Wilful misrepresentation is beneath you, Lew. Reducing air pollution is higher up on my agenda than preservation of the automobile lifestyle, a point I wish we had in common.

Mark, he doesn't want to know; he wants to believe. After a dozen patient and well meaning explanations of fuel cell principles, Lew's back to zero with his presumption of free hydrogen and feigned dismay that Streetsblog does not cover grid-gulping futurecars.

Willful misrepresentation is not very attractive, Lew. Clean air is higher up on my agenda than continuance of the automobile lifestyle, a point we don't have in common.

Mark, he has had this explained to him a dozen times now, but every time we start from zero. Hydrogen is free until pointed out otherwise, after that it's just going to be very easy to create from wind power and ocean currents. No matter that we're woefully unable to serve our current electrical needs in a renewable fashion (because $$$), let's assume that adding a country's worth of automobile locomotion to the grid would not result in the removal and burning of coal from beneath every mountaintop in WV. If you don't believe that free energy is waiting beneath every rainbow, you must not want clean air!

Re hydrogen cars, it's important to remember that hydrogen is an energy carrier, not a form of energy. So the energy would have to come from another source. Check out the Wiki on this subject.

Best wishes...

Lew from Brooklyn

Editorial focus. This is not Soccer Mom's Environmental Road Blog, it is about a particular urban vision that the next generation of 3,000 lb personal automobiles has little to do with (other than continuing the menace). Perhaps the Wired Autopia weblog would be more to your interest than Streetsblog? That is their name, I'm not sure how ironic it's supposed to be. They discuss fuel cell powered vehicles fairly regularly. Actually, in a story from last week about plug-in hybrids, I see:

"It's great to see the DOE upping its support of plug-in vehicles and getting the major car companies involved," Sherry Boschert, vice-president of Plug In America, told Wired.com. "Unfortunately, the $30 is a drop in the bucket compared with funding that DOE blows on less viable and potentially harmful options like hydrogen fuel cell cars and corn-based biofuels."

http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/06/feds-scrape-tog.html

Interesting take. Perhaps you'd like to weigh in there among the 97 comments so far, to defend this technology you have so much enthusiasm for. But the truth is that here, frankly, most people don't care. Except for the part about "effective delivery system", which sounds like a publicly financed effort to make the technology useful. I will fight tooth and nail against any massive new subsidy for personal automobile use. Pay for your own hydrogen production and distribution network.

And then Assemblyman Gannt goes out and kills even this, which was a disgrace.

Finally, how come no one here has posted the bevy of stories about the fact atht Honda is mass producing Hydrogen Fuel Cell cars? Again, some of you told me that they were a flight of fancy and that they were not close to reality. I reiterate, switiching over to zero emission hydrogen fuel cell cars would do more to clean our air, reduce teh cost of food now being pushed for bio fuelds, reduce out dependence on foreign oil, improve our international economic and political position than any one thing we can do....it won't take cars off our streets, so I don't want to reignite that debate, but I think I get at least an "I told you so" about the availability of the product.

NOW , if we can work on an environmentally sound way to mass produce hydrogen and an effective delivery system, we can make gloabal change.

Missed you guys.

Busy in budget negotiations

Lew from Brooklyn

I am just wondering what the dissenters said!

If NY State Government is "paternalistic," it is so in a child abuse and child rape kind of way.

Of course the political discussion is that this is another instance of "putting Bloomberg in his place." Funny how the legislature didn't "put Bloomberg in his place" by refusing to approve the 25/55 pension plan for teachers.

My guess is that they attach criteria that make it impossible to prove a motor vehicle wasn't in a bus lane to make a turn, jacking up the price of a $110 ticket to $3,000 in court costs. Turn it into a scam, in other words.