Bush invaded Iraq to lock up oil supplies. In doing so, he raised the price of oil so significantly that car companies have started looking towards making hybrids and hydrogen-fuel cells, and this is not just Toyota and Honda, but just about all of them. Is it possible that Bush has done us a favour...?
Not really. The hydrogen etc. is going to come from oil. But it means that all the cars out there will become junk and we will have to totally rebuild every existing infrastructure. Which will REALLY wreck the environment.
Prehaps that's why he did it.. Or perhaps so they could enormously raise the prices helping out his buddies in the oil companies.
If it is, then I'm gonna faucking blow something up cuz he's costing me out the ass to fuel my 81 Camaro z28 Pro street car...
No, no, that's just it. He did it to raise fuel prices and make bucketloads, but now people are starting to look at cheaper alternatives as a result, like hybrids. Major car manufacturing companies are starting to come to terms with technology, thanks to Bush, who unwittingly prompted all of this.
Hydrogen-powered cars are awesome, but the fuel (hydrogen) is in such limited supply that it would not be able to be introduced for more than a couple of days, and hydrogen is VERY hard to reproduce. The most effective working way we have of obtaining hydrogen at the moment is by electrifying water, but the amount of electricity to produce the hydrogen is very expensive and, yes, would require the money from paying the power bill which comes from crude oil, nuclear power, hydroelectric plants, etc. Not effective. They are studying ways to replicate a leaf, however, because leaves have been converting water to hydrogen for (if you're not a religious person) billions of years.
I thought I was being pretty clear. When you hit water with electricity it breaks apart into its two basic elements, hydrogen and oxygen. The amount of electricity it takes to do that is very high, and so the process is very inefficient because the resources it takes to convert the water to hydrogen are greater than the amount of electricity the hydrogen will then produce in hydrogen-powered engines.
That's why hydrogen isn't a solution. There aren't any great natural reserves of hydrogen ready for taking - it has to be extracted from something of which it's a component [water]. Since these fuel cells would involve a process that's basically reverse electrolysis, ya couldn't get out any more energy than what had to be expended to produce the hydrogen.
no ones mentioned biodiesel... all the carbon released is only as much as the plants originally consumed. Not nearly as bad for the environment. I'm actually doing a school project on alternative fuels, i think its a necessary step for the future. enough oil!
Ah coal. I'm all for coal. I like solid fuels. And we're told we have at least a couple centuries worth of it. But, back to compressed air. We know we can get the energy to compress it, but why would we want to? Compressed air is a lousy storage medium. We're talkin' 15% or so (if that) efficiency. Hell, hydrogen would have it beat (and I'm definitely not an advocate of that). It'd be better to simply use the coal more directly.
