http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2005/12/25/22501/989#2

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/politics/16program.html?ex=1135746000&en=85c1fc6177dd927f& ei=5070

"Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years..."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/22/nyregion/22police.html?ex=1135746000&en=53334bb47adc9f11&e i=5070

"Beyond collecting information, some of the undercover officers or their associates are seen on the tape having influence on events. At a demonstration last year during the Republican National Convention, the sham arrest of a man secretly working with the police led to a bruising confrontation between officers in riot gear and bystanders."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/20/politics/20fbi.html?ex=1135746000&en=0184c4f98727565d&ei=5 070

"The documents, provided to The New York Times over the past week, came as part of a series of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits brought by the American Civil Liberties Union. For more than a year, the A.C.L.U. has been seeking access to information in F.B.I. files on about 150 protest and social groups that it says may have been improperly monitored."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/politics/25wiretap.html?ex=1135746000&en=d2ae725096562244& ei=5070

"Congressional officials said Saturday that they wanted to investigate the disclosure that the National Security Agency had gained access to some of the country's main telephone arteries to glean data on possible terrorists."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/25/weekinreview/25bamford.html?ex=1135746000&en=0267ffdbbdeb2c92& amp;ei=5070

"Run by the ultrasecret National Security Agency, the listening post intercepts all international communications entering the eastern United States. Another N.S.A. listening post, in Yakima,Wash., eavesdrops on the western half of the country."

The Bush administration war on the US constitution.  Be afraid!

http://www.sprol.com/?p=291#more-291

There were five radionuclides that contributed the most to radiation dose from the river pathway (dose is the amount of radiation absorbed by a person's body). The five radionuclides were phosphorus-32, zinc-65, arsenic-76, neptunium-239 and sodium-24. The Dose Reconstruction Project estimated that these radionuclides accounted for more than 94 percent of the potential radiation dose from the river pathway. There were many other radioactive materials released into the river as well.

The nuclear fuel consisted of fuel "elements" which were less than two feet long and encased in metal. There were thousands of fuel elements in each reactor. The increase in the reactor power levels put more stress on the fuel elements. Under this stress, the metal covering could split and allow small chunks of the radioactive fuel to be flushed into the river with the cooling water. The largest chunk weighed more than a pound. There were nearly 2,000 fuel element failures during the operation of the eight original plutonium production reactors.

Were any terrorist organization to acomplish sabotage on even a fraction of the scale of this one disaster caused by the nuclear industry, the secret prisons operated by the duuhbyaist regime would be filled to the brim overnight.

Does anyone doubt that?

And yet no one has ever been held responsible for even one of these nuclewar waste disasters. 

How about a nuclear plant in your backyard?  No?  Not even if your beloved leader whom gaaawd speaks through commands it?  Hehey.

New plants are being planned right now in the faithfilled southland.  They need the jobs.

 

The beauty of electric plugin vehicles is that they would also serve as a huge national distributed battery.

All connected to the grid when parked, 100s of millions of cars would provide energy storage to buffer inconstant wind and solar power inputs. 

And when your local power went out from a storm (it happens 4 or 5 times per year here) threatening to freeze your home in winter, the  huge capacity (80 kwh or more, enough to power your home for days) in your electric car's battery has you covered until things are repaired.

When 50% of the US does drive plugin electric cars, that will amount to days worth of energy storage across the country, allowing renewable energy and electric power demand fluctuations to be adjusted with backup fossil and hydroelectric sources.

Even the American Wind energy Asociation, an advocate for wind power, admits the supply interuption problems with going over 20% renewable power use on the grid.  These car batteries would push that theoretical limit way up!

Maybe only 20% of power will come from fossil fuel someday?  That would be very good for mother earth.

http://www.gvea.com/projects/bess.php

This proves it, utility scale battery energy storage is practical and cost effective.  Now bring on the wind power.

This Alaska based utility company is doing that also.  How will it all work together?  It will be fascinating to find out.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/opinion/16kennedy.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fContributors

The capital invested in this project, financial and political, would be better spent on wind installations and power distribution upgrade in the northern midwestern plains.  No NIMBYs, hardly any people in fact!

His idea for siting farther off shore is a good one, but will not beat the low cost of plains based energy.  And distribution grid upgrade on the plains can form a loop to attach thousands of wind machines to the grid, more efficient and cheaper than a really long cable way out in the ocean.

And what about the crucial invention for renewable energy?  Energy storage.  High profile spokespersons for green energy ought to be pushing reserach in this area.  Superconducting energy storage is a practical technology that needs capital intensive government and private industry backing.

http://www.evworld.com/view.cfm?section=article&storyid=825

Energy CS's 150 mpg Prius plug-in hybrid. Valence Saphion (tm) lithium-ion batteries were installed in place of the Prius' 1kWh NiMH battery pack, which is located under the rear passenger seat. The car is a proof-of-concept prototype, which will make its official debut at the 21st Electric Vehicle Symposium in Monaco next month. The plug-in hybrid concept lets the car run further on electricity stored from the electric power grid instead of gasoline for the first 50-60 miles, effectively tripling the miles per gallon performance of the car.

With ever improving battery technology plugin hybrids will soon gove way to full plugin electric cars.  With no infernal sombustion or greenhouse gas emissions.  But these plugin hybrids at 150 mpg are exactly right at this moment in time.

 http://www.redherring.com/Article.aspx?a=14294&hed=Battery+Pumps+Up+Power+Toolshttp

A123 uses a nanotech material called doped nano-phosphate, and the Watertown, Massachusetts-based company says its battery will recharge 90 percent of its capacity in five minutes. The battery is also lightweight, weighing in at less than 1 kilogram for a battery that provides 1.5 kilowatts of power, according to A123.

This lithium ion battery installed in vehicles will replace gasoline and diesel fuel.  A 5 minute recharge gets you back on the road.  Just as convenient as filling up with gas, but the equivalent to a gallon of gas in electricity  only costs one dollar.

That's with high electric costs that come from fossil fuel and nuclear power too.  Wind power costs a fraction of the price of the dirty power we use now.

Mass production, by an american company, of these batteries installed in plugin electric cars manufactured right here in the USA would have the manufacturing base growing back up to healthy levels.

And no more need to pay higher and higher prices for imported oil, in lives and huge national debt!

amazingdrx - 10:40 AM ET December 4, 2005 (#45718 of 45718)

Saddam is being tried for murdering a couple 100 Iraqis after an assasination atempt.

Bush was reelected after murdering 10s of thousands of people because "Saddam tried to kill my (his) dad".

That fictional assasination attempt was a lie cooked up by Chalabi.

As were all the other excuses for the Iraq fiasco. Notice Chalabi's snickering and gloating when asked about his lies?

Rape rooms, humans shredded in plastic shredders, WMDs, people fed to dogs, Saddam complicity in 911.... all part of bushco inc lies to get their corporate hands on Iraqi oil?    

By murdering 10s of thousands of people, most completely innocent.

According to McNamara in the documentary,"Fog Of War", General Lemay told him that if the allies had lost WW 2 the two of them  would be tried as war criminals for instituting fire bombing of civilians.

Of course the enemies in WW 2, the axis powers, were a REAL threat to the free world.  Iraq was a fake threat to the free world.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2005/12/2/123612/225#5

There it is.  The half joking comments by the nut wing that once the arctic ice is gone, oil tankers will have shorter routes.  And think of all that Siberian and Canadian arctic coastal and offshore oil that will become available.

They neglect the important fact, that those past ice ages were caused by natural phenomena like volcanoes and meteor strikes.

This current climate disaster IS a result of human activity and thus preventable.

Limbaugh's argument is very powerful, maybe he has switched his drug intake to more natural sources.  No more oxycontin rants?  Hehey.

What he should say about arctic ice and ocean currents is that when the gulf stream slows the heating effect in the northern regions will be diminished and the ice restored.  Nature is self correcting.  Look for that next.

Of course we can still defeat that argument against green energy by pointing out that it is economically and culturally beneficial to halt the human contribution to this global climate emergency.

In purely capitalist terms, the cost in reduced economic growth from storm, drought,energy wars, and rising ocean levels justifies the shift to green energy that eliminates the human contribution to global climate change from greenhouse gas emmisions.

It's the best course for business as well as each traveler on spaceship earth.