Gary Varvel for May 09, 2023

This is a remarkably stupid cartoon. Gary Varvel apparently believes that conventional tanks never run out of (petroleum-based) fuel.

Nat gas? That needs to be a solar generator.

Varvel discovers another ‘issue’ to weaponize and LIE about.

They would use a battery power pack to charge them in the field.

Tell te enemy to stop shooting. We are out of gas. Hmm.

Upside: we will no longer take 20 years to lose a war.

Guess I better include a /s for those more dense readers here.

Maybe the electric powered F-35s can provide air cover while the tanks recharge.

And this is all happening the day after tomorrow!

Woke soldiers + electric tanks = easy defeat for US military. They couldn’t defeat a bunch of rice farmers in Vietnam or a bunch of goat herders in Afghanistan but they expect to win a war with a bunch of sissy soldiers and defective electric equipment. What could go wrong?

I have to agree with many contributors over the last few weeks: Mr. Varvel seems to have lost contact with Earth. Why no cartoons about voter suppression? Book banning? Mass shootings? Snitch lines for teachers? Government subsidies for oil companies? The elimination of privacy rights? The move to replace government employees with partisan GOP supporters to help move towards one-party governance?

Do we think Varvel will soon do a strip relative to TFG’s being found guilty of sexual battery and defamation?

Oh God yes! This would be true if it ever happen except for the stop shooting part!

To Judge Magney: It is an excellent cartoon. You are supposed to be smart enough to realize how quickly a fossil fueled tank can be REFUELED vs the time it takes to RECHARGE a battery powered tank! A diesel fueled tanker truck can go to an out of fuel tank and refill it in minutes. A diesel fueled generator truck can go to a dead battery- powered tank and recharge it, but both the ‘green’ tank and generator truck are vulnerable for the hours it needs to recharge! If the idea is to render military equipment useless, then ‘battery powered’ will do it! [Much like military personal are being rendered useless with idiotic ‘woke’ policies!]

“When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”—Jonathan Swift.

It’s not surprising that there are many whose coat of arms must read “Get A Horse!”. There was a time when you had to go to a supply house and buy kerosene to mix in your own garage to fuel your vehicle. Technology turned gasoline, which had been a waste product, into a viable fuel and then supply and demand made for gas stations on every corner some 20 to 30 years later. But then we’ve always had the short sighted and narrow minded to overcome.

Repeating myself a bit and for the Nth time. The M1A2 Abrams is powered by the Honeywell AGT1500 multifuel engine which can eat just about any burnable liquid. Kerosene, JP4, alcohol, gasoline but its preferred diet is diesel and it can be refueled in minutes.

Some brainiac said fuel trucks are vulnerable and can explode, but diesel really doesn’t do that very well. You can drop a lit match into a pan of diesel and it will go out. Yeah? Well recharging trucks can blow up, but for the non military, that’s why the fuelers and other support vehicles are kept in the rear echelon behind the tanks and other combat vehicles.

So how you going to recharge an electric tank? You going to have a bunch of generators in the rear burning petroleum? Kinda defeats the purpose of going to an ET (heh). Then you’re faced with the hours it will take to charge an ET which is a no go right there. Another genius suggested spare batteries. Okay, you’ve got 500 tanks on the battlefield, how many spare battery packs are you going to lug around and how long will it take to change them out? Also you’re on a battlefield with bullets flying around, sure your batteries are in the rear but sh1t happens. All it takes is a single bullets hitting one of those battery pack to cause an uncontrolled burn and meltdown. Ever seen one on fire? Arguably worse that a gasoline fire. Do a search or go to YouTube and put in “burning EV battery”. Those things don’t just burn, there are dozens of small batteries hooked together in those packs and those thing blow up like hand grenades. And what if they’re stacked up next to each other? Chain reaction, baby.

You want an ET, the only reasonable way to go is with a hybrid. But then you’re still stuck with burning petroleum to run the generator to power the engines and batteries.

Couple of people have mentioned that batteries are becoming increasingly efficient and we don’t where technologies are going in the future. Very true, but you can’t force a “breakthrough “ at the snap of the fingers or throwing money at it. Classic example is fusion research. This began in earnest back in the late 1950s. Over seventy years later the USA and over 35 nations have spent more than a trillion dollars on fusion research and were still being told that it’s 10 to 20 years away in the future.

How about we ramp up and take away the roadblocks on nuclear power plants until someone develops a viable fusion reactor.

Here’s an elegant suggestion. Take all but the most needed restraints off the nuclear power industry, fast track their licensing and make their construction a national priority. Once we have enough power in the grid to suit our needs and stop Californias rolling brown outs, we keep building them. Then for every 1000MW nuke that comes on line, we shut down the equivalent of coal fired plants. Solves a lot of problems and allows more EVs on the road. Especially nice if we encourage Molten Salt Thorium Reactors.