{"id":8040,"date":"2015-05-12T06:09:42","date_gmt":"2015-05-12T11:09:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=8040"},"modified":"2015-05-12T06:10:24","modified_gmt":"2015-05-12T11:10:24","slug":"muskular-magic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=8040","title":{"rendered":"Muskular Magic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Muskular Magic<\/a><\/h3>\n

 <\/p>\n

E<\/span>lon Musk, Silicon Valley\u2019s 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 \u201csolve\u201d the problems of techno-industrial society with more and better technology.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cdon\u2019t burn hydrocarbons.\u201d 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 US electric grid.<\/p>\n

Only 6 percent of US electric power comes from \u201cclean\u201d hydro generation. Another 20 percent is nuclear. The rest is coal (48 percent) and natural gas (21 percent) with the remaining sliver coming from \u201crenewables\u201d and oil. (The quote marks on \u201crenewables\u201d are there to remind you that they probably can\u2019t be manufactured without the support of a fossil fuel economy). Anyway, my point is that the bulk of US 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.<\/p>\n

\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Muskular Magic   Elon Musk, Silicon Valley\u2019s 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 \u201csolve\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[3930,5095,1103,5096,449,643,5098,786,5360],"class_list":["post-8040","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","tag-alternative-energy","tag-battery","tag-electricity","tag-elon-musk","tag-james-howard-kunstler","tag-power","tag-powerwall","tag-technology","tag-tesla-motors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8040","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8040"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8040\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8041,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8040\/revisions\/8041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8040"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8040"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8040"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}