After Gutenberg

• “I didn’t watch the SOTU address because I had better things to do than listen to a dull-witted bore tell me more lies.” Mark H., Biomes Blog
• “A claim made by President Bush in his State of the Union speech last night, that an attack on an L.A. skyscraper had been averted, was universally debunked as a hoax by Mayors, CIA, FBI and NSA personnel and counter-terror experts nearly a year ago when it first surfaced. By regurgitating this fraud, Bush has committed an impeachable offense by knowingly lying to the American people.” Paul Joseph Watson, Prison Planet
• “In this most recent SOTU, he pronounced terrorist properly each and every time that he said it, which was several more times than he said climate change.

  Since he increasingly is being recognized as the world’s greatest terrorist, it is comforting to know that he at least can improve his pronunication.” jcwinnie comment to EcoGeek

• “He remains delusional,” was the view of Greenpeace’s Steve Sawyer after Bush called for production of domestic oil and crop-made ethanol fuel to be ramped up to ease US dependence on energy imports.

  “He’s still trying to drill his way out of the problem, and he’s found an ingenious method for increasing US farm subsidies while pretending to do something about the energy problem.” AFP, 2007, Wed Jan 24, 8:09 AM ET

James Fraser elicited considerable commentary to his review of SOTU (State Of The Union) address last night. He specifcally limited his initial comments to the President’s brief foray on the Energy issue.

Fraser summarized the proposed agenda:

1) Greater use of coal, solar, wind and nuclear
2) Battery research for plug-in and hybrid vehicles
3) Expand the use of clean diesel vehicles
4) Greater emphasis on cellulosic ethanol
5) Reduce gasoline usage by 20 percent in the next ten years by
5a) Setting a mandatory Fuels Standard of 35 billion
gallons of renewable and alternative fuels in 2017
5b) Adopting fuel economy standards for cars to conserve
eight and a half billion gallons of gasoline by 2017

Actually, it should be noted that the President combined battery research along with alternative fuel research. Any guesses as to how much will go for research into electric drive as opposed to using ethanol and bio-diesel? Yep, you got it.

Others agreed with how Fraser directed his comments toward a greater improvement in automobile efficiency. My comment was, “So, it’s bidness as usual and above all else and we really should do something about that Global Heating some day, but at least Big Oil is sharing the pie with Big Sugar and Big Farm, eh? Where are the GHG emissions standards?” And, I now would add, let’s start with CO₂ labels or how about a carbon tax.

I included a lament that the European Commission has delayed action on a legislative plan that by 2012 would mandate the reduction of CO₂ emitted from new cars to 120g/km. The reply from amazingdrx was interesting:

Well jc, with high gas prices in Europe, PHEVs will sell like hotcakes. Without the benefit of government caps even! Porsche Sr. invented serial plugin hybrids, maybe the present leadership forgot that. A Tesla beats a Porsche too! (Followed by a quote from Wikipedia

“In 1898 Ferdinand Porsche designed the Lohner-Porsche carriage, a series-hybrid vehicle that broke several Austrian speed records, and also won the Exelberg Rally in 1901 with Porsche himself driving. Over 300 of the Lohner-Porsche carriages were sold to the public.”

With the greenhouse effect steadily worsening and the Earth heating faster than at any other time in history, the topic of climate change is Too Hot NOT to Handle any longer even by business as usual Republicans.

Mark C R, a Chemist in the UK, found hope in that this is the first time “climate change” has ever been mentioned by the Republicans in a major speech. (This was noted elsewhere on the Net and compared to the number of times (124) that Iraq has been mentioned in all SOTU addresses by President Bush so far during his two terms in office.

In the commentary, Jim Fraser doubted whether the commitment made by President Bush to alternative fuels could be met by 2017, anticipating a production that most optimisitically could reach 26-28 billion gallons per year, “~ 25% less than the Bush proposal of 35bgy.” Fraser stated the expectation that coal liquefaction would play a small role. Unfortunately, this blog feels that the Energy Blog is underestimating the Syngas push, i.e., CTL (Coal To Liquids) production.

It was interesting to note during the speech that the audience interrupted his speech to applaud when the President mentioned solar and wind, and that Bush then twice repeated the other book end: nuclear. As previously noted, it will be interesting to see how much actual support become evident for “renewables”, i.e., geothermal, wind and solar, compared with coal and nuclear.

“How pathetic is it,” writes Joho the Blog, “that after seven years in office, it’s news that Bush actually uttered the phrase ‘global climate change’?”