The French rail operator SNCF told the California High-Speed Rail Authority that it could cut $30 billion off the projectâ(TM)s $68 billion estimated price tag. San Francisco can barely build underground light rail for the price that Tokyo pays for high-capacity subways. Los Angeles's planned subway to the sea will be a bit cheaper, but is still very expensive considering the area's lack of density.
The budgets for other types of urban public-works projects can be just as shocking. Who can forget Boston's Big Dig, the $24 billion highway boondoggle? But mass-transit networks stand to lose most from out-of-control infrastructure costs. A huge part of the problem is that agencies can't keep their private contractors in check. Starved of funds and expertise for in-house planning, officials contract out the project management and early design concepts to private companies that have little incentive to keep costs down and quality up. And even when they know better, agencies are often forced by legislation, courts and politicians to make decisions that they know aren't in the public interest.
It's the same reason we pay 1 trillion per year for our military. The same millionaires who infest congress also infest massive corporations, and their goal is to make cash and get re-elected to keep the ponzi scheme going. The latest fad answer is privatization -- despite all the evidence to the contrary -- and privately held corporations love to continue furthering that myth because it's in their own interest. There's no reason for corporate owned media to report the truth either.
The actual answer is a few millennia old:
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."
-Plato
But, per the norm, America prefers solutions that are cheap, easy, and completely inefficient if you consider anything beyond the next financial quarter. We are democratically lazy, and we pay dearly for our societal incompetence, in treasure as well as blood.
That's the government for you; An epic cluster fuck you wind up paying through the nose for. I prefer to stick with private ownership, thank you very much... it's an epic cluster fuck I wind up paying through the nose for but I have my choice on how to be screwed.
The fatal flaw of all of the libertarian nonsense is that the failure or corruption of certain governments can only be replaced with privatization. The correct answer to ineffective government is effective government. Let me provide you with a concrete example:
In Washington State, in areas where fiber is provided by the state, I can get a 100x100 connection for $59 per month. No contract. From a private entity. How is that possible?
Multiple private organizations, who have an incentive to screw each other over and no incentive to work together to cover different neighborhoods, cannot provide the best plan for modern infrastructure. Even in the face of overpriced (point given: has to be relatively non-corrupt) government costs, it's still cheaper because there is no marketing department, legal department, or endless stratification of middle managers doing fuck-all in a building somewhere. Rent-seeking necessary infrastructure services don't work well with privatization, because they have the upper hand on pricing and will stuff their organization with so much bloat it would make a bureaucrat blush. When it's a government entity, there is at least some chance of oversight and cost control. When it's privatized, the inefficiency and price hikes are all but inevitable, unless there is real competition.
In modern societies the basic physical plants are installed and run by the government and funded through equitable taxation. A similar analogy is that of the road system: multiple private roads would never work, because you couldn't depend on the pricing or the availability, depending on whatever juvenile contract disputes the private corporations were engaged in at the moment. But when those costs are socialized and the infrastructure is available to all responsible parties at a low cost, you can have true competition on common infrastructure.
Let's say I want to ship something: I have an address, provided by the state, a road provided by the state that will absolutely connect me to any other address also provided by the state. So I can choose between Fedex, DHL, UPS, or even a startup like uShip. Imagine if you had a fiber connection to your home, which would cost you less in taxes than you pay for coffee every month, which was available to Verizon, Comcast, AT&T, etc. They're going to listen to customer demands, because there's actually a chance you might switch. Right now I have no choice but to deal with Comcast's endless bullshit, because I don't have any other choices available. They happen to be the provider to my location.
So, keep the libertarian fantasy going. Dog-ear that copy of Atlas Shrugged for the nth time. When you're ready to discuss solutions, consider reality.
PS: Google, Microsoft, Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T have all gladly handed over your data to the government. Being held by private corporations didn't change a damn thing, did it?
The user experience for any of these solutions is awful, even if you pick up a dedicated USB monitor. Here's a snip from the winner of the latest MakeUseOf roundup:
Video and general usage is very laggy, though subjectively didn't feel as bad as Mini-Display. You can even draw directly into Photoshop, smoothly but albeit with a noticeable second delay between touching and having the line appear
There are portable monitors like this one that offer an actual video connection. Emulation will never work for serious usage or even watching youtube, and the existing iPad doesn't have a way to communicate other than USB or WiFi, so it's boned either way.
If Apple ever offers an iPad with a Thunderbolt connector, that's a different story.
The real winner in the device market will be the first vendor to offer a tablet that connects to a laptop through a true HD interface to become a second screen and input device. People don't want everything in one device... computer sales are down because everyone has one.
Give us a laptop -- we like keyboards. Give us an iPad like device -- something to lend to a visitor or a kid, or to haul on to the couch, or for casual gaming. When we plug one into the other, pop up the hard drives so we can move data back and forth, or even use the free space on the tablet as an extra bit of scratch space. Allow the tablet to become a Cintiq-like input device for the laptop, and make sure the laptop has an additional video out for a larger 4k-ish screen.
But with all of the non-Apple vendors stuck with whatever horrible idea Ballmer's team of dunces "imagineers," we'll probably end up with a lot of stupid and unusable convertibles like this Lenovo thing.
Recently I was forced to work with Windows Server 2012. And you know, I never thought I'd say this, but I miss the simple stupidity of the Microsoft Bob era in Redmond. At least Bill Gates was smart enough to not touch servers with such an infantile interface.
"Oh, the database connection seems to be down, and you need to check running processes? We've removed the Start Button to speed up the process. Simply tilt the device to the right, swipe left, and choose the Unhappy Face. Then cycle through the server managers and click the undulating cube -- the red one, not the chartreuse (duh). Then hope and pray we keep the same method in Smiley Server 2015."
"Prior to that, the US was myopic to the extreme, and really appeared to only want to mind its own business, as far as excessive military, foreign intervention, etc."
In light of statements such as:
"We make no hypocritical pretense of being interested in the Philippines solely on account of others. While we regard the welfare of these people as a sacred trust, we regard the welfare of the American people first. We see our duty to ourselves as well as to others. We believe in trade expansion."
--Senator Henry Cabot Lodge
"Whether we like it or not, we most go on slaughtering the natives in English fashion, and taking what muddy glory lies in wholesale killing til they have learned to respect our arms. The more difficult task of getting them to respect our intentions will follow. The struggle must continue until the misguided creatures there shall have eyes bathed in enough blood to cause their vision to be cleared, but that those whom they are now holding as enemies have no purpose toward them expect to consecrate to liberty and to open for them a way to happiness."
--Salt Lake City Tribune
"The peaceful conquest of Mexico was a perfectly legitimate form of expansion. We could fill all of the tropical countries with consular agents, men trained to stand for good order and to work for American interests, for less than it costs to subdue a single tropical island."
--David Starr Jordan, The Control Of the Tropics, 1890
"Finally, it should be the earnest wish and paramount aim of the military administration to win the confidence, respect, and affection of the inhabitants of the Philippines by assuring them in every possible way that full measure of individual rights and liberties which is the heritage of free peoples, and by proving to them that the mission of the United States is one of Benevolent Assimilation substituting the mild sway of justice and right for arbitrary rule."
"General Bradley said that we must draw the line somewhere. The President stated he agreed on that. General Bradley said that Russia is not yet ready for war. The Korean situation offered as good an occasion for action in drawing the line as anywhere else."
Truman and Generals, Blair House, June 25th, 1950
nor did it start the Vietnam War
"In 1961, Kennedy agreed that America should finance an increase in the size of the South Vietnamese Army from 150,000 to 170,000. He also agreed that an extra 1000 US military advisors should be sent to South Vietnam to help train the South Vietnamese Army. Both of these decisions were not made public as they broke the agreements made at the 1954 Geneva Agreement."
I can only conclude that the figures for the civil wars in Cambodia and Laos were pulled from his ass
Civilian deaths attributed to aggressor nations are not based solely on direct fire, but the direct consequences of the destruction of infrastructure. When you destroy roads, hospitals, bridges, and kill doctors, everyone who dies as a result of your actions is your responsibility and their blood is still on your hands.
That also applies to Iraq, which had not seen sectarian violence in decades until the United States destroyed the Iraqi government and much of the country in the process. In 2002 there were probably zero Gulf-allied Al Qaeda terrorists, because Saddam Hussain hated the Saudis as much as he hated the Americans (if not more), and he knew his former benefactors in the United States would use any excuse to invade in an attempt to reclaim control of Iraqi oil and to establish another base in their ongoing proxy war with Iran.
For Iraq, the vast majority of killings is Muslims slaughtering other Muslims.
And here I thought bigotry was passe in 2013.
The Wikipedia article you cite gives a long list, but fails to prove that the US was directly responsible for most of the regime changes that actually occured.
The article is entitled "Covert United States foreign regime change actions." What are you claiming it is discussing instead of covert foreign regime change actions executed by the United States? Why are you denying the validity of US government provided declassified information?
Daemonik is an apologist for American imperialism. All empires claim self defense or provocation for their wars of choice.
I'm not sure why you want to pretend that the United States changed overnight, but you are simply misinformed. But let me allow you the opportunity to support your claim:
From 1915 to 1941, the United States had occupied or temporarily invaded these nations, often during an election for "police" work. Please explain how these invasions were provoked, by country, if you don't mind:
China Panama El Salvador Cuba Mexico Haiti Dominican Republic Honduras Yugoslavia Guatemala Turkey
But again, there isn't that much militarization in today's world. There are a number of states and super-states that could easily eclipse the US's current military, if they were to put significant effort into it.
That is sheer desperation. Sure, if you construct a fantasy world in which other nations have more military power than the United States, you would have a point. But let's stick to reality instead of your imagination:
The US Military has bases in 63 countries. Brand new military bases have been built since September 11, 2001 in seven countries.
In total, there are 255,065 US military personnel deployed Worldwide.
These facilities include a total of 845,441 different buildings and equipments. The underlying land surface is of the order of 30 million acres. According to Gelman, who examined 2005 official Pentagon data, the US is thought to own a total of 737 bases in foreign lands. Adding to the bases inside U.S. territory, the total land area occupied by US military bases domestically within the US and internationally is of the order of 2,202,735 hectares, which makes the Pentagon one of the largest landowners worldwide.
No other military in world history has been so widely deployed as that of the United States. Troop deployments are overwhelmingly supportive of host countries, and warm relations between soldiers and local populations are the norm. However, the first priority in deployment strategy is not a particular foreign government's desire to keep a certain number of American troops in its country, but the American need to align its forces against contemporary and future threats. Better data about the deployment levels of American forces will hopefully contribute to an understanding of the consequences of past strategies and the development of future strategies.
(Of course I would disagree with the Heritage Foundation about the local populace having "warm relations" with occupying forces, but that's just because I don't work at the Heritage Foundation.)
If you know of another nation that comes close to the size, scope, or ambition of the current US military apparatus, please feel free to provide similar statistics. And a source, of course.
"God created war so that Americans would learn geography." -- Mark Twain
and has organized, arranged financing, and supplied weapons and intelligence for the invasions and/or coup d'etats of:
Iran Afghanistan Haiti Chile Venezuela Cuba Panama Columbia Nicaragua El Salvador Argentina Ecuador the Philippines Syria Iraq Libya Egypt
and has supported the dictorships of:
Trujillo Papa Doc Mubarak Saddam Hussein The Shah of Iran the Assad Regime Gaddafi Pinochet Noriega The House of Saud Suharto Batista Marcos Al Khalifa
Which of those points do you dispute? You understand that all of that information is declassified or not denied and provided by the US government, don't you? What incentive would they have to lie or produce falsified historical documents of that nature?
The reason you don't want to address any of the basic facts is because it would difficult to construct the argument you want to make when those facts are known.
The quote "merely states" that there are "over 328,000 service members and 38,000 civilian [employees]... stretching from California to India... [encompassing] over half of the Earth's surface and well over half of its population." Does China, Russia, Iran, or anyone else have that presence outside of their own borders? (I believe there are about 120k outside of US borders, since that quote counts assets on the US Pacific coast.)
Additionally, the United States have over 700 military bases all over the world, and has more aircraft carriers, fighter jets, nuclear warheads, tanks, and destroyer class vessels than all other nations combined. Our yearly military spending is equal to the rest of the world put together. We also regularly use these weapons to invade other nations in wars of choice, and regularly threaten destruction of any government that does not obey our national interest.
If that's not an empire, I am not sure how to define one.
Relating facts is only hateful to a person if they aren't capable of coping with reality. If I have said something you think is inaccurate, then explain why. Otherwise you're saying the equivalent of "Is not!" and attempting to hide your reptilian response to contradictory information of your biases in weak assertions.
The ostrich response is predictable and tiresome.
The wars in Korea and Indochina were extremely deadly. While estimates of Korean War deaths are mainly guesswork, the three-year conflict is widely believed to have taken 3 million lives, about half of them civilians. The sizable civilian toll was partly due to the fact that the country's population is among the world's densest and the war's front lines were often moving.
The war in Vietnam and the spillover conflicts in Laos and Cambodia were even more lethal. These numbers are also hard to pin down, although by several scholarly estimates, Vietnamese military and civilian deaths ranged from 1.5 million to 3.8 million, with the U.S.-led campaign in Cambodia resulting in 600,000 to 800,000 deaths, and Laotian war mortality estimated at about 1 million.
Despite the fact that contemporary weapons are vastly more precise, Iraq war casualties, which are also hard to quantify, have reached several hundred thousand. In mid-2006, two household surveys -- the most scientific means of calculating -- found 400,000 to 650,000 deaths, and there has been a lot of killing since then.
If you like, I can provide you with direction so you can count the number of dead in the wars we have helped arrange and finance. A good example is the Iran-Iraq War of 1980, which was directed by the US to punish Iran for overthrowing our puppet government, as well as our proxy war with Russia in the same timespan.
Right now people are dying in Syria where the CIA is arming Gulf Arab Mujahideen -- mostly affiliated with Al Qaeda -- to fight a losing battle against the Assad regime in our continuing proxy war against Iran. The US backed side is losing badly, and I suspect that's why the United States and the EU are scrambling to come up with a final settlement on the Palestinian matter. If Hezbollah defeats the American backed forced in Syria, and we end up with a few hundred thousand militants with not much to do right next door to Israel, the situation could deteriorate almost instantly.
We are not talking about the nature of man, or any of the pathetic excuses that have been made for every empire before ours that you have parroted so faithfully. We are talking about the actions of the United States, who currently lead the world for the last fifty years in the categories of:
Dead foreign civilians: 7-10 million Coups d'etats in foreign nations: 30+ Military bases: 700+ Military expenditure: more than the rest of the world combined, every year, for 50 years
"There are instruments so dangerous to the rights of the nation and which place them so totally at the mercy of their governors that those governors, whether legislative or executive, should be restrained from keeping such instruments on foot but in well-defined cases. Such an instrument is a standing army."
--Thomas Jefferson
The standing army has not only been formed, but it has been trained and placed in every police department in the United States, and in almost every country in the world. Those military forces have been invading homes and destroying the lives of US citizens with impunity. (Presumably you would care about your fellow citizens, but perhaps that's an unfair assumption.)
Their mistakes destroy lives literally with acts of horrific violence and in all other senses after the trauma is over, and people are told to just deal with the fact that armed men can enter a private residence without warning for any reason the police care to make up. Their mere existence destroys the fabric of our society by normalizing violence and perpetuating corporal punishment as the solution to all problems, just as they do when we send in the boys to conquer whatever country we're afraid of this week.
And you still don't understand the connection, do you?
What right does the United States have to invade a nation for thinking about allying with someone else, or for refusing to submit to our trade demands?
Please be sure your argument would also justify other nations invading the United States.
As for your "ding":
In March 1906 several hundred Filipino Muslims ascended an extinct volcano known as Bud Dajo on the Island of Jolo. There in the circular crater of the dormant cone the Moro band dug in in defiance of the American military colonial regime. Their act of resistance was prompted primarily by the much hated cedula tax and rumors that the U.S. military intended to eradicate Islam from the Islands. Despite repeated pleas for surrender from American officials and fellow Muslims, the rebels refused. The U.S. military responded with a full-fledged assault that was intense, chaotic, and bloody. Moro warriors were cut down by krags and machine guns while women and children in men's clothing led charges against American artillery positions and fought hand to hand with American troops. In the end over 600 Filipino Muslims lay dead, many of those women and children.
When news of the massacre spread throughout the colony and into the United States, military officials were condemned as savage murderers of women and children. The massacre at Bud Dajo was heralded by anti-imperialists as the quintessential example of raw American imperial ambitions in the Philippines. Though press coverage of the ordeal was intense, it shortly fell from the news pages in favor other domestic political issues. To this day, however, the events at Bud Dajo stand as a critical symbol of American colonial rule in the Philippines' Muslim South.
Are you proud of moments like that? Is there a shred of human empathy in that carcass of meat you pilot around?
This statement is so ignorant of American history that I have to start from its beginning.
First of all, the United States is a land of conquered nations and foreign intervention. There were only 13 states in the beginning. We committed genocide to conquer the midwest and the west, invaded Mexico and took their land (where do you think the name for New Mexico came from?) and we have been invading neighbors consistently and for the sole purpose of directing their internal affairs since the 1820s. The only thing that stopped our numerous invasions of foreign lands was the Civil War.
Here is a list:
1915 invasion of Haiti by the United States 1900 invasion of China by the Eight-Nation Alliance (including the United States) 1898 invasion of the Philippines by the United States 1898 invasion of Puerto Rico by the United States 1898 invasion of Spanish Cuba by the United States 1893 invasion of Hawaii by the United States 1846 invasion of Mexico by United States 1813 invasion of Canada by United States 1812 invasions of Canada by United States 1805 invasion of Tripoli by United States and mercenaries
Please read just a bit on the topic before you make misleading comments like this. America learned everything from it's ancestor, Great Britain. We've been invading, conquering, taking, and killing since our inception. This whole ridiculous and infantile notion of America's Exceptionalism, even in our imagined good old days, is pure bullshit. The real difference back in those days was whether the United States should stop at our "natural" borders, which included all of North America, the Caribbean (including Cuba), and Hawaii, or if our "manifest destiny" was to continue marching west until we conquered the entire world.
I know it's difficult to see from inside of the news you're exposed to, but the truth remains: we are the empire.
For the past 12 months I have had the great honor to lead over 328,000 service members and 38,000 civilian employees along with all of their families. Our area of responsibility is diverse and complex. Stretching from California to India, the Indo-Asia-Pacific encompasses over half of the Earth's surface and well over half of its population.
This region is culturally, socially, economically, and geo-politically diverse. The nations of the Indo-Asia-Pacific include: five of our nation's seven treaty allies; three of the largest and seven of the ten smallest economies; the most populous nations in the world, including the largest Muslim-majority nation; the largest democracy; and the world's smallest republic.
The Indo-Asia-Pacific is the engine that drives the global economy. The "open and accessible" sea lanes throughout the Indo-Asia-Pacific annually enjoy over 8 trillion dollars in bilateral trade with one-third of the world's bulk cargo and two-thirds of its oil shipments sailing to or from nine of the world's ten largest economic ports.
By any meaningful measure, the Indo-Asia-Pacific is also the world's most militarized region with seven of the ten largest standing militaries, the world's largest and most sophisticated navies, and five of the world's declared nuclear armed nations.
When taken together all of these aspects represent a region with a unique strategic complexity and a wide, diverse group of challenges that can significantly stress the security environment.
A new transportation system that would cost billions to build, would be completely uneconomical for patrons to use, and has a high risk of death with even the slightest malfunction at 4,000 MPH
This sounds like someone complaining about the airplane in 1905. Part of progress is failure, and since we just dropped three to five trillion dollars on the Iraq War, let's hear a little bit less how expensive government subsidies for science are.
If we had spent just one third of what we wasted in Iraq on something like a national rail transportation, we could have created hundreds of thousands of jobs that trained people in high-level construction and engineering, strengthened our air transportation system by focusing on longer haul routes and going to fewer but larger planes (which are safer and more fuel efficient), and perhaps even reintroduced more freight service to more areas to reduce long-haul trucking, which reduces smog, traffic, and wear on our bridge infrastructure.
Besides, if Elon Musk were the new Steve Jobs, he'd be fussing over pixels on a touch device. We already have plenty of people doing that. I'm ready for some actual innovation, thanks.
Please pay no attention to the news that we are sending pretty much everything you type directly to the NSA in exchange for buckets of cash and favors. Especially you, China! Losing our entire strategy for southeast Asia would probably hurt the stock price. Hah! If those idiots knew!
Also, for those of you who like Windows 8 except for the forced UI change, you're shit out of luck. It's a thing I've said is good, therefore it is good, and the millions of customers desperately fleeing the platform have no effect on how I view that decision. Because I'm a really smart business guy. Look, I'm in a suit and tie!
Why? How many people do you think are going to care enough to switch to another chat client? Chances are if they're using Skype in the first place, they don't care about that kind of thing.
Once there is solid evidence that the NSA has worked with US Government agencies to install and exploit backdoors, and this looks like pretty good evidence, there is no direction but down. It's common knowledge that the NSA is very open and communicative with the corporate sector.
If you're a foreign corporation out of Taiwan or Brazil or Wherever, passing even day-to-day information using Microsoft products becomes risky. How can you be sure that your data isn't getting dumped into some NSA system and then made available to co-conspirators?
The NSA isn't getting this access for free. If they're coercing corporations like Yahoo to comply with broad destruction of civil liberties, some of those corporations have sold out and traded for the stolen R&D of other companies, or huge tax breaks. That's where the real story is, and one we probably won't ever get to read.
In any case, if you're a foreign corporation or government, using ANY Microsoft product just become a giant liability. Given that was already practically the case after Stuxnet, but now you'd have to be a complete fool to trust Microsoft with any of your data and expect it to remain private.
Wow, you really are devestatingly retarded, are you not?
How's that bigotry working out for you? I wouldn't be offended to be considered part of that community, but that's just because I'm a decent human being.
I just pointed out the very obvious fact that solar uses rare-earth minerals, and that the mining for rare-earth minerals is devestating for the areas where it happens
Why? If you're trying to argue against the merits of solar power, why bring up the fact that it's "devastating" for the environment when it's the best option we currently have? And if you aren't trying to argue against solar power, why bring up irrelevant points in the first place?
The misunderstanding is all yours, created entirely using your own imagination.
There are a couple of possibilities here: either you are horrible at basic reasoning, or you were trying to marginalize solar power due to your own biases and you got caught telling lies. At this point I don't care if it's malice or stupidity, because either way you are wrong.
Did you point out anywhere in the above where I had told a lie? What specifically have I said that was not true?
Earlier you wrote:
When it comes to absolute pollution, Solar... has a devestating impact on the environment... I have never said that solar panels will not reduce CO2 emissions, I said that producing them creates a lot of pollution.
If solar has a "devastating impact" on the environment by introducing "a lot of pollution," and you agree that solar pollutes less than fossil fuels, explain why you singled out solar power for criticism.
If you can admit that fossil fuels are worse for the environment in every measurable way when compared to solar and EVs, then we can bury the hatchet on this misunderstanding.
Please point to a single lie. Just one. All my numbers are from IPCC and similar sources. Where is the lie? Again, from what I have actually said, not from what the voices in your head says.
You said earlier:
Do not forget that renewables are extreme polluters though. The most common, wind and solar, uses rare-earth minerals which are strip-mined in China in a process that devestates city after city, river after river and mile after square mile of fertile land. When it comes to absolute pollution, Solar (for example) has a devestating impact on the environment.
And later:
Goodnes. I wish you'd try to read what I actually said rather than what the little green dude on your shoulder is whispering in your ear (you forgot your meds again btw). I have never said that solar panels will not reduce CO2 emissions, I said that producing them creates a lot of pollution. Remember, Pollution and CO2 are not the same thing. Pollution is not CO2 - in this case I was talking about the process of mining rare-earth minerals which is extremely polluting, and believe it or not, CO2 is not, never has been, and never will be a pollutant. Again, please respond to what I actually write, not the voices in your head and what they are trying to tell you I am writing.
From the article I linked to, but you didn't read:
One of the most promising photovoltaic technologies is based on cadmium telluride, but cadmium is one of the worst heavy metals. Still, if we compare direct emissions from production of cadmium telluride cells with coal power plants, toxic emissions would up 300 times lower," said researcher Vasilis Fthenakis, an environmental engineer at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y.
In fact, most of their dirty side derived from the indirect emissions of the coal-burning power plants or other fossil fuels used to generate the electricity for PV manufacturing facilities.
Norway thinks it is taking big steps against CO2 emissions. The steps are purely symbolic of course. Buying quota and taxing gas guzzlers. Moronic both.
Tonnes of CO2 Per Capita in 2010: 17.31 United States 8.01 Norway
Well, they're doing something right, aren't they? Or are the facts only questionable when they don't fit your worldview?
Absolutely, and if you want to solve congestion problems, problems with particle pollution and problems for asthmatics, cars is one place to start. If you want to cut CO2 emissions, even putting cars into the discussion (personal transportation) is ignorant and stupid, since removing all gasoline powered cars will not have any impact on what you are trying to solve... What we should focus on is electricity production etc, since that can have an impact. Moving to EVs will not.
You are simply ignorant of the facts:
Annual Emissions per Vehicle (National Average) 8,000 lbs Electric Vehicle 13,000 lbs Conventional Gas Vehicle
The source even has a graph for you. While it is true that converting to electric doesn't automatically mean it produces less carbon, it is also true that America's current electricity production with zero improvements would produce far less CO2 emissions. Add in some low-hanging efficiency improvements to the electrical grid, and you can intelligently charge vehicles just with temporary spare capacity throughout the day and night.
What you don't understand is that standardizing more of our country's energy usage into electrical power is the easiest way to improve efficiency. Electricity doesn't have to be moved with trucks from one side of a town to the other, and our country is already completely covered in a decent electrical infrastructure. And what's easier or more environmentally friendly: improving the emission standards of a single power plant, or attempting to drag a few hundred thousand cars in to be tuned up?
Do not forget that renewables are extreme polluters though. The most common, wind and solar, uses rare-earth minerals which are strip-mined in China in a process that devestates city after city, river after river and mile after square mile of fertile land. When it comes to absolute pollution, Solar (for example) has a devestating impact on the environment.
Well, perhaps in your bizarre alternate reality. Here on planet earth:
No, I wouldn't. For many reasons. One, I am not retarded, but I am starting to wonder about you.
Every time you use language like that, you are an embarrassment to every person you associate yourself with.
I have only stuck to the reality of the matter, and when it comes to CO2 emissions, the reality of the matter is that if you move the entire world to EVs using magic tomorrow, the total impact on CO2 emissions would be very close to zero. That is the only thing I am saying. I am not talking about the virtues of renewables, so why you bring them up is a little unclear to me.
Because your idiotic and baseless assumptions are further entrenched in the premise that all power generation is from fossil fuels. Eliminating CO2 from the electrical generation process would almost completely eliminate a person's carbon foot print if they were driving an EV. (Hopefully you understand how that works.) The only polluting portion would occur during the manufacturing process, and with all of the advances rolling in from materials science, I'm sure that can be tackled as well.
I don't know who is filling your head with all of the lies you are spitting back up, but you may want to consider who benefits from your ignorance. Maybe you are the member of some doomsday cult wringing yo
Slashdot Mirror
US Taxpayers Are Gouged on Mass Transit Costs
It's the same reason we pay 1 trillion per year for our military. The same millionaires who infest congress also infest massive corporations, and their goal is to make cash and get re-elected to keep the ponzi scheme going. The latest fad answer is privatization -- despite all the evidence to the contrary -- and privately held corporations love to continue furthering that myth because it's in their own interest. There's no reason for corporate owned media to report the truth either.
The actual answer is a few millennia old:
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."
-Plato
But, per the norm, America prefers solutions that are cheap, easy, and completely inefficient if you consider anything beyond the next financial quarter. We are democratically lazy, and we pay dearly for our societal incompetence, in treasure as well as blood.
Yeah, I can see docs. I tried it a couple of times but it was still annoying for some reason. But then again I'm a pretty strange guy.
That's the government for you; An epic cluster fuck you wind up paying through the nose for. I prefer to stick with private ownership, thank you very much... it's an epic cluster fuck I wind up paying through the nose for but I have my choice on how to be screwed.
The fatal flaw of all of the libertarian nonsense is that the failure or corruption of certain governments can only be replaced with privatization. The correct answer to ineffective government is effective government. Let me provide you with a concrete example:
In Washington State, in areas where fiber is provided by the state, I can get a 100x100 connection for $59 per month. No contract. From a private entity. How is that possible?
Multiple private organizations, who have an incentive to screw each other over and no incentive to work together to cover different neighborhoods, cannot provide the best plan for modern infrastructure. Even in the face of overpriced (point given: has to be relatively non-corrupt) government costs, it's still cheaper because there is no marketing department, legal department, or endless stratification of middle managers doing fuck-all in a building somewhere. Rent-seeking necessary infrastructure services don't work well with privatization, because they have the upper hand on pricing and will stuff their organization with so much bloat it would make a bureaucrat blush. When it's a government entity, there is at least some chance of oversight and cost control. When it's privatized, the inefficiency and price hikes are all but inevitable, unless there is real competition.
In modern societies the basic physical plants are installed and run by the government and funded through equitable taxation. A similar analogy is that of the road system: multiple private roads would never work, because you couldn't depend on the pricing or the availability, depending on whatever juvenile contract disputes the private corporations were engaged in at the moment. But when those costs are socialized and the infrastructure is available to all responsible parties at a low cost, you can have true competition on common infrastructure.
Let's say I want to ship something: I have an address, provided by the state, a road provided by the state that will absolutely connect me to any other address also provided by the state. So I can choose between Fedex, DHL, UPS, or even a startup like uShip. Imagine if you had a fiber connection to your home, which would cost you less in taxes than you pay for coffee every month, which was available to Verizon, Comcast, AT&T, etc. They're going to listen to customer demands, because there's actually a chance you might switch. Right now I have no choice but to deal with Comcast's endless bullshit, because I don't have any other choices available. They happen to be the provider to my location.
So, keep the libertarian fantasy going. Dog-ear that copy of Atlas Shrugged for the nth time. When you're ready to discuss solutions, consider reality.
PS: Google, Microsoft, Verizon, Comcast, and AT&T have all gladly handed over your data to the government. Being held by private corporations didn't change a damn thing, did it?
The user experience for any of these solutions is awful, even if you pick up a dedicated USB monitor. Here's a snip from the winner of the latest MakeUseOf roundup:
Video and general usage is very laggy, though subjectively didn't feel as bad as Mini-Display. You can even draw directly into Photoshop, smoothly but albeit with a noticeable second delay between touching and having the line appear
There are portable monitors like this one that offer an actual video connection. Emulation will never work for serious usage or even watching youtube, and the existing iPad doesn't have a way to communicate other than USB or WiFi, so it's boned either way.
If Apple ever offers an iPad with a Thunderbolt connector, that's a different story.
The real winner in the device market will be the first vendor to offer a tablet that connects to a laptop through a true HD interface to become a second screen and input device. People don't want everything in one device... computer sales are down because everyone has one.
Give us a laptop -- we like keyboards. Give us an iPad like device -- something to lend to a visitor or a kid, or to haul on to the couch, or for casual gaming. When we plug one into the other, pop up the hard drives so we can move data back and forth, or even use the free space on the tablet as an extra bit of scratch space. Allow the tablet to become a Cintiq-like input device for the laptop, and make sure the laptop has an additional video out for a larger 4k-ish screen.
But with all of the non-Apple vendors stuck with whatever horrible idea Ballmer's team of dunces "imagineers," we'll probably end up with a lot of stupid and unusable convertibles like this Lenovo thing.
Recently I was forced to work with Windows Server 2012. And you know, I never thought I'd say this, but I miss the simple stupidity of the Microsoft Bob era in Redmond. At least Bill Gates was smart enough to not touch servers with such an infantile interface.
"Oh, the database connection seems to be down, and you need to check running processes? We've removed the Start Button to speed up the process. Simply tilt the device to the right, swipe left, and choose the Unhappy Face. Then cycle through the server managers and click the undulating cube -- the red one, not the chartreuse (duh). Then hope and pray we keep the same method in Smiley Server 2015."
So you agree with the statement:
"Prior to that, the US was myopic to the extreme, and really appeared to only want to mind its own business, as far as excessive military, foreign intervention, etc."
In light of statements such as:
"We make no hypocritical pretense of being interested in the Philippines solely on account of others. While we regard the welfare of these people as a sacred trust, we regard the welfare of the American people first. We see our duty to ourselves as well as to others. We believe in trade expansion."
--Senator Henry Cabot Lodge
"Whether we like it or not, we most go on slaughtering the natives in English fashion, and taking what muddy glory lies in wholesale killing til they have learned to respect our arms. The more difficult task of getting them to respect our intentions will follow. The struggle must continue until the misguided creatures there shall have eyes bathed in enough blood to cause their vision to be cleared, but that those whom they are now holding as enemies have no purpose toward them expect to consecrate to liberty and to open for them a way to happiness."
--Salt Lake City Tribune
"The peaceful conquest of Mexico was a perfectly legitimate form of expansion. We could fill all of the tropical countries with consular agents, men trained to stand for good order and to work for American interests, for less than it costs to subdue a single tropical island."
--David Starr Jordan, The Control Of the Tropics, 1890
"Finally, it should be the earnest wish and paramount aim of the military administration to win the confidence, respect, and affection of the inhabitants of the Philippines by assuring them in every possible way that full measure of individual rights and liberties which is the heritage of free peoples, and by proving to them that the mission of the United States is one of Benevolent Assimilation substituting the mild sway of justice and right for arbitrary rule."
--President William McKinley, December 21, 1898
The US did not start the Korean War
"General Bradley said that we must draw the line somewhere. The President stated he agreed on that. General Bradley said that Russia is not yet ready for war. The Korean situation offered as good an occasion for action in drawing the line as anywhere else."
Truman and Generals, Blair House, June 25th, 1950
nor did it start the Vietnam War
"In 1961, Kennedy agreed that America should finance an increase in the size of the South Vietnamese Army from 150,000 to 170,000. He also agreed that an extra 1000 US military advisors should be sent to South Vietnam to help train the South Vietnamese Army. Both of these decisions were not made public as they broke the agreements made at the 1954 Geneva Agreement."
I can only conclude that the figures for the civil wars in Cambodia and Laos were pulled from his ass
Civilian deaths attributed to aggressor nations are not based solely on direct fire, but the direct consequences of the destruction of infrastructure. When you destroy roads, hospitals, bridges, and kill doctors, everyone who dies as a result of your actions is your responsibility and their blood is still on your hands.
That also applies to Iraq, which had not seen sectarian violence in decades until the United States destroyed the Iraqi government and much of the country in the process. In 2002 there were probably zero Gulf-allied Al Qaeda terrorists, because Saddam Hussain hated the Saudis as much as he hated the Americans (if not more), and he knew his former benefactors in the United States would use any excuse to invade in an attempt to reclaim control of Iraqi oil and to establish another base in their ongoing proxy war with Iran.
For Iraq, the vast majority of killings is Muslims slaughtering other Muslims.
And here I thought bigotry was passe in 2013.
The Wikipedia article you cite gives a long list, but fails to prove that the US was directly responsible for most of the regime changes that actually occured.
The article is entitled "Covert United States foreign regime change actions." What are you claiming it is discussing instead of covert foreign regime change actions executed by the United States? Why are you denying the validity of US government provided declassified information?
My guess is desperation.
Done with what? You threw an ad hominem and then ran away.
Daemonik is an apologist for American imperialism. All empires claim self defense or provocation for their wars of choice.
I'm not sure why you want to pretend that the United States changed overnight, but you are simply misinformed. But let me allow you the opportunity to support your claim:
From 1915 to 1941, the United States had occupied or temporarily invaded these nations, often during an election for "police" work. Please explain how these invasions were provoked, by country, if you don't mind:
China
Panama
El Salvador
Cuba
Mexico
Haiti
Dominican Republic
Honduras
Yugoslavia
Guatemala
Turkey
But again, there isn't that much militarization in today's world. There are a number of states and super-states that could easily eclipse the US's current military, if they were to put significant effort into it.
That is sheer desperation. Sure, if you construct a fantasy world in which other nations have more military power than the United States, you would have a point. But let's stick to reality instead of your imagination:
(Of course I would disagree with the Heritage Foundation about the local populace having "warm relations" with occupying forces, but that's just because I don't work at the Heritage Foundation.)
If you know of another nation that comes close to the size, scope, or ambition of the current US military apparatus, please feel free to provide similar statistics. And a source, of course.
"God created war so that Americans would learn geography."
-- Mark Twain
Is it not a fact that the United States invaded:
Iraq (twice)
Afghanistan
Vietnam
Cambodia
Laos
Grenada
and has organized, arranged financing, and supplied weapons and intelligence for the invasions and/or coup d'etats of:
Iran
Afghanistan
Haiti
Chile
Venezuela
Cuba
Panama
Columbia
Nicaragua
El Salvador
Argentina
Ecuador
the Philippines
Syria
Iraq
Libya
Egypt
and has supported the dictorships of:
Trujillo
Papa Doc
Mubarak
Saddam Hussein
The Shah of Iran
the Assad Regime
Gaddafi
Pinochet
Noriega
The House of Saud
Suharto
Batista
Marcos
Al Khalifa
Which of those points do you dispute? You understand that all of that information is declassified or not denied and provided by the US government, don't you? What incentive would they have to lie or produce falsified historical documents of that nature?
The reason you don't want to address any of the basic facts is because it would difficult to construct the argument you want to make when those facts are known.
The quote "merely states" that there are "over 328,000 service members and 38,000 civilian [employees]... stretching from California to India... [encompassing] over half of the Earth's surface and well over half of its population." Does China, Russia, Iran, or anyone else have that presence outside of their own borders? (I believe there are about 120k outside of US borders, since that quote counts assets on the US Pacific coast.)
Additionally, the United States have over 700 military bases all over the world, and has more aircraft carriers, fighter jets, nuclear warheads, tanks, and destroyer class vessels than all other nations combined. Our yearly military spending is equal to the rest of the world put together. We also regularly use these weapons to invade other nations in wars of choice, and regularly threaten destruction of any government that does not obey our national interest.
If that's not an empire, I am not sure how to define one.
Relating facts is only hateful to a person if they aren't capable of coping with reality. If I have said something you think is inaccurate, then explain why. Otherwise you're saying the equivalent of "Is not!" and attempting to hide your reptilian response to contradictory information of your biases in weak assertions. The ostrich response is predictable and tiresome.
Wishing something wasn't true doesn't change reality.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covert_United_States_foreign_regime_change_actions
If you like, I can provide you with direction so you can count the number of dead in the wars we have helped arrange and finance. A good example is the Iran-Iraq War of 1980, which was directed by the US to punish Iran for overthrowing our puppet government, as well as our proxy war with Russia in the same timespan.
Right now people are dying in Syria where the CIA is arming Gulf Arab Mujahideen -- mostly affiliated with Al Qaeda -- to fight a losing battle against the Assad regime in our continuing proxy war against Iran. The US backed side is losing badly, and I suspect that's why the United States and the EU are scrambling to come up with a final settlement on the Palestinian matter. If Hezbollah defeats the American backed forced in Syria, and we end up with a few hundred thousand militants with not much to do right next door to Israel, the situation could deteriorate almost instantly.
I guess there's no reason to present an counter-argument when you don't have one, eh?
We are not talking about the nature of man, or any of the pathetic excuses that have been made for every empire before ours that you have parroted so faithfully. We are talking about the actions of the United States, who currently lead the world for the last fifty years in the categories of:
Dead foreign civilians: 7-10 million
Coups d'etats in foreign nations: 30+
Military bases: 700+
Military expenditure: more than the rest of the world combined, every year, for 50 years
"There are instruments so dangerous to the rights of the nation and which place them so totally at the mercy of their governors that those governors, whether legislative or executive, should be restrained from keeping such instruments on foot but in well-defined cases. Such an instrument is a standing army."
--Thomas Jefferson
The standing army has not only been formed, but it has been trained and placed in every police department in the United States, and in almost every country in the world. Those military forces have been invading homes and destroying the lives of US citizens with impunity. (Presumably you would care about your fellow citizens, but perhaps that's an unfair assumption.)
Their mistakes destroy lives literally with acts of horrific violence and in all other senses after the trauma is over, and people are told to just deal with the fact that armed men can enter a private residence without warning for any reason the police care to make up. Their mere existence destroys the fabric of our society by normalizing violence and perpetuating corporal punishment as the solution to all problems, just as they do when we send in the boys to conquer whatever country we're afraid of this week.
And you still don't understand the connection, do you?
What right does the United States have to invade a nation for thinking about allying with someone else, or for refusing to submit to our trade demands?
Please be sure your argument would also justify other nations invading the United States.
As for your "ding":
In March 1906 several hundred Filipino Muslims ascended an extinct volcano known as Bud Dajo on the Island of Jolo. There in the circular crater of the dormant cone the Moro band dug in in defiance of the American military colonial regime. Their act of resistance was prompted primarily by the much hated cedula tax and rumors that the U.S. military intended to eradicate Islam from the Islands. Despite repeated pleas for surrender from American officials and fellow Muslims, the rebels refused. The U.S. military responded with a full-fledged assault that was intense, chaotic, and bloody. Moro warriors were cut down by krags and machine guns while women and children in men's clothing led charges against American artillery positions and fought hand to hand with American troops. In the end over 600 Filipino Muslims lay dead, many of those women and children.
When news of the massacre spread throughout the colony and into the United States, military officials were condemned as savage murderers of women and children. The massacre at Bud Dajo was heralded by anti-imperialists as the quintessential example of raw American imperial ambitions in the Philippines. Though press coverage of the ordeal was intense, it shortly fell from the news pages in favor other domestic political issues. To this day, however, the events at Bud Dajo stand as a critical symbol of American colonial rule in the Philippines' Muslim South.
Are you proud of moments like that? Is there a shred of human empathy in that carcass of meat you pilot around?
This statement is so ignorant of American history that I have to start from its beginning.
First of all, the United States is a land of conquered nations and foreign intervention. There were only 13 states in the beginning. We committed genocide to conquer the midwest and the west, invaded Mexico and took their land (where do you think the name for New Mexico came from?) and we have been invading neighbors consistently and for the sole purpose of directing their internal affairs since the 1820s. The only thing that stopped our numerous invasions of foreign lands was the Civil War.
Here is a list:
1915 invasion of Haiti by the United States
1900 invasion of China by the Eight-Nation Alliance (including the United States)
1898 invasion of the Philippines by the United States
1898 invasion of Puerto Rico by the United States
1898 invasion of Spanish Cuba by the United States
1893 invasion of Hawaii by the United States
1846 invasion of Mexico by United States
1813 invasion of Canada by United States
1812 invasions of Canada by United States
1805 invasion of Tripoli by United States and mercenaries
Those are just the "official" wars. There is much more detail here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_military_operations
Please read just a bit on the topic before you make misleading comments like this. America learned everything from it's ancestor, Great Britain. We've been invading, conquering, taking, and killing since our inception. This whole ridiculous and infantile notion of America's Exceptionalism, even in our imagined good old days, is pure bullshit. The real difference back in those days was whether the United States should stop at our "natural" borders, which included all of North America, the Caribbean (including Cuba), and Hawaii, or if our "manifest destiny" was to continue marching west until we conquered the entire world.
I know it's difficult to see from inside of the news you're exposed to, but the truth remains: we are the empire.
For the past 12 months I have had the great honor to lead over 328,000 service members and 38,000 civilian employees along with all of their families. Our area of responsibility is diverse and complex. Stretching from California to India, the Indo-Asia-Pacific encompasses over half of the Earth's surface and well over half of its population.
This region is culturally, socially, economically, and geo-politically diverse. The nations of the Indo-Asia-Pacific include: five of our nation's seven treaty allies; three of the largest and seven of the ten smallest economies; the most populous nations in the world, including the largest Muslim-majority nation; the largest democracy; and the world's smallest republic.
The Indo-Asia-Pacific is the engine that drives the global economy. The "open and accessible" sea lanes throughout the Indo-Asia-Pacific annually enjoy over 8 trillion dollars in bilateral trade with one-third of the world's bulk cargo and two-thirds of its oil shipments sailing to or from nine of the world's ten largest economic ports.
By any meaningful measure, the Indo-Asia-Pacific is also the world's most militarized region with seven of the ten largest standing militaries, the world's largest and most sophisticated navies, and five of the world's declared nuclear armed nations.
When taken together all of these aspects represent a region with a unique strategic complexity and a wide, diverse group of challenges that can significantly stress the security environment.
Effectively engaging in the Indo-Asia-Pacific requires a committed and sustained effort, and USPACOM, as the military component of this commitment, is clearly focused in our efforts to deter aggression, assure our allies and partners, and to prevent should our national interests be threatened.
Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III
Commander
U.S. Pacific Command
House Armed Services Committee, 05 March 2013
A new transportation system that would cost billions to build, would be completely uneconomical for patrons to use, and has a high risk of death with even the slightest malfunction at 4,000 MPH
This sounds like someone complaining about the airplane in 1905. Part of progress is failure, and since we just dropped three to five trillion dollars on the Iraq War, let's hear a little bit less how expensive government subsidies for science are.
If we had spent just one third of what we wasted in Iraq on something like a national rail transportation, we could have created hundreds of thousands of jobs that trained people in high-level construction and engineering, strengthened our air transportation system by focusing on longer haul routes and going to fewer but larger planes (which are safer and more fuel efficient), and perhaps even reintroduced more freight service to more areas to reduce long-haul trucking, which reduces smog, traffic, and wear on our bridge infrastructure.
Besides, if Elon Musk were the new Steve Jobs, he'd be fussing over pixels on a touch device. We already have plenty of people doing that. I'm ready for some actual innovation, thanks.
Dear business community:
Please pay no attention to the news that we are sending pretty much everything you type directly to the NSA in exchange for buckets of cash and favors. Especially you, China! Losing our entire strategy for southeast Asia would probably hurt the stock price. Hah! If those idiots knew!
Also, for those of you who like Windows 8 except for the forced UI change, you're shit out of luck. It's a thing I've said is good, therefore it is good, and the millions of customers desperately fleeing the platform have no effect on how I view that decision. Because I'm a really smart business guy. Look, I'm in a suit and tie!
All the best,
Steve Ballmer
Why? How many people do you think are going to care enough to switch to another chat client? Chances are if they're using Skype in the first place, they don't care about that kind of thing.
Once there is solid evidence that the NSA has worked with US Government agencies to install and exploit backdoors, and this looks like pretty good evidence, there is no direction but down. It's common knowledge that the NSA is very open and communicative with the corporate sector.
If you're a foreign corporation out of Taiwan or Brazil or Wherever, passing even day-to-day information using Microsoft products becomes risky. How can you be sure that your data isn't getting dumped into some NSA system and then made available to co-conspirators?
The NSA isn't getting this access for free. If they're coercing corporations like Yahoo to comply with broad destruction of civil liberties, some of those corporations have sold out and traded for the stolen R&D of other companies, or huge tax breaks. That's where the real story is, and one we probably won't ever get to read.
In any case, if you're a foreign corporation or government, using ANY Microsoft product just become a giant liability. Given that was already practically the case after Stuxnet, but now you'd have to be a complete fool to trust Microsoft with any of your data and expect it to remain private.
How's that bigotry working out for you? I wouldn't be offended to be considered part of that community, but that's just because I'm a decent human being.
Why? If you're trying to argue against the merits of solar power, why bring up the fact that it's "devastating" for the environment when it's the best option we currently have? And if you aren't trying to argue against solar power, why bring up irrelevant points in the first place?
There are a couple of possibilities here: either you are horrible at basic reasoning, or you were trying to marginalize solar power due to your own biases and you got caught telling lies. At this point I don't care if it's malice or stupidity, because either way you are wrong.
Earlier you wrote:
If solar has a "devastating impact" on the environment by introducing "a lot of pollution," and you agree that solar pollutes less than fossil fuels, explain why you singled out solar power for criticism.
If you can admit that fossil fuels are worse for the environment in every measurable way when compared to solar and EVs, then we can bury the hatchet on this misunderstanding.
You said earlier:
And later:
From the article I linked to, but you didn't read:
One of the most promising photovoltaic technologies is based on cadmium telluride, but cadmium is one of the worst heavy metals. Still, if we compare direct emissions from production of cadmium telluride cells with coal power plants, toxic emissions would up 300 times lower," said researcher Vasilis Fthenakis, an environmental engineer at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y.
So you can't weasel out of the truth again:
Even taking into account the low efficiency of thin-film solar cells or the energy needed to purify silicon for the other types of PV, all proved to entail significantly fewer emissions in their entire life cycle than the fossil fuels needed to produce an equivalent amount of electricity.
In fact, most of their dirty side derived from the indirect emissions of the coal-burning power plants or other fossil fuels used to generate the electricity for PV manufacturing facilities.
Tonnes of CO2 Per Capita in 2010:
17.31 United States
8.01 Norway
Well, they're doing something right, aren't they? Or are the facts only questionable when they don't fit your worldview?
You are simply ignorant of the facts:
Annual Emissions per Vehicle (National Average)
8,000 lbs Electric Vehicle
13,000 lbs Conventional Gas Vehicle
The source even has a graph for you. While it is true that converting to electric doesn't automatically mean it produces less carbon, it is also true that America's current electricity production with zero improvements would produce far less CO2 emissions. Add in some low-hanging efficiency improvements to the electrical grid, and you can intelligently charge vehicles just with temporary spare capacity throughout the day and night.
What you don't understand is that standardizing more of our country's energy usage into electrical power is the easiest way to improve efficiency. Electricity doesn't have to be moved with trucks from one side of a town to the other, and our country is already completely covered in a decent electrical infrastructure. And what's easier or more environmentally friendly: improving the emission standards of a single power plant, or attempting to drag a few hundred thousand cars in to be tuned up?
Well, perhaps in your bizarre alternate reality. Here on planet earth:
Making solar or photovoltaic cells requires potentially toxic heavy metals such as lead, mercury and cadmium. It even produces greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, that contribute to global warming. Still, the researchers found that if people switched from conventional fossil fuel-burning power plants to solar cells, air pollution would be cut by roughly 90 percent.
Every time you use language like that, you are an embarrassment to every person you associate yourself with.
Because your idiotic and baseless assumptions are further entrenched in the premise that all power generation is from fossil fuels. Eliminating CO2 from the electrical generation process would almost completely eliminate a person's carbon foot print if they were driving an EV. (Hopefully you understand how that works.) The only polluting portion would occur during the manufacturing process, and with all of the advances rolling in from materials science, I'm sure that can be tackled as well.
I don't know who is filling your head with all of the lies you are spitting back up, but you may want to consider who benefits from your ignorance. Maybe you are the member of some doomsday cult wringing yo