Lol. Now that I have your attention: The Iraq war, terrorists, conflict with Hugo Chavez, etc. mainly come from one problem (arguably): Energy. More specifically: oil. Well here is a device that makes hydrogen storage and release extremely feasible. LINK To get those who don't know about hydrogen updated, let me explain. Hydrogen is extremely reactive when ignited with oxygen. It is also the first element on the periodic table. Oil is a hydrocarbon (a.k.a. hydrogen and carbon). Igniting hydrocarbons produce carbon dioxide and water. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. Greenhouse gases trap sunlight energy around the earth. Excess greenhouse gases increase the global temp., thus global warming. Global warming leads to icecaps melting in the arctic and in antarctica and raising the sea level. Also, it changes the conditions of tropical forests, savannas, etc. possibly leading to the deaths of many types of species. Hydrogen, on the other hand, when ignited, forms only water. Thus, it is an ideal energy carrier. Unfortunately, hydrogen is also very reactive. Thus, it is unsafe for use in cars (i.e. they might blow up if not careful). This new invention, however, stores hydrogen safely. The hydrogen is bonded to the material in normal conditions causing it to be inert. Now, I know the link is fairly brief and uninformative, so let me summarize what it can do. 13.0 MJ/l is what the product claims to do. Converted to gasoline talk that means the hydrogen powered car can roughly go 500 km using 50 L. Convert to american units: that means the car can go roughly 23.5 miles per gallon. Now that's not revolutionary, but do you really want to contribute to problems of war, famine, and political strife? Plus, it is good enough to do everything we need it to do. The other problem is that we need to create Hydrogen. It's very reactive so it's rare to find in pure form. Solution? Solar and nuclear power. I'm leaning toward nuclear power as it is more reliable and efficient. Unfortunately, the majority of Americans feel nuclear power is dirty and dangerous. Because of this belief, most of our nuclear plants were created in the 50s and 60s with little plans to create more. Consider the alternative: dirty coal/gas vs. clean nuclear/hydrogen power. Why are we not doing anything? Democracy and capitalism at its worst. Instead of creating more and better technologies, democracy and capitalism has allowed huge oil companies to block innovation and influence Congress. The irony is not lost on me. Anyways, we need nuclear power and new energy development. It should be our #1 agenda for the next decade or two.
Now figure out how to make tons of money out of it (preferably $5-10 billion per quarter) and we got ourselves a new source of fuel for our SUVs
Of course that doesn't answer the fact that you would still need oil. Most oil doesn't actually go to fuels, but goes to industrial chemical manufacturing, plastics and synthetic manufacturing as well as other things...and not as a fuel, but as a component. Even if you had a fuel to replace petrol based fuels, you'd still need tons of oil.
I'm not opposed to nuclear power if someone can find a way of storing all that waste for the next 10 mil. years. I'll head off the obvious about Yucca mountain because there's still the problems of getting it there and what do you do when Yucca fills up. Hydrogen isn't an energy source in itself but a storage medium since the only way we can get hydrogen here on Earth is by expending energy to free it from water or other compounds. At that point any energy source is good enough to get hydrogen and IMO its the ideal storage medium for renewables because the problem with things like solar and wind isn't generating lot of power but being able to store that energy when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing. With hydrogen we can manufacturer tons of hydrogen when the sun is shining in addition to generating electricity then when the sun isn't shining we generate electricty from the stored hydrogen.
Yup. It isn't an either or situation. Oil and nuclear have major problems. We already have hybrids that can do 250 mpg. Lets just ramp that up right now until we can find a way to produce hydrogen that doesn't involved using natural gas in the conversion process.
Solution? Already exists. It's called an Integral Fast Reactor Benefits include: # Enhanced safety because of the high thermal conductivity of the fuel. # Able to withstand both a Loss of flow without SCRAM and Loss of heat sink without SCRAM [1][2]. # Ease of fuel fabrication. Because the sodium fills the space between the fuel and cladding, the fuel need not be precisely fabricated. The fuel is simply cast. # Because casting is simple, the fuel can be fabricated remotely, reducing the hazards of its radioactivity. # Reprocessing is simplified because there is no need to stringently reduce the radioactivity of the fuel. Actinides can also be incorporated into the fuel. # Proliferation hazards are reduced by the high radioactivity of the fuel. # Pyroprocessing and electrorefining are feasible with this fuel. This allows on site reprocessing. Two forms of waste are produced, a noble metal form and a ceramic form. Both are suitable for geological disposal. # The waste produced contains no plutonium or other actinides. The radioactivity of the waste decays to levels similar to the original ore in about 300 years. Only negatives include: - producing radioactive sodium with a short half-life (15 hours) Lol. We have the technology, but we don't have the support. Sucks eh? Even if we didn't have the technology, we should pursue more and more research in energy development, nuclear being a major area.
Martian Man; That sounds very interesting and I would be curious about learning more about it. While it makes waste easier to deal with though it still doesn't do away with waste and you're still stuck with dealing with radioactive waste for at least 300 years. I myself is skeptical that we can predict geological stability along with all potential probabilities that might occur to interred waste for decades let alone hundreds of years. Nuclear may be a better option than fossil fuels but there are still many problems with it.
I thought that Water Vapor was a greenhouse gas as well. Going to hydrogen fueled vehicles that emit water vapor as exhaust will go a long ways towards reducing our dependancy on foreign oil but will it actually do anything to reduce global warming? http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/MediaAlerts/2001/200104254688.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas http://www.nsc.org/ehc/climate/ccucla6.htm http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/gases.html
Naive Americian-centric thinking. If there are such awesome, clean non-oil options out there the rest of the world would be using them...you know, where the influence of our huge oil companies does not reach.
While its true that water vapor plays a role in the climate but at least its removed from the atmosphere through precipitation. I've heard also that part of the increase in water vapor is attributable to global warming too as temps rise the atmospheric capacity to hold water increases along with greater evaporation. If other causes of global warming are addressed its possible that atmospheric water vapor might decrease too.
A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again. - Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
You are correct. Water is a greenhouse gas. However, the atmosphere is already fully saturated with water and an increase in water emission will have no effect on global warming except, as Sishir_Chang pointed out, if the global temp. rises, then the atmosphere will hold greater water amounts. So, in short, water emission does not cause global warming.
As the article states, the "waste" produced has the same half-life as the original ore. So basically we get the benefit of using nuclear power without an increase in waste since the ore would be radioactive whether or not we used it.
Lol. So a person who researches different ideas is naive while another who blindly trusts the government to provide the best possible leadership is not? Every country has corporations and people with different agendas. And yes, the other countries in the world recognize the benefit of nuclear power, that is why they are becoming far more advance in nuclear power than we are. Stem cells, nuclear power, what next?
Here, the info. is in your own link: Water vapor is a natural greenhouse gas which, of all greenhouse gases, accounts for the largest percentage of the greenhouse effect. Water vapor levels fluctuate regionally, but in general humans do not produce a direct forcing of water vapor levels. In climate models an increase in atmospheric temperature caused by the greenhouse effect due to anthropogenic gases will in turn lead to an increase in the water vapor content of the troposphere, with approximately constant relative humidity. This in turn leads to an increase in the greenhouse effect and thus a further increase in temperature, and thus an increase in water vapor, until equilibrium is reached. Thus water vapor acts as a positive feedback (but not a runaway feedback) to the forcing provided by human-released greenhouse gases such as CO2 ([5], see B7). Water vapor is a definite part of the greenhouse gas equation even though not under direct human control: IPCC TAR chapter lead author (Michael Mann) considers citing "the role of water vapor as a greenhouse gas" to be "extremely misleading" as water vapor can not be controlled by humans [6]; see also [7].
It still will not affect the total water vapor in the atmosphere because the atmosphere is already saturated.
Except that the radioactivity of the ore is probably a lot less concentrated in the ore than it is in the processed waste. Unless they can figure out how to reverse process the waste back into the earth as ore we'll still have the problem of where to store the waste where as the ore sits down in the ground.
