Date: 14 Jun 2005 15:22:39 GMT From: Dave Hinz <DaveHinznospamcop.net> Subject: Re: 9-7X ?
On Tue, 14 Jun 2005 01:31:01 GMT, James Sweet <jamessweetnospamail.com> wrote: > >> Not too long before bio-fuels are economically feasable for mainstream >> use. Then, we can give our money to the farmers in our country, rather >> than people who want to kill us. > > It's a wonderful idea, though I do wonder how many biofuels are really fuels > in that they can be produced using less energy than you get by burning them. Well, like any other crop, the economical factors determine when it's feasable or not. A biofuel, ultimately, is just an organic solar collector and energy transport. If that land was going to be used for something else, then the loss of that crop (if any) has to be considered as well. Nice thing about dollars, is that it evens all of those variables out. > Same goes for hydrogen, I hear people talking about it as our savior and the > fuel of the future but to make hydrogen you need a lot more energy than you > get when you burn it. Hopefully some of the alternative fuels prove viable. Hydrogen is _not_ a fuel, it's a battery. You have to expend more energy to make it, than you get when you burn it. Period. It's strictly a way to displace pollution from the areas that consume, to wherever the electricity is made which is then used to produce the hydrogen. That's entirely different from a fuel, which inherently has energy that you didn't explicitly expend to produce that fuel. Personally, I'd like to see the government subsidize research and production for biofuels. Gets us over the immediate energy shortfall, economies of scale can start kicking in, and it's a hell of a lot better than some of the other stupid stuff our government is wasting our money on, with no long-term gains in sight.
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