Other than tomorrow, I have the coming week off, so I will be spending time out and about visiting friends in a number of towns as well as being out on the lake from time to time. I might even catch a fireworks show from the Official Weekend Pundit Lake Winnipesaukee Runabout, weather permitting. I will also be attending chores here at The Gulch, said chores helping to free up more attic space so I can empty out what remains in my rental storage unit.
My ex and I still have to sort through some items in the storage unit to determine what will be done with them – take home, sell, donate, or dump. If we can get through all of that I can have the storage unit emptied by Labor Day weekend and I can save myself $170 a month in rental fees.
Speaking of rental storage, I don’t know what all 15 or so of my readers are seeing where they live, but there are a lot of self-storage units being built, at least in this part of New Hampshire. I’ve seen large number of storage units being built in my town and in three surrounding towns. Is this a nationwide event or is it limited to certain parts of each state or to certain regions of the country?
Storage in this area – a very popular seasonal tourist area – makes sense, at least in part. I know a lot of folks with vacation homes have storage units to store summer items that it may be difficult to store at those vacation homes. This is particularly true at dual-season vacation homes – summer and winter – where items for summer are stored in the winter and vice versa. (My town is one of those towns which has two and a half tourist seasons, those being summer, foliage, and winter. Foliage season only lasts a few weeks, hence its ‘half season’ designation.) At least some of our storage facilities look nice, with one new site using buildings that look like large barns rather than the single-story beige boxes with white, orange, blue, or tan overhead garage doors, such storage buildings spreading like weeds on an unattended lawn.
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In yesterday’s post recounting my impressions about the debate I mentioned there were times when Joe Biden didn’t blink for extended periods of time. It turns out that it wasn’t just me who noticed that as Glenn Reynolds linked to a TikTok counting the seconds between Biden’s eye blinks which proves something just wasn’t right. One has to think he was juiced to the gills.
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This isn’t exactly news as a number of news outlets and blogs have been brought it up, “it” being a poll showing that about half of present EV owners stating they want to go back to gas/diesel-powered cars and trucks.
The CEO of Toyota has reported most of his colleagues do not think EV-only transportation is sensible, practical, or realistic. EV drivers are experiencing “range anxiety,” and short trips have doubled or more in time due to charging times. Blackouts, especially during the summer heat waves, make reliance on EVs impractical.EVs are not the panacea proponents try to make them out to be.
Now, a new study shows that a significant share of Americans who own an EV have buyer’s remorse and want to switch back to vehicles with traditional internal combustion engines (ICE).
They aren’t eco-friendly by any means, particularly in light of the materials needed to manufacturer the EVs and the battery packs. That one of those materials – cobalt - is mined using both child and slave labor is something being devoutly ignored by those same proponents. That mining for the other materials would need to be expanded by an order of magnitude or more to meet the demand is ignored, such expansion having negative environmental issues exceeding that of ICE vehicles.
Then there’s the issue of being able to charge those EVs, something that has been an increasing problem. There aren’t anywhere near enough working charging stations available and the electrical grid couldn’t handle the load of the mandated EVs as it isn’t being expanded to meet future needs. And don’t think that renewables will be able to handle the load because the numbers don’t add up. Oh, and there’s a big competitor for electrical power that has been coming to the forefront, that competitor being data centers, and more specifically, those data centers supporting AI. Which of the two do you think will take priority? Hint: It won’t be the EV charging.
Then there’s the second part of charging EVs, specifically the amount of time it takes to charge an EV versus filling the gas tank.
How long does it take to charge an EV, even with a super-charging station to travel 200 miles? 20 minutes? 30 minutes? An hour?
How long does it take to put enough gas – less than 10 gallons - into a pickup like my 2014 RAM 1500 to go the same distance? Less than 3 minutes, including the time it takes to use an ATM card and pump the gas. If I fill the tank – which takes just under 30 gallons – it will take maybe two minutes longer, I can travel another 600 miles before I need to fill up again. The EV would require at least 2 more stops and maybe another hour of time. How many people would be willing to add that much time to their driving during a vacation or business trip just to be ‘green’? My guess – not too many.
EVs sound good. But aren’t really. It’s like Thomas Sowell said, “The past [few] decades have seen things that work being replaced by things that sound good.”
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I have to agree with Chicks On The Right that AOC is “being all around insufferable human”. Then again, she’s always been that way.
Her latest bit of (racist) nonsense?
In today’s episode of AOC is insane and needs to be voted out in November, she has a breakdown about how there are too many white men in Congress. This is not satire. This is real life.We have to remember that AOC is a deluded ‘woke’ piece of work who really doesn’t care about what’s actually important, only about what appears to be important...but isn’t.
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I don’t want the people representing me to be diverse just because it hurts AOC’s feelings that it’s not. I want the people representing me to be the best people for the job and who are going to get stuff done, no matter what they look like.
Here’s hoping the voters in her congressional district wake up and kick her out bag and baggage and let her get back to her real calling – bartending. Goodness knows she’s not very good at being a Congresscritter. She’s not even all that good at being a bad Congresscritter.
Need I say any more?
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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where June has fled, the weather is going to see thunderstorms later today, and even though Monday is returning it is the only day this week that I am working.