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Politics : Foreign Policy Discussion Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (8727)	8/12/2008 12:00:13 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 15987

If we try to replace gasoline with natural gas than 1 - We will have to import natural gas. 2 - We will have to spend an enormous fortune on replacing infrastructure. 3 - Then when we transition to something else we have to spend another enormous chunk of money. Plug in hybrids are a decent idea (far more practical in the short to mid term than pure electric cars), but its not like they have no downsides at all, and also you are adding a very large cost, in replacing all those cars, and building up the electrical infrastructure. Ultra capacitors are interesting, but at best they seem like just a moderate improvement over batteries in terms of energy density (1 MJ/kg compared to maybe 3/4ths of that for the best current lithium batteries). But I'm not sure the claims of the company are highly reliable. I guess we will see over the coming years, if there estimates for energy stored per weight, energy stored per volume, cost, and safety are realistic or not. If they are realistic then its something that we should see gaining some market share, but its not a solution by itself. as we progress towards a hydrogen economy I'm skeptical of a widely distributed hydrogen economy. Hydrogen has great energy density in terms of weight, but not so great in terms of volume (even if its highly compressed or liquefied, and either of those create other costs and difficulties), and it tends to leak out of tanks over time (often embrittling the tanks in the process). Eventually with better techniques and equipment, and/or out of necessity, we may move to a hydrogen economy, but I don't think its a reasonable cost effective plan for quite awhile. I guess we are going to just have to disagree on this. My disagreement isn't just something I'm tending to, but something that I hold rather strongly. Except in the long run the idea of energy independence isn't practical, and even in the long run it isn't necessarily a good idea. For example if Canada or Mexico can produce energy cheaper than it would be produced in the US, why not import some of it. More generally I'm not a fan of trying to become independent in goods and services. Trade across the world market promotes efficiency, lower costs, and greater total wealth.