The Total Destruction of George W. Bush

Well, that's it then. Daddy's won the Oedipal contest.

Connecting the Hydrogen Dots

Three articles in the November issue of Popular Mechanics caught my eye recently, and I've been connecting the dots for Reductio and whoever else would listen for a couple of weeks now.

The issue's cover story "The Truth About Hydrogen" was generally pessimistic in tone regarding the prospects of switching the United States to a primarily hydrogen-powered economy, citing as one hurdle the difficulty in assembling a carbon-neutral or carbon-negative hydrogen production process (after all, we're trying to make sure the planet doesn't become an EZ-Bake oven around us).

However, I was struck by the article's concluding chart, which summarizes the financial costs and CO2 fallout of various hydrogen production methods with the stated goal of replacing all fossil fuels used in American passenger cars by 2040. My attention was captured by the fifth column, "Biomass":

• Cost: $600 billion


• Carbon: Neutral, due to CO2 consumption by fuel crops


• Fuel: Peanut shells at first, then dedicated crops

Keep in mind that peanut-shell fuel. We'll come back to it.
Now, $600 billion may seem like a lot of money. It is, in fact, about 1/4 of the annual $2.5 trillion Federal budget. But the cost of the pointless Iraq war as of this moment is $341 billion.

Is it unrealistic to imagine an annual Federal budget item of $60 billion over a decade to replace all gasoline used in passenger cars in the United States? Is it impossible to imagine a gasoline tax to pay for that transformation?

Naturally, there's a whole universe of costs not accounted for here, like the cost of replacing or refitting every passenger car in the United States with a hydrogen-fueled vehicle, but that's a transformation that could happen over an even longer period.

Remember how I said remember the peanut shells? As you might not know, peanuts are a major source of protein for about 500 million people worldwide. China leads the world in peanut production, followed by India, followed by the United States.

In the same issue of Popular Mechanics, Jock Brandis was awarded a 2006 Breakthrough Award (scroll down) for inventing a $75 machine for hand-cranked peanut shelling, and he's distributing the devices in Mali, Ghana, Zambia and the Philippines.

Imagine third-world countries fueling hydrogen power plants with peanut shells. Imagine them exporting their excess peanut shells to other countries with the same type of power plants.

The third article is another 2006 Breakthrough Award for GE, entitled "Cheap Hydrogen". GE has come up with a novel use for a plastic they invented, dropping the projected cost of splitting hydrogen out of water from $6 to $8 per gallon-of-gas-equivalent-energy to a mere $3 for the same unit. We've already seen that price at the pump this year, and will again, now that the election has concluded.

Connect the dots. We've got most of the pieces for a hydrogen economy sitting right here on the workbench. All we need is the political will to begin.

Next: Ethanol

A New Direction

Now that the BushCo asskicking has commenced in the rest of America, I've been giving some thought as to the direction of this blog. There's many fine blogs on these Internets whose tubes will deliver you all the snark and vitriol, and, let us say it, BushCo asskicking that you might require. I list some of these blogs on this page.

Rather than remain a pile-on blog duplicating those efforts (unless I think of something particularly amusing to write), for some months I've been thinking of focusing on the single most important challenge facing our species:

Energy.

In a planet awash in energy we're still burning the liquified corpses of extinct animals and plants to fuel our civilization. And you and I know that the USA keeps meddling in the Middle East because of the petroleum buried under it. Without the black gold, the Middle East would be as parts of Africa: unstable, bloody, ruled by kleptocracies, and not terribly relevant to the politics of the industrialized world.

Like any junkie, America's judgment and priorities are distorted by its addiction to oil. Sure, the country can still go to work, eat, sleep, and have sex (for now), but there's always that monkey on its back, whispering "Where's that next fix coming from?"

I'ts time to throw off that monkey and stomp the brains out of the little motherfucker, because he's getting mighty heavy back there and it's difficult for America to think straight when we're rolfing down 26% of the world's energy to support 5% of the world's population.

So, while reserving the right to snark occasionally and point out the worst of political injustices that come to my attention, I'm going to start writing about the challenge of this generation of Americans: Energy Independence.

We can get there. Brazil is energy independent, and you can't tell me that the people who went to the moon and have torn a chunk of a comet from the heavens can't manage to wrest a living from this abundant earth without making it uninhabitable in the process.

The discussion of energy touches on many issues, legal, societal, scientific, and economic, and I'll be exploring those matters as well, because what we're really talking about, under this most urgent of issues, is the proper management of the planet's resources for the survival of the species.

We're sharing one planet. Nothing's going to change that, and humans are now altering this world in fundamental ways that will be irreversible for many generations to come, and may be making the planet unfit for life as we know it. It's time to face that problem squarely, and fix it, because if we continue down the path we're on, it'll be the dinosaurs who were the most successful animals the planet has ever produced.

Afterglow

Now...

...can we repeal the torture?
Not for nothing, I'm just saying.

Oh Lookee Here:

That's the wave washing away the filth and crushing evil. (thanks to georgia10 for the image).

Welcome back, America. God, how I've missed you.

Man On Dog

So long, Ricky. Maybe you can run in Virginia, where you actually live.
Don't slam the state on your way out.

Rick Santorum, ladies and gentlemen, late of the Republican Senate seat in Pennsylvania, got his head handed to him by Bob Casey Jr.

Repudiate Evil

Today, go the polls and tell the children of darkness you've had enough.