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Thursday, December 30, 2004 |
Joel Makower blogs on the recent kerfluffle about the tsunami and global warming,
Problem is, I couldn't find a single claim -- by an "environmental
expert" or anyone else -- made in the past week that connects the
Indian Ocean tragedy with global warming...
A brilliant ploy: Condemn a ridiculous and outrageous claim by your
opponents, or associate them with something for which they had no
possible responsibility, thereby branding them as silly at best,
dangerous at worse, despite the fact that you pretty much made the
whole thing up.
and gave me a chance to piggyback my thoughts in his comments:
I was thinking the same thing. Closest thing I could find to that 'claim' was these
two paragraphs at Finance Gate:
The company called for measures to be taken to counter the climate
change that in Munich Re[base ']s opinion was responsible for the disaster.
'The terrible effects spreading all around the Indian Ocean and
reaching as far as the Horn of Africa are a further reminder of the
global threat from natural catastrophes,' executive board member Stefan
Heyd said in the reinsurer[base ']s annual disaster report.
Note that the assertion in the first paragraph is not what the Munich Re executive said, in the quote in the second paragraph.
10:52:59 PM 
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[Enviroline]:
The U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National Engineering and
Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) and Ceramatec, Inc. of Salt Lake City,
Utah have demonstrated the feasibility of using nuclear energy to
efficiently produce hydrogen from water.
'With America's growing demand for
oil, also comes a host of environmental challenges. Because of the need
to develop new energy sources in an environmentally sound way, the
President and our Administration recognize that the benefits of
hydrogen technologies are too great to ignore. This major breakthrough
signals that we are systematically achieving our hydrogen goals,'
Secretary Abraham said.
Apparently:
high-temperature electrolysis
enhances the efficiency of the process by adding substantial external
heat - such as high-temperature steam from an advanced nuclear reactor
system. Such a high-temperature system has the potential to achieve
overall hydrogen production efficiencies in the 45 to 50 percent range,
compared to approximately 30 percent for conventional electrolysis.
Clever. And I'm all in favor of more efficient hydrogen generation. But
when will these allegedly capitalists stop the half-century of
taxpayers money pouring into keeping the nuclear industry afloat. I
know, I know, there I go being rational again.
9:32:16 PM
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Japlonik (an Audi-sponsored... guy? site? simulacrum?) offers 'More on the MDI Air-Powered car':
The company is moving forward on its
plans to offer an air-electric powered vehicle for sale in 2005, and
even created prototypes of several models, including taxicab and
pick-up truck designs.
I couldn't find a comments slot on the site, so I emailed 'em:
This isn't air POWERED of course; maybe more like air 'assisted.' Which
is to say: compressed air isn't the source of energy, its the
energy storage -- equivalent to a battery. The air needs to be
compressed by a separate process (motor, compressor, etc), which
needs to be powered by something (solar, wind, biofuel, hydro,
fossil fuel, etc.). The emissions profile of the vehicle will
depend on that source, _its_ efficiency, etc. TANSTAAFL.
(What's TANSTAAFL? 'There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.' You obviously haven't read enough Robert Heinlein.)
9:21:57 PM
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© Copyright 2006 Gil Friend.
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