What is exciting is the opportunity to change the way the system works. Replacing one technology with another has been done many times before.

This kind of thinking irritates me. It completely ignores the impact of plug-in hybrids: there will be no such barrier to many, many early buyers, who will do fine with just their own electrical outlet at home. Once enough people start buying these hybrids, there will be demand for plug-in points at workplaces and apartment buildings — anywhere cars will normally be parked for multiple hours at a time. I don’t see “charging stations” along highways, or any setup mimicking today’s gas stations, as ever being anything more than a niche industry.

Though I’ll agree that the French approach will kick-start the process into pure electric cars faster than would be the case otherwise. Interestingly, if it succeeds in driving battery development, it might be more towards cheaper batteries than towards higher power densities.

A lightweight solar-powered plane has smashed the official world record for the longest-duration unmanned flight.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/6916309.stm

The problem with feeding that firehouse is that TH doesn’t edit anything!

Funny question. I don’t know if it saves much, but it seems like a good idea. It’s better than trying to pee later. First, if you’re not in the aisle seat, you have to bother your neighbor or neighbors to get up. This assumes you’ve waited for the food cart to clear the aisle and that the “fasten seat belt” sign is off. Then you have to often wait in line standing up to use the bathroom (everyone else has presumably waited until the above conditions have been met so a line has developed). When it’s your turn, you have to cram yourself into a tiny restroom and balance yourself if there is any turbulence, also taking on the risk of a rare more serious bump. Then you have to wash your hands by repeatedly pressing down on the faucet handle (which only stays down for a few seconds) in between getting soap and rubbing your hands together. When you leave, hopefully the food cart isn’t there blocking you. When you return to your seat, unless you have the aisle seat, you have to once again trouble the person(s) sitting next to you to stand up. All this trouble might have been averted if you used the restroom before boarding the plane, which I think most people have figured out is common sense to do.

http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Bio-energy_with_carbon_capture_and_storage

Tip to coal fired power producers:

If your coal fired power plant is located on a major river for cooling water, and most are, then planting your co-firing biomass upstream on the river provides easy, economical transport of biomass to your coal plant.

In this case, the Big Cajun II power plant is located on the Mississippi river, and has extensive coal barge facilities and a conveyor belt leading from it’s dock to its coal stockpile. All of this is visible on Google Earth, especially if you visit the CARMA (Carbon Monitoring for Action) website and download their power plant tracking .kml database into Google Earth. So, adding biomass offloading facilities should be easy.

Biochar, produced from any plant material including switchgrass and sorghum anywhere upstream of Louisiana on the Mississippi river or its tributaries, could be burned as a 100% replacement for coal in this power plant, making it carbon neutral. Biochar is as transportable, storage stable, and energy dense as coal. Biomass is generally slightly cheaper than coal, with transport costs dominating. Biochar can be produced from biomass by an exothermic carbonization process that can also pay for itself by sale of electricity produced by burning combustible gases from the carbonization process.

This power plant produces about 14 million tons of CO2 per year, so just making it carbon neutral would be somewhat significant. Of course, to really make a dent in CO2 emissions, we would have to do the same thing to most coal fired power plants in the U.S., especially those located along major navigable rivers, with sufficient biomass or biochar sources, or areas for biomass plantations, located upstream.

Converting it to an enhanced efficiency power oxyfuel/CCS power plant with an added topping cycle is also possible, and the resulting CO2 could be deep injected into deep saline aquifers under the power plant. Deep saline aquifers under Louisiana have an estimated CO2 storage capacity, according to the NatCarb database, of 400 billion tons to 1.6 trillion tons of CO2.