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Originally Posted by spence
Actually, I believe the funding stated the source of Hydrodgen must be natural gas, not oil...
There may still be advantages to doing this...if the fossil fuel is broken down in a factory it would be easier to control greenhouse gas emissions...
Even options like ethanol have serious issues. Politicians in the midwest love it because it's good for the local economy...but it requires tremendous amounts of energy to produce.
In the end I've seen little that indicates which alternative sources really provide a significant "net" gain when all the complexities are accounted for.
-spence
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hear-hear.
While we all have opinions on how easy it is to just make the change. And I think most of us agree it is already too late and the damage should have been halted long ago. We are behind the proverbial 8-ball now and as spence pointed out - this is a complex issue with no obvious winner. The problems we have cannot all be blamed on Bush - why were there no hydrogen cars during the Clinton Admin. He had 8 years to do something about it....but there are still very few alternative fuel or even hybrid vehicles on the road.
I agree that there is definitely a conflict of interest with all the politicians with there fingers in the oil community. In my opinion there has to be something that can be done. But again, I will refer back to spence - nothing is easy.
Instead of complaining, we could all simply change our lifestyles and stop or minimize our use of foreign oil. I forgot where I read it, but some of the smaller gas station chains do not use foreign oil. All of us with big V-8s that do not require them for our work or families could down size. We could fish much closer spots. We could commute or use public transportation.
But know - we keep our oil guzzling hogs because we like them. We drive 40 miles to fish that special spot when there is local access to water in our same towns. We don't carpool or use public transportation because it is hot, cold, smells, late, early, schedule doesn't allow or because it is just inconvienent.
Then we turn around and complain that politicians simply aren't fixing our problems. When it comes to the national security - I agree we need to get off foreign oil. But if it is simply cost - suck it up and change your lifestyle. Since when did we become a nation of people who don't take matters into our own hands.
Instead of finger pointing - make your own small changes to become less dependant on foreign oil. If everyone stopped complaining and voted with their $$$ things would change. If we all sold our V-8s and bought green vehicles (bio-desiel, hybrid, natural gas), the green vehicles and the cooresponding places to fill them would become more available, with better features, etc. As long as we are willing to stand at the pump and pay $3.00/gallon and not change our habits - we are fluking ourselves.