There are lots of places to hear live jazz in the Windy City (1). Some experiences are not to be missed. You can sit in Al Capone’s booth and listen to whomever is sharing the stage with Ceres, goddess of the harvest and fertility, at the oldest jazz club in the world, Green Mill in Uptown (2). You could venture into the South Loop, slip into the elegant Jazz Showcase (3) and slide into one of their plush leather chairs to stare at the big picture over the stage of Charlie Parker cradling his sax then wish you had a tiny fraction of his cool. Someday, the Fat Babies will emerge from their COVID hibernation so you can check out their swing that’ll make you think the 20s are roaring again (4). But if it’s just plain fun you seek, take the Red Line north to Rogers Park, get off at the Morse stop and walk around the corner to 6970 Glenwood to knock on the door of Le Piano (5). They’ve closed off that block of Glenwood to traffic, so if the weather’s nice and you want to hear your jazz outside, you can sit in their tables there. Occupying an old brick industrial building with high ceilings and a front face of windows that go nearly floor to ceiling, the owners have installed a magnificent grand piano and scattered touches than invoke Paris’ Latin Quarter. The bartender knows how to whip up a sazarac, and their wine list is 4 times as long as their spare menu, on which every item is sumptuous. It doesn’t take many to fill up the place, with little tables right up front by the musicians and booths back a bit for those who prefer comfort to contact. Sitting close has its advantages. You can talk to the musicians as they’re setting up and you might even get pulled into the show, as Kathy and I were when here last November, invited to lay under the piano as it was played, the better to feel the vibrations from that grand instrument. Although I don’t recall doing so, it’s an experience you can order off the menu: “The Happy Ending” (6). Le Piano is far more than a piano bar, with a schedule that features a cabaret night, Brazilian Latin jazz, retro blues and jazz, and our favorites, the Chad Willetts band. Chad owns the place. See his band here as we watched them Friday night.
No, they weren’t playing the blues. For 30 years in music, Chad is pretty shy vis-à-vis YouTube. He drives his band from behind a drum kit, but plays a pretty nice piano, too (7). This 3 ½’ clip purports to be about the “under the piano” experience but is also a nice intro to everything about Le Piano (8). So next time you’re in Chi-town, head north and check this place out. Your evening will have a happy ending even if you chose not to crawl under the piano.
In recent interactions with a woman, founder of a 508(c)(1)(a) to whom I might eventually consult, she took me up on my offer to prattle on about my virology lab experience. As her organization deals with consequences of a particular virus, she might be interested in knowing where I’m coming from. Here’s what I told her:
My CV (1) has a listing of my lab experience (a post-retirement embellishment), but I offered a prattle and you said bring it on, so here goes. I stumbled through U of M undergrad, finally collecting enough science credits to get pre-med pre-reqs and a Zoology degree in ‘74, doing well enough on MCATs to make it look like I’d have a chance at med school. Since I didn’t do that in time to enter med school right after graduation, I went to grad school in microbiology. In the mid 70s, molecular techniques like restriction enzymes were just emerging which would turn virology into such a hot area. My classroom success didn’t translate to the lab, but I spent time in the lab of up-and-comer Tony Faras working on retroviruses, RNA viruses implicated in cancer. Maybe my experiments fell flat, but I learned the lingo. When Tony went back home to Minnesota, I hooked up with Bill Murphy, who was working with slow viruses, like visna and kuru, which cause no symptoms for a long time after they infect, then disaster happens. At the time they were thought to be implicated in Alzheimer’s. HIV was a decade away from being discovered, but is now characterized as a slow virus. Bill recognized my skills so I wrote proposals and did no bench work. I would have done more with him had I made it into Michigan med school. Instead, I had to settle for the University of Chicago. There, I spent 2 semesters and a summer in Elliott Kieff’s lab. His thing was Epstein-Barr virus, which has never not been interesting, given its role in lymphoma, autoimmune diseases, and even chronic fatigue. I actually got a few things to work in his lab, tho’ nothing publishable. For me, lab research was always a means to an end, with scholarships and posts open to those who had put time in the lab. My tales of research experience impressed those interviewing me when I was seeking an Internal Medicine residency and I matched to an elite place, Barnes Hospital in St. Louis, a Wash U affiliate. I got my first taste of rheumatology in med school but my experiences at Barnes convinced me that was where I belonged. I may have overrated my assets as I sought a fellowship, as of Hopkins, UCSF, Barnes, and Michigan, only my home institution offered me a position. That was fine with me as I enjoyed coming home, had a great fellowship experience, and a long satisfying career on faculty. Research was expected of fellows, and Michigan had a unique young hotshot who was a virologist, Tom Schnitzer. He was working with a reovirus that caused muscle inflammation, similar to what happens in the rare but important autoimmune disease polymyositis. Again, I stumbled in the lab, but enjoyed other benefits, not the least of which was meeting my wife-to-be, then a PhD student with whom I was going to collaborate. Plus, I’m sure I would not have been offered a job had I not done bench research.
Worth the 10 bucks (or $3 Kindle) if only to read “Fauci’s feeble-minded fear-filled followers”, inspired by an encounter with one of those in the woods.
After another delicious dinner of this easy, simple, cheap dish, I decided I had to share it. I owe it to my brother Nick, who drives the truck he owns for a living. As I was remarking on the impressive weight loss he’s managed to achieve while the rest of us still struggle with COVID pounds, he mentioned this staple for on-road eating. After throwing some chicken drums and thighs into a crock pot with onions and such, he spreads the result on flat bread which he rolls up into hand-held sandwiches stored into a plastic box under his seat, ready to reach in and eat whenever he got hungry. Sounded good to me. I gave it a go and it turned out pretty good.
I sent it to Nick and he said it was pretty close to what he did. When you can get 5# of chicken quarters for 5 bucks or less, it’s a pretty good deal. Nick doesn’t add stock and the mix I get using it has about ¾ C juice you could strain off and save for other purposes (it’s delicious).
Part 2 of the feast is the bread you wrap this in. Any of the various flatbreads you might buy will do. Heck, you can probably plop it on a regular bun and call it a chicken sloppy joe. But if you’ve got a bread machine, you can make your own naan, that delicious slightly crusty warm flat bread you thought you could only get in an Indian restaurant. But it’s easy peasy. The machine makes the dough and you and your iron skillet make the bread. It’s what we do and I recommend it highly.
Heck, this could probably sustain you for six days on the road (1)
My dentist no longer uses laughing gas, but none was needed on my visit to his office this morning. I was there to get a new crown to replace one I’d lost. The tedium of the injections and grinding with pauses to let the former take effect to make the latter tolerable began to get interrupted when Doc commented on his observations of the bed for the new crown. Realize that conversations at the dentist’s are stilted, with something always done when the patient opens up his briefly freed mouth.
Doc: You probably lost this crown quite a while ago, as the remaining tooth protrudes more than it did when we did the last crown. It’s had time to grow a little.
(pause)
Me: I really don’t know when it happened. I’m not in the habit of panning my stool for gold. Whenever it did happen, my net worth dropped that day.
Doc: You needed a metal detector
(pause)
Me: A new essential bathroom appliance!
(pause)
Me: Maybe it can be paired with a bidet to give a combination device
By then, all were thinking we were on to something, till Doc spoke up
Doc: Bob, I don’t think you’d have a very big market for your device
Me: We just need the right celebrity spokesman
The group discussed who that might be as my mouth was full again
Me: It’s clear to me. Hire one of the two best known posteriors in show biz: Kim Kardashian or Jennifer Lopez
(pause)
Me: My good friend Ken at UCSD is Kim’s cousin.
So, Kim became the obvious choice. She couldn’t find the gig beneath her dignity and with her jewelry collection and eating habits, she’d obviously had at least one experience where such a device would have helped her out.
Assistant: you could call it the “Gold Digger”
We all agreed that was apt for Kim also.
Doc: So, who will be the go between on this?
Me: Ken, like all my friends, likes my wife Kathy better than me. Plus, he has lots of Hollywood connections and managed her in her attempt to break into the movies in the 90s. (I threw in some details of how that went down)
So woman to woman and all that.
With the tedium of prep work completed, Doc proceeded with the more intense task of seeding the crown, and the conversations petered out.
But after Doc made his final remarks to me and was waving bye, I told him “You know, my best friend from childhood is a patent attorney. I’ll be sure to include you on the discussions.”
As I paid for the visit, I hoped that our new product would make a killing.
As the summer of ’81 waned in New Hudson, Ohio, Kathy Clark packed her life into her yellow Nova to head north to Ann Arbor and grad school, closing out the last “free” summer she’d see for several decades. She was leaving behind her high school teacher’s post at Western Reserve Academy to see what she might do with this Kinesiology thing. U of M didn’t pay her right off the bat and she had to put in early mornings at the Bagel Factory to make ends meet. Teaching “Dance for Fitness” (or “Dance for Fatness”, as she liked to call it) brought her first U paycheck and her PhD research was going well enough 2 ½ years later to land a collaboration with a young post-doctoral fellow in Rheumatology. The rest is – as they say – history (1). Unlike her football season tickets, her duties at the U were interrupted a couple of times so when she decided in the Winter of ’20 she’d hang ‘em up at the end of that term, the big bad U said pas si vite! That didn’t stop us from having a big blowout retirement party on her birthday that summer (2), but it was back in the saddle that Fall for one more half-time term, with another added on for good measure so her Dean could keep her as Associate Chair. But this June, she finally packed up her academic life and her campus office no longer bears her name. As always happens at the U, once you’re gone they write nice things about you. The piece below is in the Fall 2022 issue of Movement, publication of the School of Kinesiology. I’m sure the readers of this blog have heard plenty about me, so for a change I thought I’d give you a longer peak at my dear wifey. Yes, I’m the luckiest man in the world.
I wrote this shortly after I’d received the sad news that George Frayne IV, (U of M BFA ’66, MFA ’68) – A.K.A. Commander Cody – had passed as of 9/26/21. I never posted it, but now that his life is being celebrated across the country, I think it’s time.
Some readers of this blog may have picked up by now my deathless devotion to that 70s band out of Ann Arbor, Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen. Has any band had a wilder name? And, I submit, no band was more fun. In my life, I’ve never had more fun than what I felt at a Commander Cody concert. I wrote a small book about the joyous, raucous relationships I’ve had with the band and its offshoots over the past half century (1) a new edition is coming, and I’ve posted a loving blog about my celebration of the 50th anniversary of my first seeing them in concert (2). While it was a hobby of mine in college to kype concert posters, I never snagged the one for that show. I’ve since located it – kyped from the Commander’s web page – and it hangs proudly in my entryway, first thing you see as you come in the door.
Now that the Commander is dead can we elevate his band to the immortals? The remaining Lost Planet Airmen still play about in various guises, with enthusiasm. But the originals all together were so special and unique, we need to take every opportunity to experience them. Sure, between the whole band and the Commander himself, they’ve put out a host of CDs with the same songs over and over. But I’ve just become aware of a new release that anyone who is CC&hLPA curious needs to hear. Released on www.sunsetblvdrecords.com, the two disc set even states that a dollar of each purchase will go to the American Cancer Society in the memory of George Frayne aka Commander Cody. It was esophageal cancer that finally took him on 9/26/01 after a 3 year struggle. Fortunately, the band left a trail of tapes to be tapped. This new CD set – “Strange Adventures on Planet Earth” – is one of them.
Don’t the boys look mellow?
Recorded across a number of live dates in ’73 and ’74 ranging from Australia to Rotterdam to Stony Brook, the band is at the top of their game. An indication they’re at the end of the line is that Ernie Hagar is on pedal steel, replacing Bobby “Blue” Black, who’d replaced West Virginia Creeper. Ernie was no slouch, an ace pedal steel player, recording since ’65. At the end of the last cut on the first disc – “Hey-hey-hey-hey” John Tichy calls to the audience “We love you, goodbye!”. Is that it? Fortunately, disc 2 opens with Billy C. singing “There’s good rockin’ tonight”, and for 13 more cuts, there surely is. How can you not like a set that begins with “Hot Rod Lincoln” and ends with “Too Much Fun”? In between is all that Commander music that serves poorly to promote sedate and sober behavior. But sometimes, that’s just what we need.
$23.99 on Amazon and worth every penny, IMHO. If you want to immerse yourself in an hour and half of the Commander Cody experience – accompanied by the intoxicant(s) of your choice, of course – this would be the dive I’d recommend.
If you want to have a little taste first, check out their performance at the John Sinclair Freedom Rally at Crisler Arena in Ann Arbor December 1971 (3). On a bill that included Stevie Wonder, Phil Ochs, Bob Seger, Archie Shepp, Joy of Cooking, David Peel, Teagarden and VanWinkle, the Up, and John Lennon (yes, the Beatle), they stole the show before the 17,000 assembled. Here’s their performance, ripped from “Ten for Two” the documentary of the event bankrolled by John and Yoko (she was there, too). The set includes their big hit and the saddest song ever written. Fortunately, the boys move right into “There’s a riot going on”, so you barely have time to put away the razor blades and the barbituates. If you want an extended concert, check out their radio concert from 1975 (4).
Chances for you to go celebrate the Art, Music, and Life of Commander Cody are fading. Already we’ve had gatherings in Troy NY and Mill Valley California. So any of the Cody faithful, and the Cody LPA guys showed up in NY, are coming. The Troy NY gathering was fabulous (5). Mill Valley was diluted by a lot of the “Western airmen” that accompanied him when he was out there. We’ll miss NYC as we’ll be in Chicago. Troy was magnificent, as I wrote. Rumors are for an album, so keep tuned.
As the Commander and his boys sung many times “Don’t let go” (6).
3. Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen. John Sinclair Freedom Rally performance. (from Ten for Two, premiered 4/1/72. Produced by John Lennon and Yoko Ono). Posted to YouTube by RW Ike 3/3/21. Available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ21BHiSlJ4
In my part of Michigan, we get our electricity and natural gas from DTE. While the name suggests a Detroit link, the company is based in Cincinnati and serves 3 states (Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky) totaling 13 counties. The company traces its origins to 1849 as the Detroit Gas Company, formed to supply the city’s gas streetlights. Streetlighting changed when Thomas Edison came to town at the turn of the century. The gas company survived under various guises, longest as Michigan Consolidated Gas (MichCon). In 1996, Detroit Edison formed a holding company bearing its stock symbol (DTE) and swallowed up MichCon to make a company that allows us to pay one check for all our home energy needs. They count 2,244,950 customers (2 transportation accounts, 2,036,506 residential properties, 207,722 commercial customers and 719 industrial accounts) who purchase their electricity from the company. DTE Energy’s consumers are charged an average residential electricity price of 17.86 cents per kilowatt hour, which is 32.59% more than the average US rate of 13.47 cents. In 2020 the company sold 40,629,495 megawatt hours by way of retail sales to end users. Electricity generation facilities owned by DTE Energy produced 47.60% of the megawatt hours sourced by the supplier and an additional 52.40% was procured on the wholesale electricity market. So, when calculating the key metric CO2 produced per power generated, figure the denominator to be 19,339,640 megawatt hours. Their total revenue for 2020 from electricity related activities was $7,561,877,800, with 27.60% coming from wholesale electricity sales and 68.97% from retail sales to end users (1).
The company generates a total of 23,767,774.34 megawatt hours from the burning of coal, which is the 21st most out of 3510 electric providers in the United States (2). They must be counting coal use by others on the wholesale electricity market from whom they buy electricity to pass on. DTE Energy’s electricity production plants produce 3,220,046.81 megawatt hours from the use of natural gas. DTE Energy produces 92.60% of their total electricity production from non-renewable fuels. The total electricity generated from non-renewable sources is 37,309,896.28 megawatt hours, which is 30th highest out of 3510 providers in the country. DTE Energy generates 2,434,632 megawatt hours of electricity (or 6.04% of their total electricity generation) from wind turbines. Their biggest source is coal, accounting for 58.99% of fuel used, then comes nuclear (!) at 23.25%, natural gas at 23.25, wind 7.99%, other 6.04%.
DTE remains heavily involved in coal processing (3). This portion of the company’s history has been purged from their website, and their mines in Appalachia, which account for DTE’s reach into Kentucky, are dormant. But DTE’s wholly owned subsidiary MERC (Midwest Energy Resource Company) operates 15 train sets of 123 cars each to transport the coal from mines mainly in the Powder Ridge Basin of Montana and Wyoming but also from Colorado, Utah and British Columbia to Superior Midwest Energy Terminal (SMET) on St. Louis Bay in Superior Wisconsin, on Lake Michigan. The unit trains travel the 1,000-mile route in approximately two days carrying 14,500 tons of coal. The coal is primarily for DTE’s coal fired plants but also reaches elsewhere, as stated on their web site “We have sufficient capacity to accommodate the coal transshipment needs of additional electric utilities and industrial firms throughout the Great Lakes region.”
While DTE aims to reduce its emissions to zero by 2050, they have a ways to go (4). I’ve had trouble getting raw numbers on their total CO2 output but did come across their own calculation 2,141.4 lb. CO2/MWh. Figuring 2200#/metric ton, that’s 0.973 metric tons/MWh. That’s almost twice what San Diego Gas and Electric accounts for. Guess all that coal makes a difference, and the nuclear doesn’t quite offset.
But let’s get into the reason for this post. How much does it cost to drive an electric car in Michigan, both what we pull out of our pocket and slap at Mother Earth? Of course, DTE has some plans to ease the pain. 3 all told (5). One requires a new meter on your house and in turn gives you juice for 11¢/kwh at night (11 PM – 9 AM) and 24 ¢/kwh rest of the time. That’s only for the juice that flows through your EV charger. The others charge all juice according to time of day, making it advantageous to stay up late enough to run your dishwasher (and charge your car) at 11 PM. All good deal rates are subject to suspension should a” Critical Peak Event” be called.
For our analysis, I’d hoped to pull in an electric car more suited to the modest sensibilities of us Michiganders. True, Teslas are the best-selling electric cars nationwide, but I haven’t seen many even around A square, which has enough well-heeled old hippies to fork over Elon’s tariff. I’ve been unable to acquire a list of the 10 best selling EVs in Michigan. So, I’m going completely arbitrary here. I pulled Car and Driver’s best 12 EVs (6). Some pretty fancy cars on this list. Detroit boy that I am (my mom was raised in Detroit, my adoptive dad put in 31 years with Fisher Body, as did I for 4 college summers) I picked the Chevy Bolt, which sold 24,803 units in 2021, despite supply problems that limited inventory. It’s a pretty and sexy car, if pretty compact. Although Josh Tavel was titular chief engineer for the original Chevy Volt, its predecessor, Bob Lutz, legendary engineer and GM Vice Chairman then, stood solidly behind the project (7), even though he had called global warming a “total crock of sh**” (8), praising the product as a “magnificent piece of engineering”. When the car was in concept stage, he pushed for a full electric vehicle, but was overruled by GM’s president John Laukner, who thought that by having a gas engine to charge the lithium battery, “people would not be on a tether” (9). This more than doubled the complexity of the project and engineers had to design systems both for the internal combustion engine and the electric motor, plus the means by which they would interact. Toyota managed this with the Prius in 1997, releasing it on the US market in 2001. Lutz, in an interview several years after he retired from GM, offered that he thought the Volt should have been a pickup truck (10).
So, the power used for charging is 11.5 kw applied for 7 hours, or 80.5 kwh. That gets you 247 miles, or 3.07 mi/kwh. With DTE charging an average of 17.86¢/kwh, you’ll be paying 5.82¢/mile. Could be less if you’ve got one of those fancy plans. With 0.973 metric tons CO2/MWh, each fill-up generates 0.0841 tons/fill-up. Taking 40 fill-ups to get you 10,000 miles, that’s about 3.9 metric tons/year.
Let’s bring those Teslas into a Michigan environment for comparison
While I didn’t mean to go all “Car-and-Driver” with this, it’s only fair I show the competitors I’m writing about the two Teslas.
Here’s the luxurious top-of-the-line S model:
And here’s the more modest Y model my friend Ken owns:
Since you seldom base your car purchase on the stat sheet. I’m sure you’ll agree, both have plenty of “curb appeal”. Let me tell you, it gets even better up close.
Let’s bring back in our Tesla Y for some comparisons using Michigan numbers (15). Recall that fill-up takes 8 hr. 15 minutes, pushing 11 kw. That’s 90.75 kw-h/fill-up. Figuring 303 miles/charge, that’s 3.33 mi/kw-h. At Michigan prices, that’s 5.3¢/mile. With those 33 fill-ups per year to reach 10,000 miles, the CO2 belch comes to 2.91 metric tons/year. The S has a slightly bigger battery. But also is a slightly heavier car, so numbers are similar. I don’t think you fork over the extra $40K to save 0.6¢/mile. Those pennies do add up. If you drive 1,044,386 miles, you’d make up the difference. That’s a lotta charges.
If you like your car stats all in a row, here ya go:
Transmission of electricity over power lines is not 100% efficient. DTE reports that energy lost through electricity transmission as 4.18% of their electricity production total. I was going to factor this in just for yucks, but you can just bump up the CO2 and cost numbers accordingly.
It’s just not electric cars coming, but trucks and busses too. Elon Musk has put out the sexiest, sleekest semi I’ve ever seen (16).
But with that 500-mile range, that poor trucker driving it will have to down a lotta cups of coffee while he waits for his rig to recharge. You can reserve one for a mere $20K (17), paying the remaining $130K or so upon delivery sometime next year. Thanks to the “Inflation Reduction Act of 2022”, Uncle will knock $40K off that (18). You can get an almost new 2022 diesel Peterbilt for $160-230K. Watch 8 and a half minutes of Tesla truck porn here (19). Not all those big EVs are Teslas, and sometimes the electrons just don’t provide the needed oomph (20).
New owners of electric cars can expect a few idiosyncrasies that weren’t there with their trust gas-guzzlers. The biggest of course concerns the juice: getting it, getting enough of it, what to do when it runs out, and realizing what it really came from. I’ll cover all that a little later, as those concerns confront every driver. Of the less common happenings, the most common is repair. Even EVs require maintenance, tho’ much less than a traditional car with more moving parts and fluids to be kept going and flowing. Although regular EV maintenance is touted as less expensive than that for cars with internal combustion engines (ICE) (21), the reality is somewhat different (22). The mechanic adept with the internal combustion engine must completely retrain to work on EVs, so just finding someone to fix your car might be a challenge. Collision repairs are more costly, and the heavier battery laden EVs collide with greater impact. EV electronics are more complex than in ICE cars, hence more expensive to repair. And God forbid if you have to replace the battery (23). Repair shops must extensively retool to serve EV owners, and need to recoup those costs somewhere. And it can’t help that the after purchase service for Teslas not only sucks be seems malignant (24).
An electric car is basically a rolling computer. Engineers at Tesla especially, but also other EV makers, are fond of frequent upgrades so the owner is constantly faced with new bells and whistles to master. The computer display that replaces the dashboard consumes a wide swath of the driver’s field of view. I thought you were supposed to keep your eyes off the electronic devices while driving! And, like any computer, EVs can he hacked (25). Of course, computer communications go two ways. Mr. Musk keeps a close eye on your driving in turn for offering you his own insurance, far cheaper than conventional insurance provided you drive like Elon wants you to (26).
There have always been car fires. Gasoline burns, of course. But boy do those lithium batteries burn! Everybody likes hot cars, and Jags used to be near the top of the list, but this might not be how to go about it (27). Here’s a measured and detailed article on the whole EV flambé problem (28). Yes, it’s real (but gas guzzlers catch fire too), has a known basis from those darned lithium batteries, and is worse with older cars.
flames, but charging affects all drivers. There aren’t enough charging stations, and at 30¢-60¢/kW-h public charging costs 3 to 5 times more than home charging. Even the more expensive level 3 chargers take way longer to “fill up” than the time you used to spend at the pump. Some writers see this problem as the biggest hurdle to wider demand for EVs (29). Although in reality, it’s the number, not performance, of charging stations that really matters. If enough drivers convert to make half of all vehicles on the road electric by 2030, 30 million more charging ports will need to be built – 478 per day – a venture that will cost upwards of $35 billion (30). Right now, the country has over 128,000 public EV charging outlets and at least 4,500 private charging stations – in comparison with about 150,000 gas stations. It is estimated that the new units will be mostly private 48 million versus 1.2 million public. An attraction of private chargers is that electricity bought at public chargers is much more expensive, as noted above. Where all that juice will come from remains an unsettled issue. Finally, those who want to take their EVs on the great American road will find that freedom shackled by charging issues (31,32).
Despite the inconvenience, negligible net effect on the environment, plus safety issues, you still want one of these coal burners? Will you be able to afford one? They cost way more than a gas car to make, and prices are climbing rapidly (33). Many little companies are jumping into the fray to make EVs, seeing rising demand (34). While increased competition should mean falling prices, the trend is in the other direction as battery prices skyrocket. In response Uncle ($7500) (35) and others (e.g., up to $7000 in California, just not on Teslas) (36) have jumped in with tax incentives and rebates for buyers. As most buyers of EVs are affluent, these programs amount to yet another of those “tax breaks for the rich” one side always rails against. Those on the lower economic rungs are screwed if they want to virtue signal, when all they can really afford is a used Civic. California rolled out a program aiming to help these people into a nice EV, but it’s been a horrible mess, with long wait lists and some local programs having to shut down, some running out of funds as early as April (37). Once again, California shows the nation the way. Come 2035, you won’t be able to buy a new gas guzzler in the Golden State (38).hhyub
With much of the demand for EVs driven by a concern for the environment, it’s worthwhile to examine the impact of making and driving these vehicles. I think I’ve already made the point that EVs generate plenty of CO2. It’s just done at the generating plant and not the tailpipe. Just as you gotta pull stuff out of the ground to run a gas guzzler, you gotta pull several kinds of stuff out of the ground to keep an EV going. Digging for the lithium to stock all those batteries is very dirty business, at least as bad for the environment as drilling for and burning hydrocarbons (39). But it happens halfway around the world, so who cares? Then ya need that cobalt, and nickel, too. Ya don’t pick those up by the side of the road. And who sits on most of the world’s stuff? Why, our good friends the ChiComs. Then of course all batteries go dead, and lithium units are no exception. Ya know how you’re told to take care how you toss your flashlight batteries? Well, it’s Godzilla versus gecko talking about Li++ batts (40). A little bit can be recycled, but they take up huge amount of space in landfills, leech toxic compounds, and never lose the chance to catch fire. And as we must never lose sight of the human angle, where are those mobs of angry bipolars, holding signs “Hands off my lithium!”?
As California continues its manic dash to an all-electric future, it behooves us to take a close look at what’s going on out there now (41, 42). Even the king of EVs, Mr. Musk, cautions that we not transition from oil and gas too quickly, as we risk rending the very fabric of civilization (43). He’s even calling for an increase in oil and gas production to make up for Russian shortfalls poised to plunge Europe into a frigid winter. The recent California heat wave has taxed their fragile power grid so severely that EV owners have been asked to back off from all that charging, although it’s still o.k. to juice up if that’s your only way to bug out (44). Seems those EVs fight global warming best when parked in the driveway, a symbol of the owner’s commitment. What’s that we call it when something is offered to a cause? An oblation? And if you still have some juice in that parked EV, it can come in handy for other things (45). Unfortunately, an appreciation of irony is not deeply embedded in the typical Californian’s soul, particularly the self-righteous EV drivers. More than 15 years ago, Trey Parker and Matt Stone at South Park pointed out the insufferable smugness of Prius drivers (46). Can you imagine how much worse todays’ EV drivers must be? Hey, I’m savin’ the f*ckn’ planet, man! Few Californians would wish to be in West Virginia, but at least there you can get come coal miners to push you to the next charging station when you run out of juice (47).
California has the reputation as the birthplace of trends that eventually sweep the country. Some, like their Governor Reagan, turn out pretty well. Could the chaos currently sweeping the Golden State turn into a lesson that might bring sanity to the rest of us who may not possess it already (48)? There are about 2-3 million electric cars in California, which their grid can’t support in a time of mild crisis. Should their 2035 mandate play out, there will be at least 10 times as many electric cars. Is this even, in one of the favored words of the left, “sustainable”? Or might it be time to take a deep breath and ask where all this madness is going? Whether the rest of the country should follow California’s suicide pact energy policy is highly debatable, even if Michigan’s previous Gov. Bimbo, currently drawing a government check as Energy Secretary, kinda likes it. It’s been said that our Constitution is not a suicide pact. Can we say the same about the fervor to mitigate “climate change”? Stay tuned, and fill ‘er up!
40. Harper, G., Sommerville, R., Kendrick, E. et al. Recycling lithium-ion batteries from electric vehicles. Nature 575, 75–86 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1682-5.
Among the items awaiting me in my mailbox upon returning from Phuket was the KingSize catalogue my USPS daily digest warned me about a couple days ago. I thought it might be a joke but there it was, in all its scarlet and gray glory.
Was KingSize trying to shed the state of Michigan? I’ve been a loyal KingSize customer since my gangly teen years when no one else could fit me, except at great expense, now still buying stuff from them like loose pants of all weights that are long enough. As Americans have expanded, so have sources for big and tall stuff, but I keep going back to the originals. So why did they do this to me? I’m not one to complain to corporate, but somebody had to hear about this. Hard to do on their web page, where your choices are an 800 number or an e-mail with a little box that won’t even take 100 words. Fortunately, I found https://kingsize.pissedconsumer.com/customer-service.html, which gave their their corporate address in El Paso. King Size is part of a 14 company conglomerate, so who knows who will read what I send. See below what I sent their way.
KingSize used to be based in Indianapolis. Maybe it they stayed there they’d have retained their BigTen sensibilities enough to know what that cover would do to a big chunk of their base. Now they’re based in Texas, which means they’re Southern. My Dixie-chick girlfriend Donna, now living in South Carolina, tells me they have a phrase for just such misguided behavior: “Bless their hearts”.
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