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cost of oil, coal and such is dictated at the moment by market factors - what kind of money can you get by selling it. basically what this means is that if demand goes down they can sell it for cheaper than they are selling it at now.

For a decade or two this may be true of Saudi surface oil (where Jed Clampet and a squirrel rifle drill a deep enough to strike oil), but it isn't true for frack oil where you have to figure in the cost of the sand and it isn't true for Canadian shale-oil where you have to figure in the energy cost of separation and transportation and already it isn't true for North Sea oil and it's doubtful that it will be true for deepwater wells in the Arctic or Gulf of Mexico or other places even if you can ignore the cost of environmental damage and human lives lost. In fact oil Energy Return On Investment (EROI) has been decreasing to from 2000:1 in 1919 to 5:1 in 2007. In fact, just as whales became more and more difficult to harvest as we approached peak whale oil in 1845, we are approaching the point where every drop of oil takes more energy and blood to extract.

“For God’s sake, be economical with your lamps and candles. Not a gallon you burn, but at least one drop of man’s blood was spilled for it.” -- Herman Melville (Moby Dick 1851)

The genocide of the native American Indian population was thought to have contributed to passenger pigeon's emergence as an outbreak species at populations which proved to be unsustainable. It is possible that during this time, the birds evolved their one egg per year, clustering and other behaviors which eventually contributed to their demise. One effect of the passenger pigeon's extinction is the spread of Lyme disease, another is the preservation of the American Bison.

We'll see when Telsa (or anyone else) can beat Better Place's distance record of 1172 miles in 24 hours. When Telsa figures out another way to push 22KW into a car in 3 minutes without causing a huge explosion and fire, than we'll have a better idea. Until then, Better Place's technology was the most practical form of electric transport using existing technology. It was a good idea but like many good ideas, it needs to wait until society is ready for it and entrepreneurs know how to sell it. This is by no means the first time we've seen technological regression. The rechargeable battery electric car was invented by French physicist Gaston Planté in 1856. In 1878, a Methodist minister named John Wesley Carhart proved that a steam-powered car he named the “Spark” could travel long distances under its own power. But when it frightened a valuable horse belonging to industrialist J.I. Case (tractor company owner) to death, it was banished from the city and the world would have to wait until 1886 when Karl Benz and then later Henry Ford would bring back an idea whose time had finally come.
Similar examples of technological regressions and reinventions can be found in the history of electric lighting. Better Place had a better idea for electric car charging, and if we can learn anything from history– most good ideas eventually see the light of day.

We'll see when Telsa (or anyone else) can beat Better Place's distance record of 1172 miles in 24 hours. When Telsa figures out another way to push 22KW into a car in 3 minutes without causing a huge explosion and fire, than we'll have a better idea. Until then, Better Place's technology was the most practical form of electric transport using existing technology. It was a good idea but like many good ideas, it needs to wait until society is ready for it and entrepreneurs know how to sell it. This is by no means the first time we've seen technological regression. The rechargeable battery electric car was invented by French physicist Gaston Planté in 1856. In 1878, a Methodist minister named John Wesley Carhart proved that a steam-powered car he named the “Spark” could travel long distances under its own power. But when it frightened a valuable horse belonging to industrialist J.I. Case (tractor company owner) to death, it was banished from the city and the world would have to wait until 1886 when Karl Benz and then later Henry Ford would bring back an idea whose time had finally come.
Similar examples of technological regressions and reinventions can be found in the history of electric lighting. Better Place had a better idea for electric car charging, and if we can learn anything from history– most good ideas eventually see the light of day.

We'll see when Telsa (or anyone else) can beat Better Place's distance record of 1172 miles in 24 hours. When Telsa figures out another way to push 22KW into a car in 3 minutes without causing a huge explosion and fire, than we'll have a better idea. Until then, Better Place's technology was the most practical form of electric transport using existing technology. It was a good idea but like many good ideas, it needs to wait until society is ready for it and entrepreneurs know how to sell it. This is by no means the first time we've seen technological regression. The rechargeable battery electric car was invented by French physicist Gaston Planté in 1856. In 1878, a Methodist minister named John Wesley Carhart proved that a steam-powered car he named the “Spark” could travel long distances under its own power. But when it frightened a valuable horse belonging to industrialist J.I. Case (tractor company owner) to death, it was banished from the city and the world would have to wait until 1886 when Karl Benz and then later Henry Ford would bring back an idea whose time had finally come.
Similar examples of technological regressions and reinventions can be found in the history of electric lighting. Better Place had a better idea for electric car charging, and if we can learn anything from history– most good ideas eventually see the light of day.

While writing a story about Hannukah and other lighting miracles, I found that modern LEDs can run for 6 months on the equivalent of 1 day's supply of menorah oil. So if you were to attempt to illuminate your house with candles for Earth Hour, you'd consume 4000 times as much oil. Thankfully we don't do that.

Beyond Earth Hour's temporary abatement of light pollution in participating cities, earth hour is symbolic. It is also a talking point. "Wow, look at that comet, I wouldn't have seen that if we hadn't turned off the barn light." "The building's landscaping is a bit too bright, I think it looks better against a natural sky.", "Hi neighbor, would you like me to show you Jupiter and the Pleiades through this telescope." , "Hey this is fun, why don't we do it once a week?"

How about a "light bulb moment", there are many parallels between Thomas Edison's 1879 refinement of a carbon filament electric light patented by Canadians Henry Woodward and Mathew Evans in 1874. And this was by no means the first carbon based electric light, Humphrey Davy had produced a working carbon arc light in 1807 and if we talk about electric arc lights, the mercury arc fluorescent light, predecessor to modern compact fluorescent (CF) lights was demonstrated by AE Becquerel in 1867 and so on back to kerosene, whale oil and prehistoric vegetable oil lamps.

"Light bulb" moment is a myth which is marketed in a land that wants us to believe that we are all self-reliant individuals and that we don't need to look to the past or stand on the shoulders of giants. James Burke's Connections presents this more accurate view of technological history that we should be teaching our children.

A type of dung beetle known as the scarab beetle was sacred to the ancient Egyptians. They saw it's path as it rolled a ball of dung across the earth as an earthly manifestation of the Sun god Ra's path across the sky. Now we know there was a grain of truth in this belief.

Captain James T. Kirk quoted English poet Jonathan Masefield, "All I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by." Scarab beetle celestial navigation was far beyond this with their, "All I ask is a ball of dung and a galaxy to steer her by."

Someone at Apple noticed that signing on to toothless EPEAT was free greenwashing. The 15" Retina MacBook gets a gold rating and 5/5 points in "Design for Enf of life." Look at the criteria and you'll see how Apple is trying to pull the wool over the eyes of its customers. RAM soldered to the motherboard, hard drive with a proprietary connector, battery and display glued in... yeah MacBooks are designed for end of life alright!

The U.S. applied these "anti dumping" tariffs on Chinese solar panels on the same day Saudi Arabia announced plans for a massive dump of oil to drive down prices. Isn't it obvious that Mideast oil dumps have done far more harm to U.S. alternative energy industry, including solar, than a handful of fledgling Chinese photovoltaic companies ever did?

With the exception of a few wildcat oil well companies in the late 90s, the U.S. has never complained of mideast oil dumping. And the U.S. actually complains when China stops dumping Rare Earths. Bush era steel tariffs might have saved a handful of remaining domestic steel jobs at the cost of the thousands of jobs lost with the near demise of the domestic auto industry. 1980s and 90s tariffs on Chinese and Japanese chips did nothing but move manufacturing to Philippines and Central America and Solar tariffs will cost thousands of U.S. jobs by denying U.S. consumers and corporations access to inexpensive clean energy the rest of the world will have. Looking at the history of U.S. WTO trade policy, you'd swear that it was being dictated by policies designed to crush our economy and continue our addiction to oil.

Markus Kayser's solar sintering 3D printer shows what is possible when you use ingenuity, technology and two abundant desert resources, sunlight and sand. Mr. Kayser says he is already working with Kohler on the possibility of using solar powered, sand fed replicators like his to make sanitation products such as toilets and plumbing.

I wonder whether these systems take into account the relative momentum to the vehicle in front of you - it would mean having this information communicated between vehicles. For example if a truck is following a car, then the system will need to adjust safe distance to be sure that it can break safely in an emergency (truck will take longer to break than the car and this will vary based on load). Other things that need to be accounted for are lane changes and sudden erratic behaviour of the vehicle in front.

It would be interesting to present emergency situations to both humans and computer and see which ones react best in that situation.

BTW Australia already has road trains, but they don't refer to the same thing. See top photo here: http://www.greenprophet.com/2010/04/time-to-hook-your-car-onto-the-road-train/road-train-australia-truck/

...tree hugging environmentalist freak. How the hell this dribble ever made it to Slashdot is beyond me.

As if a tree is aware of the temperature it maintains anyway... A tree is an organism, albeit a very efficient organism. The thousands of years of growth and development have dictated the system by which it generates and stores energy, not some longing for comfort. Give me a break. Next thing you know, environmentalists will be trying to develop a method of using photosynthesis to generate electricity.

When will it end?