Muskular Magic | James Howard Kunstler

[Tace]

Tesla Powerwall

James Howard Kunstler -- World News Trust

May 11, 2015

Elon Musk, Silicon Valley’s poster-boy genius replacement for the late Steve Jobs, rolled out his PowerWall battery last week with Star Wars style fanfare, doing his bit to promote and support the delusional thinking that grips a nation unable to escape the toils of techno-grandiosity.

The main delusion: that we can “solve” the problems of techno-industrial society with more and better technology.

The South African born-and-raised Musk is surely better known for founding Tesla Motors, maker of the snazzy all-electric car. The denizens of Silicon Valley are crazy about the Tesla. There is no greater status trinket in Northern California, where the fog of delusion cloaks the road to the future. They believe, as Musk himself often avers, that Tesla cars “don’t burn hydrocarbons.” That statement is absurd, of course, and Musk, who holds a degree in physics from Penn, must blush when he says that. After all, you have to plug it in and charge somewhere from the U.S. electric grid.

Only 6 percent of U.S. electric power comes from “clean” hydro generation. Another 20 percent is nuclear. The rest is coal (48 percent) and natural gas (21 percent) with the remaining sliver coming from “renewables” and oil. (The quote marks on “renewables” are there to remind you that they probably can’t be manufactured without the support of a fossil fuel economy). Anyway, my point is that the bulk of U.S. electricity comes from burning hydrocarbons, and then there is the nuclear part which is glossed over because the techno-geniuses and politicians of America have no idea how they are going to de-commission our aging plants, and no idea how to safely dispose of the spent fuel rod inventory simply lying around in collection pools. This stuff is capable of poisoning the entire planet and we know it.

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http://worldnewstrust.com/muskular-magic-james-howard-kunstler

[navarth]

1. An interesting read. kicking. nt

[gregcrawford]

2. While I applaud Musk's accomplishments...

... his delusions of grandeur notwithstanding, his treatment of those who work for him borders on the obscene, as exemplified by his coarse and thoughtless excoriation of an employee who failed to attend a corporate function in favor of being with his wife when their child was born.

If you demand that ANYONE put your company ahead of their family, you do not deserve that employee, or one single penny of your wealth. My estimation of Elon Musk as a human being just went down the toilet.