Guest “I couldn’t make this sort of schist up if I was trying” by David Middleton
From Enviromarxism Central…
Flying Cars Will Undermine Democracy and the Environment
By Kevin DeGood May 28, 2020Introduction and summary
Recent advances in lithium-ion batteries have opened the door to flying car development.1 At least 20 companies are currently working on novel designs, including both major aerospace firms such as Boeing and Airbus as well as smaller startups.2 A Morgan Stanley analysis estimates that the global market for on-demand, short-distance urban air travel could top $850 billion by 2040.3
Unfortunately, flying cars represent the technological apotheosis of sprawl and an attempt to eradicate distance as a fact of life for elites who are wealthy enough to routinely let slip the bonds of gravity. Proponents offer a utopian vision of seamless convenience and efficiency that delivers broad-based societal benefits. The inevitable reality is that flying cars will confer advantages on direct users while exacerbating the geographic isolation of elitesāa spatial manifestation of deepening inequality that undermines the shared experiences that are necessary to sustain democracy. Additionally, removing distance as a constraint in metropolitan development and land use will have profoundly negative consequences for the environment.
The desire for transportation-induced isolation is not new. In the 20th century, interstate highways served as the conduit for racial, ethnic, and income segregation. The combination of expanding automobile ownership and supportive infrastructure allowed developers to tap into vast stretches of land around center cities. By reducing the friction of distance, highways acted as a centrifugal force on cities, undermining through sprawl the racial integration that political movements and courts had sought to implement.
Flying cars threaten to magnify the corrosive effectsāboth sociopolitical and environmentalāof sprawl and segregation by eliminating distance altogether.
[…]
Center for American Progress
This morning Mrs. Middleton and I were watching our recording of last night’s episode of Gutfeld! when the flying car headline popped up in the Fox News scroll. She had to rewind it several times to confirm that it actually was as stupid as it first appeared. So, we put the research department (me) on the case… Lo and behold, the article was real… and a year old… So I apologize if this was already posted on WUWT last year.
If the ChiCom shamdemic and November 2020 coup d’Ć©tat weren’t bad enough… Now that we are on the verge of finally getting the flying cars we were supposed to have 21 years ago, cancel culture is trying to deny us the opportunity to eliminate “distance altogether”… Well… I’m…
and here I was hoping that all the Alarmists would just fly away….
they certainly generate enough hot air for it.
‘Tis seasonal ….
Gee, and here I thought all those Elites had their own helicopters. What would they want with flying cars? None of them do their own driving, y’know.
That’s about the silliest argument and panicky scrawl over absolutely nothing that I’ve seen in a while. Dumber than a box of used cat litter.
Even dumber than what you scoop out of the litter!
Unfortunately, that’s what furthers their goals. And they’re not going to stop now – as bad as it’s getting on all fronts, it’s only going to get worse – a lot worse. Fear and hate under the guise of self-righteousness is the foundation on what an entire generation has now been taught as a virtue. And there’s now going back now – it’s metastasized – this society is terminal. And it’s being greeted with thunderous applause.
Insanity is an infectious condition – and the exploitation of hate and fear is what made fascism work, and it’s what’s fuels almost all of progressive ideology today.
Well, the interstate highway has been declared to be racist for the same reason so we now need to spend trillions of dollars to eliminate them, so this isn’t as insane as it might sound. Our Progressive elites will be needing a new alternative to escape the urban hellscapes they’ve created for everyone else.
The type of transport the elitist greens want to rely on is sedan chairs. Where their dreams lead to is a sort of society where they can use them.
John the Econ, both Kalifornia and Oregon have declared math to be racist and are redesigning their math curriculum. I notice you used the term “trillions” which is dangerously close to racist math.
One of the interesting things I learned about the East Coast when I moved here from California was the purpose of the interstate highway system. In Maryland, my original relocation site, the main drag used to be Pulaski Highway, aka Route 40. Along that highway, all of the gas stations and restaurants were “white only.” Interstate 95 (I-95) was a federal project put in place specifically to do away with racial segregation. “Service plazas” along I-95 were federally licensed, and required to be fully integrated, doing away with the horrible segregation Maryland retained into the 1960s. I think this Marxist idiot has it completely backwards – which isn’t surprising when it comes to Marxist idiots.
We moved from Georgia to Maryland in the 1960s when I was in junior high. Georgians were segregationists, believing that each race should maintain their own community, with a few racists, but Marylanders were simply outright, blatant racists. I was shocked at the way they talked about and treated minorities. I was NOT shocked when George Wallace won the Maryland Democrat Presidential Primary in 1972.
In finnish we have incredibly rich vocabulary of profanities… But i will not bring it here.
Is the word kamala in there anywhere?
Infact it is, it means “terrible”.
“Flying cars will turbocharge sprawl and weaken the social cohesion that comes from shared experiences and geographic proximity that is essential to building consensus in a democracy.” OMG I would love to know the lifestyle of the person who said that. Probably a big flaming HYPOCRITE.
Yeah, like the founders lived in small, urban apartments. Where do these people learn their history anyway?
Do you dream that these idiots learned history???
Yes, I so enjoyed the shared experience on the 405 in The South Bay curve twice daily.
āShared experiencesā? Like the video I āexperiencedā watching an utterly out of control 16yo girl get all stabby with some rivals. Sorry, I donāt want anything to do with THAT āvillageā … or āshareā those experiences. Fly me the hell as far away from that ācultureā ASAP. And thank God for our police … while we still have them
Undermines fascist-style conformity.
Goebbels was nothing compared to these people.
Freedom was a nice dream, but I’m afraid it’s already dead and over.
This brings up a very interesting point.
First we have 2 markers for the downfall on Western Civilization, to wit:
1) Global Warming causes everything.
2) Everything is racist.
We have countless examples of both markers, widely held in the current culture, or what passes for culture today.
Now we can engage in a classical IF/AND/THEN dialectic. Here we will find the truth.
IF: Global Warming causes Everything
AND: Everything is Racist
THEN: Is Global Warming Racist?
Inquiring minds want to know.
{Welcome to the modern University}
Are you kidding? We’re CONSTANTLY being told the climate “crisis” will disproportionately affect communities of colour, because reasons.
Don’t worry TonyL, the Environmental Justice scammers will be right there to take money straight out of your pocket and buy expensive properties in the Bahamas to address your racism.
We’ve had actual flying cars since the 60’s – cars that disconnect from a wing/propeller assembly to drive around on roads. As an expensive toy for the rich, they never really caught on and I can’t see the future equivalent doing so either. The obvious market for these is as a reasonably priced commuter, not a rich person’s toy – in that there is nothing racist. As an aside, I see that they are doing the usual thing of invoking race rather than wealth – they are rather obviously acting out some ingrained jealousy of the ‘haves’ whilst trying to portray themselves as the downtrodden ‘have-not’s’. It’s somebody living in a fantasy world, piling fantasy on top of fantasy.
If they stopped to think for one moment about the highway deaths we incur today and transpose this into *aircraft* deaths in such a scenario they would get much closer to understanding why this won’t happen.
Have *any* of these idiots ever watched an episode of the Jetson’s?
I think the argument they’ll use is along the lines of: “Gee, if they’re developing driverless cars, why can’t they develop driverless flying cars?” I really can only think that these people are unable to tell the difference between fantasy and reality.
I believe that driverless flying cars are more likely to work than driverless surface cars. There is far less up there to confuse the AI, and it’s probably easier to get vehicles to broadcast their locations. It would need designated airways, I imagine, but I think it’s possible.
Given the problem we have with drones atm and they ways in which some individuals are deliberately trying to circumvent the safety features on assisted driving cars, I think it’s possible, but not advisable. Flying ambulances, police cars and fire engines – they might be workable!
We already have them – helicopters
When someone’s reality is based on feelings and wishes instead of facts, there IS no difference.
Author has obviously watched “The Jetsons” far too many times.
No, The man with the golden gun. That wasn’t a computer special effect nor was the river jump.
Or the back to the future movies.
For those of us of a certain “vintage”, we remember, as kids, watching “The Bob Cummings Show”, where he had an AeroCar. You drove it around, like a car, as you needed to, and when you needed to fly, you ‘unpacked’ the trailer it ALWAYS had, and assembled it into an airplane. Obviously, it was preferable that you drove it to an aerodrome, did the transition, and flew away.
I believe I have been informed that there are no surviving examples; at one time there may have been as many as a dozen, give or take …
Vlad
I grew up on Fireball XL5, Stingray and Supercar…
Cool, Thunderbirds are go!
https://youtu.be/AOHBf8ZUpBs
This is good. The arrogant rich will suffer from gethomeitis and will drop in droves.
Anyone who is rich enough can already have a helicopter.
Who thinks flying cars will not have the same regulatory restrictions as helicopters. (Rhetorical questions don’t get question marks.)
Anyone who is seriously worried about flying cars doesn’t know much … about anything.
Drivers are unable to navigate relatively empty streets, with well marked signage, safely. They insist on driving with the cell phone on the steering wheel, putting on make-up, drying their hair or eating hamburgers. Flying cars will produce perfect carnage.
Agree completely and have said as much years ago.
yes, From a group of millennials who understand and willingly accept frequent web crashes, yet are unable to comprehend why we don’t have reliable autopilots.
3D operation is world’s more difficult than 2D, and that doesn’t work too well.
3D operation is worldās more difficult than 2D, and that doesnāt work too well.
Sort of. In 3D you do have the advantage of over or under for avoiding objects, so there is that, plus you can ‘swerve’ without running the risk of running off the road.
On the other hand there is that problem that already affects flying vehicles relative to ground vehicles – gravity and the ground.
Something fails in a ground vehicle? You stop and get out.
Something fails in an air vehicle? You are still in the air and the problem has escalated.
Kevin,
I’ll have you know that I cannot only chew gum and walk at the same time, I can chew a hamburger and watch the road at the same time. The problem comes about if a piece of the hamburger drops off and I instinctively put my head down to see where it landed.
We already have a couple of “flying cars”. We live on a small airport and they are called airplanes. And actually when you are cruising a few hundred miles at around 10,000 feet using your GPS for guidance your chances of even seeing another aircraft to run into are pretty slim, so your prediction of “perfect carnage” are probably a bit exaggerated.
But the big issue with anything that flies is the weather. Almost all pilots have a very keen interest in the weather. You can poke along on the ground when it is foggy, windy, snowy, rainy or whatever… usually with relative ease, but those same conditions in the air can become extremely dangerous even for an experienced pilot. And it takes judgement to decide when the risks are not worth it. As the public saw years ago with John Kennedy Jr. even hazy conditions with almost no wind or turbulance can cause a pilot to auger in.
I thought lithum-ion batteries were illegal to fly. Regardless, have they looked at a map of the crowded air traffic lanes lately? Dodging towers, military, political, windmill exclusions, etc. Might make interesting low altitude meteorites. Somehow this doesn’t make geographic sense. In Port Aransas, Texas there is concern about a proposed condo interfering with their 3500 foot runway.
What we really need is a whole heap of lithium powered drones that DON’T avoid wind turbines !!
Cars were a luxury once, too. No need to be jealous, Kevin DeGood [real name?!]. As long as the fossil-fueled economic boom continues, you or your kids will be able to afford one soon enough.
Years ago a bubbly NASA PR geekette was addressing a bunch of us old crotchety rocket engineers at a luncheon and was hyping the future. After a bit she lamented to us “Why don’t we have flying cars?”
A quick response from a colleague followed:
“Dear girl, most people cannot successfully negotiate 2 dimensions. We thought it most unwise to give them 3.”
What are diversity [dogma], social justice, and environmentalism. That said, save a bird, whack a wind turbine.
I’m imagining an autonomous ten seater flying over Mount Washington. It uses MS 10 as its operating system. In it are Bill Gates, Claus Schwab, Tony Fauci, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, Jerry Nagler, Chuck Shumer, Bill Nye, Michael Mann and one mystery passenger X (think of who you might want to join).
X is instructed to press ctrl-alt-del when they reach 10,000′ elevation.
Easier than the Vulcan Death-Grip, re-boot hand-configuration that Unix requires.
All aboard are killed.
Question: So, who is saved?
Answer: The American people.
If all aboard are killed do you bury the survivors at the crash site, or return them to their home state?
Important question. Asking for a friend š
… important for the “survivors” of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370
And cause women not to have children….
Why climate change is driving some to skip having kids | EurekAlert! Science News
Let’s hope the sheep that believe that schist DON’T pass on their genes.
Flying cars are one of those things that sound great in the abstract but would be horrible in reality. The colossal amount of energy necessary to get them and keep them in the air, the noise, the crashes…
The left will be able to round up all their flying elephants and pigs in those thar flying car thingies.
āI couldnāt make this sort of schist up if I was tryingā
It is beginning to appear that the advanced societies of the world are experiencing a water or air-borne pathogen, affecting about half of the population, causing them to lose their rationality. God help us!
So, I guess that means that jetpacks are OK?
Flying cars will be a way to eliminate the over-exuberant rich. Unfortunately the death toll will extend to the rest of us 2D drivers and pedestrians as we attempt to avoid the wreckage plunging to the ground.
In a sense, the sentiment is actually right! But first I need to state a definition of ‘rĪ±cist’ (in the most modern context) that may be controversial, yet is what is expected to now be the normal.
RACIST ā any action or condition that affords people lacking melanin advantages, earnings, privileges, lifestyles, entertainments and outcome substantially BETTER than those people having higher levels of melanin and/or outwardly apparent ethnicities from historically disadvantaged peoples.
So, given that flying car technology, in a way one hopes mirrors computer technology, becomes ever more efficient, ubiquitous and affordable, then given that, as how people of privilege have been and will likely continue to be dominated by ‘white’ peoples, they will proportionately enjoy the speed-of-life advantages to further their dominance and command of privilege. Thus, flying car tech is intrinsically prone to a rĪ±cist outcome.
(Beggering ā¦ what about limousines, especially chauffered, private planes, yachts, cruise ships, high-end sports cars, muscle trucks and hang gliders?)
ā -ā -ā Just saying, ā -ā -ā
ā -=ā” GoatGuy ā ā”=-ā
“In the 20th century, interstate highways served as the conduit for racial, ethnic, and income segregation.”
What shockingly stupid tripe! The rise of the automobile and the supporting road network freed many American blacks from restrictive locales. There was a great migration in the 1920s & 1930s from the rural South to the industrial North where there were high paying jobs and less repression. This led to a titanic social shift in America and helped trigger the Civil Rights movement. Take away this twit’s Intellectual Card.
You noticed that line of pure bollocks.
London clearly became the largest city in the world before automobiles and Germany – home to the Autobann – lacks the city sprawl this author fantasises over.
The other fact, that you also discuss, is that self ownership of transport FREES the population. If you can only rely on public transport (important word being only) then you can only go where and when the public networks allow you. Yes it does work the other way; if there is no public transport you can only travel if you have access to private methods.
Yes, I do make limited use of public transport, but there is also a vast amount of things I would never be able to do if I didn’t also own a car. Cars allow freedom, which is why many of the Left would secretly prefer a 100% public transport society.
Well, here’s the real problem: Flying cars aren’t good cars and they aren’t good airplanes. The things that make airplanes good, interfere with car like behavior, and the things that make cars good, interfere with airplane like behavior. Plus, commercially made aircraft must be certified, and that costs lots of money. The average new 4-place aircraft today is somewhere in the $500,000 range – cheap. And that’s without cruise control and A/C, and electric windows. Useful load on a typical 4 place single engine aircraft is around 1,000 lb (450 Kg), and that includes the fuel. The most efficient aircraft get about 22 mpg equivalent, but most get around 16 mpg. Flying car? With all the aerodynamic compromises you will be on the low end of the efficiency scale. My old pickup truck can haul 2 tons and get 17 mpg doing it.
Each does best what it does, and never the twain shall meet. At least not until unubtanium is finally discovered and cold fusion becomes practical.
Besides that, most people can get a driver’s license with a few hours of instruction and a little practice. Raise your hand–how many of you have a pilot’s license? Mine is raised.
The aircraft industry thought that post WWII there would be an huge market for private aircraft. Alas, I think less than 5% of the US population is actually interested in piloting a plane. So, there isn’t enough market to allow the cost of aircraft to come down to a reasonable number. And there never will be.
-BillR
Mr. DeGood’s piece is dumb, even by the standards these things are judged by.
Google the author and you’ll find he’s a Center for American Progress fellow. Paid by the word by the Chinese, likely.
If your luck’s run out, you’ll also find a pic of the man. While he might have made a living doing a fair number of things, I’m not surprised he ended up doing this.
Bill, ā1 .. for without complicating the issue with physics and math (which I unerringly do, sighā¦) you state the corpus of the issue. Bilateral compromises to car-and-heli.
Because Mother Earth support cars on wheels-and-springs “for free” (at no static energy cost), we can afford to use iron, steel, leather and lots of pretty chromium, durable windows and big oversized brakes, engines, air conditioners and glitzy cabin electronics in cars. As you said. Power windows, nice amenities.
Flying in the 1970s in my friend’s entry-level Piper Cub, I was struck by just how spartan an aircraft it was, compared to my 1970s 2nd hand car. Downright flimsy, in order to save weight. Because it had to lift itself up by shockingly light weight wings, and a weenie motor. And keep aloft me, the pilot, the fuel, and of course all of the aircraft too. I got used to it, but ever since, I no longer wonder why so many plane crashes end in lives lost. There ain’t anywhere near as much layers-of-protection in a light aircraft. And LESS stuff still in a light helicopter or ‘quadracopter’ drone. Trim, trim, trim to the bone.
If we’re to have hundreds-of-thousands-to-tens-of-millions of ‘flying cars’ (or whatever is made to adopt that term eventually), they will need to pass FAR higher safety, comfort, survivability, noise level and with deepest irony, fuel/energy efficiency standards. Basically, along the line of private jets. Yet, still be zero-runway devices, that quite-wealthy individuals might personally own, and more commonly that are held in fleets by rental companies, air-taxi companies to vend out to passengers one hop at a time.
Without specific math, all those consumer-expected-and-demanded creature comforts and survivability add-ons will definitely make ’em heavier. Sure, the things will be built from titanium-and-carbon-fiber, from light-weight super fabrics, fiber optics and low-mass copper-clad aluminum wiring. Heavy glass will give way to many-layer bullet-proof plastics, and premium sound systems with active noise cancellation. And redundant emergency parachutes for either the whole airplane, or a separable ‘people pod’. Something like that.
Anyway, thank you again.
I am sure that you are aware that one of the primary reason general aviation aircraft are so expensive is because of the cost of liability insurance. An aircraft that costs hundreds of thousands of dolllars to purchase can typically be constructed in kit form for a much lower amount. And even this amount is greatly inflated because aviation accident ambulance chasers go after parts manufacturers as well.
I was once deposed for a trial after I witnessed a crash at a local airport that I was keeping one of our airplanes at. The fatal mishap was 150% pilot error, yet the families of the people killed were going after the manufacturer of the engine for tens of millions of dollars claiming that it had failed and caused the crash. Never mind that the engine was developing full power when the plane augered straight into the ground.
It never went to court because it was all a big shakedown that the lawyers arrainged with the insurance company. Just by claiming that the engine was at fault meant that they were going to receive a certain percentage of the “damages” because juries can be depended on to rule in favor of the families over the manufacturers a certain percentage of the time regardless of the actual circumstances.
As a geographer I agree to a large extent. Cheap, effortless transportation and spacious, healthy residence is a social good subject to distribution conflicts. Early adopters are likely to be among an elite that will benefit from easier bypass of blighted urban areas while they advocate high-density, low-energy eco-friendly urban living spaces for the masses. And the negative environmental effects of lithium-based energy is to be explored and exposed IMO even if the author of the article tries to amplify the message with woke claptrap.
“Flying Cars Will Undermine Democracy and the Environment”
What about electric cars? After all, they are bought by the rich and powerful since they cost twice as much as a comparable internal combustion engine car. Then (at least in California) they get special stickers to use the less travelled “car pool” lanes on the Freeways to avoid being slowed down by the huddled masses. If you buy a Tesla, they even give you free fill-ups of electrical go-go juice while the minorities see their gas prices climb up and up. And the Li-ion batteries have the same effect on the environment whether used on the ground or in the air. But I suspect the Kevin DeGood probably drives an electric car himself so, never mind.
The last thing we need are flying cars. People have a hard enough time driving ones that don’t fly. If flying cars become popular, there will be no safe place to live, except underground.
Proper flying cars have to be like in the Futurama or Blade Runner, or it doesn’t count.
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind. Kevin DeGood is mentally ill.
Japanese could have used them as kamikaze autos in WWII
Just think of the driving test. No traffic from right or left, then .. Wait! No traffic from below or above either, then … Ai, now there’s something coming at 14hours.
The mind boggles.
I haven’t checked his references, but lithium battery development assists flying cars how exactly?
Considering how quickly this article seems to switch from speculating about future technology into pushing a social-political agenda I feel maybe he should have started with Segways.
Instead of flying cars, I rather prefer the idea of flying carpets. Unlike brooms, which are one-seaters, carpets, I understand, can seat up to a dozen. Now if they would just lift that ban on flying carpets (“muggle artefact”)…
“Recent advances in lithium-ion batteries have opened the door to flying car development”
How does a bulky low energy density power source open the door to anything in aeronautical engineering? what a f***ing moron…
Only the ancient hippies were good humans-
Humans have been altering Earth’s land for 12,000 years, study finds (msn.com)
Except when they burnt a continent of course-
Future Eaters Ep.1 – Taming the fire -The thesis and responses from critics (abc.net.au)
Roads and highways are a conduit to communication, commerce and Christmas. Air travel further improves on communication. Take those away and you have isolation and restriction.
Too narrow a view can obstruct appreciation and cripple progress. Those seeking forced change almost always get it wrong especially when envy is involved.
Some people simply do not want to live in stack and packs. Or sit on 5th Ave for 3 hours waiting to get to the Queens Expressway. Its not racism, its quality of life.
Imagine what the world would be like if every new thing was declared “racist” and must be forbidden. Now imagine it’s 2007 and Apple’s new iPhone was just released, declared “racist” and must be forbidden. What would the world be like today if that had actually happened?
David, so glad that you are watching Gutfeld. Not all of it is great but it sure beats anything else. Some of Gutfeld’s monologes are brilliant.
Given the typical driver, flying cars will result in piles of flying car debris strewn all over the cities.
Realistically, it would require licensing similar to airplanes, at which point what’s really the difference?
If you think the Interstate Highway system was racist, wait until the Galactic Transporter is installed.
I cannot say what my first reaction was, but I WANT MY FLYING CARS AND I WANT THEM NOW.