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Re: [Spridgets] What do YOU think?

To: <spridgets@autox.team.net>
Subject: Re: [Spridgets] What do YOU think?
From: <corvallis@peoplepc.com>
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2011 15:24:42 -0800
We are sinking into a morass of our own bi-products. 
100 miles-an-hour down a dead-end street. 
"We have met the enemy, and he is us." Pogo
...bill in corvallis

=======================================================
-----Original Message-----
From: spridgets-bounces@autox.team.net
[mailto:spridgets-bounces@autox.team.net] On Behalf Of bjshov8@tx.rr.com
Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2011 1:50 PM
To: Spridgets
Subject: Re: [Spridgets] What do YOU think?

I have thought about this subject a lot.  We someday will have more oil
shortage than we have now.  We have other forms of energy- nuclear, solar,
wind, hydroelectric, that can continue into the future and can be developed
more, and we will have to convert to these.

Vehicles need a power source that they can carry with them, and gasoline is
a good material for storing energy.  It stores a lot of energy with respect
to its mass, and the mechanism needed to make use of that energy is well
developed and not too heavy or expensive.  So we need something that we can
synthesize and use in place of gasoline.  I'm not a chemist so I don't know
what fluids could be synthesized with the input of energy, but I know that
hydrogen can be generated with the input of energy.  So if you had a factory
that used electricity to generate hydrogen, you could then transport the
hydrogen to where people needed it and use it to power cars.  Hydrogen
generated from wind/solar/etc. would generate no hydrocarbon pollution nor
would it take away from our supplies of oil.

I've noticed advertisements for the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt, which can
both function as all-electric vehicles.  Certainly if we can generate
electricity with non-polluting sources and use it in vehicles, then that
doesn't generate any hydrocarbon pollution either.  I don't know if we are
close to the point of manufacturing enough batteries of enough capacity to
replace a significant portion of current automobiles but who knows how this
will develop in the future.

Convincing people to move away from gasoline/diesel vehicles is another
problem.  And developing electricity generating plants that don't use coal
and oil is another problem.  As I understand it we have a lot of coal and
could generate cheap electricity with it for a long time.  Someday it will
run out too.  But as someone also said, if you generate the pollutants at
one location then that makes it theoretically easier to control, capture or
clean up the pollutants.

All of this discussion is with respect to automobiles and trains.  Trucks
and airplanes are a different story.  I don't think electric trucks are
feasible, but maybe most long haul truck transport would revert back to
trains.  I don't think we will ever have electric OR hydrogen powered
airplanes, so we will always need a liquid fuel source for them.  We may
have to retain some form of oil fuel for airplanes, even if it is generated
from algae or something similar to that.

I'm an engineer but I sometimes wish I was a chemist so I could go farther
with these ideas.  Surely we have smart chemists somewhere but I don't think
they are doing all that they can do to develop alternate sources of energy.
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