We’ve been in no hurry to update this site since last Friday’s tasty carbon-offset confectionary post. Why should we? Our sitemeter counter tells us we’ve had more visits since then than during any four-day period in the past three months. Looks like candy’s the secret ingredient to attracting visitors, so we’re showing another of the Bloomsberry candy bar wrappers today.But back to business. In the wake of all the seriously depressing assessments of Hawaii’s tourism and business prospects in a new era of high-priced oil, jet fuel and air fares, the powers that be are cranking out the “feel-good” stories to take our minds off the bad news:
• Magazine ranks Honolulu tops in U.S. for quality of life
• Hawaii a top spot for satisfying vacations
• Hawaii visitor accommodations up in 2007
We guess the “visitor accommodation” count is meaningful to someone somewhere, but we can’t get excited about it –- not with April arrivals down 15 percent compared to a year earlier.
Pat Takahashi’s Take
We noted last week The Huffington Post has a new “Green” section, and we’re happy to see that Hawaii’s own Patrick Takahashi is a regular contributor. Whatever Pat writes is worth reading, so take a look at his Ethanol Vs. Methanol piece at the Post today and his provocative (if baffling) assertions:
“Methanol is the only biofuel capable of being directly fed to a fuel cell.” And, “One gallon of methanol has more hydrogen than one gallon of liquid hydrogen.” These statements may be obvious to some, but as with most of Pat’s writing, follow-up study is recommended. (Pat also mentions OTEC today, and that's an extra-good reason to check it out.)
Back to carbon-offset chocolate. If “candy is dandy, but liquor is quicker,” we’re hoping a distiller somewhere has found a way to fight climate change with scotch.
3 comments:
Most of those hits were your regulars checking for the latest installment. What does Ted Liu, Director of DEBDT, have to say about Hawaii's tourism and buisness prospects in the face of his Chief Technology Officer Maurice Kaya declaration that there is an energy "crisis"? And what actions does DEBDT propose that might mitigate the "crisis"?
Good points as usual from you, prh. I should have linked to the West Hawaii Today article with Maurice's assessment and will once I find it. As noted in a post here back in April or so, there's a "whistling past the graveyard" quality to the public statements by government and tourism industry officials these days. You can't pick up a newspaper without reading about some new charge some airline is throwing at customers. We're isolated now and risk becoming even more cut off from our revenue customers as this crisis worsens.
The article in question was published in the WHT on June 7th. There was also the inference that we're ok here in Hawaii because we have the ability to transport goods via sea. Anybody want to invest in a fleet of clipper ships?
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