Fuel cell technology.

Great idea, it's day may come, the way it's presented in most discussions erroneously leaves the impression that it's almost free. First, see the points about developement costs. Since hydrogen is the most often promoted fuel for these cells where do we get that? The most often cited source is water (H2O). How do you get the hydrogen out of the water? It takes a process that requires equipment to split the hydrogen from the oxygen. Where do you get the capital to build this equipment? Then where do you get the capital to build the infrastructure to store and transport the hydrogen? Then you need unique facilities to dispense the hydrogen. Where's the capital for that come from? Pesky damn question isn't it?? And once the developement of this technology is funded and completed, it will take more capital to convert our gasoline engine production facilities to fuel cell production. Need more of that damn capital stuff. Oh, I forgot to mention that the raw material for hydrogen production, that water stuff, we have supply problems there too! We're already stressing "clean" water supplies in some areas. True, the earth is 3/4 covered with water, but the vast majority of that is SALT water. Desalination is a possibility, but there's a huge cost to that. And do you really believe the NIMBY's in California or New York are going to want huge plants built near their shores to do that??

Hybrids

Ah yes, our old friend electricity!! Great idea. But remember, it takes energy to produce energy. The single most abundant, direct fuel source we have in this country is coal. We are the Saudi Arabia of coal reserves. Nope, can't use that, it's too dirty! We can barely mine enough of it to fuel the few electricity plants permitted to use it now. Besides, mining is raping the earth!!!!! Okay, another way to produce electricity is hydro dams. Nope, gotta stop plugging up those rivers and killing those fish. BAAAADDDD American. Hmmmm, oh yeah, nuclear......................yeah right!!!!!

Myths

We only have a 20 year supply of oil left. Those of us that were around in the early '70's should remember hearing that then too. Gee, 30 years later we STILL only have 20 years left. If you went back to the early 20th century you'd find that then too they were predicting known reserves at somewhere between 10-20 years. The key terminology there (geez there he goes with that terminology thing again ) is KNOWN reserves. Since we've been seeing 20 year known reserves for over 100 years do you think there's a pattern here? If you were one of those evil oil company scum would you wastey your resources to locate more than 20 years out, especially when you know that you've only explored a very small percentage of the earth's innards? Well, obviously in addition to being evil, oil guys are stupid too!! That explains Nancy Pilosi's railings yesterday. Bush is a former oil guy right? And that's basically what she said, he's both stupid and evil!!

Which brings me to what our real energy problem is. We aren't holding our politicians responsible for doing their jobs properly. Because of our own political biases we fall on one side or the other and forget about what our objective should be. And because the issues involved are so complicated (this long diatribe mearly scratches the surface). If you hate whoever is the President at the time, you blame him. If you hate the other party from your preference you blame them. We give too much credibility to crackpots because their message sounds like they care so much, and they've become very adept at manipulating our inner most guilts. We go through life basing our decisions on the shallow education that our school systems grudgingly dump on us, and fail to dig deeper on our own to find out more. We lazily look for quick answers that are plausibly presented without context because "we're so busy". A lot of that is true, we are busy. Especially those of us who work for a living, because we've engendered a society that thinks it's "entitled" to so much even when it's not earned.

I spurn politicians of both principle parties because they believe we're stupid and pander to our basest desires. They all operate in the short term. And we are complicit in that because we let them get away with it. We allow them to distract us with silly, guilt driven, programs.

Despite the doom and gloom that appears above, I believe that the issues can be solved if good people are aware of reality. I suspect most here don't really care to know all that's said here, but it's my hope that enough will learn how complex the issues are and might contribute some positive discussion with their friends the next time someone blames an evil oil company for our problems. Again I will state that I am not an appologist for the oil industry. They are not saints. But they do have an enormous investment in exploration, production, transportation, distribution, technology, and have done a very good job of supply the lifes blood of our economy at comparatively reasonable prices over the long haul. The day may come when they become obsolete, and if that happens, that's progress. But don't sit there and think foolishly that it can be done with the stroke of a pen, or the punch of a ballot. It's going to take time, effort, and a bunch of money. There is no magic pixie dust.