LJWorld.com

consumer1 (Anonymous) says…

So, we the taxpayers pay this 55 Billion dollars for research, and then Exxon/Mobile or whomever gets to manufacture this product based on our investment of $55 Billion dollars. Then they get to sell it to us at what $5.00 $10.00 per gallon? no thanks, also I can see water shortage in the future which means the cost of staying alive (drinking water) will sky rocket. no thanks again.

barrypenders (Anonymous) says…

My great g-pa used to complain about the combustion engine. He said that it scared the horses.

The_Original_Bob (Anonymous) says…

Scientists also predicted we'd be driving cars that fly through the air by 2010.

autie (Anonymous) says…

Scientist predict hydrogen car boom!! I read that and wonder how they knew it would blow up.

autie (Anonymous) says…

Maybe they ought to work on figuring a way to retro fit..jerk the internal combustion engine out of any existing vehicle and put in a fuel cell..someone probably is working on it somewhere.

tangential_reasoners_anonymous (Anonymous) says…

autie: “Scientist predict hydrogen car boom!! I read that and wonder how they knew it would blow up.”

I understand that a prototype has been christened “Hindenburg.”

jonas (Anonymous) says…

autie: Haha. That's exactly what I thought too.

max1 (Anonymous) says…

' I understand that a prototype has been christened “Hindenburg.” ' -tangential_reasoners_anonymous

http://www.theautochannel.com/news/date/…
In regards to the fatal 1937 Hindenburg explosion … hydrogen played no part in the tragic accident.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg_…
62 of the 97 people aboard the Hindenburg survived.
Of the 36 passengers and 61 crew, 13 passengers and 22 crew died.
Most deaths were not caused directly by the fire but were from jumping from the burning airship. Those passengers who rode the airship on its descent to the ground survived.

Marty_McFly (Anonymous) says…

Doc once told me “Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads.”

logrithmic (Anonymous) says…

Hydrogen is just another way for companies to get their hands inside your pockets.

Understand that the fuel itself, while clean in relation to global warming, must be manufactured and then shipped to “hydrogen” gas stations so you can fill up your car.

And the cost to manufacture hydrogen fuel?

According to Shell Oil: http://www.shell.com/home/content/abouts…

“The cost of manufacturing and distributing hydrogen is currently too high even with the exceptional fuel efficiency of fuel cell engines…. Our aim is to provide hydrogen at a price comparable with existing fuels on a per kilometre driven basis within the next 10–20 years, when mass production of hydrogen vehicles could begin.”

Contrast that with electric vehicles that could be powered from solar and wind installations at your home - virtually free (except with the cost of replacing lithium batteries every 100,000 miles or so).

Electric vehicles hold the promise of individual independence while hydrogen puts all of America at the mercy of Big Oil (or Big Hydrogen).

I'm going electric. I hope others are smart enough to see the scam of hydrogen

bearded_gnome (Anonymous) says…

autie,
I also read the headline that way!

***
44 percent of the oil used in the United States and emit more than 20 percent of the carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas causing global warming.
–
more of the manmade global warming hysteria, a religeon supported less by facts (facts are turning against them) than by religeous zealotry. see
Lawrence Solomon's “the Deniers.” those who publicly question the anthropogenic global warming mythology have funding for themselves *and their departments* attacked! even their wiki pages are attacked. uncivil? you bet.

and is this article serious? 2050, first we got to get there, drill more oil! second, if we decided to, we wouldn't need to wait for 2050!

autie (Anonymous) says…

hydrogen played no part in the tragic accident. well, it certainly didn't help..apparently hydrogen oxidizes rapidly in with enough heat. Maybe if that thing hadn't gone up like a roman candle on steroids, those people wouldn't have jumped out of it.

alm77 (Anonymous) says…

Best headline EVER!!

autie (Anonymous) says…

forget about global warming for a minute. bottom line is we need to focus on development of new technologies for all of the oil driven processes..be it transportation or bottles or grocery sacks. Because the glass is apparently about half empty and I don't think we can get a refill. Even if we expand offshore production and drill up the ANWR..which we will do eventually. If we can land a probe on some moon of Saturn, I think we can come up with an affordable way to move a car and not pollute the world.

snap_pop_no_crackle (Anonymous) says…

Remember the Hindenburg.

cowgomoo (Anonymous) says…

I'm still waiting on my personal jet backpack scientists have been promising since the 50's.

devobrun (Anonymous) says…

Money, politics, scientists, businessmen, bad guys, good guys. Its a soap opera.

Unless Michael Ramage found a stash of H2 lying around somewhere, I think he's talking about using H2 as a storage medium for energy. That is, the H2 comes from electrolysis of water. The energy needed to split the water is greater than the energy available from burning the hydrogen.

The operative concept is exergy. Exergy is available energy. It is energy that accounts for the irreversibility of a process. If an energy system exists that can produce more exergy than the amount needed to set up and operate the system, I haven't found it. That goes for bio-fuels, wind, solar, especially when H2 is the transport and storage medium. OK, hydro, geothermal, fossil fuel. Yep they all meet the exigencies of thermodynamics.

But none of the so-called alternate technologies are there yet.

Oh, autie, hydrogen must be made from another energy source, like hydrocarbon. Simply replacing an ICE with an electric motor and a fuel cell isn't the whole story. The energy for the fuel cell comes from some where. Where?
At what cost in joules? Don't forget that hydrogen is corrosive to metals. Don't forget that hydrogen is the tiniest molecule there is. It sneaks out of virtually any connector, or vessel.
I wonder why there are no H2 Coleman stoves? No H2 Jenn-Airs?
As an engineer, I could tell ya, but that might not fit into your soap opera.

max1 (Anonymous) says…

“Maybe if that thing hadn't gone up like a roman candle on steroids, those people wouldn't have jumped out of it.” -autie

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindenburg_…
Almost twice as many perished when the [inert gas] helium filled USS Akron crashed.

http://www.hydrogennow.org/Facts/Safety-…
The Facts on the Hindenburg Disaster

max1 (Anonymous) says…

http://www.charlierose.com/shows/2008/07…
Charlie Rose interviews Amory Lovins, CEO of the Rocky Mountain Institute

http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid171.php

jonas (Anonymous) says…

Christ, Max1, I would think that after a year on these boards you would have at least developed a sense of humor through osmosis.

not_dolph (Anonymous) says…

I see Sven is back…

Worth repeating:

“15 July 2008 at 9:09 a.m.
spiderman (Anonymous) says…
…i am withdrawing from the forum and have sent an email to LJW regarding the same kind of complaints about certan forum members often referred to as 'wingnuts' or the 'witches haven' or other names.”

RETICENT_IRREVERENT (Anonymous) says…

Jonas,
Wouldn't that be reverse osmosis?
R.O. is a rather inefficiency means for the production of hydrogen production. Maybe the same inefficiency applies to humor production?

jonas (Anonymous) says…

R-I: I guess it might be. Been a long time since high school science class.

tangential_reasoners_anonymous (Anonymous) says…

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm running my car on Helium… the nobler gas.

bweep bweep

bearded_gnome (Anonymous) says…

Electric vehicles hold the promise of individual independence while hydrogen puts all of America at the mercy of Big Oil (or Big Hydrogen).

I'm going electric. I hope others are smart enough to see the scam of hydrogen

–
quietcars.nfb.org

***
once you get maxy1 away from posting irrelevant, out-of-date, nonsense links/quotes, you find that posting his own words, he is no more than a 30-watt bulb in a 100-watt bulb box! humor isn't the only thing he lacks.

so if hydrogen was not involved in the explosion (LOL), then what the heck was that big explosion? static electricity on the surface of the big balloon interacted with *something*!

***
yes, I thought spiderman/cool was leaving us! did somebody *hack in to his account*? hehehehehe

Quigly (Anonymous) says…

pigs fly where?

max1 (Anonymous) says…

“once you get maxy1 away from posting irrelevant, out-of-date, nonsense links/quotes, you find that posting his own words, he is no more than a 30-watt bulb in a 100-watt bulb box! humor isn't the only thing he lacks… so if hydrogen was not involved in the explosion (LOL), then what the heck was that big explosion?” twisted_dwarf

The Hindenburg didn't explode — it burned, but you would have to check “irrelevant, out-of-date, nonsense links” to learn that.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&a…

max1 (Anonymous) says…

“Christ, Max1, I would think that after a year on these boards you would have at least developed a sense of humor through osmosis.” -jonas

It looks like jonas is on the verge of pitching another one of his famous hissy fits.

jonas (Anonymous) says…

Nope, that's all you get from me.

Although, I wouldn't be surprised if, from your perspective, that last line qualified as a hissy fit, since it came from me. (which, really, seems to be the only requirement for that classification)

Das_Ubermime (Anonymous) says…

“I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm running my car on Helium… the nobler gas.”

I had a car that ran on Helium once. Sounded like somebody was attacking a family of chipmunks every time I drove it.

max1 (Anonymous) says…

“Although, I wouldn't be surprised if, from your perspective, that last line qualified as a hissy fit, since it came from me. (which, really, seems to be the only requirement for that classification)” -jonas, Mr. Congeniality

“There are people on this board that like and respect me, and what I have to say” -jonas
“I'm sure at least 80-90% of them would still find you [max1] a distasteful posting personality.” -jonas

camper (Anonymous) says…

Underwhelming. I take this as bad news. The year 2050? I'll be 82. I was really hoping that I would live to see “real” energy solutions that are measurable within my lifetime. Something that would be as important as say the computer revolution (or evolution). Instead we get small percentage estimates over a long period of time. Something like “by the year 3000 20% of our energy will come from solar technology.”

This article is nothing to get excited about. It basically says wer'e going to be operating the same way for many years to come.

jonas (Anonymous) says…

Ah, the noble archivist, hard at work.

The only problem with posting those two lines, Max, is that they happen to be highly accurate.

Anyway, have fun, I'm done.

max1 (Anonymous) says…

“There are people on this board that like and respect me, and what I have to say” -jonas
“Im good enough, Im smart enough, and doggone it, people like me” -Stewart Smally

“Ah, the noble archivist, hard at work.” -jonas
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&a…

max1 (Anonymous) says…

http://hydrogendiscoveries.wordpress.com…
Hydrogen Fact #7 - The cost of hydrogen produced today from wind power (without any subsidies) would be less than the equivalent of gasoline at $3.50 per gallon
Producing a kilogram of hydrogen by electrolysis with wind power
Electrolyzers and hydrogen production facilities
Hydrogen pipelines and storage
Compression
Trucking
Retail fueling stations
Taxes
The total cost of hydrogen produced from wind power (without any subsidies) would be $6.98 per kilogram. Since a kilogram of hydrogen in a fuel cell will get twice the mileage of a gallon of gasoline in an internal combustion engine, this is equivalent to gasoline at $3.49 per gallon (without any subsidies).

max1 (Anonymous) says…

http://www.greencarcongress.com/2005/04/…
U of Minn Launches Wind-to-Hydrogen Project
The electricity presently is delivered to the nearby UMM campus, supplying some 50% of its power use, and any remaining goes to the grid. the hydrogen project will divert that surplus into electrolytic production of hydrogen.
http://www.rps.psu.edu/hydrogen/unbound….
Chief among these renewable sources is plain old water. By passing an electric current through H2O, you can split the aqueous molecule neatly into its constituent elements. Electrolysis produces a very pure form of hydrogen and it's simple enough to be widely adapted… The catch is that electrolysis requires electricity. Lots of it. And if that electricity is being produced in the conventional fashion—from fossil fuels—then again we're just running in place in terms of producing clean energy.
We do, of course, have a renewable source for all the electricity we could possibly want: It mounts the sky every morning… Mallouk is Dupont professor of materials chemistry and physics, and director of Penn State's Center for Nanoscale Science. As he explains it, today's best solar cells are reasonably efficient, converting sunlight to electricity at a rate of about 25 percent.
Another approach that Mallouk is investigating, with materials scientist Joan Redwing, involves a method for growing nanoscale wires of single-crystal silicon. Strung together in an array, he says, these tiny wires could conceivably accumulate enough voltage from sunlight to split water. “That's at a level of engineering we think we know how to do,” he adds. “But first we need to clean up the growth process.”
A third avenue that Mallouk and his students have long been pursuing bypasses electricity altogether, creating hydrogen and oxygen directly from water using only sunlight and a photocatalyst…
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progr…
Hydrogen can be transported by pipelines similar to those used to transport natural gas. There are some addtional problems, because hydrogen tends to leak more and can embrittle some metals used for pipelines. The existence of a 240 km hydrogen pipeline in Germany operated by the company Air Liquide provides evidence that these difficulties can be overcome.
http://www.axane.fr/gb/products/h2/h2.ht…
Air Liquide owns 12 hydrogen pipeline transmission networks worldwide. The largest and the oldest of these are found in Northern Europe and are nearly 1,100 kilometers long. In the United States, Texas and Louisiana also have sizeable networks.

notajayhawk (Anonymous) says…

jonas (Anonymous) says…

“Christ, Max1, I would think that after a year on these boards you would have at least developed a sense of humor through osmosis.”

Now *that* was pretty humorous.

How many posts (with *how* many links) did max1 make over a period of about 8 hours just to dispute the factual inaccuracies of a freakin' joke? But hey, give him a break - when was the last time he got to use his Hindenberg links?

BigPrune (Anonymous) says…

Coincidence or has anyone noticed their fuel economy going down lately? I have three cars and they are averaging 30% less in fuel economy on average than they used to get, just in the past month.

pinoyko (Anonymous) says…

The only answer to all of our problems is the invention of Daniel Dingle - the water-powered car/hydrogen-powered car . Sad to say, most of us, especially those who are envy, cannot accept that he had invented something like this. Even the Philippine government did not support his invention because of their greed!
Just google about daniel dingle and surely you will be amazed with his invention. The oil industry will surely be out of their business.

classclown (Anonymous) says…

BigPrune (Anonymous) says…

Coincidence or has anyone noticed their fuel economy going down lately? I have three cars and they are averaging 30% less in fuel economy on average than they used to get, just in the past month

=====================

It's the heat. When it gets hot gasoline expands like everything else. This means you actually get less energy because it has less mass. Which in turn means your vehicle needs to burn more to achieve the same energy output.

There is supposed to be a lawsuit pending or in progress over this. Something about how the pumps should be adjusted to reflect expanding and shrinking of gas depending on temperature.

classclown (Anonymous) says…

Here are some links that explain it better.

http://divisionoflabour.com/archives/003…

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/20…

http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/34374