No matter to me ... I've been doing the reading, picking up stocks ... about
30% of the old self directed RSP is in H2 "startups" ... bld (bldp), fcel
to name two ... and this is definitely long term ... maybe 2020 :-). So did
you read that India plans to put 1,000,000 H2 vehicles on the road by 2020
http://www.h2fc.com/index.html ?

dons asbestos suit, getting ready for flame war

There's some sort of mis-assumption that 20 years from now we'll all still
be driving/cruising around as usual in H2 or whatever powered vehicles ...
my opinion, most of us peasants will be walking.

And this I find interesting ... about 99% of the energy that goes into your
gas tank is used to move the frikken vehicle ... and about 1% is used to
move the driver. How's that for modern day dinosaur ... complete with the
brain to weight ratio :-)

A light weight vehicle would not require "the same horsepower".

A significant paradigm shift is required before even beginning to think
constructively about replacing combustion and carbon energy.


Ergo, it takes lots of gas to create the same horsepower. Where are you
gonna put all that gas in a vehicle? You have to compress it and put it
into some kind of storage tank. Compressing anything takes more energy.
How are you going to create the hydrogen or other gas? You don't just
gather it up. It has to be manufactured, which takes more energy. Some
methods allow you to use passive energy such as solar, but take a long
time
to generate the quantities required to be useful. Other methods require
energy input from... petroleum fuels... to create the "clean" gas. Ack.

"bowgus" wrote in
:

my opinion, most of us peasants will be walking.


That might be true, but not because we're out of oil.

There's lots of interesting graphs at:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/aer/pdf/perspectives.pdf
especially Figure 21, the real and nominal price of gas ADJUSTED FOR
INFLATION, those worthless US Dollars (or more worthless Canadian Dollars)
in your wallet.

As you can see, fuel is CHEAPER now than it was in 1980, if we take the
awful inflation out of it. We are in a zone of rising (until last week at
least) prices.

One thing the gummit bureaucrats conveniently left out of this pdf file was
a graph of FUEL TAXES REAL AND HIDDEN over these periods. Real gas tax, in
SC, is 34.3c/gallon, state and federal. That graph looks like a tangent
function on a linear scale. Remember all those fuel tax increases for
"education" all those years? Our kids should be coming out of grade school
with PhDs by now...yeah, right. They still can't read....

http://www.randomuseless.info/gasprice/adjusted.txt
Here....Someone has tabulated fuel prices in 1979 dollars for you....Hell,
fuel was cheaper in January of 2005 than it was in 1979! The graph is on:
http://www.randomuseless.info/gasprice/gasprice.html

The REAL devil in all this is the D word....DEVALUATION....There, I dared
say it. The goddamned government is running the printing presses full bore
diluting the value of the money into worthlessness. Remember copper
pennies? We lost our asses stamping out pennies costing more than a penny
was worth, so we switched to copper-painted aluminum. A few months ago, we
started losing our asses stamping out aluminum pennies costing more than an
aluminum penny is worth!

We're running the printing presses sending out checks to people who don't,
can't or won't produce WORK....a product to create value. We're printing
paper money to cover the checks. "Oil company profits are at an all time
high!" Exxon's stockholders made $10B with a B! How awful! But, is it?
Adjusted for inflation back 50 years, I doubt Exxon stockholders are making
any more VALUE, today than they were in 1955, when a loaf of bread was 39
cents and a whole meal in a diner was $1.89...including 10c for the Coke.

Wake up, people! Anyone working is really working for LESS and LESS every
year....trading their labor and hard work for less and less VALUE....and it
isn't going to change until the collapse, which I don't think is far
away... when..."most of us peasants will be walking."

--
Larry
If you plot gas prices against the price of a Chevy to put it in....Gas is
CHEAP!

RW Salnick wrote:

As soon as it becomes economically feasible to tear
down the coal-, oil- or gas-burning power plants and replace them with
windmills and/or solar cells, it will be done.

Welcome to the future. The province of Ontario will see the building of
nearly 3000 windmills over the next 5 years. Total output of 4500
megawatts or approx. 17% of the province's maximum daily summertime
usage. At a current construction cost of approx. $2.5 million each, the
construction costs are recouped in 10 years at current electricity rates.

http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/News/Loc...24583-sun.html

not that this has anything to do with hydrogen fueled boats

prodigal1 wrote:
RW Salnick wrote:

As soon as it becomes economically feasible to tear down the coal-,
oil- or gas-burning power plants and replace them with windmills
and/or solar cells, it will be done.


Welcome to the future. The province of Ontario will see the building of
nearly 3000 windmills over the next 5 years. Total output of 4500
megawatts or approx. 17% of the province's maximum daily summertime
usage. At a current construction cost of approx. $2.5 million each, the
construction costs are recouped in 10 years at current electricity rates.

http://lfpress.ca/newsstand/News/Loc...24583-sun.html

not that this has anything to do with hydrogen fueled boats

It does answer the question that was asked "where are we going to
get all this energy?" That was intended to "charge up the hydrogen
tanks," but is relevant whatever conditioning the energy requires to
substitute for fossil hydrocarbons.

If high compession H2 storage is elusive, it leaves it to us to
consider what format for H2 could benefit from low pressure tanks,
and that solitary format inevitably involves a gasbag, dirigible or
otherwise, even inflated kite sails made from non-static materials.

I want a low noise, low cost helicopter style sailboat, and am
convinced that a dirigible, pre-stressed inflated frame will make it
possible, if a little gargantuan. A neutral bouyancy active
hydrodynamic keel would enable an airship sailshape to sail to
windward. A longer line should enable a dirigible sailboat to
handle high seas and high winds over deep water.

Imagine a lawn chair, suspended on ropes by an H2 sail shaped
(lifting body shape) dirigible, and using a steerable lightweight
leeboard towed below in the water. A bellows able to apply nad
release a little overpressure to an inner chamber containing a
percentage of the H2 might enable a dirigible to ascend or descend
like a fish using a swim bladder only, or water could act as it does
in a MAC 26.

Tents and dodgers with inflated tube frames are the newest thing,
soon to become more popular than cheap balloon sofas?

A question in this regard, previously unanswered: at what pressure
does hydrogen weigh the same as air at STP? About 8 or 9
atmospheres? Could a kevlar or carbon fibre bag sealed with some
plastic film inside maintain neutral bouyancy (in air) H2 fuel pressure?

Neccessity is not yet percieved as pregnant enough, I guess.

Terry K

Now you're talking...

It seems to me we can make some significant progress in this area with
technology we've already developed, not pie in the sky stuff...


"bowgus" wrote in message
.. .
There's some sort of mis-assumption that 20 years from now we'll all still
be driving/cruising around as usual in H2 or whatever powered vehicles ...
my opinion, most of us peasants will be walking.

And this I find interesting ... about 99% of the energy that goes into
your
gas tank is used to move the frikken vehicle ... and about 1% is used to
move the driver. How's that for modern day dinosaur ... complete with the
brain to weight ratio :-)

A light weight vehicle would not require "the same horsepower".

A significant paradigm shift is required before even beginning to think
constructively about replacing combustion and carbon energy.


Ergo, it takes lots of gas to create the same horsepower. Where are you
gonna put all that gas in a vehicle? You have to compress it and put it
into some kind of storage tank. Compressing anything takes more energy.
How are you going to create the hydrogen or other gas? You don't just
gather it up. It has to be manufactured, which takes more energy. Some
methods allow you to use passive energy such as solar, but take a long
time
to generate the quantities required to be useful. Other methods require
energy input from... petroleum fuels... to create the "clean" gas. Ack.