Oh. My.

Focus on the pretty. The NOLA stuff is making my throat tight (which isn't me bitching -- I understand that the sharing is very therapeutic), so I'm skimming and thinking of other things.

The EU has a target of 12% of energy from renewable sources by 2010, but it's not going to happen. 2015 looks like a better estimate. Which is something. And where Europe leads, other nations avert their eyes and pretend they can't hear.

Thanks, y'all. Stepping away from the scary book.

That's gonna be the interesting part. I mean, if we get individual solar/wind/snarkonium generators to create electricity for our houses and use that to charge up our electric cars (or create the hydrogen for our H2 powered cars) where will Big Power (oil/coal/nukes) get their cut?

From making the parts that go into solar generators. If oil becomes too expensive to sell, they'll evolve or perish. Their interest is in making money, and they'll go where demand goes. No one's complaining about how Big Typewriter nearly pushed IBM out of existence. Because Selectrics turned into PCs.

And where Europe leads, other nations avert their eyes and pretend they can't hear.

Perhaps the U.S. will get a little more forward thinking when/if the government is run by a bunch of big oil people.

There are a bunch of articles on alternative energy developments here: [link]

Biodiesel is a big thing here in Illinois (what with all the corn/soy farmers), so I wouldn't be surprised if this expands across the midwest, and not just to governmental vehicles, but to retrofitted personal cars, as well.

I believe in 2007 there will be some tighter limits on sulfer in diesel fuel which will help diesel engines meet emissions regulations. I'll bet combined with higher gas prices, that this will bring a lot more diesel cars to the market in the U.S.

Dana, I recently switched to Virgin Mobile's pay-as-you-go. They were able to switch my old cellphone number over on the same day I signed up. So far so good, and I'm on track for saving a good $20 over my old Sprint plan.

Oh, come now. This is the perfect time for him to show up and declare war on, umm, the weather or something.

I predict a speech about Katrina that mentions:

• 9/11
• "America is strong"
• Terrorists

After all, New Orleans has been attacked by God. WAR ON GOD!!!!

On the whole energy thing, I really do think we'll see more nuclear power in our lifetimes. The pebble-bed reactors are remarkably safe. There is that nasty problem of disposal, though.

The real limitation to our ability to replace oil has been the physical limitations of batteries. There's only so much miniaturization you can do. Until we can find a way to store a lot of energy in a small battery, we're stuck with the high BTU goodness of hydrocarbons.

I'm waiting for Bush to invade the ocean, like Caligula.