[Sideous]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', 'I') like your title for this forum. Think outside the system. I think that hydrogen is the darling of the Bush administration because it's in the system. The idea of running cars on hydrogen and having filling stations appeals to them.

The fact is that to think outside the system requires us to scrap most of the infrastructure we have built in the past 100 years.

Richard Komp, solar energy pioneer, said yesterday that the present system of delivering electricity is already obsolete. After thinking about it I had to agree. I would add that our transportation system is also obsolete.

People may have had a sentimental attachment to horses, but their numbers still dwindled into the middle of the 20th century.

This whole mess we've made won't be worth much very soon.

We won't be able to feed the electric grid, and maintenance will be an increasingly difficult problem. Will hydrogen save us from that? I don't think so. Fuel cells might be a great way to store energy, but they don't make any.

Our cars and SUV's will be useless if gas goes much above $5 a gallon. Right now a lot of them are selling for around the scrap metal price.

The car of the future weighs around 350 pounds, and has a range of around 30 miles between electric charges. The house of the future is around 500 square feet and is oriented to the sun, for heating and cooling. The house provides at least half of it's own energy, from passive and active solar. The person of the future will use far less of everything than us. If they are lucky!

[Ming]

Yes, on national levels, until PV prices drop some 6 to 8 times, and batteries become several times more cost-effective, distributed renewable energy will remain marginal...

In fact, the combination of large wind farms and mass storage (pumped hydro and eventually CAES), complemented by nuclear and 100% conventional hydro resource utilization, will probably guarantee that large scale production facilities and national-level grid distribution (or continent-level, in Europe and North America) will be the most efficient post-peak energy solution...

[drunk]

http://biopact.com/2008/02/eu-hyways-re ... omass.html

Ahead of a €940 million (US$1.4 billion) funding round for hydrogen development, the scientific project HyWays funded by the EU's 6th Framework Program has found that introducing hydrogen into the Union's energy system would reduce total oil consumption by the road transport sector by 40% between now and 2050. The study looked at 10 member states and found bio-hydrogen is preferred as the main renewable production pathway, having the largest potential even after taking into account alternative uses for biomass, such as biofuels and bioproducts; hydrogen based on biomass is also by far the most cost-effective of the non-fossil based production methods.

They are still very reluctant but they will speed up when things get really ugly.

[BigTex]

A techno-fix is not thinking outside the system.

Thinking outside the system is realizing that FAR less can be removed from the ecosystem without destroying the sustainability of the ecosystem.

It is not thinking outside the system to try to find another way of fueling the same lifestyle.

Thinking outside the system is realizing that a new lifestyle must be adopted before one is imposed on us.

The trouble is that a less comfortable lifestyle is rarely recognized as an improvement over a more comfortable one, even if the former is the one that is sustainable.

[Revi]

I don't think we can really think outside the system, but we'll have to do it pretty soon. I have a feeling that what will actually happen will be more like the movie Brazil. The whole complicated system will slowly deteriorate. We won't be able to do much about it.

I intend to do what I can, but it seems like the rest of my culture will slowly realize that business as usual is over.

Heating oil at $5 a gallon makes it very difficult for people to heat their homes around here. People will put in wood stoves and try to keep their houses warm here in Maine, but the rest of the country can't do that.

Gas at $5 a gallon forces people to think outside of the system. Why have a car at all? Rent one when you need one. Get a bicycle or even an electric car:

www.sunnev.com

We are going to have to start thinking outside of the present system if we are going to survive.

The way we are doing things is not working.

Every American uses 3 gallons of petroleum a day. Only one comes from here. We need to live on that one gallon if we want to live within our budget.

That will take thinking outside the present system.

[hiperhiper]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('MonteQuest', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Olorin', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he only way to increase the biomass share of primary energy use in the U.S. is to decrease the fossil fuel consumption.

[The_Toecutter]

Mankind is heavily reliant upon other lifeforms. Further destruction of the biosphere will eventually lead to mankind's extinction.

Happy motoring is not so damaging to the planet if you remove the OIL involved in continuing it and decrease the energy associated with it to 1/5 of today. Food production is a much bigger culprit(especially factory famred meat), and war perhaps even a more substantial one(which, if oil is removed from the happy motoring equation, most wars would either lessen in severity or cease).


Think outside the system? How about destroy it and build a better one in its place? We need action on top of thinking.

[gnm]

Why even produce Hydrogen out of biomass, methane would be simpler. Hydrogen still suffers from difficulties in storage, transport, and energy density. Fool cells are pointless as well since Hydrogen can be burned in an ICE anyways.

I am afraid Monte is dead on about the real volumes involved. Its not scalable.

-G

[The_Toecutter]

There are even fuel cells that can run on biomass like ethanol or vegetable oil... much more efficient than making H2 from the biomass.