The Coming Hydrogen Economy

Fortune.com | Nov. 12, 2001 | David Stipp

[earlybirdnj]

very interesting article. it is thinking like this that will break the stranglehold OPEC has on us. now we need to get the federal gov't on board. everyone needs to email their congressman and let them know.

[MistrX]

Paragraphs are our friends.

[hove]

But..what was up with that exploding blimp?

[Bellflower]

How do we invest?

[sinkspur]

Unreadable and, so, not read.

There's an HTML course that teaches things like paragraphs available on the FR home page.

[Cachelot]

The lightweight gas, the most abundant element in the universe

This is factually wrong. The most abundant element in the universe is Stupidity, which is why there hasn't been more of an effort on ending the Arab energy-stranglehold. Hydrogen is a close second.

[TADSLOS]

Your unformatted post gave me (methane) gas.

[glc1173@aol.com]

In 1970, I saw a glass sphere of crude oil in a Boston museum - captioned that all crude oil would be exhausted in 25 years. "In 25 years" was six years ago. Anyone now unable to drive due to a lack of gasoline refined from crude oil?

[PJ-Comix]

Interesting but will hydrogen cells provide enough energy to FORMAT ARTICLES?

[Cicero]

You need to learn how to paragraph, because this is basically unreadable as it stands.

The problem I see with a "hydrogen economy" is that you need energy to produce the Hydrogen--let's say by electrolyzing water. At the moment, most electrical energy comes from fossile fuels. So you aren't really saving any oil unless you start making electricity in some other way, lets say from nuclear power.

[Shermy]

Kind hint: learn HTML.

The early line is from the black goo boys is that you still need "hydrocarbons" to get the hydrogen, which is partially true. But the hydrocarbon to be used is natural gas. Which, I note, Canada and Mexico have a lot of. Also, the central asian state's hydrocarbon resources is predominately natural gas over oil, as opposed to the Persian Gulf. I'd really like to see the central asian states and Russia benefit from this...I'd rather give them my money. Maybe all the deals with Putin et al. anticipate this???

The hydrogen can come from water by electrolysis too. The black goo critics say it's not cost effective, but that turns untrue when one uses electricity from dams, et al., that would otherwise go to waste during off-peak hours.

Also hydrogen is clean. Oil costs supplied by the industry never take into account the externalized costs of air and water pollution. And the cost of relying upon countries we should not be underwriting.

[Liberals are Evil Socialists!]

Good news.

[VA Advogado]

Its a shame a person smart enough to appreciate an article like this, isn't smart enough to learn how to format it.

[thatsnotnice]

In 1970, I saw a glass sphere of crude oil in a Boston museum - captioned that all crude oil would be exhausted in 25 years. "In 25 years" was six years ago. Anyone now unable to drive due to a lack of gasoline refined from crude oil?

In our junior high science classes they also told us that within 20 years all fossil fuels would be exhausted. That would have been in about 1976. Shortly after that they discovered one of the largest natural gas fields in north America in SE Texas.

1996 has come and gone and there are still fossil fuel deposits that are cheap and plentiful.

[Republic of Texas]

We can tame the hydrogen atom, but not format a paragraph? That's hard enought of read WITH formatting!

[c. l. coffman]

I can tell this article went over like a Led Zeppelin. ;^)

[Grim]

The article suggests people will be able to pour water into the fuel tank and zoom away happy as a clam. In fact, it takes tremendous energy to extract hydrogen from H2O. And that energy comes from where class? Currently, fossil fuels. All current Hydrogen cells, if I'm not mistaken, also run on, ta-da, petroleum products i.e., propane, gasoline, diesel fuel.

Of course, if I could read the entire unformatted article, I may have found the author answered this issue, but I doubt it.

I'm all for alternate energy. Sadly, most of it is hype, hype, hype.

[lunatic12]

Ballard Power (BLDP on the NASDAQ) But be careful. It's a very volatile stock, and won't earn a penny for years.

[Katie_Colic]

Well formatted

[VA Advogado]

I always find it strange that someone posts an article and then lets 19 replies go by without commenting.