| Back to main menu? | Back to Index of Entries? |
|
Is everyone is the media incompetent, or don't they do reporting any more?
| A newspaper's job was, once, to report the facts, even against entrenched interests; to strive to at least say the truth, as best it could be determined, no matter the liars and thieves it discomfited. Today's tamed papers, such as the Detroit Free Press and L.A. Times, seem unable, or perhaps just unwilling, to speak the truth about the single most important issue of our time. That would be the complex of problems grouped around energy policy , oil use, climate change, health issues concerned with oil burning, oil wars, energy crisis, etc., which could be called the "ENERGY ISSUE". Or, more painfully, the "problem of oil". Whatever you call it, it transcends agencies, peoples, continents, disciplines. It's divided up, and segmented: for example, California has different agencies dealing with auto pollution and with the pollution from the refineries which would not be in existence if not for the need for oil. A medieval adage was, "will the end, will the means", meaning that if you want gas, you agree to refineries...big navy, foreign oil wars, invading Afgan, Iraq and Iran, controlling the middle east. And oil spills, pollution from tankers and diesel trucks hauling oil, oil droplets on the road, oil money altering politics, oil subsidies. And refinery flaring, water use, electric consumption, and coke-pile pollution. Auto oil changes, auto tune-up and engine repair industries, needed for running oil-burning cars. Oh, and auto exhaust, which contains "SOx and NOx", which don't sound too bad, not as bad as what they really are, sulfurous and nitrous acids, which, in the presence of sunlight and Ozone, are oxidized into nitric and sulfuric acid. And Carbon Monoxide, each molecule of which complexes with hemoglobin in the blood, destroying one red blood cell's ability to carry Oxygen, killing the body from the inside, as tissues are starved for Oxygen, particularly during strenuous exercise. And some of the additives put in gasoline, which come right out -- benzene, toluene, volatile organic chemicals which are needed for higher octane ratings - which make a petro-car drive a little less roughly. All these chemicals are released all around those who live in cities, like as if a bazillion heavy cigg and cigar butt-suckers were hacking away all around you, day and night, befouling the air you had to breathe. Well might one wonder why the papers don't seem to be able to go there. What passes for "energy policy" seems to be written by Dick Cheney. Drill more, and tax less. What you'd expect from a warrior who ducked military service, and a hunter who shoots clipped quail on a quail farm, but hits a fellow "hunter". Walrus, polar bears, etc., are unable to live in the Arctic and, even for those who don't care much about anything but themselves, skiing is going to get lousy and there are all kinds of tropical diseases and third-world critters and bugs coming in as our former trees and bugs move north. Meanwhile, petroleum use is RISIING. Smog is coming back. Look at the mountains, while you can't feel the micro-particles that are in your lung, you can wipe them off surfaces they land on. While cardboard overfunded "regulators" like the CARB refuse to consider, much less confront, the problem of gasoline burning in the midst of people, and the refinery emissions made necessary by that burning, there is NOT ONE plug-in highway-capable car for sale out of the 16,000,000 or so sold each year just in the USA. Not one. Thanks to dense Naderesque baroque big-car pseudo-safety requirements, everyone is encouraged to drive around in a big tank, a giant "Silverado", "Tundra" or "Sienna', with names that remind you of tract houses built on dead animals, with street names like "Deer Run" or "Clear Lake", "Quail Canyone', "Heron Pointe" or "Coyote Creek". Instead, it should be named: filled-in Silverado Canyon, melted Tundra, burnt Sienna, dead Deer Run, once- Clear Lake, fried Quail Canyon, Coyotes go-anywhere-else-but this Creek. To be honest, you won't find deer in that housing tract, and you won't help the Arctic by driving a Tundra. Now let's think about how we could move, if the importance of this issue were trumpeted by a courageous press, to solar rooftop power and EVs. Faint arguments against it hinge on cost, or the fact that not everyone has a rooftop, or that some people drive 500 miles per day. But no one examines and refutes these emotional gestalts, which a journalist can easily do. And no one refutes GM and Chevron, who just this week have paid for their message on "Living with Ed" and about a ten-page spread in the New Yorker magazine. Which magazine ironically has recently moderated its stance against the war in Iran. Or Iraq, rather. GM claims it can't build the Volt, because it can't use the existing NiMH batteries that power the Toyota RAV4-EV over 120 miles per charge without gasoiine. It's interesting, and instructive, to read and listen to the convoluted "reasoning" that GM's paid minions use to advance this thesis. It's like CARB's contradictory claim that EVs were "too expensive", but then CARB gave 40 times the credit to fuel cells becuase they were hugely more expensive than EVs. Similarly, GM seems to think it can just plain lie and get away with it. And no one in the insipid press like the L.A. Times dares point it out. Some GM backers claim that the Volt would have to charge and recharge "more", but seem to equivocate based on the PRIUS batteries vs. a RAV4-EV battery. Since people mosly only know about the Prius, they may get away with this fantasy. They "cycle more", GM claims...(than the Prius)...but GM does not consider the cycling of the RAV4-EV. And some say "...the NiMH can do 120 miles, but a battery pack a third the weight of that will be too weak to do 40 miles...". Hmmm. And some believe? So a PHEV120 is easier to build than a PHEV40? Interesting theory. There are many more convenient lies, misdirection and footwork in the GM toolchest, but no one in the FREEP points them out. They are just left as standing lies, and, with GM now putting PR groups, hot web writers, and focus groups to work, they are intending to shape the dialogue, even the terms of discourse, so that they can identify failure of the Volt, when they announce it, with the unlikely idea that that means failure of ANY EV. By identifying, in the public mind, the idea of the VOLT, with all its virtues, with the need for Lithium batteries, when and if those batteries don't pan out, it will be promoted as the failure, once and for all, of the idea of an Electric car. This is not out of character for GM. Let's look at GM's history, and cast them in the image of an oil company stooge, just for the sake of argument. First, they helped Standard Oil kill America's light rail, which will never get to the stage it was in 1940. Think of that: we will NEVER, barring a complete change in national policy, ever get back to as many rail resources as we had in 1940. Some they did through North American Lines, some they financed through third parties. So we get the image of oil companies getting GM to work for them, and GM getting third parties and shell organizations to kill light rail, once and for all. In the 1960's, they helped Nader kill a dawning demand for small, efficient high-mpg gas cars, with his inane idea that each "road warrior" had to be "kept safe" in a huge, heavy car. Naderesque regulations even now hamper and eliminate the hope for small, efficient cars. For one example, you can't legally increase the speed of a golf-cart beyond 25 mph because of "safety" requirements forced by Nader -- and with big oil and auto company money behind him. But in reality, as many NEV persons can tell you, there are bootleg kits to goose the speed and range beyond 45. Illegally. An interesting thought about what's legal (gas guzzling) and what's illegal (building a NEV into a safe, serviceable city car). In 1989, some engineers, working for a small unit of GM, rediscovered the fact that an Electric car does work, and produced, for $3M, a working prototype. Still worse for Big Oil, the insouciant head of GM drove it into the L.A. Auto show for personal ego reasons; and, worst of all, the CARB then made noises about requiring GM to produce it. Whether or not Big Oil, Chevron, ordered it or not, GM went on emergency mode, to kill that idea once and for all. They are still working on killing that idea, and look to be successful. And no brave reporter dares talk about it, much less allude to breaking the story. Iin 1994, GM bought up exclusive control of the NiMH batteries needed to take an EV more than 120 miles on a charge. Believe it or don't these also can take an EV more than 40 miles on a charge; and, as even one GM person perversely admitted, the serial plug-in hybrid is really a 40-mile EV plus a genset. Of course, as the GM engineers demonstrated, even a lead-acid EV1, on non-defective batteries, can go up to 110 miles on a charge; but no one now talks about it, and the cars that would prove it are no more. In 1996, GM used defective Delco lead-acid batteries to bring the EV1 to market, as required by CARB. Ironically, this was not for "ZEV credit", so it was for some other purpose. Perhaps, just to discredit the idea of EVs. Why not use the superior NiMH batteries? GM has no answer, just a vacuous grin. Similarly, why not use NiMH for the VOLT? GM has no answer, except vapid grin, vague concepts, and no facts. No one in the media dares say the truth, the obvious, the facts, that each Toyota RAV4-EV is, in fact, a PHEV120 (an EV that can go 120 miles on all-electric) with a small genset (possibler or actual) that could be added to generate electric for longer trips. So no one in the FREEP or TIMES dares question GM's "tower of intellectual claptrap" spouted by their so-called VOLT PR team. Tells us that this important issue will continue to be ignored, that we will continue into the chaos of uncertain climate and world-change, just to continue to enrich the oil barons. Reminds one of Mubutu Sese Seko, whose name means "one who burns and destroys and leaves twisted remains in his wake", who was infamously empowered by the CIA and the French. After looting and impoverishing the Congo for decades, he had accumulated $5B in a Swiss bank. That didn't save him from dyiing, when his turn came; and the money was largely confiscated and taken away from his slimy heirs. The Congo is still devastated and ruined. So after Big Oil and their sycophants loot and destroy the planet, how will they enjoy their poisonous fruit? Where will they enjoy it, and how will it save them and their slimy heirs? And no one can say this, no one can ask this question, in the kept, oil-soaked press. |
| Back to main menu? | Back to Index of Entries? |