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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bearcatbob who wrote (17166)	4/26/2006 7:26:42 AM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 540924

Given the strong correlation between high gas prices and disgust with politicians, it is likely we will see some kind of political shakeup this year and in 2008. I think it's the miserable experience of pumping gas - it stinks, you have to stand around outside in a gas station, someone used to do all this for you, and godammit look how much it costs to be that miserable. In South Africa, there is always a swarm of attendants who make most of their money from tips, so they hustle like parking valets to fill the tank, clean the windshield, all that good stuff. Man, I am going to miss that. Bad combination, high gas prices and filling your tank on a sweltering summer day. But playing with the SPR fills, ethanol and tax tweaks as a response is a joke.

To: Bearcatbob who wrote (17166)	4/28/2006 6:18:46 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 540924

H2 cars - where is the H2 going to come from. The main advantage hydrogen has a fuel is that it can easily be produced if you have the energy. The corresponding disadvantage is that it take a good deal of energy esp. if you are trying to produce it from water rather then a source like natural gas. Getting it from natural gas is cheaper but means that you aren't moving away from fossil fuels. There are a number of non-fossil fuel energy sources that aren't suitable for fuel but that could be used to create hydrogen. However none of them is perfect. Nuclear might be a good option, but nuclear plants are expensive to build, are controversial, and you have to deal with the waste. Still in the long run using nuclear power to generate hydrogen from water might work. Hydrogen wouldn't really be a root energy source, you don't have hydrogen wells or hydrogen mines, but it would store energy and be usable as a fuel. A bigger problem than the creation of hydrogen would be the distribution of storage of hydrogen. Hydrogen can generate more power per weight that say gasoline, but it doesn't have a lot of power per volume. You need a large tank to hold it and you need to compress it anyway, which takes energy and also causes safety concerns. Also hydrogen molecule's are very small and tend to escape containers, which not only causes you to lose some of the hydrogen it can also cause metal tanks to become brittle. Liquid hydrogen could be used but have there own problems. Liquid hydrogen has to be kept at extremely low temperatures, more than 420 degrees F below zero. This takes energy, adds bulk, and causes other problems and even as a liquid hydrogen still has less energy density per volume than gasoline. You could also use hydrogen compounds but this idea is not without its own problems.