MEDIAsteria: Best Media Memes (Plus NPR Gaslighting on Vanadium Batteries)

How to spot CNN viewers, Washington Pos[t], msn[BS], learn to code CNN+ staff, Morning Mika’s dad predicts the future, NPR gaslights us on vanadium batteries, and more media memes!

Aug 10, 2022

My media meme collection has piled up. But before I get to those, there was a recent NPR story (which you may have seen as its been picked up by everyone on the Left and the Right) that has been bothering me BUT before we get to that - keep this handy media infographic in mind [33 Problems With Media In One Chart]:

infographic listing problems with media, including bias, sensationalism, and more

And here is the NPR story:

The U.S. made a breakthrough battery discovery — then gave the technology to China

“… They were building a battery — a vanadium redox flow battery — based on a design created by two dozen U.S. scientists at a government lab. The batteries were about the size of a refrigerator, held enough energy to power a house, and could be used for decades. The engineers pictured people plunking them down next to their air conditioners, attaching solar panels to them, and everyone living happily ever after off the grid…”
“…The agency issued the license, and Yang launched UniEnergy Technologies. He hired engineers and researchers. But he soon ran into trouble. He said he couldn't persuade any U.S. investors to come aboard.
"I talked to almost all major investment banks; none of them (wanted to) invest in batteries," Yang said in an interview, adding that the banks wanted a return on their investments faster than the batteries would turn a profit…”

TO SUMMARIZE: We gave away BREAKTHROUGH BATTERY TECHNOLOGY that CAN CHANGE THE WORLD (aka save the planet!!!) to the COMMUNIST CHINESE because ~~GREEDY CAPITALIST PIG BANKSTERS~~ American investors wanted a return on their investment!!!

That means there is something for EVERYONE in this story (for the Left and the Right) which is why (despite coming from NPR…) it has also been picked up by many so-called “alt-right” or conservative sites (no doubt due to the anti-China angle…) with most of the comments being, of course, anti-China. [e.g. A Curious Case of Transferred Battery Technology on Conservative Treehouse]

Here is what bothers me about this story: Why would NPR (state-sponsored media in Twitterspeak) run such a provocative story (most of our government, politicians, and big corporations are in bed with China anyway…), and why now, especially in the wake of Nancy’s junket to Taiwan AND the bill filled with Green ~~kickbacks~~ subsidies that is now working its way through Congress??? And what is NPR not telling me, or trying to gaslight me with the Chinese angle, about this so-called revolutionary GREEN technology that will SAVE THE PLANET???

I am not a battery expert BUT I do have enough common sense to sense that something does NOT smell right about this story... It just pushes all the right buttons for too many people…

From looking at the comments (I ALWAYS LOOK AT COMMENTS TO TRY TO FIND OR FIGURE OUT WHAT THE MEDIA IS NOT TELLING ME OR LYING ABOUT…) on various sites that have run with the story, there is ALOT NPR is not telling us:

“I’m beyond skeptical of a battery that can power a house for ten years. This sounds like green energy pipe dreams. Like wind farms. [EXACTLY MY INITIAL REACTION…]
“The vanadium–vanadium redox flow battery (VRB) was largely pioneered by M. Skyllas-Kazacos and coworkers in 1983 at the University of New South Wales, Australia. The technology is now being developed by several organizations including E-Fuel Technology Ltd in the United Kingdom and VRB Power Systems Inc. in Canada. A particular feature of the VRB is that it employs the same chemical element in both the anode and the cathode electrolytes. The VRB utilizes the four oxidation states of vanadium, and ideally there is one redox couple of vanadium in each half-cell. A major advantage of the VRB is that the use of the same element in both half-cells helps to avoid problems associated with cross-contamination of the two half-cell electrolytes during long-term usage. The electrolyte has a long lifetime and waste disposal issues are minimized. The VRB also offers high energy efficiency (<90% in large installations), low cost for large storage capabilities, upgradability of existing systems, and long cycle life. Possible limitations include the relatively high capital cost of vanadium-based electrolytes together with the cost and limited lifetime of the ion-exchange membrane.” [TRANSLATION: BANKERS/INVESTORS RAN THE NUMBERS, TALKED TO PAID EXPERTS, AND ARE NOT STUPID… THAT’S WHY AMERICAN TAXPAYER DOLLARS GOT USED…]
“This early work was followed by more than 25 years of research and development at UNSW in all aspects of the VRB, including electrode and membrane materials, electrolyte production and optimization, stack design, modeling and simulation, sensors, and control systems (Parasuraman et al., 2013; Skyllas-Kazacos, 2002; Skyllas-Kazacos et al., 2011). Early commercialization and field testing of the UNSW VRB were undertaken in the mid 1990s by Mitsubishi Chemicals and Kashima-Kita Electric Power Corporation (KKEPC) in Japan and by Thai Gypsum Corporation in Thailand, under license to UNSW, but it was not until after the basic VRB patent expired in 2006 (Skyllas-Kazacos et al., 1988a) that a large expansion in VRB development and manufacture was realized in response to the growing interest and demand for efficient energy storage technologies for renewable energy and smart grid applications.”
Source: M. Skyllas-Kazacos, J.F. McCann, in Advances in Batteries for Medium and Large-Scale Energy Storage, 2015, Chapter 10.1 [TRANSLATION: IT WAS NOT OUR TECHNOLOGY AS EVERYONE HAS BEEN WORKING ON OR THROWING MONEY AT IT…]
“….It was first suggested and played with in the 1930's Again in the 70's by NASA and an Australian made the first successful one back in the 80's With and Australian University patenting it in 86. In 2016 a German city was using one and By 2017 China had an operational one which would mean they either really hopped on our tech and built a large thing quickly OR they were already working on it. I would point out that the waste from these is extremely TOXIC...which is why we probably leased ( which means they had all the tech from trumps admin) it to them to make....we did not want the environmental headaches that went with it….” [EXTREMELY TOXIC? THAT’S NOT VERY GREEN!!!!!!]
“Tech has been around for ages (1980s) and really hasn’t gone anywhere. “Give” seems to mean “licensed”. Iron flow batteries seem to be the thing now because they’re non-toxic.” [OHHHHH REALLY???????]
“China can pollute as much as they like to make it priced affordable. The Globalists want China to build the ground breaking polluting tech anyways.” [GOOD POINTS…]
“Good try! Everybody has this technology. Geeze, Garbage content!” [SURE SOUNDS LIKE IT…]
“The battery will probably cost $200,000 and only work on sunny days, now the rich can truly be rid of the peasants.” [YOU GOT THAT RIGHT!!! AND NEED TO BE HOOKED UP TO A COAL-FIRED POWER PLANT AS WELL…]
“Forever energy is a company in Bellevue Washington, Chris Howard was an engineer at UniEnergy Technologies. Chris Howard is now the director of operations at Forever Energy in Bellevue, Wash.” [OH WHAT A COINCIDENCE AND NOW THE PLOT THICKENS!]

And what about Vanadium? Is it readily available like, say, all that dirty black carbon-based stuff that we happen to have buried under half of our country as well as offshore?

A quick look at Wikipedia (which I realize is often not accurate on anything remotely controversial or political) reveals:

Vanadium is mined mostly in South Africa, ncarbon-basedorth-western China, and eastern Russia. In 2013 these three countries mined more than 97% of the 79,000 tonnes of produced vanadium.[44]
Vanadium is also present in bauxite and in deposits of crude oil, coal, oil shale, and tar sands. In crude oil, concentrations up to 1200 ppm have been reported. When such oil products are burned, traces of vanadium may cause corrosion in engines and boilers.[45] An estimated 110,000 tonnes of vanadium per year are released into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels.[46] Black shales are also a potential source of vanadium. During WW II some vanadium was extracted from alum shales in the south of Sweden.

TRANSLATION: We don’t have much Vanadium. What Vanadium we MIGHT have would cost a fortune to extract…

So why is NPR [STATE SPONSORED MEDIA…] running a story now that clearly has appeal across the political spectrum for various reasons and “Cui bono” [“WHO BENEFITS”]??? Is somebody looking for a fat subsidy to manufacture batteries that don’t sound very promising and don’t make much sense??? And is somebody else in China looking for a fat payoff to unload a license they hold for a technology that does not sound all that commercially viable???

So many unanswered questions… But hey, the story has sure made the rounds and pushed all the right buttons for people… Anyway, time for some media memes…