auf Wiedersehen, November! Guten Tag, Snowy December!

November came and went with wild abandon. Enough apparently to help me abandon any posts last month. Sorry it's taken me a while to get back on the saddle, so to speak.

Today is honestly the first day I can recall being able to compose myself and write since my last post. And today is the first day since I returned from Germany last Tuesday that I've felt like doing anything for that matter. Some kind of stomach bug bit me HARD and I've been nursing oatmeal and chicken soup in odd combinations over the past several days. Here's hoping today I can break into a bagel and cream cheese regimen, at least for the morning.

Three inches of snow fell over the weekend here in good 'ole Rock Springs. Started on Friday night and continued for most of the day Saturday. Kind of nice to have December open with wintry weather.

As I promised in my last post, I was going to address some things my friend, Adam, has shared with me. He and I have been discussing electric cars and hybrids and plug-in hybrids for some time now. I will most definitely get to that, but first, I'd like to sum up the past month of November and what's been happening on my end of things.

Chihiro and I had some medical issues we had to deal with all throughout October and the first part of November. I won't elaborate further, but if you've been in contact with her or me at all over the past 6 months, you know what I'm talking about. Enough said.

My Dad in late October/early November went through his last round of chemotherapy for lung cancer. Subsequently he found out that the chemo wasn't working like the doctors had hoped. It was decided in early November to stop the treatments and just let my Dad recover naturally and see what would happen. If need be, they would perform palliative therapy (to reduce pain), but that would be it. Dad was given some new trial medications by his oncologist to see if they helped with the tumor growths. So far, no report yet on whether these new meds are working. We'll see.

On a brighter note, though, my Dad was able to schedule and carry out a trip to Germany.

I honestly didn't think it would happen, as we were waiting anxiously for a loan to come through for him to do this trip. I was also concerned that his health wouldn't be good enough to cross the Atlantic. Luckily, my skepticism proved unwarranted.

Dad, for the most part, did really well. There was a conference in Neustadt an der Weinstrasse in Southern Germany on Intelligent Design (ID) that he wanted to attend. He made the provisions and asked me if I wanted to go with him. Granted, as you know, from my earlier posts, I am not a big fan of ID, but I felt attending this conference for my Dad superceded all my personal beliefs on the subject. Besides, it was a great way to spend some quality time with him.

I wasn't sure I could get the necessary time off as I'd already taken a lot of time off in October and November for the medical issues mentioned earlier. But, in the end, I was able to get the time off, and on November 22nd, my Dad and I were on a plane to Frankfurt, Germany to attend this conference. Unfortunately, U.S. Airways didn't serve turkey on the plane. Bummer!

All in all, the trip to Germany was a good one. I think my Dad really enjoyed it, and fulfilled a life long dream to get back to the country where he'd served in the U.S. Army for two years. It was a really quick trip and we couldn't see all that we wanted to see, but for the time we had, we made the most of it.

The conference was all in German. I didn't understand a whole lot except there was alot of discussion on trying to show how the earth might fit into a "young age" scenario. Two geologists did the core of the presentations. One was from near Munich, Thomas Herzog, and he offered to translate some of the talks for me in real time. It was an awfully kind gesture, and I took him up on it.

We stayed in a Mutterhaus (Mother house) throughout the conference, which was akin to a convent, with the difference (as explained to me by the nuns there) being nuns in a Mutterhaus are not to be kept away from the community, rather they are expected to be a part of it.

Two nuns in particular, Sisters Iris and Renate, took Dad and I under their wings so to speak, and helped us through the difficult parts of navigating Neustadt. Renate, in particular, took us downtown in her personal vehicle and showed us where the hospital, pharmacies, gas stations and the like were. She even tried to get Dad an oxygen canister for his breathing, but the adapter that we needed for his aparatus was not available. He did fine though even without it.

The Mutterhaus was about 5 miles from the city located near some beautiful vineyards. Unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to snap up too many pictures (Click HERE for a link to go to the photos I did take).

Wish we'd have had more time to explore these areas, but it just wasn't in the cards. Next time!

So that was Germany. We came back on Monday evening to the U.S. I parted ways with Dad in Charlotte and boarded a plane bound for Salt Lake City. Got back to Rock Springs early Tuesday morning and had my own conference to go to in Lander, WY on soil and water conservation. It was Tuesday evening that I think my whirlwind travels caught up to me and set me back. I was sick pretty much from Wednesday on to today, although today I am feeling much much better.

Ok, so now on to the subject my friend Adam has been discussing with me. He sent me a link a while back (http://www.google.org/recharge/index.html) on plug-in hybrids; electric and gasoline engine cars that can be recharged using 120 volt electric outlets. He also laid out a list of questions he had about these cars and they are as follows:

• Do they account for differences in power generation methods across states (hydro power in Washington vs coal power in PA) and calculate pollution accordingly?
• What are the driving habits of the people that operate these vehicles?
• How much energy is required to manufacture and recycle/dispose of a plug-in vehicle vs a normal hybrid vs a VW Jetta Diesel vs a Honda Civic and what does the overall net energy balance look like?
• Do we currently have battery technology that can actually support this?
• Do they factor the extra cost of the plug-in equipment in their cost equations?
• Can the existing electrical generation capacity (and grid) handle the use of these vehicles?
• What is the required time to charge the batteries AND can it be done in such a way people put up with this inconvenience?
• How does this compare with the proposed Chevrolet Volt drive system (plug-in electric car with a diesel generator)?
• What does the net energy balance look like when using ethanol (E85) instead of gasoline?

All excellent questions, and ones I think anyone who is interested in electric vehicles should ask.

The one question that intrigues me most is the battery one.

Batteries, as much as we would like to believe otherwise, are still one of THE most expensive energy options on the market. Batteries, at their core, are literally and figuratively, chemical reactions taking place between anode and cathode. They eventually, even if they are rechargeable batteries, have to be packed with new materials to start the chemical reactions over again.

The cost of energy from a AAA battery is about $500 a kilowatt hour. The cost of energy from a lithium ion battery is about $20 a kilowatt hour. Much less than the AAA, but still, compared to what you pay on your electric bill per kilowatt hour (probably somewhere between 3 and 10 cents) this is quite expensive technology.

Furthermore, if you look at the energy one gets from a lithium ion battery, the kind in your computers and cell phones, and incidently, yes, the ones in plug-in hybrids, it works out to 0.1 calories per gram or 400 joules. And if you subsequently look at the energy one gets from gasoline (10 calories per gram or 42,000 joules), the contrast is quite stark.

Although a bit simplistic, with said comparison, it should be apparent why we use gasoline rather than batteries to power our vehicles at the current time. Furthermore, the reaction of combusting gasoline leaves only gaseous residue (carbon dioxide and water).

Granted the former gas is causing some major problems in our atmosphere, and affecting the earth's climate, but the fact remains that gasoline is being used today in our cars not because of a government/big oil conspiracy, but because of the physics and the fact that it is a superior product. There is also the added problem of heat build up and combustion problems with lithium ion battery packs that still need to be resolved for use in vehicles.

So I think until we come up with battery packs that can be produced economically, and deliver more energy per unit of mass, we are going to be fighting a very steep uphill battle against fossil fuel use in vehicles.

Do I like that scenario? No.

Do I wish it were different? Absolutely.

I do think plug-in hybrids are a good place for us to put research dollars and for us to be moving toward just such vehicles. I just have to maintain some cautious skepticism as to how "around the corner" this technology is, and just how economically feasible said technology is.

But I will add that if carbon credits or taxation begin to take a footing in our econony and others around the world, the true cost of a gallon of gasoline is absorbed by the public and the companies that supply the product to the public. Then, and only then, do I think that alternative energies can compete in the global market.

Problem is that we don't have governments that operate internationally. If we did, we'd just pass an international law making it illegal to provide gasoline without paying a carbon tax on the production of it. But as it is, India and China's energy industries are growing like weeds in an abandoned city lot, and they are not bound by environmental laws we pass.

We can work with these countries to try and effect some changes from within their respective countries, but in the end, these countries that are developing really do deserve to develop as we were able to develop over the past 300 years into the nation we are.

This, to me, is one of our greatest challenges as a society. How do we get the entire world on the same page in terms of climate change? Guess the solution rests with all of us on this pale blue dot of a planet. I hope we can continue the dialogue.

Thanks for reading this incredibly long post!