Photo of Dennis Hastert switching cars...

[Mr. Premise]

Here is a picture of U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert switching from a small hybrid he drove to a gas station publicity event in to his usual big fat SUV just a couple of blocks from the publicity event:

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/060427/480/dcpm10904272019

 

[rs]

Even worse, it was a hydrogen powered car. Now I have nothing against hydrogen, it is a fine element, it is just that there is no natural source for it, so the whole idea of a hydrogen powered vehicle is a big giant red herring.

The way you make hydrogen is either take fossile fuels (Um, isn't that what we were supposed to get away from...) and refine it into Hydrogen by wasting the energy stored in the carbon bonds.

Or, you can take energy from some other mystical place (like maybe your local "eco-friendly nucular plant") and electrolyse water into hydrogen and oxygen.

So he gets out of a car that uses hydrocarbons in an inefficient way and gets into a car that uses hydrocarbons in an inefficient way.

It is a distinction without a difference...

 

[Chris]

But the point is to produce hydrogen so far away that you don't know, don't care; polluting like hell there, but only "sub-human savages" live there anyway. You then make money by bringing it here, which then justifies higher energy costs (being green isn't free you know), then congratulate yourself because now, you are using pollution free cars! Look, only water gets out! Isn't it a proof for you! A nice example of how technology improves your everyday life!

After that, if you feel like it when some green hyppie talks again about pollution, you may point as responsible and impose sanctions to the country producing the hydrogen because it pollutes too much. Those savages (or terrorists, call them as you please) never respect our nice little earth and the environment...

(salespitch tone) As you can see, everybody wins from using pollution-free hydrogen!


Anyway, as for the picture, it shows that in politics, it's PR all the way. RS, you're right, there's another layer of deception there, hydrogen in itself is a bs solution, but it shuts up some naive groups.

 

[rs]

I know! The Sun has lots of hydrogen. We will build a fleet of space ships to harvest hydrogen from the sun and bring it back to earth.

But won't the space ships melt, your naive perspective asks? Why but of course not, we will do the harvesting at night...

:)

 

[Mr. Premise]

Or we could go there in the Winter!

I know! The Sun has lots of hydrogen. We will build a fleet of space ships to harvest hydrogen from the sun and bring it back to earth.

But won't the space ships melt, your naive perspective asks? Why but of course not, we will do the harvesting at night...

:)

 

[Mark]

The way you make hydrogen is either take fossile fuels (Um, isn't that what we were supposed to get away from...) and refine it into Hydrogen by wasting the energy stored in the carbon bonds.

Or, you can take energy from some other mystical place (like maybe your local "eco-friendly nucular plant") and electrolyse water into hydrogen and oxygen.

Well, since it's possible to seperate hydrogen and oxygen from water by using electricity then hydrogen could be "made" right on site at any hydro-electric water dam in the world. I'm not sure what sort of production level could be achieved though. Of course big oil would never let that happen to any significant extent unless they bought the dams first, and storage facilities, etc. The bigger issue is that the tech exists (MHD for example) to surpass all this commonly known stuff so it seems to me that the alternative fuel talk is a just of bunch distraction.

 

[John Chang]

According to the C's, we once had the technology to harvest free energy. And a civilization that lasted 50,000 years.

What we call the "modern world" seems like a pale echo of that, if what they say is true.

If we were "smart" we would've been building breeder reactors like crazy, and using the energy output to electrolyze water. But since when has anyone ever credited us humans with being "smart"?

Perhaps it's all working out for the best anyways - I'm not sure that the "modern world" with limitless energy would be such a great place to live in, considering the tendencies we have demonstrated over the past few years.

I hope we can increase in wisdom enough, and I hope there's enough of the right people that survive, so that when we do re-discover some of this stuff we've forgotten, that we'll make better use of it.

One can hope.