" From: Tom Jennings <tomj@xxxxxxx> " " [] " " Hydrogen isn't even a GOOD energy storage mechanism! The only reason " it's talked about for widespread use is because it would be arguably " feasable for existing oil companies to do. there is a lot of politics and entrenched bigcorp economics in this, and imho for ethanol too. " Seriously -- there's no other " reason. Internal combustion without petroleum has no future. i disagree; it will have to be limited compared to our present extravagance, perhaps severely, but i think ic with biofuels has a definite future. for spark-ign engines, i'm with bruce hevner on butanol. i'm not convinced it's -the- answer, but i am convinced it's a -much-better- answer than ethanol. it has a much lower vapor pressure than gasoline [~15x less] so i don't think it'd do well in carbed engines, but as far as i can determine it's a drop-in replacement for gasoline in any injected engine with an o2 sensor. that's what fraction of all the cars on the road -right-now-? www.butanol.com drove a '92 buick cross country on butanol and they didn't do anything to it except fill the tank. given superior diesel efficiency, biodiesel could be an even better long term solution once they solve the low temperature limitation, and butanol might help there too - see http://www.butanol.com/page6.html biodiesel is also a drop-in replacement fuel for oil heat. " Solar/wind/nuclear electric beats it all 100 times over, yet that would " upset the oil industries (solar/wind) and the rest of us politically " (nuclear). " " Don't overlook that the spectacularly performing semiconductor industry " (transistors... ICs... computers in phones...) have brought solar cell " tech to nearly 30% efficiency routinely -- it goes up about 2% a year " now -- they're way past the point of cost-effectiveness for mass " deployment. There's no will for it though. we're -almost- at the point where it makes sense to shingle your roof with solar cells. ________________________________________________________________________ Andrew Hay the genius nature internet rambler is to see what all have seen adh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx and think what none thought _______________________________________________ Amc-list mailing list Amc-list@xxxxxxxxxxxx http://splatter.wps.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/amc-list