[geoschmo]

Originally posted by oleg:
OK, I had an insomnia and listen to G.W.Bush speach (3am Zulu). Amid all the rubbish about Irag there was an interesting part - $1.2*10^9 to develop a clean car. At first, it looks like a good idea - car that emits only H2O. But... nobody, even american president cancel the first law of thermodynamics. Where all that H2 will come from ?? To make it, USA will have to multiply energy production. I don't know, double, tripple or may be less ? There is no way it can come from renewable sources - no place to build dozens of Hoover Dam or thousands of windmills. And nobody would want to build dozens of nuclear plants in your neighborhood. At the end, USA will have to build a lot more of power plants, burn more oil/gas/coal than now and pollute Earth even more ! Second law of thermodynamics is still valid and whatever the evil of cars, they are quite efficient in converting the oil energy to car motion. Now we will have a multistep process, Oil->electricity->hydrogen->wheel spining. Please don't tell me it will decrease the end amount of CO2.

It's quite reasonable actually. By concentrating the burning of fossil fuels to large electrical and H2 generation facilites you can retain stricter controls over the level of emmisions even if you don't reduce the overall use of fossil fuels. It's a lot harder to force compliance on 400 million cars than it is on a couple thousand power plants.

But I think your premise is a bit pessimistic. If people could be better educated about the safety of nuclear power generation it would help. And you might be right about the dams, but there are millions of places that windmills can be placed. And you don't even mention solar power. The biggest thing stunting the growth of these alternative fuels is not inaction by the government, but a lack of demand compared to the higher costs of developing them. Increasing the need for H2 to replace conventional gas powered vehicles would greatly increase that demand.

Geoschmo

[ January 29, 2003, 12:13: Message edited by: geoschmo ]