Energy and Economics

Hey all. This is Mitch again. I guess the politics stuff going around has got me all spun up so I want to voice my opinion. While I know very few people will read this, it makes me feel better to get it all out.
First off, energy. I'm not an expert in this area, but I do know a thing or two from my education in engineering. I'm quite disappointed in the current administration and what they have and have not done for energy in this great nation. First off, is cars. Bush has spent millions of dollars over the past few years having automakers off chasing the holy grail that is the hydrogen powered car. It sounds great at first. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. Hydrogen burns clean. There are two fundamental problems with using hydrogen to power automobiles. 1. Where to get it, and 2. how to store it.

1. Where to get hydrogen. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, but hydrogen in its raw form is not very abundant on Earth. There are two ways that we can get hydrogen. One is to get it from natural gas (where they get it for the space industry) and the second is to break water into hydrogen and oxygen by putting an electric current through it. This was the big tout of Bush, that the ocean is full of the fuel we need for our cars. The big problem with this is that it takes more energy to break water into hydrogen and oxygen than you get back out of combusting it. Most of the electricity in this nation is made by coal power plants. So, unless there is a big shift to nuclear or some other sort of renewable power, hydrogen powered cars will not reduce our dependence on non-renewable resources. For cars, it doesn't make much sense to expend the energy to convert natural gas to hydrogen to power cars since it is relatively simple to convert existing gas powered cars to run on natural gas.
2. How to store hydrogen. If you remember back to chemistry class, hydrogen is number 1 on the periodic table. This makes hydrogen the least dense element in the universe. This means it takes more space to store hydrogen than anything else. A company in Brigham city who makes composite pressure vessels came and gave a presentation at USU about the work they were doing for the government on trying to solve the problem of how to store hydrogen. What they had come up with was storing the gas at thousands of pounds of pressure. They showed us pictures of the hydrogen powered car that used their storage vessel. It works. It runs. It drives. Why isn't it out on the road? Safety. A hydrogen powered car that gets in a bad wreck and has the pressure vessel rupture, will result in a Challenger like explosion. The Hindenburg burned up because it was full of hydrogen, but having it pressurized a thousands of PSI will cause significant damage just based on the vessel rupturing, not to mention the explosive nature of hydrogen.

I wish that we hadn't spent the last 8 years researching a technology that is just out of our reach right now. There are plenty of alternatives. Cars that run on natural gas are out on the road today. Ethanol is a great solution. I don't think corn-based ethanol is a good solution because of the impact to our food market, but switchgrass (which is basically a weed) promises to have greater yield that corn and requires little upkeep. Electric cars are an emerging technology that shows a lot of promise. Energy storage (battery) technology needs to take a leap before it becomes completely feasible. I think we have a lot of good alternatives for a long-term solution to powering our cars. I'm sure that gasoline will be around for the rest of my life, but the more cars and trucks that we can get on the road using alternative fuels will only mean a drop in the price of gas and a cleaner environment. It also will help us reduce dependence on foreign oil.

Now for domestic energy production. Clean coal is something I find exciting. At USU I heard a presentation on clean coal. Basically, an algae has been developed that feeds on the nasty chemicals that come from burning coal. This algae can live in the smokestack of power plants and feed on these nasty chemicals. When the algae is mature, it is harvested and put into the power plant to be burned to produce more power. Pretty cool. That could help clean up the power plants that we have now. Safe nuclear power is also a great way to go in the future. Wind is also an area that has a lot of promise. While we can't run the nation off of wind, we can definitely make a large contribution to the power generation. The area just east of the Rockies is on average, the one of the most windy places in the world. Solar power in the Southwest is a possible contributor as well. It would not power the nation, but it definitely is an easy way to contribute. Solar panels don't have much maintenance (no moving parts!), and are easy to make. There are many ways that this could go in the future, and no one single technology is the answer, but a combination of all of them according to where in the nation they are most applicable.

Economics

I don't claim to be any kind of expert on the economy, but with all the bailouts and bad decisions that have made lately, I've started to learn more about it. Personally, I oppose the bailout. We are basically practicing the worst king of socialism there can be. Private companies get profits from their investments, and the public pays for the money they lose. Privatize the gains, and socialize the losses. The housing bubble had to burst. How can the average American family afford a $500,000 house in California? The prices need to drop. I also think that people need to be held accountable for the decisions they make. If they make risky investments, get a mortgage they can't afford, or make any other sort of bad decision, they need to accept the consequences of their decisions. One thing that made me really mad was when all this bailout stuff started, I saw John McCain on TV stating that banks have "forced American families into mortgages they can't afford." Ridiculous! No one forces anybody into any mortgage. Banks were definitely offering these mortgages (I was approved for a mortgage about 30% above what I bought my house for, and I know that I could never afford that much so I didn't get a house that expensive). What seems to be coming out of all this is that the government has to tell the banks what the American people can afford, since we don't seem to be able to make that decision for ourselves! I can't believe that. I know what I can afford, and I would hope that most Americans are smart enough to figure that out too. It is a sad day when the government feels the need to step in to the people's financial decisions. I guess if the government will not allow people to suffer the consequences of their decisions then this is what happens.

Personally, I think that people need to suffer the consequences for their decisions. Making mistakes is the only way we learn. My biggest fear is that the bailout will only allow the current situation to continue, and will result is worse consequences down the road rather than not performing the bailout. The consequneces of not doing the bailout definety aren't good (a lot of people upside down in their homes and losses in retirement funds), but will the consequences of the bailout be greater? Only time will tell. As a nation we need to stop investing into these bubbles and inflating prices way beyond value to the point where eventually the bubble bursts. Well, those are my basic observations from an outsider to economics.