Speaks for not being able to find the charging point in the parking lot, perhaps? Don't forget that Musk formulated his assertion of Broder's motivation based on a data log of the car traveling between 5mph and 15mph for 0.6 miles. That sounds almost exactly like my average journey to find a parking spot at the mall.
But no, you're right, let's assume a long-term New York Times veteran lied in the paper, intentionally. That's a safer explanation in the face of your call for Occam's Razor...
John Broder does have an affinity for writing articles about big oil. I don't exactly want to assume he was paid under the table to denounce electric cars, but it's odd for a writer to have 90% of their articles being related to oil: http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/peopl...
On Feb 8, 4 days before the controversial tesla article, he wrote one about how poorly the Chevrolet Volt & Ford Transit performed. I think he already decided on the tone of the article before he drove the Tesla.
His other articles about oil drilling claim that they help with job creation... you be the judge.
I've had two experiences with the press. I have many friends who have also had far more interaction with the press than I have.
I will tell you this:
Both times I made it into the paper, my feeling while giving the interview was that the reporter was writing the story their way despite what I was saying. I was asked leading questions, questions that asked me to come down on one side or another of a complex issue. I was asked repeatedly the same question in different ways to elicit a response that would support a conclusion I didn't agree with.
My friends confirmed my suspicions when they saw the articles that were written. If you dont think that a significant percentage of the articles you read in the paper are pushing a particular viewpoint despite contrary evidence, I'd like a little of what you are smoking.
Just in case you were asking, one of the reporters I'm talking about works for the New York Times. This is the article I was talking about:
> His other articles about oil drilling claim that they help with job creation... you be the judge.
Since I live in ND, we have lots of oil drilling going on, and the Dec 2012 unemployment rate was 3.2% compared to the national rate of 7.8%; I would find that a factually true statement.
Texas seems to be doing fine too and they have a bit of a population. The line you quoted is factual. Oil employees a lot of people and generates a lot of money.
We had a ton of fine women working as telephone operators once too. My father was a typewriter repairman for a bit.
When was the last time you saw either one of those?
Oil's biggest advantage (other than the massive amount of energy density) is that the full cost of acquiring it isn't factored into the cost per barrel. Since oil is both a commodity and a strategic resource, the government has committed its full resources in the aim of securing supply.
You can argue if this is or isn't a good thing, but you can't argue the fact that it happens.
I have no idea how your comment relates to anything I wrote. Oil employees a lot of people. The reporter's comment was factual. If we are talking subsidies then "green" isn't exactly dieting at the federal trough.
My point is this: just because oil employs lots of people, it isn't a reason to concentrate investment in those industries.
The reporter might have been reporting a true statement, but it wasn't informative or even relevant to the discussion about energy technologies. There were plenty of telegraph operators, milkmen, and dockworkers once too. Technological advancement made those jobs redundant or irrelevant.
This is fantasy. Slap a $20/ton or $50/ton carbon tax (highest non-crackpot estimate) on oil and people will still gladly pay it. The idea that oil use would severely diminished by such a cost internalization is pure wishful thinking.
Carbon tax? I'm not talking about pollution here. I'm talking about geopolitics. If the cost of maintaining a fleet of ships in the Persian Gulf was fully factored into the cost of oil imported from the middle east, you think it's be close to the price we pay for it now?
Yep, oil is totally non-fungible, and oil-rich nations wouldn't reap the immense profits of selling it on the massive global market without the US government specifically forcing them to.
Lousy education, lousy average pay vs other places, lousy level of social services.
Sure, we've got a lower cost of living than most places, but I'd argue that we've also got a lower quality of life.
When the oilfield is hot, we have lots of high paying jobs for people. Fortunately for us, it's hot right now. What they'll all do when the current boom dries up, I haven't any idea.
The reporter's statement is "oil drilling creates jobs". Do you believe he was right or wrong? He and I have made no mention of anything but that statement.
I was responding specifically to "Texas seems to be doing fine" by agreeing that yes, Texas has lots of jobs when the oil-patch is hot. But, also pointing out that it isn't necessarily worth bragging about that our economy is so dependent upon a single factor, one over which we have so little control. And, also that the definition of "fine" may not be the same for everyone here, specifically me, a resident of Texas, who certainly enjoys low taxes, but nevertheless might also like to see less blight and poverty. I made and make no comment over anything the reporter may have said, but with respect to the general statement "oil drilling creates jobs", I'd say, well, yeah so do lots of things. Does oil drilling really create the sort of prosperity that we really want?
Again, "a lot" is a statement that is only true in context. And particularly given that Oil's ability to employ is completely dependent upon geological formations that no-one has any control over, it's disingenuous to try to generalize it beyond the context where it's true.
Farming is geographically limited and it is a rather large employer in the US. Oil has a effect on more industries than just energy. Tesla would not be able to build their cars with oil products. It's disingenuous to not look at actual employment numbers and reach of industry when trying to say something factual isn't.
You want to calculate the total employment of all industries enabled by oil and then say that the next barrel of oil is responsible for a proportional number of that total?
What about those industries that use oil only because it's still currently cheaper than its alternatives? What about those industries that are already transitioning away from oil and would barely notice if oil became even more expensive? What about those industries where oil is crucially important, but is a fairly minor cost concern and even a doubling of price wouldn't seriously impact their ability to produce products, profits and employees?
How in the world would we even calculate that out to determine how many jobs would exist or not, based on whether we drill the next oil well?
And how would we calculate where those jobs would exist?
Because, oil being fungible, lower production just drives global price up. And the losers in such scenarios tend to be the poorer people and industries, which tend not to be in the US. (It would take a much larger jump in the price of oil to make the next US job in an oil-reliant industry infeasible, than it would take in, say, the developing world.)
And when we do drill that next well, it just lowers (or keeps low) the existing price of oil, and the primary place we'd expect oil-dependent jobs to be created that would not have otherwise been economically feasible without that cheaper oil, is again in the developing world.
So if you want to say oil is massively important, I agree. I never said otherwise.
But if you want to say that the next oil well will necessarily create lots of US jobs, I continue to disagree on the basis that the next oil well simply doesn't directly add many jobs.
And if you want to say that cheaper oil also tangentially creates jobs, I will again agree, but stipulate that new jobs created only because of that cheaper oil, will overwhelmingly be created outside the US.
So I will continue to disagree that the next oil well in the US will have a large impact on US employment.
That has nothing to do with anything. The point is that he appears to highlight the positive effects of oil drilling but not the negative effects (environmental degradation, etc.).
Not the negative effects? "Shell Violated Air Permits for Arctic Ships, E.P.A. Says"? "Interior Dept. Expedites Review of Arctic Drilling After Accidents"? "Rig Runs Aground in Alaska, Reviving Fears About Arctic Drilling"?
"Shell Violated Air Permits for Arctic Ships, E.P.A. Says"
Frankly that article reads like "EPA claims some infractions but they are no big deal". I can't imagine anyone reading that article and coming away very critical of Shell.
>he wrote one about how poorly the Chevrolet Volt & Ford Transit performed
Is the claim that they are actually doing very well, and he was incorrect in his article? Or that he is biased merely for writing an article based on negative facts?
The notion was that a pattern of articles that tend to support the same group should raise our estimate of a bias in favor of that group.
All of them could be perfectly accurate, incidentally - consider a journalist who investigates 100 stories for every one he publishes and only publishes those that are favorable; while none of the articles would contain actual falsehoods, clearly this is a bias.
Whether that's the case here is a much deeper question that I can't answer from my extremely limited skimming of the available media and this thread.
Huh? He writes about many, many other energy-related topics. Just page through his stories. Climate, natural gas, EPA regulations, wind tax credits ...
The street view here is outdated but I'm pretty sure you would see them immediately as you exit off the highway and, end to end, the rest area is about 0.25 miles. I don't think there's any other way to accumulate 0.6 miles in this rest stop without driving around in circles.
If this was the only discrepancy, I'd be more skeptical. However, there are a large number of problems with the reporting. Large enough that said reporter has an obligation to respond.
> let's assume a long-term New York Times veteran lied in the paper
What you are asking us to believe than is that Musk faked all this data. Because if he didn't fake the data, then the NYTimes story still doesn't add up, regardless of speculation on his activities.
Furthermore, you are asking us to believe that numerous other reviews by respectable, veteran reports, were wrong.
Maybe this report is the one man speaking out against a large conspiracy of a company and numerous reporters. But it's on him to prove now.
let's assume a long-term New York Times veteran lied in the paper, intentionally
If anything, I think that some veteran reporters get full of themselves and become unafraid of slanting things according to their biases as they get older. Look at the trouble Dan Rather got into at the end of his career because he was determined to sink George W. Bush.
What does his being a veteran have anything to do with his affinity to lie?
The main factor that affects someone's likelihood of lying is whether they think they can get away with it. Broder most likely knew that the car was logging data. However, he probably didn't know just how detailed the logging was, and assumed it was too rudimentary to refute the kind of story he was cooking up in his head before he even started the drive.
It doesn't seem likely the reporter lied intentionally - or at least, not consciously.
However, didn't we see that long apology yesterday about how easy it is to lie to yourself and others, even when truth is everything to you? This is why we have double blind medical trials etc. – because people are biased and can't help but lie to keep their preconceptions true.
> I'm not sure what a reviewer driving in circles at a charging station proves?
Perhaps that he couldn't find it, since it was his first visit?
Based on the rest of this thread, though, Occam is not going to be making an appearance and we're going to be questioning the journalistic integrity of someone who's worked at the New York Times since most commenters here were in diapers. It totally makes sense that he'd write a completely false story at the behest of big oil. That's the logical explanation.
Yes, yes, but isn't it awfully interesting how with all of Mr. Broder's complaints about the car, he completely forgot to mention just how hard it was to find the Supercharger station? Doesn't that seem like a relevant detail in an article ostensibly reviewing the Supercharger network?
I'm just so upset that I can't help wringing my hands. Just think of all those uninformed citizens. Those poor souls buying this fancy car with the wool over their eyes. So naive: thinking they can just drive right up to a Supercharger station whenever they want with nary a thought. Who is going to tell them that they must not only drive to the station, but commit to a parking lot odyssey? Think of all the electrons that will be burned whilst the good people of this country waste their time searching for a Supercharger! Who? Who, I say, will bring this message to the masses, if not John Broder? And he has failed! For this, I demand the Times investigate his journalistic malpractice at once!
Seriously, though, at what point are allowed to invoke Occam's Razor and admit that maybe, just maybe, Mr. Broder may not have been giving the car a fair shake?
...or trying to find the charging point, since it was potentially his first visit there? While we're speculating on rationale, why don't we include possibilities fair to both sides?
This is a fair point, but based on this photo [1] of the Supercharger station, and the layout of the service area, it seems unlikely he would have missed it. Google Maps even has the spot marked [2], but the photography has not been updated since December 2012, when they were installed.
That's a very prominent location. I'd have a hard time believing anyone would miss it repeatedly.
It wasn't just his driving around in the parking lot - he was deliberately leaving charging locations prior to getting a full charge so as to increase the chances of a discharged battery. That was the entire point of this exercise, and he accomplished it on his first try.
I say, have someone not biased towards big-oil try this road-trip again in similar conditions, and report back with the results. I expect they will have absolutely zero difficulty.
I also thought this at first, but it was his second time visiting that station: there are two stops by Milford's supercharger in the vehicle logs and the claims are about the second, so he is potentially familiar with the area at the time.
I'm pretty sure they were talking about the first visit to the Milford supercharger. In fact, he can't have driven around the parking lot for 10 minutes before charging on the second visit, since the Model S was delivered and initially charged on the back of a pick-up truck - Tesla haven't challenged that part at all.
I know I often drive around for several minutes trying to find a pump at gas stations I have never been to. Those damn light up awnings are just so hard to find.
Are there any modern militaries which don't consider maneuver warfare to be their primary strategy?
I can see most not being able to execute AirLand or anything involving long-distance strategic mobility, but outside of maybe NK (defending prepared positions with dug-in infantry and artillery), or non-state actors (but even there, it's more like the ultimate evolution of maneuver warfare than anything else), it would seem like the default tactic of most militaries. Certainly US, UK, etc.
No, you're on point, in my opinion. And yes, you're correct, what we're seeing today in Iraq and Afghanistan is simply the extreme evolution of maneuver warfare. There's no delicate way to say this, so: it's pretty clear that 'terrorism' is simply extreme maneuver warfare, evolved to its apex (maybe) and designed to break the opposition in nontraditional ways, and what we would consider 'bad guys' simply began perfecting it first.
The theory of the 'good guys' (the scare quotes aren't hedging, they're just being careful to avoid ideological framing of the discussion), Lind in particular, is rapidly adjusting to the new threat model. That was the thrust of my point to the other commenter here. There's an interesting parallel in that countering terrorism and counterinsurgency are largely reactionary by their very nature, and the 'good guys' have been left reacting to the new model of warfare in itself in, say, the last decade. People do disagree with Lind on fourth-generation warfare, for what it's worth.
We're "catching up," not "innovating" on the battlefield today. That's the big lesson here.
IIRC there have been wars where we used "tactical maneuver" but still thought of strategic attrition as the goal -- Vietnam is probably the best example, where the "body count" was the end goal, and "take this hill" was primarily for the purpose of incidentally killing (at a very favorable exchange ratio) the enemy. Karl Marlantes has a pretty good criticism of this in "What it is like to go to war" -- the escalating levels of lying over statistics, as well as the ultimate futility and irrelevance of the body count statistic. Unclear to me if this was due to a lack of possible focal points to attack, or because those focal points were somehow out of bounds (Chinese supply lines, etc.).
Also IIRC the Vietnam war is not considered to have been one of America's finest military successes, either.
Indeed, one of its finest defeats. Vietnam was extremely complicated, both on the battlefield and off, and it's not my area of expertise; that being said, a lot of modern maneuvers planted their seeds in that soil.
Americans grew tired of Iraq when insurgents kept picking off a soldier every other day and there was little to show for their loss. Similar themes presented in the latter years of Vietnam, combined with a complicated political picture stateside. That's the success of an insurgency: attrition not of materiel, but the minds, resolve, and fortitude of a belligerent. That was certainly evident in Vietnam, as well, and it's a great parallel.
I've always been curious if the "problem" from the popular-support perspective was the casualties (which, while high, were not THAT high for the total force -- in Iraq, most were due to IEDs/rockets and spread over a large number; in Afghanistan they're a bit more concentrated on actual combat troops), or the lack of progress, or some combination.
There really was ~zero progress (net; there were some wins and some losses) from late-2003 to early-2007 in Iraq, overall, and from ~2003 to ~2009 in Afghanistan (the 2009 end date is questionable; I'm reluctant to say Afghanistan overall is better right now than it was right after the CIA/ODA 555 operations in late 2001, as described in First In by Gary Schroen).
I was in Iraq watching this and was a lot more critical of the way the US was fighting from 2003-2006 than of the actual casualty numbers.
It's certainly more rational to be more willing to take a few hundred casualties if it brings a quick victory than to endure long slow bleeding of thousands, but I don't know if popular opinion is rational. I think casualties-per-second are much higher in offensive operations than in purely static defense, though.
> We're "catching up," not "innovating" on the battlefield today. That's the big lesson here.
I've lately come to the conclusion that modern warfare came into being because of Napoleon's genius and his wars of the early 1800s. He was way ahead of his time, and you could sense this by how "surprised" at his tactics were the guys confronting him from the other side (the Prussians, Austrians etc). For what it's worth, I think that WW1 which took place 100 years later was still an "old world" war.
What I'm trying to come at is that even Napoleon had to face a huge "insurgency" war in Spain (those insurgents will by today's standards be called "terrorists"). Even Napoleon couldn't "win" that war, I doubt it that in today's US military there are smarter heads when it comes to war.
IMO Afghanistan is a lost cause (it is fundamentally unwinnable at any price worth paying for a win; any victory will be at best Pyrrhic. You can pretty readily destroy AQ's ability to operate (completed in early 2002), but you can't turn Afghanistan into anything but a basketcase.)
Iraq, however, was obviously maneuver early on, on the part of the US (who kicked ass; the war in a conventional sense really was won in a few weeks/months -- a reasonable person could have pulled out at that point, and we might have had some stupidity at the Presidential and State Department levels not happened). It then turned into maneuver warfare by the insurgents -- striking the weak link of the US, the large logistics convoys, largely operated by KBR under LOGCAP, needed to supply the logistics-heavy US force. (and arguably the same thing has happened in Afghanistan, aided by the terrain and Pakistan.)
The relative victory post-2007 was primarily due to the old British Empire tactic of dividing your enemies (i.e. buying off both the Shia militias by putting US forces in small posts in their territory to keep them safe from the Sunnis, and by bribing the Sunnis as "Sons of Iraq" to join the US as well) -- with FREs largely destroyed by this time, it meant leaving only AQ, straight-up criminal gangs, and some seriously hardline Shia (Iran-linked) enemies.
Those guys essentially got defeated by the "task force with many names" (6-26, 121, 88, assorted colors, etc.); essentially JSOC. It was pretty much the same as you'd roll up organized crime in the US (i.e. watch The Wire) -- identify high value targets, "human" focal points, and then go kill/capture them. By removing the bulk of non-hardline opposition, the US was left with thousands of enemies, of which only tens or hundreds were key -- and they ended up dying pretty fast.
Small JSOC units operating from the air, from civilian vehicles, etc. were highly mobile, so it was essentially maneuver warfare at the small scale. Essentially all "raid" type SOF missions depend on speed and mobility; there is no way for even a 10x better trained/equipped force to stand and fight against a much larger conventional force for a long period of time, outside of a video game.
There's a bibliography near the end with interesting things to read. That's generally where things to read if you're interested in a topic will appear, and there's no need to be harsh to the guy pointing you toward useful information.
No amount of buzzwords can conceal that you don't understand what "maneuver warfare" is, either; fourth-generation warfare pretty much is maneuver warfare. Your dilution of your point by introducing United States themes and specific tactical situations makes me question why you're putting so much skin in this discussion if you're as lay as your questions indicate. I'm not criticizing you, for what it's worth, just wondering why you're cloaking not knowing something with extra buzzwords -- you should be happy to learn, not apt to show off.
Terrorism and insurgency are forms of maneuver warfare, and the term "maneuver" doesn't imply scale (and certainly not armor, for that matter). Since you're quite obviously American, the Marine Corps' definition of "maneuver warfare" should interest you:
"Maneuver warfare is a warfighting philosophy that seeks to
shatter the enemy’s cohesion through a variety of rapid, focused, and unexpected actions which create a turbulent and
rapidly deteriorating situation with which the enemy cannot
cope."
That's from Warfighting[1]. Seriously, read up, you sound interested but misguided, and I made a throwaway just to spite you. :)
"Third Generation warfare, like Second, was a product of World War I. It was developed by the German Army, and is commonly known as Blitzkrieg or maneuver warfare." [1]
"Along with placing greater emphasis on adaptability, the Army has transitioned its focus on training and operations from developing forces for large-scale maneuver warfare to increasing the capability of individuals to operate in smaller, decentralized elements." [2]
The wikipedia link to Warfigthing is broken. I am having trouble finding the manual on DoD's doctrine section.[3][4] Is it still relevant?
You made a throwaway account because you did not want to have your name attributed to what you wrote, I experienced no spite
[1] Understanding Fourth Generation War by William S. Lind
Notice how your quote includes the phrase "large-scale" behind it? That's because of what I, you know, wrote in my original comment about maneuver warfare not implying a certain scale or strategy in particular. You're proving my point and disagreeing with me at the same time, which is rather remarkable. Lind's equivalence of third-generation warfare to being called "maneuver warfare" is a definition that I happen to disagree with, as I think maneuvers in general evolve as war itself does. Terrorism itself is another evolution of a maneuver, in my opinion.
Maneuver warfare isn't the specific strategy on a general's table. It's an ethos of war. In particular, maneuver warfare embraces decentralized command, as you're so vociferously citing in your defense; Iraqi Freedom was a war of colonels, not generals, as discussed in a link I shared with you earlier.
I tried to be kind in my reply since you share a passion for military theory, and it's a topic I happen to be extremely versed in (as in, my entire adult life to this day). I hope one day you realize that there are people out there in the world that know more about a topic than you do, don't feel like justifying that authority to you, and that you should appreciate that they took some time out of their day to try to inform you rather than attack them belligerently because they dared to disagree with you.
I see this is fruitless, so, best of luck debating with other laypersons on the Internet.
But no, you're right, let's assume a long-term New York Times veteran lied in the paper, intentionally. That's a safer explanation in the face of your call for Occam's Razor...