OT of an OT: Ethanol

[Jack Simth]

Funny thing about that.... plants, and things that eat plants, have a net 0 atmospheric carbon impact when you burn the resulting fuel - plants took the carbon out of the air, animals ate the plants to get their carbon, carbon is bound up in the fuel, carbon goes back into the air when burned. Some of the carbon gets pulled out for things like excrement and plastics, so in general it will actually reduce the amount of carbon in the air, not increase it.

Might have a little problem if global warming is the only thing holding off an ice age, but hey, everything has risks.....

Biggest problem with hydrogen is that it only stores the energy used to split it; it doesn't capture it from the sun (like a plant does) in order to make hydrogen burning (to water, rather than helium....) a viable option, you first need more power than you plan to generate from burning the hydrogen. And even then, we still need plastics.