Things that make me mad...

Yeah, I know... that's a very positive sounding title that just makes you WANT to read this, huh? Anyway, I've come across a number of things in the past year or so that have just made me alternately want to celebreate and then throw things angrily. The first instance is a couple of years back I went to the Solar Decathalon and saw all sorts of new innovations. One that seemed very implementable to me was an inductance heating stove. Super cool! A changing magnetic field sends all the electrons spinning in the metal pots and pans (eddy currents, yay!) and then you get heat... It takes very little electricity as opposed to a heating coil on a normal electric stove. But later, I was doing a search and found this patent from 1973... 1973!!! WHy aren't these standard in houses already?!?! I can see not replacing a gas stove, but electric stoves should have been replaced by these already. So that made me mad.

Then I heard about a car company in Indian working on making cars that are driven by compressed air. It a super cool idea. So new, so novel! Oh wait... I found this... History of compressed air engines. Now someone please explain to me why we're so much better off now that if we had just spent the past 80 years improving the technology on this.... Thing that made me mad #2.

Now, just a few days ago, I foudn this on BoingBoing: 1958 TV show about global warming

I really give up. There's so much we could have done and should have been doing to prevent the environment from going the direction that it has. It all makes me mad, it makes me sad. I get worried when I hear somenoe in the policy realm talking about the next energy technology. They seem to think along the lines of ONE. ONE new technology. What we need to be doing is making a comprehensive study of the entire US and pair that with feasibility studies for different technologies. Let's face it. Solar energy is not the answer for Pittsburgh, Seattle, or Binghamton. But it would be great to imprlement in Nevada. Wind turbines would probably do much better on the tops of mountains or on unobstructed plains areas. Aren't there a couple of more places that we could put in Hydro plants? And who does the US rail system suck so much? I have ridden the train once (amtrak). It rocked. There was no waiting, no security lines, more spacious than a bus, and you didn't have to stay in your seat the whole time. The main gripe I have about the trains is that it doesn't go everywhere I'd want. When it does, it takes longer than a plane (well duh!) but they don't have as frequent of schedules, so I can't get an overnight trip on a 16 hour train ride. If I could spend 8-10 hours of that trip sleeping, I'd totally pay that much for a ticket that takes that long. Well, that's it. I'm done. No more ranting. Take a nice bath & hit the hay I guess.