Earth System

Earth System

1. You are at a dinner party talking with an acquaintance and he remarks that he heard that we are running out of oil. You don't know about his background or what his political leanings are, so you want to respond in a way that fairly presents known data and outlines the leading theories. How do you respond to him?

Answer: Based on the current discoveries of oil, experts claim that we will soon run out of this resource. However, we also need to take into consideration the future discoveries that will take place. As drilling for oil continues, new reserves are found often which increases our hopes that there is still a lot of oil left unexplored. If these reserves are tapped, we will get some additional years worth of oil. Additionally, with the development in technology, geologists are now able to drill deeper into the earth's crust. This will help reserves that were currently unreachable to be tapped; hence, we can be sure that there are sufficient reserves of oil to meet our needs well into the future. The change in business became public only last year, when two industry giants British Petroleum and Shell said they are preparing to tackle the environmental problems caused by oil. And are not the only - according to the British magazine The Economist, companies like Exxon "continue, in public, to ridicule global warming, but, secretly, are investing heavily in new technologies."

Apparently now that the great successor of oil is hydrogen, it is the simplest of all chemical elements and by far the most abundant in the environment. It could be extracted from seawater, among other possibilities, to replace oil with huge advantages. The first advantage is for being an inexhaustible source of energy. Second, because "burn" in the dictionary of chemistry, is synonymous with "combine with oxygen." What generates, again, water - only residue left by burning hydrogen? The energy released in this process is transformed into electricity in a generator specially designed for this purpose, called a fuel cell. The electricity, in turn, puts, for example, a car running. "I believe fuel cells will ultimately end the reign of 100 years of combustion engine," he said last year the president of Ford, Bill Ford.

Currently, all the big names in the auto industry have prototypes of hydrogen-powered cars in the advanced stage of testing. The pioneers were DaimlerChrysler and Ford. The combined investment of the two, in their projects is already in the house of a billion dollars and the plan is to spend as much to launch new models until 2004. And its good engineers meet the schedule because the Japanese manufacturers, although they have dropped a little behind in this race, promising picks up the pace down the stretch. Their hydrogen-powered cars may well reach the dealerships before 2004.

Toyota, for example, was a success at the fairs last year showing the Prius, which is still only a hybrid capable of taking power from two sources at the ...