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Jan. 7, 2002 - Art Bell

02:34:43

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Mark McLaughlin - Alternative Energy

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	And the high desert, and the great American Southwest.
	I bid you good evening, good afternoon, good morning, wherever you may be upon the planet, all 24 time zones taken into account.
	I'm Art Bell, and this is the largest program of its kind in the world.
	It's close to go down.
	It's good to be here.
	And it's getting a little larger tonight.
	KIML and Gillette Wyoming welcome.
	1270 on the dial in Gillette, Wyoming.
	And hello to David Schoolfield, GM, PD, Mitch Miller, and Ops Director Steven Patrick.
	So another one joins the patch.
	Zooming, zooming, zooming over 500 affiliates.
	Alright, well.
	Let's see what has happened in the world of war news.
	British Prime Minister Tony Blair and nine US senators swept into Bagram Air Base.
	It's a former Soviet air base north of Kabul on Monday and promised Afghan leaders their full support in rebuilding the shattered country.
	Really?
	Did we really?
	Hmm.
	That's interesting.
	So, I guess we didn't.
	The British did, but if they're doing it, we're doing it.
	So, I wonder how much money it's going to cost us to rebuild Afghanistan.
	Now, it was in pretty bad shape before we began, which should be taken into account.
	I mean, when I first saw shots of Afghanistan, the ones that they showed, you remember?
	Before the bombing began?
	It looked like the bombing had already happened.
	So, Be a big job.
	So are we supposed to put it back into the state that it was prior to our arrival?
	Or are we supposed to restore it totally, so they have nice shiny cities?
	I'm not clear.
	Military officials said today that US forces in Afghanistan are focusing now much more on Attacking all remaining Taliban and Al-Qaeda members unless on the hunt for Osama Bin Laden and other individuals.
	Well, let's think about what that one means.
	We're back to attacking Al-Qaeda and we're not looking for Osama.
	That means, translation, we can't find Osama, so here's what we're doing.
	That's basically it, and they can't find him yet, So, I guess, you know, you've got to say what you're doing, and if you're not, if you're sort of not finding him, then you shouldn't be looking for him, and if you're not looking for him, you should be doing something, so they're back to bombing.
	Now, I want to say that, well, let me finish up what news there is.
	The Red Cross is saying that a lot of people who donated blood after September 11th are reneging on their deal.
	And they're not coughing up the promised blood.
	So, blood banks are in trouble, which seems incredible to me, because when the September 11th thing occurred, there were, I thought, giving immediately, just hundreds and thousands of people, just giving blood immediately, so you would think they would have it, but no, I guess they just collected, they probably had so many, they had to just collect chits.
	You know, blood chits.
	And, uh, when the chick got turned in, why, uh, there was, there was, you know, no blood.
	No blood tonight.
	And then there's this teenager who crashed his airplane into the building.
	A skyscraper.
	Tampa.
	Um, you know, it's just, uh, you, you shake your head.
	Here's a story about, he was remembered as a patriot.
	He used to sing patriotic songs.
	And I've heard everything.
	I've heard everything about this fellow like you have over the weekend.
	And I don't know.
	I can't quite put it together.
	He had sympathy with Osama Bin Laden is the one story, right?
	And the other story is he was a patriot and sang, sat around singing patriotic songs.
	And then I hear he was saddened by what happened September 11th, but then I hear he, in his note, praised and was in sympathy with the attack on September 11th.
	So I don't get it.
	I don't know.
	I don't know what to do with this story.
	I guess we're going to have to wait until we hear what the real deal is.
	Listen, my Radon earthquake guy, He is predicting something slightly, he says a 7.2 earthquake near LA within 14 days.
	Now this is just a guy who predicts earthquakes by measuring radon levels in his well.
	And he's been sending me these for, or calling them in.
	Used to be easier to get in, you know, so he'd call them in.
	Now I get them by email and I've got a code on here so I know it's him.
	And he's been terribly accurate.
	Sometimes a little off in the magnitude one way or the other, but in terms of accuracy within days, awfully good.
	Things to think about.
	It seems as though we're going to have a very close encounter.
	I don't know if you've heard about this yet or not.
	These things are not widely known.
	You know, past my program.
	If you didn't listen to my program, I doubt that you'd get this at all.
	Maybe you would.
	But just in case you don't have it yet, an asteroid discovered just one month ago is, in fact, making a very close approach to the Earth.
	Though there is no apparent danger of colliding with it, the astronomers say that its proximity reminds us just how many objects are out there in space and ones that could strike our planet.
	With devastating consequences.
	Moving closer to the sun.
	The asteroid is passing less than twice the moon's distance from us.
	That's not much.
	370,000 miles.
	They calculate at 0737 GMT on 7 January.
	Which is, you know, close in cosmic terms.
	It is, now get this.
	737 Greenwich Mean Time on 7 January, which is, you know, close in cosmic terms.
	It is, now get this, it's 300 meters in size. It says here, actually, large enough to wipe
	out any given entire country.
	Country, I said, if it should hit Earth.
	It's 2001 YB-5, if you want to go check on it.
	Discovered early December by the Near Earth Asteroid Tracking Survey Telescope at Mount Palomar in California.
	Astronomers add it is potentially hazardous, meaning there is a slim chance that it may strike the Earth sometime in the future.
	So, uh... It circles the Sun every 1,321 days.
	Now, that's really interesting, isn't it?
	That's a real short-term Big Mama, and it comes by us very frequently.
	And it's coming I wonder if they've calculated out the orbits from the one they're talking about missing the Earth by two moon.
	That's not very much at all.
	That's a really, really, really close.
	And I guess, you know, they can certainly calculate that it will miss Earth by that much and be right, I hope.
	Do you remember We talked a little bit, only again on this program, right?
	About the Mirror Space Station, and do you remember the fungus in the Mirror Space Station?
	Remember that?
	Well, maybe you don't.
	The Mirror had a fungus growing in it that was eating through super materials that were on Mirror.
	I mean, this fungus was eating, it was incredible what it was doing.
	It was really thick on the space station.
	And the space station fell, what, somewhere to the east of New Zealand and Australia.
	And I said to myself then, you know, they're all saying, well, of course, it'll burn up in the atmosphere, whatever it is, it'll burn up.
	I thought, yeah, but what if it doesn't?
	Because there was a big piece of mirror that got down and crashed into the ocean, right?
	Right.
	So, bearing that in mind, as I see the following story, there's a guy in the New Zealand Herald, if you want to check on it folks, and it shows this scientist holding this stuff.
	They call it a mystery marine animal that has invaded Wanda, and I'm going to have to spell it for you, W-H-A-N-G-A-M-A-T-A.
	Whangamata Harbor, I guess, could threaten New Zealand's aquaculture industry because whatever this is, this parasite sponge-like animal, Get this.
	It kills all other sea life when it embeds itself on the surface.
	And they found it apparently late last year.
	Merv Martin, the harbormaster there, found it.
	And they are now investigating like crazy to try and figure out exactly what the hell this is.
	But it, I mean, it eats plankton.
	It eats all sea life.
	So we've got something new, and while they try to figure out what the hell it is they've got, it's ugly, whatever it is, he's holding it in his hand.
	Now, I'm not saying that this came from the mirror, because I certainly wouldn't know that to be a fact at all.
	I'm merely calling your attention to the fact that I did say it's possible, in my opinion, that whatever was growing in Mir could survive re-entry, And going into our ocean where it would find all kinds of spiffy nutrients.
	Well, you know the rest, right?
	So, you all think about that one.
	Next hour, incidentally, we're going to be talking about energy.
	And, uh, what we can expect, you know, what's real and what's BS in terms of alternative energy.
	And you get so damn many claims, um, I do on this program of people who say this and that is not only viable but being ignored, you know.
	With the oil company police keeping, uh, all the information at bay and, you know, all the stuff we hear, right?
	We'll try and separate with an expert what looks real in the immediate alternative fuel world and what looks not so real.
	And we'll talk generally about the subject.
	It should be very, very interesting.
	That'll be Mark McLaughlin.
	Wait till you hear about him.
	He's been doing writing on this for a long time.
	All right, let us take a very quick break, and then we will continue.
	Open lines.
	Oh, tomorrow night, Richard C. Hoagland will be here in the second hour, and he has a big announcement for you.
	He told me to tease you with exactly that line, that he's got a big announcement for you.
	Coming up tomorrow night.
	Alright, I'm considering the implications of what happened Friday night to Saturday morning on Friday night Saturday morning show.
	I asked what I thought was a somewhat controversial but nevertheless interesting question and it has set off an avalanche.
	I have been getting email by the thousands This really is going to interest you over the weekend.
	Thousands of emails.
	On Friday night, Saturday, just for the heck of it, I asked my audience, what would you do if you were the devil?
	What would you do if you were the devil?
	The evil one himself, Lucifer.
	And I'm trying to figure out, and you know, I went into some big rap about, hey look, Really put yourself in his shoes.
	Before you answer your question, really put yourself in his shoes.
	And it provoked such a response.
	I'm trying to understand why it provoked such a gigantic response.
	My God!
	We've been flooded with responses to this question.
	Maybe it's because no one ever asked it before.
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	It's one of those questions that just somehow caught everybody's attention.
	So I guess it's a cool question.
	We'll probably get more of it.
	You know, the phones prior to the beginning of the live show were ringing off the hook.
	Just flat ringing off the hook.
	And it was for trying to respond to exactly that.
	So prepare yourself.
	I imagine this half hour you're going to hear some responses.
	It's been overwhelming.
	Why, oh why, oh why, is this such an interesting question to respond to?
	Why are so many of you responding to it?
	Does it indicate, what does it mean that so many of you are responding to it?
	Does it mean that we, you know, is there some general sense of people understanding Really well and fast, if they were evil, what they would do and how they would subvert themselves virtually, right?
	We may have a... Here is one said to be a Darwin Award winner.
	Now, I'm not going to read the last names.
	They're included in the story.
	I'm going to omit the last names.
	They need not be read anyway.
	The late John... blank.
	And his friend, the late Sal... blank.
	of the great state of Washington decided to attend a local Metallica concert at the George Washington Amphitheater having no tickets but having had 18 beers between them they thought that it would be easy to hop over the nine-foot fence and sneak into the show.
	They pulled their pickup truck over to the fence and the plan apparently was for a John Who was 100 pounds heavier than his friend to hop the fence and then assist the friend over unfortunately for the late John There was a 30-foot drop on the other side of the fence In other words he thought he was going over a rather short fence and would hit the ground right away Didn't hit it for 30 feet
	Having heaved himself over, he found himself crashing through a tree.
	His fall was abruptly halted and broken, along, it might be added, with his arm, by a large branch that snagged him by the shorts.
	Dangling from the tree with a broken arm, he looked down and saw some bushes below him, possibly figuring the bushes would break his fall.
	He removed his pocket knife and proceeded to cut away his shorts to free himself from the tree.
	Finally free, John crashed into holly bushes.
	The sharp leaves scratched his entire body and now, without protection of his shorts, a holly branch actually penetrated his backside.
	To make matters worse, on landing, his pocket knife penetrated his thigh.
	Now, Sal, seeing his friend in considerable pain and agony, threw him a rope and tried to pull him back to safety by tying the rope.
	Get this part, folks.
	By tying the rope to a pickup truck and slowly driving away.
	Good plan?
	However, in his drunken haste or state, he put his truck into reverse And, apparently, crashed through the fence, landing on his friend and killing him.
	Police arrived to find the crash pickup with its driver thrown 100 feet from the truck and dead on the scene of massive internal injuries.
	Upon moving the truck, they found John under it half-naked, scratches on his body, a holly stick where it ought not be, a knife in his thigh, and his shorts dangling from a tree branch.
	25 feet in the air.
	So, according to this article, congratulations, gentlemen.
	You win.
	It is indeed, and I wish you a good morning.
	We're going to throw the lions wide open to all of you here in a moment, and it's going to be very interesting to see what it is you're calling about tonight over this next segment.
	But I think I know.
	In a moment, we'll find out.
	All right, into the night and the unknown we go.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Cheerio.
	Hello.
	Hello, Art.
	Hello.
	Yes, if I were the devil, first of all, I would just deceive everybody's mind.
	You would trick everybody?
	Yes, I would make them believe that everything in the Bible is a lie, and I would make them believe That the Roman Catholics are the only ones in the world that have the truth.
	You would?
	Yes.
	You would, as a devil, you would help the Catholic Church like that?
	Yes, I would.
	Because... Yes?
	Since the year 325 A.D., the devil has been deceiving the nations.
	No.
	Now, you see, you see what I mean?
	This has attracted a...
	A tremendous, just a tremendous amount of response.
	People answering it sometimes in exactly, in my opinion, the wrong way.
	I mean, if I ask you to get into the devil's shoes, you're not supposed to say, well, if I was the devil, I'd get down on my hands and knees and pray to God and Jesus and everything.
	Because the devil's a bad dude.
	And he's not interested in doing any of that stuff.
	Not at all.
	He's interested in subterfuge Killing, Armageddon, and harvesting of human souls.
	So, if you're truly putting yourself in his shoes, I mean, you've got to move out of character a little bit.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	Hi.
	Hi.
	Jim Phoenix.
	Yes, sir.
	Well, if I was, you know... The devil?
	I think that I would deceive everybody by Letting them know the truth about everything.
	Then they'd start thinking, and then the front part of their mind would start rationalizing, and their intuitive part would come to get lost.
	After the centuries, thoughts would become darker and less light from creation would get through, and then he'd be able to surface closer to the surface.
	Can I add one to something else?
	I believe that hell is like in a black hole.
	That's the only way you can have eternity and burn forever.
	It would be a black hole?
	Well, according to cosmologists, there are plenty of black holes out there, so... So, yeah, I mean, it could be.
	Alright, well, listen, I appreciate the call.
	I'm just... I'm sort of... You see what I'm talking about, right?
	I'm just sort of speculating on the...
	Sociological meaning of people responding this hard to that question.
	There may be a meaning there.
	There really may be a meaning there.
	An important one.
	First time caller online, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	Hi, R. Hello.
	Hi, I just had a question for you.
	Well, you had, I guess, like about a week ago, had asked for a couple of people to call you and said, my name is Lindsay in Seattle.
	Yeah.
	Did you, was that?
	I wasn't sure if I heard it right.
	That I was asking for what now?
	You had asked, like, my name, like on the air, to call.
	About something, and I don't know if it was... Well, unless you were in the news, or there was a news story about you.
	No, it was like a... I thought maybe it was something I had emailed you or whatnot, but... Uh, I don't know.
	I read some emails on the air.
	Maybe it was that.
	Oh, okay.
	Well, I had sent you some pictures of UFOs, but I don't know if maybe that was it or not, but...
	Could be.
	A lot of photographs that are really, really interesting.
	I pass on to my webmaster, and then we decide whether we're going to put them up, so... Okay.
	Okay.
	Thank you very much.
	I have no idea whether I told you to call or not.
	I don't recall it specifically.
	Wild Card Line, you are on the air.
	Hi, Eric.
	Hello.
	Um, I didn't call for the devil issue, but I will answer that.
	If I were the... Just leap at the opportunity.
	I understand.
	Go ahead.
	If I were the devil, I would become a minister and a very, very highly influential minister.
	Maybe even, maybe even the Pope?
	Maybe.
	You know, I wouldn't go that direction because that kind of limits your outreach.
	Really?
	But it would be more along the lines of Protestant.
	But I mean, I would go full scale.
	Well, out of curiosity, let's say you attain this position of high religious power, what would you do with it?
	I would then announce that I had a revelation from some entity or being that there was no God.
	But the reason I called was over the weekend on the Discovery Network,
	the visual cable.
	They interviewed the assistant director of the Pope's Scope in Arizona.
	Oh, the telescope the Vatican muscled their way into in Arizona, yes.
	And his last statement as he closed out the program was extremely interesting.
	What did he say?
	He says, you'd have to be crazy to believe that God would only create life on one planet.
	Did he really say that?
	He really said that.
	Amazing.
	Cross your heart and hope to die?
	You can contact Discovery and have them bring it up.
	I was floored.
	You know, add to that the fact that Sam Donaldson, as you know, has predicted this year will be the year of contact by SETI.
	Well, I see.
	I don't understand what the hoopla is over SETI.
	I mean, if you look at the big picture, why would aliens need a contact?
	That's when they're already here.
	Well, I mean, there's official contact, and then there's unofficial contact.
	Maybe what we've been getting so far is unofficial contact.
	And they're talking about official contact.
	Well, also, like, the CIA has satellites.
	I mean, you've got to ask yourself, if you were an alien, really here, track with me for a moment.
	If you were an alien, and you had been observing this world for 30 or 40 years, how would you feel about contacting it?
	I would not.
	You wouldn't?
	You wouldn't contact it?
	The average human, 99% of humans are not ready.
	Uh-huh.
	I appreciate the call, sir.
	Thank you.
	Probably a Brookings boy.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	Turn your radio off, please.
	All right.
	That's good.
	Now you're on the air.
	Hello, Art?
	Yes.
	This is Aaron in Dayton, Ohio.
	Hello, Aaron.
	I was just curious if you'd heard anything about the, I don't know what government agency it is, but wanting to immunize children for hepatitis.
	And I was just curious if you thought this was related to the digital angel that I've been reading about.
	Oh, I don't know.
	Okay.
	The digital angel, huh?
	Just a way for... The Mark?
	The big brother to keep track of us, yes.
	Uh-huh.
	Well, immunizations.
	I don't know.
	Digital angel.
	I think he refers to something so small that it could be injected into your body.
	If they really had something like that and it could keep, more or less, keep track of you, why?
	I think people would get rather upset about that, don't you?
	Imagine that.
	You're gonna have to get an injection of something or another to prevent something you think.
	Or even just a shot of whatever to prevent some infection because you bumped into something and inside it you receive a digital angel.
	Not really an angel.
	What's with the Rockies?
	You're on the air.
	Hello.
	Hello, Mr. Bell.
	This is Gary out of Seattle.
	Yes, Gary.
	Hey, I wonder if you heard today about the new hydrogen car that GM announced.
	Yeah, I heard some about it.
	It's quite interesting.
	Very interesting.
	Yeah, and it actually went beyond what I would ever have expected them to even announce at this point, because it's got what might be called an independent platform, which could be adapted to sports cars, vans, all kinds of vehicles.
	And it's just a basic platform with four wheels and a hydrogen power system in the bottom, and you can snap bodies on the top of it.
	Yep, yep, yep.
	I tell you, the guy that you really need to have when you're showing these days, I've never heard you actually talk about him, maybe you have, but a guy named Amory Lovins from the Rocky Mountain Institute.
	No, haven't heard of him.
	Well, he's got his own think tank.
	He wrote a number of books over the years, maybe 20 years ago he wrote a book called Soft Energy Paths, trying to convince government to convert to bio-friendly energy systems.
	Well, the government is a mule.
	It's an oil mule.
	Yeah, this is, I mean, we're going to talk about this tonight, so, you know, hang in there.
	If you ever do a hydrogen show, though, you really should get Lovins on.
	He's, he, I believe he got a, he got one of those genius grades.
	Alright, alright, fine.
	Uh, but, sir, we'll do, uh, something on hydrogen, and, uh, we'll do it tonight, uh, so, maybe I'll investigate this guy.
	Send me some email with some contact information.
	Okay.
	Okay, bye.
	A lot of people out there with energy things.
	And that's some of what we're going to talk about tonight.
	You know, I want to know too.
	I am so tired.
	I am bone weary.
	I mean bone weary of the people with the energy claims.
	I'm sorry, but I've heard it.
	It's all talk.
	It's all hot air.
	I haven't I haven't seen one thing even even to the scale of a toy and and trust me I would love to be challenged.
	Please challenge me on this and tell me I'm wrong and demonstrate to me better yet that I'm wrong.
	But I haven't seen so much as an over unity or even unity or slightly even just a hair less than unity kind of device brought forward.
	Not really.
	They all don't want to be examined.
	They all seem paranoid about the oil companies.
	And or something always falls apart.
	You know, there's some pretty big people in this country.
	Dr. Stephen Greer, for example, was obviously taken in by somebody who had a claim.
	I think he was anyway.
	Certainly never followed up on it.
	And I found sure what happened.
	I'll bet what happened is that it just turned out to be a a dead end road. So I really do want to separate a little
	reality and tonight we're going to do that from fantasy in this question of energy. Wes to the Rockies,
	you're on the air.
	Hi Art, how are you doing? Doing okay sir. Great. Hey, yeah this is Ron in the San Joaquin Valley
	by the way. I found out something kind of interesting that you may want to check into.
	I don't know what kind of software you have or what program you're using but I'm kind of new to computers and I've been going through your galleries and there's a photo in there of a UFO and you personally say in there that you you scanned this yourself.
	Do you know which one I'm talking about?
	Uh, no.
	Over the years, I've scanned many, many, many UFO photographs.
	Well, it's up on your website right now.
	Okay, fine.
	Well, the reason I say I scanned it myself is so that people understand, at least, that I have a photograph in my hand.
	It's not a digital image that somebody sent.
	It's a real photograph that I personally scanned.
	So that's all I'm guaranteeing.
	It was once in the form of a real photograph.
	One thing that's very interesting, um, you'll find interesting, if you have, uh, I'm sure you have a, you know, a pretty good photo studio.
	I took it into my ArcSoft.
	No, I've just got a good scanner.
	I'm talking about your photo software on your computer.
	I've got about four different programs and I took it to ArcSoft.
	The first thing I did is I zoomed in because it said you can't see a wire and sure enough I'm thinking, well, somebody could have modified this still and it could have been a Oh, a double exposure or something.
	I don't know.
	But I don't know enough about this software.
	But one thing I found that was really interesting is I started playing around with this picture and putting flames on it and all kinds of funny stuff.
	Yes.
	One thing I tried to do, I used this feature that's called rub.
	It's like a smear.
	Rub, yes.
	And I put it on its lowest setting, you know, like one percent.
	Barely rubbing.
	Yeah.
	And I went over the thing, over the UFO itself.
	Yes.
	And all the way around it.
	And I wish you could do this, sir.
	I'd be willing to send this to you.
	It is bizarre what it's doing.
	So what do you think happened?
	Well, it's beaming it down.
	You can see the beam.
	But you did that, sir.
	No, no, I didn't put anything in.
	I'm taking away.
	No, no, no.
	Oh, I see.
	I see.
	I see what you're saying.
	That's interesting.
	All right, well, send it to me.
	So if you're saying that you have found something in the photograph that is not there until you apply a particular effect, I'll be willing to look at that.
	However, once you have a picture like the one he's working with in digital form, you can do anything to it.
	You can modify it and he was just at the beginning of learning how to use his photo program and amazed but I would suggest that well maybe you never know
	he might have found something so send it along and I'm willing to look but it's
	it's likely an artifact of what you have done. West of the Rockies you're
	on the air hello hi Art. Hello off the radio please. If I was the devil yes
	oh yes I would make I would get people to hate God. How would you do that?
	People love God, so how would you do that?
	You'd have a big job on your hands.
	Well, I would, you know, do what they did to Job, you know, make him think, you know, all the problems, it's all God's fault.
	Hmm.
	Make it out all as God's fault.
	You know, tricking, making all the problems happen to Job.
	So, in other words, people out there, uh, as it is, uh, when something really goes wrong, they, you know, you know how they are.
	They say, uh, they get angry for a while with God, uh, like if somebody close passes away or that sort of thing.
	Yeah.
	How can there be a God?
	How would God do this and all the rest of it?
	You mean like that?
	Right.
	Uh-huh.
	All right, uh, Mr. Devil Would Be, thank you.
	There is a definite study that should be done about the fervored, and I use that word advisedly, fervored response to this question.
	First time caller on the air, hello.
	Hi Art, this is Ben from Ohio.
	Hello Ben.
	Well, regarding the devil.
	Yeah.
	What I would think would be distinctive about the devil is that the devil would be motivated to actually destroy as opposed to just kind of torture or provoke.
	I think furthermore that it would be doing this by tempting people, particularly getting them to act in ways that would be a weakness for them.
	Are these things you would do if you were the devil?
	I would try to create circumstances where people would act alone, would hurt each other, with full knowledge that they were doing the wrong thing.
	I think it's important that the devil would also go after people since, as far as I understand, people and who they are is much more precious to God than institutions or worldly power.
	Sounds like you've thought this thoroughly through.
	It's crossed my mind.
	It has.
	Do you mind if I ask a couple of questions?
	Not at all.
	Did you find it hard to put yourself in the devil's shoes and begin thinking of what you would do?
	Not really, no.
	Just sort of came to you right away?
	Not really.
	It usually began in just discussions that I would have with peers, etc.
	about what was really the nature of what was wrong.
	So you mean to tell me that my question was not the first time that you've considered this at all?
	Oh, not at all.
	Really?
	So you've thought about this before, if you were the devil.
	Alright, I appreciate your answering the questions.
	Thank you.
	Hmm.
	Well, maybe we've stumbled onto some social phenomena here, folks.
	I'm not sure why everybody is reacting.
	And again, I think it's probably because nobody ever asked such a question before.
	That man said he's thought about it before, but I've never heard anybody ask the question.
	Have you?
	Maybe that's why we're getting this kind of response.
	Buzz to the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hello?
	Well, nobody there.
	First time caller line, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	Hello there.
	Yes, sir.
	Yes, yes.
	Turn your radio off and imagine you're on the air.
	Yes, I would say that.
	I would give up, take away hope from everybody.
	If you were the devil?
	Yes.
	You'd take away hope?
	Yes, and everybody would have lots of despair.
	So, in other words, you would place everybody, the whole world, in some kind of hopeless situation?
	Exactly.
	Oh, by the way, I'm up here in Bismarck, North Dakota, listening on 550 KFYR.
	Appreciate giving them a plug.
	You bet.
	What do you think?
	Something like, say, an asteroid that would hit the Earth in, say, give the Earth, what, two or three years?
	Oh, no, just general hope, because if you're all hopeless, you're all despairing.
	But if there was a five-mile-wide rock coming at Earth, there'd be a lot of despair.
	Believe me.
	Well, I think people would turn to God in that sort of time.
	You think so, huh?
	Oh, sure.
	I'm an optimist.
	Well, okay.
	You might be right about that.
	You might.
	I'm Art Bell, and this is Coast to Coast AM.
	We are going to be talking about energy tonight, and we'll see about this question later.
	It sure is.
	Good morning, everybody.
	Mark McLaughlin is coming up in a moment.
	We're going to talk about energy.
	He is a professional researcher, and he's been a writer for 10 years, more than 200 articles published.
	Mark McLaughlin trained as a historian and cultural geographer at the University of Nevada, Reno.
	His work appears regularly in California and Nevada newspapers, was awarded the Nevada State Press Writing Award five times.
	Author of three books, McLaughlin frequently writes historical articles for magazines like Sierra Heritage, Nevada, Weatherwise, and his work will appear in the Grawlier Education 2002 Science Annual.
	McLaughlin is a professional lecturer, frequent guest on regional TV and radio programs, and consultant for the History Channel.
	That must be fun.
	As lead writer for the Alternative Energy Institute, Inc., A non-profit educational organization.
	He spent two years researching material for Turning the Corner Energy Solutions for the 21st Century.
	Mark McLaughlin owns Mic Mac Printing.
	Publishing rather.
	Which I guess puts stuff into a print, right?
	Located at Lake Tahoe, California.
	And in a moment he's up and we'll talk about energy.
	And now here is Mark McLaughlin.
	Mark, where are you?
	I'm located at North Shore Lake Tahoe, California.
	All right.
	Very good.
	You ready to talk about energy?
	It's my pleasure to be here.
	Absolutely.
	Why are you interested in energy?
	I mean, what got you going in this direction, first of all?
	Well, first of all, just maybe a little bit of background information.
	I work for the Alternative Energy Institute.
	As you mentioned, we're a non-profit educational organization.
	Began in 1998.
	I said, why did you get into this, personally?
	Well, first of all, I'm an environmentally concerned person, and I think that's what's The most compelling issue about energy today.
	It's polluted the biosphere.
	The U.S.
	spends between $50 and $100 billion a year on health costs from air pollution.
	But just from the very beginning, even as a young person, to see the rivers polluted.
	I grew up back east and the rivers were polluted and the refineries and everything.
	And it's just ugly business.
	I guess I want to understand the depth of your feeling about this.
	If everything continues as is, how much environmental trouble are we and are we causing with what we're doing?
	I think that we're in very serious environmental trouble and of course I'm not the only person.
	Besides the pollution aspects, we have the very severe threat of global warming, you know, from greenhouse gas emissions, increasing the carbon dioxide changes.
	The weather patterns have a very strong potential for rapid climate change, which would have tremendous ramifications for people all over the world, and mostly the people who probably can least afford it.
	You know, I have a New Scientist article here somewhere.
	I don't know where it is.
	I've got, I'll find it here in a minute.
	It just came out.
	The new scientists talking about global climate change and they're talking about the Gulf Stream specifically and they're talking about new measurements that show the Gulf Stream seems to be slowing up and stopping what it's doing and if that happens Europe is going to freeze, period.
	Yeah, that's a very major, that's a big trigger.
	I did not read that article but I'm familiar with The situation has things to do with salt density in the water and temperatures.
	The Gulf Stream is part of a very deep water conveyor belt that brings much more energy and disperses it from the equator to the north than does the atmosphere itself.
	And Europe is the beneficiary of that warm stream because it has a very mild climate.
	If those salt densities and temperature changes can affect the stream flow, it could really change the way... Western Europe, it may be, you know, really under the gun if that kind of a situation came about.
	And they do believe that other rapid climate changes that have occurred in the past have been fundamentally affected by that very thing.
	Actually, they're suggesting Europe...
	Could become, exactly, that part of Europe would become the same climate as Alaska, roughly.
	More continental cold air influence.
	Yeah, that's all that keeps Europe mild, is that flow.
	That's right.
	And things are really changing, so these are pretty interesting stories.
	I just, you know, I wondered how really concerned about all of this you, I mean, do you think it's a Terminal, terminal, ultimate terminal issue for the world's population if something is not done?
	Ultimately, yes.
	But the most important thing to think about is that we've been, you know, producing these emissions for a long period of time.
	The carbon age has been going on for quite a long time.
	So we've paid our, we've put and pumped a lot of uh... gases into the atmosphere at
	and the one thing i think it's important for us to understand that
	to address this issue will be a multi-generational thing and it will also have to
	be an international community effort this isn't the kind of thing is
	you knock out a coal plant here and you knock out a an oil refinery there and okay everything's looking rosy
	uh... it's it's going to take time to turn it around but the beautiful thing about it if you think about it are
	i mean addressing these emissions
	first of all will not change the c o two concentration will not change
	the possibility for global warming and and and those ramifications
	but the immediate benefits will be healthier air and and less health issues impacted
	by air pollution Of course.
	I was in Las Vegas earlier in the day.
	And in Las Vegas, it's a bull.
	You know, it's a pollution pot if the conditions are right.
	And they've got an inversion going on right now, an air inversion.
	And what's to be seen there is incredible.
	The air hanging over the city as seen from a distance is a dark brown cloud.
	And I mean dark brown.
	That's what I saw earlier today.
	It was like that. So that Reno is frequently like that. And that's actually a situation.
	Climate and topography in the inner mountain west and in the west in general,
	dictates stagnant air and especially in the winter where there's very little mixing.
	So any of the exhaust that's coming from your vehicles, because hey, let's face it,
	we all know Las Vegas is not an East Coast industrial city.
	You're looking at a lot of emissions from automobiles exhaust. Yeah, it's mostly cars.
	Yeah, absolutely. And the fact is, when you're there, all that is being trapped underneath
	warm air falling above. So where the animals live, the plants live and the humans live, you're
	breathing in that toxic stew.
	Um, how much do we know about, uh, breathing in, uh, air in Los Angeles or Las Vegas or any of the other many cities where it gets that bad when we have inversions, when it really gets bad and they start advising on the weather.
	This is unhelpful.
	Stay inside.
	You know, that's what I heard him saying.
	It's unhelpful.
	Yeah.
	Stay inside.
	That's a scary thing to hear.
	I know.
	And it's totally legitimate.
	Um, There's issues with young children, elderly, people with asthma, bronchial problems.
	These are all very serious effects.
	Plus, the particulates that are also in the air, depending on their size, can become lodged deep in your lungs.
	There's a lot of health costs that, and you know, it's like we don't really think of it.
	I mean, you think about it.
	People tell me all the time when I'm, when I'm trying to explain to them the ramifications of the gasoline that they use.
	And I'm not telling people they can't drive or whatever, but I'm just telling them the cost of the use.
	And they say, well, geez, it's only a buck a gallon.
	How bad can things be?
	But you know, when we sell gasoline at the pump, yes, it's taxed.
	The taxes are used for a variety of things depending on the area, but we don't penalize the cost of that gasoline for the health cost that it's going to make on society.
	Well, that's kind of what the Europeans do, and I know even there where they've been tolerating high prices four or five dollars... Well, how bad is it really?
	And now, here's a... Let's see what you do with this.
	With regard to smoking, oh my God.
	There is a campaign out there and nearly every death you can imagine is if anybody's ever, you know, walked within 10 feet of the cigarette, they declare it smoking related.
	And you hear a lot about smoking, right?
	I know.
	So, to put it in scale, people are breathing that air every day.
	How do they compare with regard to health risk to those who smoke?
	Truthfully, a lot I couldn't tell you.
	That's beyond my expertise.
	Um, I do believe, however, that... Well, they don't talk about it, so you would think there'd probably be no risk at all compared to smoking.
	Right?
	I mean, that, that, that... Well... Or, or, would you think not necessarily?
	Not necessarily.
	Not necessarily.
	I certainly don't rely on the government or state government or the federal government to give me all my knowledge or information that I need to protect myself.
	You don't?
	You listen to other sources?
	I just happen to be independently minded, I guess.
	I see.
	Alright, well, this is an auspicious night to have you on.
	Why's that?
	Well, because I'm going to read you something here.
	Okay.
	This is a writer's story that broke today.
	Mentioned by a caller earlier.
	I'll just read a little bit of it.
	After 100 years of making gasoline-burning cars, General Motors Corporation sees a not-so-distant future when vehicles powered by hydrogen will revolutionize the industry and make transportation more affordable for the world's population.
	GM, the world's largest automaker, unveiled at the Detroit Auto Show on Monday A fuel cell vehicle that it said could rewrite the laws of how automakers design cars and make them much cheaper to build because fuel cells consume hydrogen and emit only water and heat.
	Automakers have talked for years about the arrival of the cleaner technology over the next decade as a way to make cars more environmentally friendly and curtail the need for foreign oil.
	GM said its so-called autonomy fuel cell car Which it says is the first vehicle designed exclusively for the fuel cell could have a far broader impact.
	It's a long story.
	It's a skateboard like chassis between four wheels and I guess you can make it into anything you want.
	So this sounds like a really big step for General Motors.
	I mean, GM, I mean, they are the ones.
	And if they're introducing a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, That's a big, big, big story!
	Sounds like GM wrote the story.
	Well, no Reuters wrote it.
	It sounds a little promotional.
	Yeah, it does, it does.
	Let me talk about that.
	I mean, we've been hearing about the hydrogen economy.
	Uh, for a while now.
	I mean, this isn't brand new stuff, and they're not the first ones to come out with a fuel cell powered vehicle either.
	Yeah, but it is GM now.
	Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, it will be something we're going to see.
	Most important, I think the most important thing to think about here, first of all, because we live in a world of soundbites, and one of the problems with living in a world of soundbites, you never get the story.
	Okay, you give me the story then.
	If I had, if I had, A hydrogen powered car.
	Tell me what I would have.
	Now compare it to today's cars and what they will do.
	Power, speed, efficiency, blah, blah, blah.
	And tell me now about a hydrogen car.
	If I had a hydrogen car, what would its abilities be?
	It would be just like the car you're driving today, except it's not using gasoline.
	Would it be as powerful?
	Yes.
	It would?
	I think so.
	I think once they get these things tuned up, I don't think you're going to have an issue with that.
	Would it sound like a regular gas combustion engine?
	No, it would be silent.
	It would be silent?
	It runs on electricity.
	They're going to use that hydrogen, run it through a membrane, separate the hydrogen out, burn the hydrogen, and the remaining water and heat are just dissipated.
	The whole key here is, we're going to get the hydrogen from, that's what I want to know.
	Well, you tell me.
	We're not.
	Well, the thing is, right now we do have fuel cells that are working.
	The technology certainly exists.
	They're being, actually, you know, California had that very serious electricity supply problem last year.
	Yes.
	And so companies are starting to install them themselves.
	Hospitals have them in this.
	I mean, the technology Yeah, but you know what they're running on?
	They're running on hydrocarbons.
	They're not running on hydrogen.
	They're stripping those hydrocarbons, the hydrogen out of either natural gas, or gasoline, or other, or coal.
	They're using fossil fuels to power these things.
	Hydrogen is the ultimate coup.
	If you can run something on hydrogen, Yeah, that would be great.
	It would be a non-polluting thing.
	But how are you going to generate the hydrogen?
	It's not found free in the atmosphere.
	It's not found free in, like, oil.
	You know, you go to Iraq, you stick a straw in the ground, and oil shoots out.
	Yes.
	You know, you're going to have to use... Well, the way they're doing it now is they're using fossil fuels... Well, excuse me.
	First of all, they're getting the hydrogen primarily from fossil fuels.
	Then if you said, okay, I want to run the vehicle on hydrogen, you're going to use that coal plant, that natural gas plant.
	Or a nuclear reactor to generate the power to electrolyze water, separate the hydrogen out of the water molecule.
	Right.
	And then you're going to have the hydrogen to distribute.
	Right.
	OK, that's all great.
	So if you think about it conceptually, you have just taken the pollution and the emissions from the tailpipe of the vehicle and put it back into the power plant.
	And we would need many more of them.
	And the emission problem would still be there today, would still be there.
	It doesn't answer the, and that, I mean, it's a great technology.
	It really will come together over time.
	You know, it's the actual fantasy.
	Well, I'm not, I'm not computing what you're saying.
	You're, you're, you're, you're saying it's on the one hand a great technology and on the other you're saying, but you can't get fuel.
	That's right.
	You can.
	So I don't, why is it a great technology if you can't get fuel?
	Because I think over time, as we develop better energy sources, power generation sources that are carbonless, we will be able to generate quantities of hydrogen.
	You know who's doing it?
	Here's an example.
	Iceland.
	Iceland is a very small country.
	A lot of geothermal activity there.
	So they're really tapping into that.
	They're using that geothermal heat to create power to separate the hydrogen and they want to become a hydrogen economy and Iceland could probably pull it off but Iceland is Iceland and the U.S.
	is the big boy and has a lot greater demand on those kinds of sources so if you now let's just follow this one step further the fantasy will be to use Clean renewable energy like solar power or wind power or biomass.
	To make the electricity.
	To make the electricity and then create the hydrogen and when the wind dies and the sun goes down you burn the hydrogen.
	Well how much energy does it cost to create the hydrogen?
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	I mean exactly how you would say that.
	Well that's what it's going to come down to though isn't it?
	In other words, if you're going to manufacture hydrogen, and you have to do so in burning fossil fuels, conventional fossil fuels, you're going to have to know what the ratio is.
	It's got to be economically feasible, or it's an idea out the window.
	Well, that's one way to look at it.
	You're still using fossil fuels, though, and that still puts us in a position where we're in a... That's the message I got.
	Hold on.
	We'll be right back to you.
	I'm Art Bell.
	All right, back now to our guest, Mark McLaughlin.
	Mark, you're back on.
	I've got a computer next to me, and people can fast blast me these little sentences, and Wayne says, you put your finger on the problem.
	It takes more energy to free the hydrogen than you get back from it.
	However, there is as much energy in one gallon of water More than 300 gallons of gasoline, one gallon of water equals 300 gallons of gasoline, if they can figure out how to do it.
	But see, the fundamental issue of using fossil fuels is still a serious problem.
	You know, the U.S.
	has good, strong sources, or vast sources, or vast, I guess, depending on how you want to look at it.
	Tremendous sources of coal.
	And that's local and within the country if you're thinking of national security or energy issues, but coal's the dirtiest of all the hydrocarbon fuels.
	The U.S.
	used to have as much oil as Saudi Arabia.
	We were the number one producer.
	We produced by far the greatest amount of oil for the world.
	So it's a finite, oh yeah, oil is a finite thing.
	It's going to be gone.
	When will it be gone?
	No one can tell you that.
	How come?
	In other words, when they look at primal supplies and what they could anticipate they could still find, I hear these claims of 40 years, 35 years, at present rates of consumption.
	Consumption, yeah.
	Well, you know, it's kind of happening.
	Think about it this way.
	Like in the 1950s, for every barrel of energy you use, let's say you take the energy worth of a barrel of petroleum for the drilling and the pumping to find other oil, In the 1950s, you'd use one barrel's worth of energy, and you'd pull in 50 barrels of oil.
	Now you use one barrel of energy, you're pulling in four barrels of oil.
	Really?
	Yeah.
	And one of the things that's most important, and you know, these are all the spins, Art.
	Think about it.
	They're going to say Shell Oil, or BP, or ARCO, they're all going to say, oh, you know what?
	We're finding more and more stuff out in the Gulf, and yeah, we've got all this oil in the Alaskan Refuge.
	But look what's happening.
	These are getting to be more and more hostile environments.
	They take tremendous more technologies.
	It's more expensive.
	Mark, they're going to... Look, even if what we all hope happens happens and they dive into alternative energy as fast as they can, unlikely as that is, they're still going to have to go up to Alaska and get that oil.
	They're going to need that oil.
	There's no argument about that.
	The only argument is whether they're going to start down the road at the same time, isn't it?
	Well, I kind of agree with you there, even though, you know, the argument is if we just improve the nation's fuel efficiency standards, we won't even need the juice, you know what I mean?
	Well, maybe that'll happen, too.
	I think that will happen.
	Maybe it will, but we still need the Alaskan oil before we are ever going to get to a conversion sufficient enough to stop what you're talking about.
	Long before that, hell, we're going to need the Alaskan oil for sure, even if we dive right into this.
	Yeah, you could very well be right about that.
	The main thing that you want to think about is not about how long will the oil last.
	There's a couple things.
	One is, Well, yes, we use it primarily as a transportation fuel in the United States.
	I mean, less and less they use it to generate electricity or anything like that.
	So we use it as a transportation fuel.
	We're burning it in our cars.
	And really, oil is like a feedstock for plastics and medicine and that.
	fertilizer and herbicide and pesticide.
	I mean, it's, you know, we need these chemicals that come from there as feedstocks for other
	things.
	The economy is based on a whole economy.
	Yeah, sure.
	And the other part of it is, it's not like, um, when are we going to run out?
	It's when you reach this peak of production in any finite resource.
	And, you know, all these things that we're talking about are really explained in our energy book, which is available at our website at altenergy.org.
	And, you know, we've got a lot of testimonials and things for your viewers.
	I have listeners mostly.
	When do you think this peak... Within the next 20 years is what they say.
	That'll be the peak of production.
	Yeah, and after that it just kind of ramps down slow.
	It's not like going to fall off the map.
	It'll slowly, slowly go down.
	But, what's going to happen here, and this is really the most important part... What'll happen to prices?
	Slowly go up, of course.
	But, it's where... Who has exportable oil?
	That's the key.
	If you can produce enough oil for yourself, hey, that's all well and good.
	But Asia doesn't have any oil.
	They're going to need it from somewhere.
	The US, we suck up, we have 4% of the population of the world, we suck up 25% of the oil.
	And you know, bring China in, Asia in, and who's going to have it?
	The politically volatile Persian Gulf.
	That's where the oil is, the conventional, easily accessible, inexpensive oil in the next couple of decades is going to be primarily located in the Persian Gulf.
	Well, they seem to have mixed feelings about whether they want us to have it.
	Oh, they want us to have it?
	Well, on the one hand.
	Yeah, I mean, it's the only thing that those countries have to sell.
	Yeah, I know, but there's a lot of trouble that comes along with it.
	Well, it's big business and it's also dangerous business and dirty business, you know?
	Well, I mean, there's really a lot of trouble.
	The whole mess over in the Far East, or in the Near East, rather, Middle East.
	God, I'll get it.
	Middle East is really, well, war is certainly possible.
	As resources begin to dry up, or if somebody decided to restrict the resources from a power-hungry America, there's going to be a war.
	Every president has said it.
	We'd go to war to protect the oil flow.
	Well, you know, you think that the U.S.
	would have put together that coalition to protect Kuwait if Kuwait didn't have any, if they weren't worried about the stability of that area and everything?
	You know, Iraq has 10% of the oil, the oil, proven oil reserves.
	And sometimes I make the joke, I say, yeah, we bomb them into oblivion.
	That way it's like the 51st state.
	I mean, they have all the oil underground.
	It's just sitting there waiting for us to get it when we need it.
	I mean, it's kind of a calloused view.
	You're not recommending, actually, that we... No, no, no, no, no.
	You know how this is.
	When you allow your mind to think about how things can be, we don't know everything.
	We're going to get it one way or the other.
	That's right.
	If we have to have it, we're going to get it.
	If it means going to a war to get it, we would go to a war to get it.
	That's what the country runs on.
	Without it, stop.
	So, it's really interesting what we're doing.
	Now, let me take a giant leap and see what you have to say.
	I am barraged.
	I am beseeched by people with machines and plans and ideas to, you know, to have this or that scheme or machine to produce energy.
	Virtual, they say, free energy or very near free energy or over unity.
	There are 10 million claims I've been waiting years and years and years to even see a toy that would demonstrate it.
	I have not yet seen one.
	Have you?
	No.
	You haven't?
	No.
	I have met and seen the evidence of professional scientists and researchers who have data and
	physical evidence that show anomalous effects.
	Anomalous effects.
	Anomalous effects.
	They are not really explained by the present day physics.
	But many times they are not repeatable.
	That is difficult.
	Perfusion is one of them especially.
	Or they are not feasible economically or whatever.
	Have you seen one where you go, oh my god, here it is, the answer.
	No.
	You know, there's Randall Mills.
	He's actually an MD, I should say.
	Dr. Randall Mills.
	He's got a company in, I think it's in Princeton, New Jersey.
	Guy was a whiz, got his MD from Harvard.
	In the meantime, he was taking advanced physics courses at MIT in his spare time.
	You know, so no intellectual slacker at all.
	And he's got this thing, and I'm still trying to figure out if it's the real deal or not.
	He's got some money behind him.
	He's got a couple utilities put in 20 mil.
	But that's small money for you, Tony.
	What is the claim?
	Well, what it is, he takes hydrogen, which is really the most simple atom kind of thing, and what he says is, using chemical action, he reduces the state.
	As if you have the electron, the proton spinning around, he reduces their orbit.
	It makes it, if you can think about a kind of dancer, and by collapsing it a little bit like that, it releases tremendous amounts of energy.
	Now, when I, and I really try to approach this idea as a journalist and as a responsible researcher, and when I come upon this and I see people saying, that can't be true, this is all baloney, it's a scam, and then I have other people willing to line up and buy in and other professional type people.
	I don't know what's going on with him.
	There was something happening where he was trying to get some patent work, and the U.S.
	Patent Office is a pain already.
	You're probably familiar with some of the things with them when it comes to these breakthrough energy situations.
	So I don't know.
	They've kind of flipped off the radar in the last, I would say, half a year.
	So I couldn't tell you exactly what's going on.
	It did raise a lot of excitement, but I think that...
	Okay, well that, yeah, but see that qualifies with a whole lot of other stories, similar stories that I've heard.
	Very exciting, kind of slipped off the map, haven't heard about it lately now.
	That's right.
	Okay, so now there's a million people out there who say, of course it slipped off the map.
	Their attitude is the big oil companies in some way squished, broke, bought, otherwise acquired, stopped.
	Any news of this took control of the situation.
	A lot of people believe that conspiracy theory.
	Are you one of them?
	No.
	I believe I can see easily why, but let me throw a caveat out there.
	I'm sure that things have happened.
	Illegal, violent, and other things, small things.
	I don't believe there's this giant orchestrated thing.
	What it is, I think a lot of it comes down to R&D.
	When you get into R&D with a product or this potential innovation, you run into the obvious things that your data were flawed.
	You set the experiment up incorrectly.
	Uh, and things happen, you know?
	And as you mentioned before, it's the economics about it too, you know?
	If you can't get any money, then effectively you are shut down.
	So things do happen, but I don't believe in this grand conspiracy idea.
	The only way you could know for sure would be to have the black box that worked, and then you'd find out.
	Hey, I'll tell you right now, you get a black box that works, people are gonna be lining up I mean the one thing is it's a good thing to disseminate information sometimes, you know what I mean?
	And one of the things that happens with a lot of these people, either individuals or outfits, professional labs who are working in this field, Very reluctant to share information.
	No data comes out.
	Well, moreover, I mean, these people say if you did have the black box at work, you'd be with the fishes.
	Yeah, I know.
	Anyway, you sort of don't buy into that.
	Well, you know, I have a little bit of skepticism in me.
	It's hard for me to buy that, but it wouldn't surprise me if things like that do happen at certain levels.
	And of course I know that the government will come in, and under national security, the laws are on the books, if they believe that you have something and they think it's going to upset the balance of the status quo.
	No, no, no, wait a minute.
	If you had a black box, we'll just call it that for a generic term.
	No, because the black box produces energy.
	Yeah, whatever it is, it produces energy.
	It's just a generic term.
	You've got the black box.
	You're saying they could put it under the banner of national security?
	Yeah, there's a law in the books from the 50s, I think, made right after World War II.
	It's a secrecy thing, and they have used it.
	I mean, I couldn't... Wait a minute, though.
	What justification would there be?
	Such a thing would save society's butt.
	So, what would be the national security implication of it, please?
	Well, you have to look at each individual example, but it would be something that they felt... Threaten the oil companies?
	I think it's pretty much carte blanche.
	If the government wants what you have, they can come and get it.
	Something that would threaten the oil companies?
	Would that be national security?
	It wouldn't surprise me if it was.
	It wouldn't surprise me if it was.
	We live and breathe oil in this country.
	It's in our blood.
	Oil in our blood, yes, I suppose.
	Alright, let's turn our attention for a minute to things that we know are out there.
	I have other energy sources where I live here.
	I have wind energy and I have solar energy.
	That's your house you mean?
	I have so much of it that I can power my entire house with it.
	24 hours a day?
	Yeah.
	That's great.
	Yeah, I know.
	But it's a lot of money.
	Yeah, I know.
	Expensive to get in.
	Yeah, and so these two technologies, where do we stand with wind and where do we stand with solar, the cost of solar panels, and the cost of manufacturing solar panels, by the way.
	Manufacturing them would be a monstrous job that would require a lot of fossil fuels.
	So how about what we do have now, wind and solar, what do you say?
	Wind is by far the best one right out there now. Solar is actually the most
	expensive. Wind power in some areas of the country, and this country has a lot of wind potential,
	it's coming down to naira nickel for a megawatt, and that's what you're getting
	for megawatt hour, whatever that's what you're getting for coal-produced electricity in some areas.
	So, wind power really has a lot of potential, and that's why the Europeans have now taken over.
	The U.S., it wasn't even that long ago, the U.S.
	led the world in solar photovoltaic technology development, and wind power. Now Western Europe's all over it. Japan's
	blowing us away in solar. These countries see that the future economies, even though we
	know that these renewable, decentralized renewable technologies are inadequate to replace oil, they
	will be part of a growing economy and there's jobs involved in everything else.
	You just said you're down in Southern Nevada.
	Nevada ranks 21st out of the 50 states for wind potential.
	It's really good.
	Where I am is, if you look on a map, and you look specifically at where I am, we are in a particularly high wind zone.
	They rate the zones.
	And I'm in a particularly high wind zone for Nevada.
	Okay.
	So that's one thing.
	And the other is I'm also in an extremely high, although our weather right now would defy what I'm about to say, it has been defying it, but we have generally the cloudy days you could count on maybe three hands, you
	have three hands.
	Hey, Nevada's the driest state in the country.
	Very low humidity. All of this favorable to both solar and wind,
	which is one of the reasons that I proceeded with what I did,
	but it still is not economically really feasible.
	It's just not.
	Now maybe wind.
	Well, it's not compared to the price you're paying for your electricity now.
	That's the one thing you have to remember.
	Hydrogen is not fossil fuel.
	It's an energy carrier.
	Hydrogen and electricity are going to be like the sisters in the future is the idea.
	But let me just show you one of the things.
	Nevada, we know, has the potential for the solar because it's so sunny all the time.
	And as you said, there are areas that have very good wind potential.
	Right.
	There's no commercial electricity being generated in Nevada at this time of year.
	In fact, there was a proposal, I don't know where it is, to build a gigantic, immense wind farm where I am here.
	Oh really?
	Oh yeah, in this area.
	A proposal to just build this incredible, incredible wind farm, yes.
	A monstrous thing.
	I don't know where the proposal is now, but they were talking about it.
	Was this a long time ago?
	No, fairly recently.
	California has a tremendous amount of wind potential because of the gaps in the mountains and the winds, onshore winds.
	Yeah, you're going to run into people who don't like the aesthetics of it, and this, that, and the other, but... Ecological groups that bitch about the birds hitting it?
	Yeah, they're figuring that out.
	I mean, they put them in flyways, and they do say, you know, I mean, they're not doing that.
	They can, we can figure things out, how to kind of ameliorate some of these issues, you know?
	But, you know, this definitely has to be done.
	No, I'm really impressed that you're, so you can be pretty, you feel like you can be pretty much disconnected from the grid.
	Absolutely.
	Yeah, that's great.
	In fact, when power failures occur in the neighborhood, I don't even know they've occurred.
	I actually don't know they even happen until I happen to look and I see all my neighbors gathered around, you know, looking up here and wondering why there's light up here nowhere else.
	Does the Nevada utility allow you to have your meter run in reverse when you're When you have enough power to put it back in?
	We'll have to talk about that in a moment.
	We will, too, all right?
	Okay.
	Stay right there.
	I'm Art Bell.
	Yes, of course.
	In the nighttime.
	It's close to coast AM.
	It certainly is, and I certainly did screw up, so you're gonna get treated to a little bit more commercial activity than you normally would in the next hour.
	My fault, and here we go.
	Okay, let's talk about this for a second with Mark.
	Are you there, Mark?
	Yes, I am.
	All right, well, let me tell you my little story here.
	I did this because I think for the following reasons.
	Number one, because I could, because I think it's really cool to produce your own energy.
	I did it with full knowledge that I was spending money that I really
	wasn't going to be able to recoup probably in my lifetime. And I did it
	because of probably far down the line some sort of actual honest concern for our
	ecology.
	The best reason I've heard. Those are the reasons but but you know what there was
	not a good financial reason to do it and I I did some serious checking.
	We've got a power co-op here, and what I'm going to say doesn't reflect negatively on them.
	I don't mean it to, but for example, I checked into what you said, hooking up to the grid and selling power back to the power company.
	I thought about that, and so I called them, and are you interested in what they said?
	Yeah, I know Nevada.
	I think Nevada makes it pretty hard to do, but go ahead.
	Well, I mean, it's individual.
	This particular co-op is one of them.
	And what they said was, yes, there is provision for this, but it would require that we come out and install a new meter, another meter, which, of course, you have to pay for.
	And then they would pay me wholesale.
	In other words, as I sold power to them, they would pay me the wholesale price,
	the same price they pay other people who sell them power.
	That's what they would be willing to pay.
	And so I balanced that.
	These are the things you do if you really have a system like mine.
	So I balanced that against just instead using the power myself,
	and I would in effect then be offsetting their retail rate.
	So for me to sell it to them wholesale is really stupid.
	Instead, I'd be better off using it, which I am myself at what amounts to the retail rate.
	Right.
	So you can't say that what I did was smart economically or any other way.
	You just have to sort of imagine that I'm a little bit of a geek
	and I thought it'd be cool and I have the resources.
	And so I went and did it, but I couldn't recommend to anybody
	that it's a great idea economically, because it's not.
	What do you say?
	It depends.
	Why what?
	It depends on where you live.
	In the Sacramento area, they have the Sacramento Municipal Utility District.
	Fork out 50% of the cost of a $10,000 solar array, and really what they're using are shingles that are actually... Yeah.
	You know, you've seen them.
	Yep.
	And they'll come out and they'll lay them on your house and everything.
	They will put up the $5,000 to pay for the $10,000 of the cost of the system, and then give you a low-interest loan for another 10 years to pay off the balance.
	Uh-huh.
	And why are they doing that?
	They're the most aggressive utility in the world for solar power.
	This particular... I ask again, why are they doing that?
	Oh, I think it's all business for them.
	Why not?
	They're still going to be able to sell out all the electricity that they can possibly have.
	I'm just wondering how it makes economic sense for them to do that.
	Oh, well, I don't necessarily know that it actually does.
	If you pay a surcharge on your fuel bills and your energy bills, And part of that money goes towards the utilities, public awareness campaigns and things of that nature.
	It's the nuts and bolts of a capitalist society to look at it economically.
	That is how I'm trying to look at it.
	And if it doesn't make economic sense for them to do that, I mean to applaud them for doing it and so forth, but it's not going to be widespread.
	Right.
	So this kind of thing isn't going to be financially feasible, or is not financially really feasible, except in a special case like that, yet.
	So how's anything going to change?
	Here's one way.
	You get Congress.
	All right, I know this is a bad start.
	You get Congress to mandate that the U.S.
	government, which is the largest consumer of energy in this country, mandates that they have to buy 20% of their juice from renewable power sources.
	Once you do that, that means companies are going to start ramping up.
	This is what they did with the microprocessors and the silicon chips.
	That's just going to cost the taxpayer money, though, right?
	I mean, you're going to be subsidizing something that really ultimately isn't profitable Initially, and then it becomes economically feasible as they start to pump them out and the prices come down, the effectiveness of the technology becomes better with the investment.
	You know, it's what they did with the silicon wafer for the computer, the military and the government.
	So then what it comes down to is you're saying that this generation and maybe even the next generation is going to have to pay for the future Of a couple of generations, at least two or three, down the line, where it finally becomes economically feasible, what's been done.
	Until then, we're going to fork over the bill for the fact that it's not really economically feasible at all, if we start on that path.
	I'm sorry to be hitting you with such tough questions, but that is the truth, isn't it?
	Yes.
	So what?
	I don't have any children, but I've got brothers and they've got their children and such.
	It's not like I'm stopping here in the sense that I don't care about what's down the road.
	So what do we do?
	What does our generation do?
	Let's say the 20th century generation, not the 21st century people coming along now.
	Two generations.
	And here we have, we're sucking up all the oil, we're polluting the atmosphere.
	We're an indulgent, hedonistic party!
	I agree.
	You know, why should we be able to do that?
	And then when we die off, we've left crap behind.
	Well, because we can.
	But is that the right choice?
	I don't know.
	Not necessarily.
	I did it because I thought it was cool.
	I did it because... That was actually above the ecological reason.
	I don't know, not necessarily. I did it because I thought it was cool. I did it because...
	That was one of your reasons, you said.
	That was, well, that was actually above the ecological reason. I'm telling the honest truth
	and I really did look at this all very carefully before I did it. So it was slight madness,
	to be honest with you, to do it. But I'm not sorry I did it.
	I'm happy with it. I love it.
	It's like a pet that I have out there. I love it. I won't deny that, but it's more of a...
	It's like...
	It's like a... I don't know.
	You use the system to charge batteries and then you... I use it for everything.
	Look, you can fall in love with stuff like this.
	That doesn't mean that it's economically feasible.
	And my larger point here is, and it really is the larger point, that if all of this is not economically feasible, to talk this generation into forking over big dollars to subsidize something that's not going to pay off for two more generations, brother, good luck.
	Let's change the equation.
	Let's make it economical.
	Let's penalize fossil fuel use.
	And let's reward renewable power.
	Well, so raise the taxes on fossil fuel usage, right?
	Is what you're talking about.
	One way, yeah.
	That's right.
	And... Make gas $3 a gallon.
	Right?
	If you can handle the riots.
	Well, that's my point.
	I know.
	I know.
	But you know, well, you're right.
	You know what?
	It almost always does come down to the wallet.
	It almost always does.
	Not almost.
	They were always OK.
	But the thing is, you know what?
	We have to be looking forward.
	Geez, we spend a hundred billion dollars a year for that Persian for imported foreign oil.
	I know.
	You know, that's some serious dough.
	We spend a hundred billion dollars a year on the health costs from the fossil fuels.
	I know.
	That's some serious dough.
	I know, but we're really living comfortable lives.
	Oh, you bet we are.
	We're at the, I kind of think we're at the apex, you know, at the pinnacle.
	Uh-huh.
	I don't know, but, uh, you know, there's, yeah, If you just want to make it into dollars and cents and you're not willing to address trying to compensate for the well-established fossil fuel industries already in there, so now you've got some up-and-coming, good, clean, decentralized, renewable power sources, technologies that do work, and maybe it's not as cheap as it seems that coal is, if you don't consider all the other ramifications, but it doesn't mean it shouldn't be implemented.
	Yeah, I know.
	I know.
	You're playing devil's advocate, and that's fine with me.
	Yes, I am.
	I don't have a problem with that.
	Well, unfortunately, though, I think in this case, I'm right.
	In other words, about what will happen.
	I'm sorry, but I believe that I'm right.
	If you could present me with evidence that there was an economic reason to do something other than what we're doing, then we would do it.
	Otherwise, we're dreaming and wishing and hoping.
	Okay, here you go.
	The world community all comes together, not the U.S., but the world community, and I know this is another pipe dream, the world community comes together like they did with the Kyoto Protocol.
	You sound like a beauty contestant answering a question.
	World peace.
	The world comes together.
	All right, continue what's happening.
	Hey, hey, hey, we know what we're talking about here.
	But they already have.
	The international community has shown that they have been able to hammer out some kind of international agreement to deal with greenhouse gas emissions.
	Which we promptly bowed out of.
	We walked away.
	We're going to be back.
	We're the largest polluter and here we are not even paying attention to the game.
	And of course, what's anybody else going to do to this country?
	geez what's anybody else going to do to this country what you know and you're
	right I mean what are they going to do I'll tell you here's something that's
	very here's the sense of optimism yeah in this dark hot topic we're mired in
	you know The European community has just elected their new president for the period of time.
	I believe it's the president of Spain.
	And he'll be the leader of the European community.
	And their three main points of agenda are sustainability, environment, and climate change.
	And so the Europeans are showing some very forthright and aggressive action.
	I don't know how they're actually going to pull it off.
	Germany has outlawed nuclear power.
	They intend to phase it out.
	Right now they get 32% of their electricity from nuclear power plants.
	I'll tell you how they're going to pull it off.
	They're socialists.
	Yeah, but they're socialists.
	That's how they're going to pull it off.
	They're going to use this incredible amount of taxation that they have.
	And what is a gallon of gasoline over there?
	It's $4 or $5.
	Oh, you bet.
	They're going to use that to do it.
	And they've got the money to do it because they're socialist states.
	Here, supply and demand dictates the price of oil.
	Period.
	Period, period, period.
	That's supply and demand.
	And so it is where it is right now.
	And that's all there is to it.
	I know you scare me because I mean I realize you're an open-minded individual.
	I am.
	And I believe that...
	But I'm also a realist.
	Yeah, I know. I know. I'm pragmatic too. I mean I am.
	And it is.
	It's a frustrating thing.
	And that's the whole thing.
	If you just want status quo, look at Bush-Cheney's 2002 national energy policy.
	Talking about status quo.
	Let's dig out the coal, baby.
	Drill more oil.
	I don't know where they're going to find it.
	Not in this country.
	Well, we've got Alaska.
	Yeah, that's a short shot.
	And the Middle East will keep pumping for a while.
	Yeah.
	You know, there's Russia now.
	Russia's got an awful lot of oil and that has not been explored because they don't have the money to build the things to do it.
	That's right.
	So, I mean, there still is oil around.
	I just... I'm sorry.
	You think this is like crying wolf about how important this is?
	No, I don't.
	Okay.
	I just wanted to get to the grit there.
	No, I don't.
	Okay.
	I think your wolf cry is absolutely justified.
	I just think you're a howl in the night.
	Tom, tell me about it.
	I feel like I'm just spitting in the wind.
	Well, you are.
	It's hard.
	It's hard.
	I mean, everything you're saying, when you boil it down, goes against everything we're doing right now.
	Our whole produce and consume economy is based on what we're doing, and what you're talking about would tear all of that It's a flagrant abuse of the natural resources and lots of things, you know.
	I mean, we're discussing this now and maybe we're not getting calls, I don't know.
	I could take nothing but calls.
	I'm enjoying this a lot right now.
	I mean, I talk to people like I'm talking to you and there really are many people That are concerned about this, you know?
	They're concerned about the environment.
	They're concerned about their children, their grandchildren.
	I'm one of them.
	Yeah, I'm one of these people.
	It's just, it's just... How do you beat the system, right?
	Mark, I see what's happening, and you can talk at the edges of this, but the bottom line is what I said it is, and for this country, anyway.
	And I know what they're doing in Europe, and I know what it's costing, and I know how they're doing it.
	They're not like we are.
	No, I know.
	I know.
	So a little bit like apples and oranges.
	A little.
	So so then.
	If you get down with me and get realistic, do you do you honestly think any of this is really going to begin happening here anytime soon?
	Yeah, I do.
	I think it's going to happen in very in the just the way it is now.
	Slowly.
	Here's a scary thing.
	I read Bush's energy plan, the 20-year program.
	Right now, the U.S.
	gets less than 1% of its energy, electricity we're talking about.
	Electricity from non-hydro sources.
	Meaning, let's talk about wind power, solar power, this, that, the other.
	Less than 1%.
	In his plan, by 2020, the U.S.
	renewables will be generating, non-hydro renewables will be generating 2%.
	And I had to write a critique for our outfit for that.
	And I opened my critique saying, you know what, it's a very pragmatic plan.
	I mean, but some of that's unacceptable, and that's one of them, I believe.
	You know, I just think that that's just, I don't know, it's just not willing to address the issues.
	And I know, but if you just want to talk about the money, then jeez, I mean, what are we?
	You know, is it all just money?
	We are what we are.
	Yeah.
	I know, but I do think there's a lot of people that care, and why do you think GM's so fired up about putting out that vehicle?
	I don't know, after hearing what you said about hydrogen, I don't have the slightest idea.
	I felt like I burst the bubble there, you know?
	Plus the fuel cells themselves use platinum and things, a very expensive metal, and they're a little bit pricey, but over time they will come down.
	You know, they probably are better and more fuel efficient.
	Like, we didn't talk about the hybrid vehicles, you know, that are around now.
	Okay, yeah, that's good.
	I would like to talk about the hybrids.
	I have, most of my driving, even though I have two, we have two other cars that are sort of muscle cars that I have because I like them.
	So, there.
	I get a lot of criticism about that.
	I don't care.
	Most of the time, 90% of our driving, I have a GeoMetro.
	And we do 90% of our driving in that GeoMetro.
	The only time we drive the other cars is for pure D power beneath me fun, if you follow.
	Got it.
	I mean, we do it here in Nevada.
	I'm not going to lie to you.
	It's fun.
	You get a muscle car going.
	It's a lot of fun.
	Yeah, sure.
	But 90% of our driving is in a Geo Metro that we own, and we love this car.
	We love this car, and it gets many, many, many miles per gallon.
	And they have, by the way, discontinued the Geo, which really kicked me off.
	Oh, I didn't know that.
	Yeah, they have.
	It's sickening.
	My wife and I swear it's because it's too damn good.
	It lasts too long.
	It uses too little good.
	Why in God's name would they discontinue as good a car as this?
	make enough money off of it because it lasts too long and then the oil companies don't
	get in your pocket either.
	That's what my wife and I are saying to each other.
	Why in God's name would they discontinue as good a car as this?
	But now there are these hybrids coming and I'm thinking maybe that'll be my next car.
	When we get back from the break, I want you to try and convince me that it should be my
	next car, okay?
	All right.
	All right, good.
	Stay right there.
	Mark McLaughlin is my guest, and we're having a hard-nosed conversation about energy.
	Can you handle it?
	How y'all doing this morning?
	We're talking with Mark McLaughlin about energy, and if you'll stay right there, there's much more ahead.
	All right, I think that catches me up, and yeah, of course we can go to calls.
	We're going to do that in the final hour, usually, is when we do that.
	In the meantime, I seem to be having, I'm sure, from his point of view, fun torturing Mark McLaughlin.
	All right, well, so when my Geo Metro expires, we'll have like a burial for it and we'll be really sad and all the rest of it, and my wife and I have been talking about Well, how about a hybrid?
	I wonder about the hybrids.
	So maybe you can tell me about the hybrids.
	What is going to be available?
	What's the upsides?
	What's the downside?
	What's the deal?
	Well, the first thing I think that we should say is what a hybrid vehicle really is.
	What is it?
	It's a combination gasoline internal combustion engine, just like you're driving right now.
	Right.
	And electric propulsion in the sense that The engine's going to use the gasoline, which has the really high, strong power density.
	It's going to use the gasoline to get you accelerated and get your momentum going.
	Right.
	Then it'll use electric, uh, some batteries to run little electric motors that will maintain your momentum.
	And then when you want to come to a stop, you will use, and they use a low, low, low resistance, uh, low, uh... resistance rolling tires and uh... then when you
	bring the vehicle to a stop
	at the break will convert that momentum back into electricity to put back into the batteries for
	when you start you're on your way again sounds smart
	yeah and the beauty of it is artist the fact that i know i feel like a show for them
	but i don't know where i think i want to know about these yet another thing about
	him is it's uh... it's basically it's a hybrid of the kind of
	technology that we've been using for a hundred years
	and they've just uh... tweaked it up a little bit by making it much more energy efficient with the electric
	uh... backup system Okay.
	I think that I've driven the Toyota Prius and I thought it was very nice car.
	Was it?
	Very quiet and I've heard that sometimes those Regeneration braking systems can be a little bit clumsy or clunky kind of, but I didn't find that to be a problem with this one.
	No?
	No.
	It operated just like a regular car?
	Yeah, pretty much.
	Yeah, I didn't... I really had no complaints.
	And the beauty of it is you're looking at 60, 70 miles to the gallon for a gallon of gasoline.
	60 to 70 miles for a gallon of gas.
	And that could get better.
	Okay.
	How about the batteries?
	Everybody said, well, every couple of years you're going to have to replace the batteries.
	Yes?
	Don't know that.
	That's one criticism that I hear about it, that you'll have to replace the batteries and that's pretty expensive.
	And the batteries are super expensive.
	Pretty expensive proposition, I suppose.
	I don't know.
	That was going to be one of my questions for you.
	That I don't know.
	Yeah, I'd have to look into that.
	Do you ever have to plug this car in?
	In other words, if somehow... No.
	You don't.
	So in other words, it's totally independent.
	Using only...
	That much gasoline and then all of the energy that's collected in various ways is dumped right back into the batteries and used at cruise speeds.
	Right.
	Exactly.
	That's a pretty cool concept.
	It's an awesome concept.
	And it's here today.
	And they're actually pretty affordable.
	The only thing that my concern is now, your local mechanic.
	You know, I never want to get on a prototype.
	If you know what I mean, you know, so... Oh, I surely know what you mean.
	Yeah, they're out there now and I think over time they're going to become mainstream in a lot of ways, I think, because it's too easy not... it's too easy to do it, I think, in that sense.
	You know, the battery option... Do you happen to know what the projected cost for these, when they're available, or I guess they're available now to the consumer?
	Yeah, I've been looking, they're like low 20s.
	Low 20s?
	Yeah.
	I mean, you can get some that are more expensive, and you know, as they start making more of them, it should come down.
	Well, that's within reason.
	That's within reason.
	That's, let's see, 70 miles to the gallon, huh?
	Yeah, 60, 70.
	And what about... And of course, you reduce your air pollution, you know, the emissions by... Obviously, yeah, obviously.
	You know, that's a good thing, too.
	I know it's not money, but it's still a good thing.
	Do you know any of the technical aspects?
	Are they using lead-acid batteries?
	No, I don't.
	See, the one thing about my job is, I'm going to have a broad, I can paint a broad stroke, but when we get into specifics, and I mean, I wrote the book, the Turning the Corner Energy book, and it's, I mean, I know pretty much what's in here, but I didn't go into the specifics about each and individual thing because I, you can't get too bogged down.
	But that is one really important point.
	Batteries will take, Uh, generally, X number of charge cycles.
	Right.
	And then their... Their history.
	Their history, yeah.
	So, um, do me a favor between now and whenever we might talk again and find out, um, how long the batteries last and what they cost, because that's got to be factored into it.
	Makes sense.
	That makes sense.
	So, would you buy one of these?
	I would, yes.
	But I bet you'd ask that question first, wouldn't you?
	Sure.
	Sure.
	Of course, I went into it as, like, in a reporter's mentality at first.
	Right.
	To see if the thing was really even... was it really even real.
	Because it's like, you know, I've looked at lots of different battery-operated vehicles, and that battery technology just never happened.
	And that's why nobody's getting them.
	Well, actually they're improving battery technology all the time.
	Incrementally, though.
	Listen, we're getting some pretty big jumps, actually, in storage capacity.
	Anyway, I need to understand more about that.
	It does look like a pretty good technology to you, though, generally.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	Because I think a lot of it is based on existing tried-and-true kind of stuff. You know, the more you go and that leap of
	faith, the more things that seem to turn up.
	Alright, since you follow the journalistic, from a journalistic point of view, this whole thing.
	Big, big news this last summer about California.
	They had their blackouts, their rolling blackouts, and oh, even Las Vegas had a rolling blackout.
	I heard you had one down there.
	It was amazing, yes.
	It was amazing.
	I mean, people here were walking around with their mouths wide open because they couldn't believe it.
	Las Vegas doesn't have a power outage.
	Nothing stops Las Vegas.
	And it happened.
	They figured that whoever dried up Well, I don't know about that.
	No, I know what you mean.
	Anyway, we were all caught up in this thing that happened in California.
	They get a cold, Nevada sneezes, so I guess we sneeze.
	Sure, you get something by default.
	I thought it was ironic from a personal level that Because in California, they're rolling back out.
	And I understand businesses.
	I mean, in some businesses, this may be a really, really big deal.
	But for the average guy to have the power go out for one hour during the course of the day is catastrophic.
	Absolutely catastrophic.
	Half the countries in the world get electricity for one hour a day.
	It was catastrophic for a lot of businesses in California.
	It really was.
	Oh, man, it was incredible.
	Anyway, my question is, What do you know?
	Is this going to happen again this coming summer?
	Is this going to be a common occurrence?
	Or, since all the news about all of this has dried up, does that mean it was an aberration and it's not going to happen anymore?
	No, but also California was kind of a special case.
	And I do want to make one minor correction here.
	As you said this summer, maybe the Vegas blackout was like in July or something.
	I forget what month that was.
	But the California blackouts for the summer did not come to fruition because of a variety of reasons.
	The two primary ones... Okay, then it was the spring.
	I mean, what I'm saying is the temperatures really began going through the roof, and that's when the big strain hit.
	I remember that much anyway.
	The temperatures were incredible.
	And so I'm asking, number one, is it going to happen again?
	It can.
	Yes.
	But several things have changed.
	One of them is, first of all, conservation in the state of California, anyway, was tremendous.
	It was like 12 or 15 percent.
	I think Governor Davis asked for 8 percent, and he got a lot more than that.
	So that was nice.
	Plus, some new power generation plants have come online since then.
	And they are really the two fundamental aspects.
	It doesn't mean that the situation certainly isn't over permanently.
	Well, I remember stories about power companies were going to go completely broke, right?
	They were going to declare bankruptcy, all kinds of... Oh, that's still on the table.
	Edison, Conrad Edison, and yeah, that's... No, they're still in court.
	All that stuff is still happening now.
	You know who's going to pay.
	So it's only, I hate to bring it back to where it was, but in the end it's going to be a matter of money, right?
	Yeah, well the one thing about California is it has the worst air pollution in the country in general.
	So less than one half of one percent of the electricity generated in the state comes from like oil or a gasoline product or something like that.
	The fact is, and you know how the mentality of Californians are, not going to build any of that dirty stuff here.
	So California imports more juice from all the Western states.
	It doesn't produce its own.
	It has to import it.
	So it's susceptible in that respect.
	And in the deregulation process, it's very complicated.
	But what it boils down to, though, Mark, is that California then was punished severely for its good environmental ways.
	But poor vision.
	But isn't that generally right?
	In other words, you were right.
	We're not going to put any of that dirty stuff here.
	They didn't.
	So they didn't build plants and all the rest of it.
	And so they were environmentally friendly.
	And economically, it slipped their throats.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	Well, hmm.
	Hmm.
	Now, okay, now see now what's happening is they're going to be building, and of course these things take time, but they're going to be building natural gas.
	Uh, generation power plants.
	That's the new phase.
	That's the new phase.
	And here, I just wanted to bring this up.
	It's very interesting when you read the Bush-Cheney energy policy for the next 20 years.
	Of course, their administration will be here for, you know, they'll get their shot and maybe one more.
	But natural gas is fossil fuel, too, right?
	It's the cleanest one.
	Yeah, but it's fossil fuel.
	Yeah.
	and here i have a i know a guy who is a well-respected uh...
	uh... geologist retired professor out of that oregon and his sources and of
	course i don't know who is sources i was one of the ask him about these
	particular ones but it's he's got a couple books is information is very good
	says that by the time
	these natural gas plants are put online in the united states over the next ten
	years yes there won't be enough gas for a third of them and if you look at the bush cheney plan he doesn't talk
	about natural gas very much because of that very reason
	You figure natural gas shadows oil.
	President Bush is doing a fabulous job, most Americans think, as President of the U.S.
	We're talking about energy, though.
	I know.
	He's got very, very high marks right now as President.
	You know that.
	Yes.
	You also know that he's an oil guy.
	And so then, what do you expect?
	I guess I got what I expected, huh?
	No, the point was that he pushed, his plan pushes coal and more domestic drilling for oil.
	Not exactly the cleanest emitter of coal, right?
	No, but he doesn't talk about natural gases, which you would want to think, because that's the cleanest of the fossil fuels.
	We don't have it.
	Well, maybe that's why he doesn't talk about it.
	Yeah, I'm trying to bring that, that's exactly right.
	That's all the point I was trying to make, actually.
	Well, he's just being realistic.
	If we don't have enough, then what's the point of talking about that as something we can do?
	Because we can't.
	Because we're building 125 of them, that's why.
	You know, it's like the great answer, but I don't know if we'll have enough to keep them going.
	You know what I mean?
	Yes.
	So it's not the great answer.
	No.
	And what happened with the electricity prices?
	They were reflecting, one, the provider's spikes because they weren't controlled.
	Two, the cost of natural gas went through the roof.
	And California generates its electricity through natural gas, a lot of it.
	A lot of it hydro too, but a lot of it natural gas.
	And when the natural gas spikes in temperature, that goes right into the cost of the electricity.
	Alright, let's cover a few things.
	Is cold fusion a dead end?
	It's still, it's still happening.
	There's guys all around the world working on it.
	And there have been real As we talked about anomalous results in the sense of excess heat and different things, but it's very hard to replicate.
	It's taking a long time.
	If you bring it up like you're trying to work on it, you're excommunicated.
	You know, you can't get your in a peer reviewed journal.
	Why?
	Because it's like you're a pariah when you talk about it.
	Why?
	Once again, it's going against the status quo.
	Why?
	Why are you a pariah?
	If you're in an institution, either governmental, academic, or whatever, you've got your whole thing.
	You've got your whole world paradigm all locked up to figure out how everything's supposed to be.
	And somebody comes along and says, you know, I was able to do that stuff at home in the garage.
	And that changes things.
	And what the main thing would happen to, and you probably know the story, Pons and Fleishman come out.
	They said, look, this is what we did.
	They released their information in a press conference, which is unprecedented.
	MIT come out and says, look, we tried to do it with the information we had.
	It failed.
	Turns out they smudged that information, actually.
	Well, Pons and Fleishman took off to Europe.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Well, they kind of blew it in a lot of ways in that respect, but it didn't stop the My question is, if you've investigated, is it real or not?
	Anomalous results, not good enough.
	You want it to be commercial already.
	You're saying it's going to be a commercial application.
	I'm asking if you know whether it is viable enough that that's what it will become, yes?
	I don't think anybody knows that yet.
	Nobody knows?
	No.
	No.
	But I know some people that I respect highly who believe it's something worth pursuing.
	Well, I do, too.
	I just thought you might have some insight.
	Yeah.
	No, I wish I had, you know, all this kind of inside information about all these wonderful things, and in a sense, it's a... Well, if you did, you'd have to be killed.
	Oh, I would tell you, sure.
	Oh, you'd have to be killed.
	Exposed immediately with prejudice, so that's why you don't have any... Hey, but once I got it out to all your listeners, then it wouldn't matter if you killed me.
	Uh, yes it would.
	Because then you couldn't go on other shows.
	Oh, well that could be.
	And people would say, you know, just like... I'm not talking about that either!
	You would go where the carburetor that gets a thousand miles per gallon went.
	Right.
	Wherever in the hell that is.
	Well, you know, I went to, I've been to a couple energy conferences and I noticed one particular gentleman, of course we're not talking names or anything, and he has a gizmo that he uses on an internal combustion engine that he pours soda into it and it runs, or different kinds of non-hydrocarbon fuels.
	And what was really funny because a friend of mine, when he got back from the conference, and we all watched the motor run for a little bit and this kind of a thing, but he went back and says, you know, I went to my local store and Root beer is way more expensive than gasoline, which is pretty funny, I thought.
	Yeah.
	All right.
	Well, what about other out there sort of things right now?
	I don't know.
	People are working on... In other words, if we, for example, did something with gravity, if we learned some secret about gravity, there's got to be an energy source there somewhere, right?
	Absolutely.
	And more specifically, I think, propulsion systems and such.
	Are we working on that stuff?
	Yep.
	NASA's got their... NASA's spending money on it.
	You know, there was this guy from Russia who started working as a grad student in Norway.
	A guy from Russia.
	We'll pick it up there after the top of the hour, alright?
	You got it.
	Good.
	Guy from... There was this guy from Russia.
	I'm Art Bell.
	All right, as a quick little addendum to our conversation about these hybrid cars coming up, I'm pretty attracted.
	John in Colorado Springs says, aren't they used, according to the Ford HEV website, nickel metal hydride batteries, and they are amazing batteries.
	He goes on to say, it'll last the life of the vehicle.
	Toyota says battery can be charged tens of thousands of times.
	I make a very heavy use of nickel metal hydride batteries.
	They're amazing, amazing batteries, but I have never, until now, heard of tens of thousands of charge cycles.
	I tend to doubt that, but if it's on their website, maybe it's true.
	And if it is true, if the manufacturer of nickel metal hydrides of that capacity Doesn't in itself cost environmentally dearly, then we're really on to something here and a vehicle like this really would be a gigantic jump for all of us.
	And so maybe, you know, I guess I'm looking down the right road.
	I mean, we're really thinking about buying one.
	So sounds cool to me.
	Mark, maybe it is the answer for the most immediate future, huh?
	Well, that was good news about the batteries.
	I didn't know myself.
	And if it's true, That may not be as big a factor as we were worried about.
	All right.
	Well, listen, I am going to turn you over to the hordes, to the minions, to those who have no doubt questions for you.
	You ready for that?
	I think I can try.
	Mm-hmm.
	All right.
	Here it comes.
	First time caller line, you are on the air with Mark McLaughlin.
	Hi.
	Hello, Mark.
	Hello.
	My name is DG.
	I'm calling from CGOB listing area.
	No, it's where?
	Central Canada.
	I'm an undergraduate student.
	I'm studying environmental sciences.
	I read a white book.
	It was published jointly with Congress and the Vatican.
	It had a model of world events leading up until now.
	It was published in 1967.
	For a population model, there are only a half million people out, but for the fuel consumption, the White Book says we're only about eight years away from total petroleum exhaustion.
	Do you see any future for new sources that are viable in the near future?
	Well, let's first of all address that.
	Do you think that's true or false?
	Eight years away from total exhaustion?
	No, I don't buy it.
	No?
	No.
	I don't really think... I'm surprised that that would be in a paper.
	It doesn't make sense to me.
	It just doesn't make sense.
	Colin?
	I can send to you the call number of the book that was published sometime in the future.
	I'm writing papers right now.
	I can have it to you by Friday if you want.
	That would be great.
	I'm always interested in seeing what kind of information is out there.
	I think one of the problems is that one of the big problems that happens in any field
	but as energy becomes more and more of a critical topic and such, you get all this, just like
	what's happening with the global warming thing, you have all these competing and contrasting
	...
	The most viable type of fuel you mean?
	I think they really tend to confuse the picture and they kind of make the regular person feel
	like what can I do or is this guy true or is this guy real, is that right or not.
	But I can't go with the eight years.
	But what was the second part of the question?
	I'm forgetting that now.
	The second part of the question I was just asking what do you see as the most viable
	part of fuel for the future?
	The most viable type of fuel you mean?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Alright.
	Mark?
	I think we're going to be stuck with fossil fuels for a while now.
	There are a variety of things.
	You've got zero-point energy, as we talked about before.
	Hydrogen is a carrier.
	Electricity is a carrier.
	It's not a producer of energy.
	I personally, through the research that I have done, see nothing that's going to be commercially applicable within, you know, within a decade or two.
	I mean, these things take a long time to ramp them up and get them going.
	You just mentioned zero-point energy.
	Yeah.
	Fascinating.
	What do you know about that?
	Well, you know, it is.
	It's a very interesting thing, and it actually does exist.
	It's just a state of low energy that's in the vacuum.
	They believe it's just produced by the fluctuations of the electromagnetic and gravitational force
	fields that's throughout the universe.
	That energy does exist.
	It's a true thing.
	Now, how do you tap it?
	There are people working on different things of that.
	I know a guy I know in Bodega Bay, Ken Shoulders, he got the first patent, actually, that the
	U.S. Patent and Trade Office gave him that apparently does get energy out of the ZPE.
	Out of the Zero Point Energy.
	He has this thing called High Density Charge Clusters.
	He uses a very low power source.
	He gets these electrons to cluster even against the repelling force.
	Then he uses them.
	He blasts them into these various materials.
	And the very interesting thing about it is he uses very little input power.
	He uses a cathode.
	He blows these things.
	He shoots them at these aluminum foils and different kinds of metallic foils.
	And it gives it, and he uses these very amazing photographs that he uses with these, you know, very close-up photographs, and you can see the melting of the material, the sloshing, the propelling of this liquid material, and it would look like it would need tens, you know, thousands and thousands of degrees centigrade to make this happen, yet there is no sense of any conventional heat.
	He uses wax and such, and it doesn't even melt.
	So and and he actually got a patent for that from the and but see and I know Ken I've met him many times He's been to my he was at my house just about three months ago, and he doesn't know what he's got He's been working on this thing for 18 years very straight shooter smart guy his problem is Using these electron clusters like this Tends to it and he had an idea of trying to use it to evaporate water to make a steam generator and a variety of ideas and But the delicate nature of the apparatus...
	is constantly eroded and destroyed by the violence of the actual result.
	I see.
	And that's been very frustrating to him.
	But... So the machine essentially destroys itself.
	Yes.
	I see, okay.
	Right.
	Alright, let me stop you there.
	If it does that, then, you know, we're not yet going anywhere.
	No, but it doesn't mean you just walk away from it, Art.
	No, perhaps not.
	I forgot to follow up.
	You said there was this guy from Russia.
	Yes, the man from Russia.
	Yeah.
	I may not be saying his name correctly, Eugene Potkornov, but really what he did, he was working in Norway and he took these special kinds of ceramic disks, he chilled them to near absolute zero, stacked them, rotated them, I mean, how are they going to figure all this out?
	And apparently measured reduced gravity, force of gravity, above this rotating disk.
	Yeah, that's right.
	Gas is already on top of it.
	I mean, not that they put out a $750,000 job for a commercial company in the United States.
	They're making them now.
	They're looking at this and trying to figure out what's really going on.
	You know, something that's really very exciting is that there's a small group in the DOE, the Department of Energy, and they are trying to put forward Yes.
	new programs where they are going to make a national database and go out and
	get all of these disparate results of phenomena, look at what's most close,
	look at what looks like makes sense, and start looking at it instead of just
	always crossing your fingers and walking away like it's some kind of pariah.
	And that's kind of an interesting thing.
	They haven't been funded, of course, but we'll see what happens in that direction.
	Alright.
	Wildcard Line, you're on the air with Mark McLaughlin.
	Hello.
	Yeah, hi.
	I'm calling from New York.
	Did you ever hear of something called the Peterson Power Cell?
	Yeah.
	A couple of years ago, it's something that's supposed to put electricity in and more of
	it comes out the other end.
	Yeah, it uses these certain kinds of beads.
	I mean, it was on Good Morning America and such.
	Right.
	They're apparently, I don't know what's going on with that.
	They kind of come up and disappear and come up and disappear.
	So I have that.
	That's still on the back shelf.
	Uh, he, there's something going on, but I wonder, I wonder why.
	I mean, I saw that good morning America, the actual show, not only did it generate power, but it did it from nuclear waste.
	It converted nuclear waste into a usable power.
	It was amazing, amazing, amazing.
	And, uh, you know, they, they have this big demonstration.
	Everybody went, Oh my God.
	And I haven't seen a word about it since.
	No, he's still around.
	I think they have a website.
	I think I have covered them in our book.
	It looks like there's got to be a hole in that or somebody will be all over it.
	That's right.
	I agree with you.
	I tend to say alleged or appears to be or something.
	And once again, we might get back to those bad measurements or things like that.
	I mean, he doesn't seem like a scam artist to me.
	And there's a lot of them out there.
	But I don't know why.
	It hasn't gone further than you might have thought.
	But now you can see why so many conspiracy theories develop.
	How could they not?
	Look at the atmosphere.
	I mean, stories like this, they just go away.
	Yeah, but he's not locked up or corralled somewhere.
	He's still around.
	Maybe there's a technical problem.
	I know, but for all we know his frontal lobe is missing now or something.
	Yeah, you're right.
	I wasn't going that far, but you're right.
	These are the Rockies.
	You're on there with Mark McLaughlin.
	Hello.
	Hi.
	I was wondering why we say Neanderthal when it comes to energy.
	I mean, yeah, we need to produce and get the better technologies.
	But I mean, like, I live here in Florida.
	Why don't we try out wind power with the large windmills like they have over in Norway.
	Over in Germany, for heat at night, where it's cold, they have those, I'm sure you've heard of them Mark, where it's like bricks and they've got them in a metal heating container.
	Well, through the night, when the factories are shut down, the straw heats up and then Through the day there's no electric at all except for the factories.
	I'll tell you, he's been telling me all night, it's because you can get cheaper power from fossil fuels in Florida than you can from any other source.
	Yep.
	That's exactly what it is.
	And it's also because companies, countries like Germany and other countries in Europe are mainly sort of socialistic and they're willing to take taxpayer money and Gosh, money that comes from incredible tax on gasoline that pushes it to four and five dollars a gallon.
	Well, I think they can manhandle the private sector much more there.
	You know what I mean?
	Well, yes, I do.
	We're not all that manageable here.
	You pointed out yourself.
	Four or five dollars?
	Riots.
	And you're absolutely right.
	Riots.
	You bet we'd have riots.
	Yeah, I know.
	Okay.
	West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Mark McLaughlin.
	Hi.
	Hi, this is John calling from Laguna Beach.
	Yes, John.
	I really enjoy the conversation that Mark McLaughlin and you are having on the subject, but I've got a couple of points.
	One is I would hesitate to suggest that you purchase a gasoline hybrid or gasoline electric hybrid since there's probably in the background, I think GM is showing that regarding the hydrogen car. You know that there are
	hydrogen conversion kits that are available commercially. As a matter of fact, there is a
	high school in Arizona that has a class project conversion of a gas car to a hydrogen car.
	I don't know where they get their hydrogen, but that's the problem.
	That's the economics and kind of going back to hydrocarbon sources for the hydrogen.
	I understand from a prior guest on the Coast to Coast program over the weekend that was with one of the other people that handled the weekend program.
	Right.
	Roy McAllister, who is the president of the AHA, the American Hydrogen Association, was there and very knowledgeable about the entire process.
	One of the callers called in and said, oh, I want to do this.
	I'm an engineer.
	I've got all kinds of facilities.
	I want to be able to convert my house to generate electricity, since he was talking about a device that Would be about the size of a refrigerator.
	Right.
	Or smaller.
	Power a whole house, yes.
	Yeah, do the whole house.
	Right.
	From water.
	Mm-hmm.
	From water?
	Yeah, regular water.
	And also, he mentioned that, well, question, you can use up all the water?
	Well, it doesn't really take that much water to go through the process.
	Plus, salt water can be used just as easily.
	So you've got a whole ocean of water.
	Yeah, it's the conversion process that's at question here.
	Right, Mark?
	Well, also the fact is, what he's using to create that hydrogen in his house is the natural gas or the electricity coming from the centralized fossil fuel power plant.
	One way or the other, it always backs up to the fossil fuels.
	That's right.
	I mean, I don't want to be the guy who put the big kibosh in the opinion level on this hydrogen technology.
	I mean, it works.
	We know it works and everything, but everybody always seems to fall short.
	They look at the good news and say, you know what?
	I don't have to worry.
	I'm going to sit back.
	Everything's going to be taken care of.
	You know, it's a technological optimist, but, you know, it's like never even be concerned.
	And I'm not saying, oh, wring your hands and lament in the night, but I think it's important to understand the whole picture.
	And not just look at the little plugs of good news and such.
	Okay.
	First time calling a line, you're on the air with Mark McLaughlin.
	Hi.
	Hi, I'm Chris, and I'm in Virginia.
	I would just like to go back to talking about biomass.
	First, I would like to apologize.
	I didn't hear the first half an hour of the show, and if you guys have covered this already, I don't want to... We didn't talk about biomass.
	Yeah, go ahead.
	Okay, specifically about hemp as fuel, because it's very easy to sow Um, it burns efficiently.
	Um, as a matter of fact, there's a car right now called the hemp car that they have actually made a slight modification to a diesel engine where they can burn hemp as biomass.
	You know, you can, you can get four times as much fuel from hemp as you can from corn turning it into biomass.
	Uh, you know, without going back to the whole, you know, uh, 1938, you know, uh, uh, uh, Reefer Madness?
	Yeah, not necessarily Reefer Madness, but yeah, you know, the whole marijuana tax act.
	That's what it is.
	I think it was the Wall Street Journal published an article that said that if we simply legalized hemp and utilized it for, you know, clothing and energy sources, as this gentleman is talking about, even marijuana for people to smoke taxed at all, it would be a half trillion dollars in immediate tax That's very, very serious amount of money.
	That's right, that is serious money.
	But, we have this big thing about hemp, right?
	Yeah, I know.
	You know, it's funny, we get more questions, we're starting to get a lot of questions about hemp and such and I haven't looked into its specific qualities as far as using it as a biofuel.
	My general feelings about and the way that it's, the research and the way it's been presented to me is Agricultural crops, whether you're going to get ethanol from corn or whatever, are kind of like an end loser.
	When you think about, you've got to take large amounts of land to grow crops.
	That's going to take fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides.
	They're all fossil fuel derived.
	You need the mechanized equipment and of course you can use the product of the field if that's how you're going to do it.
	And I actually know a gentleman in Australia who's working in this too.
	Um, and, but, the, all the impact on the land, the, uh, the variety of things, it seems that I'm, the way it seems to me is that the end result of using an agricultural product on the scale of replacing conventional oil... Very quickly, we're at a break.
	Yeah, it's, it doesn't seem to work on that, on that level, on that size, that scale.
	That's interesting.
	Alright, I've never heard that said before, so...
	And there are problems, it seems like, no matter what you use and what you do and what idea you come up with, unless it's absolutely free.
	Ain't it the truth?
	Ain't it the truth?
	And the truth is it don't come cheap either.
	I'll make you, you want to, know that you don't, don't come easy.
	You don't have to shout.
	New South Radio 630 WPRO Providence Southern New England depends on WPRO's exclusive after
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	Brisk and colder overnight with a few flurries.
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	With WPRO's exclusive after weather, I'm Reggie Lux.
	And News Talk Radio 630, WPRO.
	General Tommy Franks, in charge of the military operation in Afghanistan, says there's no longer any need for carpet bombing, but he says daily flights will continue and if terrorist holdouts are spotted, they'll be hit.
	The Washington Post reporting that the Justice Department is looking to arrest some 6,000 Middle Eastern men in this country who have ignored deportation orders.
	The crash of a private plane into a skyscraper in Tampa, Florida is prompting the federal government to rethink air security regulations.
	Details from ABC's Bill Greenwood.
	There are roughly 200,000 general aviation aircraft in the United States, operating from 18,000 airports.
	And many of them have virtually no security.
	Since September 11th, the Federal Aviation Administration has done nothing to make it more difficult to steal or misuse a private aircraft.
	However, since the Tampa incident, that's about to change.
	And the FAA has been talking with industry leaders on possible security improvements.
	Bill Greenwood, ABC News, Washington.
	I'm Shiri Preston.
	WPRO and Channel 12 News bring you a reality check.
	Weekday afternoons at 5.40.
	WPRO's Dan York joins Channel 12 anchors Pat Masters and Walt Biotto to talk about the hot issues of the day.
	There's a lot of stuff hanging around the house.
	Santa Claus, very good to the kids, right?
	And there's stuff.
	Piled upon stuff.
	Parents don't say no enough.
	Right.
	We're not that good at it.
	Just take a look around the tree and see how much stuff.
	Reality check.
	Afternoons at 540 on Channel 12 and WPRO.
	The only thing better than courtside seats is courtside seats with me.
	Bolger's Cafe Latte.
	I'm the finger-dunkin' mug in your face.
	Call it a goddang baby.
	And I always hit for three points.
	Rich, creamy, and frothy.
	I am the carpet at three peaks.
	Three, two, one, de-shoot!
	What'd I score?
	Folgers Cafe Latte.
	The big-headed coffee.
	I know it's basketball and all, but, uh, you got a little dribble on your lip, cuz.
	New windows?
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	Your energy bills are high, and your home isn't comfortable when your windows are drafty and noisy.
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	Just call 1-800-225-5991 for a free in-home estimate.
	Not available in all areas.
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	Service and materials provided by a Sears authorized contractor.
	License numbers available on request.
	Call Sears now at 1-800-225-5991.
	That's 1-800-225-5991.
	I'm a Gold Bond guy.
	Ordinary products don't work for me, but Gold Bond's medicated to work as hard as I do.
	Drill press operator Michael Harding of Charlotte, North Carolina, talks about Gold Bond medicated body powder.
	Gold Bond powder keeps me cool, dry, and itch-free.
	I'm a Gold Bond's mom.
	For her family, Allison Lee from Atlanta, Georgia, uses Gold Bond medicated anti-itch cream.
	Gold Bond Anti-Itch Cream works for fast release of skin irritations, rashes and bug bites.
	Gold Bond.
	Medicated to work as hard as you do.
	Use only as directed.
	This is Coast to Coast with Art Bell.
	Afternoons at 3.
	It's the Dan York Show on WPRO.
	Give him a week and you'll be hooked.
	on AM 630 WPRO.
	This is a test.
	East of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
	1-800-825-5033.
	First time callers may reach out at 1-775-727-1222 or use the wildcard line at 1-775-727-1222.
	To recharge on the toll-free international line, call your AT&T operator and have them dial 800-893-0903.
	This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell on the Premier Radio Networks.
	It sure is.
	We're talking with Mark McLaughlin about energy.
	It's a very, very interesting conversation if you would like to get in on it.
	Those were the numbers, and the phone is the way you do it.
	It doesn't seem to me that any conversation like this could be complete without some discussion of nuclear energy.
	The Russians, of course, have Chernobyl, which More or less melted down is now in a big casket thing that they're afraid is going to explode and poison, you know, a good portion of the world there again.
	We have Three Mile Island and some other interesting incidents that have occurred with nuclear power.
	It is sort of stalled in this country.
	The Europeans are abandoning nuclear power for wind power and other Other sources.
	And then, of course, there's the problem of the fuel rods, which they're trying to put in my backyard in Yucca Mountain, where we're only going to have to be custodians of it for a few hundred thousand years.
	So, we haven't really touched on nuclear power.
	What's your take, Mark, on nuclear power?
	The big picture is nuclear power is uneconomical, which should make you feel good, because we're talking about money.
	If you've taken into consideration the construction of the plant, uh...
	the operation of the plan though not that big of a deal but then you get into
	the decommissioning of the plant and the long-term storage of high radioactive waste
	and it's a dead end fact is
	the best part about it is that it doesn't emit greenhouse gases
	uh... but it can emit a lot of other things you know uh...
	there's another little side to that though, you were talking about the rods
	they're working on these pebble beads now which is a little bit better
	and gas as opposed to water they've got a thing they're building in south africa
	But the main crux of it will come out to if they can do that transmutation of nuclear waste like they think they might be able to, they can stabilize it and possibly generate power again from it.
	Well, when nuclear plants do emit gases, they're far worse in the immediate than greenhouse by a long time.
	Absolutely.
	All right, back to the phones.
	Here we go.
	First time caller on the line.
	You're on the air with Mark McLaughlin.
	Hi.
	Hello, Art.
	Yes, sir.
	Hi.
	Where are you?
	Uh, this is Art from... I'm down here sitting in Houston waiting on a load.
	I wanted to just make a comment to you and Mark if I could.
	You could.
	Uh, I heard about your Geo Metro going out.
	Oh, yeah.
	Stopped producing them.
	Yep.
	I bought a Chevy Sprint Turbo back in 86.
	It made them for two years and stopped producing them.
	Of course, they were made by Suzuki.
	Right.
	I used to get 57 miles per gallon to use it.
	I know.
	And I still got it, getting 46 now, but... Hey, listen, the Metro XF-5, first one I had, got about 60 to the gallon.
	Did it really?
	Oh, God, it was amazing.
	Wow.
	You throw that turbo on there, and it runs like a souped-up 6.
	Uh-huh.
	I know, but a lot of people will not ride in them.
	You know, I get it all the time.
	Why do you ride around in that?
	Is it not safe?
	Yes, it has been very safe, as a matter of fact.
	Real safe.
	Anyway, sir, do you have a question for us?
	Well, I'm just kind of confused on some of the hydrogen.
	It shouldn't be that... I don't see why it would be that hard to produce myself.
	I just don't understand.
	Okay.
	Can you help him understand, Mark?
	Why is hydrogen going to cause fossil fuel to produce?
	Well, back to the two main principles.
	Either you strip the hydrogen from a hydrocarbon, which is a fossil fuel.
	We know the ramifications there.
	Or you're going to use another power source to create the hydrogen, which is just an energy carrier.
	And until you can replace that power source with something other than fossil fuel, it Not a good, it just doesn't seem to make sense yet.
	It seems cleaner for the end user, but for the environment as a whole.
	That's right.
	Alright, I'm with you.
	Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Mark McLaughlin.
	Hello.
	Good morning, Art.
	Good morning, sir.
	This is Vince Cullen from Denver listening on KHLW.
	In Denver, of course.
	There.
	And my question falls under the category of whatever happened to.
	Okay.
	I remember I heard a, I actually saw a TV report on ABC News Where they interviewed a French engineer who had perfected a car that ran on compressed air.
	He spoke English.
	They interviewed him.
	They showed him driving around in the park.
	Oh, yeah.
	Okay, good.
	I'm not familiar with this.
	You're not?
	There was this guy, I got a million emails about it, who claimed to have invented a car that ran on compressed air.
	Well, they showed him driving in it.
	Oh, sure.
	I'm sure he was.
	He claimed that on a billet.
	Sir, how did he compress the air?
	Well, just like you'd go up to a filling station and, like... Yeah, I know, but I mean, where did the energy come from to compress the air?
	Well, obviously, from whatever power source powered the gas station, I guess.
	In other words, fossil fuels.
	Electricity or natural gas or something.
	Okay.
	Well, okay, uh... It's funny how all roads lead to Rome, don't they?
	All roads lead to... Well, no, actually, they lead to Saudi Arabia.
	Well, yeah, there you go.
	There you go.
	So I'm not, uh, you know, I'm sure that that did run, but it required, you know, a power source to compress the air.
	But again, maybe it's a good idea.
	I haven't heard any more about it.
	When was that?
	East of the... I don't know.
	It was fairly recently.
	East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Mark McLaughlin.
	Hello.
	Hello.
	Am I on?
	Probably, yes, you are.
	Okay, I have been appalled at the answers you've been getting.
	You've been asking all the right questions and getting misinformation.
	Like what?
	I'm a bonafide energy expert and I could answer every one of those questions.
	Now, let's start with a hybrid engine.
	Okay.
	The reason it gets good fuel energy is you've got a 15 horsepower engine.
	It takes 8 horsepower to drive a car at 60 miles an hour on a straight and level road.
	If you want to accelerate from 0 to 60 in 10 seconds, it might take 100 horsepower.
	Right.
	So how do you harness this?
	Well, you let this 15 horsepower engine run continuously all the time, putting out 15 horsepower.
	Right.
	A lot of the time, you're only using half that, so you're charging the batteries.
	Right.
	If you suddenly need 100 horsepower, that comes out of the battery.
	I have electric motors, you run the battery down a little bit, but you've stored a lot
	of energy there.
	And then you keep adding to that.
	Yeah, so you have not really yet told us anything that we, we discussed the hybrid car and quite
	obviously it seems like a pretty viable option.
	I think the answer that your reporter gave you was that it has a big engine to get the
	acceleration and runs on electricity.
	That's exactly backwards.
	Okay, but that is, it does have a gas engine to...
	It does and it gets 80 miles an hour, 80 miles per gallon because it's a very small gasoline
	Okay, but again, I don't think you, I'm sorry sir, you didn't tell us anything that we didn't discuss.
	Yeah, that's exactly the way it was laid out.
	Now, any engine that's going to take you zero to 0 to 60 in 5 seconds or something, or 6 seconds, is going to take a hell of a lot of horsepower, and during that time, you're probably going to be utilizing the piston engine, you know, the good old gas engine, to do it.
	Right, Mark?
	That's how I understand it, yes, sir.
	And so, to perform as today's cars advertise, everybody loves them to perform, 0 to 60 and whatever, it is, you know, that's your trip, and it's going to Still gonna use gasoline, folks.
	West of the Rockies or on the air?
	I'll try to be quick, but I have a question and a comment.
	First of all, do you know in this country you use 5% more power each year?
	So maybe solar power isn't such a bad idea anyways.
	And maybe, ever heard of salt water power?
	Salt water power?
	Well, me and my friends in high school, we tried making saltwater power because saltwater is acidic.
	So we just got two dissimilar metals and we got actually a little bit of energy from it.
	Oh, you get a little bit, oh I see, from dissimilar metals.
	Yes, you do get a little bit of energy from it.
	I think that's the operative word.
	Yeah, a little bit.
	I thought the interesting question though was about Ocean power.
	Ocean thermal or ocean current?
	Ocean current.
	Well, that's something they're looking at for sure.
	Ocean thermal is very isolated areas, certain areas.
	You know, a lot of these applications, and the one thing I do want to say, Art, is like I, and I think you know this, and I just want everybody to know this.
	I mean, I support solar power.
	I support wind power.
	I just don't think any particular thing, and even with these agricultural biofuels, I don't want to push everybody down and squish them and say none of this works, but none of these are the panacea that will replace the vast consumption of fossil fuels that we're talking about.
	And I think it's going to be a whole variety of energy sources that we're going to be using to help us cut back is the very beginning.
	Efficiency and conservation is really kind of the first steps.
	I think there are quite a few viable things, and they all should be slowly done and slowly implemented.
	But as you said, money is an issue, and like you said again, the average guy can't really afford to go out and set his whole house up so he can unplug from the grid.
	No.
	No, he can't.
	And if he could, he's still not doing something that's necessarily profitable for him.
	Right.
	That's exactly right.
	That's honest, that's a key.
	First Time Caller line, you're on the air with Mark McLaughlin.
	Hello.
	Hi.
	Wow.
	I've been dialing for so long.
	Well, here you are.
	Well, I have a couple of things to say.
	I've just been listening to your dialogue, and I'm feeling kind of some sympathy for this guy, Mark, because he seems to sometimes can't get his rebuttals in order quick enough for you, Art.
	And you were talking about California being paying because they're clean.
	Do you remember that?
	Yes.
	I believe I said that California acting in probably what a lot of Californians consider to be an environmentally friendly way have paid for it with what's happened to them now.
	Yes.
	Because they didn't build the plants.
	Yes.
	But it's not actually environmentally sound because like your guests said, they're drawing this from non-environmentally found sources out of the state actually
	so they're just sort of well of course that's true yeah what do you call that
	when you uh not in my backyard well some people call it exploit some people some
	people call it stupid they do yeah they call it stupid in other words
	California says oh we're not gonna do that here not in our backyard but they buy it
	from people who are doing it in their backyard
	So the net effect is the same.
	It's just stupid for California because they have a crisis and end up with 300% more of an electric bill than they had.
	Right?
	I agree.
	Okay.
	Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Mark McLaughlin.
	Hello.
	Hi, Art.
	Yes, sir.
	This is Brian of Prompt.
	My main gripe is with jet aircraft.
	I work in Las Vegas.
	I drive a taxi.
	My main gripe is with jet aircraft.
	I work in Las Vegas.
	I drive a taxi.
	We depend on airplanes.
	I would say that the aircraft landing at Bacari International Airport far outweighs the exhaust
	produced by vehicles, particularly cars.
	Well, I mean, that's a good point.
	Airplanes really do use a lot of that jet fuel.
	Yeah, they do.
	And they're lined up all day and all night long.
	They're landing at... And they're full of people, aren't they?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, they're full of people.
	We depend on that.
	But can we please clean up the aircraft before you pick on the cars?
	My car virtually doesn't... It doesn't burn anything.
	It doesn't?
	I want to see your car.
	It blew four parts per million hydrocarbons.
	You know, oh my God.
	But you have to multiply them by hundreds of thousands.
	You know, hundreds of thousands of vehicles.
	Yeah, well there's other contributing factors.
	Other than strictly automobiles.
	Okay.
	Well, he's making a very good point, Mark.
	He's right.
	I mean, it's not just cars.
	No, it's not.
	It's other fossil fuel burners.
	Look at Jets.
	My God, he's right.
	Look at them lined up out there.
	Oh, yeah.
	I wasn't trying just to pick on car owners.
	I mean, it wasn't about that.
	It's like any engine or any device or any apparatus that uses a hydrocarbon fuel contributes to the problem.
	And once again, Art, it's coming back to you.
	So are we going to go into... Well, yeah, it'd be great to have an aircraft that would be extremely or highly fuel-efficient.
	And don't you think the airliner would like to have that, too, if they didn't have to pay the fuel costs?
	You bet.
	I don't know if that technology is readily available.
	I mean, I certainly don't see them flying on a fuel cell that generates electricity.
	Well, if it was available, you can darn well bet they'd be using it because that's a big part of their operating costs.
	Sure.
	Because I agree with the caller.
	I mean, I understand and I'm not trying to pick on any particular sector.
	It's a very large and it's a very intricate and complex situation.
	All right.
	Well, to the Rockies, you are on the air now with Mark McLaughlin and Art Bell.
	Good morning.
	I can... Oh, there you are.
	Yeah.
	Just sent you an email outlining what I had intended to say.
	It's basically that the real cause of global warming has nothing to do with carbon dioxide.
	Well, that may or may not be.
	Well, I... You don't honestly, for one second, no matter what you believe about global warming, you don't think putting all of this carbon dioxide into the air is a good idea, do you?
	It is not a good idea, no.
	It's not a good idea.
	But the carbon dioxide from human sources is such a puny part of the total carbon dioxide that's going eventually into the water.
	The real problem is one of getting the coral reefs back to good health.
	Because they are the ones that are tying up the carbon dioxide that winds up in the water.
	Okay.
	Which is nearly all of it.
	All right.
	I appreciate it.
	And I'm sure you're right about the coral reefs which are dying, by the way.
	They're just indicative of the environmental problem.
	The coral reefs are dying at a frightening rate.
	Yeah.
	A frightening rate.
	So, you know, that argument I know.
	You hear it from the political right all the time.
	What man is doing is nothing.
	They say nothing!
	And in some ways, they're right.
	But it doesn't matter.
	Is putting all this stuff into the atmosphere a good idea?
	Anybody in their gut knows damn well it isn't.
	Be damned the argument about how much effect we're having on the planet by doing this.
	Is it a good idea?
	No.
	Are we going to run out of it?
	Yes.
	Basics.
	Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Mark McLaughlin.
	Hello.
	Yes, good show.
	Say, hydrogen is viable.
	Uh, be honest about it.
	First of all, you treated that engineer who called in rather crudely.
	He was a scientist.
	You should have heard him out.
	He had more to say.
	I'm sure he did, and I'm sure you do too, but you're gonna have to try to be quick about it.
	Okay.
	Uh, if you use wind power and solar power...
	Well then you weren't listening because that's exactly what Mark McLaughlin said about what, Mark, an hour and a half ago?
	Yeah, we did talk about that, yes.
	Yes.
	I agree with him then.
	Understand, but it's still going to take, and this is what we're covering, that he apparently didn't listen to very carefully, a long period of time for it to become financially viable to do and to transfer our society, which is now absolutely dependent on fossil fuels and will be for our lifetimes.
	Yes, I agree with you.
	I mean, this is something people have to understand.
	Ease to the Rockies, you're on the air.
	Hello.
	You were talking about numbers a little bit ago.
	The one time that you mentioned numbers, it sounded like that it might be less time than
	you talk about the rest of the program.
	I mean, you said $10,000 would be about what the solar energy would cost, but that ought
	to be payable within eight years, I would imagine.
	I'm sorry, who said that?
	Well, I did.
	That's a subsidized program in the Sacramento Municipal Utility District.
	The key word, sir, is subsidized.
	In other words, they give you half of what you have.
	Half of $5,000.
	$5,000 was half.
	$5,000 was half and the $10,000 if you pay the whole thing yourself without the subsidy
	is $10,000.
	You could pay that off in eight years.
	Sure.
	You could pay it off at any level.
	It doesn't make you, you're not self-sufficient at that level either.
	It's going to be helpful.
	How close to self-sufficient?
	Well, let me just give you one good thing.
	You know, everybody always says, oh geez, when the sun goes down, the solar power's over.
	You think about it.
	In the West, specifically, but also in the East too, the greatest electricity use, it's peak power usage, summertime afternoons, when the air conditioners are just Yeah.
	their doors off and that's when the solar panels are working the best. People
	though don't understand or even begin to understand how much power it actually
	takes to run a home with air conditioning for example and all the
	appliances they just yeah they just don't have a clue until you start trying
	to actually do it you don't know. You've learned. Oh I've learned.
	You've learned first-hand.
	Listen, thanks.
	It's been an absolutely, totally stimulating program.
	Oh, thanks, Mark.
	And I really appreciate your being here.
	We'll have you back again, alright?
	I'm going to send you a complimentary copy of our new book because... And the name of your book?
	The book is called Turning the Corner, Energy Solutions for the 21st Century.
	And I bet you can get it on Amazon.com, right?
	Yes, you can.

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