NYTimes ♥ GM

The New York Times ran an article today about GM's enormous fuel-cell behemoth, a hydrogen-powered SUV.

Like other fuel-cell cars, the Equinox generates electricity from a reaction between hydrogen and oxygen, with no smog-forming emissions or greenhouse gases.

Of course, they don't mention where the hydrogen comes from: fossil fuels, notably natural gas, which is burned:

CH₄ + O₂ -> CO₂ + 2H₂

That means that carbon dioxide, CO₂, a greenhouse gas, is emitted to produce the fuel. (The other common source is coal, which is much worse.) The car doesn't emit it – that's taken care of already. And, as a matter of fact, the somewhat inefficient intermediate step of going to hydrogen means that this car burns 30% more fuel than a vehicle that runs directly on natural gas. But you won't see that anywhere in the article, since the Times is too busy making mouth love to a major advertiser.

Granted, hydrogen could be produced through solar or wind power. Someday, maybe, when and if government decides to subsidize that instead of petroleum extraction. It just isn't currently. But to read the Times, you'd think these things were powered by environmentally beneficial fairy sparkles.

Freebird

Today Statistics Canada released new census reports, and the Globe and Mail published a set of interviews with immigrants. One recent refugee from Myanmar living in Newfoundland had this to say:

"I feel very safe. It's freedom," she says. "It's a nice place. I'm not afraid anywhere. I'm not afraid [of] any soldier but Burmese. I still [feel] like a freedom, like a bird fly in the sky."

That and the rest of her story sure puts my bitching about tasers into perspective. What a wonderful place I live, where that's the worst that happens.