Quote:
Originally Posted by
un-midas touch 
Whatever dude you forget about the many other gases that are much stronger greenhousers that are released as a result of burning HC's, methane itself having about 4x more impact than CO2 per ton.
I'm not concerned by global warming. The world's temperature has fluctuated wildly long before human's were even around. GW is more about fear of change than anything else. Even if humans had zero impact on the climate, oceans would still continue to rise and fall.
True, burning fossils fuels makes more than just CO2. It addition to making CO2 it produces a lot of pollutants, as carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen combine in random ways. These compounds present a short term inconvenience, but no long term danger. They are unstable and over time break down into more common compounds, which is the reason they are not readily found in nature.
Quote:
Originally Posted by
un-midas touch
Ok so which side are you on? the side that burns HC's for energy or the side that has more energy to make them when fossil fuels run out? Cuz it takes more to build them ourselves than to just use them as they're found.
Both. Fossil fuels today are an energy source. They contain millions of years of solar energy.
But hydrocarbons could be used to store and transport energy collected by humans, whether that be from wind, nuclear, etc. That is the idea behind hydrogen fuel cells. Use an electricity source to create hydrogen, then transport the hydrogen to the point of use(eg a car).
Edited by erunion - 11/12/12 at 2:25pm
