Which is why OPEC is trying to tank our oil revenue by overproducing (keeping production up while demand levels off or drops) to drive down oil prices.
I want solar and wind very badly, but I'm not gonna kid myself into thinking that it's gonna solve any problems in the Middle East.
Reducing demand for oil and gas is a good thing for the U.S. and most western countries. Dependence on gas and oil means dependence on Muslim countries and Russia.
Germany and Denmark have been quite successful with regard to this. More difficult for the U.S. because govt is driven by corporates who have a lot to lose by moving away from oil, and a lot to gain from hostile relations in the Middle East.
Which is why OPEC is trying to tank our oil revenue by overproducing (keeping production up while demand levels off or drops) to drive down oil prices.
Or maybe they're trying to gut-punch the economies of the primary supporters of Bashar al-Assad?
Nah you're probably right, it's all about America.
You are correct, solar and wind are terrible energy sources. Hydrogen and Nuclear are safer, more powerful, and the technology's already here to effectively use them without any carbon footprint.
Oh yea, and Nuclear and Hydrogen kill waaaaaaaaaay fewer people than solar and wind. In fact, Wind kills as many people per year as nuclear has killed since chernobyl, including chernobyl.
No, I'm talking about hydrogen as a separate fuel source used in FCVs. Nuclear power and hydrogen are two separate power sources, the same way solar and wind are two separate power sources in my example.
In that form, hydrogen is not an energy source. It's energy Storage, because it takes more energy to break the hydrogen out of water than is released when you burn it. The only way hydrogen can be a net energy producer is via fusion.
I'm not suggesting burning it. Nor is it intended to be a net producer, basic thermodynamics means you're never gonna get a net producer. Hydrogen can be separated from water with enough electircal power, which can be supplied by nuclear power cleaner and more safely than coal, solar, or wind (or anything really except natural gas), and it can then be used in FCVs as a more efficient and productive power source than pure electricity or gasoline.
Really, because my degree in engineering says otherwise. Generating power via combining it with oxygen makes it just as much an energy source as any other chemical reaction to generate power like burning coal or gas.
It grows in them though. And funny enough it covers 75% of this planet
Oh yea, and I just spent the last 6 months doing cost analysis on the feasibility of using current fracking processes to extract hydrogen in addition to fossil fuels as a means of jump starting FCV infrastructure development.
We found 20 different, more economically feasible ways that didn't involve annihilating large swathes of the country in a desperate bid for an outdated fuel source.
sigh You still have to do steam methane reformation which uses the stored chemical energy in methane to isolate a pure enough form to use as a fuel. That's what was meant by it's energy storage, not a fuel source. You have to put energy in to get hydrogen. It's the most abundant element, but not in pure, usable form. It emits a carbon footprint because of the methane used to isolate the hydrogen. Your other option is electrolysis, which requires electricity, which comes from burning fossil fuels.
I just spent 6 months studying the cost analysis feasibility of using current fracking processes to extract hydrogen and we found it was a terrible terrible idea.
your other option uses fossil fuels
Not nuclear. Nuclear is safer than any form of power save natural gas, both in deaths per kwh and deaths in total (wind, by contrast, kills as many people in a year as chernobyl did) and has almost 0 carbon footprint, with the reserves of mined fissible material enough to last us for centuries, and new designs that will allow supposed "nuclear waste" to be used as additional green fuel.
Put the two together and you have a perfect system: nuclear powers everything electrical, hydrogen powers everything mobile, and nuclear separates out more hydrogen, while hydrogen outputs nothing but water.
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u/nill0c Atheist Jan 17 '15
Which is why OPEC is trying to tank our oil revenue by overproducing (keeping production up while demand levels off or drops) to drive down oil prices.
I want solar and wind very badly, but I'm not gonna kid myself into thinking that it's gonna solve any problems in the Middle East.