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Originally Posted by Hobbs in post #64
I just find it interesting that in this time and age of technological advances that no one can come up with a valid, inexpesive, safe, clean alternative fuel. I mean, come on, why does the fuel we need to use have to include oil as a main ingredient?
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Appreciate basic chemistry. Show me another fuel that can store the same energy per pound as petroleum. Furthermore, have you looked at petroleum molecules? We humans make complex structures with simple molecules of two or 6 atoms. Man has no practical way (yet) of making anything as complex as petroleum. We are very dependent on nature for complex organic compounds. Rather sad that a molecule so complex and wonderful, with so many interesting functions, is instead burned for heat. And yet planes really could not fly as they do today without petroleum. There just is no fuel that can store so much energy in so little weight. Furthermore, fuels such as hydrogen (hyped to the naive) just don't transport or store well meaning even worse energy efficiency.
The problem is making a fuel that can store energy without major loss AND can hold sufficient energy per pound. Nothing (at reasonable cost) comes close.
Our energy problems are so simple to solve. It’s called innovation. The solutions are based in efficiencies. Even back in the late 1970s, a maximum zed car (not much larger than a bathtub) using only a carburetor, achieved something like 1300 MPG. Don't even expect a gasoline driven car to achieve those numbers. But those numbers demonstrate what I had posted many months ago (search for a discussion about Horsepower per liter). Most of the energy burned in cars is completely wasted. Cars are that grossly inefficient.
When GM and Ford engineers developed new technologies that made better use of petroleum in about 1970 and 1965, well, what happened to those technologies? They were stifled until rescued by foreign automakers in 1990 and by Honda in 1980.
You tell me. Do you really believe we have not the ability to innovate, based upon lessons of history? Of course we do. So what happened to that $100 million dollars provided in 1994 to build a hybrid? GM still does not have a workable hybrid engine 11 years later. Do you still believe, based upon past and recent histories, that innovation is marketed in the American auto industry? Even when driven to the verge of bankruptcy, those companies still did not tap their archive of innovations.
So you tell me why. Did you say to America, "Keep making crap"? Or did you demand innovation; buy from companies such as Toyota? We stifled innovation when we buy 1968 technology machines marketed as 2005 monster vehicles. Too many so hate America as to buy GM products. Do you say anything when the neighbor says, "F... America" - and buys a Chevy? Well then how in hell are the car guys ever going to tap and use America's innovation pipeline?
Where is that hybrid that the US government paid 11 years ago to have built? Oh. George Jr tells us the solution is more oil. Where is that oil? Middle East and Central Asia. No problem. We will fix their nations. We will impose democracy. I guess that is innovation according to the Project for a New American Century.
But this is the most embarrassing part. Did you even know the simple science as explained in the newspapers (papers that actually report news)? A major problem is that some just think a solution must exist without first learning the underlying concepts - especially the numbers. If one really understood fundamental numbers, then one would immediately see through GM's lie about hydrogen as a fuel. And yet so many of us so don't first learn facts as to believe that GM lie. So again the problem continues.
The nation that was once a number 3 oil producing country was still importing over 50% of its oil - when the 1970s gas crisis hit. Now we import something like 70% of our oil - and don't worry? Furthermore, we now must import natural gas. Why? We consume double energy to accomplish same thing as any other nation. The solution is not more oil. The solution is doing everything smarter. As the Japanese always said, don't work harder - work smarter.