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efficiency</title></head><body>
<div>This message has three subsubjects: 1) Capacitors in Austin, 2)
Hydrogen in the atmosphere, and 3) A new plea for Production electric
cars.</div>
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<div>1) Capacitors in Austin</div>
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<div>At 2:02 P -0500 6/2/08, Ian Ward wrote:</div>
<div>>we also have a local company working on potentially amazing
capacitors.</div>
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<div>In Austin? Oh, who, Ian? Tell! Tell!</div>
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<div>2) Hydrogen in the atmosphere</div>
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<div>At 12:57 P -0500 6/2/08, m. edmund howse wrote:</div>
<div>>I can't believe hydrogen if set free could escape the
atmosphere</div>
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<div>You're quite right. Some does leave* (it's lighter than
helium, after all), but most is reabsorbed into the soil or, as you
pointed out, recombined into other chemicals. So much is
constantly being generated that there's plenty of hydrogen gas (H2)
still here in our atmosphere.</div>
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<div>I Googled "hydrogen in the atmosphere" and got several
very authoritative-looking papers measuring how much hydrogen gas (H2)
is in the atmosphere and how it's changing (automobiles emit a lot.)
You're right -- there's tons of hydrogen gas -- H2, not part of any
other molecule -- in the atmosphere**.</div>
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<div>Helium does get lost to space***, apparently, but then there's
much less of it being generated (from radioactive decay.)</div>
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<div>3) A new plea for Production electric cars</div>
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<div>As we're off topic anyway, I'd like to point out that advances in
technology are not needed for us to own electric cars. Most
messages on this list (until this past week) are all about people
building electic cars with technology that's on shelves somewhere
right now.</div>
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<div>Those of us unwilling to do the work to make ourselves a car,
however, don't have much in the way of alternatives. Here's a
cool video posted just hours ago that laments this lack in an engaging
way:</div>
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<div> <a
href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOVdEKuQR1g"
>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOVdEKuQR1g</a></div>
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<div>--Gil</div>
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<div>References:</div>
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<div>*-Hydrogen is ... the most abundant [element] in the universe...
Because hydrogen gas is so light, most of it escaped from the lower
atmosphere early in the Earth's history.</div>
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<div>
http://www.enviroliteracy.org/article.php/1001.php</div>
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<div>**-The troposphere has an estimated 155 Tg of hydrogen gas:</div>
<div> [I think Tg means Teragrams. --Gil]</div>
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<div>
http://www.princeton.edu/~chm333/2004/Hydrogen/h2_atmosphere.htm</div>
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<div>***-Helium, the second most abundant element in the universe,...
makes up about 0.0005% of the earth's atmosphere. This trace amount of
helium is not gravitationally bound to the earth and is constantly
lost to space.</div>
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<div>
http://education.jlab.org/itselemental/ele002.html</div>
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<div>--Gil</div>
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