Speechless

Saw this on the intarw3b this morning, whilst reading my usual Yahoo! headlines with breakfast.

So I read the article. Did a complete eyeroll afterwards, and thought, "Compressed air?, how stupid can you be?" Four minute compression fill at 4K psi? Whatcha using to make that kind of pressure? The article is clearly non-specific, other than to say something in passing about a custom air source (gee, hard to believe that) , or plugging in to the grid to power its on board compressor...in four hours.

Why is it that people think that plugging their car into their house is somehow "green"? My only guess is that they've been brainwashed into thinking that electricity is somehow "clean" power and that it doesn't have any emissions of its own. How wrong they are isn't any kind of a surprise to me.

Then I saw the comments portion below....and couldn't believe some of the stuff I was reading, to wit:

"the rich oil companies will pay off the American govt. to reject this invention" (I just love the conspiracy laden bullshit)

"Hydrogen allows a car to feel like a real car but only rejects steam. Check out the BMW 750H for a great example" (So, I need to buy a $100K+ German luxury sedan, so that I can fill it up at our non-existent liquid Hydrogen stations, so that it (the hydrogen) can increase my range by a hundred miles, or if we're talking about the electric (fuel cell) version of the hydrogen vehicle, it continually burns off through its on-board electrical generation grid, even while it sits in the garage. Just brilliant.)

"I'm wondering if it could power a small personal helicopter, gyroplane, etc There's no reason why this propulsion technology has to be restricted to cars." (Dude, are you fucking serious?)

"In Chengdu, China, all the taxies have been using Compressed Air (nature Gas) for a couple of years." (Jeezis, I'm assuming this girl means "natural gas", regardless, do these folks even know the difference?)

"The cold air emissions would balance the warm air compression, so ther is not ecological issue." (Didn't you pass physics? You've got to use energy of some sort in order to make the initial pressure. Aside from the heat created from the initial compression(yes, the expansion is cold, but as I just said, aside from any balance created by this), there is a machine of some sort that must be powered by something to make the pressure. It uses resources and isn't just imagined out of thin air. This creates heat. Period. There is NO way around it.)

"the spiking cost of oil after peak world production is reached will impact economies most dependent on oil... USA." (Ah, the Peak Oil scare tactic. I'm really not that concerned with it, and anyone who knows anything about oil exploration also knows that this is nothing but a red herring. The truth is that we haven't even begun to tap all of the reserves yet. The obstacle is actually just getting to that oil.)

"Let us all remember that the good old USofA is owned by big business. They will exert enough pressure on the government to declare the cars unsafe to protect their interests" (More "Big-Business Bogeyman Bullshit")

And my personal favorite:

"The only danger here is from big oil companies creating a hostile market for any non gasoline vehicle. The Bush administration could solve the dependence on oil with the stroke of a pen." (Again, the "Big Oil" conspiracy, somehow preventing the NextBigThing from happening, along with the childish notion that, somehow, it's all Bush's fault, because he could fix it by edict, or something. Note for the clueless on this last bit; it is impossible for politics to fix our "energy addiction" or whatever you want to call it, specifically, and, more generally, it's not likely that politics can fix much of anything, so quit trying to act as if it can, ya dolts!)

The list just goes on and on. These dolts don't understand anything about science or Newton's laws or thermodynamics, or... much of anything, really.

The real problem, as I see it, isn't so much that this type of thing is being investigated at a practical level, it's that there are far too many people, as evidenced by the aforementioned comments, who haven't a clue about what's at stake in this thing. All they care about is the preaching aspect of the whole thing. They've been coopted into believing the drivel that Al Gore and his ilk are absolutely shoving down everyone's throat, and once more, they like it. These same vermin vote, people, and that should scare the living hell out of you. Why?. They will make laws concerning what you can and can't do, and they are convinced they're right about it all.

For the others, it's better to live in Lalaland and believe in the tooth fairy, I suppose. It makes blaming you for their own suckage that much easier, since they get to define what the rules are.

If I made a lot more money, I'd ditch one of my current vehicles and get something with at least 400hp, maybe even 500hp, and drive it like I stole it, everyday, just because I can. Alas, I am poor, and have a huge mortgage to pay for. It'll have to wait.

I'm still completely unapologetic about using resources. Use what you can pay for, and tell the Eco-Preaks to fuck themselves.