Emerging National Emergency

[clive francis]

I think they should take some of the technology shelved by the oil companies and come up with a better way to power vehicles. We are using ancient basic internal combustion engines with some modern bells and whistles now. There has to be a better, more efficient, enviromental friendly way.

there is no way the oil companies will develop an engine that moves you away from oil.

this will never happen.

 

[Rick Murchison]

Increasing... since 1969? Increasing since 1851? Increasing since 1933? :06:

The chief problem with trying to compare "named storms" is that today a storm can't escape naming... if it reaches TS strength even for a few hours (a la Bret, Gert, Jose, Lee, Vince and possibly Stan this year), or even if it stays away from land completely (a la Harvey, Nate and Philippe) it gets picked up on satellite and named immediately. We have no idea how many of these storms may have occured in 1933, for example... and weather cycles being as they are, a single year is a very poor indicator of any trend.
So we must look at something we have a reasonable chance of comparing, something where the record has a reasonable chance of being fairly complete - a pretty good one is to compare the number of hurricane strength tropical cyclones that have made landfall in the United States per decade since we've been keeping records. By that scale it looks like the 200x decade is going to be right up there with other high-storm decades. It may even set a new record... but I doubt it. And whether it's a trend or not will have to wait fifty years at least for conclusion.
Rick

 

[MikeC]

there is no way the oil companies will develop an engine that moves you away from oil.

this will never happen.

Another issue is that there are taxes collected on every gallon of gasoline or diesel. Until the government can figure a way to tax the sun...

I truly would love to see how an engine that got say 75MPG, city driving, would be received by the various states and local government levels that get $$$ per gallon. The public face would be much different then the private face after they have two or three years of reduced tax revenue. Maybe some of the fat would be cut, maybe not.