Right Wing Granny

News behind the news. This picture is me (white spot) standing on the bridge connecting European and North American tectonic plates. It is located in the Reykjanes area of Iceland. By-the-way, this is a color picture.

Right Wing Granny

Tag Archives: batteries

Caught!

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On September 18th, Hot Air posted an article about the Hezbollah pagers that exploded yesterday. There were some very interesting people who had those pagers.

The article quotes The New York Times:

Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amini, lost one eye and severely injured his other eye when a pager he was carrying exploded in a simultaneous wave of blasts targeting wireless electronic devices, according to two members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps briefed on the attack.

The Guards members, who had knowledge of the attacks and spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said Mr. Amini’s injuries were more serious than Iran initially reported and that he would be medevacked to Tehran for treatment.

Hossein Soleimani, the editor in chief of Mashregh, the main Revolutionary Guards news website, confirmed the extent of Mr. Amini’s injuries in a post on X. “Unfortunately the injuries sustained by Iran’s ambassador were extremely severe and in his eyes,” Mr. Soleimani wrote.

Why was Iran’s ambassador to Lebanon carrying a Hezbollah pager?

John Hinderaker at Power Line reported on the news that on Thursday handheld radios were exploding.

The article at Power Line notes:

Apparently fires have broken out in seemingly random buildings, and loudspeakers are telling people to take the batteries out of their phones. I haven’t seen any reports, however, of exploding cell phones.

The usual suspects are up in arms over yesterday’s pager attack:

The United Nations Security Council will convene an emergency meeting on Friday afternoon to discuss Israel’s wave of attacks in Lebanon, according to Slovenia, which holds the Council’s rotating presidency this month.

How many emergency meetings have they held over Hezbollah’s rocket bombardment of Israel, which has gone on for months?

The United Nations’ human rights chief, Volker Türk, has criticized the pager attack as a violation of international law and called for those behind it to be held to account.

So, does sending thousands of rockets into Israel violate international law? What does the U.N. propose to do about it?

Nothing, of course. Hence the need for Israel to defend itself.

That is the current state of the United Nations.

 

Don’t Mess With Israel

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Israel has not yet taken responsibility for this event, but most sources are suggesting that Israel is behind the event.

On September 17th, The New York Post reported:

Hundreds of Hezbollah terrorists were seriously wounded on Tuesday when the pagers they used to communicate exploded around their belts and pockets – with officials claiming a hacking attack by Israel triggered the blasts.

Hezbollah officials confirmed the wide-range attack on its operatives, including fighters and medics, with one member, speaking on the condition of anonymity, calling it the “biggest security breach” since it began its daily attacks on Israel on Oct. 8.

Videos uploaded to social media show several incidents where seemingly unaware men had devices in their pockets blow up, with the victims crying in pain as bystanders ran away.

…The devices that detonated were all the latest models acquired by Hezbollah in recent months and distributed to its members, with the devices suspected of being tampered with, three security sources told Reuters. 

Through the use of malware, the devices could see their lithium batteries overheat and explode. 

One Hezbollah official told the Wall Street Journal that some members felt their pagers heat up and disposed of them before they detonated.     

The terror groups’ leader, Hassan Nasrallah had previously warned his fighters not to carry cell phones or pagers, telling them they could be used to track their movements or carry out some kind of targeted strike. 

The exact cause of why the pagers exploded have yet to be revealed. 

Reuters journalists witnessed ambulances rushing through Beirut with the wounded terrorists amid widespread panic over the explosions. 

The article concludes:

Although Lebanese Health Minister Firas Abiad said no deaths have been reported as of Tuesday morning, he expects several casualties given the wide range attack.

Israel and Hezbollah have engaged in near daily attacks over the border since the terror group began attacking the Jewish state in solidarity with Hamas.

There are many ways to fight a war.

The Problems With Electric Vehicles Are Becoming Obvious

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WITN posted an article on Wednesday about the impact of the current cold snap on electric cars.

The article reports:

OAK BROOK, Ill. (WLS) – Tesla drivers in the Chicago-area are complaining about charging stations not working due to the extreme cold, leaving them with dead batteries.

Many Tesla owners were stranded Monday with dead batteries from the cold and not enough working charging stations at a location in Evergreen Park, Illinois. For most of the day, the temperatures were expected to be below zero with wind chills from -25 to -35 degrees.

“Our batteries are so cold it’s taking longer to charge now. So, it should take 45 minutes, [but] it’s taking two hours for the one charger that we have,” said Tesla owner Brandon Welbourne. “I have seen at least 10 cars get towed away from here because the cars, they died, they’ve run out of battery.”

In nearby Oak Brook, some drivers who went looking for a charge waited hours.

“Right from outside the highway, there’s a whole line of cars, over 20 cars, all Tesla cars … and every single car is a Tesla in this whole parking lot,” said Tesla driver Sajid Ahmed. “We’re waiting and waiting for over an hour. It’s unfortunate that these cars are sitting dead in the spots.”

For many drivers, it was too late. Their cars died during the long wait, and they had to leave their vehicles stranded and wait for the stations to get up and running again.

We should also note that charging an electric vehicle is not the five minute process that filling up your gas tank is–in cold or hot weather. Green energy is a nice theory. However, until we perfect it, we really shouldn’t encourage drivers in parts of the country where the weather is extremely cold to invest in electric cars.

Has Anyone Actually Thought This Through?

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On January 30, 2021, a website called Deseret News posted an article about the ‘solar waste’ involved in green energy.

The article notes:

Although countries are feverishly looking to install wind and solar farms to wean themselves off carbon-based, or so-called “dirty” energy, few countries, operators and the industry itself have yet to fully tackle the long-term consequences of how to dispose of these systems, which have their own environmental hazards like toxic metals, oil, fiberglass and other material.

A briefing paper released by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency predicts these startling global numbers for countries by 2050 just for solar waste:

    • United States, 10 million tons.
    • Germany, 3 million tons.
    • China, 20 million tons.
    • Japan, 7.5 million tons.
    • India, 7.5 million tons.

Solar arrays have a life cycle of about 30 years, but the rapid adoption of solar in the United States and elsewhere has the problem of disposal creeping up in the rearview mirror — faster rather than later.

The article also notes the problem with wind power:

Wind power also is taking off as a clean energy resource, but the EPA notes that windmills are the least energy producing and most physically difficult renewable energy waste stream to address.

The sheer size of the windmills and the difficulty of disposing of them at recycling stations led the agency to conclude that each new wind farm is a “towering promise of future wreckage.”

While there is a market for second-hand windmills in Eastern Europe, Asia and Latin America, the tactic of shifting used windmill components to other countries simply delays the waste disposal problem and puts it on the shoulders of countries less equipped to deal with the challenge, it noted.

Like coal mining or other natural resource extraction, certain entities in Utah and elsewhere have addressed the afterlife issues of wind and solar farms by requiring environmental remediation or the posting of a reclamation bond to ensure proper cleanup and disposal.

The article concludes:

There is some innovation playing out, however, with Japan’s Nissan repurposing batteries to power streetlights. In the United States, General Motors is backing up its data center in Michigan with used Chevy Volt batteries.

The EPA notes, however, that these sort of “adaptive reuses” still only delay the time for final disposal of the batteries and the need to deal with materials in the batteries that can cause fires or leach hazardous chemicals.

On the wind power front, GE announced last year it had reached a multiyear agreement with Veolia North America to launch the United States’ first wind blade recycling program, according to an article in Utility Dive.

Nearly 90 % of the blade material, consisting of fiberglass, would be repurposed for cement production, cutting carbon dioxide emissions from that source by 27%.

With the release of its paper, the EPA is calling on researchers, states, industry and other federal agencies to ensure green waste is sustainable from end to end and that gaps in renewable energy waste management are addressed.

“While consumers may purchase renewable energy or renewable energy-based products with good intentions, that does not prevent the unintended adverse environmental consequences of these products,” it said.

It seems that we have not yet solved the problems of green energy. Those problems will be solved in the future, but as of yet green energy is not quite ready for prime time.