One last thought for 2010….

I caught a train coming home last night. Meaning the road was blocked by a long freight train. Many of the cars were full of coal, used to generate electricity in Texas. 35% of Texas electricity comes from coal, and our state is probably last in the Union at enforcing any EPA air quality regulations on big business.

If mountain tops are being blown off in the Appalachians to provide the coal, trains are hauling it cross country, and the smoke from said coal then making the air filthier than the alternative gasoline would, what good does it do to drive an electric car?

It is true, that hydrogen from water is not cost-effective, it takes as much electricity to separate the hydrogen out as is produced by burning the hydrogen.
But hydrogen from urine is cost effective. The initial tests were done on cow urine, and the urine from one cow was sufficient to power 17 homes. Write me if you want a link to the article.
Urine can generate a huge amount of electricity in proportion to the cost of separating the hydrogen atoms out.
Every large city in America has a waste water treatment plant. I do not have the knowledge it would take to devise the system, but someone out there does.

I don’t have all the answers. I think a good question should be spark enough.

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Maybe it’s time to let the roof fall in.

The FDA has added so many regulations to pamper the pharmaceutical companies it is not funny.  Quinine Sulfate was over the counter for 30 years, but when big pharma came out with a new drug for Restless Leg Syndrome, Quinine Sulfate became prescription only. Gee….   Unfortunately I need it for another species of the animal kingdom, and I’m having issues laying hands on it. 38 people were harmed by quinine sulfate, and 2 died, of kidney or  blood-related disorders between April 2005 and October 2008, prompting this change.

I watched a pharmaceutical rep drop off Celebrex samples in a doctor’s office 2 weeks ago. How many people have died of Celebrex? Since Celebrex is still on the market, that number seems to be suppressed. I found 10 deaths in Canada, from an online Canadian paper, but no searching produced a U.S. number.

The FDA Estimates Vioxx Caused 27,785 Deaths … The estimate is based on the number of prescriptions…

I expect 2011 to bring irradiated eggs to market. More homeophatic and organic remedies will disappear. Some people will die for lack of insurance and access to supplements, vitamins and those organic remedies. Some will fork over the cash and spend hundreds each month either on insurance, or the prescription cost of new patented drugs, many with harmful side effects, to keep the pharmaceutical boat afloat.

At the same time, our economy will be taking its second dip into recession.  The cost of the Deepwater Horizon is already on gas pumps, and prices will continue to climb in an effort to force the U.S. government to allow offshore drilling again. Will BP pay for the spill – they may hand over some cash, but we will all, in Louisiana or out of it, be paying BP and the rest of the industry back. Just in case you thought they were taking responsibility.

Nothing is about responsibility. Everything is about profit.

I watched PBS last night, “Secrets Beneath the Ice”. The image of  our globe if Antarctica melts is radically different. Fortunately I live very far inland. Those oil magnates busy disputing global warming, well let’s just say I hope they own beach front property. We have only to look at Greenland, and the loss of the Larsen Ice Shelf in January 2002, to see how this is going to play out.  Massive population reduction if we can’t turn it around.

But then, we can’t reduce Earth’s population any other way, can we?  If we talk about birth control and limiting population growth, the American conservative movement would have a field day saying we’re talking about state-mandated abortion, or death panels.

So I say, make more babies, burn more oil, and drill baby drill.  We should lose 5 or 6 million people in the first wave, and boating could become fashionable in some previously dry parts of the world.  I give up.

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