If only we could build a wall. Those dang Jews have gotten us into sooooo much trouble. And you can't reason with those Arabic primates, so you might as well let them have Israel. After they are done killing each other for it, the Hebrews can move back at will. Or better yet, we can give them California.

California! The new Israel!
"More tofu, less death!"

I'll make up the travel brochures tomorrow. I'm drunk. I'm going to bed. I have no idea how I found your blog, but its great. Good Luck.

I believe you have a misunderstanding about fuel cells. I don't think they run on water -- they run on hydrogen. The "waste product" of the cells is water, true. But to get the hydrogen, you have to expend energy -- i.e., burn oil. So fuel cells to do not eliminate the need for other sources of energy like oil; they just move the burning of the oil from the car to a hydrogen production plant.

I don't know of any alternative energy sources on the horizon that will obviate the need for oil.

Mark J, you might want to do a web search on something called thermochemical depolimerization or also called hydrocarbon depolimerization. Basically the process takes any hydro-carbon based waste (up to an including human waste) and under pressure and temperature deconstructs into useful components, like light crude oil. It's in the commercial testing stage in the US now. It won't make us independent of gasoline but it just might make us independent of the ME (not to mention solving the problem of sanitation and land fills).

Hydrogen fuel technologies (including fuel cells, among others), have often been referred to as "energy transfer". Yes, you can get a lot of energy from burning hydrogen, say. But you still need to get the hydrogen to begin with... and the energy you get from burning hydrogen (producing water) can never exceed, or even equal, the energy required to EXTRACT hydrogen from water in the first place. It's an aspect of the second law of thermodynamics.

This doesn't mean that hydrogen is an impractical fuel source. We just should expect it to solve all our problems, that's all. If we can generate significant amounts of energy, and USE that energy to break hydrogen away from water, then hydrogen becoems a means of "exporting" that energy. (In other words, transport the hydrogen anywhere you like, and use it for fuel there. "Energy transfer", as I said.) If we work on the efficiency with which we do that, this could be A Good Thing Indeed. (We can also extract hydrogen from natural gas and other sources, when we can find it.)

And yes, there are engineering problems to be solved, in terms of hydrogen's flammability etc. Fortunately, that's what engineering problems are for -- you solve them.

best wishes,
Daniel in Medford

I'm more interested in your money quote, however:

"The entire non-petrochemical exports of the Arab World are less than Finland’s."

Could we have a source for that, please? I'd love to compare the numbers to other countries as well. (Israel, for example...)

cheers,
Daniel in Medford

Keep in mind a couple of things...

One is that this recycling process, so far, is HIGHLY limited (a few hundred, or a few thousand, barrels of oil is really pretty meaningless compared to the amount the US imports each day).

Second, oil is used for more than just energy: it's also a prime feedstock for plastics manufacture.

Tony Z