But as Sickandtired pointed out, it takes as much, if not more energy to produce it than saves by using it. If the reverse were true, all cars would already be converted and the Mid West would be our new middle east.

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"George W. Bush surrounds himself with smart people the way a hole surrounds itself with a donut." —Dennis Miller

mentioned in the article. We need a solution. Let's find one.

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I wasn't born with enough middle fingers.

What makes you so confident? Hydrogen seems great until you consider the problem of where to get the hydrogen. As a self-described libertarian, shouldn't you be questioning whether simply throwing money at a problem "could well yield many more ideas?" -- or, maybe you know of some specific feasible alternatives for generating hydrogen that are cost effective?

I've gotta question you on this one Stekim. Why do you think this wouldn't turn into a boondoggle?
I know the space program seems a great success, at least in the 60s it did. But look at it now. They made so many compromises and bad decisions that our space program is nearly moribund. We should have let private industry develop it, then it would be making money. Just think if we were mining asteroids for metals, rather than mining them on earth.

While i agree that the space program had lots of good results (if you put large sum of money into R&D, you'll get some results) I can't help but think of what might have been, if private enterprise had done it, instead.

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Never moon a werewolf.

I'd like to see this happen too. I think it's going to happen, but maybe later than sooner, if the planning isn't in place.

I found this interesting:
and then this:
GM has recently had to divert some monies back into the survival kitty (truck/SUV redesigns, special charges for this, that and everything else) - exactly how much I don't know. But the talk at GM now seems to revolve around things other than the next generation of engine design... which is sad. What GM accomplishes will probably only be done with Toyota's assistance. Ford is in no better shape. So it's probably best to just accept them as followers, rather than wait for them to pick up the baton and run with it.

With advanced electronics, innovative cam designs and and close toleranced high speed machining, even the old internal combustion gasoline engines are more efficient, cleaner, more powerful and durable than they were 25 years ago. So much is possible. I like these ideas. It's not so important that we switch over 100% from gasoline internal combustion, but imagine if we could get to 10-15%?

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"Tweeter was a Boyscout before she went to Vietnam and found out the hard way... nobody gives a d@mn."

have brought this up a couple of times; here goes again. Fareed Zakaria(Newsweek), Max Boot (neo-con columnist), and a variety of conservatives are coming around to the notion that we must have a federally financed Manhattan Project for energy security. James Woolsey and Frank Gaffney set up a group www.setamericafree.org They say that flexible fuel plug-in vehicles which get 500 mpg. are an attainable goal right now if we invest in the infra-structure. It strikes me as a something that liberals and conservatives can get behind with a few rather important exceptions like George Bush.

Bio whatever is not a long perm answer. If we build a lot of wind power in the North Western United states that would give is the electricity that we need and then we could switch to all hydrogen powered cars.

"There are two main ways that you can burn hydrogen with oxygen, to give you water, and energy.
The first way is that you can burn hydrogen in a modified car engine. Two companies, BMW and Mazda, are working on this. The engine works fine, but with about 20% less power - which is pretty reasonable, considering that we have been working on the petrol engine for a century or so. When you burn hydrogen in an engine, you get mostly water coming out of the tailpipe. You also get small amounts of oxides of nitrogen (from the nitrogen in the air), and even smaller amount of hydrocarbons (from traces of the lubricants in the combustion chambers of the engine). Even so, a hydrogen-powered car is much less polluting than a petrol-powered car. Of course, you use a normal gearbox and diff.
The second way to use hydrogen to run your car is in an electric car. Mercedes-Benz have been using a strange device called a fuel cell, which has been around since 1839.
A fuel cell is very similar to a battery. Both a fuel cell and a battery turn a chemical reaction into electrical energy. But a battery is sealed, and when the "goodness" in the chemicals is used up, the battery is flat. A fuel cell is like a battery, but with one important different difference - you can pump in the chemicals indefinitely. Fuel cells take in hydrogen and oxygen, and give off pure drinking water, and electricity. You use the electricity to run electric motors."
http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/trek/4wd/hydrogen.htm

" The most nonpolluting method of producing hydrogen is by using wind electrolysis.

"We concluded that if you generate hydrogen from wind or natural gas you get a clear benefit over gas/electric hybrid vehicles, though hybrids would also represent an improvement over the current fleet," Mark Jacobson, an associate professor at Stanford University, said."
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Hydro...ves-3730.shtml

"A hydrogen fuel cell works much like a battery. It consists of two electrodes sandwiched around an electrolyte. Hydrogen fuel is fed into one end of the cell (the anode) where it comes in contact with a catalyst, usually a platinum plate. Oxygen, in the form of air, enters the fuel cell on the other end (the cathode). When the hydrogen hits the catalyst it splits into positively charged ions and one negatively charged electron. The positively charged ions are allowed to pass through the electrolyte, while the negatively charged electrons can not. The electrons are then collected and sent through a wire. The resulting stream of electrons is electricity, which can be used to power a vehicle."
http://autoadvice.about.com/od/resea...rogenPower.htm

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Classic American liberal

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"Tweeter was a Boyscout before she went to Vietnam and found out the hard way... nobody gives a d@mn."

Unfortunately, wind power is under attack.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg...sn=001&sc=1000

The wind turbines at Altamount (the same area where the Stones played in 1969) are killing a lot of birds, which has some people upset. So now some of the turbines are being shut down.

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Never moon a werewolf.

electric vehicles, unless they can find some way of increasing the viability of non-fossil fuel powered ways of producing hydrogen.

Cheaper, batteries are getting denser and denser all the time, VERY efficient.
Also has the potential to be the cleanest (if we convert to clean power).