water as fuel

We used that for about a year, but the water coming out of the fridge trickles slowly. We just got the water cooler and big bottles. It's actually only $24 a month. It's spring water. The good stuff.

Nevada.

Or just have wind farms produce the electricity and eliminate nuclear out of the picture.

Either one, without O2, is a harmless substance.

The problem with Hydrogen is that we have neither a convenient way to carry around 400+ miles worth of the stuff (I dont know how much it would weigh but it would either have to be squeezed or liquified and still might be pretty big volume), nor a convenient way to produce it.

Well, yeah, except that's a crapload of nuclear power plants. You still have to obtain nuclear fuel for them. You'd probably need to go to breeder cycles. You'd also have a lot of nuclear waste to deal with. On the plus side, nobody would complain about the water off the Coast of Maine being too cold for swimming any more. And you'd be able to pull lobsters from the bay all pre-cooked.

Solar cells, anyone?

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asks:

For now, at the Yucca Mountain Repository in Nevada. In the long run, it's something still to be worked out.

But which do you think is worse? Having a spent-fuel disposal problem that technology will probably find a solution to eventually...or running out of energy (or potable water) in the foreseeable future? I don't see that there's a third option.

Are you one of those people who knows the cost of everything but the value of nothing?

Geoff

: Doesn't gasoline contain far more energy per unit weight than : hydrogen does, what with all those molecular bonds just waiting : to be broken and all? And if so, doesn't that make it more ex- : plosive (read: dangerous) than hydrogen, pound for pound?

Three things. One, gasoline doesn't explode in an engine -- at least, not in an engine that's running properly. It burns with a definite flame front. When it explodes, it's the phenomenon known as "pinging," which isn't good.

(Diesel fuel, in contrast, *does* explode -- which is why diesel engines make that characteristic chittering sound. Not due to any property of the fuel, but because its combustion is initiated spontaneously by the heat of compression, rather than ignited at a point source by a sparkplug and traveling across a rapid but defined flame front.)

Two, the need to have the optimal mixture of gasoline and oxygen says nothing about the energy content of gasoline. Oxygen is just a reactant.

And three, whether gasoline burns or explodes has no bearing on the amount of energy produced. Either way, combustion -- the conversion of chemical energy into heat -- is taking place, whether quickly or slowly.

Excellent point.

Geoff

Yes, but the poster was talking about the danger (or non-danger) of transporting and using gasoline vs. hydrogen, not how it works in the combustion chamber.

I was always amazed at the movies we used to show the Navy flight students in Pensacola that actually showed both flame front burning and detonation (this was when many Navy aircraft still used reciprocating engines). I never understood how they could actually film within the combustion chamber.

Merritt

That slow flow is not normal. I added a filter to the water line to my refrigerator and it doesn't affect the water flow. It is very effective at improving the taste and removing contaminants. The filter (by GE) costs about $15 and lasts for six months.

Merritt

You should also mention the elimination of atmospheric pollution caused by burning fossil fuels to generate electricity.

We should also be expanding hydro power. The availability of clean power outweighs any impact on wild rivers, in my opinion.

Merritt

They may have used a self piercing connector for the water valve. Those are not recommended by refrigerator manufacturers because they clog up. Also some refrigerators from Whirlpool/Kitchenaid have a slow flow. Our new Maytag is very fast. GE is medium.

Those flight students buzzed me quite a few times when I was in the process of taking a swing at the ball on that nice course at Pensacola NAS.

value! Not a concept in this culture! Why is Detroit still selling Fuel guzzling SUV's? Why are these vehicles so popular? I drive a fuel efficient small car 27/34. Show me the need for a public owned Hummer, or the giant Caddy. The public screams about fuel costs but are not willing to do things that are practical. First stop buying giant vehicles to pump up your masculine image. Start making use of the technology that is already available.

Are you referring to CBS truth or "Actual Truth" as reported by ??????. All of the news channels are biased and report only the truth as they see it. A liberal sees CBS as very truthful. A conservative sees the same on FOX. I see no truth on any channel.

Don D.

: This must be an example of that famous liberal tolerance and : openmindedness we're always hearing about.

What specifically have you seen on Fox News that you considered stupid, and why?

This is the first time I've seen Fox News accused of stupidity. What it's usually accused of is having a right-wing slant. The Left seizes on their slogan "fair and balanced" and essentially says, "Nuh-UHH," which I've always thought offered a lot of insight into the sophistication of the liberal worldview.

Anyway, your charge of stupidity rings rather hollow because having a particular slant presupposes the intelligence neces- sary to have that intent and to doctor the network's coverage accordingly.

By "fair and balanced," they *mean* "true" -- as in unbiased, not tainted by ideological slant.

It's a platitude on the Left that Fox News is anything *but* fair and balanced, because it allegedly has a right-wing bias. Some of the _commentary_ is conservative, for example that of Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly, but openly and forthrightly so. And Hannity is of course balanced by Alan Colmes.

I've never detected anything about their *news coverage* that was slanted. I suspect that what liberals are noticing isn't right- wing slant per se, but the absence of the *left-*wing slant that they're accustomed to seeing from the other networks.

Geoff

"Just" having wind farms won't cut it. No single approach will be sufficient; it'll have to be a combination of technologies.

Speaking of wind farms, have you heard the latest on that? The Birkenstock Brigade is whining that the windmills kill birds. (My take on it is that they weed out the stupid ones, thus doing nature a favor.)

Have you noticed that the envirozealots bitch about pollution, but that whenever a clean energy source is proposed, they always find some excuse to bitch about that, too? Windmills kill birds. The dams used for hydroelectric power generation interfere with salmon migration. (Didn't we dispense with that issue decades ago with those fish-ladder things?) And don't even think of mentioning

*nuclear* power.

The conclusion I draw from this is that the eco-zealots, like the so-called "deep ecologists" and the "animal rights" wackos who'd rather see people die of dread diseases than have experiments performed on animals, have an abiding hatred of mankind. That's their real agenda; their rhetoric about protecting Mudda Oit' is just window dressing.

(And the word is *mankind,* goddammit, not "humankind.")

Geoff

DH wtes:

: Doesn't gasoline contain far more energy per unit weight than : hydrogen does, what with all those molecular bonds just waiting : to be broken and all? And if so, doesn't that make it more ex- : plosive (read: dangerous) than hydrogen, pound for pound?

There'd be plenty of O2 available if a tank containing either were ruptured in a crash. And that's what the previous poster was getting at, not any danger inherent in simply having the stuff on board.

Or an infrastructure for dispensing it.

: Think about it: we could have nuclear power plants on the coasts, : colocated with desalination plants and electrolysis facilities. : Our energy, water and automobile fuel needs could be met in one : swell foop, as it were, all within the smallest possible use of : space. Sounds like a winner to me.

Ain't hyperbole fun? I'm surprised you didn't mention that three- eyed fish in The Simpsons.

France (to name one example) gets the overwhelming majority of its electricity from nuclear generation, and it isn't overrun with nuke plants. Considering how far to the Left the European political mind- set is compared to ours, there'd have been a hell of an outcry if it were. Don't forget, nuclear power plants generate a metric shitload of electricity. That's one reason they're less common in the U.S. than conventional power plants: proportionately fewer are needed.

And in the wintertime, when the sun is less intense and the sky is overcast much of the time? That's the sort of thing I was alluding to when I said we'll need a combination of technologies: solar cells in sunny places, hydropower in places like the Northwest which have lots of rivers, windmills where it's breezy, and nuclear plants to take up the slack (and power the colocated desalination and elec- trolysis facilities).

Geoff

There's a difference between "fuel on fire" and "fuel exploding," mostly having to do with how well it's mixed with the O2.

Not that I'd want to be involved with either.

The French aren't using nuclear power to commute 50 miles to work each way. Their per-capita energy consumption is significantly lower than ours. We'd need more nukes, per capita, than they do to get the same fraction of our overall energy demand from nukes.

Also, don't forget that nukes are a tempting terrorist target. As is their waste. I'm not anti-nuke but I'm in favor of being fully aware of what we're getting into and being prepared for it.

Normally, I would agree that a mix makes a lot of sense. However, on Usenet we prefer exaggeration, histrionics, polarization and a healthy dose of "neener, neener, neener" to any kind of reasoned and thoughtful discussion.

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Found that statement very interesting. Do you have any references? When i searched i found the opposite.

: Are you one of those people who knows the cost of everything but : the value of nothing?

Because they give certain people value *in terms of what they want.* Which isn't necessarily what you or I want, but I'm glad there are such choices in the marketplace -- even if they're not all choices that I personally would want to take advantage of.

It isn't about need; it's about having the choice to drive whatever one wants and can afford. This isn't East Germany, where everybody drove those shitty little Trabants because the government said that was all they needed.

My cars are both diesel Benzes. My daily driver is a sensibly-sized

300D. But my second car is a huge 300SDL -- the stretched-wheelbase version of the big body, really a small limousine. But I'm a single guy, and I have no practical need for such a car. So why did I buy it? Because I wanted it. I'd long admired them, and when I could finally afford one, I went out and found one. It's a great value to me because owning and driving and taking care of it gives me pleasure.

The same reasoning applies to SUVs or duallie crew-cab pickups or big Cadillacs, or what have you. If owning something like that gives somebody pleasure, even though it's in excess of what they really need, who are you to say they made a bad call value-wise? That's their call to make, and nobody else's.

I suspect that the people who are screaming loudest about fuel costs aren't the same people who choose to drive large vehicles. The latter people are those who decided that driving a large vehicle is worth it to them *despite* the expense of fueling it.

Masculine image? The largest market demographic for SUVs, especially for the biggest SUVs is...women. Just look at the advertising and take note of who it's aimed at. And start paying close attention to who's driving the ones you see on the road.

Geoff