The essence of tragedy is an unexpected twist of fate where happiness abruptly becomes disaster and its sorrowful consequences. Such is the case of the flash flood in Texas in which over a hundred lost their lives.
Adding poignancy were the 27 girl guides who came for adventure, kayaking, swimming, the fun of chatting over campfires, perhaps even survival skills like building a fire.
The parents paid 4,375 dollars each in tuition fees for the 30-day stay at Camp Mystic. Some of the parents had attended the same camp when they were children and going back nobody recalled the place ever being flooded.
With all the DOGE (Dept. of Government Efficiency) cuts by Trump and Musk to make government smaller, some observed that essentials were being lost. A Florida TV weather man warned that the cuts to the National Weather Service (NWS), which provides forecasts and warnings of dangerous weather conditions, will lead to loss of life. He could not have been more prescient. Should Musk in his careless cost-cutting be held responsible, and is anyone then guilty of manslaughter, which warrants a prison term of two or three years or more.
Well, Mr. Musk tries his best, even if the minerals being mined for the batteries in his electric cars have their own pollution problems. Then there is the charging of the batteries. Where does Mr. Musk think the electricity to charge them comes from? Most power stations are coal or natural gas fired . . . and combustion generates carbon dioxide. It has been increasing in the atmosphere since the 1950s and leads to the fear of a greenhouse effect. So we are back to global warming.
Most electricity generating plants use steam turbines. These drive the alternators that generate electricity and their efficiency in converting heat from fossil fuels into electrical power is around 40 percent. This electrical power is used to charge Mr. Musk’s Tesla cars.
Now roughly speaking the internal combustion engine in your car has an efficiency of 30 to 40 percent. So the best ones with modern innovations are comparable to Tesla cars. In brief, if you feel smug driving a Tesla, there is nothing to be smug about unless you plan to rig up a home generator, possibly bicycle powered, to charge it!
One point some might have realized, namely, electric motor efficiency (usually well above 90 percent) has not been included. The losses are due to current flowing through the windings and so on, and it applies to Teslas. As we have seen it’s not all roses.
Starting with Camp Mystic we have looked at tragedy, global warming that made the camp vulnerable, and then at electric cars, discovering in the end that little beats conservation.