From: Adrian Tymes (wingcat@pacbell.net)
Date: Tue Aug 26 2003 - 00:33:53 MDT
--- Emlyn O'regan <oregan.emlyn@healthsolve.com.au>
wrote:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Spudboy100@aol.com [mailto:Spudboy100@aol.com]
>
> We can't drive automobiles on wind and solar power
> as yet. This is despite
> the TV jourmalism of the local variety; who spout on
> about solar cars, for
> the last 35 years.
> <snip>
>
> Decent electric cars would do the job. Then we could
> use any generation
> method that we could dream up.
With sufficiently large amounts of sufficiently cheap
electricity, one could economically desalinate ocean
water, then crack hydrogen from that; even today's
fuel cells would, with a good hydrogen distribution
network (which would be much easier to deploy with an
ultra-cheap hydrogen source), be able to at least
equal gasoline engines for most consumer purposes.
Note that just being able to economically desalinate
ocean water would be a revolution in itself. The cost
of the vast amounts of electricity consumed by modern
facilities is the main (maybe sole) economic
impracticality of desalination today. In certain
regions of the world in a decade or two, fresh water
is expected to be what oil is in most of the
industrialized world today.
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