[Wilhelm]

In my way of thinking (and correct me if I'm wrong), the only way to stop global warming, would be to stop using fossil fuels. But that drastic stop would bring a halt to the economy, lead to recession, and even worse, to starvation. So, people want to make a transtition from fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy.

The way I see it (correct me if I'm wrong on this one too), there are only two major ways to replace the fossil fuel economy: hydrogen and electricity. But the problem with electricity, for example electric cars, is the renewable part of it. Generating electricity is not as hard as storing it in a battery. Currently, an electric car's battery takes about 6 to 12 hours to recharge, while a gasoline-powered car takes less than five minutes to tank. There is one other option which is fuel cells, but these use hydrogen.

So hydrogen seems to be a very reasonable otion. The hydrogen economy looks good as it seems. But how do we get the hydrogen? By electrolysis of water, and the electricity? Well, here goes the "taking advantage of global warming" part:

So, now there are costal cities at the shores of the ocean:

As water levels rise, the coastal cities are swept away:

So people run away to high places.

But before that happens, we should do great deeds of civil enginering. We dig very big and deep holes, and leave mountains, which we know the sea will pass over. So we build dams over those hills, for the dams to generate hydro-electric energy:


So, we have the electricity, but where does the hydrogen economy come in? Well, here:



The electrolysis plants take hydrogen out of the water, and take the electricity from the dams, which should be built in large quantities to also replace the electricity being generated with fossil fuels:



Combustion of hydrogen creates water again, which can be sold to electrolysis plants, to take hydrogen out again.

Some other plants would also serve as water treatment facilities, to provide water supplies by means of distillation (heating with hydrogen, of course).

This way, we could take advantage of global warming, by getting rid of dependance on fossil fuels.

Any objections? Let the bashing begin!

[S. P. Laroche]

There's two major problems that I can think of, off the top of my head, with alternate fuel source cars. For Electric cars, the electricity is still coming from somewhere, i.e. coal or oil burning power plant, which rather negates the small amount of avoided CO2 emissions from your puny electric car. The problems I see for hydrogen arise from all that water vapor coming out of the cars. Imagine a city like Toronto or New York on a regular day with hydrogen cars. That's a lot of water vapour being released into the atmosphere, which in turn would most likely (I'm not a meterologist) cause increased amounts of precipitation. Now, imagine that on a world scale, and it'd be unlikely that we'd ever see the sun again. I hardly think turning the planet into a tropical jungle is the solution to Global Warming. Besides, scientists have proven that a "Waterworld" like melting pattern wouldn't occur, as the water displaced by the ice is only slightly less (or something like that) than the water contained in the ice, so your harnessing of Global Warming wouldn't work.

[CasX]

This might be a little irrelevant, but it's interesting...

On a return flight from London to New York an aircraft produces about 800 tonnes of CO2 (the main gas leading to climate change). It would take an average family car 200 years at 12,000 miles per annum to produce the same amount of CO2.

Of course, there are a lot more cars than there are flights...but it makes you think.

[A_Technocrat]

The problems I see for hydrogen arise from all that water vapor coming out of the cars. Imagine a city like Toronto or New York on a regular day with hydrogen cars. That's a lot of water vapour being released into the atmosphere, which in turn would most likely (I'm not a meterologist) cause increased amounts of precipitation. Now, imagine that on a world scale, and it'd be unlikely that we'd ever see the sun again. I hardly think turning the planet into a tropical jungle is the solution to Global Warming.

Regenerative fuel cells will take care of that little problem. (ie: the fuel cells that keep the water vapour inside of them and covert it back to H2 and O2 gas when electricity is fed in via braking or recharging).