Ethanol from sugar cane gets more energy per acre and takes less energy to grow. Corn is a very inefficient crop to get ethanol out of. The only reason corn would be used is political.
Of course, environmentalists are in a class like religious fundamentalists and censors. They all think they're going to get people to stop doing things, and want to use the law to do it. So they place their arguments in very general terms like "we must cut greenhouse gasses" or "reduce out dependence on foreign oil" thinking this will get people to conserve.
Instead it gets people looking at alternatives like ethanol.
OK, so what happens? It's predictable that what will happen is that forests will be clear cut in foreign countries to grow sugar cane so we'll have cheap foreign ethanol. Environmentalists have realized, to their horror, that this is already happening.
Food crops will be substituted for cane because it will be more profitable.
They've realized to their horror that the greenest practical energy to meet our electricity needs is nuclear power.
And in the future, they're going to realize to their horror, that the only way to make environmentally friendly hydrogen, is to split sea water. Which will no doubt have some bad consequences to the oceans.
Everything has tradeoffs. You aren't going to get people out of cars. Hybrids are a decent halfway step for what can be accomplished right now. Hydrogen fuel cells are the next quarter way step. Ultimately, some form of energy acquisition will be necessary that doesn't require fuel at all, though the science of such an invention isn't yet on the horizon. Or uses fuel so sparingly that it doesn't require much to last for the lifetime of the vehicle. That doesn't help much now.
Currently, hydrogen uses a system that requires platinum. The largest source of platinum is in Africa. Think the Middle east is trouble to deal with...
In any case, the issue isn't really to eliminate a fuel source, it is to reduce dependancy to the point that we aren't screwed every time OPEC sneezes. We will ALWAYS need Crude oil, at least until someone learns how to make plastic and rubber from sand... and then we will still be tied to the Middle East because the environmentalists will not let us mine our deserts...
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that the only way to make environmentally friendly hydrogen, is to split sea water. Which will no doubt have some bad consequences to the oceans.
If you split water, you get oxygen and hydrogen. (2H2O => 2H2 + O2) The hydrogen is collected for our use and the oxygen is just released into the atmosphere. But the energy to do it in the first place...
The real solution to our energy problems is nuclear fusion, but that hasn't been invented yet. But nuclear fission has been used for a long time and is actually cleaner than coal. Solar is currently too expensive to be practical on a large scale. OTEC is another possibility but it's expensive to construct and is vulnerable to damage by hurricanes. (In theory, OTEC power plants can lower the surface water temperature and greatly reduce the frequency of hurricanes, although it would take a lot for that to happen.)
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Originally Posted by A friend of mine who has a Linux kernel named after his girlfriend.
If I was VirtualBox, I could load my virtualization module into Hannah and boot up another kernel in the same address space.
The energy to do it is available in multiple avenues.
Wind, solar, geothermal, coal, ethanol burning, nuclear, etc... Everyone seems to think that there is a put everything in one basket approach to solve every problem.
Iceland has huge reserves of geothermal resources and are looking to leverage that into more uses.
NW America has great possibilities for Wind power
South US has virtually unlimited Solar resources
Water turbines are additional methods of power generation.
However, until someone creates a more efficient technology for an electric car, cars will have to carry/generate their power... There is quite enought controversy over hydrogen power in cars to seriously consider a fusion or nuclear power plant under the hood. Besides there hasn't sufficient testing of the environmental effects of dilithium crystals.
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If you mean retrofitting a hybrid gas/electric into an existing car, a whole bunch. basically everything is different, except for the seats and the shell.
converting it to use alternative fuels is easier, but not simple.
This process will take years... probably 10 to 15 years to get the majority of the cars in the US replaced with hybrids or ethanol or hydrogen. (I'll bet on hybrids)
For those that haven't really researched hybrids or the technology in them, the general theory is a small gasoline/ethanol generator (similar to a lawnmower engine) that generates electricity. The electric either charges an array of batteries or direct to each (or several) wheels that has an electric motor.
The efficiency is in the tiny details, like lighter materials, lighter frame, smaller engine, more intelligent methods of recovering inertial power, etc. The biggest obstical in hybrid tech is the storage batteries, there is a "cost" in charging/discharging batteries, they are heavy, and have a relatively short lifespan. Some alternative methods have been to reduce or eliminate the batteries in favor for a generator that is "always running" with the effect of being less efficient on gas mileage but with a lighter and less expensive car.
The long winded version is that they would need to replace the frame, engine, transmission, axels, suspension and all to sufficiently lighten a typical car in order to make a hybrid that would have any sort of benefit... so the answer is not really. It could be done, but it wouldn't make any sense to do it
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The thing that annoys me is when people want an electric car. Instead of burning our fossil fuels right there we can burn them at the powerplant instead. And then we can even carry around half a ton of lead acid batteries.
I didn't really read too many replys so I may be a little off topic and I apologize if I am, but i get a little worked up some times.
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