Gas prices are getting high, and pollution is driving people to try to discover alternate types of power, especially for cars. Experts say oil has reached it's peak and is getting harder and harder to extract from the earth. We're literally running out of oil and natual gases.

So what have people responded with? Alternative fuels including Hydrogen and Ethonal are trying be named the fuel of the future. They are supposed to be clean burning, efficient, types of power that will save our lives when the time comes. But in reality, these options are even worse and less practical than what we are using now.

See, people think that these fuels are perfect because when they run the the engine of a car and out the exhaust pipe, there is little to no pollution. But the thing is, how these fuels are made require more oil and power than we are using now. It takes energy to make energy. To make one calorie of ethonal fuel, it takes ten calories of oil. To make Hydrogen you need water, and electricity. Where does the electricity come from? Power plants using dwindling oil and natural gas to generate power. This also throws electric cars out the window seeing as you need oil produced electricity to charge the car.

Pretty much what I'm saying is cars that use electricity, hydrogen, ethonal, and any other alternative fuel actually require more of what we're trying to stop using. Oil. We're pretty much royaly screwed and some smart people need to think of something real fast.

Yeah.. I just felt like typing and telling you guys some facts. Hope you enjoyed. Heh.

 

I'm no treehugger, and I dont really believe in a lot of this alternate crap. that said, I feel the need to play devils advocate. First, They have figured out new ways of getting oil that was previously unobtainable. like the oil sands. and there is a huge amount of oil that we couldnt ever get that is now at our disposal. and even in the traditional fields, there really is still no shortage. The issue is that we know that we will eventually run out. estimates vary so wildly that the only conclusion we can draw is that we have no idea when that will be. every new solution will bring another problem with it. Hybrid cars are a big step forward, but wait, anyone ever see the mines that they pull the material for the nickel-metal-hydride batteries from? yeah. nasty way to mine. but without those batteries, hybrids arent feasible. how about compact flourescent lights? yeah, they contain mercury. only a bit of toxic metal that causes all sorts of stuff from birth defects to death. we use oil by-products to fertilize the soil that corn is grown in, so there is one of your ethanol dilemmas. and the hydrogen is actually one of the more feasible ones. yeah it takes electricity to make, but the more we move to renewable resources for our power grids, the less pollution that the power grid would produce. wind, hydro, and solar powers are in my opinion, our best long-term hope. if we create clean energy to use to store either electrically (in batteries in your car) or chemically (as in hydrogen fuel cells), then we can produce a net loss in pollution.

 

Belive me, I'm not saying that I'm a treehugger, either. Pave the rainforest for all I care. I'm just saying that oil will eventually run out. The way it looks now, sooner than later.. And when oil is gone or too difficult to produce, the way will live will drastically be changed.

 

1. power grid moves away from oil burning plants
2. electric cars becomes practical and affordable!
3. we get to enjoy the instant torque without the CRUSHING GUILT OF DESTROYING THE UNIVERSE, or at least without paying $4 for a gallon of gas

but ofcourse...

4. electric companies decide to be ******** and charge more than $4 per gallon of electrons

 

You make some very good points, Gonzo. I love it when folks talk about how they are going to get a cheap running electric car. The electricity has to come from somewhere, and a lot of it comes from natural gas and oil. If we start using more electricity, most of the new plants will need gas and oil. Where are we going to put all the new plants? How much will they cost? How much will the new distribution system to beef up the current system cost? There are a lot of unanswered questions no one seems to be talking about.

The use of corn for ethanol has already tripled the price of corn and is causing food shortages, and we have just started using it for fuel. Not good.

What happens when1 billion chinese all decide they want one car per person like we do? The Iraq War is going to seem like a minor skirmish in a few short years. A PBS program last night said that 25% of all the oil ever used was used in the last ten years. thats a lot of oil, and the demand is only going to rise.

 

^ holly crap that is a lot of oil they are going to have to find some alternative some time if its possible

 

and there are only a few places that you can actually get the E85 crap. and apparently GMs almighty Flexfuel, at least the first generation (supposed to change on the next go-round) you have to get the damn ecu reprogrammed at the dealer to change fuels. so if you happen to see an E-85 station, you still cant use it. poor Mexico. we are killing their economy too, since they rely heavily on corn for their food supply, and their prices were affected too.

 

The car you drive today is a result of nearly 100 years of automotive innovation. If people 100 years ago said "We can't do any better than this" today you would be driving a model T cranking the engine over by hand. The Hydrogen Fuel cell is a very new technology, about 10 years old. It took nearly 100 years to make cars that get 30+ MPG. It didn't happen overnight, and for anyone to expect that is simply foolish. Alternative fuels need to be researched and developed. Hydrogen fuel cells do not get enough funding. We need to be funding the hydrogen fuel, but of course the oil companies won't stand for that. The government gives a little money towards research, but not nearly what they should. It is a viable alternative once someone figures out how to refine it. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. I don't think Ethanol is the answer. Ethanol is made from corn. People eat corn. Using ethanol to make fuel will mean there is less corn to eat and will therefore raise food costs and further hurt the economy. The way to go in my opinion is hydrogen. Electricity is not made eclusivley by oil and gas, it is also made by wind, hydroelectric, solar and nuclear sources. We need to move the production of electricity away from petroleum based fossil fuels into renewable sources.

 

What we need is safe nuclear power plants and a way to eject nucler waste somewhere...like the moon which nobody cares about.

 

Roto: there have been 2 major nuclear meltdowns at power plants ever. There have been 8 minor ones

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear..._have_occurred

Chernobyl was a very bad meltdown, but the damage was caused by skimping on the construction of the reactors. About ejecting waste into space...if you're worried about radiation contaminating ground water, then how would you feel about a rocket filled with uranium exploding in our atmosphere? That would have a much larger scale effect than a dump site radiating the local soil. Personally, I'm all for nuclear power, just not launching nuclear waste into space.



The rising food prices are really rising grain and rice prices. I think there's plenty of reasons, and I think that ethanol demand is a very insignificant part of them. In the last year, there were severe droughts and floods in China and southeast asia, cutting that regions rice production by a significant amount. The price of oil is well over $100 a barrel, which affects more than just commuters. It takes fuel to deliver food from farms to grocery stores. In the event that larger quantities of food need to be exported, it also takes a significant amount of fuel to move food around the world.

Now all that said, I haven't seen news articles about food supply shortages, corn especially. Prices are up, but if the world really needed more food, demand for corn would curb high fructose corn syrup production. Consider that in 2007, the per-capita high fructose corn syrup consumption was 40.1 pounds per year (source). With our population around 300 million, that means that america consumed about 1.2 billion pounds of sweetener made from corn. 1 pound of corn does not produce 1 pound of high fructose corn syrup, so there's well over 1.2 billion pounds of food that's being made just to be a sweetener.

Then there's the issue of the declining value of the American dollar. Many countries set their currency value relative to the dollar. When our dollar falls, their currency falls as well. This can also account for the food price increase. Perhaps there's sufficient supply, but everything is going to cost more when the value of your currency drops.

I love playing devil's advocate, so just reading your opinions made me look that stuff up It does seem to me that the recent food and oil prices are much higher than they should be because of speculation, though I admit that the supply/demand ratio is probably lower than it has been in the last few years.

EDIT: (to roto) also note that there haven't been any meltdowns in the last 20 years. The last 25 excluding Chernobyl, which was constructed by a declining Soviet Union