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NASA Reports Vast Hydrogen Reserves in Earth's Crust
Garin writes: "The Vancouver Sun is reporting that NASA scientists have discovered vast quantities of hydrogen stored in the Earth's crust while they were trying to explain the presence of living bacteria. Could this be the beginning of the end for our dependence on oil? I hope so."
Sometimes it doesn't pay to hope.
But getting the petro-monkey off our collective backs would be a truly wonderful thing.
If only the oil companies would allow it...
Could this be the beginning of the end for our dependence on oil? I hope so.
Let me get this straight: you think the mere presence of a large quantity of an alternative is going to change things? So what exactly is holding back solar power, wind power, and nuclear power? They're all more freely available than hydrogen. They've all been around for quite a while, and you don't see people giving up oil just yet.
What's your damage, Heather?
Sure, it sounds like a neat idea now.
But wait until we've been burning hydrogen-powered cars for a thousand years, locking up all of the atmospheric oxygen in water. People will be gasping for air at sea level, and the 'dead zone' on mountains (which the oxygen level is too low to support human life) will include cities like Denver and Mexico City.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Professor Freund said that his team had "tantalizing evidence" that as much as 1,000 litres of hydrogen may be trapped in each cubic metre of rock.
When asked what this could possibly mean, Dr. Freud said that it meant that he secretly wishes to engage in sexual relations with his mother.
Thank goodness that they found some Hydrogen in the earth's crust! We were almost running out of dihydrogen monoxide and atmospheric sources!
(Yes, I know it's more costly to derive [H] from other molecules than to recover from the earth and store for immediate use. It's called "vain attempt at humor.")
SlashSigTheorem: Humorous, Political, Critical, Constructive- If you have a
How much hydrogen is there compared to the amount of oil that was underground 100 years ago?
I haven't read the linked article yet, as it appears to be /.-ed. So my comments are made in more than just the usual bit of ignorance.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
Posted anonymously because I don't need the karma.
LONDON -- Scientists have discovered vast quantities of hydrogen gas, widely regarded as the most promising alternative to today's dwindling stocks of fossil fuels, lying beneath the Earth's crust.
The discovery has stunned energy experts, who believe that it could provide virtually limitless supplies of clean fuel for cars, homes and industry.
Governments across the world are urgently seeking ways of switching from conventional energy sources such as coal, gas and nuclear power to cleaner, safer alternatives.
Energy specialists estimate that oil production will start to decline within the next 10 to 15 years, as the economically viable reserves start to run out.
Hydrogen gas has been hailed as the ultimate clean fuel, as it produces only water when burned. Until now, however, moves to switch to a "hydrogen economy" have been dogged by the cost of making the gas. The two most common ways -- extraction from natural gas and sea water -- are expensive and create environmental problems.
Now scientists at the American space agency Nasa have found that the Earth's crust is a vast natural reservoir of hydrogen which has become trapped in ancient rocks.
The team made its discovery while trying to explain how bacteria live many miles below the Earth's surface. Such bugs have no access to sunlight, forcing them to rely on another source of energy for life. Scientists suspected that hydrogen was the source.
According to Professor Friedemann Freund and colleagues at Nasa's Ames Research Center in California, the gas is produced when water molecules trapped inside molten rock break down to release hydrogen.
"In the top 20 kilometres of the Earth's crust, the conditions are right to produce a nearly inexhaustible supply of hydrogen," said Professor Freund.
Studies by the team of common rock types such as granite and olivine have revealed extraordinarily high levels of trapped hydrogen. Professor Freund said that his team had "tantalizing evidence" that as much as 1,000 litres of hydrogen may be trapped in each cubic metre of rock.
Although formidable engineering problems remain to be overcome in abstracting the gas, the sheer volume of the Earth's crust means that such a high concentration would solve the world's energy problems.
"Everyone thinks of gas and oil as the main sources, and it's very difficult to get anyone to take alternatives seriously," said Dr. David Elliott, the professor of technology policy at the Open University in London. "The possibility of vast reserves of hydrogen in the Earth's crust could change that mindset."
The low yield of energy from burning hydrogen compared to gas, however, means that vast quantities of rock would have to be mined.
Professor Freund believes that the extraction and crushing of rock to extract the trapped hydrogen is likely to be prohibitively expensive. The reaction which creates the gas takes place at depths far below those involved in oil extraction, which are typically about two miles down.
The most promising source of the hydrogen may be geological "traps" similar to those now drilled for natural gas. Professor Freund said: "One of these natural hydrogen fields is already known to exist in North America, and extends from Canada to Kansas."
not a chance.. not for a long time at least.
Forcing huge and multiple industries to completely re-tool for a new fuel source will first cause gigantic resistance. The oil companies will scream no way, the car companies will scream no way, and finally the consumer will scream no-way-in-hell!
Why the consumer screaming? simple.. GM,Ford,Toyota,etc... will intentionally hike prices even higher due to the "forced changes" making you $17,000 budget sedan cost $36,000 and the stupid SUV's costs soar even higher..
it wont happen, not in our lifetimes, and possibly not in our grandchildrens lifetimes.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Why wait for hydrogen to relieve the dependence on foreign oil. In the states there are thousands of farmers who cannot afford to eat. Why haven't ethanol powered automobiles showed themselves? Corn products seem like a great way to help improve the economy by helping out the farmers, providing new jobs, and lowering the dependence on petrol? What gives? Why are there no ethanol cars?
NASA scientists have discovered vast quantities of hydrogen
Any extraction of this 'hydrogen' should be persued with caution. Especially if this so called 'hydrogen' is in the dangerous dihydrogen monoxide form!
Consider some of it's effects and the consider the whole cover-up and conspiracy surround dihydrogen monoxide!
Please, for the children's sake, reconsider!
--
Some weasel took the cork out of my lunch.
I can imagine us finding alternatives to our oil based fuels. I can think of many candidates off the top of my head. But it seems like we use an awful lot of oil just for its lubricating properties. What sort of alternatives do we have in that area?
Not being in a field of study relevant to the question, perhaps I am in a position to overlook an obvious answer.
Alan
watch out, the "elemental magick" people are gonna be pissed!
I don't know if I would drive around in a car with a tank full of hydrogen in it. Gives a new meaning to back fire. I can just see someone leveling their garage or house. :-)
I want my rights back. I was actually using them when our government stole them after 9/11.
17,000 isn't necessarily a 'budget' vehicle. There are plenty of brand new vehicles at around 10K. If they jumped up to 15-17K to switch to hydrogen, and the SUVs became unaffordable I don't think I would cry one bit. I walk pretty much everywhere, so smaller cars on the road would make my day. It's not as if most people who own an SUV need them anyways...
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
"Why the consumer screaming? simple.. GM,Ford,Toyota,etc... will intentionally hike prices even higher due to the "forced changes" making you $17,000 budget sedan cost $36,000 and the stupid SUV's costs soar even higher.."
The car companies would never do this. If they started doubling prices other car companies would step in and sell for much cheaper prices.
Also, you should not force industries to use a new fuel source. If its economical then they will do it automatically. If they don't other companies will take there place by providing the fuel source.
Huge hydrogen stores found below Earth's crust Discovery suggests near limitless supply of clean fuel
Robert Matthews Vancouver Sun
Monday, April 15, 2002LONDON -- Scientists have discovered vast quantities of hydrogen gas, widely regarded as the most promising alternative to today's dwindling stocks of fossil fuels, lying beneath the Earth's crust.
The discovery has stunned energy experts, who believe that it could provide virtually limitless supplies of clean fuel for cars, homes and industry.
Governments across the world are urgently seeking ways of switching from conventional energy sources such as coal, gas and nuclear power to cleaner, safer alternatives.Energy specialists estimate that oil production will start to decline within the next 10 to 15 years, as the economically viable reserves start to run out.
Hydrogen gas has been hailed as the ultimate clean fuel, as it produces only water when burned. Until now, however, moves to switch to a "hydrogen economy" have been dogged by the cost of making the gas. The two most common ways -- extraction from natural gas and sea water -- are expensive and create environmental problems.Now scientists at the American space agency Nasa have found that the Earth's crust is a vast natural reservoir of hydrogen which has become trapped in ancient rocks.
The team made its discovery while trying to explain how bacteria live many miles below the Earth's surface. Such bugs have no access to sunlight, forcing them to rely on another source of energy for life. Scientists suspected that hydrogen was the source.According to Professor Friedemann Freund and colleagues at Nasa's Ames Research Center in California, the gas is produced when water molecules trapped inside molten rock break down to release hydrogen.
"In the top 20 kilometres of the Earth's crust, the conditions are right to produce a nearly inexhaustible supply of hydrogen," said Professor Freund.Studies by the team of common rock types such as granite and olivine have revealed extraordinarily high levels of trapped hydrogen. Professor Freund said that his team had "tantalizing evidence" that as much as 1,000 litres of hydrogen may be trapped in each cubic metre of rock.
Although formidable engineering problems remain to be overcome in abstracting the gas, the sheer volume of the Earth's crust means that such a high concentration would solve the world's energy problems."Everyone thinks of gas and oil as the main sources, and it's very difficult to get anyone to take alternatives seriously," said Dr. David Elliott, the professor of technology policy at the Open University in London. "The possibility of vast reserves of hydrogen in the Earth's crust could change that mindset."
The low yield of energy from burning hydrogen compared to gas, however, means that vast quantities of rock would have to be mined.Professor Freund believes that the extraction and crushing of rock to extract the trapped hydrogen is likely to be prohibitively expensive. The reaction which creates the gas takes place at depths far below those involved in oil extraction, which are typically about two miles down.
The most promising source of the hydrogen may be geological "traps" similar to those now drilled for natural gas. Professor Freund said: "One of these natural hydrogen fields is already known to exist in North America, and extends from Canada to Kansas."This hydrogen is molecularly trapped in Granite! 1 cubic meter releases 1000 liters of gas. Even if it did, the energy required to completely mill one cubic meter of granite is most likely more than the energy value of the gas.
2nd problem. Isnt 1000 liters exactly equal to the volume of one cubic meter? So where is all the granite?
I am in Vancouver literally across the street from the Vancouver Sun. Nobody reads it for a reason....
Sure, there are a lot of alternative fuels (hydrogen, alcohol, solar, etc) that could replace oil, but a lot of our dependance on oil has nothing to do with burning fuel. Plastics, synthetic fabrics, and a ton of other products are all made with petroleum products. Take nylon-66; The starting material for that is Hexene. Hexene comes from petroleum. Before we can get rid of our dependance on oil, we have to find alternatives to making synthetic materials.
"Moltar, I have a giant brain that is capable of reducing any complex machine into a simple yes or no answer."
Stop writing when you have no clue.
SUVs are the minivan of the 00's. Do you deny that the minivan has many uses that your little hybrids, Yugo's and scooters can't compete with?
What pisses me off about your (weak) argument is that you don't hear people who drive SUVs whine about other folks choosing to walk.
Heck, I do both. But with your painful liberal worldview, I wouldn't have the choice. Thanks.
Put the Hydrogen components ONLY in SUV's as part of a mandatory 'changeover' process and finally get people not to buy them.
Manufacturers can say, "See, nobody wants to buy them". Before long, they'll be fewer luxury SUV's on the road.
But it doesnt stop there. the Hydrogen fuel will also soar in price to stratospheric prices. due to the "added processing costs" of "retooling the industry"
a change to Hydrogen as an automotive fuel will make 6 dollar a gallon gasoline look cheap... and again the consumer will scream no-way.
A real budget vehicle is $17K. and vehicles that should be bought by most (honda Insight and the other super green cars) cost insane prices ($32K for the insight and more for the GM offering)
The corperations are not interested at all in any change from diry/nasty/super inefficient oil fuel cars... otherwise they'd make the green cars affordable.. and start switching the entire lines of vehicles to green-er offerings.
so again...It will never happen.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
cars still run on petrol, lorries still use oil derivatives - there'd have to be a *lot* of conversion before hydrogen was used and who'd pay for it all?
Video Game cheats, hints a
WOOHOO!!! Now we can end our dependency on that pesky Oxygen!
Could this be the beginning of the end for our dependence on oil?
I can think of many reasons why it won't.
oops forgot. a $10K vehicle is an econo-throwaway box. they are not quality vehicles in any way ..(I own a Kia Sephia... it is a piece of crap in quality... you have to drive it very very carefully to not damage it... My Aztek feels better built and get's the same gas mileage(31.2Mpg on highway.. K&N air filter gave me 1mpg on it's own! ).. and isnt as delicate.)
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
If the H2 is locked up in some other medium other than gas/liquid, the cost associated with extracting it could outweigh the benefit in using it. There's lots of hydrogen all over the planet, but as has been pointed out before, the electrolysis to release the H2 from the H2O takes more energy then is derived from the H2. I hope someone can tell me why this is not the case....the teat that is oil is doing us no favors.
The article claims that Professor Freund said that his team had "tantalizing evidence" that as much as 1,000 litres of hydrogen may be trapped in each cubic metre of rock.
This basically means that any particular volume of rock contains its own volume (at atmospheric pressume, presumably) in hydrogen. Unfortunately, that really isn't that much. It takes much more energy than that to extract and presumably, crush 1 m of rock. The article states this, too.
The article somewhat confusingly states The low yield of energy from burning hydrogen compared to gas, however, means that vast quantities of rock would have to be mined. Hydrogen is in fact the most energy-rich chemical fuel, per unit weight, in existence, the problem is that at the concentrations they're talking about, this won't be solving any problems any time soon, unless they find these things trapped. Not that unlike drilling for natural gas.
What might be a lot more promising is that some scientists have been working on bioengineering algae to produce hydrogen when deprived of sunlight. This basically amounts to a very cheap form of solar energy: grow algae in ponds, then pump them into a bioreactor where they produce hydrogen. Leave them in for a few days, then before they start to die off pump them back out. A lot cheaper than refined silicon covering all that area...
hydrogen gas, widely regarded as the most promising alternative to today's dwindling stocks of fossil fuels, lying beneath the Earth's crust.
Well according to the C02 Coversion Article...
Fossil fuel supplies are plentiful
Ok This may be off topic But these Scientific Geniuses need to make up their minds... Oh The Hyrogen Gas article is from Canada, that explains it those flappy head beady eye bastards!
"All I can tell the "lesser of two evils" folks is that if they keep voting for evil, they'll keep getting evil."-Lp.org
the beginning of the end for our dependence on oil
I guess I'll bite.
The problem with the dependence of oil isn't an alternative means. Someone has pointed/will point out that we have many alternative energy sources. Instead oil as a means of energy is dominant because it is cheap.
The world's energy infrastructure is based on using crude oil. There are oil power plants, oil refineries, gasoline engines, etc. Oil is simply cheaper to use. Companies spend billions of dollars researching new drill sites, lobbying Congress, etc. to maintain oil production because it is cheaper than investing in alternative energy sources; i.e. solar, nuclear.
Now what if this limitless source of Hydrogen comes on-line? What if we start using it instead of drilling for crude oil? At some point, the demand for oil begins to decline. Seeing as there is still a supply of oil (a diminishing supply, but still a supply) the price of oil will go down. Eventually, oil will be cheaper to use, and begin to rise in demand. A happy medium will be reached where crude oil drilling and this new hydrogen production will co-exist.
Admitidly, at this point there will no longer be a complete depedence on oil, but I would argue that we (the globe) are not as dependent as the media makes us out to seem. Alternative energies exist, but simply cost more. If we are willing to bear higher costs, we can reduce our oil dependence today.
As I see it the world's dependence on oil will not diminish with new energy sources. At least not until that source is so incredably inexpensive that it will replace all other energy supplies. Or all crude oil supplies run dry. Perhaps the correct question is not: will hydrogen reduce our oil dependence? But will this new hydrogen supply produce limitless inexpensive energy, so inexpensive that all other means of energy are outpriced?
They have.
You knew there had to be one.
Down in the article...
Although formidable engineering problems remain to be overcome in abstracting the gas...
At least the hydrogen is only trapped physically and not chemically. For a while I was afraid they were going to say you could get all the hydrogen you wanted if you were willing to chemically decompose water.
If you have to pulverize a cubic meter of rock in a vacuum to get 1000 liters of hydrogen at STP, then you still have a ways to go to compete with conventional processes that rely on getting it from natural gas.
I don't know if in-situ pulverization would even help enough in terms of the economics.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
The original article says:
"The low yield of energy from burning hydrogen compared to gas, however, means that vast quantities of rock would have to be mined."
Any petroleum geologist would tell you that there is oodles of available oil in the ground, but it is unprofitable to recover it. That is, it cost more to get it than it would be worth on the market. Obviously, the same economies would apply to recovering the hydrogen trapped in the rock. The profits have to be available to make the business work
Also, the article says:
"Energy specialists estimate that oil production will start to decline within the next 10 to 15 years, as the economically viable reserves start to run out."
The key word here is "economically viable". Think for a moment, what would happen if oil supplies started running low because of a lack of profitable reserves? Demand for oil is pretty inelastic (not dependant on price), so the price would almost assuredly go up, just as when supplies are cut short for other reasons, like an OPEC quota. As the price of oil goes up, reserves that cost more to extract will now be profitable. We'll still have oil, but it will just be more expensive.
This is why the estimates for the amount of recoverable petroleum reserve are SO varied. When you hear doomsday predictions of running out of oil supply, remember these effects of supply and demand on price and profitability.
Don't get me wrong, I don't like the rising CO2 levels at all, and I don't think fossil fuels are a sustainable energy source. I just think that clear-eyed skepticism is more productive than knee-jerk idealism.
Because someone choosing to walk isn't sucking up resources at a greater than necessary rate for no bloody reason. I see people driving SUVs with no one in them but themselves, obviously not carrying anything bigger than a small box. Why the HELL are they driving a hugeass SUV?
Minivans are passenger vehicles, if you carry a lot of passengers they are a good investment. They also tend to get better gas mileage than SUVs. SUVs are 'Sport Utility Vehicles' so you get a vehicle that kind of looks like a cross between a truck and a van, but also stuffed full of luxury crap and with worse gase mileage than both.
And you don't have to be driving a Scooter or a Yugo to have an efficient vehicle. The new Volkswagen Beetle gets 50mpg and has enoug room in it to carry 5 people, or 2 people and a whole bunch of stuff. SUVs are an uneccesary, unsightly, blight on the landscape. And SUV drivers had damn well better not be complaining that I choose to walk. I'm trying to make up for their gas guzzling lazy asses so those pathetic whiny entitlement minded me-me-me children they are hauling around will still be able to breathe without a gasmask when they grow up.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
Until we find out how the hell PLANTS do it!
It is really fascinating. A power source made out of wood (ok, and some organic material) which feeds on water and sun.
We must find a way to harness the power of the sun.
That is the only way.
Until then, no matter what we find on this earth, won't help us more than a fart in a thunderstorm.
Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
Energy specialists estimate that oil production will start to decline within the next 10 to 15 years, as the economically viable reserves start to run out.
Not a well written paragraph from an Economics point of view. What will happen is once the easier to tap reserves run out, production will shift to the harder to tap reserves. More likely than not, that'll lead to technology that'll make those reserves just as economically viable as the current ones now. Therefore, at worst, we may see a price rise, but I would be surprised to see a decline in production.
Ford and Daimler both own large shares of Ballard, the world leader in hydrogen cell technology. They are prepared to make the leap. Why? Market advantage. They know there is a large group of consumers who are concerned about fossil fuel use. They want to sell to these people. The relative success of the Toyota Prius (hybrid gas/electric) shows the market exists. There is a lot of marketing advantage when you can say, "Our product is just as fast, just as reliable, and 100% cleaner. Buy Ford and feel good about yourself."
the car companies will scream no way
Bullshit. The car companies are working on hydrogen powered cars, both with fuel cell technology and internal combustion engines. BMW is pursuing the latter approach.
Well the bigger problem you miss is the fact they don't want to change because of the amount of money invovled, they would rather stick with oil because it would make more money that way.
GM, et al, get a tax break for making a 'clean' car, the reason for this is to encourage them to do it. It is also to keep the consumer from getting shafted by the companies.
Hell getting off oil would be good, because all those arabian states would lose their hold on the damn US companies/politians
Okay, I think someone should step up and defend the auto industry before the bashing gets any sillier.
I'm quite well aware that the auto industry is dragging their feet, even on simply making more efficient use of oil fuels. But a car-maker conspiracy isn't the biggest obstacle to widespread adoption of hydrogen fuels...
...it's the fact that there are something like a billion (yes, that's completely a guess; the specific fact is irrelevant to my point) cars already in existence which run on petrol.
Even if every auto manufacturer in the world announced that, beginning tomorrow, they would completely cease production of gas-powered vehicles and sell nothing but hydrogen cars, what do you think would happen? Are you going to run right out and buy a brand-new car? Or convert yours to run on hydrogen?
Where are you going to get said hydrogen? How much time and money do you think it would require to build a hydrogen-fuel distribution infrastructure?
Ideas like hydrogen fuel, and "automatic refill" pint glasses, sound so cool except in the real world.
Scientist report vast quanitities of hydrogen in Earths oceans.
(2,3-Benzopyrrole)
How things are going it is most likely for our gene to mutate to breathing CO2, Nitrogen Oxides, and Hydro Carbons.
Representatives from Exxon, Mobile, and other major oil companies warned consumers to expect hydrogen prices to increase over the summer months as demand skyrockets.
It hurts when I pee.
If you built kites and yousold your kites for $10.00 but were forced to retool for a different material that required complete re-design and re-tooling would you swallow all the costs of the changes and happily spend all your money to do so and THEN not change the prices of your kites? Most sane people agree that changes are the cost of doing business.. the car industry has never been ran by sane people.. (destination charges when buying a vehicle for example) and they will use the scare tactic of doubling the prices to try and squash the changes. and if they cant squash it they will punish the consumer for letting it happen... you might say "well the imports will fill in under the overpricing..." wrong... japenese cars are dirt cheap... not in the US though because almost 25% of that cost is in tarrifs and fees paid to the US auto industry... these tarrifs will increase to make the prices match the US cars. If you could buy a honda Insight for $19,000.00 they would sell like crazy and you would see them everywhere.. but the added tarrifs and fees to this double threat (forign and green=evil to US car makers) cranks the price up to $32,000.00.
Do not think for a minute that any large industry in the US would act responsible.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
So now can we go to war over where to mine hydrogen as opposed to where to drill for oil?
;)
Moreover to you think Dick and W. will lets us mine hydrogen? I doubt they have any money invested in the resource
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
As noted in this press release, similar hydrogen-consuming microbes may some day be discovered on Mars.
And if we ever did figure out a way of "mining" this trapped hydrogen, there would be a way to fill up your tank if you went planet hopping :)
Sure, I know that the sulfide (ite/ate/whatever) imputities found in most petroleum products are bad mojo for the atmosphere, but isn't burning hydrocarbons just effectively re-releasing lost carbon back into the biosphere? Global warming issues, etc aside, isn't the industrial age simply reverting the environment back to an era before plants more or less depleted the atmosphere of C02? I just wanted to know if anyone else has looked at environmental issues in this way before.
If we are going to burn something for fuel lets burn hydrogen, but if we don't have to let's burn nothing. Tidal, wind, and solar power are far more renewable and safe. In Texas some deregulation laws have allowed a company, Green Mountain Energy (they use wind power primarily), to supply energy to the grid based on consumer demand. If enough people switch the utilites will simply be a delivery service.
The idea of an actual hydrogen car seems a little silly. Sure gas is explosive but a hydrogen car is a bomb. Ill take an electric/solar car thanks, and one powered by wind/sun/tides over one by hydrogen.
sig
Call me crazy, but, isn't 3/4ths of the Earth's surface covered with stuff that can be easilly converted to clean-burning hydrogen and oxygen?
I definitely think the big H is the way to go. Petroleum is a stinky industrial-age relic that costs too much money to purify into something useful. To make matters worse, its non-renewable, and synthetic replacements are too expensive to produce.
Solar --> Electical --> Decomposition of seawater --> Hydrogen. Whats so hard about it?
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
Moderation Totals: Insightful=1, Interesting=1, Total=2.
Eh? Does no one have a sense of humor any more?
Infuriate left and right
Sure, oil is used for plastics, lubricants, and many other purposes, but who cares? Why would we want to eliminate all use of oil? If we eliminate the use of oil for automobiles, OPEC could shut down and we wouldn't notice. If we also eliminate the use of oil for home heating, our oil use would no longer be a statisticly-significant source of pollution.
That doesn't leave much room for the rock...
Finally I can rip one in Biology class and blame it on the Earth's crust. (Of course then someone would probably say, "Hey, you farted methane, not hydrogen," and then I'd be screwed.) Damn, foiled again.
Hargun
Think nothing is impossible? Try slamming a revolving door.
Why would vast reserves of H alleviate our dependencies on other nations? I'm sure someone will claim the H, just as the arab nations own all of the oil they sit on. Of course, if it all lies under the US of A, then we have nothing to worry about, but if it is all under Iraq, we'll, we're still boned.
Greed will eventually settle in. I'm sure lots of legislation would be passed by our corporate controlled government to make sure that the WTO and Free-Trade agreements put us in full control.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
... the return of the Zeppelin?!?!
Just to assuage public opinion, they'll have to drill far away from public places. That runs up the cost of packaging and transporting the hydrogen, making it tough to do this as "economically" as oil drilling today. (OK, nobody counts all the costs of oil drilling, e.g. smog control in all those cars, higher healthcare costs, etc.)
Another possibility would be to put electrical generation next to the H2 mines and take advantage of the electrical distribution grid.
Maybe we'll see H2 fuel when the oil supplies have dwindled far enough to force a look at alternative sources. Maybe.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I think electolysis of seawater is a far cheaper source of hydrogen than mining from deep within the earth's crust. And this also gives off oxygen.
It's not the inavailability of H2 that has lead to our oil dependence.
"Never bullshit a bullshitter" All That Jazz
Comment removed based on user account deletion
A hundred years from now, Morlock-like slaves work their lives away deep underground in the hydrogen mines...
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
Well, this is true, but I for one would prefer not to be in NYC if Indian Point melts down (for example).
sulli
RTFJ.
Bull. USians (as a whole) are addicted to oil: why else do we buy those big SUVs that chow down gas like crazy? USians won't be satisfied unless they can get their 6000 lb. vehicle to 75mph in 8 seconds or less. At this point, air and solar powered vehicles can't even dream of this.
And as soon as the auto manufacturers figure it out, and are able to produce vehicles with an acceptible profit margin, they will start to build them. And "oil" companies will begin to mine hydrogen or build solar/wind plants for charging fuel cells, or whatever. Oil companies don't care about oil; they care about profit. If they can profit more producing an "alternative" energy source, they will.
Funds for research into these alternate energies are greatly limited by these efforts of the patrolium companies.
Source, please?
Something similar was probably said about oil in the middle east 50 years ago.
That's what European sailors thought about the fish supplies on what is now Canada's East coast when the first discovered the Grand Banks.
Space used to be so vast but now it is hard to get a satellite above earth without extreme care to make sure it is not in the path of space junk. It's another resource which we thought was inexhaustable but it is now becoming scarce.
I bet the some of the older folks here remember thinking (15-20 years ago) that newly created 1.2 MB floppies were vast expanses of practically unfillable space and you'd never need more than 20 of them.
Let's not speak too soon.
Many environmentalists are pushing for renewable energy sources, not merely alternative ones. There's an inherent (albeit longer-term) problem with using a finite non-renewing source indefinitely.
You mean "carbohydrates" wasn't just chosen to sound neat? I thought plants got all their component atoms from carbon dioxide and trace minerals in the groundwater, and only used water as a medium!
In all seriousness, though, I think the extra water would pretty much end up in the ocean and not significantly encourage plant growth (unlike increased supplies of available carbon). Neither would the reduction in free oxygen, that I can see. There's no guarantee that the ecosystem will naturally balance a sufficiently huge influx of some active element in a way that doesn't kill some of the more sophisticated and sensitive forms of life (such as mammals).
We'd have to burn an awful lot of the stuff to make a difference, but who knows? Maybe it will be worrisome in a thousand years, and we'll have to start actively breaking down some carbonate rock to balance things out.
If these guys are even close to being right:A rticles/ 000/000/000/815xuago.asp
http://www.astronomy.com/Content/Dynamic/
Then we won't have 1000 years to burn hydrongen.
Just a thought.
Assuming this discovery is legitimate, I bet that it's old news to the oil companies.
From the article:
"In the top 20 kilometres of the Earth's crust, the conditions are right to produce a nearly inexhaustible supply of hydrogen," said Professor Freund.
I'm not much for conspiracy theories, but come on. How could the huge oil producers not have encountered this vast store of hydrogen? I would imagine the oil companies do 10,000 times more drilling and exploration than NASA.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
Insight is $32,000? Somebody should tell Honda that! According to Honda's web-page the MSRP on an Insight is $20,000 for the manual transmission and 21500 for the automatic. You can get one for less if you're willing to live without air conditioning.
I tried building a Civic Hybrid on their "Build Your Own!" page and the manual transmission model started at $19,550. (With fabric seats...)
So are you just ignorant of the true cost of these vehicles or is there some other axe you're grinding that I haven't picked up on?
Who did what now?
In an article mentioned earlier on Slashdot - http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/04/15/134222
- this quote:
"Fossil fuel supplies are plentiful, and what will limit the usage of fossil fuels is the potential climatic and ecosystem changes you may see as a result of rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere."
and now, in this story, this assertion:
"Scientists have discovered vast quantities of hydrogen gas, widely regarded as the most promising alternative to today's dwindling stocks of fossil fuels..."
What's it gonna be boys?
 
MjM
XKCD:Xeric Knowledge Comically Dispen
Ever noticed that the people who bitch the loudest about pollution drive around in 40 year old VW buses that leak, belch, and spew exponentially more toxins than a guy behind the wheel of a modern automobile?
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
Here's the original release from NASA, which goes into some of the science behind this:
HYDROGEN-FED BACTERIA MAY EXIST BEYOND EARTH
It appears that Freund only casually mentioned the potential for extracting this hydrogen for energy, but the Vancouver Sun reporter decided to grab onto that for the headline value...
first post redundant.
outstanding job, moderators!
This sounds really good but don't get excited until the science is peer reviewed. Remember the meteorite that 'proved' life existed on Mars?
NASA announcments are always constructed to enhance NASA and are written by PR types from data that is filtered by managers.
Nate
And memories of Bre-X flood back into my mind...
Vast amounts of hydrogen has been found in the oceans.
After a 5 year study, scientists have concluded that the ocean contains as much as two atoms of hydrogen for every one atom of oxygen.
Enough to solve all the planets energy needs!
...is going to be harder than getting one of those damn floaty-things out of my cup of coffee.
Not to mention that the return on the engergy spent in extraction will be a loss.
D.
I keep trying to pick fights, but I can't shake this Excellent karma.
There's probably hundreds of times the earth's mass of methane in Jupiter, but that doesn't make it a viable energy source.
Detail #2: Water is a potent greenhouse gas.
Any New Englander knows that it's usually a good twenty degrees warmer in the winter when you have a good cloud cover. Of course, burning gasoline generates water too, so it's a win as a gasoline replacement. However, it is not an energy source that is limitless in the sense it can be used in any amount with no consequences.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Come on, people, it was a joke. A deliberate attempt to imitate the "there's no silver lining so bright that it doesn't contain a dark cloud" crowd.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Let's see. This disovery was made by Professor Friedemann Freund and colleagues at Nasa's Ames Research Center in California, its publicised in a Vancouver paper, but the byline is from London.
News sure get's around.
Some references:
Thomas Gold at Cornell
Wired article
Exactly.
I can lend you my knife if you like...
As far as I know, there are no eletrolytic organisms or other natural process to get the O2 back, so we are screwed.
Photosynthesis takes CO2, H2O, and sunlight to produce carbohydrates.
However, new CO2 goes into the air, spreads out more or less evenly, and its precious carbon becomes available to plants around the world. So carbon balances itself pretty quickly, and you have to really work at releasing it faster than plants can suck it up. New H2O vapor mostly falls in the ocean (or winds up there, eventually), where there's plenty of the stuff already, and doesn't promote new plant growth. So there's not much reason to believe that hydrogen will balance itself out naturally.
The article claims that the hydrogen is stored in granite and olivine. The last time I checked, granite is not the most porous material, even if badly fractured. Olivine is a mineral, not a rock type.
Also, the article states: "Professor Freund said that his team had "tantalizing evidence" that as much as 1,000 litres of hydrogen may be trapped in each cubic metre of rock."
Let's see 1 liter of water = 10 cm cubed at 1 atmosphere, so 1000 liters = 1 meter cubed. That leaves no room for the rock in which the gas is supposed to be trapped!
if 'fruits de mer' = seafood
does 'fruits de merde' = mushrooms?
A main problem I see with this is that we could deplete our oxygen supply. Get ready to breath WaterVapor/Nitrogen mix. CO2 can return the O2 via plants. How can the cycle be completed returning O2 from H2O ?
Because the government killed off the station wagon with CAFE regulations. Next question?
/. If the government wants us to respect the law, it should set a better example.
...as seen on any Hollywood movie, if a US car is in a 5 mile per hour collision with another car or a lamppost etc. it instantly explodes into a huge fireball! You don't see Volvos doing that in Swedish movies :-) admitedly the cars tend to be stationary in the relevant scenes ;-)
As far as fuel sources go, nuclear waste produces lots of H2 (He also). That seems like a cheaper way to get the stuff as it wouldn't have to be mined, and would have to be released normally.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
> it wont happen, not in our lifetimes, and possibly
> not in our grandchildrens lifetimes.
Why not? There's still people alive (though I imagine the count is getting smaller each day) who were born before cars even existed. If we can go from no cars to everyone has a car within one person's lifetime, who's to say we can't go from oil dependant to something else in the same time frame?
In other words the world changes a lot faster than you're giving it credit for.
I do long for the clean (lack of) smell of natural gas though; petrol and diesel both stink... (avgas/kerosene has a certain intoxicating smell though :-)
the oil companies have declared that hydrogen does not exist in the earth's crust and that the previous study was a cruel april fools joke that was released 2 weeks too late.
/.
CmdrTaco is being investigated for taking part in this attempt to create chaos in the minds of readers of
Yes. Here is a link.
Excerpt:
"Using these data, the releases of radioactive materials per typical plant can be calculated for any year. For the year 1982, assuming coal contains uranium and thorium concentrations of 1.3 ppm and 3.2 ppm, respectively, each typical plant released 5.2 tons of uranium (containing 74 pounds of uranium-235) and 12.8 tons of thorium that year. Total U.S. releases in 1982 (from 154 typical plants) amounted to 801 tons of uranium (containing 11,371 pounds of uranium-235) and 1971 tons of thorium. These figures account for only 74% of releases from combustion of coal from all sources. Releases in 1982 from worldwide combustion of 2800 million tons of coal totaled 3640 tons of uranium (containing 51,700 pounds of uranium-235) and 8960 tons of thorium.
Based on the predicted combustion of 2516 million tons of coal in the United States and 12,580 million tons worldwide during the year 2040, cumulative releases for the 100 years of coal combustion following 1937 are predicted to be:
U.S. release (from combustion of 111,716 million tons):
Uranium: 145,230 tons (containing 1031 tons of uranium-235)
Thorium: 357,491 tons
Worldwide release (from combustion of 637,409 million tons):
Uranium: 828,632 tons (containing 5883 tons of uranium-235)
Thorium: 2,039,709 tons"
And:
"Thus, by combining U.S. coal combustion from 1937 (440 million tons) through 1987 (661 million tons) with an estimated total in the year 2040 (2516 million tons), the total expected U.S. radioactivity release to the environment by 2040 can be determined. That total comes from the expected combustion of 111,716 million tons of coal with the release of 477,027,320 millicuries in the United States. Global releases of radioactivity from the predicted combustion of 637,409 million tons of coal would be 2,721,736,430 millicuries.
For comparison, according to NCRP Reports No. 92 and No. 95, population exposure from operation of 1000-MWe nuclear and coal-fired power plants amounts to 490 person-rem/year for coal plants and 4.8 person-rem/year for nuclear plants. Thus, the population effective dose equivalent from coal plants is 100 times that from nuclear plants. For the complete nuclear fuel cycle, from mining to reactor operation to waste disposal, the radiation dose is cited as 136 person-rem/year; the equivalent dose for coal use, from mining to power plant operation to waste disposal, is not listed in this report and is probably unknown."
Yeah end of our oil worries... until we run out of these reserves.... And so the cycle begins anew.... :)
Insert Sig Here
You know, they said the same thing when vast oil reserves were discovered. Economics tells us that if the supply of an item increases, then the price drops which leads to higher demand until a new supply-demand equilibrium is reached. With a new, cheap source of energy, usage will go through the roof.
"Virtually Inexaustable", right. Never underestimate the wastefulness of people.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
Professor Freund said that his team had "tantalizing evidence" that as much as 1,000 litres of hydrogen may be trapped in each cubic metre of rock.
Umm, isn't one liter the amount of water in a cubic decemeter?
would there not be 1000 litre's of water in 1 cubic meter of water?
Can someone explain the difference in volume between a litre of hydrogen and a liter of water?
I do believe that if you shuffle the eletrons enough you can turn any element into another element. - basic molar equations prove this.
However, it takes a lot of energy.
comment directly in my journal
(1) Problem #1: Getting the hydrogen. We don't *have* to mine hydrogen. We can get it from water. But this takes power, the practical generation of which has an impact on the environment. This could weigh equally with the environmental impact of mining it (as mentioned in the article).
(2) Distributing hydrogen. Hydrogen cannot be pumped or carted around like petroleum or natural gas. It is an extremely difficuly to handle gas, and contains much lower energy density than other fuels (read: you need more to get the same energy). Part of our dependency on petroleum is based on the current distribution network.
(3) Burning Hydrogen. Contrary to popular belief, burning hydrogen does not produce only water. Yes, hydrogen plus oxygen equal water, but we are not talking about burning hyrogen in oxygen. We are burning hyrdrogen in *air*, which is +70% nitrogen. When anything is burned in air, there is a reaction between the oxygen and the nitrogen to create those nitrous oxide pollutants which we generally associate with cars. These will be reduced but will not go away just because we are burning hydrogen.
Fortunately using fuel cell *does* produce only water. Hopefully many cases where we current burn fuels can use fuel cells instead.
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
for this crowd, sadly the mod is correct
sulli
RTFJ.
"Hydrogen combustion creates a key component of battery acid!"--Enron Executive
"Hydrogen is a dangerous combustible responsible for destruction of the Hindenberg!"--Exxon CEO
"It's a scientifically proven fact that a hydrogen-powered fusion reactor will eventually cause the destruction of our entire planet!"--Dick Cheney
"Hydrogen is just too dangerous. Mixing it with the air we breathe is enough to cause catastrophic explosions, death, carnage!"--Standard Oil press release
"Hydrogen is much more deadly than milk!"--Bob Dole
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
we already have a hydrogen source a mere 1AU away.
Too many people get confused. If you have 100J of energy, and it takes 150J of energy to pump a liter of oil out of the ground, even if I give you a million dollars for that liter, you can't get it out of the ground. Unless, perhaps, I give it to you in paper money that you can burn to get the extra energy. See the problem?
If this hydrogen can be extracted at a net energy profit, and there's as much as they say there might be, I'll start worrying about retirement savings again.
..don't panic
Hey, since I live in the area between Canada and Kansas I have to ask... Are there any dangers in extracting the big pocket of hydrogen from below me?
Specifically, Earthquakes and/or Explosions???
Any risk?
Ooh, enlighten me?? I always wondered what happened to the station wagon, I liked station wagons. Fairly small, versatile, could carry people or stuff around, could be made to get good gas mileage. All around great car design, where did they go? What CAFE regulations killed them? I haven't heard about this before.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
So what's the chances these bacteria the depend on this trapped hydrogen are sensient and intelligent and will move to wipe out the human race when we try this?!
is not in changing the source of our power in my opinion, but in reducing the amount of enegry that we expend. It's a policy thing. I don't know the facts, but I'm going to guess that america expends more enegry then most of the world. America also doesn't have most of the world's population. Therefore America uses more enegry then the rest of the world per capita. If America was more efficient with it's power consumption, then we would have more time to solve this problem.
Everyone acts like this problem needs to be solved today, when in fact it doesn't.
If it requires more energy to extract a energy source than the energy it will yield upon extraction then it is not viable. If it takes 1.5 barrels of oil to extract that 1 barrel then it will never be economical to extract it. Even if you use another energy source you have to look at the economics of ENERGY not cash. Using 1000 Watts of energy to extract 100 Watts isn't profitable. Same goes for hydrogen.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
MALIBU -- Scientists have discovered vast quantities of a hydrogen/oxygen compound, both of which are widely regarded as promising alternative to today's dwindling stocks of fossil fuels, lying in vast resevoirs on top of the Earth's crust.
The discovery has stunned energy experts, who believe that it could provide virtually limitless supplies of clean fuel for cars, homes and industry.
"[The compound] apparently contains twice the amount of hydrogen as oxygen," said Professor Spicoli of Pepperdine
University, "Which is great, because we need more hydrogen than oxygen. Although oxygen is pretty cool too."
...
Just a question --
How efficiently can we store elecrical energy in batteries? In hydrogen? How efficiently can we get it back out?
--
grep "xercist"
The reason for the bad Denver smog was thermal inversions where a layer of cold air near the ground was capped by warmer air above. That's why it could be sub-zero on the plains, but 20-30 degrees warmer if you went into the mountains.
We still have those inversions (and "no burn days"), but the bad smog was largely eliminated as newer, cleaner cars replaced the older fleet. Unfortunately we still have a stupid oxygenated fuels program in the winter months, and pollution levels are rising again (but still below Federal guidelines) due to large number of people who moved into Denver and insisted on big SUVs for the "lifestyle" nonsense.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Doh! Can't spell "good" :-\
Life is like a web application. Sometime you need cookies just to get by.
How dangerous extracting energy from hydrogen is. We have to come up with a completely safe process of extracting the energy.
That's nice.
It's about 30 miles (50km) from my house to my work, and there are no buses or trains to take, so I need a car. And don't tell me to move closer to work - the only places within walking distance are apartments the size of my bathroom that rent out for nearly what my house payment is.
Of course, I drive a Toyota Echo, so my consumption of fuel is about as low as I can get it.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
Just when we'd solved the CO2 emissions problem.
Now we'll have to figure out how to deal with the byproducts of hydrogen combustion. Ack, dihydrogen monoxide, head for the hills!!!
-- Adam
You know it's only a matter of time before an evil super-villian figures out a way to simultaneously ignite all that hydrogen under the Earth's crust, thereby threatening to cause a global, cataclysmic earthquake unless we pay him a ransom of one hundred.. billion... dollars!
<insert maniacal Dr. Evil laughter>
This tagline is umop apisdn.
There's lots of problems with hydrogen:
;-)
a) its energy density is pitiful (about 1/14 IRC of gasoline, so you'd have to have a tank 14x bigger)
b) its best stored in liquified form for maximum energy density (liquid hydrogen needs incredibly high insulation values, and tends to freeze things solid, or condenses oxygen- trust me, either is very bad, and its density still sucks- check out the Space Shuttle main tank, its enormous!)
c) alternatively you store it in a pressurised tank. Pressurised tanks are heavy as heck. Or you can use a rare earth catalyst to store it in. However, the overall weight is about the same if you do so, TOO HIGH. So big deal.
d) Hydrogen can go bang (in an enclosed space the explosion can be awesome). Sure, gasoline does that too. However hydogen leaks out much more easily.
e) Hydrogen embrittles many kinds of metals, once that has occured the metal fails catastrophically.
f) Hydrogen escapes from just about any container; the molecule is just too small to keep in in most cases; still you can control it in most cases, but it's awkward.
All in all, hydrogen is at best a waste of space and at worst a waste of time. Yeah, so it doesn't make any CO2. So what? We've got this handy recycling system called plants. Please go out and grow some, so I can carry on burning my hydrocarbons
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"This is just more anti-OPEC feel good FUD for the ditto heads. What are we going to do. Dig a strip-mine two miles deep, Crush cubic tons of crustal rock, hall the powder up the two miles of gravity well to get it out of the way. Pump tons of rain water up the two miles also. For what "1000 liters per cubic meter of rock". Excuse me but 1000 liters at what P and T. Why not report the mass of hydrogen extracted. Could it be that the energy costs of uncover, extract, crush, and dispose would vastly exceed the recovery. And is anyone seriously considering up heaving the total surface of the planet to keep the hot water heater working. Tell me now and I'll send a Rainbow Warrior over to put you out of your silliness. This is either scholars for dollars or PR for ditz. At that depth you would probably get more energy from the geothermal than the hydrogen. Clue number two, I'll sell you the rights to the iron ore in the earth's core under my land, cheap. Clue number three, There's lots of hydrogen in the sun and it spits it at us in the solar wind, 1000 * 1000 * 1000 / 1000 = 1000000 litters per cubic meter. We just need to build a big pipeline to the sky.
Did anyone think that maybe the hydrogen was there for a reason? Maybe those billions of tonnes of bacteria need it to survive? Maybe their survival is necessary for everything else to also work correctly and that the wholesale removal of the hydrogen would ultimately kill us too?
We already have drilled essentially all of the easily available oil. At the start of this business, there were places where oil fountained natually, like artesian wells. Those were the first that were exploited (or perhaps it was the seeps, where instead of a fountain there was just a slow leak to the surface). Those are gone. It now takes a great deal of high-tech just to locate a likely place to drill. Sometimes it takes more to get there.
If we need to come up from low-tech again, we won't be using petroleum to get there. Olive oil would be more likely.
Question about the solar cell plant, however:
Is it, perhaps, a matter of scale? They typical solar generation plant is quite small. If one isn't enough to power a factory, perhaps two or three of them could. Or, if not, the 5, or 10, or 20? Presumably the factory would turn out cells in essentially unlimited number, so if you needed to create several banks of cell to power it this wouldn't be an essential problem.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Just look up "Brazil" and "Proalcool" in Google and you can find plenty of information about this.
Starting in the mid 1970s, the program was so successful that in 1988 nearly 100% of the cars sold here (made by Ford, Fiat, VW and GM) ran on hydrated Ethanol.
But since diesel based transport wasn't converted and since the chemical industry's need for oil continued the same, the result was more an oversupply of gasoline than a reduction in oil related imports. The extra gasoline was sold really cheap to neighboring countries, which combined with the subsidies to sugar cane farmers resulted in the program having very negative economic results.
In 1990 president Collor, a political enemy of the sugar cane farmers, made a serious attack on Pró-Alcool and while there are still many used cars running on Ethanol it is nearly impossible to buy a new one that does so.
Another posted mentioned that alternative energy sources will not replace oil, because oil is so cheap. The poster also said that another reason for oil to be replaced is if we run out, or if supplies dwindle enough that we can no longer provide enough oil for everybody (which ties into the rising cost argument).
According to Oilcrisis.com, when we hit the point (within the first quarter of this century) that we need to switch over to an alternative energy source, it will be too late. Our infrastructure depends on oil, and switching every motor vehicle, truck, airplane, cargo ship, and train to an alternative energy source will be a massive endeavor. Perhaps impossible to perform without the support of the infrastructure itself.
I would like to encourage everyone to support alternative energy before this point. We can't afford to wait until it is cheap.
Igniting trapped hydrogen did not sink Atlantis.
It did however sink Challenger...
"...So, we have determined that there are vast amounts of Hydrogen locked away in the Earth's crust. These vast stores are held in huge cauldron like features on the crust which we like to call "Oceans" - these "Oceans" hold the hydrogen in place by fusing it with another element, Oxygen, to form what is known as "Water" (Whaa-der). We believe that at some point in the future we will be able to tap the Hydrogen as a source of fuel, but first we have to figure out a fast efficient way of separating the H from the O and get the world at large to adopt alternatively fueled vehicles such as the $32,000 Honda Insight"
Vancouver reporting on NASA findings???
In other news, ESPN will have coverage of the Zen Nippon Kendo Rei tournament this weekend.
Randy "Zen Nippon Kendo Rei is the All Japan Kendo Organization" B.
Yugo, the former Yugoslavian automobile manufacturer, has set up shop near Chernobyl after their plant was destroyed during the Bosnian War. Yugo claims to have perfected a cheap means of manufacturing personal nuclear reactors for automotive use. "We've done away with the complicated and expensive safety features, and this so-called 'containment' nonsense, to bring the consumer an almost neverending powersource for their disposable car."
Using the Bic Disposable lighter as a model for their prototypes, the Yugo company has finally brought something to the market which will really light up the consumer.
Owners of the new Yugo (and bystanders) can expect to also receive a great tan from the car. Due to the high acceptance of birth defects in Kentucky already, the cars are slated to be rolled out next week in Lexington, KY. Subsequent rollouts will based on which direction the fallout cloud blows.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
"Energy specialists estimate that oil production will start to decline within the next 10 to 15 years"
While in this story (On /. here):
"Fossil fuel supplies are plentiful"
Asikaa
Come in, twenty-seventy-seventy, your time is up.
"...vast quantities of hydrogen stored in the Earth's crust..."
I can think of four other locations of "vast quantities of hydrogen": Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, and Artic...
Problem solved: ocean water -> filter water -> electrolysis by solar power -> storage of H2 and O2 -> power fuel cells -> repeat but use the water from the fuel cell instead of ocean water.
:wq
I'm pretty sure one of the reasons Brazil was privatizing is partly because of the political fallout from the loss of the world's largest offshore oil platform in March last year.
It sounds really good to grow corn, brew ethanol, and use it to replace oil as a fuel. There's just one little problem... until recently, it took more energy (in oil) to grow corn to make ethanol than the ethanol could produce.
There's been gains recently, though, so there's hope for the future.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
I would be willing to bet that if there is agenda to budget tax dollars to research the potential energy source there will be a lot of hot air to shoot down the proposal from those that get campaign finance from the petroleum sector.
On a positive note, the Bipartisan Renewable, Efficient Energy with Zero Effluent (BREEZE) Act extended the production tax credit for energy generated by wind for five years. (The tax credit expired Jan. 1. 2002) That is a lot of hot air.
pronoblem
high levels of co2 are associated with great ages of biological diversity and large populations of species. we'll just have more pigeons, rats, white-tail deer... we are far from historic levels of co2.
Lets say that we switch to a hydrogen economy, and over the next 100 years we leak several billion cubic feet of it into the atmosphere... what are the effects? Will we miss it?
How will massive amounts of accidental hydrogen emissions compare to massive amounts of purposeful CO2 emissions?
Who exactly are bringing electric cars to reality, eh? Who?
This post was compiled with `% gec -O`. email me if you need the sources
The U.S. Department of Energy reports that 8.7% of electricity generated comes from natural gas. I would think it would be technically feasible to convert these plants to hydrogen, since it would probably use similar pipeline and boiler design. The CO2 emissions decrease would be substantial.
It would be interesting to see the effect of burning hydrogen and putting a lot more water vapor into the air... (Looks like rain again today!)
There's more than enough Uranium and Plutonium to remove our dependence on oil, but that doesn't mean the oil industry will let it happen.
Solar, hydroelectric, geothermal, wind. If these technologies had the full support of the government and didn't have big oil lobbiests against then you might see a country that didn't care so much about fighting in the Middle East.
Kevin Fox
Yes friends, it is time for me to bring up my solar-hydorgen powered Jeep once again!
Do you know why people think that hydrogen powered vehicles are a long way off? It ain't the energy companies keeping it a secret, it is an unholy alliance between environmentalists and the government!
How do I know? Well, my Jeep is powered by solar derived hydrogen and I drive it almost daily (unless I am in a hydrogen powered aircraft of course). I purchase my hydrogen in liquid form, so do the airlines. My Jeep's birthday (to me) is tomorrow, 16 April, the day I liberated it from it's pen at the dealership. It will be 6 years old and has carried me over 226,000 miles now. Try that with a $5,000 "electric Honda deathtrap"!
Back to the point... The conspiracy has hidden this plentyful source of hydrogen by banding together with advertisers and disguising the name. Just so you are not duped, and to prove that I am being honest, here is the formula for the reaction: CxHy + O2 --> CO2 + H20 SEE? Simple! The big "H" on the left side is Hydrogen of course. It is bonded with some Carbon (the C on the left) to keep it in liquid form at surface tempratures and pressures, thus making it stay "in the container" so-to-speak until it is needed for combustion.
Not only does my Solar/Hydrogen Energy Plant, under the hood of the Jeep prouce water (more on that later), it also produces plant food! Yep, that little CO2 notation is something plants love! I try to drive up to pristine forrested areas as much as possible to feed the trees. Sometimes the trees love me so much they want to come home to my fireplace, but that is a different environmental service that I preform (free of charge too) and it can wait for another topic.
Ooops! I almost forgot to let everybody in on the secret places where I get the hydrogen for my Jeep! Liquid sunshine, aka, hydrogen fuel, is sold at places with funny names like Exxon/Mobil/Connico/Arco/Shell/Standard/Amaco... As a matter of fact, many of these places will clean the outside of your vehicle if you just come in and fill your hydrogen tank with at least $5 of the stuff! They use that left over H2O to scrub all the grime and crud off of your vehicle after a nice weekend of tree feeding.
Besides the great combustion properties of "liquid sunshine" (my favorite name for this miricle product), it is perfect for lubricating the parts that make your vehicle go, no matter what kind of power plant you run. Why do I call it solar-hydrogen or liquid sunshine? Because solar energy was used to combine the carbon and hydrogen of course! How much more environmentally sensitive can you get than that?
I could go on forever, but seriously, the energy companies have known about vast quantities of hydrogen in the earth's crust for ages. It is called "oil" and "natural gas" and is a lot easier to extract that chunks of granite. School children know of another surface source, it is called water and it is a lot easier to haul around than granite or hydrogen gas too.
Sometime soon I will tell y'all about my solar-hydrogen fireplace. The best BBQ ribs in my apartment complex are smoked there.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
...when these scientists later considered that the universe is composed of 74% hydrogen, they realized their "discovery" was somewhat moot.
-... ---
Why the HELL are they driving a hugeass SUV?
Um...because they can?
Minivans are passenger vehicles, if you carry a lot of passengers they are a good investment.
Minivans are tangible evidence of the existence of Evil, with a capital 'E'. Everyone who gets behind the wheel of a minivan turns into a homicidal submoron as soon as they put the key in the ignition. Minivans are the tools of Satan.
The new Volkswagen Beetle gets 50mpg and has enoug room in it to carry 5 people, or 2 people and a whole bunch of stuff.
Well, yeah, if you want a car that looks incredibly stupid, I suppose the new VW bug is the way to go. It's no wonder the ads always say they're 'looking for drivers'; anyone with a shred of self-respect would be mortified to be seen in one of those things.
SUVs are an uneccesary, unsightly, blight on the landscape.
Cosmetic surgery is also unnecessary, but certainly not unsightly (unless you're Michael Jackons) and definitely improves the landscape. But that's neither here nor there.
I like SUVs. Alot. I want the option to smash my neighbor's stupid little minivan into so much aluminum and plastic garbage if the rage at the lack of his/her driving skills finally becomes too much to handle. And those bikers! The little shits don't even bother to obey traffic laws: running stop signs, hanging out in the center of the road rather than riding right, and so forth. With an SUV I can hit the accelerator and that idiot biker in his riding-the-short-bus helmet and gay-looking lycra stretch pants will go up and over the hood leaving only a small scratch or two.
Yessirree, SUV's have all sorts of practical uses.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Exactly how "limitless" is this? I mean, a century ago when the oil tycoons were around and drilling, it was projected that the oil would be limitless, because they just did not know how much oil we would soon be using. Similarly, this supply of hydrogen may seem limitless to us now, but will we be running into the same problems again in another hundred years? How much energy will things take in a century? Even if it increases linearly from the amount needed a hundred years ago (unlike everything else), we may well be running out of hydrogen in the same way we are now running out of oil.
Nothing is limitless except to the short-sighted.
Lack of eloquence does not denote lack of intelligence, though they often coincide.
In an effort to force car makers to develop more efficient cars, they passed laws requiring car makers to meet a minimum MPG rating average for all of the cars they sell. Good idea, right? No...
Car makers didn't bet their business on the hopes of making significant breakthroughs in engine efficiency before the imposed limits went into effect. Instead, they downsized the stationwagon cars into the small compact cars we have today. Then, to cover the market previously served by the large station wagon cars, they made SUVs. SUV were considered a truck and not subject to the MPG rating restrictions imposed by the gov't.
And thus moderately low MPG station wagons were replaced by abysmally low MPG SUVs. Thank you gov't regulation.
Listen to your friends at the DOE They say methane hydrate is so prevalent it would take us a thousand years to use it all up even if we all wire our houses up as high voltage plasma labs and commute a hundred miles to work and it wouldn't require a fuel cell infrastructure to be useful. So, relax, turn on some of those lights, run the dryer for an extra cycle. Leave the door open with the air conditioner on. There's plenty of energy and there always will be.
If you just hate burning dead swamp muck, there's the pages at Sandia with Bush himself saying how concentrated solar using nothing but mirrors could also easily handle the US power needs in a space the size of lake mead.
The question isn't "is there an answer to the problem?" as much as a question of "what exactly is the problem we're trying to answer and who decided it was a problem?"
I'm proud of having been liberal to the point of extremisim all my life and hope I always will be, but the evidence seems to suggest that burning oil is nowhere near as bad for the environment as many people have feared in the past and this crap about running out of oil twenty years from now has been going on since at least the seventies. I think it would be more realistic to assume that these alternatives will only become useful when they become cheap and that this is not such a terrible thing.
I think there is room for the MP3 analogy, but it's not going to happen with hydrogen. The infrastructure trade-off makes it no different than existing oil and gas, much more likely to be revolutionary in the sense of MP3, Divx is going to be high powered nanotech solar panels. Now that is what scares the shit out of petroleum companies because there's no infrastructure to control. Their product becomes irrelevant. As long as you've got abundant electricity, powering up a fuel cell car is not a problem and electric kicks ass all over diesel for torque.
So let me get this straight...
1. Oil driller becomes hydrogen driller.
2. Hydrogen [Oil] driller has 21st bday
3. Birthday cake falls down before he blows out the candles.
4. Instead of possible oil fire and possible polluted atmosphere we have unavoidable hydrogen explosion and 3/4mi crater
What I'm wondering is... aside from a lower population on the planet, where's the upside to this? Doesn't the increase in danger kinda outweigh our (potentially) shortterm energy needs?
Why can't we all just stop driving... Try site-to-site teleportation... Or you could always do what I do, just pretend you go somewhere.
Funny how you call Bush and his associates "ecoterrorists" when the actual terrorists come from the more extreme believers on YOUR side of the issue.
"All mankind is at the mercy of a handful of neurotics". - Norman Douglas
I don't think he was talking about people who have no option but to drive a car. I think he was talking about people who could quite easly, with a bit more effort, walk, catch public transport, or get a lift with a workmate etc. But instead still decide to drive a big SUV to work everyday etc.
I got his book and read much of it. Basically he theorises that free hydrogen comes from slow oxidation of hydrocarbon molecules trapped underground. It's worth a read if you're interested in geology.
The Deep Hot Biosphere.
There is nothing so silly as other peoples traditions, and nothing so sacred as our own.
Uh, guys, isn't the Vancouver Sun a tabloid? I wouldn't take anything they said too seriously.
"It sure was strange to see something on Usenet about me that didn't involve Klingon gang rape." -- Wil Wheaton
Fuel cells will be the likely candidate for replacing our oil habits. Hydrogen IS the most common element that we know of (now) and can be produced rather cheaply. When we begin converting to fuel cells we can dip into so many other fuels beyond hydrogen like boron (less ignitable).
s en ic.html
Regarding solar cells: I think they have a long way to go and they use poisons such as gallium arsenic.
http://scifun.chem.wisc.edu/chemweek/arsenic/ar
Please say that you've heard of it.
Don't tell me you use 10W30. Everyone knows how bad petroleum based lubricants are on latex membranes.
Even PAM cooking spray would be preferable to WD40, plus you can get that Real Butter Flavor smell.
The best that could come out of this is the removal of the strangle-hold the middle-east has over us because they have most of the oil.
Anonymous Cowards suck.
I seem to recall reading an interview years ago with Thomas Gold, who I believe thought up the idea of a neutron star, and predicted that there were huge quantities of hydrogen gas deep in the earth's crust. He was ridiculed by mainstream geologists. Does anyone remember this? Anyway, I hope he's enjoying a well-deserved "I told you so". Dan
Mod this up someone. I was going to make point number three myself. All three of these are excellent points... N
Scientist 1: Wow! It's kinda dark down here.
Scientist 2: Just a sec...let me light this match for...
The point being: the relative cost of oil and alternative fuels is not the issue - it's DEPENDENCE on oil-producing nations.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
At the Detroit Autoshow Media Preview days, I had a chance to talk to an engineer from Mazda about hydrogen Rotaries (if you are unaware of Mazda H2 Rotaries, check out this website
They said the largest problem for them right now with hydrogen is delivery and distrobution. Mazda has the in-vehicle delivery system basically in place, and can, within a matter of months, crank out rotary powered hydrogen cars. "We are ready to go" he said, "If they distribution system was in place today, we'd be number one on the market.
Additionally, he said retrofitting older fuel injected rotaries (13b RX-7's from 1984 on) would only need the fuel tank replaced, injectors replaced, and computer repoogrammed.
The remaining problem: there is only 68k BTUs per ft3 for H2 compressed at 3500 psi. At the same ft3 for gas yeilds 922k BTUs. Increasing the PSI for in car storage is a major research focus for the auto industry right now... Hyundai has developed a 5000 psi tank, but that still falls short of the 922 BTU's that has has at 1 ft3
1.3L, 3 moving parts, 280 HP, no Turbos, wanna Race? RotaryNe
Every time any sort of alternative fuel/transportation or whatnot comes around people ask if it will be the end of the use of oil.
It wont.
As long as there is oil left in the ground the large multinational corporations and every single oil mogul will not let this happen. There are plenty of good and efficient ways to replace the use of oil right now. Not gonna happen; the billionaires will never ease up on selling oil until there isn't an extractable drop left anywhere. Even then, they'll probably synthesize it themselves, strongarm the energy concerns, and sell it at incredibly high prices.
But hey, I'll be long dead before then. Until that day, screw em, I'm walking.
I am BelDion's
It may replace your car engine's fuel, but it won't reduce plastics. Lot more plastic crap outy there than people realize
...you don't hear people who drive SUVs whine about other folks choosing to walk.
Um... A walker complaining about SUVs compares to an SUV driver complaining about someone commuting in a tank, not a SUV driver complaining about walkers.
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
I see people driving SUVs with no one in them but themselves, obviously not carrying anything bigger than a small box. Why the HELL are they driving a hugeass SUV?
Sometimes, one hopes, it is because they occasionally need it, and would rather not have more than one car. Experience suggests that this is not the case very often. Many people with SUVs own two (often 'his and hers'), and use them exclusively for highway commuting and errands, with nary an off-road hauling trip.
__
Do ya feel happy-go-lucky, punk?
It is deeper and less concentrated than petroleum deposits. It will have impact simlar or worse than petroleum extraction. Many so-called of "free energy" sources have turned out to have considerable environmental drawbacks. Geothermal has it corrosive brines, hydropower distorts rivers and river life, fusion has dirty neutrons that turns any nearby metal highly radioactive.
one problem in hydrogen is that it's energy density is far too low and another problem with hydrogen is that it causes really awesome explosions.
You cant have your cake and eat it too you know.
Why...? As far as I see it, it isn't a discovery that leads to a cheap homebuilt zero-point generator to put in your garage. Instead it's a new portential power source which is extremely expensive to extract... and that is not necessarily a bad thing for Bush and associates.
Most likely they'll jump on it, take billions of dollars out of your pocket to find the most cost prohibitive approach to extracting the hydrogen (most expensive approach to keep the monopoly). Then, once they've switched from oil to hydrogen they'll charge you a helluva lot more, claiming a.) hydrogen extraction is an expensive process, b.) the research costs were extremely high, c.) water in the atmosphere contributes to global warming!
So you see, expensive, hard to get Hydrogen is a good thing for everyone involved. It preserves the status quo.
Oh, great. We use up one resource and when we find another one we just go ahead and talk about how we can use that one up too.
Way to go humanity.
Maybe we should be looking at creating hydrogen, not just digging it up - just means more mines, more waste and undoubtedly more exploitation of poor people and economies who will undoubtedly be the people that the oil companies exploit when they switch from digging for oil to digging for hydrogen.
Is why hydrogen isn't as good as fossil fuels.
Furthermore: it takes energy to separate and store (compress) hydrogen. Since hydrogen doesn't occur naturally in usable quantities from the start, it cannot support itself (thermodynamics laws and such.)
Thus, you need a source of higher energy density that is readily available, and there are only a few sources like that: hydroelectric power, coal, oil, natural gas, radioactive elements, and wood.
Wind and solar power are neither efficient, nor have the energy density to compete. I saw a wind generation area on the Columbia River in Washington yesterday. I haven't seen a natural-gas fired power generation plant that spanned an area ten miles long! I've also seen the solar plants near Barstow, California. Huge amounts of area are taken.
Consequently, you just shift the pollution source elsewhere. Just like electric cars. You shift the pollution source to the power plant.
The ONLY energy solution that will satisfy all environmental issues is complete reversal back to pre-fire technology.
"Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives" should be a convenience store, not a government agency.
In this growing global economy, any country of value is owned by the same oil-companies and the banking cartel in switzerland.
You seem to think we're all still separate...
Nope, it wouldn't be in the oil industry's best interests. Guess what the Bush family has been heavily into for decades? Hint: They're from Texas. And lookee.... the Bush family is back in power, and
Hemp is outlawed because it would compete with (maybe destroy) the oil and timber industries. In the mid thirties, a machine was invented which made Hemp cultivation on an industrial scale possible, which was poised to launch a new Hemp industry. It was promptly buried and outlawed by oil and timber moguls. It has nothing to do with Marijuana usage, this is just the scapegoat.. the paper tiger... what they used to stir up public support and panic 60 years ago to get the prohibition passed, and what they've been using ever since to pull the wool over our eyes.
This is an excellent paper on the subject, allow me to quote some passages:
If Hemp is really outlawed because of the possible misuse of Marijuana, then oil should be outlawed because of molotov cocktails, not to mention the thousands of other dangerous applications of gasoline.
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Paraphrasing:
As much as 1000 liters of Hydrogen gas may be stored in each cubic meter of rock!
Wow!
Let me see now... 1ml = 1cc
100^3 cc = 1m^3
10^6 cc = 1m^3
1L = 1000ml = 1000cc = 10^3cc
(10^6 cc/m^3)*(1L/10^3cc) = 10^3L/m^3
= 1000L/m^3
Gee, either that's some REALLY HEAVY hydrogen or som REALLY LIGHT rock!
GodsMadClown writes:
:
The key word here is "economically viable". Think for a moment, what would happen if oil supplies started running low because of a lack of profitable reserves? Demand for oil is pretty inelastic (not dependant on price), so the price would almost assuredly go up, just as when supplies are cut short for other reasons, like an OPEC quota.
while skwang writes:
The problem with the dependence of oil isn't an alternative means. Someone has pointed/will point out that we have many alternative energy sources. Instead oil as a means of energy is dominant because it is cheap. The world's energy infrastructure is based on using crude oil. There are oil power plants, oil refineries, gasoline engines, etc. Oil is simply cheaper to use.
Newsweek summed up the energy market quite well with this litle bon mot
"You want alternatives? That's just so much sweet talk," one former official at the Saudi Petroleum Ministry told NEWSWEEK. "Suppose you target the cost of alternative energy at so many dollars per Btu--and then we lower the cost of oil below that. All your investment goes down the drain."
Da Blog
Professor Freund said that his team had "tantalizing evidence" that as much as 1,000 litres of hydrogen may be trapped in each cubic metre of rock.
1 cubic meter = (100cm) ^ 3 = 1,000,000 cc = 1,000,000 ml = 1000 liters
upper bound indeed!
$ make work
make: *** No rule to make target `work'. Stop.
That the Big media companies all collude, and while I'm not saying the oil companies wouldn't it's possible that one or two of 'em could leave the others behind by moving in that direction...
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Ignoring the obvious fact that you're trolling, I'll point out that you haven't been reading the messages below.
Who cares what they're excited about? Remember all the trouble the government had with the wealthy, powerful, monopolistic railroad companies? All their power and wealth still didn't stop the death of their industry.
Um, what? The railroad industry is as big as ever.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I see. We discover an ecosystem with greater biomass than any other on the planet, and devise a means to rapidly insure it's extinction by exploiting it as an energy source. Sounds real "green" to me. See http://brianf.editthispage.com/SlimeHuggers for more.
It is now time to flip off your computer.
As I've stated (what, a half-dozen times now?) At least 34% of the rock is empty space. Also consider that hydrogen gas can quite easily be compressed to less than 1% of its STP volume before condensing...
The article states that Hydrogen produces only water when burned. This is WRONG. It produces water and carbon dioxide.
This discovery of hydrogen seems to me to give more weight to Thomas Gold's thesis, that natural gas and oil are not fossil fuels at all but a result of geothermal processes on stored hydrogen.
Gold is a professor emeritus at Cornell; his key works can be found via web searching. Basically, he suggests that the Earth is filled with hydrogen, left over from its creation and perhaps the decay of the uranium core. (I'm a little fuzzy on details. Read him, not me, for details.) The hydrogen percolates outward. Some of it gets cooked into natural gas. Some of that becomes petroleum. Gas accumulates when it hits a geologica formation that keeps it from the surface. Thus natural gas wells are replenished from below.
This fits in well with the recent discovery of life deep underground. The origin of life may be in the crust, not the oceans. These bacteria live on the hydrogen-methane chemistry. Maybe they poop oil.
So the supply of natural gas is probably nearly endless, if not tapped too too quickly; oil is also replenishing. (Coal is indeed a fossil, very finite.) Still, there are costs in extraction and burning (CO2) so you can't treat them as free resources. But you may find them in unexpected places.
I didn't have the time to read all the posts here, and I'm sure what I have to say has already been said...
That aside. Whats the benefit of changing our dependance from one natural resource, to another natural resource? I can't see how thats a good thing, perhaps in the short term. But in the long term it will just land us in the same situation we'll be finding ourselves in with oil in however many years worth the current experts tell us are left.
While it's great to find a new energy source, unless it's a renewable resource, Here's some links, then we really need to keep looking.
I'm surprised that I haven't seen any mention of Thomas Gold's "Deep Hot Biosphere" theory. This would seem to support his idea that there is a second biosphere that produces hydrocarbons as a waste product.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
From the description of the chemical reactions in the NASA press release, it appears to me that the levels of deuterium (for nuclear fusion) should be the same as seawater (currently the intended source of fuel for fusion). It'll be interesting to see which is more viable to extract.
Actually if you can use nuclear power to produce the 150J but the 100 J of oil can be used in portable devices (gasoline in cars) whereas nuclear cannot it may still be economically viable. (though addmittedly at that point it will be incredibly expensive.)
This is like declaring that batteries are useless because they take more power to charge than they provide when used.
The economic viability argument is more robust, if it costs more money to supply oil than the market demand will bear (due to the availability of other energy sourcess) then oil companies simply won't exist.
Where to start?
Well done that man who realised that burning H2 produces NOx (nitrogen oxides). Since Hydrogen is a _very_ high octane fuel (it's also a highly effective anti-knock additive - the difficulty is in adding it) it would probably be combusted at higher temperature/pressure than gasoline, thus creating more NOx. Hello performance-reducing and dirty-to-manufacture catalytic converter.
Extraction problems have been fairly well covered - it would be a nightmare.
I live in the UK - when I hear USAians bitching about fuel taxes I don't know whether to laugh or cry. 50%? Try 550% - that's right, for every 100p spent on fuel, 85p is tax.
Fission reactors would, as others have posted, be an excellent energy source, especially if combined with available reprocessing technology. (Please mod up the poster who described the process - useful info). Today's reactors are safe - people prate on about Three Mile Island because it was the most recent occurrence in the Western world. It happened over two decades ago and was caused by _human error_ - if nobody had touched any of the controls from the moment the first alarm sounded there would have been no disaster.
Fusion reactors would be even better. Unfortunately, the USA has jeopardised future fusion research by pulling out the ITER project (details on http://www.fusion.org.uk)
This seems a curious action by the world's number one user of energy per capita.
Why the opposition to alcohol? It may not be viable to grow crops specifically for fuel production, but ethanol can be brewed from _any_ plant matter - including waste. Its also the only renewable with anywhere near the specific energy of fossil fuels.
This is entirely wrong. Water vapour reflects visible light and thus reduces any greenhouse effect.
(Ever noticed how it gets cold when the sky is cloudy?)
It seems that for the past 40 years it was estimated that we had only 10-15 years more oil left. Problem is that oil is being discovered in places no one ever thought of looking before. I wouldn't be surprised if 30 years from now we still had 10-15 years of oil left.
OTOH, with global warming, political unrest, and increasing energy demands finding another energy source is a very good idea. Hydrogen may not prove to be a good mobile energy source for small power plants (cars), but it will work out fine for electric power plants, jumbo jets, and large ships. Hydrogen has a better power density than coal (when used as a fuel for steam engines), and coal served well for ships and trains. Hydrogen will serve well here too. Autos will go electric, we are getting close to the perfect battery. Hydrogen will power the electric power grids. It can work.
As for natural gas, you can strip the hydrogen off, but you get one CO2 for every 4 H2's. You're ahead on energy, but you're still pulling carbon out of the ground and sticking it in the atmosphere, where you don't want it.
What we need is a closed-cycle fuel system. Something like grow tree, cut down tree, process tree into hydrogen and carbon dioxide, use hydrogen as fuel. This way, all the carbon and water you're releasing into the atmosphere is stuff the tree pulled out of it -- so the system is stable.
so... we start a transition now. then in 50 years when everything has moved over to hydrogen we'll be in a hyrdogen dependence. We'll be dependent on hydrogen producing nations. No different that it is now with oil. we'll just be changing what we are being dependent on.
go nuclear. HIGH energy density AND really awesome explosions. Sounds like you really CAN have your cake and eat it too...
Just as an semi-interesting aside - about two weeks ago the Canadian government reclassified all SUV's as passenger vehicles (amazing!), making them subject to much stricter pollution laws. It would be nice to see the US do the same, but given the rather strong influence industrial lobby groups have in Washington, I can't see it happening for a while. (Softwood lumber anyone?)
Anyways, it'll be interesting to see what effect, if any, this change will have on the market. Maybe all the soccer-moms and suchlike will start driving slightly more sensible vehicles.. not that I dislike having distracted yuppies careening around in 4-ton monster trucks while chattering in their cell phones or anything. =)
Umm... $32,000 CDN equals about $20,000 USD. =) Perhaps this was the confusion?
I'm not challenging the report's factuality, I just got a small laugh out of it that I thought I'd share. They could've reworded it "As much as 89 grams of hydrogen...", but that wouldn't have sounded nearly so impressive.
$ make work
make: *** No rule to make target `work'. Stop.
In this mad dash for pulling hydrogen from the Earth, we seem to be forgetting one very annoying group of people. "Treehuggers". This is a catch-all term applying to anybody who puts animals/trees/geology over their fellow man.
The point? What makes you think that the same tree-huggers that oppose nuclear energy or the safe(r) drilling of Alaskan oil deposits are going to sit idlely by as somebody turns a large strip of land into a giant quarry in their quest for hydrogen? of course, that's assuming there isn't any other way to take it out...
But the real point I'd like to make about our oil dependancy- Regardless of the cost to convert to a new form of energy, we will either pay it now, or pay later. And the price for later is always higher. It's my opinion that one of these days all of our dependancy on Middle Eastern oil will blow up in our faces so badly, it's going to be like another 9-11 wakeup call. The region is far too unstable and anybody who surrenders the stratgic control of their resources severly jepordizes their own security and destiny as a nation. One of these days something very bad will happen, forcing somebody or multiple somebodies to get a clue and develope an alternate energy dependancy so those fools don't have so much influence.
Sorry, it's late, but the above captures my concerns. If tree-huggers cry about nuclear power and lobby against it, how about tearing up huge chunks of land. On the same token, if we don't change, we'll regret it soon enough in a stratigic sense.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Never said you were stupid, Mr. Pimp, "It's the X, Stupid!" is simply a common way of offering a differing opinion.
In Europe and Japan, the taxes on gasoline are so high that the average price of petrol (as gasoline is known in most of the world) is the equivalent of US$5-US$6 per US gallon.
At those prices, people will end up buying a lot smaller cars than currently; I'm not sure if Americans want to drive vehicles with the average size being that of the current Volkswagen Polo (what Europeans call the super mini class of vehicles).
One quick way to decrease our dependence on foreign oil is to rapidly develop clean-burning diesel engine technologies; with the EPA mandating low-sulfur diesel fuels very soon, diesel cars can have sophisticated fuel-delivery and exhaust emission control systems that are found on European market diesel cars, and this will allow diesel cars to even meet the strict Ultra-Low Emissions Vehicle (ULEV) standard for exhaust emissions. The nice thing about diesel technology today is that they now offer 30% or more better fuel efficiency with almost no loss in performance; the proof of this is the amazing Duramax engine found on the Chevrolet Silverado, which has more torque than the equivalent gasoline engine but has nearly 50% better fuel mileage!
If it cloudy in the day then the clouds keep light out reducing temperature. If it is cloudy at night then clouds can keep heat in, maintaining temperture.
You are right that this makes the green house effect self correcting, to an extent. This is something that weather models take into account. However, most models show that this effect does not keep pace with the warming effect. So the weather gets cloudier and warmer - but not as warm as it would get without all the extra clouds.
As for humidity (mentioned by someone else), it makes no difference to actual temperture. It makes a difference to apparent temperature (i.e how warm it feels) because humidity makes sweating a less efficient way of dumping heat.
I'm not challenging the report's factuality, I just got a small laugh out of it that I thought I'd share.
Whether it's a joke or not, it's no longer funny when it's already been posted a half-dozen times. I agree that giving the number of grams would make more sense in a certain way, but that's not the standard practice with compressed gases. Also if you think about hauling the stuff to the surface and storing it, Giving the amount in volume at STP gives you a better idea what size tank to use.
www.solarhydrogensystems.com
www.solar-h.com
www.hionsolar.com
You're right- H2 is a sucky fuel to deal with- that's why we have fuel cells powered by Methane. H2 can be converted to CH4, stored safely and later used. So, ironically you WOULD produce CO2 with a 'hydrogen fuel' car, but more importantly you won't get all the other nasty stuff that petrochemicals contain (eg Sulfur)
Let me get this straight:
Mine rock from deep undergound with, of course, no environmental impact. Crush said rock to extract hydrogen, unless the rock crunbles under it own way or something.
And this process is supposed to be more efficient at getting hydrogen out than anything else we can do today (choose your favorite technology to get hydrogen out of water I mean [H2O])?
I don't get it!
Not quite sure what the H2 is for in your scenario. There's massive deposits of methane under the ocean for example. So why make it from H2?
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"