and way-overtaxed power grid crumbles into pieces-parts under the weight of all these state-mandated struggle buggies. The only practical answer? This.
Chris Reed: I’m going to still drive the same vehicle I am now in 2040. I won’t be alone.
Assuming you’ll be allowed to, that is.
People routinely go down memory lane when they see decades-old vehicles — lovingly and ingeniously kept up for years despite replacement parts no longer being readily available — still on the streets long after they typically would have been consigned to scrap heaps. While wealthy collectors of older vehicles focus on classic sports or muscle cars, those with economic motives often prefer those they grew up with, such as the Volkswagen Beetles first sold in 1949. It was the best-selling car in the world in 1968 — popular in the U.S. in large part because of its countercultural associations, popular elsewhere more for its durability, affordability and excellent (for its time) gas mileage. In 1972, the Beetle passed the original Ford Model T to become the most manufactured vehicle in history.
Now there is an increasingly strong chance that this phenomenon — of aging vehicles still being a common sight long after they were first sold — will just keep growing in the United States, and that it could be strongest of all in California.
So I guess they’ve finally gotten it done, then: we are all Cubans now.
1It really is true: they hate you, and want to inflict as much suffering and misery on you as they possibly can.
Anesthesiologists can play a role in reducing the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming by decreasing the amount of anesthetic gas provided during procedures without compromising patient care, suggests new research being presented at the American Society of Anesthesiologists’ ADVANCE 2023, the Anesthesiology Business Event.
Inhaled anesthetics used during general anesthesia are estimated to be responsible for 0.01% to 0.10% of the total worldwide carbon dioxide equivalent emission. For example, an hour of surgery using the inhaled anesthetic desflurane is equivalent to driving up to 470 miles, according to one study. Carbon dioxide is the primary greenhouse gas that traps heat in the Earth’s atmosphere, contributing to global warming.
“Global warming is affecting our daily life more and more, and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions has become crucial,” said Mohamed Fayed, M.D., M.Sc., lead author of the study and senior anesthesia resident at Henry Ford Health in Detroit. “No matter how small each effect is, it will add up. As anesthesiologists, we can contribute significantly to this cause by making little changes in our daily practice—such as lowering the flow of anesthetic gas—without affecting patient care.”
Yeah, I’m sure it won’t—y’know, seeing as how the politicized “health” “care” establishment has proven itself entirely trustworthy and honest and all over the last few years. Boy, this Climate Change (formerly Global Warming, formerly Global Cooling, formerly The Weather)™ nonsense has really become the shitlib catch-all to justify absolutely any insane thing they can pull out of their, ummm, hats, hasn’t it?
(Via Insty)
4For reasons which shall soon become obvious.
Go Inside the New Tesla Semi: Features, Screens, Seats, and More
We visited Frito-Lay to find out what the Semi’s interior looks like, and how it drives and charges.
Expect no surprises, that’s my advice. Because it’s gonna shake out exactly as anybody who’s been following this EV foofaraw already knows it must.
Tesla fans with Ruffled feathers over perpetually delayed products can finally Lay off the brand. After much waiting (only four years late), the electric Tesla Semi’s first customer, PepsiCo, has taken delivery of its first examples of the big rig. The beverage and snack food conglomerate’s Frito-Lay division will take center stage in the company’s Tesla truck rollout plans at its Modesto, California, factory and distribution center, so we visited the upgraded 80-acre zero-emissions facility to experience the Tesla Semi firsthand and talk to its drivers about what it’s like to drive.
Frito-Lay’s 15 new Tesla Semis made their debut at an event celebrating the Modesto factory’s transformation into a zero-emissions pilot project for Pepsi as it aims to achieve zero emissions across its operations by 2040. The revamped facility is massive: 500,000 square feet dedicated to turning potatoes and corn into Lays, Ruffles, Doritos, Cheetos, and Fritos chips, powered by a massive onsite solar facility and local renewable energy projects, both backed by 2.7 MWh of onsite battery storage. Helping the factory distribute its snacks throughout the American west are three electric BYD 8Y yard tractors, six Peterbilt 220EV electric box trucks for local last-mile deliveries, 38 natural-gas powered Volvo VNL trucks for long-distance slogs, and of course, six (and counting) Tesla Semis, used for out-and-back trips across the region.
Making “three times the power of the average diesel semi,” according to a media-trained Tesla rep, the electric Tesla Semi effectively sports a lightly modified Model S Plaid tri-motor powertrain spun around backward. The Model S’s front motor drives the Semi’s rear axle, functioning as the “highway drive unit,” while the Plaid’s dual rear motors are mounted on the Semi’s middle axle. These motors feature a Rivian-like clutch, allowing them to be used for acceleration and to decouple once at speed for improved efficiency. Considering the bestselling semi in the U.S., the Freightliner Cascadia, sports 350 hp in its basic form and that “three times” that figure is 1,050, we’re fairly confident in saying the Semi matches the Model S and Model X Plaid’s 1,020 hp, and possibly its 1,050 lb-ft of torque, as well.
As for its battery—well, logic dictates we should look at the Plaid again. The few PepsiCo Tesla Semi drivers present during our visit said the truck has a 1,000-kWh battery pack, or 1 megawatt-hour (MWh), which equals 10 Plaid battery packs daisy-chained together. That jives with Tesla’s claim of 500 miles of range and company chief Elon Musk’s claim of the Semi using 2 kW per mile traveled. In real-world use, Frito-Lay’s drivers told us the Semi’s routes are much shorter. A typical day for them might have them leaving Modesto in the morning with a load of chips (weighing less than the truck’s 82,000 gross combined vehicle-weight rating) and running an out-and-back loop to places like San Jose or Concord, both about 85 miles away.
Hey, that oughta work out great. After all, over my years of driving big rigs, I can’t really recall hearing of ANY trucker EVER being expected to cover more than 170 miles in a single day. But wait, it gets even better still.
The out-and-backs are crucial because at the moment there are few places to charge an electric Tesla Semi. Frito-Lay installed four Superchargers onsite in dedicated “Tesla Semi” parking stalls, all of which feature a unique squarish plug incompatible with any other Tesla we’re aware of. The chargers are capable of outputting 750 kW, far exceeding the 250-kW peak rates of Tesla’s passenger vehicles and existing Supercharger network. That, says Frito-Lay, is good enough to charge its fleet of Tesla Semis from nearly empty to 70 percent in about a half hour (good for 400 miles), and to 100 percent in about 90 minutes.
Interestingly, the four Tesla chargers are positioned in such a way that the Semis must unhitch their trailers and back in to plug into each one’s charge port, which is located on the driver’s side, just forward of the middle axle.
Ohhhh yeah, the truckers are gonna just LOOOOOVE that. “Extended” range, for certain values of the word “extended,” plus the added hassle of having to drop the trailer every time you need to “gas up” the useless hunk of junk too? I ask you, what’s not to like here?
And believe me, hassle it is: first, scramble underneath to pull the handle on the fifth wheel and unlock the kingpin. Then, sweat yourself into a lather winding down the rusty, stiff, recalcitrant landing gear on the trailer. Which in itself can be quite damned hazardous, actually: several years back, my brother knocked himself near-unconscious when a landing-gear handle kicked back on him and whacked him upside the haid. Ended up having to get stitches, that’s how severely it laid him open.
And yes, the same damned thing has happened to me plenty of times too sans the stitches part of it, along with every other unfortunate soul cursed to the trucking life, guar-on-teed. It’s just one of those things you gotta deal with, y’know?
Yep, sounds like those Frito-Lay/Pepsico boys have themselves a lot to look forward to with these fine, fine machines.
21Thanks to Himself for hipping me to this vintage Eric Peters post, from 2018.
The Electric Suicide of Harley-Davidson
Imagine a Harley that doesn’t vibrate. No bark through the straight pipes when you push the starter button. No nothing through the pipes – which aren’t there anymore.
There is no starter button.
Just an On/Off switch.
No shifter, either. Because no gears.
All that remains is the “Harley” name on the tank – which isn’t one because it will never be used to store any gas. Might as well paint it on the side of your toaster.
Welcome to the 2019 LiveWire – Harley’s first electric motorcycle. The first of a whole line of them – intended to be ready by 2025.
They’re betting the future of the company on it.
If you have any Harley stock, better unload it.
Quickly.
Because an electric Harley is as silly as juice-bar speakeasy. It runs counter to the point.
People buy motorcycles – and especially Harley motorcycles – because they make that sound.
And also because of the smells – of gas and oil – which attend those sounds. Without which you’ve got what amounts to alcohol-free beer.
Or a girlfriend who won’t sleep with you.
Heh. Indeed. Oh, you’ll for sure be getting yourself a good fucking alright, but you won’t enjoy a single minute of it.
This is not going to end well. For the intangible reasons already articulated – a BLT without the bacon – and for other more tangible reasons.
Harleys – more than any other make of bike – appeal to the cruiser. The long-haul rider. The open road.
But electric bikes – like electric cars – are stunted by abbreviated operational range. A 2019 V-twin Sport Glide carries 5 gallons of easily and quickly replaced gas and gets 47 MPG. It thus can travel almost 240 miles – and when the tank runs low, this Harley can be back on the road in minutes.
That is freedom.
With the LiveWire, you are tied to an electric umbilical cord.
The opposite of freedom.
Yes, t’is, with cars and bikes both. Which is precisely why TPTB insists so vehemently on cramming their blasted EVs down our collective throat.
Over at Eric’s place, there are a cpl-three Harley-hating sourpuss types in the comments who scornfully profess their complete lack of concern for whether H-D carries on as an independent motorcycle manufacturer or not, and who the hell would want one of the outdated POS dinosaurs anydamned way? They’re missing the point at issue, which is, was, and shall eternally remain freedom. This ain’t about motorcycles and/or who makes ‘em. Ultimately, it’s about taking your freedom away from you, nothing more nor less. Y’know, just like with everything else.
2They seem to be going around of late.
The Biden Administration Finally Admits Its Mistake in Canceling the Keystone XL Pipeline
At long last, the Biden administration is admitting what experts have always known: reckless energy policies have disastrous consequences. This time, the Department of Energy quietly released a report highlighting the positive economic benefits of developing the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada, an energy project canceled by President Biden in the hours following his inauguration.
But the DOE’s report is a proverbial day late and a dollar short. The cancelation of the Keystone XL pipeline has already cost the United States thousands of jobs and billions in economic growth while families suffer under the weight of record high energy prices. It’s time for lawmakers to make American energy independence a top priority.
Released without a formal announcement, the DOE’s report points out that the pipeline would have created between 16,149 and 59,000 jobs and would have had an economic benefit of between $3.4 and 9.6 billion. That’s no small impact. Yet with one stroke of his pen, Biden slashed the project and instead focused his efforts on costly “green energy” goals. As a result of his executive action, 11,000 pipeline workers were promptly laid off and told to “go to work to make solar panels” instead.
But Biden’s green energy efforts are bound to backfire sooner rather than later. That’s because today, more than 70 percent of the energy produced and consumed in America comes from oil, gas and coal. That’s not likely to substantially change anytime soon. In fact, the International Energy Agency predicts that oil’s share of energy production in the United States will only fall 8 percent in the next two decades, from 31 to 23 percent. And that’s assuming a sustained commitment to green energy policies. The forecast spells bad news for the Biden White House. At his political peril, Biden ignores the lessons of Presidents Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush, who both lost elections due to spiked oil prices and accompanying recessions.
Oh, I’m beginning to suspect, strongly, that Old Joe is going to die of Suddenly™ well before the next sham “election” season rolls around. But Joe’s Folly isn’t the only mea culpa to be found out there.
Pro-Vaxx Dilbert Creator Scott Adams Admits Profusely “The Anti-Vaxxers Win”
Mark Twain is often misattributed as saying, “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” The sentiment is definitely Twainesque, but he never said it. Nevertheless, it’s still true and demonstrable time and again in our post-truth society.
As more “normies” have started waking up to the reality that the Covid-19 “vaccines” are ineffective and dangerous, a lot are finding new ways of defending their decisions to get jabbed rather than admitting it was a mistake. Conservative comic Scott Adams, who is most famous for creating the Dilbert comics, is not one of those people. He’s now admitting that “anti-vaxxers won” in regards to their decision.
In fact, he admitted it over and over again.
“All of my fancy analytics got me to a bad place,” he said. “All of your heuristics — ‘don’t trust these guys’ is obvious — totally worked.”
Blindly trusting the US government and its horde of bought and paid-for faux “experts” never does work out too well, not for anybody.
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"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."
—Claire Wolfe, 101 Things to Do 'Til the Revolution
Claire's Cabal—The Freedom Forums
"There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."
—Daniel Webster
“When I was young I was depressed all the time. But suicide no longer seemed a possibility in my life. At my age there was very little left to kill.”
—Charles Bukowski
“A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.”
—Ezra Pound
“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
—Frank Zappa
“The right of a nation to kill a tyrant in case of necessity can no more be doubted than to hang a robber, or kill a flea.”
—John Adams
"A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves."
—Bertrand de Jouvenel
"It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged."
—GK Chesterton
"I predict that the Bush administration will be seen by freedom-wishing Americans a generation or two hence as the hinge on the cell door locking up our freedom. When my children are my age, they will not be free in any recognizably traditional American meaning of the word. I’d tell them to emigrate, but there’s nowhere left to go. I am left with nauseating near-conviction that I am a member of the last generation in the history of the world that is minimally truly free."
—Donald Sensing
"The only way to live free is to live unobserved."
—Etienne de la Boiete
"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid."
—Dwight D. Eisenhower
"To put it simply, the Left is the stupid and the insane, led by the evil. You can’t persuade the stupid or the insane and you had damn well better fight the evil."
—Skeptic
"There is no better way to stamp your power on people than through the dead hand of bureaucracy. You cannot reason with paperwork."
—David Black, from Turn Left For Gibraltar
"If the laws of God and men, are therefore of no effect, when the magistracy is left at liberty to break them; and if the lusts of those who are too strong for the tribunals of justice, cannot be otherwise restrained than by sedition, tumults and war, those seditions, tumults and wars, are justified by the laws of God and man."
—John Adams
"The limits of tyranny are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
—Frederick Douglass
"Give me the media and I will make of any nation a herd of swine."
—Joseph Goebbels
“I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.”
—Ronald Reagan
"Ain't no misunderstanding this war. They want to rule us and aim to do it. We aim not to allow it. All there is to it."
—NC Reed, from Parno's Peril
"I just want a government that fits in the box it originally came in."
—Bill Whittle
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