[MontyCarlo]

Originally Posted by radz282003

Touche

Speaking of... WHY CAN'T WE GET SOME SYTHETIC ALTERNATIVE TO FOSSILE FUELS?! I'm sure they'd be more expensive, at least intially, but if they can do that with oils, and so many other things, why not this? Why can't we get something that produces at least the same power with less emissions for a reasonable price? My dad will say it's because of "Big Oil" but I'm not totally convenced.

Exactly. I remember seeing how a single computer used to take up an entire room! Look at how far we've come!

Gasoline has extremely high energy density, and the energy it takes from us to pull it from the ground and turn it into fuel isn't much compared to the energy we get from it. The reason we don't use greener fuels or synthetics very much is they're simply not as good as gas in terms of bang-for-your-buck or sometimes safety.

Hydrogen, for example, is clean and renewable, but the only good way to get it is to take it from water, and doing that requires slightly more energy than you get from burning the hydrogen once you're done! Also, it's got a nasty habit of going Hindenburg on you. Biodiesel's an excellent fuel and with a bit of home chemistry you can get your car running off of used french fry oil, but this will only be cheap until it becomes popular and McDonald's starts charging $5 a gallon for used oil.