CapeCodToday Blog Chowder

for anyone who is curious that amazingly handsome man with the black hair leaning over wearing the orange vest in the middle of the frame with his back to the camera is none other than me. That was two years ago when we released a bunch of dolphins off of p-town it was a great day. Keep up the good work ccsn.

So Peake has lots more support from inside the district? As 60% of 55,498 is 33298.80 more than the total number of dollars maloy has raised.

further more...

Electric cars are a technology that is here now, we will not have to wait for it to be developed.

Battery technology is currently good enough to power a car at high speeds for long distances without minimal recharge.

In my opinion hydrogen technology may never be as good as good old fashion wind turbines/solar panels/etc a batteries and an electric motor.

Don't be fooled by the hype, we have good enough current technology to power your car with renewable energy.

I am all for using wind turbines to power your car I simply propose we do it
in another way.

Here are my problems with hydrogen fuel cell power.
1. hydrogen is hard to store and hard to move around.
2. most fuel cells are YEARS away from being good enough to power a car for any amount of time
3. most current hydrogen is produced from steam reformation of natural gas and as such in the early years of a fuel cell car revolution it would increase our need for natural gas not lessen it.
4. transforming wind to electricity and then electricity into hydrogen is foolish when you can just create an electric car and charge the cars batteries directly from the wind turbine.
5. why build a hydrogen infrastructure when we already have an electric grid right now
So that is my main problem, why put the hydrogen step in when you can go right from the turbine to the car and use an all electric vehicle to do it.

Current support for fuel cell technology is way to "green wash" the issue. It lets the administration support hydrogen (from natural gas) while seeming to support the environment.

Several road blocks were erected as i was there and the whole town was in a flutter. I had no idea what was going on but ended driving through all manner of back roads to get around them.

Your best post ever!

I really liked your story.

do you even realize how this sentence

"First of all, forget “black.” This is no Jesse Jackson. This is a classy, talented, articulate American who is making his bid to become governor of this state."

It's about as racist as you can get. You are saying that Deval is not like most black people (including Jesse Jackson) because he is "classy, talented, articulate." Implying that most black people are not that way.

I am not sure if you meant it like that be smacks of racism to me. If you didn't mean it that way, thats one thing, but if I were you I would edit it a bit.

Not to worry all, just been on an actual vacation (first in a long long time) and will be blogging again come the end of august. I still update my main site on a regular basis www.blog.thesietch.org if you want to check it out.

Ben and jerry's. Blah you can get that any old place. we just went to several very nice local joints if you want to check them out. www.theicecreamchallenge.com

all of the pictures seem to be missing? Perhaps your picture host got tired of you hotlinking to them...

I will be sure to watch out for countries "countries controlled by Islam" what about our own nation would you say we are "controlled by the Jesus"?

Monponset: no one takes you seriously when you call for a war for cheap gas, you sound stupid and it's an insult to your intelligence (and ours), no one wants to get a bunch of people killed just so you can have cheap gas (except maybe you and the president), do us all a favor and buy one of the new 08 plug in hybrids.

War makes the price of oil go up. Observe the fact that gas prices go up every time someone starts a new conflict in the middle east. A ten year "war for oil" would no only waste much of the oil we would get from such a conflict (have you ever seen the mpg of a tank or Humvee?) but it would drive the price of oil well over 100 dollars a barrel leading to 5 buck a gallon gas.

Your plan of a grand war for oil is stupid and has no basis in reality.

Balboa: I agree the high price of oil (and therefore the high profits of oil companies) should not be met with government action.

In fact I would be in favor of making oil MORE expensive by removing all the corporate hand outs we give big oil already. People will see that oil and gas are not the way to go when they have to pay 10 dollars a gallon.

The free market is a myth. We pick and choose which industries to prop up and which ones to suppress. I think we should stop helping oil and start giving these hand outs to wind/solar/etc companies.

There are so many benefits to moving over to renewable energy (clean air, clean water, lower cost electricity, national security and more) that it makes sense to move our hand outs away from oil and towards renewables.

what if we are poor, could we drop like a 20 and still talk to the guy? I really want to meet deval patrick but do not have 100 dollars.

All this being said, I am glad that you point out that the vast majority of the experts agree that peak oil is here and we need to do something about it, thank you.

Also I hate to "bash bush" but his renewable energy projects include things like "clean coal" and hydrogen fuel cells.

Clean coal is crazy, burning coal is never going to be clean. At the best we could find a way to sink co2 into the earth but that is a big problem. And mountain top removal for this "clean" coal is no good.

Hydrogen is more complex. Most hydrogen comes from steam reforming natural gas. Its hard to store, hard to move, and while fuel cells are very efficient, the process to get/store/move the hydrogen is not.

Georgies renewable energy projects are more or less another way to give hand outs to oil gas and coal companies.

Look to countries like Denmark, Germany, and other northern European countries for a real renewable energy plan.

I agree with Monpo to a point. We could have avoided all the American blood, simply by starting to aggressively use distributed renewable energy. Wind farms, solar panels, geothermal heat, wave, tide, small scale hydro. For every region there is a technology.

There is enough wind in the northern Midwest to power the whole nation, all it would take is an investment in electrical distribution network.

The east coast has some of the best wind resources in the world, with some of the largest energy needs in the world. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this out.

The southwest has one of the best solar resources in the world. Texas has great solar and wind.

two thirds of our power is currently wasted due to inefficiency in the system. Distributed renewable generation combined with traditional oil/gas plants would lengthen the time we have to move over to complete renewables by double.

Our only hope is wind/solar/tidal/wave/small scale hydro/geothermal with limited gas/oil backup.

Balboa: if we took all the money we spent on wars for oil/oil company tax cuts and put it towards making renewable energy...well lets just say a lot could get done fast.

If you are addicted to crack and want to get off the rock, you don't go hunting for more crack, you stop doing crack!

If we are "addicted to oil" it makes no sense to go hunting for more oil. The oil companies want to drill in ANWR because they can make a tonne of money. They don't care if the oil only lasts a year, or if it ruins the environment, they will get the money and run.

Dick: i wonder if the native Americans would have a different view on that immigration.

Cape Cod Mom: then just make them all legal...Problem solved.

We have to talk about practicality, we would have to become a police state to remove all the illegals that are here now. There are millions of them. Do you want to have to show your "papers" every time you get on a bus/train/plane/go to work to make sure you are "legal" because that's the only way that we would be able to screen out millions of people. Or perhaps we just round up anyone that "looks" illegal?

I am proposing that we make everyone here now legal, get them on the tax roles, get them educated, get them into the work force, and then worry about the people that want to come here. Yes I am proposing they cut in line. Yes I am proposing amnesty.

So the republican senate, and republican house, and republican administration can't get a good energy policy because the Democrats?

Come on man, the Democrats can't do anything without begging the republican house and senate for a place on the schedual.

I find it dubious that anyone would be able to blame Democrats for anything when the Republicans control pretty much all three branches of government.

Have you ever thought about the fact that maybe these policies don't work because they are flawed? And has nothing to do with with anyone's political leanings?

As far as ANWR even if we pumped it dry, it would still only provide enough oil for a small amount of CURRENT American usage. As it would take several years to pump it all out, its likely to provide even less of our projected need.

A much better policy would be to pursue renewable energy like wind and solar, while aggressively pushing bio fuels like biodiesel. Instead Bush calls for "clean-coal" and "hydrogen" both of which are fossil fuel based. Most hydrogen comes from natural gas.

smp: creepy dude, seriously and not the first time.

Viv Hope you feel OK, and would suggest getting a bike, very hard to ride tired.

"family roots on the Cape dating to the 1600’s"

I am sure your "roots" were all legal immigrants that respected the nations that were here when the got off the boat huh(I am also sure that none of your forefathers took any land or jobs from any natives)...funny that now after a couple hundred years you want to deny that same chance to new immigrants (legal or otherwise) Strange logic if I do say so myself.

Having a well educated work force helps the economy grow.

Making the immigrants legal, providing them with education, and making them a part of our culture provides a larger tax base, a more diverse culture, and labor for jobs that need it.

Good luck, my best wishes will be with you.

I have found that in general there are just not that many young people on cape cod. The cape seems to be very full of very old people.

nice pictures, as always such a nice garden.

Monponsett: is that some sort of very complicated metaphore about how americans are getting kicked in the nuts, because the president is a racist????

Or does it have NOTHING to do with this post?

Just wondering.

I feel like the things this country stands for are slowly getting moved aside in the name of security, and safety.

When do we say, "enough is enough" and live with danger rather than being safe but not free? Personally I think we have long passed that point.

I am sure everyone is happy that the current level of intellectual discourse in these blogs has degraded into a series of silly jokes.

Or maybe thats where it started?

If all these near ocean developments are harming the sound, lets start tearing down beach front housing, tearing up beach front golf cources, removing large expansive beach front lawns, and most of all move everyone off of cape cod (to prevent sewage run off). Seems to me this kills two birds with one stone, without people on cape cod, there will be no nitrogen running into the ocean, and if there are no people we wont need a wind farm.

wave: here is an idea, if you don't like the things she says, why don't you start a blog, write a letter to the editor, write a book, start a website, publish a flier, give a talk of your own.

Whatever you do don't take away her right to free speech, instead use your own to counter her views.

Your comments do nothing to express your views, other than to blandly lay out your opposition to her. Why not say why you don't like her, and perhaps some supporting facts to back up that view...you know helpful and meaningful dialog.

Of course you could always "dress up like Nazis and beat her with a truncheon"....because thats how we do things in America?...sheesh

Honestly the "debate" is going to be both sides stateing there opinion. If we could find an unbiased (to either side) person to moderate and ask both sides tuff questions that they did not get ahead of time...well maybe that would be a debate. This is going to be dueling press releases. Or maybe not, either way I will be there, any cct bloggers want to meet up at the event find me, (guy with black hair glasses skinny probly have a batman shirt on). Might be nice to have a little blogathon about it after to see what we each got out of it.

hmm who to trust on the topic of global warming, mcfly, or the vast majority of the worlds climate scientists...tuff choice.

Balboa: the oil gas and coal industry receive billions of dollars of "government welfare" every year and have for decades.

If we cut off aid to renewable energy projects, shouldn't we also do so for the oil companies?

"Climate hysteria" or not, oil and gas companies made billions in profits this year, and yet we still give large amounts of money?

I would say a much better use of that money would be to go toward research and development of a robust renewable energy economy.

I just want to make it clear that i am all for bio fuels like biodiesel...just not ethanol. Mostly because of the way we make ethanol. If we develop another way to make it, say out of wood or grass, using a chemical process rather than a fermenting process, I would be all for ethanol.

Ethanol does add a net amount of carbon to the atmosphere, just not the way Ted thinks.

Currently fuels like biodiesel (that use a chemical reaction to be produced) are far more efficient, it is clear that you get more energy out of a gallon of biodiesel than it took to make a gallon of biodiesel.

When it comes to ethanol, this is not so certain. Ethanol may be a zero sum or even negative sum game. When you look at the life cycle from the growing of the corn to the production of the fuel, it is very likely that ethanol uses more energy to make a gallon than you would get burning that gallon.

Until we develop a way to make ethanol the same way we make biodiesel ethanol will continue to be just one more of president bush's hand outs to the oil and coal companies.

He did the same thing with hydrogen. Most hydrogen is produced by steam reforming natural gas. His "renewable energy" plans are often hidden hand outs to oil companies.

Solon: We have wrecked many a wetland on cape cod by trying to control mosquito's, ever wonder why there are so many large grid like channels etched into marsh lands, a long time ago they thought that it would help control bugs, all it did was increase run off and lead to more nitrogen in the bays.

Mosquitoes are a part of life, if you kill them you are going to wipe out the bats, and the other bugs that eat mosquitoes and its larva.

The environmental movement is not about making sure the rest of nature bows to our whims, its about living in harmony with the world. I shudder to think what would happen to us if we just wiped out every species that annoyed us.

Whoa there haus! One post at a time, you need to go flag the rest as drafts, and let walter know so he can delete them.

opinonator: Would you rather have a person that just inherited all of his money from daddy, did a little cocaine, got bored decided to try his hand at the baseball biz, then maybe the oil biz, then when he fails at that too runs for Governor? We could do far worse than Deval.

Don't use your gut to tell you what to do, think with your brain. "feeling" true is not the same as true. Feeling uneasy for no reason is probably the work of someone else's carefully planned campaign to make you feel that way.

If you don't like Patrick at least try and find a factual reason why.

Does anyone see the support of Deval Patrick as a tacit endorsement of the wind farm? As the only candidate to come out strong for it from the get go it seems that he made a name for himself with that issue. I wonder if maybe we should have let the Governor have veto power over the project, and then just elect a Governor in favor of the project?

/sarcasm I propose that not only do we stop cape wind, we put in five or six large coal fired power plants, one in each major population center on the east coast, right in the downtown. I mean we have lots of coal in America, and I keep hearing our president talk about "clean coal" so it must be OK. /sarcasm

In all seriousness i am willing to have a debate about the pro's and con's of various energy solutions.

All energy solutions come with a trade off, wind power has the fewest negatives for the most positives.

If you are against cape wind (for any reason) you are still left with how we power an every growing population. Do we use oil, coal, nuclear?

I would love to hear from the anti-wind people what they plan on powering there homes with in the future.

Of course I am pretty sure that my request for logic will be met with frothy mouthed tirades on both sides of the argument.

If we want to continue our lifestyle we will need to make trade offs. Its green power, or global warming(and potential extinction). You pick.

I agree, the logical end point to that question would be to never send anyone to die for anything, as killing people is wrong, and getting killed is wrong, but in our modern world logic rarely rules the day.

I do so wish that people could get along without the use of violence, but like I said the real world hardly conforms to what I would want.

On memorial day I am going to spend some time thinking about the fallen, and the family's of the fallen that have to live without a son or daughter (or mother or father or...).

The rest of the year I am going to do my best to limit the amount of violence in the world.

Because our men and women in uniform do so much for this country, I feel that on memorial day we should also reflect on when and where it is appropriate to ask of them this sacrifice. Let us not waste there heroic efforts in conflicts that have no merit. Nothing is worse than sending our young people to die for a cause that is unjust.

nice pic's welcome to cape cod today.

you can always find all your ice cream needs at the Cape Cod ice cream challenge www.icecream.thesietch.org We just put up the four seas review.

You guys are amazing. Stunning, really. Bravo. Theater at its best. It took me a while to figure this whole thing out, but now I understand.

Truly the best troupe of improve actors I have ever seen. Now that I know all your comments are an elaborate joke I can laugh WITH you.

Mr Bennett I feel that you would be better served by talking to people, and leave the sign holding to a staffer.

People want to go up to you and interact with you, its hard to do that in a rotary.

Myspace has until now not been shown to be a good political outlet, but I wish you luck in changing that.

monponsett...that same uranium is going to get all over our troops, they are going to be exposed to the same dust, and from the looks of things, are going to be over there for a long long time being exposed to it. we have "traditional" shells that will blow up what tanks the Iraq's might have. No need to use a chainsaw to cut butter.

thanks for this, i was unable to catch the debate live but now i can read about it :)

You don't find a needle in a haystack by adding more hay. I imagine having all this other phone data is only going to make it harder for an agency that is already behind to catch up...

What are your other two blogs? (other than this one and the two linked in your profile) would be curious to visit them.

I liked the previous version of this post better, maybe my vanity enjoyed the refrence to me :) I still voted however.

I do enjoy your posts, keep up the good work.

give it a couple of years, global warming will bring the water to you...

Or i should say, lets start with getting them out of politics then we can work on this after that.

While your at it try and stop some of the "sponsorship" deals that large companies have with many politicians.

I am more interested in getting big business out of politics than getting them out of hospitals.

these guys you don't like so much, these pundits, all get there talking points from Karl Rove, the whole system you despise is just a mouthpiece for the guy you still seem to love....don't shoot the messenger.

welcome chuck, i am from the Midwest as well. just a couple simple midwestern boys who have moved to this crazy place where they eat cranberry's in the ice cream and talk funny! (no offense to you all of you but you do know there is an r in car right :)

Everyone I know seems to be having a hard time paying for one child to go to school, let alone more than one. College is pricey, and getting more so by the day. Americans also used to save a lot more money than they do now, there giant homes, and 50000 cars are using up all there incomes.

Hi Mr. Patrick, I am glad that you are adding your voice to this growing place, trust me, this is the way for the people to talk right to you. Good job, and I look forward to reading your posts.

Most people think about what is left over when you are done with a nuclear plant (and it is horrific), but the cost in fossil fuels it takes to dig up all that nuclear material in the first place makes it a lot less clean and cheap. Nuclear power will only be useful if we develop fusion...and maybe not even then.

Boycotts work, if they are large enough and hurt financially or politically enough. Look at the Montgomery bus boycott.