Which leads to the obvious conclusion, this scheme is a diversion designed to stall plugin hybrids (chraged by a renewable smart grid)and keep the gas guzzling going.  And an excuse to build more nukes.  A two-fer.

My prediction was that nuclear power backers would get together with fuel farming agribizz corps and tar sand and coal to liquid companies to boost the idea of using cogenerated heat from nukes to improve the energy ratio and reduce the GHG problem with these fuels.

Alberta tar sands extractors are talking nuke already, not much from fuel farming or the Montana coal to liquid boosters yet on using nukes.  They are burning coal to power the coal to liquid plant in Montana.

Anytyhing to keep guzzling gas and vrooming the macho vroom.  And keep oil wars and the exxonmob going strong.  That's my take on cO2 to fuel with nukes.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

And as an aside to Dr. X, I see no real conspiracy here - only that the media loves a story about technology, especially ones that appear to solve problems.  They appeal to our national character, no matter how ill-informed.

NYT and others who support this deserve a lot of egg-on-their face, but primarily for shoddy journalism.  Put simply, they didn't check their facts.  I don't see this as having any long-term legs to it, for all the reasons Joe noted because eventually those facts come out.  And the more egg on the sloppy end of the media, the more discipline they'll have next time around.

I agree Sean, none needed.  Just bidness as usual.

Hope it doesn't turn up in Barack's inaugural address though.

We can make.....  clean fuel...from CO..2..  with clean ..nuc..clear power  yes we cAN!  Yow!  hehehey.  We will be missing the duuuhbya..

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Both "Green Freedom" and electric cars are desperate efforts to convince people that they can continue driving. Even electric cars require too many resources especially if you include full life cycle costs of the vehicle and the roads, bridges and parking spaces required for automobiles. Remember, we are in a world of 6 billion people and right now there are only about 800 million automobiles and yet they have caused so much damage.

Again, rail, rapid transit and cycling are the future. The age of the automobile is over. Electric vehicles only delay the inevitable

Joe Romm, there you go again. Using "facts" and "rationale" to show how stupid this great idea is. Shame on you for your utter lack of vitriol and bias.

Great points racc.
  It comes down to the issue of equity. 6 billion people and 1 billion automobiles.  We know that doubling or tripling the number of automobiles is not feasible.  There's a lot of people out there who will never have a car.  We're part of the privileged minority who get the cars.  But taxing one type of car and subsidizing another type is just a big scam.   All cars should be taxed and the money used to subsidize transit and rail.

   Most people in North America drive and don't want to see the writing on the wall.  we shouldn't be supporting subsidizing the privileged.If we don't have the guts to show the world how to be sustainable than let's just give up right now.

First of all, the original post: good work except for this:
We are going to need a vast quantity of
zero-carbon electricity in this country
just to reduce emissions 80 percent in
the electricity sector while supporting
 population growth and increased living
standards.
Joe: we cannot keep growing population and living standards. We've already overgrown sustainable carrying capacity of this planet 23%, I read recently. We can make a little more room with various improvements in technology choice, but we have to put an end to both growth of the population and growth of the GDP. We need to get over this cancerous idolatry of growth, preferrably yesterday. Having already failed to do it yesterday, let's do it today.
Other than that, Joe Romm's post was indeed full of "facts" and "rationality," which apparently were missed by Bill Hannahan, whose post completely ignored the points made in the post. Then he says we can convert everything to nukes, presumably be getting around the imminent end of the uranium supply by using breeder reactors, even more dangerous than conventional reactors. As for the waste, his brilliant idea is to DUMP IT IN THE OCEAN, a suggestion that makes me think, "lock this guy up, he's dangerous." He follows this beauty with the idea that if we turn our whole economy nuclear and dump all the radioactive waste into the oceans (usually thought of as being part of our own planet), we will make the planet "less radioactive in the long run"...which is like proposing to burn all the forests, which in the long run will reduce the threat of forest fire to any creatures that survived.
Posters on Grist tend to be well informed about climate change but make little mention of oil depletion. But there is strong evidence that constrictions on supply are already beginning and will soon accelerate, and will have a huge impact on our lives. For this reason, solutions must take the coming shortage into account, and therefore we simply don't have room to thrash around with bad solutions first and move toward good ones only after exhausting all the alternatives. We need to use the last of the oil to build the windmills and solar devices we need--and the railroads and bicycles we need in the realm of transportation, as racc and charlesjustice so aptly note. If we do continue to use cars, though, we should move to electric ones because they're so much more efficient that solving the problem of where we get the electricity is a better chore than the ones we face in trying to keep the liquid fuel option open.