What would be reasons not to switch to alternative fuel sources?

Question

For a school project I am arguing that we should NOT switch to hydrogen or alternative fuels. What reasons could you give to support this? What would you say to argue this statement?

Answer 1

Ignorance I suppose, as well as there is a lot of money in the fossil fuel (oil and coal) industry. Something else is to be consider, that humans have adapted there way of life around the use of fosil fuel, this means alternative fuel will demand technological changes and again private interest (coal and oil) is key to this issue.

Alternate energy source is needed, because fossil fuel is running low. Some people say fossil fuel is non-renewable, thats partly true and partly lye, it is renewable but it takes millions of years to renew it self.

Answer 2

Well, I can help you a little bit. We could save a ton of fuel, for instance, by simply switching to diesel engines in our vehicles. And hydrogen is a boondoggle, it doesn't make sense. Hydrogen is simply not available to us as a fuel - it must be chemically separated, and you can't get as much energy back out of the hydrogen as it took to extract it.

Now if you push me a bit further, of course, I'll tell you how much sense it makes to drive electric vehicles, so I'll stop here.

Answer 3

I usually argue the why we should side of this debate, so this will be an interesting experience...

Why not?  

*We have an enormous amount of money invested in the petroleum industry and infrastructure - rebuilding this for hydrogen will be expensive and time consuming.  

*There are plenty of oil fields that have not yet been tapped, and developing those will be less expensive.  

*We can't economically make hydrogen from renewable/clean energy, so we're only moving the problem anyway, not solving it (by reforming petroleum products to get the H2).  

*Fuels other than hydrogen don't eliminate emissions, and batteries are difficult to dispose of in an environmentally friendly way.

*We have lots of technology currently available to reduce carbon & other emissions from power plants, they just need to be added/included in new plants.

All that said, most of that above paragraph is &*^%#.   Maybe not totally, but very one-sided and ignoring important counter arguments - but then that's what politicians do all the time anyway :)

Answer 4

Hi there, it comes down to one thing.  Power.  There is so much money invested in the oil that is coming from the middle east if we switched to alternate fuels tomorrow our ecconomy would literally fall apart.  The oil industry is worth around 300 trillion dollars a year to around 2 - 3 hundred very large corporations world wide.  If you had all that money coming in and then brought out a brand new clean free fuel source the money would stop rolling in and that i believe is why we are not driving around in cars that burn water for hydrogen, why our houses are not powered by free over unity zero point energy converters.

Answer 5

Alternative fuels have an atrocious stench to them. Nothing compared to the lovely smell of a two-stroke. That's my personal reason, anyway.