Hydrogen is a cost efective altrnative fuel source, NOT!

My opponent contradicts himself. First he says that hydrogen is a cost effective alternative fuel source and then he argues that it is not. I will give him the benefit of the doubt and not look to his contradiction. I ask that people voting on the round do the same. Thus after removing the contradiction, the burdens are as such: Pro: Hydrogen is a cost effective alternative fuel source Con: Hydrogen is not a cost effective alternative fuel source Thus in the round if I show that hydrogen is not a cost effective fuel source, I win the round. I will support my claim by this article which my opponent provides me and which I greatly appreciate. http://mb-soft.com... I will fit as much of this article as I can into this space and the rest can be read by following the link. (Once again, I would like to thank my opponent for providing me this article.) On first glance, hydrogen seems to be the ideal fuel for automobiles and other vehicles. It doesn't seem like one could get any cleaner burning, since hydrogen burns (oxidizes) to form simply water vapor. Nothing else! No pollution! What a seeming advancement over our current internal combustion engines that put thousands of tons of pollutants into the Earth's atmosphere, as well as giving off massive amounts of heat that contribute to global warming, and many other environmental problems. Hydrogen (H2) plus Oxygen (O) makes H2O, water, or actually, water vapor, at higher temperatures. And Hydrogen is actually capable of nearly meeting those high expectations. And there is even a concept, and somewhat of a device, called a Fuel Cell (originally conceptualized in the 1830s), which can use this reaction to generate electricity. During the 1960s, NASA developed Fuel Cells which produced electricity for spacecraft. They worked reliably and fine, but they were horrendously expensive. There have been people trying to make inexpensive versions ever since! In the early 1990s, some breakthroughs were found. The concept of a Fuel Cell is actually pretty simple. You provide a supply of hydrogen gas and oxygen gas (which is usually from the air) which are separate, with a unique barrier between them. The simplest version of a Fuel Cell is to allow the NUCLEUS of the hydrogen atom to pass through the barrier while not allowing the electron to also pass through. The electron is then caused to follow some DIFFERENT path to eventually get to where the nucleus had gone to, where the end result will be water molecules. The electrons are negatively charged, and when they are forced to follow that alternate path, they are MOVING CHARGE which is the same as an electric current. In words, it therefore seems quite simple to have a Fuel Cell produce electricity. However, in practical terms, there are lots of complications! It may still be ten or twenty years before any reliable technology will exist which has tolerable cost. But Hydrogen itself has an ENORMOUS disadvantage, as well as many smaller ones. It cannot really be considered a "fuel" at all! Yes, it IS, but it isn't! It IS because of the exothermic chemical reaction described here. It ISN'T because it does not occur naturally. We have such an attachment to petroleum and natural gas and coal and uranium BECAUSE they exist naturally. We actually have the technology to manufacture petroleum, but it would be so involved and expensive to do that it would never be worth it. Hydrogen is very different. It is so chemically reactive that it IMMEDIATELY combines with nearly any other atom (ion, actually) that happens to be near it. So there is NO natural supply of Hydrogen, anywhere on Earth. This really changes the equation A LOT! Essentially, Hydrogen should be considered to be similar to a battery, where electricity is produced somewhere else and then STORED in it. And it turns out that the chemical properties of Hydrogen are such that it is rather difficult to pull hydrogen atoms out of any of the molecules that it exists in. That means that a lot of power is needed to separate out the hydrogen. The obvious primary source is water. You can look up something called the Electrochemical Equivalent of Hydrogen in many Reference books. It is the amount of electrical energy that exists in the chemical bonding of Hydrogen atoms inside of the molecules it exists in, such as water, H2O. Those Reference books show that 12,062.183 ampere-hours of electrical energy is required to release a single pound of Hydrogen from any chemical compound. It turns out that there are no "perfect" devices to do this, and the best tend to be around 20% efficient at getting the Hydrogen released, regarding the electricity used. So we actually need to use up around 60,000 ampere-hours of electrical energy in order to get one pound of Hydrogen released (and therefore available as a fuel). That is a LOT of electricity! Your kitchen toaster uses around 15 amps of electricity, for maybe 30 seconds. Here, we are talking about 100 amperes of electricity being used continuously for 600 hours or 25 days! So, proponents of "the coming Hydrogen economy" brag about the fact that Hydrogen CAN be produced by electrolyzing water to separate it into Hydrogen and Oxygen gases. Then they brag about the fact that when Hydrogen burns, it combines with Oxygen to create "lots of power, and just water vapor". Those statements are totally true, and nearly everyone seems to totally trust the people pushing Hydrogen and Fuel Cells, without asking the next, VERY IMPORTANT, question! Didn't Newton prove to us that we cannot have energy simply appear? That there is a Conservation of Energy? So, if we have to SEPARATE the Hydrogen from the water to start with, doesn't it seem obvious that it has to require AT LEAST AS MUCH energy as will later be released when the Hydrogen again winds up as part of water? How come nobody asks this really obvious question??? In fact, there is another closely related Law of Nature, regarding something called Entropy, where NO actual process can be 100% efficient. So, as discussed below, to provide all that electricity needed to release Hydrogen from any chemical compound: (1) coal must first get burned in a power plant; (2) it must heat water into steam; (3) that steam must drive high speed turbines; (4) the turbines must drive alternators; (5) the electricity must then travel through wires and transformers to get to your house; (6) an electrolysis apparatus must use (a LOT of) electricity to produce Hydrogen gas; (7) that gas must be tremendously compressed to be of manageable size; (8) THEN you finally get to the Fuel Cell technologies that are still being developed! The result of this is that Hydrogen power for vehicles might SOUND amazingly Green, but the reality is that the power consumed (at that distant electric power plant that you never see) to create the Hydrogen is at least seven times the amount of power associated with a gallon of gasoline! For now, no one seems willing to tell the public these things, because they REALLY want to get the public to buy a zillion Hydrogen powered vehicles! This exact same situation occurred a few years back when Battery-powered vehicles were supposed to be the FUTURE! Battery power is GREAT, IF you only consider the vehicle itself. It gives off ZERO pollution! But these same issues regarding the massive amount of electricity needed to re-charge those batteries (even for golf carts) already costs about double what the equivalent amount of gasoline would have cost! And at the distant power plant where that electricity was produced, a LOT of pollution, carbon dioxide and atmospheric heat was created and released; you just don't see it! Ditto, with Hydrogen! Once again, I thank my opponent for this debate and for helping me gather evidence. I eagerly await my opponents rebuttal.