Should the US government do anything about the financial crisis?

[Lead Head]

Ah, so the green stuff was all just a bit of a cover.

Some good did come out of it. All electric cars are now a closer reality then they ever have been.

[SiMuLaCrUm]

That's true. But now I'm sure a lot of the research for those is going to back down some, as you all have mentioned.

[worker201]

I read about a new hydrogen car the other day that seems cool, the Honda Clarity.  But there aren't enough hydrogen fuel stations to make them useful.  Now that gas is "in" again, it's very unlikely that more hydrogen fuel stations will be built.  Too bad for Jamie Lee Curtis, who already bought one.

[Lead Head]

I read about a new hydrogen car the other day that seems cool, the Honda Clarity.  But there aren't enough hydrogen fuel stations to make them useful.  Now that gas is "in" again, it's very unlikely that more hydrogen fuel stations will be built.  Too bad for Jamie Lee Curtis, who already bought one.

I don't really see a future for hydrogen cars. The two main ways to get hydrogen are to get it from water - require more electrical energy then you'll get from hydrogen, or to crack it with natural gas which is not helping the fossil fuel problem.

I think plug in hybrids will be have much more success (essentially an electric car, but with a smaller then usual battery pack, and an engine directly coupled to a generator. Should go 50 miles on battery per charge before having to start up the engine.

[Aloone_Jonez]

The good thing about hydrogen fueled cars that use fuel cell technology is that their more efficient than the combustion engine.

Cracking natural gas isn't such a bad idea as the carbon can be buried under the sea.

Hydrogen from water is also fine as long as the electricity is obtained from renewable sources.

[worker201]

I don't really see a future for hydrogen cars. The two main ways to get hydrogen are to get it from water - require more electrical energy then you'll get from hydrogen, or to crack it with natural gas which is not helping the fossil fuel problem.

Bad news, kid - the amount of energy used to refine oil is also much higher than what you can get out of it.  But we're paying those premium prices to turn point energy sources into mobile energy sources.  Windmills and dams are great, but you can't put them under the hood of your car.

I think plug in hybrids will be have much more success (essentially an electric car, but with a smaller then usual battery pack, and an engine directly coupled to a generator. Should go 50 miles on battery per charge before having to start up the engine.

I read a pretty neat article in Wired about that.  Your car has this battery in it.  Parking spaces have these little battery chargers in them.  If your battery doesn't have enough juice to go where you need to go, you just stop by the battery changing station, and 5 minutes later you have a fresh fully-charged battery.  Instead of paying per battery, or per kW to charge the battery, you pay a monthly subscription fee.  Kinda like a cell phone plan, where you pay $49.99/month for unlimited minutes.  The whole thing is controlled by a computer that keeps track of your battery power, networks with the charging stations, and sends you a text message when it needs a fresh battery.  Pretty cool idea - but the system the inventor described would only be efficient if everyone was using them.

My uncle, who works in the oil industry, thinks that the future is going to be commuter vehicles - really small cars, like those unbelievably tiny cars from Europe, that get moped gas mileage and can just about hold you, a cup of coffee, and a briefcase.  People will use these for the daily commute, and then have a normal-sized vehicle for family outings and recreation.

[SiMuLaCrUm]

I read a pretty neat article in Wired about that.  Your car has this battery in it.  Parking spaces have these little battery chargers in them.  If your battery doesn't have enough juice to go where you need to go, you just stop by the battery changing station, and 5 minutes later you have a fresh fully-charged battery.  Instead of paying per battery, or per kW to charge the battery, you pay a monthly subscription fee.  Kinda like a cell phone plan, where you pay $49.99/month for unlimited minutes.  The whole thing is controlled by a computer that keeps track of your battery power, networks with the charging stations, and sends you a text message when it needs a fresh battery.  Pretty cool idea - but the system the inventor described would only be efficient if everyone was using them.

That is actually really clever.


The only thing I can see with hydrogen is the price. Wouldn't it be more expensive than gas?

[worker201]

The only thing I can see with hydrogen is the price. Wouldn't it be more expensive than gas?

That depends.  How expensive is gas?  You can make hydrogen by arcing a huge electrical current across a bucket of water - the water is pretty cheap, but the electrical current required is like running your house for a month.  The other way to get hydrogen is to pull it out of natural gas the same way you pull gasoline out of oil.

In case you don't know, here's how gasoline is made.  First you have to find crude oil, and usually it is in a crack deep underground, so you have to drill down to get it.  In the case of offshore oil, sometimes the place you have to drill is under 1000m of water.  After it comes up, it goes to the refinery.  What the refinery does is heat the crude until it becomes unstable, which is called cracking.  Depending on how much you heat it, you get different products - kerosene, lube oil, gasoline, butane, propane, etc.  How much does this cost?  Hard to say.  Use this equation if you want a rough estimate:

($/gal gasoline) - (taxes&profit) * 42 = ($/barrel crude oil) + (refinery costs)
1 barrel = 42 gallons

It seems like the refinery costs would be a lot, but since they already exist, and they do so much volume, they basically become zero, so the current cost of gasoline is based largely on the price of crude oil.

If you make your hydrogen from natural gas, it should be just as easy as making gasoline from oil, since its the same process.  And the US has huge natural gas reserves, with more to be found all the time.  Actually, natural gas occurs right alongside the oil, and we usually just flare it off because its value is so low.  Imagine that - a great energy source being thrown away because only the oil matters.  That kind of logic is why high gas prices were such a good thing.

[SiMuLaCrUm]

So according to the US, oil > natural gas, despite the huge supply the US has. That makes no sense, if the US knows natural gas is abundant, and that it could be used to cleaner alternatives, then why the hell is oil still king?

[worker201]

Because everything is already in place for oil.  Think about it - we have been making gasoline-powered vehicles for like 100 years.  Back when we started, we didn't know what natural gas was, it just seemed like an annoyance.  And just like in the intro to "The Beverly Hillbillies", crude oil did bubble up out of the ground in Pennsylvania back then.  Things are a little different now that you have to go a couple miles down to get oil locally, but the refineries and the gas stations and the storage tanks and the "unleaded fuel only" signs on your dashboard are already in place.  It's a fuck of a lot easier to do what you did yesterday than come up with a new plan for tomorrow.*

* = haha, conservatives are lazy!

[SiMuLaCrUm]

Ah, so it would be too much trouble to make such a conversion. Maybe take baby steps?

[worker201]

Well, we've been doing that.  Many city's buses now run on natural gas because they burn cleaner and the bus can run all day on a single tank.  Texas actually burns natural gas for electricity in some places, and they are planning to do that more.

But back to the original point, a little pressure helps a lot.  We had hybrid cars before gas prices went up, but they were expensive and unpopular.  Now everybody wants one, every manufacturer is making them, and SUV and Hummer sales are way down.  All because gas prices were artificially high for a few months.  Probably, some of the newer models will be phased out if gas prices stabilize at a low level.

[Lead Head]

I still believe crude oil is much more abundant then natural gas. If we had a cheap efficient way to get the oil shale to a useful sate, we (the U. could have enough oil to power the world for the next hundred years or so.

Coal is actually still the most abundant fossil fuel around. If they can come up with a cheaper way to convert into oil/gas, then we would be set on that as well

[worker201]

According to Wikipedia, oil is only marginally more abundant than gas, but way more heavily used.  In the following stats, gas volumes have been converted to barrels, and the most generous estimates of reserves have been used:

Proven Reserves:
Oil - 1371 billion barrels
Gas - 1161 billion barrels

Usage:
Oil - 84 million barrels/day
Gas - 19 million barrels/day

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossil_fuel#Levels_and_flows

Of course coal is way up there, and there's a shitload of it left.  But it's so filthy and environmentally destructive.  If you've never visited a coal mine or a coal pit, you ought to sometime.  They're the most foul horrorscapes on the planet.

FYI, Wyoming is capable of creating over 85,000 MW of wind electricity.  Their current production - less than 450 MW.  That's where we need to be.  When free energy is just flowing through the air, grab it and do something with it.

[Aloone_Jonez]

Measuring quantities in barrels is silly, the only fair comparason is what the energy reserves are in terms of oil gas and coal,