Breaking News Re Solving Radio Waves/Hydrogen

[solutions]

Our focus for October is “Big Coal” which, like oil and gas, produces prodigious amounts of air pollution, including greenhouse gases. Electricity, except for hydro and nuclear (please note that the U.S. has not built any new dams or nuclear plants for several decades), is generated from hydrocarbons (oil, natural gas and coal – all of which produce horrendous air pollution, especially considering the 75% BTU loss in converting oil/gas/coal to electricity).

Coal is plentiful in the U.S. -- we have more than enough to meet all our energy needs, elminating any need to import oil and gas. PROVIDED WE ARE WILLING TO ACCEPT THE HORRIFIC AIR POLLUTION THAT COAL WOULD PRODUCE!!!

After reviewing the dangers of coal mining, “Big Coal” reviews the air pollution from burning coal, including some grim statistics -- >50% of American electricity generated by coal-fired electricity plants; >20 lbs/American/day of coal burned for electricity; >60% of all American sulfur dioxide (think “acid rain”) emissions and > 40% of all American carbon dioxide emissions (think global warming) come from coal-fired electricity plants; and >2/3 of energy for China comes from coal-fired electricity plants.

“Big Coal” then offers (according to the NY Times book review) only “drop in the bucket” solutions – conservation, carbon trading and carbon sequestration (the NYT review is posted under “Suggested Background Materials Re Big Coal for Oct 11th” on this Bulletin Board).

There has been only one solution of the magnitude required – to solve all of our energy needs, to solve global warming (not just comply with Kyoto which only delays the day of reckoning), and to solve energy independence – NUCLEAR (please see “October Meeting - Possible Topics (historical)” on this Bulletin Board).

Unfortunately, politicians cannot bear to utter the word “nuclear” when it comes to power generation. They prefer a euphemism – “The Hydrogen Economy.”

There has been considerable talk for the last decade about “The Hydrogen Economy” – because hydrogen is plentiful (water = H2O and 2H2O > 2H2 + O2), and because hydrogen could be used to power virtually anything (car engines, generators for electricity, etc.).

Hydrogen burns cleanly (2H2 + O2 > 2H2O), producing no pollution of any kind!!!

The only question is how to obtain the hydrogen from water, and whether obtaining the hydrogen from water requires more energy than can be obtained from oxidizing (burning) the hydrogen.

Until this past week, the only technology for obtaining hydrogen from water economically has been nuclear power.

Please see the 9/10/2007 AP Wire Service article about the possibility of using radio waves to break water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen posted on this Bulletin Board under "Suggested Background Materials Re Big Coal for Oct 11th."

There are 19 posts to www.autobloggreen.com which have since appeared (they are posted under "Suggested Background Materials Re Big Coal for Oct 11th" on this Bulletin Board). Like the introductory editorial comments when we posted the AP article on 9/11/2007, several of the posts question whether more energy is required to produce the radio waves than can be obtained from oxidizing the hydrogen obtained – while others raise some additional interesting points.