Category Archives: Transportation

Where we’re going, as it were.

Biden, Climate, Crime, Culture, Economics, Education, Foreign Policy, Immigration, Transportation

BEING A LONG SHORTLY – 2

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America is mired in at least 39 or 390 serious problems, but we’ve dealt with only 4 of those we’ve Prudently identified.  Time is short.  We must continue.

NUCLEAR POWER

Those who have submitted, mentally and emotionally, to the “green” cult, are uniformly opposed to so-called fossil fuels on the premise that carbon-dioxide is going to ruin Earth’s climate and cause the demise of civilization and of life, itself.  That CO2 is the prime “green” component of the solar-driven oxygen cycle upon which all life depends, seems not to affect their thinking.  Those same are virulently opposed to nuclear energy, the cleanest, least damaging source of electrical energy currently available.  Something doesn’t make sense.

Green leftists always reference “Chernobyl” as the end of the argument against nuclear; if that fails, “Three-Mile Island” is expected to shut-up any pro-nuclear stragglers.  Both of those supposed examples of what’s wrong with nuclear power plants, are non-sequiturs.  Chernobyl, in particular, is an example, but it’s an example of how NOT to build a nuclear pile and of how NOT to run and maintain it.  Rather than condemn the natural process of nuclear fission, opponents should correct their opposition to the technological stupidity the Soviet Union rewarded.  Chernobyl would have been a big nothing had it been designed and built like, well, Three-Mile Island, actually.

Chernobyl was, technically, not in a containment structure as nearly all nuclear plants outside of the USSR were.  That is to say, the weaknesses of the design and overall misunderstanding of the processes at various states of operation of their graphite pile reactors, make the Chernobyl-design power plants risky for mistakes and accidents under the best of circumstances.  A long list of nuclear accidents at those plants was finally made public after the investigation into “Chernobyl” was completed.  Some engineering traditions should not be permitted to operate or build nuclear plants.

Still, nuclear power plants have so many inherent advantages that it is foolishness to avoid making use of the continuously-improving technology that goes into their design and construction.  The largest deterrent to nuclear power is fear, often fed by reference to bad technology, like that employed in Chernobyl-design plants and methods.  New series III and IV plants are smaller, modular and 5 to 10 times safer than Three-Mile Island era plants, including passive safety systems.  They’re also much less expensive to build and license.  And, they are clean in both product and operating lifetimes up to 60 years and in eventual decommissioning costs and impacts.  There is no “all-electric” future without massive, weatherproof generating capacity like what nuclear can provide.

TRANSPORTATION

Ours is a highly specialized and competitive global economy.  Both commodities and finished products must move from points of origin to points of consumption; this is not going to change no matter how many “community gardens” are created, and it won’t change despite all efforts to go “carbon neutral,” either.  Some tasks must be performed.  Daily there are millions of them.  Reducing the efficiency of completing those millions of tasks places huge burdens on society, the economy and on freedom.  Forcing wholesale changes on how transport is performed… without a more efficient way to do it, is risky at best and foolish by definition.

We are in the midst of a green revolution, and we have been for over 100 years.  From time to time wisdom has been applied through government regulation that has sped up the process of becoming more efficient and therefore cleaner in our consumption of energy to get materials and people moved from place to place.  Increased mileage standards is one example, and automobiles are far cleaner and more efficient than ever, today.  On the other hand, there are far more cars on the road than ever – in virtually every country – causing ever more gasoline, diesel and lubricating oil to be consumed while propelling substantially more “transport” per gallon or quart, and overall.  For green evangelists there has been no progress at all – things are oh, so terribly worse because people insist on private, self-directed transport, and reject, for the most part, “public” transportation: too many cars, too many people driving cars.

Bad government, bending to the political pressure of “green” acolytes, responds by forcing people to pay for and to switch to public conveyance, and then fails to render it clean, comfortable or safe.  Worse, public transit doesn’t go to every place where people need to go, and it never will.  Government then considers how to force people to go to where public transit does go, imagining “model” communities that may never exist.  There are clean, electric alternatives, but so much money and political force has been committed to “public transit” that alternatives are now less likely to be considered than if government went back to being wise, again.  [See: https://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2017/07/20/a-home-on-the-beach/; or https://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2016/07/10/automotive-economics-and-freedom/.]

Battery magic seems to many, especially to “green” proselytes, to be cleaner than those awful carbon-based fuels; we should all shuck our internal combustion engines and switch to battery-powered vehicles.  Bad government is listening to them and is virtually forcing car manufacturers to make more magic cars and fewer reliable ones.  The ads are impressive.  Batteries, themselves, are dirty products to make, both physically and politically.  A person changing from gasoline or diesel to battery power has to drive upwards of 60,000 miles before the ecological cleanliness of an “electric” car starts to improve upon that of an internal combustion model.  The only advantage of lithium-ion battery-powered cars is that the filth of mining and tailings, processing and effluents, unsafe mining (including child labor) and ecological disruption and pollution… well, it all happens in other places, out of sight of “green” Americans and others.  Right in our neighborhoods things are pollution free!  Forcing indigenous people off of their ancestral lands in South America is meaningless to us: they’re not OUR indigenous people about whom we care very deeply… very, very deeply.  Improvements to Communist China’s manufacturing base and our long-term dependence on it for parts and replacement batteries, should keep China from ever damaging relations with the United States… so that’s good, too.

No matter how much cleaner internal combustion engines become, it is – and will never be – clean enough; only perfection is barely adequate in the business of planet-saving.  So, in partnership with an entirely anti-American regime, the “green” (actually Red) movement has twisted our economy to the point of throwing away phenomenal manufacturing and servicing skills and technology, as well as discarding remarkably and increasingly efficient electric generation in favor of windmills and Chinese solar panels.  Soon, there will be millions of used cars rusting away as planet-saviors force the end of internal-combustion cars and trucks and the adoption of battery-powered replacements, while limiting the number of “licenses” to sell gasoline… or refine it… or transport it, making continued use of gas or diesel power a little more awkward and unreliable than even severely limited-range electrics are and will continue to be.

Ultimately, (see “only perfection” in the preceding paragraph) owning and driving personal vehicles will become so troublesome that only grossly expensive “public” transportation will be able to provide a modicum of mobility.  Personal freedom and sovereignty that Americans have invented the technological means to enjoy, will be lost forever.  After that there will be millions of battery vehicles that no one wants or can sell, and will find difficult to recycle.  Everything will be approaching perfection.

IMMIGRATION

For many nearly forgotten reasons the United States of America has for over 230 years been the most attractive nation and place for people from every nation to emigrate to.  Americans, themselves, no longer understand (or are taught) why this could possibly be.  Today education appears to include – is compelled to include – every tawdry mistake anyone in our history ever made.  Worse, to complete a communistic circle, the effect of those mistakes is to absorb and render null and void, every great idea and action of those same people.  The net effect of this twisted lens of American history is to grow up blaming your country for every problem in the world, rendering the existence and founding of it indefensible.  As a result, fewer and fewer people do defend it… at least from inside the country… even as more and more people flee their home countries and sneak into, well, HERE.

Actual sovereign nations, however, have laws to govern and, basically, restrict entry to their jurisdictions.  Nations are defined by their borders.  The United States is defined by both borders and ideas of freedom and individuality – not by groups or identities, but by individuals, individual responsibility and equality under the law for – every – individual.  For the past 65 years or so, we have turned our backs on our unique and majestic ideas, and dispersed the gold of citizenship as millions of people who don’t want to become Americans flooded to the insides of our borders.  

Barack Obama was the first president who actively modified immigration practices if not policies, to try to change the demographics of the United States.  Democrats had been dreaming of pushing white America into the minority category since Teddy Kennedy, an avowed socialist (and idiot).  They couldn’t get it rolling any faster during the Clinton administration, but things started moving under Obama.  He was probably the first president who seriously does not like the United States or its Constitution.  Trump, obviously, was an unexpected speed bump in the race to change races.  Biden, on the other hand, knows only two speeds in that race: “flat-out” and “stupid.”  Some FIVE MILLION illegal aliens from over 100 countries have walked in to the U.S. since the 2020 votes were “certified.”  About a million of those never even checked in with the Border Patrol, preferring to sneak in with various subterfuges planned, including serious drug-dealing and, for some hundreds or thousands, terrorist crimes.

Biden is hard to pigeon-hole.  A patriotic observer is hard-pressed to declare him merely sloppy or foolish, when the very next day he might be presented with greater evidence of Biden’s treason toward his own nation.  Breaking, or failing purposefully to enforce U. S. laws, which enables the entry of enemies to our nation, is exactly what President Biden has been doing since taking office… and it’s treasonous.  That treason has come in many flavors, primarily these two: entry of those seeking to execute criminal activities including terrorist acts, and entry of those transporting deadly narcotics with intent to distribute.  That fentanyl kills 10’s of thousands of Americans – mostly young men, but certainly not exclusively – one would think might wake up Americans to the crime of making its importation easier!

The importation of people is also a crime.  Mexican cartels, who control drugs across Mexico and across the U. S., have found a new billion-dollar industry in the trafficking of people into the U. S., especially, by a factor of 10, since the Biden administration took office.  For all of the cooperative police work – DEA work – between Mexico and the past 5 administrations, the flow of drugs, now including abundant fentanyl, has not slowed.  Where there once were 5 or 6 cartels there may be 15 operating in every Mexican state and every U. S. state, as well.  They’ve become more violent in Mexico, causing record levels of homicides, destroyed families and widespread official corruption.  At the same time, with the cooperation of Chinese chemical suppliers, they are partners in at least 100,000 deaths in the U. S. from fentanyl overdoses.

President Biden commits treason against his own country in other ways, often by providing “aid and comfort” to our enemies.  It’s subtle, but definite… well, subtle except for scuttling Afghanistan.  According to sworn congressional testimony, Biden demanded immediate withdrawal despite the advice of military advisors, including the abandonment of Baghram Airbase and more than $7 BILLION in weapons, ammunition, aircraft, including some high-tech personal and tactical hardware.  The Taliban, of course, has never been an ally of ours or friendly toward America or Americans in any way.  They’re enemies, Joe, you dope.  And we armed them to the teeth, abandoned real allies to danger and death at the hands of the Taliban.  We could have retained Baghram and much of our equipment, and we logically should have regardless of costs.  So, militarily, why did we do things the way we did?  What on Earth was the headlong, damned stupid rush?

It seems Prudent to realize that we abandoned all of our work because China wanted us to.  China didn’t want us to maintain a base so close to their border.  China is happy to see us shoot ourselves in the foot – it saves them the trouble.  They have invested many millions into the Biden family; our retreat was a return on investment by a factor of a thousand percent.  When we look at all the players and pressures involved in 20 years of U.S. actions in Afghanistan, only the U.S. acted like an idiot, against its own interests.  Treason, thy name is Biden.

When China is invited to “help” the United States eliminate drug abuse, and elections are “temporarily” suspended to get a handle on “crime,” it will be too late to rid ourselves of the gaggle of assholes from the Obama and Biden regimes.

So many words and only 3 more issues discussed.  Prudence says stop here, wait for the next.

Biden, Culture, Economics, Education, Elections, Governance, Politics 2022, Taxation, Transportation

CLIMATE, WHETHER OR NOT

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The Green New Deal has become a means of theft: elites taking freedom and independence, and possibly life, itself, away from the middle and lower classes.  “Oh! No!” you say, “Surely you are misinterpreting the existential threat of climate change and their intense efforts to save the planet.”  Well, no, actually I’m trying to balance reality with what we’re being told.

Many hundreds of statements and declarations are made on a weekly, monthly, annual basis – certainly on every hot day, cold day, dry day or wet day, that “climate change” is wreaking havoc on the planet and on the poor and downtrodden, minorities and LGBTQ+ “communities” worst of all.  It’s all the fault of you smug suburbanites and your SUVs spewing that awful carbon dioxide… and the cow farts you cause by eating burgers made from meat and not insects.  Don’t forget your air conditioners and outdoor grills – all hastening our extinction.

This would be such a nice planet to live on if it weren’t for all you… well… people for goodness’ sakes.  (Can’t say ‘God’s sake.’)

Actually, if it were not for the constant tilt of most media outlets, the condition of the earth and its climate could be discussed and better known by young and old, alike.  We are just coming to the end of a very hot summer.  There were drought conditions in many countries.  We will soon be inundated with claims of the planet having a “fever” and “the earth is on fire,” and similar declarations.  So far, we haven’t suffered a hurricane coming ashore to the United States; as soon as one does, we’ll be told there are more -and stronger – storms because of our driving “fossil-fueled cars” and resisting buying non-polluting “electric vehicles,” EV’s.  If we have a severely snowy winter with lots of cold, cold days, they’ll all be our fault, too.

There is some supposed perfect average global temperature… one we like.  It is impossible to define the “ideal” climate, the ideal temperature, the ideal amount of ice at the poles, the ideal amount of cloud-cover or precipitation… or the ideal anything else.  What does seem easy to idealize is the right population the earth should hold and support, and it is a Hell of a lot smaller than the population we have, today.  Various oligarchs, like Bill Gates and others, think the world is overpopulated by 5 BILLION people, or even more.  It’s going to take substantial new rates of sterility and deaths to achieve the “ideal.”  What an achievement that will be.

Around the planet ice is melting… from the poles (supposedly), Greenland, various glaciers and so forth.  This causes terrible worries.  Oddly, they’re more terrible for leftists in the West, than for conservatives.  They don’t make a damned bit of difference to leftists in Russia, China, India and elsewhere, or to Islamists, who are happy with any number of earthlings as long as they’re all Muslims – the right kind of Muslims.

It’s rather comforting that the climate is changing, whether warming or cooling at any time: the climate has been changing for hundreds of millions of years – maybe billions of years… as long as we’ve had an atmosphere.  No one would want to be here on the day the climate STOPS changing.  For most people, “climate change” translates as “global warming.”  We can see videos of running water on Greenland and shrinking glaciers in the mountains.  Definitely, it’s warming.  Then we have a summer like 2022’s and we are convinced of the imminent danger of the seas rising and a hurricane toppling our houses.  Look what happened to New Orleans, for Pete’s sake.  Maybe if they’d all had electric cars in 2005, the people who wasted the federal moneys for strengthening the dikes around the ninth ward might have gone to jail.

It’s hard to predict the future, and that’s the only kind of predicting there is.  There is a form of false, God-save-us-if-this-happens sort of prognosticating, though, that is employed stridently by “Climate Campaigners.”  It’s always negative.  People who worry about and inveigh about the climate, are certain that change means some form of doom.  They never seem to make any predictions of benefit from “climate change.”  It’s always an imminent disaster, and it’s always our fault, meaning that we have to make drastic changes to avert certain death in as few as 10 or 12 years.

The premise of prediction is history.  Recorded history of what people have done, or which volcanoes blew up or geologic evidence of mile-thick ice sheets that created the Great Lakes and the like, as well as records of various past weather trends and climatological periods, provide a basis from which inferences are drawn and, in very grave tones, predictions are made about the future of climate and weather over the next hundred years or so.  It’s all very scientific, except it’s impossible to replicate the conditions to see if the same effects take place, so climatologists are unable, actually, to apply the scientific method to historic evidence and add to the evidence of the first “experiment,” seeking correlation.

Atmospheric scientists have gained great knowledge and reasonable predictive power of weather deriving from worldwide patterns like El Niño, although little has been said about movements of the magnetic poles, for example, and the focus of charged particles changing cloud formation patterns.  The availability of satellite data, global photography and thousands of measurements daily and hourly, have given meteorologists perhaps too much confidence in prediction, and this has seeped in to the self-esteem of climatologists, too.

Whether from ice cores or dendrochronology (tree rings), climatologists can paint what they feel is an accurate picture of what the climate has been for hundreds, if not thousands of years.  Things become more sketchy when they try to make inferences as to WHY they were the way they were.  Bias, or belief, can sway even the best scientists’ theories of cause and effect.  It’s something “science” ostensibly guards against and works against no matter the line or field of inquiry.  Replicating experiments and finding the same or similar results – and publishing those results for other scientists to review and try to replicate or prove wrong, is how science makes real progress towards understanding.

It is not possible to replicate the past; it’s not possible to mimic all the conditions, both on the earth and impacting the earth hundreds or thousands of years ago.  But there is great pressure, whether personal or from the all-important funding sources (grants) for a direct correlation to be discerned… cause and effect.  Why?  Because the reason the study of the past is being funded is often because of beliefs about today’s climate and weather, and that there is a way that humans and their bold politicians can avoid the conditions of the past.  A little humidity – if not humility – is called for.

Politicians and the scientists they fund, have an overriding belief that we humans can modify the climate to keep weather as pleasant as we like, the oceans at the depths they currently are, the glaciers as big as they are if not bigger, and polar bears in their favorite conditions, too.  Underlying this presumption is a belief that we humans have caused changes in the climate to begin with.  Otherwise, we are powerless to undo the damage it is believed we have done!  So, to start with, let’s agree that humans HAVE altered the climate somewhat, and not just around cities.

Cities form “heat islands” with huge blocks of real and manufactured stone, steel and asphalt absorbing more sunlight than the natural environment they replaced.  But huge, multi-square-mile farms also modify natural environments, also changing sunlight absorption, requiring and transpiring huge volumes of water – water that is artificially moved away from its natural location(s).  Are either of these commonplace alterations of the natural environment changing climate?  Somewhat, but how much?  It is very hard to quantify or even describe.  That is, we know the CAUSES we’re concerned about, but we cannot, despite many claims, actually pin down the EFFECTS of these two causes.  Certainly there are some, but what should people be forced to stop doing in order to offset those effects?  We don’t really know, but there is a strong political pressure to force people to stop doing something because of some politicians’ FEARS.  Indeed, one of their biggest fears is of doing nothing or, worse, of failing to force other people to stop doing something.

The urge to do something and to force others to do something comes, deep down, from a belief that a wise-enough human, especially from the leftist persuasion, can control almost anything, including populations, countries and planets.  To a great degree, these same authoritarians will automatically adopt any tool or method to control those who aren’t in agreement with them, especially people whose faith tends toward religious origins rather than government ones.  Soon, the authoritarians commence to blaming those who don’t agree with their beliefs, for the problems they believe they, the ‘wise,’ are destined to solve.  Any contrary data, facts or “science” non-leftists discover, are automatically denigrated and their proponents are labeled “deniers,” as an attempt to more firmly cement the immutable truth of what leftists believe.  It becomes difficult to discuss or debate ideas in that environment.

Because CO2 is generated by so many human activities and machines, not least of which is electricity generation, and because climatologists have observed wide fluctuations in the apparent concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere over millennia from all those ice cores and tree rings, there has grown up a set of beliefs about the correlation of temperatures at different points in time and CO2.  We can summarize this fear quite easily: More CO2 than the magical percentage is BAD; less CO2 than the magical percentage is GOOD.  Sometimes the rise in CO2 concentration precedes a warming period, sometimes it follows, but there is definitely, we’re almost certain… in fact, we’re so close to certain that it’s time to pass laws that we think will reduce the amount of CO2 that enters the atmosphere so that the average temperature of the entire planet’s biosphere can be controlled.

Whether these temperature fluctuations are caused by carbon-dioxide or not is unproven and unprovable.  But, it is definitely believed by many.  Of course, CO2 is essential for life and good for vegetation in particular, from which our food derives: farms and crops and things.  So we wouldn’t want to interfere too much, would we?  How much is too much?  It’s impossible to say, but less than we’re making now, we’re quite certain.

CO2, methane, nitrous oxide and water vapor are the primary “greenhouse gases.”  They’re all natural.  Many chlorinated and fluorinated gases that we manufacture also have the effect of “trapping” solar energy.  Fortunately, they are much smaller fractions of the atmosphere, although not as small a fraction as the dreaded CO2.  [See http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2017/07/20/a-home-on-the-beach/ ]

It’s common to see descriptions of human contributions to total greenhouse gases based on what percent of our (American) contribution is CO2.  This makes it look like CO2 is a gigantic problem and the U. S. contributes over 70% of it!  Ye Gods!  Stop breathing!  On the other hand, it is very reassuring that over 70% of what we contribute is CO2 and not methane or manufactured gases.  Methane is natural gas, basically, and the product of bacterial action on organic materials, like food we eat or grasses and grains that cattle, deer, antelope, bears and squirrels eat, among other living things.  Those gases escape, both intentionally and accidentally.  As far as we know, animal escapes are all accidental.  Still, methane is a greenhouse gas, the concentration of which also should be reduced, according to the magical percentage theory of global management.  This has led to calls to reduce cattle herds and, less publicized, to reduce human herds, too.  Ye Gods, again!

Those who are deeply committed to the magical percentages of greenhouse gases theory, are equally committed to blaming their fellow humans for every weather event that is less than perfectly comfortable for everyone from the Amazon watershed to the arctic tundra.  Everything is now our fault.  It has become a great tool for forcing people to accept authoritarian government as it lovingly struggles to avert the imminent climate catastrophe.  A “climate crisis” is declared repeatedly.  Taxpayers and anyone who wants the United States to survive and prosper, should have justifiable concern about any use of “crisis” in relation to items of government interest.  The designation is uniformly employed to justify borrowing from future generations to create politically advantageous spending, now.  There’s a $31 TRILLION liability on our balance sheet that demonstrates the effectiveness of this spending strategy.  Thus it is that “climate change” has become “climate crisis,” a political tool, and not just for the U. S.  Climate is global, and through the World Economic Forum [See http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2022/04/16/where-the-globalists-struck-first/ ] it is politically valuable to globalists and other socialists.  There is no reason to trust them.

The W.E.F. has determined that nitrogen-based chemicals, like most fertilizers, must be curtailed in order to save the planet.  You can see the conflict: humans eat the products of fertilized crops.  We like to eat meat, too, often simultaneously, and the animals that provide it also contribute to nitrogen chemicals resulting from bodily functions.  It is what it is.  The globalist solution?  Less eating!  Unfortunately, many governments pay attention to the blatherous emanations of the W.E.F., and adjust policies to fit.  You can read of the effects of this nonsense in the Netherlands, where farmers are in serious protest, or in Sri Lanka where people are starving.  Oddly, the same people who want to mandate the mRNA “vaccines” are they who want to limit food supplies to avoid climate change.  Are the two efforts connected in purpose?  Population reduction?  Certainly, in terms of the net effects of the Covid-19 “vaccines,” population reduction appears to be the biggest net effect.  The spike in non-Covid deaths among the healthiest demographic (ages 25 to 64) in the U. S., Canada and the U. K., is continuing.  The victims are vaccinated against Covid.

It seems intensely Prudent to be intensely skeptical of the unsubstantiated claims of Climate believers. 

We should consider the benefits of warming and the ancillary costs of attempting “carbon neutral” or, worse, “zero carbon” by any date-certain.  All the public statements about “climate change” fit under one heading: “The sky is falling!!” Note the dual exclamation points!  Once the rabid claims are sorted out – and the overblown statistics corrected-for – the best projection for the extent of warming is 2 to 3 degrees Fahrenheit by year 2100.  What are the upsides?

One is longer growing seasons for the crops that sustain the world’s population.  This can also translate to requiring less fertilization and more fallow periods for fields, enabling natural processes to enrich the soil between crops.  There will be more arable land, now covered by ice.  Some may think this is a tragedy, but those who live near the ice are glad to see it go.  Earth’s current weather patterns will change.  This may mean more rain in lots of areas.  Deserts that have evidence of past wet periods might return to that condition, improving opportunities for many peoples to feed themselves and spend less time on subsistence, leaving more time to develop their societies and, perhaps, correct their crappy politics and improve millions of people’s lives and futures.

Less energy will be expended heating homes and other buildings; less fuel expended clearing snow.  Meanwhile, should we manage to avoid or stifle the warlike designs of globalists and Communists, the invention and innovation of free, well-nourished people will be making at least as much progress in engineering and science as we’ve made in the past 80 years.  Our economies will cost less in energy density, transportation will be logarithmically more efficient.  People who are bound by ideologies that condemn half the population, and who are willing to twist “science” for political advantage, cannot conceive of humans creating solutions to the problems that serve one political ideology today: leftist authoritarianism.

In short, there are more reasons to hope for the future than to fear it.  If we have the wisdom to restore freedom as our flame of purpose, there is nothing to fear.  Biden and his ilk will be gone.  Education will be dramatically decentralized and made honest and non-ideological.  Freedom, Hope and Genuine Progress: bring it on!

Economics, Education, Politics 2017, Responsibility, Transportation

A Home on the Beach

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As the popular sport of denigrating Christianity has flourished, the new religion of “climate change” has gained thousands of new acolytes. Of course, “climate change” is science as opposed to faith-based mumbo-jumbo. You religious nuts have to come in to the 21st Century. Maybe. Hold the door, please.

Climate change is one of the few constants in the life of the earth. Ice ages, warming periods, volcanoes, comets, tides, gravity, planetary magnetic fields – these things have been present quite variably for billions of years. Well, yeah, but… but pollution, man… pollution has been present for like, since the atom bomb, man. What about that, dude?

Valid point, but pollution, too, has come and gone many times. We are considering only pollution that affects things WE have experienced. We, in our hubris, see this brief period since Biblical times or, more pointedly, since Columbus, say, as what is normal and the only way the world should be forever. Maybe, but an impossibility with or without the befouling presence of humans, especially white ones; they are the worst.

Earth changes in ways and for reasons we cannot affect, effect or fully understand. We may have some ephemeral effects right now, but they get taken care of through cyclical processes fairly well, although not perfectly, God knows… except for jet aircraft and a handful of other egregious assaults on the biosphere that we can fix if we develop a mind to. Surface weather cleans up a lot of our sloppiness, and we are technologically obviating some of our worst ideas. Economics helps.

Self-driving cars are a good example. Again, hubris and greed are driving current approaches, but we’ll get it right without too many deaths, one hopes. Once a standard is set requiring cars to “talk” to each other, real progress will be made. The problem with “autonomous” vehicles is autonomy: attempting to have every car have all the abilities to detect, control or react to every variable in traffic, pedestrians and weather – and weird roads. Can’t be done. However, if every car knew what every other vehicle within, say 100 yards were doing – direction, speed, acceleration – then traffic could automatically adjust itself so that it would never have to stop, including at intersections! Add a few sensors at intersections, on-ramps and the like, and “self-driving” cars will begin to resolve one of the worst pollution generators on the planet: personal, independent, ready-at-a-whim, expensive, heavy, inefficient cars.

And save lives. Imagine commuting without driving your own car. An electric “AV” (autonomous vehicle) or “SDC” picks you up along with 3 others going to the same concentrated economic zone, all independently arranged with phone apps. You work on your laptop, play cards, text or eat breakfast perfectly safely. Your SDC moves steadily forward cutting commuting time by a third or a half, then drops each “ride-pooler” at his or her work and goes off for the rest of the day to do some other tasks, including plugging itself in for an hour or so. At the prescribed times it picks up its riders (who may or may not be the same 4 based on workday schedules) and takes them home. Highways are less congested, traffic flow is uninterrupted (thanks to MDV’s [manually driven vehicles] also communicating with vehicles within that 100 yards), and billions of gallons of gas are left unburned. Cool.

Plus, thousands of acres of parking lots are made superfluous and may be “de-paved” and otherwise made better use of. Public transportation, that perennial, government, unionized cesspool of constant losses and shortfalls, will finally be in a form that works and a lot of crappy trains, trolleys and buses can be eliminated. SDC’s can go where people need to go when they need to go there, resulting in actual use. A lot of people will simply stop owning personal cars that sit idle 93% of the time.

As for jet travel, that’s different. Still, large fractions of it can be obviated with superior “ground” transport systems. Monorail transports in busy corridors, even up to 1,000 miles, can eliminate thousands of short-haul jet flights. Jets, after all, dump their exhaust at 35,000 feet, beyond where normal weather will help remove it. Surface transit at 300 miles an hour, or close to it, will compete effectively on trips up to 3 hours or so – possible up to 1000 miles. Trips from 150 to 500 miles would be a breeze, and more comfortable… and electric. Clean.

Elon Musk’s batteries are going to help, but we’ll have to resolve our UN-scientific fears of nuclear power to finally clean up our planet. It’ll happen… has to. Neither solar nor wind can carry the load in the next couple of generations and we seem to want to clean things up right now – nuclear.

At the same time, maybe we can devise solar-powered robot vessels to clean up our preposterous gyre of garbage in the pacific. Container-ship companies can pay for them. We have to become serious about not despoiling our home. Clean air, clean land, clean water – all valid and viable goals. Climate change will slowly correct to the only extent that it can. What does that mean?

To whatever, unquantifiable degree that human activity has caused a change in Earth’s average temperature, it has taken a long time. This is not to discount variations in solar output, sunspot cycles, variations and weakening of the magnetic field and so forth, but let those go. We may have an impact, no matter how arrogant we sound in saying so. Still, it’s fairly small and slow to make a difference. There isn’t any treaty or legislation that is going to make a rapid reversal. Decades, generations.

This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t start as soon as possible… and we have. But, increasingly, the choice that true believers offer is stark destruction of our ecology and mass starvations and all they imply; OR, VOLUNTARY population reduction. The possibility that Humanity might resolve pollution by dint of invention and technology or even good motives, is never proffered. According to the Church of Inevitable Death, mankind will either kill itself out of stupidity and greed or thanks to enlightened leadership from government members of the new religion.

I’ll take door number 3, Winky.

Climate acolytes are currently very upset about “…the four inches of sea-level rise that has already happened!” Well that’s serious, especially if you’ve been living within two inches of the mean sea level in 1940. It’s also extremely difficult to determine with any precision. But if the seas have risen a couple of inches, their worry and over-concern has to ignore the 400 FEET of sea-level change since the beginning of the reversal of the last ice age. Of course, there was a lot more ice available for melting in the good old days, so small global changes could cause massive meltwater volumes. We’re relatively safe from those kinds of effects, today.
A large part of our ostensible sea-level problem is our own damn fault, since we do enjoy living right on the waters’ edges. I expect we’ll deduce how to avoid drowning slowly, most of us, anyway.

If the entire atmosphere could be liquefied it would be about 33 feet deep, or 393.7 inches. Well great… so what? Well, in fact, CO-2 comprises about .0397% of the total. Let’s see what this means:
1% of 393.7 inches is just 3.937 inches – out of 33 feet. But, CO-2 is less than 4/10ths of that percent, or slightly deeper than 1.57 inches. Around the year 1800 (pre-industry), we’re told, CO-2 was only 3/10ths of a percent of the total, or what would have been 1.18 inches. Now we are told, it is the added .39 inches of the 33-foot total that has caused nearly every problem we face today, hot or cold, wet or dry, cloudy or sunny.

It is a big deal because people literally breath out CO-2, as do our cars and trucks and planes and things. Better, it’s a trace gas that we can BLAME on humans! We can TAX it and buy votes with it and be superior about it. Ohh, Heaven!

Worse, it is swamping tiny atolls in the Solomon Islands and the handfuls of people who like living there (who wouldn’t?) need some of everyone’s money to compensate their moving costs. At least, that’s the trumpeted theory. Still, it fits with the trends of the past 100 centuries or so, which ought to be comforting. Our anxiety derives from changes that have affected things we know from the past couple of hundred years… things that, in our arrogant view, should have remained static once we decided we liked them.

Right? Of course, right!
Since so many factors we have nothing to do with have maintained the direction of change, we are now adopting an amazing attitude that it is within our politics, economics and powers, that we can steer change in a different direction. This is far more remarkable than divinity, but a lot of people have bought it.

Transportation

AUTOMOTIVE ECONOMICS and FREEDOM

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traffic2Increasingly there are stories and speculations about autonomous, or “self-driving” cars. Upon hearing these stories, many just look at their friends and roll their eyes, as if to say “Yeah, right. Never happen!”
POWER
People are too tightly connected to controlling automotive power, gunning it to pass or enter highways; there is too much alignment with sexual prowess for males, at least, to give up the pilot’s role. Maybe.
Self-driving vehicles hold a lot of promise. Consider overall expense. An ‘SD” vehicle won’t at least initially, be your all-around vehicle. Rather, it would be utilitarian, mostly used for commuting and short-haul shopping missions. Unlike mass-transit, a self-driving car retains independence and privacy for 1 to say, 4 passengers, but doesn’t have to be parked once “work” is reached. It can be electric, of course. Once depositing its commuters it can self-drive to a charging station – like a Roomba vacuum cleaner.
SAFETY
At 3:30, or 4:00, or whatever time the commuters have told it via cell-phone, the vehicle will guide itself to the convenient pick-up spot(s), receive its passengers and head home… or to a sports bar. Commuters could work, play games, watch TV, fool around (just sayin’) or, if not stupid enough, take a hit of ‘medical’ marijuana, all while presenting no threat to other drivers/commuters.
After all, the weakest link in a car or truck is the driver. Self-driving vehicles will offer some positives.
INDEPENDENCE
Not the least of these will be mobility for seniors (or the blind!). No one likes to be the one to tell mom or dad that it’s time to relinquish the keys and stop driving. That’s tantamount to saying stop enjoying independence. A self-driving car extends the “freedom” years for both parents and children. This alone will make autonomous vehicles popular, and keep other drivers safer, too. You watch.
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AND MORE THAN THAT…
Autonomous cars can solve a lot of problems. Imagine every self-driving car having fairly simple radio-frequency communication with all the others within, say 100 yards, and with beacons at intersections. This inter-communication will enable cars to automatically give way to one another at merges and intersections, such that there will be very few reasons for forward progress to totally stop… as it does, constantly, during both “rush” hours and all other hours, when red and green lights “control” drivers to avoid collisions.
INSTANT PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION
Now imagine that for most uses, travelers will simply call for a car via cell-phone. Even for local shopping trips, the drudgery of parking can be avoided. As you check out with your groceries, a car is automatically called for you, meeting you almost at the door of the supermarket. You ride home with your stuff and the car moves off to do another job. Your flashy, powerful, expensive, highly-taxed and rapidly-depreciating (although impressive to others) SUV, remains in its garage-nest, shiny and undamaged. That’s good, right?
Except for the need to stow all the crap we leave in our cars – sometimes for years – not being completely responsible for a “car” can be increasingly attractive.
STAYING RICH
Rather than a $500,000 home – mortgage payment, insurance, upkeep and all – one’s car is the largest expense one carries. Over, say, twenty-five years, a homeowner might spend $30,000 a year for his home and on his home… $750,000, a lot of money. In the same time, he might buy and finance five $30,000 cars… $165,000. Insurance adds another $50,000, maintenance and taxes, gas and sundries, probably another $75,000 – altogether $290,000 (very conservative number).
At the end of the twenty-five years the home will be sold for a million dollars (if not three times that much), while the last car will still be on the road, sucking up expense dollars. Most homeowners will profit on the home, but the car dollars are all gone.
HOW MUCH PER MILE?
Suppose the homeowner travels 20,000 miles a year commuting, shopping and few trips. His average cost per mile is 58 cents, except, well, over the years, he’s also spent $120 a month for parking while at work – another $36,000! Now we’re over 65 cents a mile, despite some of the dollars being for “non-miles.”
What if you could call up a car whenever you needed it, for $500 a month, same amount of miles? To compare, that would be only 30 cents a mile… HALF! The other $150,000 you can keep in your pocket!
Insuring your private vehicle is a function of the extraordinary risk one takes both for himself and his prized possession. You might have a new, ultra-safe, back-up camera’d SUV that has cost you $4,000 before you left the dealer’s lot (taxes, registration, insurance, etc., etc.) and will soon generate monthly payments of $600. The first morning you pull onto the interstate parking lot, where its comforts and sound system are so valuable, and where its appearance can be thoroughly envied, a $500 piece of… crap can drift over the line as its driver reads the paper, texts or reaches for another doughnut, and pretty well ruin the driver’s side of your polished beauty. You can imagine your own feelings without my help.
In an instant you will appreciate the economy and efficiency of autonomous vehicles for commuting purposes, if for nothing else.
WHY YOU’RE GLAD YOU LEARNED LOGARITHMS
We can imagine, as autonomous vehicles gain numbers and acceptance, that only one lane, the “breakdown” lane will be designated for them at first. They will travel at no more than 40 miles per hour, automatically giving way to private cars that signal for exits. The blinker itself or a radio beacon it turns on will tell the “AV” that will create space for the exit turn, of the need to do so, and through virtually instant communication with the AVs behind it, a slight reduction in speed is smoothly achieved logarithmically back down the line, as is smooth acceleration back to normal.
Along with other automatic adaptations to traffic conditions, the ride-sharing (or not) commuters in the AVs will arrive at the destination for each in about half the time as all those individually impressive, singularly occupied, driver/commuters will. Better still, they won’t have to find parking – or pay for it.
SHARED CONTROL
Now let’s imagine that most of the vehicles on the Interstate are autonomous and happily communicating with the dozens of other AVs that are nearby. Let’s extend that to all cars being required to have a couple of basic transponders so that “special-license” drivers can’t screw up the works. Now manually-operated and autonomous vehicles can share the road, even to the point that the AVs can “scatter,” so to speak, whenever a “ManOp” does the wrong thing. If it’s something really foolish, or dangerous, all the vehicles around the offender will “know” who the offender was – at least what the ‘numbers’ of his vehicle were.
RISK
AVs will cost a lot less. With fairly simple RFID chips in every vehicle, there won’t have to be on-board radars, back-up cameras, etc. (that may not be paid-attention to). Those suckers are expensive. Plus the cost of insurance will be very low and cost in dollars and suffering will be almost eliminated. That is the best part. Medical care (some quite dramatic) resulting from automobile accidents, is just as expensive as for other reasons.
This is disruptive technology. The phase it is going through, now, is going to be brief. All the automatic safety and silly systems (like automatic parallel parking), that owners love to show off, will become superfluous in large part, when there is no need to park, among other things.
NEW-CITY
Imagine the people-positive effects of not having millions of cars parking in our cities and towns.
Drunk-driving, drugged-driving, texting, reading, applying makeup and eating breakfast on the commute, will all become safe to do! How cool is that? Streets and interstates can be smaller, believe it or not, instead of constantly become larger, more costly, ugly and dangerous. We won’t need as many police, either, since the number of accidents will decline markedly, and insurance will cost a lot less.
When you start to consider all the crap we put up with to maintain private, manually-driven cars – and trucks – the day when true transportation arrives, can’t be too soon. I didn’t even mention the first teen-age solo…