House Speaker Dennis Hastert of Ill., center, gets out of a Hydrogen Alternative Fueled automobile, left, as he prepares to board his SUV, which uses gasoline, after holding a news conference at a local gas station in Washington to discuss the recent rise in gas prices.
Hastert and other members of Congress drove off in the Hydrogen-Fueled cars only to switch to their official cars to drive the few blocks back to the U.S. Capitol. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
expected solution: widen the media exclusion perimiter
Tags: doomed, sprawl
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26 Responses:
...only to switch to their official cars to drive the few blocks back to the U.S. Capitol.
The gas of which is also paid for by the American public.
That kind of unpatriotic pre-9/11 talk insults everything this country was founded on with it's tax-and-spend liberal media bias. What the American people need is a government that provides a strong, consistent message to the world by putting its foot down and saying, "No!," and that means paying corporate farmers not to grow crops, paying Halliburton not to treat the troops' drinking water, paying Boeing not to build helicopters, and paying congressmen not to drive around in alternative-fueled vehicles.
You forgot the "trickle-down effect" of investors in agri-business and the military-industrial complex subsequently spending that money and making us all richer!
I say, "yes", for America is at war and must provide a united front against its heinous enemies. We citizens must be ever vigilant in promoting the Reagan Center For Faith-Based Economics' national initiative for "No Credit Left Behind". In this global battle against the forces of evil, we must reject waffling naysayers sprouting liberal slander such as "deficit". Instead, let us proudly stand shoulder-to-shoulder with those few, those courageous patriots brave enough to speak up in boardrooms across this god-fearing nation, and lend our hand to these embattled citizens to help "liberate" funds to do the great work of democracy and bring endless prosperity to this promised land. Amen.
Just for the record, the weather in DC today couldn't have been better. Clear skies, mild breeze, not too hot or cold. I'd rather walk a few blocks than be in a car.
Oh, excellent catch by the photographer!
...his SUV, which uses gasoline,...
"As you know, Bob, in the early twenty-first century most of our motor vehicles are powered by 'gasoline', which is..."
Nice. I'm a bit curious as to how long he managed to try and keep the up the charade of giving a shit though.
Shocking!
Dude looks like Winnie the Pooh.
The heir to the UK throne, Prince Charles, apparently does something similar - talk about how green his travel is... but sends his chaffeur with his petrol-guzzling car along the same route, so it'll be there when he arrives.
Perhaps he should be stepping out of vehicles permanantly and getting some exercise. . . .he has plenty of fuel to burn from what I can tell in the photo.
Are you suggesting that our elected politicians can be dishonest?
Yea he got out of the hydrogen powered car. But gee what is the cheapest way to make hydrogen? Maybe cracking natural gas which comes from the same dinosaurs the gasoline in the other vehicle comes from.
I believe something involving solar power. ;)
Yeah, hydrogen is a battery, not an energy source. The focus on it is a bit weird, but there is something to be said for a high energy density fuel with zero emissions. We'd still have to crack water somewhere to make it, but it's easier to make a single power plant clean than several thousand individual cars.
I would love to live in a World where the environmental lobby/supporters weren't schizophrenic to the point where they could actually agree that a large build out of nuclear power could do this along with providing electricity in an environmentally friendly way. And rather than just demanding emissions reductions supports a solution. Unfortunately, a certain vocal segment of the population has Jane Fonda's China Syndrome playing in loop on their Beta Max deck.
...and Chernobyl, and TMI, and Windscale, and that one in Finland that was made with the cheap steel, and the Swiss one, and not forgetting what wonderful things the Iranians are doing with their nuclear programme...
I'd love to live in a world where nuclear reactors weren't so fragile. Or so useful for making bombs. While I'm dreaming, one where I could see or feel radiation doing me harm, rather than having to wait for the tumours to grow, so I could have some chance of controlling my exposure myself.
Comparing Chernobyl and Windscale, which were positive void coefficient graphite moderated reactors, to modern pressurized water cooled reactors is like comparing hand grenades to apples.
If you mean by fragile 50 years of running reactors on US submarines without any major issues and TMI3 where a slew of equipment failures and human error led to no injuries or deaths I concede.
The weapons aspect is moot. This isn't a consideration for US energy policy since we already have nukes. And if country X has the capability to enrich spent fuel for weaponization they have the capability to make spent fuel so there is no need to steal it. The cat is out of the bag everybody already knows the physics no sense sticking ones head in the ground.
I live 20 miles from a nuclear power plant and don't lose any sleep.
You mean "major reported issues." I would assume that any accidents on nuclear subs would be hushed up right quick, unless they happened very much in public view -- which such subs usually aren't.
Yes the black helicopters are circling. We've lost (2) nuclear submarines since the program was started by Admiral Rickover in the mid 50's. USS Scorpion 1968 and USS Thresher 1963. The Thresher was undergoing sea trials and is highly suspected that flooding was caused by poor welds in some seawater lines. The facts surrounding USS Scorpion is a little more elusive and I will not make judgments one way or the other. Since then, under "Sub Safe" we've not lost a submarine. Now perhaps you can believe that a submarine that is built and commissioned in public, I used to pass General Dynamics Electric Boat on the ferry, with 120 people on it could have a catastrophic nuclear event without anyone catching wind of what happened to the people or the submarine but I can not. All submarines since then have either been decommissioned over a normal life cycle or still in use. Either way not radioactive in the crew compartments.
There are failure modes less bad than "all hands lost" that are still notably bad.
But I'm sure you're right, and the gov't is always forthcoming about fuckups in their top secret military excursions.
Lest you stereotype me improperly, I'm not necessarily against nuclear power; I do think it might well turn out to be our least-bad way past peak oil. But I find the pro-nuke propaganda that everything that has gone wrong with it so far is only because of "outdated gear" or "russians" to be highly disingenuous; the real problem is lack of accountability and oversight, and that's not a problem that is really solvable, given that politicians are scum and corporations can't see past six months.
You can make fun of the movie "The China Syndrome" all you like, but if you'll recall, what that movie was actually about was a contractor faking their test reports so that nobody would know that the reactor was not actually up to spec. No matter how much the technology improves, it's still vulnerable to that kind of attack. The profit motive is there, and the failure modes are not good.
France has used nuclear energy as their primary means of power (70%+) for quite some time.
-bZj
Environmentally friendly? Okay, you can make the argument that spent nuclear fuel is less damaging than burning coal, et al., but it's far from friendly. That's kinda like saying that a gunshot wound is life-friendly, at least in comparison to a frangmentation grenade wound.
The vast majority of electricity is made by burning coal, which is MUCH more polluting (and cheaper!) than burning gasoline or oil.
Wherein all politicians are ripped (including the utterly useless Feinstein and Boxer): http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/26/AR2006042602307_pf.html
-bZj