Al Gore keeps two huge sport utility vehicles running outside the building wherever he speaks. International environmental diplomats rack up huge carbon footprints flying around the world to luxurious hotel resorts for climate conferences. A Prius gets less gas mileage than a Hummer.
To this list of eco-ironies, we can add New York Representative Eric Massa’s failed fuel cell road trip. According to Jason Chen at Gizmodo, Massa “tried to drive a fuel cell car from NY to DC to make an environmental point and to show how great fuel cell cars are.”
But things got complicated.
Chen continues:
“Massa drove one fuel cell car while a hybrid SUV [Chevy Tahoe] towing an additional SUV followed along. Once he got half way, he switched to new fuel cell car [which I assume was towed to the half way point sometime earlier so that it would be waiting for the environmentally-conscious congressman]. The empty fuel cell was then towed back by the first SUV. As he continued on his journey, the second SUV followed. Once Massa arrived in DC, the second SUV then towed the second fuel cell car back to NY.
So basically, one SUV traveled 400 miles and one SUV traveled 600 miles for a total of 1000 miles on a 300 mile trip. That's not even counting the mileage on the fuel cell car. Nice work there Captain Planet.”
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Total idiocracy. If not his idea, he surely agreed to it.
I know this sounds somewhat crass, but he just proved why electric cars are essentially useless. If you cannot refuel the car from empty to full in five minutes or less, it doesn't matter what kind of infrastructure you build, it's useless.
Now, the advantage of fuel cells is their ability to do just that. If he can't simply refuel from a hydrogen tank in his trunk, then he wasted more time.
Add to your total the carbon used to make the hydrogen and you can understand my complete lack of respect for this congressman.
Hi,
Couldn't resist – politicians just do some of the dumbest things. Here's the link:
http://www.c3headlines.com/2009/01/example-of-inf…
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