I don't care where you come in on the political spectrum or what your (no pun intended)burning issue is (environment/climate change, hate depending on countries outside our borders... whatever) -- there are 1,000,001 reasons to limit our dependence on fossil fuels (of all kinds, from all places) and no good reasons I can think of not to. Zero.In the late '70s, I was a college biology major. An inventor-dude came in to our science building demonstrating some kind of a hydrogen fuel cell engine he was building.
He believed that hydrogen would replace every other type of fuel in just a few years. Almost ideal... no polution to speak of ( the main by-product of burning pure hydrogen is water vapor) and... IF you can use renewable resources to make the hydrogen.... the cost to run the thing was almost FREE. Of course that meant needing a bunch of some kind of free energy to add to the system... sunlight, wind, waterfall, whatever you got.... or otherwise you'd need electricity, and lots of it. If you needed electricity, even that was better than what we were doing with gasoline vehicles.
But ...FREE? That sounded great to me and it seemed like everyone else would like it too. So why the hell were we still buring gasoline? I asked him.
Money. Follow the Money son.
He said crude oil had to get above $25/barrel (in 1979 dollars)for his solar electrolosis fuel cell idea to be viable ( $75 in today's dollars). Crude oil was spiking at the time, new federal subsidy money was becoming available for inventors and consumers alike. And there were all kinds of "experts" popping up in alternative fuels, but they were mostly passive solar heating hot water systems, windmills, new types of insulation, etc. Nuts and twigs stuff, not enough impact to replace oil in the economy.
Fast-forward 28 years... I was listening to a Coast-To-Coast AM the other night (http://www.coasttocoast.com/) and Dr. Michio Kaku (proponent of 'string theory'... Google it) was the guest. That night he was talking about a move to a hydrogen economy as a way to displace the use of fossil fuels. The hydrogen fuel cell car being produced by Honda came up for discussion. I didn't realize you could actually purchase a fuel cell vehicle (and technically you still can't yet...but it's only a few months away).
The Honda requires refueling either via one of their very scattered (2-3 prototype stations in Southern CA only ) or home re-fuelling stations, which will be powered by -- electricity, which is produced by.... oil, or coal.
So we're still not "getting it". Honda's system (like most mainstream fuel cell schemes today) is not eliminating fossil fuel... it's just moving it to a different place in the (no pun intended) energy pipeline. There are some savings - maybe 30% overall, from just buring the gasoline straight up, but that's a fly speck compared to what we need to cut the cord on foriegn oil.
Today, hydrogen comes from one of two places, and they both require carbon-based fuels to accomplish. You either need to add massive amounts of electricity to "electrolyse" water - splitting it into its component oxygen and hydrogen gasses - or you have to "reform" (re-form) natural gas or gasoline or some other fossil fuel into hydrogen, leaving you with a bunch of by-products you don't want, that aren't any better than the by-products from burning fossil fuels.
But what about this idea... let's take the half-a-trillion bucks we're going to dump into the middle ease over the next few years, and build a national system of solar-powered electrolosis facilities that can produce us an endless supply of hydrogen from seawater (or any water). We'll also need a distribution system of course, but that should be a piece of cake compared to other stuff we've accomplished in this country.
Hydrogen is the perfect fuel. It can be made from water. The by-product is Oxygen. It leaves behind only water (mostly) when it's burned. It could actually be produced at the point of use for many purposes. Like a mini-fuel cell system to power your laptop, re-fueled by a pod you sit in the window.
Honestly folks - build a solar-hydrogen economy and kiss the nut cases in the middle east good-bye. Kiss the massive pollution from China and other "developing" countries good-bye.
I don't know about plastic and all the other crap we make out of oil. I'm sure there are other ways to do all of that as well. And even if we needed some oil to make some stuff -- as long as we're not blowing through every drop of it we can find, we'd be better off than we are now.
WE'RE AMERICANS FOR CRISSAKE. THERE ISN'T ONE DAMNED THING WE CAN'T PULL OFF WHEN WE NEED TO. WELL - WE NEED TO. THIS IS SERIOUS.
We ALREADY KNOW how to do it. We've known how for at least 30 years (that's how long I've known anyway). Is ANYONE out there ready to stand up and get this done ?
