Recent Comments:
New York Times calls it for the Volt over the Tesla Model S {Autoblog Green}
Jul 21st 2008 1:23PM BlackbirdHighway got it right. The loser isn't going to be the company with the second-best EV. The loser will be the company that has no EV.
Al Gore calls for electric cars {Autoblog Green}
Jul 19th 2008 11:01AM Well, there's the pot calling the kettle black. Let's turn that around. . . .
Oh, that's right, I forgot...you're a self-taught climate scientist, a.k.a a global warming alarmist. I wonder how you got all that training and, found all that time to do analyses of climate data that allow you to dismiss, yes, a great many professional geophysicists who study temperature trends.
What have you published in the area of climate science?
(And saying that Al Gore is "wise enough" to let scientists do their work is a very weak argument -- because he's apparently not wise enough to acknowledge the concerns and inputs of the many dissenters.)
Re: http://www.dailytech.com/article.aspx?newsid=12403
Al Gore calls for electric cars {Autoblog Green}
Jul 19th 2008 1:37AM Well, in the end it comes down to the science. Gore claims to have the scientific facts on his side, and yet he is no scientist and shows little understanding of how the scientific method works. (It certainly doesn't work by loudly and publicly claiming "consensus" is on your side, and then branding everyone who disagrees as either a troglodyte or a shill for Big Oil.)
Global warming alarmists share many of the same characteristics of "creation science" or "intelligent design" advocates, right down to bearded prophets of the End Times. Both claim to be about science but are fundamentally faith-based and agenda-driven.
Eventually the facts will win out, and when that happens I'm afraid the whole environmental movement will be tainted in the mind of the public. Every environmental issue, no matter how urgent, will provoke a skeptical response: "Yeah, but remember how they used to go on about global warming?"
At Witz' End - Gas Prices: Alternatives and Oil Supply {Autoblog Green}
Jul 14th 2008 12:18PM Nuclear became "clean" when CO2 became the main pollutant that environmentalists worry over. Then again, one might easily argue that nuclear has always been way cleaner than coal. With coal everything is sprayed right up into the atmosphere.
"Does anybody want a nuclear plant in their back yard?" Just ask the people who live near nuclear plants; you'll find most of them have gotten past the fear-mongering and are quite happy with the arrangement.
Veteran journalist John McElroy calls for EV1 revival; too bad it's not that simple {Autoblog Green}
Jun 28th 2008 6:24PM GM are already working on this, they call it the "Chevy Volt". The Volt promises to be a huge improvement over the EV1.
As for this idea that GM could somehow dust off the blueprints and start cranking out EV1s overnight. . . With his extensive knowledge of the auto industry, McElroy really should know better. It just doesn't work that way.
Sure, GM could put it back into production, but at this point it would actually take longer than getting the Volt onto the market. Given a choice between the EV1 and the Volt, which do you think people would buy? The EV1 was a wonder in its day, but it would be hopelessly obsolete when compared with the new generation of BEVs and PHEVs that are coming Real Soon Now.
First offshore wind farm in U.S. could come to Delaware {Autoblog Green}
Jun 24th 2008 1:40PM It annoys me how they always describe the output as "enough electricity to power XX,000 homes!" I suspect if they told it in megawatts, then it would be apparent just how little we're talking about, in comparison with a conventional coal or gas power plant.
Is John McCain's $300m battery prize a good idea? Pelosi chimes in {Autoblog Green}
Jun 24th 2008 11:40AM Thus far McCain has started out with a dumb idea (gas tax holiday), then moved on to an idea that's not bad but not terribly helpful either (more offshore drilling).
McCain accused Obama of rehashing the same old failed energy policies from the 1970s and the Carter administration. Meanwhile, McCain was rehashing the same old failed energy policies from the 1980s and the Reagan administration. I think it's fair to say Reagan did more to get us into today's oil crisis than Carter did.
And yet, McCain now brings us this . . . intriguing new proposal. The devil is in the details, and there's a lot that could go wrong, but I still like it more than anything I've previously heard out of either candidate. I like his attitude, that it's time to start inventing our way out of this problem. That's what America does best.
McCain has advocated nuclear power, which Obama seems reluctant to talk about. I'm pro-nuclear, but still it was an odd thing for McCain to say in today's context of high oil prices. You can't get gasoline out of a nuclear plant. New battery technology and electric cars could resolve that little problem.
If I didn't know better, I might suspect that McCain has been doing his homework, studying and actually learning about energy issues. Can politicians do that, is it allowed? I mean, if you learn something new and adjust your views accordingly, doesn't that make you a "flip-flopper?" Surely we can't accept that! :p
It's possible that McCain may not have been strong on energy issues up to now. However, if we're going to solve our problems in this country, a lot of people who previously haven't paid attention to energy need to do their homework and get up to speed on this stuff. If McCain is doing that, I think that's excellent.
As for Pelosi. . . I cringe as I read her words. They are so trite and vague and weak that they could have been written about practically any subject that Republicans and Democrats disagree on. She's emitting political gas, along with a list of utterly worthless and trivial policy ideas.
A McCain presidency would mean electric cars powered by nuclear plants, clean coal {Autoblog Green}
Jun 19th 2008 12:00PM Yanquetino wrote, "Thirty years ago, nuclear proponents were claiming that by the year 2000 we would have harnessed fusion and could thus turn away from the toxic dangers of fission. It is now 2008, and I don't hear one word about fusion anymore."
Here's an update for ya. . .
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/06/12/1136887.aspx
Just because the mass media isn't talking about it doesn't mean it's not happening.
Blind advocacy group gets a theme song for louder hybrids/EVs {Autoblog Green}
May 27th 2008 7:39PM Silent death arrives in a hurry!
Wow. . . I'll never look at the Tesla the same way again.
Greenpeace: Carbon capture is not going to save our climate {Autoblog Green}
May 7th 2008 8:32PM I hate it when organizations like Greenpeace make what sounds like a perfectly logical and reasonable argument, and then cap it off by saying we should use clean energy sources "like solar or wind turbines".
Wind power has its niche, but it's a drop in the bucket compared with the world's energy needs. This is like giving a starving man a couple of peanuts and telling him, "There you go, eat 'till you bust!"
Solar is somewhat better, but it still has cost problems that aren't yet resolved, and it's still an intermittent power source. It's hard to see solar carrying the main burden any time soon. And soon is exactly when we need clean power.
Meanwhile. . . According to a study by MIT, much of the USA could use geothermal power. All we need is a relatively modest R&D investment in deep drilling and "enhanced" geothermal technology. Why isn't Greenpeace pushing for this?
Nuclear fission technology has indeed improved a lot. Why isn't Greenpeace pushing for new nuclear plants?
There are some promising new approaches to nuclear fusion, like the late Dr. Bussard's "Polywell" reactor. They're trying to develop these on a shoestring. Why isn't Greenpeace pushing for more research funding for fusion?
