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A Hydrogen-Based Economy
Glog writes "Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall of Wired magazine have written an amazing article explaining why we need to transition to a hydrogen economy. Lots of info there, estimated cost and benefit ... very good solid reasoning for whatever floats your boat - national security, environment, super-duper-charged automobiles."
The hydrogen economy needs trillions of dollars in investment to get it going. This won't happen in our "returns-in-six-months-or-else" system we have at present, beacuse it is more cost-effective in the short term to do what we're doing right now. When the global energy system becomes dire - which it WILL, eventually, and sooner than you think - the hydrogen economy will take off, because if it doesn't the human race is quite literally doomed.
But it's not doomed for more than six months. The accountants won't let the investment happen. It's not too late... yet.
-Mark
I find it strange that both Ford and GM just killed their electric car programs. Perhaps their CEO's know something about the future US oil supply that we don't?? Naaa....
Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power.
While eventually we probably will move to a hydrogen based economy, there is a flaw here. Currently and in the foreseeable future, extracting the vast amounts of hydrogen that we'll need requires...wait for it...hydrocarbon based fuels like oil and coal! That's right, in order to separate the hydrogen and oxygen in water, we need energy. How do we produce most of our energy? Hydrocarbons.
Increased nuclear, solar, wind, and geothermal power generating capacity would help solve this problem of course. However, it will be a long, long time before we can wean ourselves off of hydrocarbon based fuel sources.
Electric cars didn't seem to be going anywhere. They ran out of power too fast ...
...
Hydrogen fuel cells, hybrids, and (I wish) water-powered cars, now THAT would be something worth exploring
This is all well and good, but why can't we promote hybrid cars in the meantime? I for one was pissed when I found out the Bush Administration was ending the programs for hyrbrid cars and shifting the money to hydrogen cars that won't be around for at least 10 years.
How much you wanna bet the funding for those end just before we get to the point where they might be useful, so that we can persue the next big thing in energy efficiency (all the while sticking with the crappy methods we use now)?
I'm a lawyer, but not yours. I wouldn't represent someone who thinks taking legal advice from Slashdot is a good idea.
Unfortunatly like many hydrogen fans, they're ignoring the realities of the world. For example, under the creation of hydrogen, they're suggesting that you should use electrolosis of water to produce it, because steam reformation of methane releases CO2. No-one does electrolosis for a reason, it's horribly inefficent. You then have to deal with moving a dangerous and hard to deal with molecule around, which is going to reduce the efficency even more, and then what do they do at the end? Use it in a fuel cell to produce electricity! If you've got electricity produced by any method and want to make best use of it, then KEEP it as electricity. Using it to make hydrogen is just throwing it away.
Conspicuously missing from the article, where the hydrogen comes from.
We dont know how to make hydrogen a commercially viable alternative. As soon as it's profitable, it'll take off in a big way.
It's the simplest element, it's everywhere in the universe, we'd never run out of it, but we dont know how to get it without putting more energy into the extraction than we would get from it as a fuel.
Why not just write an article on how a pixie-dust based economy is the wave of the future? Or another one about rocket cars and living in giant plastic bubbles under the ocean?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
well, ya know, cars are already powered by explosions.
The Hindenberg just had a big Hydrogen balloon that wasn't being depleted - it was simply "there". In the case of a hydrogen-powered car, the hydrogen supply would be steadily depleted in a semi-closed system with little to no chance of a huge pocket igniting. For the exact same reason that, under standard usage, gas tanks and fuel lines don't explode.
This does not account for Pintos and Volkswagens, of course.
Hydrogen + fuel cell is just hoped to be either better for storage of electricity than batteries, or cleaner than hydrocarbons (still has to be converted somewhere, generating pollution and CO2), eventually. That's all, until we can use the planet as a Bussard collector.
Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?
Switching over to Hydrogen definitely changes oil politics... the Middle East would ease back into irrelevancy, and the US could start ignoring them again like Osama bin Laden wants. But do you think those countries will be happy once we've pulled their major revenue source out from under them? They haven't been able to use their oil wealth to make any other significant industries in their countries.
I seriously doubt switching from oil to hydrogen will stop terrorist attacks.
When reading the article, one part in particular jumped out at me:
Is the Prius really a radically different automobile from the view of the consumer? It has the same sort of range as a traditional car, and you still have to fuel it up like other cars. The only radical differences I can see are its gas mileage (which is not always what it's cracked up to be) and the higher cost of repairs. I'm hesitant to extrapolate from its acceptance to the acceptance of a car that runs on entirely different fuel, and requires a now-nonexistent fuel infrastructure.
300 dollars please.
You dont just throw 100 billion dollars around and expect for all of the rules of physics and chemistry that make extracting hydrogen a wasteful process go away.
Hydrogen is an energy storage medium, not an energy source. The best we can hope for is that it's better than batteries, but the hydrogen needs to be made.
Oh, and before the fuel celled cars show up, we need to come up with something to replace plastics and styrofoams, as thats where most of the produced oil ends up.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I think this is a good idea, but I don't really think it'll happen. First of all, as most posts have already mentioned, there's no way the oil companies will allow this to happen; they have too much at stake to want to change the way things work.
Secondly, and maybe more importantly, is public perception of these types of vehicles. I know just about nothing about the workings of hydrogen-powered cars, which lumps me in with (I'd wager) over 95% of the rest of the country. When people like me hear the term 'alternative-energy automobiles,' we think 'expensive and underpowered.' And what does the average consumer look for in a vehicle? A low price and lots of horsepower.
I'm not saying that hydrogen-powered (or solar-powered or whatever) vehicles are incapable of costing little or being able to tow your boat; I'm just claiming that the average American thinks along those lines, and as long as this perception exists then there will be no demand for alternative-fuel cars.
What I think we need is a huge marketing campaign which essentially hammers people over the head, and beats into them the advantages of hydrogen power. There are economic advantages, environmental advantages, and even simply the coolness that can come from owning something the neighbors don't. It could even be explained that their views of hydrogen-fuelled vechicles are wrong, and that they really can have the horsepower and cost in addition to an environmentally-friendly car. A huge marketing blitz could be undertaken relatively cheaply and have the effect of greatly boosting demand, which in turn would cause corporations to invest capital and make this actually happen. That, along with tax credits or some sort of incentive program, would generate demand with consumers and put the whole alternative-fuel concept on the right path.
the coolest club on
yes, a bold initiative that will not actually begin to show results for 10 to 15 years, at the very least. that wasn't a real proposal, it was political showmanship. if he wanted to show interest in decreasing our reliance on foreign oil, he'd implement a plan to make 90% of government vehicles hydrogen powered by the end of the decade, or something like that.
How do you mean water-powered? As in use electricity to "crack" the water into H2 and O? Where does the electricity come from to do this? Generated by the engine burning the H2 and O2? There's a little thing called the laws of thermodynamics.
What I see is a cracking plant run from household electricity. Or any other central locations, where you can fill up on H2 and O2, but that is just a Hydrogen fuel cell.
Humm? There are not huge H2 deposits in the earth to tap. Electrolysis of H2O is hugely inefficient. You could take the light hydrocarbons and steam crack them to form H2 and C02, but this does not reduce our dependance on foreign oil!
Sheesh, it would be nice if these guys would pull their heads out of their butts and have a logical though for once. But wait, if that happened then their heads might explode.
Kent
Since when did blatant conspiracy theory become insightful?
Maybe they killed the programs because they were wasting a huge amount of money and getting little commercial interest. Apply Occam's Razor.
Damn them for trying to profit.
The hydrogen economy has lately gotten lots of press, but much of it mistates role that hydrogen can play.
Hydrogen will not, can not, be a primary energy source for our society. Current hydrocarbons provide net energy (at least in a temporal sense) because the energy that was consumed in their creation was used millenia ago. There are no similar, vast reserves of hydrogen waiting to be exploited.
While other posters here (and many others in varied other media) talk of a supply of hydrogen gained from splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, they have forgotten that this process requires energy, thus necessitating some other primary energy source. Some suggest that source may be solar or wind or hydro--but then they are the actual source of the energy, hydrogen is merely an intermediate storage device.
It is much more likely that any 'hydrogen economy' that emerges in the next 3-4 decades will be based upon the extraction of hydrogen from methane, either at a large scale, or in fuel cells at the point of generation.
I'm not saying that hydrogen has no place or not interesting, but in our excitement, let's not forget the law of conservation of energy.
--my $0.02
That's interesting. That would be like mandating the use of computer driven cars by the end of the decade. We'd all be stuck not being able to go anywhere.
The technology is there, but it is not ready for prime time or its not practically implementable. Just like Hydrogen.
10: PRINT "Everything old is new again."
20: GOTO 10
its about setting reasonable goals and giving a direction for the future. Mr. GWB is committed to spending 100Billion on the "war against terrorism" to eliminate "wepons of mass descruction".
isn't it possible that that 100Billion could provide all we need in homeland security as well as give a direction for future energey use of the country? the government already guides our eating habits by providing huge subsidises to the farming industry, why not kick the "drop your dependance on oil" in the ass and get it rolling? alterior motives perhaps in spending 100B? not in this great union.
But the myth of the hydrogen economy is confounding to me. For example, take the claim that "hydrogen is plentiful" made by Mr. Schwartz. Yes, it's a plentiful element, bound in low energy configurations in other molecules. There are no hydrogen "free lunches" sitting out there waiting for us to take advantage of them. The problem is that most of the sources of hydrogen take more energy to get hydrogen from than they provide in energy output from burning the hydrogen (or reacting it in a fuel cell). This is fundamental chemistry and physics. No ranting and raving or spending campaign is going to change it.
The "hydrogen economy" really needs to be relabeled as the "coal economy" or the "nuclear economy", because hydrogen's role in this hypothesized economy is merely as a very efficient battery.
The most viable alternative energy sources we have right now are right under our noses but we've chosen not to see them. Ethanol can be produced quite efficiently at reasonable cost from renewable sources. Low cost cellulose-containing feedstocks are available that don't end up with the energy-sinkhole problems faced by corn-based ethanol (i.e. you end up putting more energy into making it than you get out of it). The tools of biocommodity engineering are starting to mature, and this is where we need to put more resources.
Ethanol and methanol, in fact, can be used to power fuels fairly efficiently (not quite as much so as hydrogen). But we don't have to wait - FFVs (Flexible Fuel Vehicles) are on the market today, thanks to tax incentives. People need to be made aware of this alternative. The problem? Outside of the midwest and corn based ethanol, it's hard to fuel up on fuel grade ethanol at the pump. More investment in building production facilities and developing distribution channels to the pump is needed for the several million FFVs already on the road, and a government-financed consumer awareness campaign would also go a long way to supporting this effort.
Other real possibilities exist too - biodiesel, for one, though the economics of it are likewise not as favorable as for ethanol production.
We don't need to enslave ourselves to oil. But we do need to be realistic about the alternatives and acknowledge that hydrogen is merely part of the equation. We shouldn't use "hydrogen" as shorthand to refer to the broad array of _real_ alternative energy solutions that are available. The myths about hydrogen need to debunked - it doesn't make you anti-progress or pro-oil to point out the realities of a full "lifecycle analysis" (to use the term from the biocommodity engineering literature) of hydrogen production and usage. And to divert vast volumes of money to research hydrogen when that's not necessarily the most viable path to a sustainable energy economy seems at best foolish.
Recycling old ideas is a great way to save brain energy. Thus I quote myself:
If you can maintain an air of hype-proofness it is fairly easy to see how stupid the "Hydrogen Economy" ideas are in both the short term and long term. Hydrogen is merely an energy carrier a finicky one at that. Many of its proponents only see the end result, a car that spits out warm wet air, without fully realizing the infrastructure that warm wet air is generated with.
Diesel, especially biodiesel has a much better cost/benefit analysis but isn't as sexy as technology as hydrogen. Even the word Diesel fares ill in comparison to the dynamicism of hydrogen's syllibles. It also seems to me that the American public, three quarters of which live in urban areas, connotate Diesel with dirty and noisy MAC trucks and pubtrans buses. If they're a little more technical they probably instantly think of Diesel cars like the TDI Golf and Jetta with their 90hp-I-think-I-can-make-it-up-to-passing-speed engines.
What Diesel hybrid proponents ought to do is start up a massive test drive program. Give a couple people the keys to a Diesel hybrid for a week with a full tank. If more people see they can actually use freeway on-ramps effectively AND have most of the tank of gas left by the end of the week they'd see Diesel hybrids and hopefully Diesel engines in a much different light. Electric assist makes a huge difference in the car's feel, especially for those who shun anything that won't pop off a light like a Roman candle.
The Honda Dualnote concept car is an excellent example of this idea, the combustion engine charges an ultracapacitor while idling or braking. Said capacitor gives an extra umph (100hp worth) when accelerating. If you were to stick such a system on a high efficiency yet power deprived car like the TDI Lupo it'd make for a fair bit of go juice without expending a ton of gas juice. Citroën and Audi have shown that it is possible to make exceptionally clean burning Diesels which is promising for the Diesel-smells-like-poo opponents. Nissan's Gloria is making some great advancements using toroidal CVTs instead of conventional gearboxs.
These sorts of advances lend well to designing a really badass Diesel hybrid. From conception to fruition Diesels are going to be far cheaper than any hydrogen powered car for the next several decades. Diesel fuel is much easier to store and transport than pure hydrogen, it is more robust than methanol, and with biodiesel is renewable and is only pumping the CO2 back into the environment that was used to grow it.
Hype about hydrogen based utopian societies are the same sort of pie in the sky crap that has been fed to people about fusion power. It's payoff point is always somewhere out in the distant future where we all use transporters to get to work. Hydrogen COULD be viable as could nuclear fusion. They could be viable technologies at a point in the future but not now and not any time soon. Hyping these technologies up does little to fix any problems anyone has in the here and now which is where we live.
Hydrogen will be a good idea some day but unfortunately not today. Until then we ought to work towards improving what we have available to its most efficient state while working on the technology of next year. I personally think Diesel's time is due but clean and efficient gasoline engines would work just as well for me. I just want more cars on the road with that get 40+ miles per gallon. I'd really love to see 90+ miles to the gallon. The more fuel efficient our cars get the less dependent we are on the gas pump to lead functional lives. Three times the gas milage means a third of your current fuel expenses. I'm sure everyone in meat space can find a use for a couple hundred extra dollars left at the end of the year, for some a few thousand.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
GM is putting a half-dozen fuel cell vehicles on the streets of Washington DC as a real world test (and some political PR). Shell is providing the hydrogen through a few of its existing retail stations. Electric cars aren't dead, just battery powered electric cars (e.g. EV1). The oil companies will profit since they have the infrastructure to support hydrogen delivery. Finally, creating hydrogen is easy. All you need is electricity and water.
what do you think saudi arabia will do when we decide to go down this road? pump more oil maybe?? oil can be made so cheap that saudi arabia can kill of the hydrogen transition 'just for fun'. it will be worse that the transition to HDTV :)
when cars came along, they
bought all the train tracks (in LA), and guess
what? public transportation is barely functioning.
look around your neighborhood. how many gas stations do you see? what is the cost of this 'gas infrastructure'?
Perhaps you would care to do the calculation for us? Let's see: take your average daily home energy use (converted to BTU's) add in your average daily automotive use (you burn how many gallons per day?) converted to BTU's, add in the amount extra you want to have available to sell to power companies: that's your total daily energy requirements. Multiply by a factor of 3.5 to account for the inefficiency of solar conversion, then again by a factor of 1.5 to 5 (depending on the part of the country/climate you live in.) then once more by 2.5 (to account for the fact that the sun only shines usably for 40% of a day) to get your total solar requirements.
One more quick comnversion to square feet and you'll be able to tell me how many acres of solar panels this New York City apartment dweller will have to install to do his part.
Not a realistic solution, but it sure seems great for "buy one today" marketers.
The thing about things we don't know is we often don't know we don't know them.
Lets just modify some photosynthetic bacteria to exhale hydrogen! Just be sure it doesn't get loose into the oceans!
Entropy sucks.
Hydrogen requires energy to be made. The most convenient form of energy right now is still fossil fuels. Energy gets lost when converting it from one form to another (basic thermodynamics). We would be worse off if we tried to convert to hydrogen now. Solar energy is still a pipe dream, hydro power destroys once-pristine rivers, nuclear power is toxic. We are basically screwed without the development of fusion.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
Why am I pessimistic? because as soon as a technology that promises to get away from petroleum dependency arises, petroleum producing states will cut prices significantly until said technology is deemed 'impractical'. Once this happens they'll raise prices once again.
I mean, how much does oil cost per barrel to Saudi Arabia to produce? a few bucks? less? how much are they selling it for? 30+ bucks and counting? They could flood the world oil market with oil at $5/barrel (which would translate in gas at around 40c/gallon) and still rack in profits...
Personally I don't believe that until oil runs out we'll ever wean ourselves from it: and given how big the reserves of oil producing states are, I don't believe it will run out for another several decades unfortunately...
just my 2c
-- the cake is a lie
An H2 based economy will happen. There is absolutely no doubt about this. The general trend throughout history is to go from high carbon fuels to a zero-carbon fuel (wood -> coal -> oil -> gas -> H2). This transition will happen probably over the next 100 years. H2 will be piped into every home and used for both electrical energy (fuel cells) and heat (a furnace).
The most important thing to remember about H2 is that it is NOT an energy source, but an 'energy storage' system. An H2 tank is basically an chemical battery (all batteries are chemical, but you know what I mean). H2 allows energy to be generated in one location (wind-mills on the prairies) and moved to another location (a car manufacturer in Toronto). Currently, generated electrical energy (wind, hydro, etc.) must be consumed at the same time. By converting it into H2 it allows the energy to be stored.
The real question is not if it will happen, but how. There are two broad possibilities. One, the H2 will be distributed in a similar fashion as natural gas is today: Through pipelines that are controlled by state sanctioned monopolies (i.e. the Gas Company). There might be limited competition at the high volume end of things between large companies. These companies will control generation and distribution (and hence the price).
The second model is much more democratic. The pipelines will be owned by the public (like most roads are today) and the mechanism of transmission will be operated by some body (public or otherwise); that is, they'll look after the physical infrastructure. Here's the kicker: the generation and sale of H2 will be open to anybody. Most people will still choose just to buy the H2 at the market price, but people will also be able to store H2 if they want. They will be able to purchase the H2 when the price is low (night), store it in tanks, and sell when the price is high (day). Very complex computer programs will be written to try maximize their profits. Furthermore, people with small wind-mills or solar cells will be able to sell the extra energy that they do not consume by generating H2 and selling it on the open market. Farmers on the prairies will be able to build windmills to generate H2 and supplement their incomes. In this model, the free market is in driving force for the price of H2, not monopolies.
It is important to understand what is happening with H2 based economies because it is up to the people to ensure that the second model happens. Big oil/gas companies will oppose it every step of the way and try to maintain control. It will be interesting to see what happens.
-PCB
'Men never commit evil so fully and joyfully as when they do it for religious convictions.' B. Pascal
Currently, the least expensive method is a process known as steam reforming, in which natural gas reacts chemically with steam to produce hydrogen and carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. Far preferable would be to use carbon-free resources like solar, wind, and hydropower to produce electricity for electrolysis, which splits water into hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen would make renewable energy practical, acting as a storage medium for the modest amounts of energy such resources produce. Wind power, especially, lends itself to this sort of use.
And there's the rub. Even neglecting the astronomical capital costs, no one has concieved a renewable energy program that will fulfill our energy needs. Most hydrogen will have to be produced from natural gas. The rest will have to be produced using electricty generated by nuclear, fossil fuel, and hydroelectric plants. No renewable technology has yet been proposed that could possibly generate enough power to do this a bearable cost. Hence, our dependance on foreign oil remains.
To be fair, that 100 - 200 billion (probably more) is not his money. On the other hand, companies that Still have top administration officials on their payroll are getting sweet contracts in Iraq directly related to the war effort.
It looks like a sound business plan to me. Create a market, then exploit it. Don't worry about the Oversight committees, those can be taken care of with a little pressure from the top and a quick nip off the old budget.
I read the internet for the articles.
People go on and on about the hydrogen future, but it's a mere distraction. Hydrogen will not replace oil, or coal, or gas. It may replace gasoline. Because hydrogen is an intermediate energy form - it's temporary storage between production/harvesting of energy and use of energy. And for all its supposed advantages, it's got a lot of faults. IMHO, diesel/biodiesel is a much more flexible and practical intermediate fuel - and if anyone could come up with a better battery, it would beat both.
The real question is energy generation/production/harvesting. We need to stop shipping in oil and burning up coal and start harvesting it from renewable (AKA "effectively infinite") sources, particularly the ones with low environmental impact. That means solar, wind, microhydro, biodiesel, cellulositic ethanol, tidal and current turbines, and geothermal. We need on-site off-grid power generation. We need to distribute energy generation and storages so that we don't need delicate, wasteful shipping methods - be they the power grid or fuel trucks. And we need to stop letting everyone get away with building structures and devices that waste energy with wild abandon.
Long story short - hydrogen may have potential, but it's being sold like snake oil and it's years away from reality. If we focused on simpler, proven technologies and put some real effort into some rather obvious fields of research (like high efficiency solar) we could have a working system in much shorter order.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Peter Schwartz neglects to mention something that is perhaps not immediately obvious - hydrogen is currently produced from petroleum. It is going to be extremely, extremely difficult to transition to a hydrogen economy while leaving petroleum behind. To do this is going to require a major advance in science - namely the development of an inorganic system for splitting water to produce hydrogen and oxygen. There have been many great minds working on this for years and currently the record for doing this is around 1% at best (based on the conversion of hydrogen from a single photon).
Clearly, a hydrogen economy devoid of an intimate connecting with fossil fuels is not going to be a reality any time in the near future.
The first way to begin easing the dependency on petroleum is to both decrease consumption and increase the efficiency of processes that consume energy. The first of these is obviously not a simple task. The second is. John Deutch (MIT) has argued that if all cars in the US were hybrid, we would reduce the daily consumption of petroleum by approximately 30% (I recall it would be around 3 million barrels/day vs 30 million). And this is just the start - think about all of the other technologies that could be improved by improving efficiency.
My point is not to shoot down the article, but simply to note that the switch to a hydrogen economy is absolutely going to be connected to petroleum - there is currently no other way to produce hydrogen as efficiently (currently steam reforming hovers around 60-80% in terms of the yield).
Exactly. It takes energy to make all this Hydrogen.
...to the other major power in the conversion from oil to hydrogen: electric utilities. Within a decade, outlays to power companies should be aimed at connecting hydrogen pipelines to the power stations.
I love this part from the article:
Far preferable would be to use carbon-free resources like solar, wind, and hydropower to produce electricity for electrolysis, which splits water into hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen would make renewable energy practical, acting as a storage medium for the modest amounts of energy such resources produce.
And then:
So let me get this straight: Use renewables to produce electricity to make hydrogen that can be pumped to utility plants to make electricity. Hmmm. Doesn't sound too efficient.
You presuppose that the people engaged in understaking this course of action are doing it with a rational point-of-view. Maybe they figured that "since my daddy learned how to sell a war to the American people, so can I." After all, that war netted Bush, Inc. large reconstruction contracts in Kuwait.
In addition, maybe they're also thinking they have everything in place they need: D. Cheney, C. Powell, C. Rise. D. Rumsfeld to plan this next heist from under the noses of the Iraqi people. And maybe their still high on the fact that they were able to steal an election, not just from the American people or it's Justice system, but from the world. It seems like everyone else it paying dearly for our apathy.
Bush's (et. al.) plan is well calculated. They approached the United Nations first and got their support last fall. They hoped the UN inspections would fail and have sped the process, failed to get the inspector the adequate equipment they needed, and failed to adopt James A. Baker's post Gulf War approach, i.e., "intrusive inspections anytime, anywhere, with no exceptions" utilizing "all necessary means to enforce it."
Now he is going to push through a war that nobody wants. How do I know, he's moved a lot of people and equipment in place while millions around the world cry out in protest. Finally, there's the Washington Post story yesterday about the Pentagon talking to a few key players regarding a post war Iraq and the fact that Halliburton Co., where Dick Cheney was chief executive before becoming vice president. This is really pivotal to all of these business ventures. Many key Senators and Congressmen who should have known about this crucial development simply read about it in the Washington Post.
It may be a horrible business gamble by any stretch of the imagination, but the benefits of money and power are just to great to pass up.
If you think I'm kidding, do a little more research into exactly what went on in Florida during the election.
Terrorism is a last-ditch attempt to gain the attention of powers that don't/can't/won't pay attention to the social effects of their policies.
It's because the US has fucked about with the economies and societies of Middle-East nations, and is continuing to do so, all to secure their supply of oil, that terrorism against the US came about.
By your logic, terrorists should be attacking the Swiss, the Norwegians, the New Zealanders, and the Mongolians, all because they're different.
You must understand: terrorism is a political tool, not a religious one. Wars are religious, and the impending one is no different.
I had one, but the wheel fell off.
The prez probably does have info we don't. But...
Prez and friends makes money out of Iraq war, due to easier access to oil. France and Russia will lose money over Iraq war, due to lost oil. This is not rocket science.
Disarmament is bollocks. The only country to have effectively disarmed their "WMD" is South Africa - everyone else says they need it for defense. I'd love to see the reaction if the UN told the US to disarm all of their WMD and submit to inspections, "or else". Yet you expect it of other nations.
Iraq hasn't done shit to anyone internationally these past few years. Internally is another story, but name a single country that hasn't.
And meanwhile, North Korea is working with nukes and lobbing missiles into the Sea of Japan, and Israel and Palestine are exchanging bombs and rockets almost daily. How peace-loving are these guys?
Don't try to tell me Iraq is the big bad threat to world peace and needs half a million troops on its borders, cos it's rubbish.
It's called thinking proactively. It's clear that Saddam is not stable--he has a record of killing his own people and attacking his neighbors. It's known that he had chemical weapons because he's used it on his own people. They also tried to assassinate ex-president Bush in Kuwait during the Clinton administration so it's clear he is willing to resort to terrorism for "payback" or to achieve his goals.
So you have a dictator that kills his own people, attacks his neighbors, and ordered an attempted act of terror against an ex-president of the United States.
Whether he has ties to terrorism is a question mark. Some say yes, some say no. It is clear he can't launch a ballistic missile at the U.S. so the only way he could use it against the U.S. is via terrorist agents--be they Al Qaeda or home-brewed.
Regardless, after 9/11 I'm glad to see we're taking action BEFORE something happens. All the terrorists could get their hands on last time was 4 airplanes. What if they worked out a deal with Saddam and got some WMDs?
Practically all of the world (except for Britain and the US) see no impetus to invade Iraq
I suggest you review the news and see what countries are for and against the U.S. stance on Iraq. Most of Europe *DOES* support the U.S. position, and many European presidents/leaders signed a letter to that effect weeks ago. The president of France got in a hissy-fit over that.
No, the U.S. and England are not alone. France, Germany, and to some extent Russia are being very vocal, but they are by no-means the "norm."
But Bush doesn't care what anyone else thinks. He wants to skip the jury and convict anyway.
If I know my neighbor is collecting guns and I have information from people who have visited him that he is planning on torching my house, I'm going to take action BEFORE that happens even if a jury can't convict him until he does something. If Bush has intelligence that gives him reason to believe that inaction could lead to an attack on the U.S. then he is 100% right in taking action to stop it preemptively.
Why don't our country's internal values apply to how we conduct ourselves in world affairs? That's just sad.
No it's not. It's naive to think that personal civil rights can be applied to entire countries. They are not the same thing.
This depends on the liberal conspiracy that the only reason Bush wanted to be and is president was to forward his own personal economic goals, or those of his friends. If you were to become president is that what you would do? Why do you think that Bush would?
Further, as a parent post already stated, it is far from clear that this war will actually help the oil industry. So you are gambling domestic and international political capital, the economy that could cost Bush his re-election, and tons of money and a budget deficit for something that is not even sure to help the oil business. Sorry, doesn't add up.
I'd love to see the reaction if the UN told the US to disarm all of their WMD and submit to inspections, "or else". Yet you expect it of other nations.
I agree this is unfair and I've oftened wondered why the "world powers" haven't been taken to task on this. That said, that's not the issue. The world is NOT insisting that the U.S. give up its nukes because it has a history of over half a century of RESTRAINT. Iraq does not. And the world has already declared through the U.N. that Iraq MUST disarm. Not just the U.S., the entire U.N. security council. The difference is that it is time to enforce that declaration and some countries aren't willing to backup their demands.
Iraq hasn't done shit to anyone internationally these past few years.
And we should wait until it does? Iraq has a history of bother its neighbors. It has a history of using WMDs on its neighbors (well, Iran) and internally. What do you think all those WMDs are for? Collecting? And if they're planning on using them, on who?
Don't try to tell me Iraq is the big bad threat to world peace and needs half a million troops on its borders, cos it's rubbish.
I'm not telling you that. The U.N. decided that many times over the last 12 years and again last November. If you have a problem with that, complain to the countries (the unanimous Security Council) that passed 1441 last November. Don't complain that some countries actually want to see that resolution acted upon.
Perhaps not efficient, but necessary. The problem here isn't one of physics - it's engineering.
The two big problems with renewables are:
a) Where the energy is generally doesn't have good grid connections. For example, there is enough wave energy off the west coast of Scotland to run the entire UK, and enough wind to run about half the country. There are simply no Supergrid connections to the entire region. It would be very expensive and fairly difficult to build them. But we already have gas pipelines to supply the towns with natural gas.
b) You can't regulate them by demand, as you can with fossil powered turbines. When the wind blows, you get electricity, regardless of whether you want it or not. The Grid can't store electricity - it has to produce exactly as much as is being used at any one time. Any imbalance is taken out of the kinetic energy in the spinning turbines, which leads to a.c. frequency fluctuations. Too much wind/wave/solar power feeding straight into the Grid would rapidly lead to desynchronisation.
However, both these problems could be solved by using Hydrogen, as it's a simple method of storing energy, which could be piped ashore/around using existing natural gas pipelines and stored until needed (porosity issues aside).
I would like to point out that the invasion of Iran was US backed, and the invasion of Kuwait was US approved, until it happened, anyway.
Mind you, Resolution 641 (I think that's it) from 1991 mandates regime change, so technically, the US already HAS a UN mandate.
Personally, I think that the invasion is ALL about Iraq's strategic position in the Middle East. It borders all the iffy countries that the US has been having trouble with, and neatly divides the Arab states and sandwiches them between US friendly powers (seeing as the US intends occupying Iraq). Then the US can proceed in it's tasks in the region without the need for iffy alliances, such as the one with Saudi Arabia.
Rational thought is the only true freedom
So why are countries such as France, Germany, Russia, etc. not happily falling in line behind us? Simple, there is no compelling evidence of WMD.
ROTFL. You are slightly out of the loop, aren't you? The French actually built the Iraqi nuclear reactors, and gave them the technology for building nuclear weapons. The current French president Chirac railed against Israel for bombing the nuclear facilities in Iraq just before they obtained nuclear status, because French scientists were killed in the process. The French also have substantial oil deals with Iraq. Over here in France we see clips of Chiraq and Saddam Hussein being quite chummy, though apparently this was a few years ago.
Personally I don't see what the fuss is about. France has had a long history of appeasing dictators. It's always Britain or the US that go in to do the right thing, with or without the UN.
I wouldn't hold your breath, unless inspections are given a legitimate chance.
So we hold 300,000 troops on the Iraqi border for another 12 years?
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France