What he did do was refuse to have the fires in the tenaments put out. That way he could rebuild a substantial part of Rome.

Bush, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have rebuilt much of anything.

It’s unfortunate that a site so devoted to scientific integrity is so blithe about historical ignorance.

The consensus among historians is that Nero did not burn Rome. Meanwhile, the relief effort he quickly enacted and spearheaded – setting up tent cities on the exercise grounds, having large amounts of food quickly brought in (a prodigy of quick organization) certainly puts America’s post-Katrina effort to shame.

As for Chamberlain, his position was firmly within the mainstream of both public and educated opinion, while Churchill represented a small, ridiculed minority. So while appeasement in hindsight can be seen to have been the wrong policy, it hardly renders one a horrible leader that one subscribed to it at the time. (And don’t forget, FDR sent Chamberlain a congratulatory telegram following Munich.)

I always laugh at all the blowhards who smugly imply, “I would’ve been against appeasement if I’d been around back then”, when you know damn well 99% of them would have been against no such thing.

Sorry to rant about this, but intellectual integrity is intellectual integrity, and someone who knows history but not science, coming to this blog, could be forgiven for wondering if the intellectual sloppiness evident regarding the one doesn’t also infect the other.

(Written by an afficionado of both science and history.)

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we didn’t create green electricity faster than we bring electric cars to the streets.

BTW, ever figure out how much it would cost to buy enough panels to give you “free fuel” for the rest of your life?

Let’s say you drive the national average of 12,000 miles a year, 33 miles per day. You get a BEV that uses o.3 kWh per mile so you need 10 kWh per day.

You install them in a 5 solar hour location, so you need 2 kW of panels. At $4 per watt you’re out $8,000 for lifetime fill ups. About $35 dollars a month over 20 years.

And solar is expensive compared to wind. Best site, best technology wind is about $0.05 per kWh. Let’s say you have to pay high retail or $0.08 per kWh. That’s a whopping eighty cents to power your daily ride. Your latte’ will now be your daily biggie….

Please note that my reference is the Prius, not the “gasoline” cars in general, that average around 20% efficient rather than 38%.

But since you bring up calcars where they advocate for plug-in Priuses, I should point out that the Argonne study of the Hymotion, A123 battery conversion actually reduced the efficiency of the Prius engine from 38% to 32%. That should be noted though it is a minor part of the problem.

The real problem with plug-ins is that the fuel to run these will come from coal, and if the plug-in is a Prius, the conversion will cause a net increase in CO2, probably about 50%.

Calcars is a leader in the use of the “100 + MPG” slogan. This is easily detected to be gibberish since the number could be “40″ or “10,000″ just as easily as “100″. Google does even worse since they eliminate the “+” and pretend the electricity falls from the sky, though of course it does after they put a lot of money into solar panels at their offices. That is ok for them, but it should not be taken as applicable for the rest of us.

Repeated tests have shown that PHEV’s produce less CO2 overall than gasoline cars, even if the power comes from a coal plant. (see http://www.calcars.org/calcars-news/797.html )

And of course, the article also notes that as we convert to greater and greater amounts of renewable electricity, every PHEV ever produced will get cleaner and cleaner…

http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/ Energy_Resources_Materials/ Environment/ An_electric_plan_for_energy_resilience_2276

I commented thereto (they might or might not publish it):

I had previously assumed that Andy Grove was advocating a solution to global warming. Careful reading of this article shows that he has no such goal in mind. I was particularly misled by a Forbes Mag. article where his plan was featured next to one of Amory Lovins, who strongly relates to the anti global warming objective.

This plan is consistent with the GM plan to shift the energy source from oil to the electric grid. This all makes sense since there is plenty of cheap coal available to do this, and energy independence and local air quality of places like Los Angeles will be significant benefits. GM and Grove both are careful to avoid mentioning the effect on CO2 levels that would result in their plans.

As to the details, Grove advocates retrofitting the least efficient vehicles, and he does not mind tricking those who “support–green initiatives” into thinking the retrofitting will relate to “green” objectives.

The largest fuel source for generating electricity in the USA is coal and the average efficiency for converting heat from coal into electricity is 33%. The Prius engine is 38% efficient in converting heat from gasoline into mechanical energy. A BTU from coal causes 34% more CO2 than a corresponding BTU from gasoline. So a rough estimate would be that Grove’s plan would produce about 50% more CO2 than a plan where Prius technology was adapted.

Thus it appears that Andy Grove and Bob Lutz of GM are in the same “global warming is a crock” club.

END COMMENT at McKinsey

Notwithstanding your advise on the Prius warranty, maybe we should keep this technology in mind for the future. I note that Toyota is not proceeding with its USA plant to build the Prius.