A complete, stand alone power system that takes people off the grid and away from fossil fuels.
]]>The PR on the story mostly focuses on the hydrogen potential, but the paper itself talks exclusively about the oxygen. Seems to me that the chemists are trying to replicate what plants do in the photosynthetic process–store energy in the separated hydrogen and oxygen molecules liberated from the electrolysis or catalysis of water, and then recover that energy when needed by allowing the two elements to recombine.
]]>You can start making hydrogen, bio-diesel or ethanol today, but you have interruptions in food supply and distribution problems.
Better batteries charged by wind and solar are probably the quickest short-term solutions that can be rapidly deployed, but more efficiency is a better longer solution and goal.
]]>So why do Bush and Cheney push so hard for offshore drilling and wildlife refuge drilling? I suppose only they really know, but my best guess is that it is a dominance gesture: it is important to Bush to stick his Dick in the eye of everyone who opposes him. Not only is that more important to the Bushies than the environment, more important than public approval of themselves or of the GOP, more important than the health of their own direct descendants… it is even more important to them, or at least to Bush, than their profits. Now that is sick, even by Republican standards.
]]>We have restricted the overfishing in the Gulf, but there is no plan for the runoff. Between cheap imports and reduced catches sports fishing is almost all there is left.
I understand that people need to earn a living, but if you don’t think long-term where are the jobs for the next generation? When do the people who profit from the pollution start paying for the costs?
]]>Yeah, until there’s a hurricane and one of them washes ashore, as happened in Alabama as a result of Katrina. The “sugar white beaches” won’t look very inviting covered with oil and dead marine life.
The other local problem is the area they want to drill in is currently used for testing and training by the military. There aren’t many areas left for large scale military exercises, and the military is the largest employer in the county.
People keep clinging to hope, but the price of gas is not going down to the old levels – too many people around the world want to buy it.
]]>Any altruistic notions that humans nurture toward the natural world in which they live are out the window when times get hard and their personal well-being is threatened. They will grasp at any any straw offered by any charlatan if it offers the hope of stepping them away from the perceived risk to their sense of personal security; it doesn’t really matter what the reality attached to that straw really is…
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