The last figure i heard, was that our oil supplies would be nearly depleated by 2015. Hopefully that was a bit off, but then, like you said, if we continue to increase our consumption, it might be dead on. While listening (it was an audiobook) to a book by Michael Moore (Dude, Where's my country?) he pointed out an intersting fact that i had never considered - When the oil runs out, we won't just be out of gasoline, we'll be out of everything made from oil. Most importantly, we'll be out of plastic. And without plastic, we will be in one hell of a bad situation. I personally can't think of anything i have touched today that didn't have plastic in it.

However, as for the hydrogen fuel cells - I've read something critisizing them too, however i disagree. This article (or whatever it was) talked about the idea that it took just as much energy to produce the hydrogen that the fuel cells put out. My question is, so? I don't think the researches on the fuel cell ideas have pointed out what exactly they are yet. Fuel cells are not a way to get cheap or free enegery (people are stuck on oil, with no work involved, etc.. we just screw some Middle East people, and then we get lots of free enegery), but instead, it's more like a battery. The catch is, it's a very high capactiy battery, that takes only as long to charge as it would take to fill your gasoline tank. In my mind, that's all they are. And in that regard, they are a great idea. The problem with using electric power before was that it would take 20 hours to charge your battery, and you'd only get 5 hours of driving out of that. With perfected fuel cells, you can full up your hydrogen tank at a classic-style gas station, and then drive for a week on it, just like we all like.

As for the impact on the environment, i do imagine there would be one.. if i'm not mistaken (and i could be), their only emmission is water vapor.. sounds harmless enough, but if everyone in the US were driving them, that would be a lot of water vapor. Would be nice to see a perpetual rain cloud over a city though, instead of a smog cloud. It would be link London everywhere, heh.

Either way, alternate fules do need to be implimented, and fast.

Posted by MasterRa - December 7, 2003 10:10 AM

The energy issue isn't extremely viable with fuel cells as much as it is with the idea of alternate methods of collecting petroleum. Fuel cells are pretty efficient producers of electricity, and their output is water vapor like you said. The part of fuel cells that people are raising question about however is increased levels of hydrogen leaking into the atmosphere. This would come from fuel stations, as well as from every car on the road. It would just be hard to make sure tanks never leak and storage is full proof. The fact is that hydrogen is a greenhouse gas and an increase in atmospheric levels would be as deadly to our environment as burning fossil fuels is today.

Posted by Adam - December 8, 2003 03:10 AM

On that note, however, you have to realize that the amount of hydrogen leaked by accident into the atmosphere is going to be NOWHERE near as much as people are putting into it at this point with fossil fuel exhaust. Yeah, more hydrogen is going to be bad, but there's not way it could have the same effect as the tons of sulphur and shit we pump into the sky every day at this point.

--CharonErebus

Posted by CharonErebus - December 8, 2003 03:16 PM

In the US auto industry alone we are talking about 107 million American households with an average of 1.9 cars. I won't deny that this fear of leaky hydrogen storage could be just political garbage, but it still needs considering. There is a lot of buzz in this area going on these days. It should show an interesting development in coming years.

Posted by Adam - December 8, 2003 06:08 PM