Debate = scientific method. At least to me it does. To most people it means who can yell the loudest.

Now that we have nobody else’s attention. How many Americans will go buy a brand new hybrid vehicle when they roll off the assembly line? If the government will not give all of us a new car then we’re right back to a band-aid approach. Retrofitting currently owned cars will certainly go a long way to clean the air. CNG is basically what you exhale from your own body. The new administration is going to initiate a plan to go with bio-fuels to solve this problem, instead of fitting the old cars with CNG. I’m having trouble recalling the country that uses a sugar cane bio-fuel. They are totally independent from fossil fuels and the sugar cane plant scrubs the ozone. They switched to cane because under the enormous amount of evidence showing that corn damaged the environment, they did an impact study which also included a fiscal impact and decided they could afford to plant sugar cane and soy. They feed the masses, they don’t have to import anything, they employ a lot of workers, and they are healthy. We are stuck in the mud.

Jake break – regenerative break – give me a break J I’m old

What would happen if we were to overload the system? Also you’re not touching on the issue of the batteries that go into the hybrids, even the mining process damages the environment, not to mention the batteries contain toxic materials, and the contracts are Japanese. That is fully one half of the vehicle’s expense. The lithium-ion batteries that is in the testing phase keeps blowing apart at higher temperatures. They are currently working on a technology similar to the “jake break” in a long haul truck that when you are decelerating in the hybrid vehicle, the same thing that slows the engine, charges the batteries. At that point I will be in almost agreement on the technology because at that point we will have developed the wind and solar farms to go with the electric and hydrogen vehicles. Peace

By the way CNG is and has been in existence on a massive scale since 1995, here’s some info. And just to show you I’m not one-sided I’ve included the debate http://www.naturalgas.org/environment/naturalgas.asp here’s the fleet use from the clean cities http://www.afdc.energy.gov/cleancities/ccn/progs/story.php/WHATS_NEW/845/0/A or the natural gas site at the DOE http://www.afdc.energy.gov/afdc/fuels/natural_gas.html

GeneC, thank you so much for putting so much time into answering this post. This is exactly what people need to see and understand . People automatically think that there are no repercussions for technological advancements. The Drake Equation’s last value describes the ability of an advanced civilization’s ability to survive its own technology. In examining the drake Equation “The astronomer Carl Sagan speculated that all of the terms, except for the lifetime of a civilization, are relatively high and the determining factor in whether there are large or small numbers of civilizations in the universe is the civilization lifetime, or in other words, the ability of technological civilizations to avoid self-destruction” we are drowning in a toxic sea, every time I hear the words “clean coal technology” I cringe. We cannot build the wind turbines in time. Please convert your cars to compressed natural gas. The government must act on this now. They need to invest in our future and convert the cars of the people who can’t afford to do it themselves. Plus it will create jobs. http://www.greencar.com/features/natural-gas-conversions/

Bio-fuels upstart costs to the environment are so counter-productive that I can’t believe that they were ever even discussed, except that the farmers benefit a great deal from them, got to pay those lobbyists. Here’s one that is a total oxymoron. The woman that was appointed environment/agriculture secretary, has a conflict of interest. Her bio-fuels cause global warming and she knows it, but to protect her farmers which represent America, who she works for, she’ll push corn crops. Corn also represent the number one reason America has an obesity problem (high fructose corn syrup, corn starch it’s in everything as a bulking agent) Corn has almost no benefit to the atmosphere as far as reducing CO2 emissions, where soy is better than trees, but who wants that yucky plant, there’s actually a poster here that’s arguing we should plant cannabis, well in this respect it’s better than corn.

If every person that owned a car left their lights on every night for the rest of their lives, what do you suppose that does for the environment? These cars draw more power than your refrigerator, which, by the way, draws the most power in your house. It is not one/one-thousandth or whatever, we are supposed to be turning the lights off! Remember the CFL bulbs? Even the mining process of these batteries damage the environment they are currently made from nickel and lead. Guess who currently has the manufacturing contract for the batteries? Nope not America, it’s Japan. And they are fully 1/2 of the car. You want to do something for the environment, research it first.

I agree, the wind corridor and the oceans are a natural resource for an untapped power supply. But what do you suppose will happen first? Also, how many of you actually know how much damage happens to the environment during the manufacturing process of the electric hybrid car batteries? Not one word was ever spoken again about Hydrogen Fuel Cell cars. And don’t get me started about the crash tests. The impact it would take to cause a fiery crash on one would cause total destruction to the car and driver, there would be no survivors anyway. What I’ve been trying to do is open the eyes of everyone about the environment that ALL of the statistics have not been accurately given about these electric cars. We’re all supposed to run right out and buy them blindly, It’s the equivalent to the entire nation leaving their house lights on, who invested in the technology? The power company?

Soy can feed millions, has fed millions, does enrich the soil when you rotate the crops and has been shown to reduce carbon emissions more than trees

Richard i think one of the main things he needs right now is community organizers. teachers are uniquely suited for this task, as are human resource mangers, job foremen, head nurse and any number of people who have gathered people together for a common goal. If you are willing to take on this challenge find a cause that means something to you and contact your state or local representative and find out how to make a difference. But bring your community with you. If they know it means votes it means something to them.

Juliet, I've started this too. with me I have this thing about getting people to stop throwing away their perscription bottles. Since I live in a retirement comminuty there's a whole lot of them. I get them to remove the labels and throw them into a small box and save them for me to pick up since they can't be left for curbside recycling. Also I've gotten a few neighbors to place a recycle logo on a great big garbage pail, so now they recycle a large can of plastics every other saturday, soon I just know I'll have my whole block doing it. I place flyers out on the mailboxes about taking the electronic waste to the blind services (that's where we take it) to have the toxic materials recycled, instead of tossing your cell phones or batteries, CFL bulbs. I do this once per month. I pick them up and take them down, the money I make for the plastics pays for the boxes I have to buy for the dosposal boxes for the CFL bulbs.

Duane thank you so much for saying that, I wonder if at anytime in our existence, was there a representative for the people, that gave us a voice? other than Abe Lincoln and MLK. I'm talking about a voice in the government. PE Obama said he would make this transparent and make this a government for the people, of the people and and by the people, but dayam, I only thought he was going to give us a little of that.

Well considering the soy plant would go a lot further to benefit humans than the Cannabis plant you'd probably have a hard time convincing the government that we should grow it for the economy. There's also the debate you'd get into with people who don't like mind altering substances of any type. That would be the following: Cannabis, Alcohol, Sleep Aides (that includes benadryl) pain pills (doesn't matter if you have a perscription) diet pills the list goes on, then you're right back to your Cannabis. You can't control it, so you can't have it because at no time are you supposed to operate anything dangerous under the influence of a mind altering substance, the risk to the gerneral public is high, so only in extreme circumstances ie medical situations is it indicated. You can argue all day long that the tolerence level is different for different individuals, but I can honestly tell you that I see at least one thousand drunk people per day who honestly believe they are able to drive their car. At least 300 will, fully one tenth of those are also one another form of mind altering substance. In 2003 The DUI's rose 50% because of Red Bull. Stick that in your pipe.