Iceland phasing out fossil fuels for clean energy

September 21, 2007...6:59 am

Iceland phasing out fossil fuels for clean energy

Looks like the car companies are putting clean energy “on ice” after all…in Iceland. Check out how Iceland hopes to be completely free of fossil fuels in the not too distant future.

2 Comments

cncrndeng
September 21, 2007 at 3:42 pm

So hydrogen solves the Global Warming issue? One thing I love about journalists is their propensity to show the world their ignorance in writing. According to the International Panel for Climate Change water vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas (~95% of the total pool) and carbon dioxide is the second most abundant at just under 5%. Maybe a real scientist can help me understand how substituting water vapor for carbon dioxide reduces the quantity of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Right now its tough enough for me to grasp that man contributes roughly half of the carbon dioxide (2.5% of the total greenhouse gas pool), we’re going to reduce that by half in the next decade (a 1.25% reduction in total greenhouse gas) and stop global warming???!!! As an engineer I can tell you that the degree of complexity of the Earth’s atmospheric system precludes any accurate prediction of outcome due to such a tiny change in the greenhouse gas mix. Indeed, if you read the IPCC report you’ll find that there’s a chance that the increased water vapor due an evaporating ocean could cause excessive cloud cover and actually cool the planet. That means that there’s a chance that if we increase our CO2 output we could stop global warming!
felty
September 24, 2007 at 6:37 am

Great comment, thanks. Bottom line I guess is that there are always trade-offs and many of them are unknowable until after the fact. But some are known ahead of time and there is probably never a clean solution. So you want a battery powered car to replace gas, but what is the cost to the environment to make that energy, not to mention to make the batteries themselves? That kind of thing.