Liberal Talk Radio

Interesting piece in the NY Times about how France is doubling down on nuclear power:
Nuclear power provides 77 percent of France’s electricity, according to the government, and relatively few public doubts are expressed in a country with little coal, oil or natural gas.
With the wildly fluctuating cost of oil, anxiety over global warming from burning [...]

Man, Tom Friedman sure is annoying today, getting all sanctimonious about how Bush needs to either get with the alternative-energy program or else STFU. But why is Friedman so angry? Bush already had a strategy to lower oil prices: invade Iraq. And he did so with the blessings of… Tom Friedman.
Back in [...]

Interesting piece in the NYT about the Saudis finally getting nervious and increasing oil production to lower prices. While you’d think that they would be happy with $140/barrel, the truth is that nefarious “alternative fuels” are becoming cost-competitive. They’re also planing on bringing a whole new field online next year.
The question is, how [...]

Jon Golob concludes his six-part investigation into nuclear power with a call for more research into next-generation reactors:
Where are these plants? The ideas here aren’t new ones. A pilot project, the Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) was to build a liquid sodium metal cooled, plutonium and U-235 fueled fast neutron reactor with an on-site waste [...]

Maybe you trust this man to make smart environmental policy? I wouldn’t:
Representative Anthony D. Weiner, Democrat of Brooklyn and Queens, drives a 2008 Chevrolet Impala, leased for $219 a month. Representative Michael R. McNulty, a Democrat from the Albany area, gets around in a 2007 Mercury Mariner hybrid, a sport utility vehicle, for $816 a [...]

Apocalypse Tom owns a 2004 Subaru Impreza WRX, an all wheel drive pseudo sports car that goes faster than Tom reasonably needs to drive and allows him to go over Snoqualmie Pass in winter weather that keeps everyone except chained-up semis and Tom at home.
The WRX has a 15.9 gallon gas tank, and requires [...]

It’s hard to get outraged at American Airlines for flying a plane with just five passengers from Chicago to London. After all, they lost a ton of money on it, and they just made the business decision that made the most financial sense. So I’m glad that instead the environmental group who brought [...]

I found myself watching Who Killed the Electric Car? last night, and it’s quite an interesting little movie.
One thing that’s hinted at in the film, but not really fleshed out, is the idea that electric cars are a really, really disruptive technology. Like any disruptive technology, they create a whole new class of winners and [...]

And it’s helpful to remember that, you know, our entire freakin’ economy is based on trucking:
Ricardo Caraballo was having a familiar American experience at the filling station the other day, groaning as the pump clicked up, up, up. By the time he finished it read $505, and his tank was only half full.
A few years [...]

And they say this Congress has done nothing . . . here we are this morning with a whole extra hour of sunlight:
For Benjamin Franklin, daylight saving time was about saving candles and for modern lawmakers, it’s about electricity — but a recent university study found it might actually cost more energy when the nation [...]