< = =text/> < = ="http://ypn-js.overture.com/partner/js/ypn.js"> In 2005, Honda leased the first commercial hydrogen car to a family in Redondo Beach, California. Pictured Right.

Honda FCX Hydrogen Car

For the past 28 years, the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) has been conducting research on hydrogen fuel cells for use in transportation, industry and residential use. According to the LANL, "Hydrogen & Fuel Cell Research at Los Alamos has made significant technological advances in Polymer Electrolyte Membrane (PEM) fuel cells, Direct Methanol Fuel Cells (DMFC), and related technologies such as the electrolyzer (a fuel cell in reverse, liberating hydrogen from electricity and pure water)."

Unlike many of the hybrid and "green" cars currently on the market, hydrogen cars offer the promise of zero emission technology, where the only byproduct from the cars is water vapor. Current fossil-fuel burning vehicles emit all sorts of pollutants such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, ozone and microscopic particulate matter. Hybrids and other green cars address these issues to a large extent but only hydrogen cars hold the promise of zero emission of pollutants. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that fossil-fuel automobiles emit 1 ½ billion tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere each year and going to hydrogen-based transportation would all but eliminate this.

Not only that, but hydrogen cars will lessen the United State's dependence upon foreign oil. The so-called "hydrogen highways" will mean less dependence upon OPEC, the big U. S. oil companies, oil refinery malfunctions and breakdowns and less resistance from oil selling nations like Venezuela and Saudi Arabia or from hostile nations who would rather sell elsewhere. Consumers will finally get a break from the never-ending rising prices at the gasoline pumps.

President Bush has already allocated approximately $2 billion in hydrogen highway research. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is pushing to get 200 hydrogen filling stations built within the next 5 years stretching from Vancouver, British Columbia, all the way down to Baja, California. Since Californians buy one-fifth of the nation's cars, the new hydrogen car technology could simply replace the current gasoline engine automobiles in what is called "disruptive technology" where something so innovative comes along it simply replaces the old technology very quickly.

Then again, a more likely scenario is that dual-fuel automotive systems will be developed that can run on either gasoline or hydrogen as the hydrogen infrastructure is being developed. The conversion from gasoline-powered internal combustion engines to hydrogen powered combustion engines is agreed upon by most scientists and engineers to be a particularly easy transition and would buy time for hydrogen fuel cell cars to be fully adapted. Hydrogen cars are the future, so why not take a test drive of this website right now and see what you'll be driving a few short years from now. The hydrogen economy is just around the bend. Will you be ready?

these examples are just a few that are reality now but underfunded research and development has caused this and other technologies to be slow in coming.

Marks6555 I agree with you that we need the space program. I not think humans will make it as far as when the sun engulfs us...I think someone is going to send that nuke off or some other super disaster before then will take us out...we need the space program because it is going to take a VERY long time to actually have something set up to get regular folk out into space to new settlements. I'm guessing a couple hundred years or more. I have the NASa station and watch our meager space station up there and think we have a very long way to go.

I know there are those who don't think we should spend $$ on the space program that we should feed our poor...BUT there won't be any poor or rich people if you don't figure out a 2nd home for the future.

Climate change is with us. A decade ago, it was conjecture. Now the future is unfolding before our eyes. Canada's Inuit see it in disappearing Arctic ice and permafrost. The shantytown dwellers of Latin America and Southern Asia see it in lethal storms and floods. Europeans see it in disappearing glaciers, forest fires and fatal heat waves.

Scientists see it in tree rings, ancient coral and bubbles trapped in ice cores. These reveal that the world has not been as warm as it is now for a millennium or more. The three warmest years on record have all occurred since 1998; 19 of the warmest 20 since 1980. And Earth has probably never warmed as fast as in the past 30 years - a period when natural influences on global temperatures, such as solar cycles and volcanoes should have cooled us down. Studies of the thermal inertia of the oceans suggest that there is more warming in the pipeline.

Climatologists reporting for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) say we are seeing global warming caused by human activities and there are growing fears of feedbacks that will accelerate this warming.

Global greenhouse

People are causing the change by burning nature's vast stores of coal, oil and natural gas. This releases billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO₂) every year, although the changes may actually have started with the dawn of agriculture, say some scientists.

The physics of the "greenhouse effect" has been a matter of scientific fact for a century. CO₂ is a greenhouse gas that traps the Sun's radiation within the troposphere, the lower atmosphere. It has accumulated along with other man-made greenhouse gases, such as methane and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).

If current trends continue, we will raise atmospheric CO₂ concentrations to double pre-industrial levels during this century. That will probably be enough to raise global temperatures by around 2°C to 5°C. Some warming is certain, but the degree will be determined by feedbacks involving melting ice, the oceans, water vapour, clouds and changes to vegetation.

Warming is bringing other unpredictable changes. Melting glaciers and precipitation are causing some rivers to overflow, while evaporation is emptying others. Diseases are spreading. Some crops grow faster while others see yields slashed by disease and drought. Strong hurricanes are becoming more frequent and destructive. Arctic sea ice is melting faster every year, and there are growing fears of a shutdown of the ocean currents that keep Europe warm for its latitude. Clashes over dwindling water resources may cause conflicts in many regions.

As natural ecosystems - such as coral reefs - are disrupted, biodiversity is reduced. Most species cannot migrate fast enough to keep up, though others are already evolving in response to warming.

Thermal expansion of the oceans, combined with melting ice on land, is also raising sea levels. In this century, human activity could trigger an irreversible melting of the Greenland ice sheet and Antarctic glaciers. This would condemn the world to a rise in sea level of six metres - enough to flood land occupied by billions of people.

The global warming would be more pronounced if it were not for sulphur particles and other pollutants that shade us, and because forests and oceans absorb around half of the CO₂ we produce. But the accumulation rate of atmospheric CO₂ has increased since 2001, suggesting that nature's ability to absorb the gas could now be stretched to the limit. Recent research suggests that natural CO₂ "sinks", like peat bogs and forests, are actually starting to release CO₂.

Deeper cuts

At the Earth Summit in 1992, the world agreed to prevent "dangerous" climate change. The first step was the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which finally came into force during 2005. It will bring modest emission reductions from industrialised countries. But many observers say deeper cuts are needed and developing nations, which have large and growing populations, will one day have to join in.

Some, including the US Bush administration, say the scientific uncertainty over the pace of climate change is grounds for delaying action. The US and Australia have reneged on Kyoto. During 2005 these countries, and others, suggested "clean fuel" technologies as an alternative to emissions cuts.

In any case, according to the IPCC, the world needs to quickly improve the efficiency of its energy usage and develop renewable non-carbon fuels like: wind, solar, tidal, wave and perhaps nuclear power. It also means developing new methods of converting this clean energy into motive power, like hydrogen fuel cells for cars. Trading in Kyoto carbon permits may help.

Other less conventional solutions include ideas to stave off warming by "mega-engineering" the planet with giant mirrors to deflect the Sun's rays, seeding the oceans with iron to generate algal blooms, or burying greenhouse gases below the sea.

The bottom line is that we will need to cut CO₂ emissions by 70% to 80% simply to stabilise atmospheric CO₂ concentrations - and thus temperatures. The quicker we do that, the less unbearably hot our future world will be.

I guess I didnt clarify enough. Its not wether the ports deal was right or wrong or if since we have alowed it in the past we should just keep allowing it now.