sci.energy.hydrogen

Benj wrote:
> On Feb 29, 2:41 pm, "Androcles" wrote:
>> "Bill Penrose" wrote in message
>
>> You have little faith in technology, and a lot of faith in schoolyard
>> | taunting as a way to settle debates. Ann Coulter could use your
>> | exquisite talent.
>
>> Ever see how quickly a helium balloon deflates?
>> Do you have a clue why?
>> I'll tell you. The light gas with the low atomic weight passes
>> right through the skin.
>> Piping hydrogen out of a desert is the stupidest idea I've
>> come across in a long time.
>> I'll repeat: I wonder if you have a brain? ?? ??? ???? ?????
>
> Hey, wash my mouth out with soap but Andro is right on, this time. Not
> only hydrogen but ALL of the liberal schemes to get us out of the so-
> called energy crisis are the stupidest ideas that ANY reasonably
> educated person has ever come across.
>
> Hydrogen. Inefficient to make (make some and see how HOT the cells
> get!), hard and dangerous to store, light weight molecule with little
> energy storage, leaks out of EVERYTHING like mad, Hard to liquify to
> get energy density and on and on. Stupid!
>
> Gasahol. Gosh lets' save the world with energy from bio-renewable
> corn! Oh I'm SO excited about this! Er except that it takes MORE oil
> to generate a gallon of alcohol and gives less energy than if you just
> burned the oil in the first place with the added bonus that it sends
> food prices through the roof (happening already with just small
> production)
>
> Solar power! Yeah, a great idea to any moron who has never OWNED a
> real solar cell. Yes, virginial I have one. Yes it's expensive. Yes,
> it charges a car battery (at 1 amp rate in bright sun) and you can
> calculate that to use solar simply to replace the energy flowing
> through ONE major gas station you'd have to cover the state of texas
> in solar cells (and that's REAL (means expensive) cells not some
> printed amouphous crap that has no idea what conversion efficiency
> is.
>
> How about wind power? Well if you could just ring Washington DC with
> windmills it just might work! Or maybe attach a windmill to any
> liberal kook who really "cares"about "saving the world" using
> hydrogen. Otherwise you had better just leave your windmill to fill
> the cow's watering tank.
>
> Alright, how about the time-tested water power! Now we are getting
> somewhere! Lots of energy and other side benefits such a sflood
> control and irrigation! Oh wait, I remember now, most of the major
> rivers ALREADY have dams and power stations on them! Duh!
>
> Atomic power: Well who could be against using up all those world-
> destroying bombs left over from the cold war? Of course a nuclear
> power plant has to be just about THE most primitive "high tech"
> installation this side of raiders of the lost arc. Using radiation to
> boil water? cripes! But OK, you are getting rid of old bombs! But
> there is just one tiny problem: Nuclear waste! The answer is simple.
> You find a totally useless area of the planet, you rope it off and you
> dump all the crap there! My vote is for Alamaba! (and oddly enough
> there are quit a few people actually living in Alabama who would vote
> my way as well!
>
> How about we simply stuff a dirty jock strap in the mouth of each
> "caring" "world-saving" liberal and let the engineers deal with the
> problem. Points:
>
> 1. first thing is start conserving oil! Oil is FAR too useful a
> chemical raw material to simply be burning it in cars or houses! You
> like to eat? Well start thinking about where the fertilizer that
> makes the current population levels sustainable comes from. It's oil,
> bunky!
>
> 2. look at energy sources with a long time to "peak". These would be
> first natural Gas and secondly coal. Both these can give us a little
> "breathing room" of say up to 300 years to really solve the problem.
> BOTH are technologies that are running vehicles RIGHT NOW! Hey our
> local gas company runs ALL it's vehicles on natural gas! j And I also
> point out that Hitler ran all of WWII on synthetic gasoline from coal.
> Seemed to work well enough to make him a royal pain in the ass.
> Instead of dreamland projects work should be started right now on
> removing the pollutants from coal (No dear, CO2 is NOT one of those
> horrible pollutants!)
>
> 3. Once we've bought ourselves a little time, we start to work on REAL
> solutions, like cold fusion, Tesla scalar rays, or just the right
> arrangement of magnets to give us "free energy"!
>

Your comments about hydrogen as a potential energy source miss the most
important aspect of its nonsense: it takes more energy to manufacture
the hydrogen (whether by reformation or electrolysis - especially the
latter) than you can get, at best, from using the hydrogen as a fuel
directly or in a fuel cell. We liberals generally know quite a bit about
the second law of thermodynamics as well as the first law as opposed to
the general yahoo who is the conservative (really a reactionary.)
FK