Asymmetrical Information

Meanwhile, here in Colorado, since about 11am I've been driving with my sunroof and windows open today. In January. Again.

The Kyoto position: Wreck the strongest economies of the world now (with the accompanying misery), to do something that might possibly have some small effect on global warming that might possibly be bad for the human race (in case some haven't noticed, there are a lot of places that would benefit from being a tad warmer). If it actually is going to happen.

Pascal's Wager for the 21st Century.

My train station is on the Hudson. There was a tremendous amount of ice - not quit enought o walk across, but another few days of this might do it.

My favorite part about all of this is that after a while, the environmentalists stopped calling it "global warming" and started calling it "global climate change." In other words, they don't know what's happening.

God forbid anything should happen on this earth without someone's sealed approval.

"...the environmentalists stopped calling it "global warming" and started calling it "global climate change." In other words, they don't know what's happening." Nobody does, that is the problem; but I, for one, am glad to be on the side that is trying to find out, instead of trying to bury any evidence with smears against people that care.

Can anyone deny the harm caused by burning fossil fuel? Even if it isn't changing the climate, the air is dirty, forests have been eviscerated with acid; and the occasional oil spill destroys entire microsystems.
How about looking for some answers? For example: a one time multi-billion dollar investment in a "manhattan project" type of program to install an infrastructure that could one day replace all autos with this baby ? And this is not a joke .

Perhaps we could stop belittleing environmentalists long enough to get serious about something that would reduce the importance of the middle east and give the world an unlimited source of power without the harm of burning nor harvesting fossil fuels. Jane, isn't your pseudonym a character in Miss Rand's seminal book who invented a machine that could produce power from air?

"get serious about something that would reduce the importance of the middle east"

Ok, this is off-topic, but comments like this have been seriously annoying me ever since 9/11. This whole "we need to develop alternative fuels so we don't need mideast oil" thing betrays a curious neo-isolationist urge. The thought seems to be, "If we didn't need their oil, we could just ignore the wogs and leave them to their crazy religious squabbles."

Say it happens. Say we develop alternative energy, stop using oil, tell the Arabs to fuck off. etc. What does that change, other than impoverishing Arabs? Will it uninvent airplanes? Satallite dishes? The Internet? Will it spur development in the arab world? Will it do anything except make a desperately poor area even more desperately poor?

Hey, I'm all for alternative energy - but those who think it's a magic solution to our mideast problems just aren't thinking it through...

Awwwww - SHIT!

TonyB said exactly what I wanted to say. I got here just a little too late.

He's right folks. The fact that the "environmentalists" (it really is absurd to use that word in a perjorative sense) are unable to model climate change is not attributable to stupidity or anything like that - it has to do with the extreme complexity of the subject matter they're studying. The goal of environmentalists (as opposed to pseudoscientists and political ideologues) is to understand climate change - including human impact of the climate.

But let's suppose, arguendo, that scientists are unable to deliver any kind of a consensus on long-term climate trends for the future, or on what impact human activity has on the environment.

Just suppose . . . Well? What then?

That would certainly take the wind out of the sails of the most apocalyptic scenarios currently urged upon us by some members of the dogmatic left. But even without left-wing neoluddite angst there are still a million good reasons to ditch carbon as the world's primary energy source: it's dirty and it stinks; it takes a huge capital investment to pull it out of the ground, process it, and deliver it to market; it has known carcinogenic properties; it keeps us dependent on medieval theocratic despots; it's finite.

None of these observations is true of hydrogen.

Belittle the caution of well intentioned (and often responsible) scientists all you want if it makes your feel good; and by all means apply lots of skepticism to the most irresponsible of their predictions and political recommendations. But in the mean time, educate yourself about the cheaper, cleaner, more abundant sources of energy that are (in terms of the history of technology) right around the corner. And then ask yourself why our government seems to be doing everything in its power to maintain the carbon based status quo?

...but I, for one, am glad to be on the side that is trying to find out, instead of trying to bury any evidence with smears against people that care.

Tony, I understood that most of the complaints about Bush regarding global warming was that he kept wanting to study it instead of doing something about it. Is the side you're on the same one that Bush is on, or are there more than two sides?

Nobody wants dirty air or oily beaches or forests on acid. The question is always how much are we willing to spend or give up to clean the air, etc. Our air is already way way cleaner than it was, and so is the water, because we've bought catalytic converters and smokestack emissions control devices, etc. That's money that could have gone into cancer research or bicycle helmets or improved frozen dinner technology or paving more of West Virginia.

One of the problems with the global warming alarmists is that they are _not_ worried about dirty air as much as air with too much CO2 in it. Since we don't have infinite resources, what we spend on reducing CO2 ends up coming out of clean air funds or other quality-of-life projects. I'll believe that alarmists are really worried about CO2 when they advocate more nuclear plants, since that's the only large-scale power technology we have that doesn't produce CO2 (well, there's also hydropower).

I appreciate the links to the articles on GM's hydrogen car. GM says it will be out before the end of the decade, but I'll believe it when I see it. The current concept car looks cool, but there's no mention of its cruising range (Wired implies they're below 150 miles, only half the 300 mile range they want). Also, it takes more energy to make the hydrogen from natural gas than the hydrogen provides, so it's not an improvement in efficiency. (You might ask where all the hydrogen we will need is going to come from; the answer might give you a hint why ExxonMobil and Chevron/Texaco are involved in fuel cell research.)

And though the car looks cool, I don't want to be in one in an accident; it looks to me like the entire contents of the car (including human contents) could be scraped off that spiffy chassis very easily. The car would survive the crash but the owners wouldn't.

tonyB and Zarath, there's no free lunch.

Either the hydrogen has to come from electrolysis of water or (per PJ's comments) from hydrogen-rich fossil fuel sources. It would be nice to derive an efficient process for the latter, since the hydrogen could be used with the carbon disposed some way other than release into the atmosphere, but in either case energy has to be put into the process of obtaining.

And where is that energy going to come from?

well, there's also hydropower

Only Latin America has sufficient river systems to rely on it as a primary source, unfortunately...

"I, for one, am glad to be on the side that is trying to find out, instead of trying to bury any evidence with smears against people that care."

Tony, can't you grant that some of us who disagree with you ALSO care? Sheesh! Talk about trying to claim the moral high ground.

The problem I have with many in the environmental movement is the attitude that their policy prescriptions have no downside apart from a slight (but healthy) change in lifestyle. That is far from the case. The radical reductions in CO2 emissions called for would cripple our economy.

The pay off? The HOPE we could reduce the earth's average temperature by a slight amount in 100 years or so. The cost? Hundreds of thousands if not millions of lives. Why would the CO2 restrictions cost lives? There is a very direct link between the health of the economy and the physical health of individual members of society. A crippled economy means less spent on health care, less on education, even less for public sanitation. In short, people would die sooner.

Now, call me uncaring if you like, but before I support a policy that is all-but-certain to lead to more deaths over the short term, I want to have more than a HOPE that the policy will save a lot more lives over the long term.

Jane, isn't your pseudonym a character in Miss Rand's seminal book who invented a machine that could produce power from air?

Already been done. Liberals have been scuttling about in a massive hot-air machine for decades.

Tony, whipping hypothetical darts at the reality of climate change is nominal for anti-capitalist barnstorming but not effective in gaining scientic credibility. The earth's weather, temperature and ecosystems have been evolving and moving between one extreme to the next for eons. A brief glance at ano domine (or even further back, if geological/paleontological/archaelogical evidence can be found) shows significant swings in climate that have profoundly influenced civilization; enabling empires and knocking a few down.

Disclaimer: no fossil fuels back then. For goodness' sake, volcanoes can, in one short eruption, make China's industrial clusters look like spit in the Atlantic.

But in the mean time, educate yourself about the cheaper, cleaner, more abundant sources of energy that are (in terms of the history of technology) right around the corner.

Yes! We'll use fusion-powered rocket ships. Rocket ships docked at the top of buildings. We'll jump into our fusion-powered rocket ships wearing sequined jumpsuits. Women will almost exclusively wear beehives. And fishbowl helmets.

In all seriousness, I would agree/opine that petroleum alternatives will be based on scientific and elemental principles that have yet to be understood. Until then, fill 'er up!

Mousie:

Yeah, that Colorado weather is something, ain't it? I was out there on business for about two months from late January (I think it was 1991) through early March. At least six weeks of that time was sunny and in the '70s, every single day. The first week or two was cloudy and 50-60.

But Christmas through New Year, I'm told, was colder than %&$#. And sometimes it snows in September. Odd weather; overall I'd take it over Florida. Why am I here? It's where the job is. And my wife gets really bad skin problems here, in the dry of winter. I can't even imagine what'd happen to her in CO after a week or two.

Well...
Jimbo, I am not the only one that thinks reducing our need for oil would alleviate tensions the middle east.

PJ, Bush is using the "more study" issue to to prevent any action, all the while reversing the rules that have led to recent improvements in our environment. I reiterate, global warming does not have to be the only reason to move forward on some long range solutions, but any improvement in the environment would seem to help that cause also. Finally, the car, nor the program are perfected, but non of the problems seem insurmountable, just underfinanced.

David, read the tone of the post and the first comments and tell me my claim to the moral high ground was misplaced. Even yourself, who would take the high ground from me, immediatlely does a cost analysis on the health of the environment, assuming that the cost would take money from other health needs; what are those needs and how are they currently financed? Moreover, I disagree
with your conclusions that the economy would be crippled. The one time infusion of billions of dollars is just the tonic for what currently ails this economy. Millions of jobs would be created and many technological advances would occur that would generate even more wealth. It could turn into the greatest investment in history. Wealth reallocation, yeah, but a crippled economy, no.

Michael, those are the smears that I am referring to. I know you can do better than that. I totally agree with you on your point regarding historical climate changes and the power of volcanoes. But you miss the point. Moving away from fossil fuels would be beneficial on many, many levels besides macro-climate.

environmentalist groups are not happy with ANY source of power. period

see sierra club militating for breaching dams and stopping hydropower projects (3 gorges, etc)

dmas = flooding = killing something == bad!

no method of energy generation is acceptable at all (see opposition to wind in mass., solar projects taking up too much desert, tidal projects fouling beaches, geotherma creating too much dirt that must be landfilled and possibly contaminating water table...)

the other thing, is that no one i've ever heard of opposes working to reduce emissions. it's just that you want to teal from me the resources to threaten me with jail unless i reducemy emissions... that's unfriendly. I'm seriously questioning the whole idea of fair play when the other side is aimed at stealing from, imprisoning, and killing their opponents. Just might be time for te gloves to come off... but you don't get anywhere saying that good intentions and experimentation justify massive applications of government force to create who knows what...

thats crap and you know it. so go find your own 50 billion (gates is freaking soft headed, as is buffet, try them) and prove that you know what you are doing... oh wait, thats hard and doesn't end western civilization... freaks

Yes – in the long run, the ice sheets will continue to advance and retreat, there will be volcano eruptions, continental drift and asteroid collisions, and the earth's magnetic field is long overdue for a reversal. But these are pretty feeble arguments against trying to understand human impact on the environment and mitigate the worst effects of it. Moreover – and this can't be reiterated enough – "saving the environment" is not the only reason to invest in a shift away from carbon.

The shift to a hydrogen economy will happen – with or without government intervention. But the question remains – do we want it to happen without government intervention? Given the government's already interventionist approaches to environmental and energy policy (under both Republican and Democratic administrations) – much of which goes towards the conflicting goals of putting a band-aid on the environment while simultaneously propping up the unsustainable carbon-based economy – it seems to me a wiser approach would be for the government to invest (directly and through tax credits) some fraction of that money in research into hydrogen production, storage and safety, retrofitting the transportation infrastructure, improving power generation and distribution, and providing unemployment benefits and job retraining to compensate for the inevitable dislocations.

Instead, our esteemed leadership has invested a paltry $150 million into the FreedomCAR initiative, while providing tax subsidies to SUVs.

I would like to reiterate the question of where the Hydrogen is going to come from? What, exactly, is a "Hydrogen Economy?"

Also, who is going to deal with the disposal of millions of tanks from gas stations, the pumps, the hoses, etc... if we try to do a wholesale switch? That's a lot of hazardous waste to deal with.

Why don't we continue to clean up what we've got? Cars today pollute very little and new cars sometimes actually clean the air as they drive through it (if the air is dirty already). We could make tremendous progress in cleaning the air just be replacing old cars with new cars. Instead of spending a fortune on R&D that may or may not pan out, spend less and buy brand new cars and crush the old clunkers that pollute 500x as much as new cars.

Then encourage the development of gas powered generator/hybrid electrics that can still use gas stations or recharge from a socket. A hybrid would allow a transition to charging stations from gas stations over time. At the same time, continue developing battery technology, something that would help more than just the auto industry.

Bolie IV

Michael, those are the smears that I am referring to. I know you can do better than that.

Sorry. You supplied the image and I couldn't resist conjuring up a canopy full of Oxford scholars rolling around in a bulbous, heaving steam engine. :-)

If you want character-assassination, chat up poor Bjorn Lomborg.

But you miss the point. Moving away from fossil fuels would be beneficial on many, many levels besides macro-climate.

The point of this thread was that the "global [adjective]-ing caused by human activity" bludgeon is finally beginning to lose its steam. It's always been a crock. So, now, what of petroleum? Bolie makes quite a good point regarding the great strides taken by internal combustion engine manufacturers. What sort of endemic environmental disasters are we attempting to mitigate, again?

Toby:

I'm just trying to have a civil conversation with you. (Never an easy thing to do when two people pasionately hold opposite views.) My point: Just because I disagree with you does not mean I don't care about the enviroment!

Yes, I do a cost benefit analysis when considering public policy issues. (FYI: I'm an accountant and minored in economics. I do a cost benefit analysis when choosing a place to eat -- it just comes with the territory.) I don't see why comparing costs and benefits should force me to cede the high moral ground. Are you suggesting we should consider a change in policy without considering both the expected costs and the hoped for benefits?

I fully understand that you do not believe that your proposed reductions in CO2 and other policy prescriptions would have a negagive impact on the economy. We disagree. As a general rule, its up to those advocating a change to prove their case. I am willing to listen (and have listened in the past) to any cogent arguments from your side of the question. As of right now, I find everything I've heard unpersuasive.

As of right now, I believe your ideas would make us worse off. (I define that in terms of the number of lives cost. Some might argue we would be better off with far fewer people in the world, each of us living some agrarian lifesyle. I'd prefer not to argue about such quality of life questions.) I believe most of the evidence is on my side of the argument. All I've heard so far from your side are utopian predictions of how great it will be in the new hydrogen economy. Kewel dude. We'd all love it if money grew on trees, if every woman were as beautiful as my wife, and animals could talk, too. Still waiting for some evidence from your side that your approach will benefit more than it would hurt.

Bolie,

I provided the link in my last post – This should get you started on "where the hydrogen is going to come from."

As for your question, "What, exactly, is a 'Hydrogen Economy'?" – you can start finding out here, and here and here. But simply Googling "Hydrogen Economy" will yield loads of information.

You raise a good question about the disposal of all the hazardous leftovers from the carbon economy. One way to answer this question is to ask yourself what has been happening to all the hoses, pumps, etc. for most of the last century? Whatever the answer to that question is (and I don't know it), you should ask yourself whether we want to keep doing it that way, or whether we should wean ourselves off fossil fuels sooner rather than later. It's also worth pointing out that all of the tanks, pumps, hoses, and other toxic paraphernalia currently in use will have to be disposed of someday anyway. But I take your comment as being more narrowly focused on the large amounts of hazardous materials we'll have to deal with after a "wholesale switch." I don't know the answer, but I expect it will carry a big price tag – and some government assistance in that area would be welcomed by those of us who want to see the transition happen sooner rather than later.

New cars do not "clean the air." Not even an emissions-free car like the Hy-Wire will "clean the air." Rather, reducing emissions dirties the air less, with the result that over time, as the average emissions per vehicle-mile traveled is reduced, the air becomes a paler shade of brown.

I'm not slamming hybrid cars or battery technology – they are certainly better than doing nothing. However, if you look into this subject you'll find that the potential of hydrogen surpasses the potential of hybrid cars by far.

Also, falling back on "Why don't we continue to clean up what we've got?" is ultimately an evasion. When do we finally decide to stop cleaning and start replacing? Like I said before, the transition will happen with or without government involvement. But in the meantime, wouldn't it be a good idea to get a clue what's happening and playing a constructive role?

Toby:

I'm just trying to have a civil conversation with you. (Never an easy thing to do when two people pasionately hold opposite views.) My point: Just because I disagree with you does not mean I don't care about the enviroment!

Yes, I do a cost benefit analysis when considering public policy issues. (FYI: I'm an accountant and minored in economics. I do a cost benefit analysis when choosing a place to eat -- it just comes with the territory.) I don't see why comparing costs and benefits should force me to cede the high moral ground. Are you suggesting we should consider a change in policy without considering both the expected costs and the hoped for benefits?

I fully understand that you do not believe that your proposed reductions in CO2 and other policy prescriptions would have a negagive impact on the economy. We disagree. As a general rule, its up to those advocating a change to prove their case. I am willing to listen (and have listened in the past) to any cogent arguments from your side of the question. As of right now, I find everything I've heard unpersuasive.

As of right now, I believe your ideas would make us worse off. (I define that in terms of the number of lives cost. Some might argue we would be better off with far fewer people in the world, each of us living some agrarian lifesyle. I'd prefer not to argue about such quality of life questions.) I believe most of the evidence is on my side of the argument. All I've heard so far from your side are utopian predictions of how great it will be in the new hydrogen economy. Kewel dude. We'd all love it if money grew on trees, if every woman were as beautiful as my wife, and animals could talk, too. Still waiting for some evidence from your side that your approach will benefit more than it would hurt.

David,

How will the transition from fossil fuels to hydrogen make us worse off in terms of lives cost? Why would the transition result in fewer people in the world, each one living some agrarian lifestyle?

"All I've heard so far from your side are utopian predictions of how great it will be in the new hydrogen economy. Kewel dude. We'd all love it if money grew on trees, if every woman were as beautiful as my wife, and animals could talk, too."

This is an incredibly naïve statement. We're not talking about cold fusion here. We're talking about actual prototype vehicles that are currently on the road in some parts of the world. We're talking about corporate R&D money and venture capital already spent, with more budgeted for the future that measures in the billions. We're talking about mass marketing timelines measured in years – not decades. The question "your side" continues to avoid is this: Why is American policy (energy, transportation, environmental, foreign, etc.) based on the assumption that fossil fuels will continue to be the lifeblood of the world's economy into the indefinite future?

Note that it is possible to answer this question without buying into environmental alarmism, or conceding a retreat to luddism.

"The one time infusion of billions of dollars is just the tonic for what currently ails this economy."

Infusion? Those "billions of dollars" ain't going into the economy until they're first taken out of the economy in taxes or borrowing.

You might just as well suggest taking blood from my right arm and pumping it into my left arm. That would do just about as much good.

"The shift to a hydrogen economy will happen – with or without government intervention. But the question remains – do we want it to happen without government intervention?"

Hell yes!

"But in the mean time, educate yourself about the cheaper, cleaner, more abundant sources of energy that are (in terms of the history of technology) right around the corner."

Great. When cheaper, cleaner, and more abundant sources of energy actually exist, then we can stop using fossil fuels. At that point, I don't think the feds will need to twist our arms very much to get us to use cheaper energy.

"But even without left-wing neoludfdite angst there are still a million good reasons to ditch carbon as the world's primary energy source: it's dirty and it stinks; it takes a huge capital investment to pull it out of the ground, process it, and deliver it to market; it has known carcinogenic properties; it keeps us dependent on medieval theocratic despots; it's finite."

Fine. When something better comes along, we'll use it. For now, if you want massive amount of energy at affordable prices, fossil fuels are the only game in town.

By the way, the "huge capital investment" required to pull it out of the ground, process it, and deliver it to market is already factored into its price, which is itself favorable to the alternatives. So you can't claim that that "huge capital investment" as a strike against the use of fossil fuels.

"We're not talking about cold fusion here. We're talking about actual prototype vehicles that are currently on the road in some parts of the world. We're talking about corporate R&D money and venture capital already spent, with more budgeted for the future that measures in the billions. We're talking about mass marketing timelines measured in years – not decades. "

Sounds like things are proceeding nicely on the alternative energy front. Excellent. I don't see the need for the feds to do much of anything other than refrain from screwing it up.

"The question "your side" continues to avoid is this: Why is American policy (energy, transportation, environmental, foreign, etc.) based on the assumption that fossil fuels will continue to be the lifeblood of the world's economy into the indefinite future?"

American policy is based on the assumption that fossil fuels will be the lifeblood of the world's economy in the near future - for the obvious reason that that happens to be true. Trying to base American policy on the particulars of future energy sources is foolhardy; no one knows exactly what those future energy sources will be, how much they'll cost, or what implications will ensue from their use.

It is sensible to base American policy on the assumption that energy in some form will be delivered by the private sector and that consumers will continue to want lots of energy and will eagerly buy it unless someone stops them. If we have any sense at all, this will continue to be true in the short and the long term.

Zarathustra2101 - (What was your mother thinking when she filled out your birth certificate?) I don't the statement you quoted of mine is naive, incredibly or otherwise. (But then, I wouldn't, would I?) The statement just needs a little context. Here's the context:

Most advocating change in our environmental policies are thinking of something along the lines of the Kyoto treaty. Those proposals call for dramatic (even drastic) reductions in CO2 emissions -- reductions that cannot be achieved using currently available technology without crippling our economy. If you are advocating this type of policy change, then I have yet to see anything from your side of the argument that justifies -- from my point of view -- such a change.

If, on the other hand, you are simply looking forward to all the wonderful things that advances in technology will bring, great. That's a club of which I am a proud member. I read in Jr. High about a Dr. Billings who was developing a way to power cars using hydrogen. Cars would cruise the freeways producing nothing but water vapor as an exhaust! That was in the early '70s and I am still waiting. We are a lot closer, but the day of a hydrogen based economy may still be decades away.

It will be great when we get there. In the mean time, I don't see the advantage of having government force the issue. (Aren't you the one saying it will happen one day with or without government action?) Forcing the issue is likely to lead to more government power and less individual freedom (seldom a good trade). If forcing the issue also crashes the economy, we will have less to spend on social programs -- meaning people will die.

Zaranth: That link doesn't answer the hydrogen question at all. It acknowledges that hydrogen CAN be extracted from fossil fuels, but is very unspecific in the feasibility of that approach except as relates to natural gas.

For natural gas, it discusses steam reformation. Great. And where does that steam come from? Some industrial processes produce steam which could perhaps be then re-used for gas->H conversion, but I am not aware of industrial processes producing steam on sufficient scale to revolutionize the economy over to hydrogen. Ditto for geothermal sources.

So then we have to create steam for the process. And how do you get steam? Energy input. The link claims the steam reforming process is about 70-90% efficient. Lovely -- but you still need to make up the differential with added energy input.

Another process, which I had already mentioned, is electrolysis of water. That requires a tremendous energy input.

Photoelectrolysis -- nice idea, if it can ever be made practical on large scale. By the way do you know what kind of environmental externalities are encountered in producing photovoltaic cells, relative to their electrical output capabilities? Ouch.

Photobiological -- another nice idea, but still in experimental stages.

Biomass conversion -- still another nice idea, but the "high-temperature gasifying" stage is going to require a lot of energy input from somewhere. That the biomass is "renewable" is not a relevant savings, given the energy input requirement and low efficiency for this process.

In the end, it's a circular argument. Can we develop techniques that eventually make hydrogen-based energy sources more efficient than what we currently use? Possibly. But hydrogen is not a holy grail, nor is it free. All presently-feasible methods for obtaining it require significant energy input. I reitterate:

*THERE IS NO FREE LUNCH.*

Finally, allow me to respond to this response quote you issued to another poster:

New cars do not "clean the air."

You are apparently unaware that a catalyst compound was recently developed which, when applied to a car radiator, allows the radator to perform catalytic conversion of some common pollutants simply by virtue of air passing across the surface. So yes, the statement was correct.

For those who question the idea that significantly reducing carbon consumption would really impair our life and health, I ran some preliminary estimates here. And while there are modest carbon savings to be had from hydrogen due to the superior efficiency of turbines over internal combustion, those savings are nowhere near enough to reverse global warming; you're talking about maybe a 20% reduction at theoretical maximum, which is enough to slow global warming, but not halt or reverse it. That's presuming, of course, that you can overcome the rather massive safety problems. And if you try to electrolyze the water in the car, which is safe, it's a carbon loser -- between generation and transmission losses and inefficiencies of scale, you're talking about a rather large net increase in the carbon footprint. Or so I'm told.

You've heard of 'gold bugs'? Those funny little folks who buy and hoard gold ingots, waiting for the price to pass $1200/oz.?

Economists have a term for them "Nuts".

We have the same phenomenon here "Hydrogen Bugs". Wherein all the ills of man- and woman- kind is solved by a change to hydrogen based thingies.

Now mention has been made of inherent inefficiency and conservation of energy. Not to mention entropy lost in conversion, there are no 100% efficient processes: even for dear old hydrogen.

The fact (?) that Detroit may be developing doesn't cut much mustard. The whole project may be just window dressing for PR, and a hedge against a long bet. Besides, their science and engineering is not top drawer in the best of cases.

Anyway, in any event you can't fight City Hall and Thermodynamics at the same time.

Like that other ill, relax and enjoy.

Mindles, I thought the EPA and GWB had acknowledged in 2002 that the climate was warming and there was an increase in greenhouse gases, contrary to your link from 1998.
In regards to automobile emissions, today's cars produce far less SMOG-forming components because of electronic fuel injection, computer chips managing the ignition, better catalytic converters, etc. Do a little research and see how many cars meet the ULEV standards. These controls make the engines alot more reliable also. Ironically, Detroit claimed these controls would be too expensive and bankrupt them. The issue with today's cars and SUV's (at least in terms of global warming) is the amount of CO2 produced per mile driven, i.e. MPG's.
Charles, I wouldn't get too smug about thermodynamics. A gasoline engine is only about 25% efficient. If we could get cheap and abundant electricity from non fossil fuel sources, then we would have cheap and abundant hydrogen also (and abundant oxygen for oxygen bars also). As much as I like doin' 100 mph in my Volvo C70, I would prefer my energy dollars not go to despots who fund terrorist whose goal is to kill all non-Islamists.

GP: The problem is [with your last statement] that you would have to stop using hydrocarbons entirely to stop indirectly subsidizing the ME sheiks. Every barrel of virgin US crude you use per year prevents somebody else from using it, and forces them to buy from the sheiks, unless everybody stops using petroleum completely or embargoes the whole region. The latter would be a clear act of war, which brings up another issue at that point.

Someday I'll find a citation of practically how the "hydrogen economy" is going to work. But the citations provided in this thread aren't them. The ones provided by Zarathustra on 24 Jan were simply references to use applications. Looking into some of their background links, and in particular into the DoE planning for how to provide the hydrogen gave the following:

a. the principal use application to be supported is auto fuels. The "refinery" price goal is $5/kwh which roughly translates to $1.67/gallon gas at the refinery. Rather pricey by petroleum standards, but then you won't have to buy antipollution equipment either and fuel cells might get more efficient than Internal Combustion cycles by then. But it would still be pricey.

b. At those prices you aren't talking about putting hydrogen into your steam boiler to heat your office building, let alone running your electrical generation facility with it. To a large extent gasoline is cheap today because a barrel of crude is efficiently used in petrochemical feedstock production (at a higher profit margin) and industrial fuel stock production (at a lower profit margin). Once you take part of that equation out of oil refining, it has to seek another set of equilibria points, as do the remaining product lines still being refined. But hydrogen at that price might be solely used by cars, so our auto fuel will not be "subsidized" by Dupont using part of the barrel to make carpet fibers, for example. Economically, this is a very difficult projection to make.

c. None of the links cite the obvious: develop nuclear power sources and in particular fusion to provide centralized H2 generation. The technical issues involved with this are substantive, but no worse than many other issues that we've dealt with in the past. But nuclear engineering is even more politically toxic than industrial pollution engineering. If however the proponents of this "hydrogen economy" don't wish to realistically ponder the full engineering envelope, why should anybody take them seriously at this date?

"None of the links cite the obvious: develop nuclear power sources and in particular fusion to provide centralized H2 generation. The technical issues involved with this are substantive, but no worse than many other issues that we've dealt with in the past. But nuclear engineering is even more politically toxic than industrial pollution engineering. If however the proponents of this "hydrogen economy" don't wish to realistically ponder the full engineering envelope, why should anybody take them seriously at this date?"

Well said, Tom. I'll take a lot of this agitation for alternate energy sources a lot more seriously when I'm convinced that its advocates have done a reasonable cost/benefit analysis of nuclear power that isn't skewed by hysteria. Fusion hasn't progressed far enough to attract the attention of the tinfoil hat crowd, but once it has the protestors will be ten deep outside the Department of Energy. 'Cause it's *nuclear*, you know.

Tom, the US could significantly reduce the amount of dollars going to the sheiks/terrorists by reducing our consumption of oil. Perhaps we could give tax credits to encourage conversion of homes from oil to natural gas heat. We could insist on higher gas mileage requirements for SUV's and trucks (did you know that both Mercedes and BMW also make turbo-direct- injection diesel automobiles, with significantly better fuel economy?). In recent years, it seems that modest decreases in demand of oil have resulted in marked decreases in the prices, which would greatly diminish the flow of dollars into terrorists' coffers.
And M. Scott, nuclear fusion has been 30-40 years away for the last 20 years. If a controlled, sustained fusion reaction is ever achieved, we would need to be an electrcity/hydrogen based economy to take advantage of it fully. In regards to nuclear fission, when I was young and foolish, I had great faith in technology. Since then, I have seen 1) a partial meltdown of a core at 3 Mile Island 2) a reactor blow up and spread high level radioactivity over many miles 3) a space shuttle explode and 4) terroists hijack 4 hi-tech aircraft and fly them into large buildings. All in all, fission reactors may not be the panacea you think them to be.

GP: Did you actually read my post concerning the economics of usage displacement? If you reduce consumption of oil by 10%, you reduce the Arabian share of the total demand by 10% also. But this is only a first order approximation once you start this process, because you've just lowered the prices at which the market sets for oil (same supply plus lower demand = lower prices). At that point you then have to ask who gains market share due to production efficiencies and how loses.

Unfortunately for your desired outcome, the lowest producers are in fact in the Persian Gulf, led by Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. The US is close the highest cost producer, with Venezuela potentially close due to the high refining costs of their high sulfur "sour crude". This means that reducing US consumption would perversely increase Arab market share of the total production market.

The best way to deal with energy economics is to deal with them economically instead of fiddling with the politics of who makes the profit. An interesting historical precedent occurred in the Dutch revolt against the Hapsburgs, which was a century long war of liberation noted for its mutual atrocities. One strategic weakness of the Spanish Army was that it didn't have a realistic local source for gunpowder, other than local suppliers in the Netherlands. But these local suppliers were the Dutch, who were in rebellion. Now the Dutch could sell the Spanish the product and pocket the profits, or let somebody else sell the Spanish and pocket the same profit plus transportation charges.

The Dutch took the money and ran, regardless of politics. The lesson that I draw from this is that if its a war you want to fight, fight it. If you wish to discuss how to structure a logical economy, war has little to do with that decision process.

GP wrote:

"And M. Scott, nuclear fusion has been 30-40 years away for the last 20 years."

True enough. The prejudice against all things "nuclear" isn't helping the process. Ultimately, the only way to meet increasing energy demand is going to be some kind of nuclear power, and fusion is going to be the best kind available (barring a energy-efficient method of producing antimatter being discovered, which is unlikely in the foreseeable future).

"If a controlled, sustained fusion reaction is ever achieved, we would need to be an electrcity/hydrogen based economy to take advantage of it fully."

Once fusion is available, we can transition to an economy that doesn't use fossil fuels. More extensive use of fission (which seems to be working fine for the French and the Japanese) would undoubtedly help ease the transition.

"In regards to nuclear fission, when I was young and foolish,"

Sadly, I am no longer young. As for "foolish," reasonable minds can disagree. :-)

"I had great faith in technology."

Your entire argument involves "faith in technology." The hydrogen economy is as much pie in the sky as the future nuclear economy portrayed in Disney's educational film from the 1950's, "Our Friend The Atom."

"Since then, I have seen 1) a partial meltdown of a core at 3 Mile Island 2) a reactor blow up and spread high level radioactivity over many miles 3) a space shuttle explode and 4) terroists hijack 4 hi-tech aircraft and fly them into large buildings. All in all, fission reactors may not be the panacea you think them to be."

The Chernobyl reactor was an old and faulty design that would certainly not be emulated by the West (certainly not for any new reactors). I'm not sure what the space shuttle blowing up has to do with this, unless you're advocating sending nuclear waste into space--rather prohibitively expensive for the foreseeable future. Nuclear waste, the last I heard, isn't carried in passenger aircraft. Both France and Japan rely heavily on nuclear power, and they've handled the threat from terrorists to that source quite well (I'm quite willing to give even a charter member of the Axis of Weasels their due). I never said that nuclear power is a panacea; however, eschewing it due to anti-nuclear hysteria while ignoring the fact that the increased usage of fossil fuels that has been a result has cost lives directly (through lives lost in energy production, particularly coal mining) and increased pollution. Once again, a modern form of Pascal's Wager.

Did y'all notice that Melissa Stark is taller than Bill Callahan? The Raiders are finished!
Tom, I still think that if we could reduce our comsumption of oil, we could seriously deplete the treasuries of the sheiks/terrorists. But suppose what everything you wrote is 100% correct. Then, if we maintain the same amount of oil comsumption, the sheiks win. If we increase our oil consumption, the sheiks win. If we modestly decrease our oil consumption, the skeiks win. Maybe we better start praying towards Mecca 6x a day. Or perhaps we should conquer the entire mideast to ensure a supply of cheap oil. Or perhaps we should spend, say, 50 billion dollars a year to develop non- petroleum based energy resources.
M. Scott, you call the hydrogen economy "pie in the sky," but your fission/fusion vision relies heavily on hydrogen replacing petroleum as a portable fuel source. I would wager you 10 dollars that we could have a hydrogen economy before fusion is controlled.. In regard s to Chernobyl, could you tell me why it was an obsolete design? If I remember correctly, it was a graphite moderated reactor. I remember in Scientific American an article that Graphite moderated reactors were much more resistant to loss of coolant problems than water moderated reactors (3 Mile Island). Correct me if my memory is faulty, but I tought that the Chernobyl disaster was due to human error/arrogance, i.e. withdrawing the control rods to see how uncontrolled a reaction that could tolerate. In regards to the Challenger disaster, I cited that example because a once proud agency (NASA), was forced to skimp on design, and inexplicably tried to launch in freezing temparatures, a shuttle mission with a political symbol. The Rodgers commision tried to whitewash the investigation, until Richard Feynman so simply and cleverly demonstrated the proximate cause of the disaster. Do you think the nuclear industry is immune to such manipulation? Finally, of course aircraft do not carry nuclear waste. The concern is what if Al Queda hijacked a plane and crashed it into a nuclear reactor? Current studies seem to indicated the containment building would hold; so suppose they crashed the plane into the ponds holding highly radioactive waste? Or suppose they lauched a manned assault on a nuclear reactor defended by Homer Simpson types?
Finally, why do so many divas come from Canada? Back to the Super Bowl.

Holy poop! What a mauling!

GP wrote:

"M. Scott, you call the hydrogen economy "pie in the sky," but your fission/fusion vision relies heavily on hydrogen replacing petroleum as a portable fuel source."

If we had a non-fossil fuel/other combustible power source to run most or all of the power plants, battery technology would handle transportation needs, particularly if the technology continues to improve. Hybrids (which are already improving quickly) will bridge the gap in the meantime.

"I would wager you 10 dollars that we could have a hydrogen economy before fusion is controlled.."

At what cost, and how economically? Modern designs already pollute far less than the old vehicles, and hybrid technology is moving forward. Best to work on means of mainline power generation that don't pollute as heavily as fossil fuels: fission and fusion still are at the top of that list as far as potential growth goes.

"In regard s to Chernobyl, could you tell me why it was an obsolete design?"

I did a Google search using the terms "chernobyl meltdown causes design" and got about 1,000 hits. This page put together by a Canadian 2nd year engineering/computer student back in 1998 lays it out pretty well:

http://www.glencoe.com/sec/science/cgi-bin/splitwindow.cgi?top=http://www.glencoe.com/sec/science/top2.html&link=http://www.uoguelph.ca/~bgingras

Ugh, evil wrapping. Oh well, it's near the top of the list if you want to run the check yourself. Anyway, the gist of it was that while the main causes of the disaster were human error and deficient safety precautions, the plant was also not constructed to specs and the design itself was problematic in a number of ways that made a runaway reaction more likely. The other links I checked came to similar conclusions, though not usually in so much detail.

"In regards to the Challenger disaster, I cited that example because a once proud agency (NASA), was forced to skimp on design, and inexplicably tried to launch in freezing temparatures, a shuttle mission with a political symbol. The Rodgers commision tried to whitewash the investigation, until Richard Feynman so simply and cleverly demonstrated the proximate cause of the disaster. Do you think the nuclear industry is immune to such manipulation?"

I think that precautions can be taken to make it very unlikely, and that the cautionary tales about Chernobyl and other mishaps make it even less likely than that. Nuclear power plants operate today in the U.S., and there are countries that rely heavily on them. Other forms of energy present risks too, and fossil fuels have had far more negative impact on the environment than all of the nuclear events in history combined.

"Finally, of course aircraft do not carry nuclear waste. The concern is what if Al Queda hijacked a plane and crashed it into a nuclear reactor?"

It's never happened, and it's a hell of a lot less likely now. If it did happened, I'd be a lot more worried about them flying a jumbo jet into Hoover Dam--that would kill a hell of a lot of people if the dam was breached.

"Current studies seem to indicated the containment building would hold; so suppose they crashed the plane into the ponds holding highly radioactive waste? Or suppose they lauched a manned assault on a nuclear reactor defended by Homer Simpson types?"

I wouldn't mind seeing security procedures at nuclear power plants (and at other dangerous power sources like major dams near population centers) kicked up quite a bit. Liquified hydrogen isn't exactly a non-volatile substance either, though if it blew up it would at least burn more cleanly.

M. Scott, you were googling during the Super Bowl? I sincerely hope to see fusion as a significant energy source in my lifetime. But ultimately, fusion would just be a heat source to be converted into electricity via steam production (or MHD production). In order to have a portable fuel source, the electricity must be converted into hydrogen via electrolysis of water. Vast improvements in battery technology would of course obviate the need for hydrogen, at least in terms of transportaion. Hybrid gas-electric cars are very nice in that they produce far less CO2 and smog pollutants, and would reduce our need for oil, assuming all you want to drive is a Honda Civic, Insight or Toyota Prius.
Although I am not a nuclear engineer or physicist, I have a few quibbles about your link. First of all, I thought nuclear reactors used cadmium or boron control rods to control the rate of nuclear fission. Thus, when something goes wrong, the control rods "scram", shutting down the nuclear reaction. I would guess that water is not an ideal coolant for a graphite moderated reactor, since with extreme heat, you get the chemical reaction carbon & water becomes methane and O2, which then blows up. (in the Scientific American article, Helium is used as the coolant/ medium for heat exchange). In any case, water moderated reactors are all at risk for loss of coolant disasters. Fossil fuels have probably killed more people in the 80's and 90's than Chernobyl, but they did not render 282 square km uninhabitable for the next 200 years (radius=30 km, pi r squared= area). I sure hope we learned our lessons from Challenger, 3 Mile Island, and Chernobyl, but I work in an industry where the gains from technology have been partially negated by cost cutting and poor management and poor vision for the future (medicine). Finally in regards to planes not crashing into nuclear reactors yet, why do you think they did those simulations of planes crashing into 3 feet of highly reinforced concrete? In case it did happen, at least we'd have some idea if it would be a terrible catastrophe or not. Nonetheless, dams, refineries, nuclear plants, and nuclear waste dumps remain attractive targets for genocidal terrorists, in a way that fossil fuel plants, windmill farms, and possibly fusion plants would not. Finally, a liquid hydrogen explosion would be as spectacular as a natural gas explosion (those fuel-air bombs we used in Afganistan use propane, I believe).
P.S. whose idea was it to have Bon Jovi at the Super Bowl?

GP:
"... suppose they crashed the plane into the ponds holding highly radioactive waste? ..."

This strikes me as a poor target. The used fuel rods don't contain any gaseous or flammible elements so even a perfect hit won't do more than break them into chips and chunks and blast them around the neighborhood. And most of them have been cooling in the pond for months or years so their radioactivity is a small fraction of what it was when they were taken out of the reactor.

As terrorism such an attack might exploit nukophobia very effectively, but it'll kill fewer people than driving the plane into a building à la 9/11.

The Soviet RBMK reactor used the graphite as a moderator, and water as part of the limiting system. Less water means faster reaction -- "positive void coefficient." Guess what happens if the reactor overheats for some reason and begins boiling off its coolant water? Additionally, the graphite itself is flammable at high temperatures. It's an accident waiting to happen, albeit necessary to the design since the RBMK can have its fuel rods individually changed without shutting down the reactor. This is reportedly a useful feature for plutonium production.

Couple this with the generally shoddy workmanship used to construct the Chernobyl plant, as well as some other design flaws (no proper containment shield) and design undesirables (fully inserting the control rods momentarily increases activity at the bottom of the reactor, for example), and suddenly Chernobly looks a lot like having an unstable nuclear weapon in your backyard.

US pressurized- and light-water reactors use the water as the moderator; less of it means the reaction slows, albeit at the (reasonable) expense of requiring full shut-down to change fuel.

US control systems also will not permit the operator to override the safety systems and perform the kind of experiment that ultimately blew up Chernobyl.

This link here covers many of these details with illustrations --

http://users.owt.com/smsrpm/Chernobyl/RBMKvsLWR.html

-- but again, thousands of others can be found with a quick Google search.

The reason we're not worried about a plane crashing into a nuclear reactor is that it probably wouldn't breach the core.

"the US could significantly reduce the amount of dollars going to the sheiks/terrorists by reducing our consumption of oil"

So it is being suggested that there are nations where a significant portion of their oil revenues is going to the support of terrorism and the appropriate response is to retool the American economy? Um, if you buy the premise, isn't there a slightly more direct approach that might be warranted (see also: Afghanistan, Iraq)?

One factoid about the Chernobyl design that wasn't posted is that it was an open, containment vessel-less system because that made its use as a breeder reactor for military radioisotopes (plutonium and tritium, principally) much more easy. Doing that in a containment vessel design is much harder and more expensive. Much of the rest of that design was not optimized for safety as it was optimized for the neutron fluxes needed for this radioisotope production requirement.

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