Kevin's Watch

www.hydrogencarsnow.com/

Hydrogen cars are not only the future, they are here, now. When hydrogen cars become the status quo, the U. S. can lessen its dependence upon foreign oil, achieve lower prices at the fuel pumps and cut down on the greenhouse gases that produce global warming. The future of hydrogen cars is not a pipe dream, as there are already many hydrogen cars on the road. California and Japan have many hydrogen cars being used as fleet vehicles now.

Unlike many of the hybrid and "green" cars currently on the market, hydrogen cars offer the promise of zero emission technology, where the only byproduct from the cars is water vapor. Current fossil-fuel burning vehicles emit all sorts of pollutants such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, ozone and microscopic particulate matter. Hybrids and other green cars address these issues to a large extent but only hydrogen cars hold the promise of zero emission of pollutants. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that fossil-fuel automobiles emit 1 ½ billion tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere each year and going to hydrogen-based transportation would all but eliminate this.

President Bush has already allocated approximately $2 billion in hydrogen highway research. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is pushing to get 200 hydrogen filling stations built by 2010 stretching from Vancouver, British Columbia, all the way down to Baja, California. Since Californians buy one-fifth of the nation's cars, the new hydrogen car technology could simply replace the current gasoline engine automobiles in what is called "disruptive technology" where something so innovative comes along it simply replaces the old technology very quickly.

This is all great news. I have always thought that the "Hydrogen Highway" initiative was THE long term answer to fuel / pollution issues. Hybrids are nice but they don't completely solve the problem. I know its going to take placing a Hydrogen Station on every other street corner and producing cars that are affordable to everyone in order to fully realize the potential of Hydrogen technology but seeing the beginnings of real everyday use and knowing that high profile political leaders are actively supporting progress in this endeavor is pretty exciting.

I hope by the time I'm at retirement age I'll be saying "Meh! In the old days we drove cars that ran on ground up dinosaur bones and spit out black soot like a chimney and we loved em! Hehehheh. More rain more grass. Hehehehhe."

I remember hearing somewhere that Gov. Arnold spent around $60,000 to modify his Hummer to run on hydrogen. Sounds like a good investement to me.

I read an article about this recently.

It pointed out that although hydrogen cars' emissions are zero, the actual process of preparing the hydrogen to be used as a fuel, produces all sorts of nasty stuff. Will try to find it.

Unlike many of the hybrid and "green" cars currently on the market, hydrogen cars offer the promise of zero emission technology, where the only byproduct from the cars is water vapor. Current fossil-fuel burning vehicles emit all sorts of pollutants such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, ozone and microscopic particulate matter. Hybrids and other green cars address these issues to a large extent but only hydrogen cars hold the promise of zero emission of pollutants. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that fossil-fuel automobiles emit 1 ½ billion tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere each year and going to hydrogen-based transportation would all but eliminate this.

Water vapor is a MUCH more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. It accounts for up to 66% of all GHG warming. How is this zero emission, and how does it eliminate GHGs when it simply replaces one with another?

A good example of why you can't believe everything you hear on the news. I always believed that "big oil" was evil and that they should be brought down a notch. I also suppose that this would be one good way to do that. But I would bet all of my money that some slick business man would start a monopoly on the most important thing that we have. Water. Are we just trading one evil for another?

Malik wrote:Water vapor is a MUCH more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. It accounts for up to 66% of all GHG warming. How is this zero emission, and how does it eliminate GHGs when it simply replaces one with another?

Pools and pathways ?

Stone wrote:It pointed out that although hydrogen cars' emissions are zero, the actual process of preparing the hydrogen to be used as a fuel, produces all sorts of nasty stuff. Will try to find it.

A point I have made countless times: Hydrogen is NOT a source of energy, merely a vector. However, there might some local polution advantage of switching to hydrogen fuel for transportation. Because, what you have read is about how you produce hydrogen TODAY in the majority of places. There are numerous other ways to produce it. Most of them are , however, either slow, energy ineficient or both.