A week ago I posted an article featuring Konstantin Kisin's recent YouTube video discussing why he was supporting Israel together with some introductory comments (Kisin's case for Israel.
I feel Kisin's video was a valuable contribution to this very widely discussed issue because it is comprehensive and clear. It covered all the arguments and his analysis is easy to understand and hard to refute.
Yet, it has elicited some responses, and Kisin has reacted by publishing a second video refuting the critique.
This time I shall simply post it, without comment. It is self explanatory.
The EV dream is foundering. Almost daily, we hear of some sort of EV fire caused by unstable, fire-, and explosion-prone lithium-ion batteries. Add to this the lived experience of EV owners with long queues at chargers, even if available, and diminishing resale values. And worst of all for the car manufacturers, the buyers are leaving the field, and as a consequence, so are many manufacturers.
So, the dream that most of the world would transition over the next decade to a majority of electric vehicles is becoming a pipe dream. Many of the claims were "heroic" and never achievable. Yet some governments were so convinced that they forecast bans on fossil fuel-based vehicles at future dates even within 10 years. Much of this rhetoric is being walked back, and it takes the most self-deluding politician to make such claims today. So, is the EV destined for the dustbin of history? Far from it!
While the relatively new EV technology is feeling pressure on many fronts:
Long battery charge times
Limited range
Limited battery lifetime
Unstable fire/explosion-prone battery technology
Lithium is a difficult raw material requiring extensive mining and difficult extraction
Looking at this list, the weakest link in the EV dream is the battery technology. New battery technology can totally overturn the current decline.
So, now that I have set the scene, several new battery technologies seem to be on the horizon. One such technology is the Graphene-Aluminium-Ion (Gr-Al-Ion) battery. It does not use lithium, the source of many of the problems with the Li-Ion battery. It uses aluminium, which is abundant, light, easy to handle, and relatively easy to mine. It also uses graphene, a form of carbon that is manufactured from abundant, low-cost carbon. However, the manufacture of graphene is currently a difficult and expensive process and would have to be improved to make this technology viable at scale. The resulting battery, however, beats the Li-Ion hands down.
The Gr-Al-Ion battery:
Charges 70x faster, meaning your laptop can be charged in minutes, not hours, and your EV can have a meaningful charge in the same time it would take with a petrol engine
Has a longer lifetime – 3x as long as Li-Ion, implying a life of 30 years for an EV as opposed to the 10 years of a Li-Ion
Is greener – eliminating the need for lithium and rare earths with complex supply chains
Is safer – the Gr-Al-Ion battery operates at lower temperatures and does not cause fires or explosions
But this is just a summary. If you need more detail, here are a couple of videos that provide more information.
So the EV dream may yet be realised, but not quite there yet.
and another.
The leading company in the development of the Gr-Al-Ion battery is an Australian company, GMG (Graphene Manufacturing Group), established by and working in collaboration with the University of Queensland and Rio Tinto.
So the EV dream may yet be realised, but not quite there yet.
It has now been a year since the October 7 massacre of innocents that changed the world. While the world has seen many terrorist attacks, and many, disproportionately many, on Israel, the reaction of many in the Western world has been shocking. Instead of universal condemnation of a terrorist attack—the worst in terms of numbers and barbarity against Israel in its 75-year history—the event triggered a range of responses. These included celebration of the event, support for Palestinians following Israel’s response, repeated demonstrations in support not only of Palestinians but of Hamas, condemnation of Israel and all Jews, and antisemitic attacks on Jews around the world.
It seems this massacre exposed a hidden rift in our society. The event revealed the underlying values of many of our fellow citizens who do not share our values. It also exposed the weakness of politicians, business leaders, media commentators, and academics to speak out against the blatant vilification of Israel and Jews. By their inaction, these leaders have allowed antisemitic feelings, perhaps previously hidden, to become open. This has led to a breakdown of our communities and will take decades to heal.
Of course, there are many—in fact, a majority in most of the Western world—who do share our values, and slowly they are becoming more vocal about the failure of their leaders to speak up in support of fellow citizens and Israel’s right to defend itself.
Many commentators have analyzed the events of the past year. Recently, I came across a compelling analysis by Konstantin Kisin. He is an articulate and compelling debater, having won acclaim in his Oxford Union debate a few years ago. His analysis of Israel’s war provides a structured examination of the arguments for and against Israel. You can see the YouTube video below, and I strongly recommend it.
If you do not have the time here is a summary generated by NoteGPT
Summary
Konstantin Kisin shares his journey from neutrality to a clearer stance on Israel’s conflict, applying first principles thinking to analyze arguments from both sides.
Highlights
🗣️ Kisin initially had no opinion on the Israel conflict before the October 7th attacks.
📚 He engaged deeply with various perspectives to understand the complexities involved.
🔍 First principles thinking helped him dissect the arguments surrounding the conflict.
⚖️ Kisin compares October 7th to other historical terrorist attacks, emphasizing its unprecedented severity.
🏗️ He argues that the legitimacy of Israel cannot be dismissed based on historical grievances alone.
💔 Kisin addresses civilian casualties, stressing that responsibility lies with Hamas for their tactics.
📊 He concludes that Israel’s military actions, while tragic, are necessary for its survival against ongoing threats.
Key Insights
🔄 Importance of Context: Understanding the historical and emotional contexts is crucial but can often cloud logical arguments. Kisin emphasizes the need to strip away emotional narratives to grasp the core issues. 🌍
⚔️ Comparative Analysis: By comparing October 7th to other terrorist attacks like 9/11, Kisin highlights the disproportionate impact and severity of the violence against Israel, which serves to contextualize the response. 📈
🏛️ Legitimacy of States: The legitimacy of Israel’s existence is challenged by some, but Kisin argues that many nations were formed through similar histories of conflict, complicating the argument against Israel. 🌐
🔄 Nature of Warfare: Kisin points out that civilian casualties are an unfortunate reality of war, but emphasizes who holds responsibility for their safety and the ongoing violence. 📉
🎯 Hamas’s Strategy: The tactics employed by Hamas are designed to maximize civilian casualties, which Kisin argues shifts the moral responsibility back to Hamas rather than Israel. 🎭
📊 Casualty Ratios: He presents statistics showing that Israel is successful in minimizing civilian casualties compared to historical urban warfare, countering claims of indiscriminate attacks. 📊
⚖️ International Perspective: Kisin notes that any nation under similar threat would respond similarly to Israel, highlighting a double standard in international criticism. 🌍
Surprise, surprise! Will wonders never cease, the woke Washington Post, WA,PO has recently published an article that contradicts one of the most oft repeated dogma's of Climate Change.
The article refutes the regular claims by the Climate Chane Zealots that the earth has never been warmer than it is today. On the contrary, WAPO says its comprehensive study of the earths' climate over the past 465 million years
" reveals that the world was in a much warmer state for most of the history of complex animal life."
But WAPO seems unaware that it is contradicting one of the shibboleths of the CC dogma, and continued to claim that
"The revelations about Earth’s scorching past are further reason for concern about modern climate change"
So it seems once again that the CC dogma is unfalsifiable. Previously claims that the earth was now hotter than ever before in its history were taken as proof of anthropogenic CC. Now we have a claim that the earth had much higher temperature in the past and again we have the claim that this too supports the CC dogma.
As you can see I remain a skeptic. While there seems to be some evidence of warming over the recent past, I believe the contribution of CO2, and man-made CO2 , are highly debatable. Add to that the failure of climate models to predict even the recent past makes it impossible to trust these models to predict eighty years into the future.
Moreover even if these predictions were true, there is a very serious question as to what the world could possibly do about it. Certainly the Paris accord goes nowhere near the magnitude of cuts required. So I remain skeptical about the science and strongly against the counterproductive policies of many Western governments trying to cut emissions and transform energy usage.
The recent debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump was controversial for many reasons. Not the least is the blatant bias of the ABC moderators. Multiple so-called 'Fact Checks' were targeted at The Donald while none, zero, zilch were addressed at Kamala. Of course that is bad enough, and I am not sure we have heard the end of it yet, given there may be a whistleblower willing to expose some underhand dealings to give differential treatment to Kamala. Let's just watch how that one pans out.
But even worse than addressing Fact Checks to just one candidate, many of the moderators' so-called 'facts' were, and still are, false! I won't go through them all, as most of the details have been widely covered elsewhere.
However, one issue that did come up has not been addressed widely. This is the one about the 2020 elections. The moderators asked a 'gothcha' style question baiting Trump about his non-accepting that he lost the 2020 election. In particular, the moderators claimed that Trump's team had lost a large number of court cases proving that the elections were fair. Trump argued that the cases were not 'lost' but had been dismissed on technical issues such as the 'claimant having no standing'.
It was a long time ago now, but I do recall having looked at these cases closer to the event and remember a number of reasons for dismissing the cases instead of hearing them. The technicalities included standing, latches, being moot ,etc. It appeared that the courts were looking for any way they could to avoid hearing any details of electoral malfeasance. I think the judiciary did not do their job, but that is a subject for another time,
