Check out the documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?"
The hydrogen car will always be "just a few years away" when we already had electric cars that could drive circles around almost everything I've ever owned. In fact, the development of the Prius was propelled by the fear that Cali would enforce 0 emissions standards sometime about now, but then big oil and GM killed the Cali law and sent their electric cars to the crusher. (nice cars that people wanted to buy, with lots of money, that could drive fast enough to get speeding tickets on LA's highways) Hydrogen and Water power is a mirage to distract us from the fact that we already have electric technology that could run cars off of our current infrastructure - the electric power grid. No need to go to the Shell hydrogen station or any of that bull. I've recently heard that some Texas guy just made some huge breakthrough in battery technology too so we could have laptop batteries the size of watch batteries, Car batteies (to drive them) the size of, well, car batteries (the kind we use to just start them now) And if they eventually do end up making hydrogen/water cars it will be to preserve the corporate monopoly on distributing the energy inputs through their filling stations rather than let people fuel up from the public municipal power grids.
Of course no matter the energy storage system, inputs are needed, so amen to algal bio production, solar, wind, tidal , geothermal, etc. But reduction is also needed. We could turn every square inch of the US into a bio-d farm (algal, hemp, or otherwise) and it still wouldn't cover all of our transportation energy consumption. So how about a paradigm shift... do we really all need to haul 4 leather seats, a 200 watt stereo system, an air conditioner, and a couple tons of steel plastic and glass with us every time we go to work a mile across town?
On the subject of anti pot/hemp conspiracies and lunacies I also recommend the documentary films: "Emperor of Hemp: Jack Herer Story" and "Waiting to Inhale"
As for Ron Paul - the media and everyone else did the same thing to Dennis Kucinich in 04 and this time around, as well as to Mike Gravel. But I like Paul, and will support him. But you know the system is rigged when even so called "credible" candidates drop out before even 1% of the delegates are won in the primary contest. And so on the topic of media cultural conspiracies I also recommend the documentary movie: "Zeitgeist" which is some pretty crazy S***!
Well sorry I don't seem to have as much to share about VW diesels as I do about politics on this forum! :roll: I am glad to see that this is a place where people are thinking though, maybe there is hope...
