GM plans to be the first automaker to produce one million fuel-cell-powered vehicles in a year. When? Good question. In May, GM's VP for R&D, Larry Burns, said his employer aims to have fuel-cell vehicles in the showroom "around 2011 or 2012" then ramp-up production to a million worldwide after that. But today in Shanghai, where GM unveiled "environmentally friendly" models to the Chinese market, Elizabeth Lowrey (another GM VP) told Reuters they now have no target date for mass production. In a blinding flash of the obvious, she revealed "You have to bring the technology along before you know when you are going to get to a million vehicles." Then to show her environmental acumen, she added "You have to make sure that any of these technologies are out there in great volume to make a difference for the environment." With executives like this waiting in the wings, it shouldn't be hard selecting a suitable sound-bite successor to Maximum Bob Lutz if he ever when he retires.
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Sure, let’s go with a hydrogen economy, and pollute billions of tons more from coal fired electrical generation to split the water into hydrogen…
Then we’ll REALLY have real global warming, since water vapor is a REAL global warming candidate, far more than CO2 ever was/is.
Therefore, of COURSE GM is backing hydrogen…. along with the other absolutely asinine idea, E85.
How is gasseous H2O a worse green house gas emission than CO2? Water vapor has cooling effects…it condensates and forms clouds (shadows the earth cooling it form the short wave radiation from the sun), it causes rain which cools the earth and nourishes plants. CO2 only helps plant photosynthesize.
Currently we are too reliant on fossil fuels. As we grow alternative energy production such as solar (Honda’s SoCal hydrogen refueling stations are solar powered now) and wind energy – plus there are several kinetic energy applications out there such as ocean current (underwater windmills) – it’s a matter of time that these technologies will reach critical mass.
Until we discover cold fusion – fuel cells are the most promising technologies we have and once we build the proper infrastructure it will pollute substantially less than fossil fuels.
jaje-glenn is on target.
water vapor is a far greater percentage of the “greenhouse” gases than CO2 (forget the percentages at the moment but CO2 is a very small contributor)
I suspect glenn126 is also employing a well know humor technique refered to as “sarcasm” also.
It’s found in the humor dictionary some where between “obvious” and “slapstick” but is not related to either of those types. ;^)
Actually, I was dead serious about my comments re: H2O vapors being more dangerous than CO2, as Bunter1 verified. When I found this out last year, my enthusiasm for the ‘hydrogen economy’ – evaporated (sorry, I could not resist a little humor).
We truly need to skip past the ethanol economy, the hydrogen economy and go straight to the electron economy. Inner earth heated steam power generation, wind generation and solar generation – and electric cars. And we need to start doing so – oh, let’s see, about 34 years ago… the day after OPEC turned off the taps for the first time (and at the time, the US “only” imported about 30% of it’s oil needs – now in excess of 60%).
There’s a difference between water vapor and CO2… vapor doesn’t accumulate the way carbon dioxide does. As it piles up, it condenses and becomes water, and there’s no limit to how much can do that. Besides, getting hydrogen from water is a usual way… after you use it for power, you’re not getting more water than you started with.
CO2 gets absorbed by oceans, trees, etc too, but their absorption rate slows as they take in more CO2, and it’s slow to begin with.
carlismo-why does it slow? ive never heard of that,does it slow because its dieing? your also not getting more carbon than you started with its just been combined with oxygen and happens to be what plants breath and animals exhale. i also wonder is it proven hard fact that the co2 in the atmosphere is not allowing heat to escape into space? doesn’t heat go towards cold, so that would mean the excess heat radiation would go into outer space-, co2 or no co2 like the sun, unless we added so much co2 we could hardly breath . doesn’t a h2o molecule hold more heat than a co2 molecule? so shouldn’t the environmentalist be more worried about the relative humidity more if they want to stay consistent about what gasses we should worry about?