Wednesday, February 01, 2006

SOTU Snake Oil Energy Sales

"We must also change how we power our automobiles. We will increase our research in better batteries for hybrid and electric cars and in pollution-free cars that run on hydrogen."

Great. Will we build them out of plastic to save weight? Where does that plastic stuff come from? Oh yeah, oil. All that plastic insulation in eletric stuff: oil. Well how about ethanol...In order to feed us and power us, we're gonna need a lot of fertilizer and pesticide. Where does that come from? Oil and natural gas.

Here's an idea. If you want to do your part to save on consumption of oil, don't buy any clothing with synthetic fibers in them, and nothing that has plastic in it. Who is working on next generation fertilzers, pesticides, solvents, glues, and lubricants that don't use petroleum or LNG as a feed stock chemical?

I've beaten the hydrogen thing damn near to death. I guess if we built enough nuke plants, with new more efficient electrodes coming online, water electrolysis for derived hydrogen would become "cheap". However, most H2 fuel cells use platinum as a catalyst. It's already expensive. Imagine how valuable platinum will become when it needs to be in every new car, truck, tractor, motorcycle, etc. Will we use H2 fuel cell driven watercraft?

I know I beat this thing like a drum, but it's just damned short-sighted to jump from a sinking ship to a leaky one.