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Gold/Mining/Energy : PEAK OIL - The New Y2K or The Beginning of the Real End?
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To: I_C_Deadpeople who wrote (729)6/7/2005 9:29:03 PM
From: Mahatmabenfoo   of 1183
 
> he North American big three have always been reactive

yes and no. One of the many mysteries of peak oil is how GM could so dutifullly and sincerely spend SOOO many dollars and time and research trying and failing to create a fuel cell car which is hopeless impractical because:

1. The fuel cell stack has a very short life

2. The fuel cell stack uses platinum and is impossibly expensive

3. The fuel cell runs on h2 which requires is made with natural gas as a feedstock (and natural gas is more in danger of running out utterly in the near term than oil); or from water cracked by electricity, which is a hopeless inefficicent use of fossil fuels (fossil fuels --> heat water --> make electricity --> crack water ---> hydrogen ----> converted into electricty in a fuel cell ---> converted into motive power in an electric motor, with energy loss at each stage by the laws of thermodynamics).

So exactly at the place at which GM was trying the most forward looking it was the most bafflingly idiotic, failing at the creation of a technology which, if it had succeeded, which have greatly accelerated our use of fossil fuels.

I realize there's much about this I don't understand -- I'm not an economist or scientist or engineer or ecologist or.... well, you get the idea. But what little I think I do understand seems stark raving crazy, even by the standards of the knowledge of the time. We knew by 1980 that the days of fossil fuels were doomed, so what explains the mad fantasy of fuel cells? A potentially great idea for which there is no fuel.

- Charles
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