Merv's Politically Incorrect Audio Blog

It wasn't coincidental. They were actively trying to attract workers who traditionally aligned with the left parties. They were pushing the "common good" deal which was very much aligned with significant aspects of communism. That it was warped (understatement) doesn't mean it had nothing to do with anything.

Political parties always seek positions and evolve to attract more people. The Clintons stole the globalism away from the GOP. The GOP (southern Democrats turned Republican) stole big government away from the Democrats. W thought he could play Vorlon. Obama stole the neo-conservative "we are Vorlons and can save the world" outlook and extended the already lost war in Afghanistan for a decade. Trump stole the "take this job and shove it" union voters away from the Democrats.

This is why fascism and communism are simply two sides of the same coin to me. The main difference is whether you want to kill up or kill down. Westerners who haven't had to live in shitty governments love to categorize and compartmentalize, and line up everything to a T, denoting the finer differences. I see things very simply like my grandmother's Shanghainese friend: "Communists, Nationalists, Japanese - I hate them all". Or what an ancient German bar owner said after I asked how it was like during that time: "Nazi's, they hated everyone who wasn't a Nazi".

I mean who really gives a f**k about what Karl Marx really said or meant or intended or whether a political philosophy can trade its lineage to him, when there is a pile of bones at the end.

 

Yeah, I went to Chinese school when I was a kid and I didn't have a problem with it. Calligraphy, stroke order, all that jazz. Not a big deal once it's learned and there is a cursive style with the traditional characters. I've seen my dad scribble shit, and it's still obvious they are the traditional characters. Today nobody writes, they mash pinyin or in Taiwan bopomofo into the keyboard.

I all know that when I see my Chinese surname in simplified commie characters, I want to barf.

Removing a few stokes from a glyph based writing system doesn't improve literacy rates. A concerted pushed effort to do so does. Credit goes to the Commies here. However, if it wasn't the Commies, it would have been the Nationalists, or whoever else. The Commies simply wanted to put their stamp on things, to say that their brave new world was good, and everything else, especially the old, was bad.

 

Smaller dirt poor countries don't pollute that much. This is because people in these countries don't eat as much, most certainly not as much beef (cows fart methane), and throw away food. Food production and everything that goes along with it (land-use, transportation, fertilizers, etc.) is responsible for somewhere between 27% to 37% of global emissions. People in poor countries also don't have air conditioners, drive around everywhere in big SUVs, or have power hungry GPUs to play their games, or Class A amps to listen to music.

Developing countries which are due to be the next up and coming super greenhouse emitters such as China and India aren't technologically backward. China is the largest manufacturer of solar panels in the world. The USA is currently at at the mercy of China for solar panels. Wind turbines are made in China, Korea, India, and the USA. Hydropower is old tech. "Renewable" biofuels don't count because they pollute the same as fossil fuels, but the Green people don't like to mention this.

The rate of adoption of green tech in the USA or more advanced countries has no bearing on what China and India will do. China and India are their own sovereign states and will do whatever the hell they want which is best for them - as they should. The reason these countries use a lot of coal isn't because they lack know-how or are waiting for the advanced nations to go full retard and ban ICE vehicles. It's because it's cheap and the infrastructure for coal power already exists. Energy, cheap energy is what fuels growth. They are not going to be dumbassess and shoot themselves in the foot with respect to global competition just because some white girl tells them to.

With respect to scale of economy for green tech to make it more affordable, China and India have billions and billions more people than the USA. 3 Billion vs 320 million. Think about that. The developing nations are more likely to drive green tech in the future, also because they will have more green gains since they will be coming from coal. China is more likely to ban ICE vehicles before the USA (aside of California Governor Gavin Awesome) because a city like Shanghai could probably build out a network supercharging stations in six months (if they not already done so). It would probably take 17 years to do the same in Los Angeles. And even then, the supercharger stations would be in the middle of nowhere - kind of like how the El Lay subways tend to go from nowhere to nowhere. And let's not talk about the lack of power generation in California once everyone plugs in their Teslas for the night to charge (that's 10-12 hairdryers or 100-120 Aegirs worth of current in case you didn't know).

 

Not to mention that most green "tech" is mature. Hydro has been around forever. The Hoover Dam was constructed in the 1930s. Nuclear has been around forever and is now safer than ever. Windmills have gotten more efficient. Some of these gains are tech such as carbon nanotubes to strengthen and lighten the blades, but most of it is larger and larger windmills with blades shaped like whale or lionfish fins. The windmills that I see here in Texas that were put up a few years ago are much larger than the ones in California twenty-thirty years ago. Battery tech is fairly mature now too. We reached a good limit where any more stored power would not be safe. The fact is batteries store energy, not too different from a bomb, so it's best not to make them too high capacity for consumer products like cars.

The only area where there is progress is solar panels. Efficiency has been and still is slowly and surely going up. Progress simply takes time, adoption rate can't make it go any faster, especially...

That seems to be taking the false assuming that the USA is dragging its heels with green tech adoption. This is a lie perpetuated by virtue signalling environmental activists and politicians.

The rate of green tech adoption in the USA has been rather speedy and actually accelerating. For wind, Texas went from 183MW in 1999 to 33,133MW in 2020. For solar, California went from 7MW in 1999 to 31,288MW in 2020. In that same timeframe, Texas went from 2.3MW to 7784MW for solar and is massively accelerating. Hybrid car sales went from zero in 1999 to 400M more or less. Electric cars went from zero in 2010 to just over 300M.

When the CARB and Newsom want the selling of ICE cars to cease in California by 2025, it's pure virtue signalling. It's a nice goal but not possible given the lack of charging stations and lack of electrical capacity in the California power grid. Fossil fuels are not pure evil. They are a pragmatic necessity during the transition to renewables.

Besides, Newsom is hypocrite. I bet my family throws away far less food than his. Food production accounts for a third of greenhouse gases. Oh, I've seen how Americans, especially rich white American families throw away food. My son was disturbed how his friends in Calabasas would eat 40% of the steak with the rest of the plate thrown into the garbage. Heck, I'm disturbed.

Also, if one truly cared about greenhouse gas emissions in California, the CPUC should have put aside some of that money spent for solar generation into fixing the old power lines which caused forest fires. The state government should have taken forest management more seriously, conducting controlled burns, allowing the cutting down for trees for lumber. One single forest fire in 2020 accounted for more greenhouse emissions than industrial energy that entire year. California burns every year, sending not only tons of greenhouse gases but particulate matter into the air, and it will continue to do so.

P.S.

With regards to adoption, I looked into solar for my house when I lived in California. The total cost including roof replacement was $45k. Add another $15k for a Tesla battery (because solar don't work after 4pm and the power companies stopped giving credits for electricity generated). Considering the costs of only the panels and battery, it would have taken 13 years to reach break even. I would have been giddy if Greta or her parents offered to pay for it though instead of screaming "now now now".

 

Suckers. GM, Toyota, and the rest told the CARB to f**k off.

It may be cool to see California like Cuba in 2050, with "classic" ICE V8 Camaros and Hyundai Equus / G90s.

Scratching my head why it's always all or nothing. Hybrids are a great approach.

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In the meantime, many CA mayors getting tough on crime, de-defund police, after several smash and grabs throughout the Bay Area, all of those locations I've been to having been a former long-time SF Bay Area resident. I'm sure most of the cops were like screw this and didn't try very hard to stop the perps.

 

Na, hybrids don't have big batteries and in practice, they've lasted forever. Know many Prius owners who've been driving them for 10 years. I think the batteries are guaranteed for eight years, some states mandating to 150k miles. With modern cars, I'm worried about the viewscreen, instrumentation, radio, buttons.

Anyway, the point was choice and allowing alternatives during a period of transition.

 

In California, EV buyers can get single occupancy carpool lane privileges. In other words, rich people can buy carpool lane rights when they drive by themselves. All under the guise of clean air.