Methane versus Hydrogen as Fuel

Suggestion:

Texas should encourage the development of its own auto industry of electric cars
since those are simpler.

Recommendation:

Texas encouraging the development of its own electric auto industry is a good idea. The first step is to encourage the development of fuel cells that use methane (CH4 - 1 carbon atom bonded to 4 hydrogen atoms). In addition to methane being the primary component of natural gas, which is very abundant in Texas, methane is also a renewable energy resource (land fills, sewer systems, & animal waste processing), and can be obtained from coal gasification which is cleaner than simply burning coal. Furthermore, the infrastructure for methane transportation is already in place so that filling up could be accomplished at home. Other applications of an efficient methane fuel cell would include battery replacement, on-site electric generation at homes / schools / businesses, and reduction or elimination of reliance on the grid which is unreliable, expensive, and inefficient.

Question:

Why are you recommending methane which contains carbon instead of
hydrogen, when everyone is concerned about global warming, which
we know is caused by burning carbon-based fuels including hydrocarbons like
methane?

Problems with hydrogen as a fuel include:

• Hydrogen released into the atmosphere could deplete the ozone layer since hydrogen (the lightest element) will go straight into the upper atmosphere where it will interact strongly with ozone (3 oxygen atoms instead of the normal 2 atom form).
  
• Hydrogen is more difficult to store since the liquid form must be very cold and under high pressure.
• Hydrogen must be generated from some other energy source.
  

Advantages of methane include:

• Methane production, transportation, and utilization technologies are already in place.
  
• Methane fuel cell development is underway with promising results.
  
• Methane is renewable, abundant, and part of natural processes (like milk production).
  

Global warming is currently occuring, but there have been warmer periods in recorded history, and the warm periods were better for people:

Warm period from the year 9000 BCE to 5000 BCE (known as the Halocene optimum)
Cold period from 5000 BCE to 1 CE (Stone Age to Bronze Age then ends during Iron Age)
Warm period from the years 1 to about 240 (known as the Roman Warming)
Cold period from 240 to 800 (the Dark Ages)
Warming (the Medieval Optimum) from 800 to 1400
Little Ice Age from 1400 to about 1920
Warming from 1920 to Present

Although there is concern about our "carbon footprint", carbon-dioxide is a poor green house gas, which is evident at night in arid areas where the day versus night time temperatures continue to be significantly different except when there is a high moisture day or clouds in the air (dihydrogen-monoxide click for details or water is an excellent Greenhouse Gas click for details). As documented in wikipedia:

Water {Dihydrogen-Monoxide} accounts for the largest percentage of the
greenhouse effect between 66% and 85%

Therefore, I am considering establishing a Dihydrogen-Monoxide Credits (DMC) program so that areas with higher concentrations can pay me to move their problem to areas with lower concentrations.

This is even more clear on Mars which has a 95% carbon-dioxide atmosphere, but very cold nights, and Mars terraforming proposals require producing green house gases in order to warm the climate http://www.copperwiki.org/index.php/Terraforming_Mars.

Incidentally, global warming is also occuring on Mars http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html, but it appears to be part of the natural cycles of the Sun, which affects the Earth in similar ways.

Furthermore, the climate of Earth is also affected by its own movements http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles as well as many other factors including ocean currents, rivers, lakes, volcanoes, cosmic rays from outside our solar system, land locations / elevations / composition which are all changing (human blame yet to be assigned http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/geology/tectonics.html), space dust, meteors, comets, vegetation, agriculture, buildings, roads, and reservoirs. So blaming our global warming on carbon-dioxide emissions seems unreasonable unless you are selling carbon credits http://www.chicagoclimatex.com/, making science fiction movies, or trying to force economic contraction.