Alternative Energy

"America is addicted to oil" - George W Bush

When I heard this I was first of all shocked and surprised that the good friend of Exxon and the Saudi Royal family had really said this. I thought, 'is this the George Dubya Bush I know?’
Politics aside, it was interesting that he did mention alternative energy resources. The one thing that will always bother me when politicians talk about alternative energy is how wrong they always are. In particular Bush mentioned ethanol, fuel cells "hydrogen", and nuclear power.
The first problem is ethanol. It is a new, organic source of fuel that is extracted from organic material. In 2004 John Kerry talked about this on the campaign trail while Bush was talking about ANWR. I think it could be a useful addition to gasoline, but there are major problems with it. Have you ever heard the thing that if everyone in the world lived like an American, we would need something like three more planets? Well, if every car in the world used pure ethanol, we would need three more planets just to grow all the corn! Plus, Corn turns out to be a very inefficient way of producing ethanol. It will be a useful fuel additive, but we will never be able to use it entirely for fuel.
"Hydrogen"... please people, do yourself a favor and become educated. Fuel cells work on the technology of combining hydrogen and oxygen in a controlled reaction that produces electricity. Fuel cell technologies are useful and may soon be applied in many, many areas, however it has one really, really big problem. Where is all the hydrogen? There is NO source of hydrogen where we could get any of it. The only practical source of hydrogen is water, which would take energy to separate the Hydrogen and oxygen. There are two ways to do this, and both are ironic. One method of separating them is to use coal or nuclear power to “manufacture” hydrogen. Stupid. Obviously whoever thought that it could be a good idea wasn’t thinking about what the purpose of fuel cells were. The other way to extract hydrogen from the water would be what shell had used in a few experimental “hydrogen gas stations” that use solar power. Not as bad as the idea of wasting other precious resources for it, but not as practical as it could be. Hopefully solar farms for hydrogen will never become large or big business, because then we will start running out of space on earth and begin cooling it.

This is my Idea for perfecting our wasting of precious energy:
Oil is a valuable resource. We are stupid to waste a thing like that on things like cars, when really we should save it for things that can not use alternative fuel yet, like planes, heavy trucks, trains, and cargo ships. (When I say heavy trucks, I’m not referring to the “light trucks” and SUV’s that soccer mom’s drive.) We have everything that we need to make efficient cars.
Hybrids are simply genius. They could also be improved by adding lightweight or painted solar panels to improve their energy efficiency. Super-efficient diesels are also here. In Britain, a modified version of small car with a super-efficient diesel got 120 mpg! (don’t have a link, sry) Manufactures also have many, many ideas that may soon become very practical in improving engine efficiency. One idea is using the hot exhaust gas and a heat engine to provide more energy for the car. Gas taxes could easily force companies and consumers into these, but the sad thing is how it’s not being done.

We have the tools we need, yet we refuse to use them.