How big....

[Unforgiven]

Originally posted by Saturnyne
The main problem with water vapor is that it's hot. In great amounts, it might mess with local climates and might kill plants and insects, and some animals. Otherwise, it's completely harmless

Water vapour can however be relatively efficiently stored inside the car, just cool it down. And when you refuel fresh new hydrogen you can empty your water deposit, or use it as engine coolant or whatever.

Originally posted by Madman
carbon monoxide is caused due to incomplete combustion of alkenes and alkanes, simeple solution, make efficient engines, ur point tho is valid, water vapour is less of a problem than CO but, the person who said fuel cells were crap proposed a hydrogen engine, because it had no harmful emissions, water vapour in large amounts can be harmful to the environment, as it is a greenhouse gas

Complete combustion still yields carbon dioxide, that's not much better either.
When you could make a relatively emmission-free engine using hydrogen I say go for it. You say it costs more energy than it yields. Maybe so, but part of the issue is making an engine that fits in a car. We can generate the hydrogen using power from solar stations (perhaps one on the moon for real efficiency).
You may have some energy loss but it beats covering your car with solar panels or stacking it full of batteries.

 

[Frosty]

Originally posted by Madman
HELLO! are u stupid! you cant extract hydrogen from water, it requires more energy than the combustion of hydrogen HOW STUPID CAN U GET!

You're the idiot who can't spell simple three-letter words like "you."

It is *quite* possible to extract Hydrogen from simple tap water, as it is done on a pretty much daily basis in schools the world over.

Originally posted by Madman
water vapour in large amounts can be harmful to the environment, as it is a greenhouse gas

Since a large portion of the world is covered in mile-deep oceans, water vapor is already released in very large amounts daily. Any amount released by vehicular emissions would be a drop in the bucket compared to that. It's not a concern. Lots of people boil water all the time to make tea, or boil noodles, or rice, or God knows what else, and you don't hear anyone up in arms about it.

Originally posted by Unforgiven
When you could make a relatively emmission-free engine using hydrogen I say go for it.

Since that's the very nature of the Hydrogen-fueled internal combustion engine, I guess we should go for it right away. This article explains a little bit about what BMW is doing to make these the engines of the future. They're pretty much 0-emissions from the get-go. Reading on you see that the main problem is having pumping stations available, but that's all.

Originally posted by Unforgiven
Water vapour can however be relatively efficiently stored inside the car, just cool it down. And when you refuel fresh new hydrogen you can empty your water deposit, or use it as engine coolant or whatever.

That's actually a pretty good idea, but it adds weight to the car, and probably sacrifices something like trunk space. You have to remember that the steam will cool off very rapidly when it reaches the open air. Most of it will just turn right back into water and hit the pavement.

You may have some energy loss but it beats covering your car with solar panels or stacking it full of batteries.

Amen to that.

 

[Madman]

oh come on! the suggestion that a hydrogen engine is a good solution is true, im not quibbling with that, what i am saying is that the reason given to use it in preference to a fuel cell, namely that it produces no harmful products, is not true, water vapour may be less dangerous than carbon dioxide and definitely than monoxide, but any greenhouse gas has the potential to damage the environment, a hydrogen engine is a great solution, but unfortunately we need to clear the atmosphere of the current excess of greenhouse gasses and that could take nearly a hundred years, until then, we cannot afford to keep adding to the problem, no matter how small the addition, a billion cars producing even 100ml of water vapour a day would definitely be a noticeable amount, better than the same amount of carbon dioxide, but still a problem

 

[Unforgiven]

Originally posted by Madman
oh come on! the suggestion that a hydrogen engine is a good solution is true, im not quibbling with that, what i am saying is that the reason given to use it in preference to a fuel cell, namely that it produces no harmful products, is not true, water vapour may be less dangerous than carbon dioxide and definitely than monoxide, but any greenhouse gas has the potential to damage the environment, a hydrogen engine is a great solution, but unfortunately we need to clear the atmosphere of the current excess of greenhouse gasses and that could take nearly a hundred years, until then, we cannot afford to keep adding to the problem, no matter how small the addition, a billion cars producing even 100ml of water vapour a day would definitely be a noticeable amount, better than the same amount of carbon dioxide, but still a problem

So we should all just stop using any type of engine at all, until we can find one that produces no harmful emissions at all? (And is practical, because in all fairness we already have that type of engine, namely solar power). Welcome back to the stone age.
This just isn't realistic. If we can make an engine that produces in any way less than the current amount of emissions, we must do it, since there is no way you are going to convince everybody to stop using those engines.
And we can never completely not add to the current amount of greenhouse gasses, unless you want to ask 6 billion people plus a lot of animals to hold their breath...

Greenhouse isn't that simple anyway. You can't just say that greenhouse gasses keep in the warmth so the global temperature rises and the sealevel rises due to melting of the polar icecaps. A lot of people think that, but it's just not that simple.
If anything the sealevel will rise not because of melting of the icecaps, but because the water expands with higher temperatures.
Higher temperatures however also lead to higher evaporisation of the oceans, which will have to come down somewhere in the form of precipitation. It's most likely to do this in the coldest regions (ie the polar caps) so maybe they'll grow instead of shrink.
Higher evaporisation leads to more clouds. While clouds keep in the warmth (as said, water vapour is a greenhouse gass) they also increase the albedo rate of the Earth (the amount of sunlight reflected back into space, never reaching the surface), which could lower the surface temperature.
In other words, climate is just too complex a system to predict what will happen because of the greenhouse effect.

 

[Frosty]

Originally posted by Madman
water vapour may be less dangerous than carbon dioxide and definitely than monoxide, but any greenhouse gas has the potential to damage the environment,

OK, well I'll ignore the fact that you're the only person on this planet whom I've ever heard claim that water vapor is harmful to the environment, and I'll move on to a few simple facts:

• There is no way to tell if enough water vapor could be released to do any sort of damage.
• Even if it were possible, we must remember that a great deal of this water vapor would instantly condense and turn to liquid almost immediately after exiting the tailpipe of the vehicle.
• Further, a great deal if the remaining water would condense and fall back to Earth the farther is rose, because the atmosphere would be cooler at higher altitudes. The cooler the air, the less water vapor it can sustain.

a hydrogen engine is a great solution, but unfortunately we need to clear the atmosphere of the current excess of greenhouse gasses and that could take nearly a hundred years

Once again ignoring the fact that nobody has ever been able to prove that these co-called "greenhouse gases" do anything (there is equal or greater evidence to the contrary,) I'd still like to know where you pulled 100 years from. Let me see the calculations that led you to that conclusion.

a billion cars producing even 100ml of water vapour a day would definitely be a noticeable amount

First of all, I'd be terribly surprised to learn that one billion functioning automobiles are operated daily, I should think the actual numbers would fall a couple hundred-million below that.

Even if that were true, however, we once again have the question of your mathematics. I'd love to see the calculations you did that prove such releases would be harmful.

I should hope you did some calculations at all, instead of something silly, like pulling figures out of your ass.

My point is, since the greenies are so up-tight about cars today, and they think fuel-cells are a solution, hydrogen-fueled internal combustion is obviously an even better solution, superior to fuel cells in every relevant way. If they're willing to settle for fuel cells, they should have no problem settling for this instead. Besides, I think you're overreacting about this water vapor business. Nobody has been able to prove that these so-called "greenhouse gases" are in any way harmful, or even that excess amounts of them exist, so I doubt the situation should be any different concerning water vapor.

Don't believe every little thing you're told. Originally, the same people who cry about "global warming" today, were weeping over "global cooling" 30 years ago. And the funniest part is, they blamed it on the same things they blame global warming on now.

The truth is, nobody has done enough research to be able to prove anything outright, and it'd unlikely anybody will too soon. It has been proven that Earth goes through cycles of warm/cool temperatures, and there's no evidence that we are the cause of any fluctuations in that pattern.

One has to remember that the planet is a very very large place, which has survived natural catastrophes far worse than anything we have yet to create with our technology. It is more likely than not that our Earth has a very wide margin of error for things like carbon-dioxide levels, and that we don't have the capacity to exceed that margin yet.

I don't see the point in getting all worked up over these phantom facts.

 

[Unforgiven]

Wow, Frosty and I agree on something. I never thought I'd live to see the day...

The only thing we really know for sure is that CO, CO2 and NO are toxic (in varying degrees) to us, and water vapour is not.

 

[Marcml30]

Frothy, I could really give a damn about the topic but I will say that you present some convincing arguments. What I object to is the way you present them which, in my opinion, is simply a way for you to inflate your opinion of yourself by ridiculing others.

Originally posted by Frosty
OK, well I'll ignore the fact that you're the only person on this planet whom I've ever heard claim that water vapor is harmful to the environment, and I'll move on to a few simple facts:

• There is no way to tell if enough water vapor could be released to do any sort of damage.
  
  Once again ignoring the fact that nobody has ever been able to prove that these co-called "greenhouse gases" do anything (there is equal or greater evidence to the contrary,)
  
  Nobody has been able to prove that these so-called "greenhouse gases" are in any way harmful, or even that excess amounts of them exist, so I doubt the situation should be any different concerning water vapor.
  
  The truth is, nobody has done enough research to be able to prove anything outright, and it'd unlikely anybody will too soon.
  
  I should hope you did some calculations at all, instead of something silly, like pulling figures out of your ass.

• 
  I can only assume that since you're so fond of mathematics that you've done the math to prove Madman incorrect.
  
  Your extraordinary mathematics ability aside, you sure throw around absolutes like "nobody" and "no way" freely in your rebuttal. And since you're sooooo keen on presenting facts accurately I felt forced to comment on some of your statements of fact. Again, while I don't necessarily disagree with them, I do hope that you at least peripherally searched for some of the research you claim does not exist. I should hope you did some /checking/ at all, instead of something silly, like pulling /nobody/ out of your ass.

 

[Penguin]

Originally posted by Marcml30
Frothy

LOL

 

[Bob McDob]

Originally posted by Marcml30
Frothy, I could really give a damn about the topic but I will say that you present some convincing arguments. What I object to is the way you present them which, in my opinion, is simply a way for you to inflate your opinion of yourself by ridiculing others . . . I should hope you did some /checking/ at all, instead of something silly, like pulling /nobody/ out of your ass.

1. Duh
2. Don't worry, he never does.

 

[TC]

OK.... A hydrogen engine could *maybe* be argued to be on topic if I was in a good mood and someone was paying me off, but I doubt Frosty's debating skills, or lack thereof, have anything to do with Wing Commander.

Remember, destroying threads is a group effort!


Thank you,
TC