Bush Hydrogen Crusade gets an F from Energy Experts

[Sleestak]

Originally posted by: BaliBabyDoc
Damn what a troll . . . at 300 posts . . . most impressive.

As for the initial comments about short/long term, you probably need to read the actual article in Science instead of a Yahoo blurb. Since I no longer qualify for a student discount, I don't subscribe but if you care to read it at your local libe:

Rethinking Hydrogen Cars
David W. Keith and Alexander E. Farrell
Science 2003 July 18; 301: 315-316.

If I had to guess an energy and resources professor probably considers short term to be a generation and long term means 50+.

UCBerkley!What does that tell you?! Don't see any political agenda there? Raise the CAFE limits, eliminate SUV's, raise the gas tax. That's the dems & the greens party line.

Even an econ prof at MIT would tell you the gross expense of converting to a hydrogen economy greatly exceeds the cost of making more efficient internal combustion engines over any interval EXCEPT for a time horizon of centuries. You don't have to eliminate SUVs you just make ownership reflect the actual costs to the planet.

Hydrogen is a long term strategy, of course, since electric cars are a total failure. The short term strategy is to drill our abundant supply of domestic oil, eliminating the need for imported oil.

You will be dead and buried long before hydrogen vehicles constitute a significant portion of domestic vehicles. GMs EV1 was definitely a failure but hybrids are pretty much here to stay. All it takes is a little public policy push to create a revolution (increased gas taxes, increased CAFE (including reigning in light trucks, SUVS, and ALL cars), subsidies for true hybrids (end the BS credits for flex fuel vehicles that rarely see anything other than gas), advocacy/subsidies for clean diesel, subsidize ALL public transit that uses hybrid or LEV).

Your short term strategy is only appropriate on the time scale of the Science article. It will take over a decade for significant domestic exploration, pipelines, and increased refinery capacity. In the near term, we need more efficient vehicles and real political leadership.

I'm the troll huh? I think you need to go back through the thread and see who turned it political.

 

[uncleel]

You will be dead and buried long before hydrogen vehicles constitute a significant portion of domestic vehicles

You will be dead before cars run by sucking hydrogen out of the air, w/ the only waste material being water. But that's the research is heading.

20yrs is the best estimate that auto manufacturers say before any alternative vechile (inc. hydrogen cars) has a significant percentage. Widespread adoption in 30 to 50 years. There's nothing wrong w/ investing in hydrogen research now. The history of research has shown that inventions are not straightlined, but rather derivatives offshots of other's research.

Previous administrations (not to mention California's legislators) policies totally failed w/ electic cars & other mandates. MTBE has turned into a ecological disaster. Domestic oil exploration stopped. You call that leadership?

The only argument w/ hydrogen is political. 1.) because of fossil fuel use. 2.) Because it's anti-Bush
The "Watermelons" (green on the outside - red on the inside) are using their left-wing pseudo theology beliefs to blame SUV Owners for Causing Global Warming by spiking and slashing SUV's tires, "keying" body paint, smashing windshields, breaking window glass.

Politics over science.

 

[Moonbeam]

Well it was uncleel who turned the thread political and claims it's politics over science for the reason that the science was done at Berkeley. This is an example of the inability to think rationally. A bull sees a red flag and charges. Too bad people are that way. They are that way, all right, but the fact they pretend otherwise, unlike the bull, that makes them so full of it. Berkeley of course has some of the greatest scientists in the world there and trains many more who will be so in the future. Scientists come in all political flavors.