Personal record

Wow, two posts in one blog! This marks a personal record... should I celebrate?

Appropriate first article post:

http://columbus.bizjournals.com/columbus/stories/2006/05/08/daily.html

OSU opens the first hydrogen filling station in Ohio state, 15th in the country. Associate professor of mechanical engineering says:

"The time is much shorter than the general public is willing to acknowledge. Transferring to new fuel and transportation technologies takes decades and we probably don't have that luxury before we'll start feeling the pinch," [Yan] Guezennec said.

Isn't it nice when officially smart people agree with you?

What I like about his quote is that, though it calls to the front a sense of urgency that is certainly needed, it does not spark the debate about running out of oil. He/she merely mentions that our time is running short - read politically, environmentally, financially, etc. I have my own feelings about an "impending oil shortage" based on common sense and the little scientific knowledge that I have. In my opinion, however, I do not feel that we need to base a a shift in energy consumption based on whether or not we can sustain what we're doing for how long. With 800+ million vehicles in the world (as per General Motors) spewing out an average of 10K pounds of material each year, we certainly will reach an air quality threshold at some point in time, do we need to wait until it is a crisis before we act? Judging by events gone past, I guess we do: