You think aliens are laughing at us for using

[Carbon]

fossil fuels?

They are like "what? these people have never heard of hydrogen? the most abundant fuel source in the universe, hahahhahahah. suckers" ::a giant death ray obliterates earth::

frealls tho. I lnow hdrogen powered cars are availabe in limited production.

if not a fully H-powered car, why not an H enriched/assisted hybrid auto mobile?

[Warewolf50]

Hmm seems like costs are still way to high for car makers to switch production to h powered cars, and actually there are some very great designs for h powered engines out there but the oil companys have bought up the patents on them and wont allow them to be made.

[Rather]

Won't matter, we'll have already killed off the planet by the time we really do run out of fuel... the price will just keep going up and up before its all gone. Untill then, courage.

I trust humanity, I promsie...

[PyRo]

Buy a hydrogen powered car. Where are you going to fill up?
Who is going to invest the billions of dollars to build hydrogen filling stations all over the country when their is no customer base?

Simply their is no customer base so no stations will be built but their won't be a customer base until stations are built.

[Jaan]

The picture is simple ... oil is great for fuel since it doesn't take much effort to get it out of the ground compared to the amount of energy you get out of it. Hydrogen, however, likes to bond to things and it takes a lot of energy to break those bonds, at least it does now.

Apart from nuclear power nothing comes close to that energy expended / energy released ration right now. Hydrogen isn't the answer anytime soon.

The scary part is that oil is getting harder to pump out of the ground too. All that "sweet crude" is almost gone. It's taking more and more effort to get the oil that's left out. Also, our economy grows and depends on increasing supplies of oil every year. We may have already reached the point where we've pumped half of all the oil and if that's the case the future doesn't look bright.

[Carbon]

Buy a hydrogen powered car. Where are you going to fill up?
Who is going to invest the billions of dollars to build hydrogen filling stations all over the country when their is no customer base?

Simply their is no customer base so no stations will be built but their won't be a customer base until stations are built.

people though stringing up wires for communications cross country was proposterous when the idea 1st came about. The widespread use of H isnt exactly an overnight sensation. But i belive there will come a time where there are no other options.

Apart from nuclear power nothing comes close to that energy expended / energy released ration right now. Hydrogen isn't the answer anytime soon

But, non-fossilbased fuels seem to be the ultimate solution. Granted all of us, if not many of us, will probably never see alternative fuels become widespread.

[FooTemps]

You know, people have been saying Hydrogen is impractical since it has too high of switch over costs for years. But if companies just freakin agreed to switch at the same time, thus causing competition, the prices would drive down to something more acceptible and there would be a customer base.

[Army]

It has nothing to do with "switchover costs", or even Big Oil "buying all the patents"...which is too funny a conspiricy every time I hear it...

It takes MORE energy to obtain Hydrogen, than what the Hydrogen produces. There are no Hydrogen pockets deep in the earth, waiting to be tapped by wells. There isn't enough in the atmosphere to suck up and store, and water just doesn't want to give it up very easily.

It may be clean burning, and I pray for the day that it is our main source of fuel, but right now there is NO practical, logical, or financially feasible way to use Hydrogen as commercial or industrial fuels.

[teufelhunden]

It has nothing to do with "switchover costs", or even Big Oil "buying all the patents"...which is too funny a conspiricy every time I hear it...

It takes MORE energy to obtain Hydrogen, than what the Hydrogen produces. There are no Hydrogen pockets deep in the earth, waiting to be tapped by wells. There isn't enough in the atmosphere to suck up and store, and water just doesn't want to give it up very easily.

It may be clean burning, and I pray for the day that it is our main source of fuel, but right now there is NO practical, logical, or financially feasible way to use Hydrogen as commercial or industrial fuels.

Get C/D, by any chance?

[lather]

Many CT power plants are being constructed to have the ability to use H2 as a fuel source. H2 power in the near future is a very real possibility.

[bofh]

It takes MORE energy to obtain Hydrogen, than what the Hydrogen produces. There are no Hydrogen pockets deep in the earth, waiting to be tapped by wells. There isn't enough in the atmosphere to suck up and store, and water just doesn't want to give it up very easily.

This is true for anything that we don't dig out of the ground. ie Nuclear power, coal, oil, natural gas.

Even growing wood takes more energy, it's just that trees use sunlight as the energy source without much work on our part.

Making H2 would at best, move the energy generation elsewhere. Think of the H2 as type of battery.

It's still useful, since you normall can't have a nuclear plant in your car, but you can have your H2 made by a Nuclear plant.

Personally, I think that if we applied the same ideas to alcohol, ie gasohol. we could use the existing infrastructure.

[Jaan]

Even growing wood takes more energy, it's just that trees use sunlight as the energy source without much work on our part.

If I recall correctly from science class, all energy on the earth had started out as energy from the sun. It's interesting to think that the gasoline in your car started off as energy absorbed by plants, and the animals that ate them, millions of years ago.

[CoolHand]

This is true for anything that we don't dig out of the ground. ie Nuclear power, coal, oil, natural gas.

Even growing wood takes more energy, it's just that trees use sunlight as the energy source without much work on our part.

Making H2 would at best, move the energy generation elsewhere. Think of the H2 as type of battery.

It's still useful, since you normall can't have a nuclear plant in your car, but you can have your H2 made by a Nuclear plant.

Personally, I think that if we applied the same ideas to alcohol, ie gasohol. we could use the existing infrastructure.

Nuclear power is the only way that H2 will ever be viable. Otherwise, the coal used to fire the power plants that supply the power for electrolysis (the process that we use to break apart water to give H2 and O2 gasses) puts out way more crud than the gas that the cars are now burning. I guess if we totally run out of oil, it would be a stop gap, though not a very good one.

Ethanol isn't really viable either, as it takes something like 24 bushels of corn to get one gallon of ethyl alcohol. To satisfy the needs of the US economy, we would literally have to plant ever single growable acre (and then some) with corn to use for fuel. If we do that, what will we (and a good part of the rest of the world) eat?

Its not a simple question to answer. If it were, we would have fixed the problem long ago.

The fact of the matter is that we will need to invent a totally new form of energy production and storage in order to get away from fossil fuels. Right now there is no useful alternative.

Give it another 25 years, we'll be OK, I have faith in our nation's engineers.

[PyRo]

I fail to see the problem with sticking solar panels on roofs. Sure it wouldn't completly eliminate the need for power plants due to cloudy days, snow, no good way to store the energy, etc. But it would make a serious dent and when you consider the panels would replace roof shingles and save you money on the electric bill they would just about pay for themselves. Combine that with building more nuclear power plants and we could eliminate the use of fossil fuels in power plants.

[bofh]

Ethanol isn't really viable either, as it takes something like 24 bushels of corn to get one gallon of ethyl alcohol. To satisfy the needs of the US economy, we would literally have to plant ever single growable acre (and then some) with corn to use for fuel. If we do that, what will we (and a good part of the rest of the world) eat?

Ethanol from Corn may be marginal. But Ethanol from Sugar Cane is very viable, and currently doing very well in Brazil. They use the waste fibers to burn and run generators that power the distillation process.

Perhaps if we had a GM version of Sugar Cane that grows in Iowa.