Cuz We Said So

Charging Ahead on Hydrogen?

Hydrogen gets push in California 

While many automakers are developing hydrogen powered vehicles, California is moving towards implementing the infrastructure necessary to support these new vehicles.

Okay, but…  Look, I don’t have anything against hydrogen power, and I’m not saying it’s just like California politicians to go half-cocked, or anything, but what I want to know is, where are we going to get the hyrdogen to put in these cars?  Hydrogen on Earth is a transportatio mechanism for energy, not a source of it, because free hydrogen isn’t lying around, right?  You have to expend energy to liberate it from, for example, water.

So where’s that energy going to come from?  If we’re gong to get it by burning fossil fuels—which Wikipedia says is how we currently produce 96 percent of our hydrogen—what do we accomplish?  Depending on the efficiency of the production process, we could even be creating more polution, not less.  If we use nuclear power, it’s a different story—but I’m skeptical that the environmentally conscious people that think hybrid or hydrogen cars are swell ready to sign up for nuke power.

I think we should answer this question before we spend a fortune converting our economy to work on a fuel source that might not be the right one, or even a good one, to which to migrate.

Mr. Fusion, where are you?

Wet Whipped Men

This was a bit ridiculous:

No wonder Fox's hurricane coverage won the news-channel ratings sweepstakes: They know what the people want, and the people want news correspondents subjected to life-threatening winds and debris.   There's actually a clip reel on the Fox News site that is nothing but wet whipped men

Every time I saw a reporter standing out in the wind just so he could lean into and yell while making his report (Steve Harrigan and Anderson Cooper were the two jokers I specifically noticed were doing this, but I doubt they were alone) I turned the channel.  No sense rewarding boneheaded behavior. But I'm sure other people more than made up for me.

Is this surprising?

Agencies respond slowly to major U.S. health threats - Yahoo! News

Well, yeah. Most government agencies are slow to respond to most things.

Iranian Claims

Uranium enrichment itself, however, remains suspended as a confidence building measure aimed at reassuring the world that it is not pursuing nuclear weapons.

In the midst of a Reuters story about Iran's claims to have made a breakthrough in its uranium enrichment program, this seems like a remarkably definitive statement from They Of The Scare Quotes.  If this article were about actions by the US government, wouldn't this passage be prefaced by “US officials say that ” or ““The Bush administratio claims that” or at the very least, “Experts believe”?

Greater caution would seem to be required in light of Iran's estranged relationship with the truth in such matters. Here's me, a little over a year ago, on the German-brokered 2003 deal in which Iran agreed to stop enriching uraniaum :

One might cynically conjecture that Iran agreed to the deal because it felt it could continue with covert development under the plan until such time as it had to undertake development activities that could be detected by the west--a place at which they have now arrived? I wonder how much they got done during the eight month "freeze"?

Here's Iran, now, in the above article:

Iranian officials have recently boasted that while some sensitive parts of the atomic program were frozen during the last two years while negotiations were held with the West, Iran's atomic scientists have been busy perfecting other, less sensitive, parts of the nuclear fuel cycle.

Well, I'm glad we're all on the same page now, at least. So, could German diplomats leaders not see this coming?  Or (more conjecture), was claiming that there was a deal in place more important to Germany than actually stopping Iran from developing weapons?  What scares Germany more: Iran with nukes, or our moving to prevent them from getting them?

Iraqi Constitution

The New York Times has the Iraqi Constitution, translated, on its web site.·

My initial impression: well, it’s wordy.· I’m not sure Schoolhouse Rock could do much to rein in this preamble.· John Hindraker·has·this (perhaps more useful) thought:· “I'm still working my way through it, but it generally looks good, despite being a little "liberal," in the American sense, in places.”

Of course, as we demonstrate in this country all the time, the implementation of a constitution can be quite different than what you’d expect reading it.· The real test, assuming the document is indeed a good start, and is ratified, will be when it is put to practice.

Take this, for example:

No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam. (b) No law can be passed that contradicts the principles of democracy. (c) No law can be passed that contradicts the rights and basic freedoms outlined in this constitution.

What exactly are the undisputed rules of Islam? Undisputed by whom? Clearly the terrorists would dispute many of the rules that good and decent Muslims would hold sacred. And "no law can be passed that contradicts the principles of democracy"? What does that mean? This passage has to rival our own Necessary and Proper clause as an open door to freelance interpretation.

Katrina: The Economic Angle

Instapundit:  “Hog on Ice…, has unfortunate information about the likely impact of Katrina on the petroleum industry.”

Here’s a shorter assessment of the potential impact of Hurricane Katrina from Phil Flynn, VP for Alaron Trading:  "I think this potentially could be the biggest blow to the US oil industry I've ever seen in my years in the business.  ...And it's not just the off-shore oil rigs that worry me, what worries me is that this storm is right on track for nine major oil refineries."

I’d love to think this is more of the usual pre-storm hype the news media has become known for, but this one has the feeling of being the real deal.

Just Insane

Fox News is showing footage of people standing on the seawall in the face of the advancing storm.  If (or when) these people fall in, they are probably as good as dead, and there's no one to save them.  There's apparently some guy out there on a surfboard.  You really have to wonder what's going on inside people’s heads.

Katrina at 5:30 pm

It sounds like the arrival of Hurricane Katrina could be shaping up to be the worst-case scenario for New Orleans. The track has shifted slightly to the west, directly toward the city. Sustained winds are 165 mph, and the storm is expected to be Category 5 at landfall, which is now expected at 4 am. Storm surges are expected to be 25-30 feet tall, which is above the level of the river levees, meaning the whole city could flood.

Have people been slow to evacuate in advance of Katrina because they have been emboldened by recent hurricane threats that didn't live up to their advance billing? I just listened to some guy on Fox News who is staying in the French Quarter, and obviously doesn't believe it's going to be as bad as the news is painting it. I hope he's right, but looking at the raw numbers, it's looking ugly. Joe Bastardi, the head hurricane forecaster for the National Weather Service: "I hate to say this; I think this is the worst storm in the history of New Orleans, and I think when you total it up, it will be worse than Camille. I fear the worst..."

If you are near New Oreleans, and you can leave, YOU NEED TO LEAVE NOW.

Not Gone With the Wind

Power's out here, about 30 miles north of Houston. (Sprint's data network is still up, apparently; that's how I'm dialed in.) There's some significant wind going on, too, and the rain has started. Is this Katrina-related? Not enough power left in the laptop to take a lot of time to research, and it's hard to read the maps on as slow a connection as this.) Not a great time to be anywhere near the coast, looks like...

LATER: Nope, not Katrina-related; just a good old-fashioned Texas squall, apparently. It's about an hour later, and the power's back on.

Where did that come from?

Hey, is it just me, or did Katrina come out of nowhere? I didn't even heard about it until a day before it hit Florida, and suddenly people are dead and a million people are without power? Now suddenly the computer models show it tracking toward New Orleans—which is just about the last place you want a hurricane to hit.