John Petersen

Making Natural Gas Transportation a Reality

Fitz, another wonderfully informative piece (as usual). A new article came out in Wired this morning and really made my day. It will probably leave you feeling a bit vindicated too.

The City of Seattle has reported that its fleet of plug-in Prius retrofits only averaged 51 mpg over the last year as compared to the 100 mpg everybody expected. Apparently comparable results are being seen by the Idaho National Laboratory which is following a nationwide test fleet.

The title is priceless - Plug-in Hybrids: More Hype than Hope?

www.wired.com/cars/coo.../

Book Review: Robert Hefner's 'The Grand Energy Transition'

Another great article Fitz! I just did a quick Google search using the terms methane and atmosphere. I found references to Mars, Pluto and an extrasolar planet in the first page of results. I also seem to recall something from high school science about the earth having a methane rich atmosphere before the first life forms emerged. I'm a big fan of some alternatives and an unrepentant critic of others. To my simple way of thinking the only relevant question is "Are we better off with it than we would be without it?" Using that metric, natural gas will always win. Solar and wind may be better still, but the core technologies that exist today are not as good as they will be in the future. So let's take the baby steps and work toward the plentiful energy future that Heffner, Milunovich and others foresee.