Krautzer and I never spoke to each other. He got up and, armed with a flask of coffee and a pack of cigarettes, I sat down to sign in. It was already a busy night, four units in action, which I monitored a few minutes before I took over. I hated weekends.
"Seven polecat," the radio said.
"Seven," I acknowledged.
"Maintenance arrived at 3355 Union. Situation quiet."
I glanced at the map that was evoked by his transmission. No reason to take chances. "Seven polecat remain on scene and cover. I'll relieve you as quick as I can."
"Seven copy," he replied.
I lifted the cover and touched the All Channel button. "Twenty-one oh one, R.A.C.C."
Coffee would have to wait. "Night units to district loops. Day shift dismissed, except Seven polecat, Nine alpha, Center one and Center two. Nine alpha, report your status."
"Waiting for P.D., 6300 block of Farleigh. Request backup."
The nearest unit had just saddled up. "Sharp five, 6300 block of Fairleigh, code 2. Meet Nine alpha on Tac 1."
"Sharp five wilco."
The mess downtown bothered me. "Center one, what's the situation?"
"We're still tied up with P.D. and directing traffic."
Shit. "Can you release Center two?"
"Uh ... okay. Maybe ten minutes or so. Center one."
The customer board yelped at me.
"Nine strong, silent alarm at Western Supply, 601 South River, code 1."
He acknowledged, and I debated sending a second car, but resisted the impulse. Nine strong had enough firepower to deal with whatever the situation might be, and if the shot locator tripped, I could get another unit on scene fairly quick. I called the customer, told him not to respond until we had control of whatever was happening, and had to hang up abruptly.
"...backup! Officer down!"
The shot locator flashed red at 3355 Union. I vectored the drone: "Armed support to 3355 Union. Be advised civilian maintenance people on scene." Policy dictated that I had to report a shooting incident to the cops. Not now. "Six buster, six falcon, 3355 Union, code three." They acknowledged in turn. I briefed the EMS dispatcher, requested that he deploy two units to a safe position, 35th and Lafayette, until I signaled on their tactical channel to proceed. The shot locator was rattling, five or six map jogs. I described the situation to the drone operator, ordered him to take out the brick building and adjacent vacant lot at 3367 Union, be aware that two District Six units were converging, code three, use stun shots, and be damn careful not to hit our people or nonactors by mistake.
The clock was running and I had to notify the police. I scanned the directory for Southwest, identified myself, described the activity, and suggested that they delay responding until we had control of the situation. The station commander was pissed off, aware of what we were doing, monitoring my dispatch channel. No point in apologizing. I disconnected abruptly
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With the drone on location, I started getting fuzzy bodycam relays, one of them an unmoving cockeyed image of the pavement. Officer down. Tactical chatter among the others and then a series of flash bang shots to take out a knot of gang bangers.
"Six buster, Seven polecat, say your situtation."
"This is falcon. Two men down. Buster and Ritchie from polecat are holding a perimeter. We need EMS, right now, god damn it!"
I released the medics to roll, sickened by what had happened. Eight hours to go, and in the first fifteen minutes of my shift I had two men down and three units out of action. When the cops showed up, they'd pour molasses over everything. Might be more than a few bangers wounded, blinded, or deceased. I had to call Legal.
A few seconds to light a cigarette, unscrew my thermos and pour a cup of coffee.
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Saturday, January 25, 2020
Keeping the flame
Historically, liberty required courage and self-sacrifice, Minutemen standing guard, Marines ready to deploy, ships at sea, submarines, Air Force silos and bombers to deter aggression. It takes a special sort of hero to patrol our highways, streets, and ports. I admire them -- brave, strong, clear-eyed defenders of peaceful American civilian life. We do a terrible disservice to ourselves and our innocent children, if we fail to stand up for liberty and its defenders. They are few in number, 1 million LEOs and 2 million soldiers, sailors, and airmen. 99% of us are civilians. Only 12% of Americans are legal gun owners capable of engaging a threat, if they're in the right place at the right time and adequately trained for battle.
I carried a gun a couple years in Central America, never liked it. The work I do is challenging, and at times I distrusted myself to have a lethal weapon nearby. I bought an air pistol to deal with critters, and it looks like a Ruger 9mm to impress the neighbors, but peace and freedom have to be guarded by others. My job is to defend liberty with words, often explicitly, but in fiction as well. Imagined stories are important, to show why armed men and women have to fight for freedom and justice. It's a controversial concept, often misunderstood by lunatic criminals and communists who feel entitled to kill. That's why my nonfiction work addresses the rule of law. No one has a right to kill, unless it's in self-defense and there's no immediate existential alternative to save life in an emergency.
Keeping the flame in literature is, in fact, more important than keeping the peace by force, because lawmen, military, and armed civilians need intellectual moral support. Morality is controversial and often misinterpreted. It has nothing to do with God or Allah. The supreme value in a free society is liberty. The highest virtue is courage. Having less of it than other people, I lacked enough physical courage to defend liberty by devoting my life to military service or sworn law enforcement. I did what I could, writing about justice and creating stories about courage, a crystal clear personal issue, because I know what it means to face danger alone. Our overseas troops are hamstrung by terms of engagement and prosecutorial military law. LEOs are hobbled by procedure and judicial due process. An individual cop or soldier on patrol is in terrible peril, if attacked by a murderous enemy gang. Courage is the moral power to face death, to rely on one's experience and talent, to fight evil with clarity and valiant resolve as a defender of civilian liberty.
http://www.wolfdevoon.net
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I carried a gun a couple years in Central America, never liked it. The work I do is challenging, and at times I distrusted myself to have a lethal weapon nearby. I bought an air pistol to deal with critters, and it looks like a Ruger 9mm to impress the neighbors, but peace and freedom have to be guarded by others. My job is to defend liberty with words, often explicitly, but in fiction as well. Imagined stories are important, to show why armed men and women have to fight for freedom and justice. It's a controversial concept, often misunderstood by lunatic criminals and communists who feel entitled to kill. That's why my nonfiction work addresses the rule of law. No one has a right to kill, unless it's in self-defense and there's no immediate existential alternative to save life in an emergency.
Keeping the flame in literature is, in fact, more important than keeping the peace by force, because lawmen, military, and armed civilians need intellectual moral support. Morality is controversial and often misinterpreted. It has nothing to do with God or Allah. The supreme value in a free society is liberty. The highest virtue is courage. Having less of it than other people, I lacked enough physical courage to defend liberty by devoting my life to military service or sworn law enforcement. I did what I could, writing about justice and creating stories about courage, a crystal clear personal issue, because I know what it means to face danger alone. Our overseas troops are hamstrung by terms of engagement and prosecutorial military law. LEOs are hobbled by procedure and judicial due process. An individual cop or soldier on patrol is in terrible peril, if attacked by a murderous enemy gang. Courage is the moral power to face death, to rely on one's experience and talent, to fight evil with clarity and valiant resolve as a defender of civilian liberty.
http://www.wolfdevoon.net
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Thursday, January 16, 2020
Tuesday, January 7, 2020
Attn Mark Steyn
The same is true of horizontal shale oil production in North Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, and Oklahoma, uneconomic at less than $60 a barrel. Several shale oil frackers are upside down financially, and the United States continues to import oil from Arabia. Please note that oil and natural gas are not equivalent or interchangeable. Gas is a cost-effective and efficient cooking fuel for commercial and household kitchens, an input for fertilizer production, and grossly misused for electric power generation, all of it supplied by pipelines. There are no natural gas aircraft, locomotives, farm tractors, big rigs, or bulldozers. Aside from subsidized buses, propane converted cars, and delivery vans in urban settings, liquid fuel refined from oil powers 95% of transport in the United States. Without oil, everything grinds to a halt.
It is important to grasp why Middle East oil is vital. Japan and South Korea have no oil, totally dependent on imports of Persian Gulf crude and LNG shipped via supertankers protected by the U.S. 6th and 7th Fleets. Germany has no oil. China, India, and most of the EU-28 are heavy importers of oil and gas from the Middle East, Africa, and Russia. The U.S. military pays $100 a gallon ($4200 a barrel) to transport jet fuel and diesel via armored tank truck convoys through hostile Pakistan and Afghanistan, every drop of it produced in Arabia.
There is no alternative to liquid fuel to power aviation, ground transport, farming, and heavy equipment for construction. Wind and solar produce a puny 2% of energy consumption. If we mandate electric passenger vehicles, it will rapidly outstrip U.S. electric generation and toxic waste disposal of depleted lithium batteries. The entire "green tech" movement is a fraud. It works pragmatically in China, because China is the world's worst polluter, poisoning its land, air, water, and millions of seriously ill, rightless Chinese industrial slaves. Wind power is an egregious fraud that eats mountains of maintenance and capital subsidy. The one and only dependable, efficient electric power fuel is coal, augmented by hydro turbines in those few natural situations where dams and reasonably short transmission lines make sense.
The greatest tragedy of all is Peak Oil, a geological certainty. The world endowment of oil is approximately 3 trillion barrels, of which we have already produced and consumed 1 trillion barrels. The next increment will be more expensive to produce. Much of it is in Siberia. The final trillion barrels are trapped in thin shales, the Arctic, incompetent and corrupt nations, war zones, and ultradeep offshore reservoirs that will never be easy or cheap to exploit.
If we lose Arabian production to seemingly inevitable Middle East war, oil will go to $150 a barrel, instantly crippling Europe, India, and the Far East. It is important to reflect that World War II was a genocidal military struggle to capture oilfields in Romania, Persia, and the Dutch East Indies, none of which are important today. The world consumes 85 million barrels a day and is becoming progressively dependent on Russia for oil and natural gas supplies. U.S. gas production is in long term decline. U.S. horizontal shale gas plays in Texas and Louisiana are already depleted, drilling rigs withdrawn, tens of billions of high yield debt written off, and shareholders screwed. The future of natural gas production inevitably belongs to Russia.
The threat is not global warming. It is economic collapse, freezing to death, starvation, and global conflict for control of oil and natural gas. If you think that's an exaggeration, consider what happened during the Obama-led Arab Spring and creation of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. High oil prices forced Americans to cut consumption, and domestic U.S. gasoline sales crashed an incredible 66 percent, forcing major East Coast refiners into bankruptcy.
In answer to public hand wringing and bureaucratic lies about climate change, it's simple to make as much sea ice as needed to cool the oceans, using offshore oil platforms that "flare" (burn off) associated methane gas that can't be profitably piped to shore. This is especially true of frontier plays, such as offshore Newfoundland, Greenland, Barents, and Brazil. The system deploys scaled-up standard technology used by commercial fishing vessels to make sea ice to chill their catches and a small turbojet engine powered by methane. I'd be glad to see it mandated on all offshore platforms, because I patented it.
It's not necessary to shoot ourselves in the head and abolish internal combustion transport. Industrial innovation has cut U.S. carbon emissions every year for two consecutive decades and offers the potential of ameliorating ocean warming, until the next natural cycle of solar variation tosses Planet Earth into another scary phase of global cooling like the 1970s, during peak gas-guzzling muscle car production and coal-fired electric power generation. It's truly hilarious that East Anglia Climate Centre was founded to study the threat of global cooling, and a prominent Stanford economist predicted mass starvation from over-population. U.S. chemists and farmers implemented the Green Revolution and world population doubled.
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