Just yesterday, we learned that:
GM has ended its development of next-generation hydrogen fuel cell technology for everyday passenger vehicles, citing a need to focus resources on its electric vehicle (EV) strategy. As part of this change, the company has canceled a planned hydrogen fuel cell factory in Detroit and laid off employees from its Hydrotec brand. GM stated that it wants to put all its effort toward its EV future, as the path to a sustainable business in fuel cells for consumer vehicles is “long and uncertain.”
“Uncertain” seems to be putting it kindly; absolutely impossible sounds more apt, especially given its history.
The effort to establish the “hydrogen economy” began in the early 1970s with the OPEC embargo on gasoline that did great damage to the U.S. economy and angered the hell out of the American consumer.
Yet we learned quickly that replacing gas with hydrogen was to be an enormous undertaking, as:
Hydrogen was difficult and expensive to produce
Hydrogen fuel cells, the devices that create electricity from hydrogen, were also expensive, and fragile as well
Replacing the fuel delivery infrastructure (more than 150K gas stations) with hydrogen was costly beyond measure.
It’s hard to know exactly why it took the American automakers more than half a century to make this decision. Common wisdom is that the world of Big Oil/Auto wanted to prevent the world from moving to electric transportation, so they held out the bogus notion that hydrogen was “right around the corner,” and that just a bit of patience was required.
Well, it seems like today may be the day that this notion died, after five full decades.
I wish I had $100 for every time I heard some uneducated Trump supporter tell me this.
A democracy is a system where governmental power is derived directly from the will of the majority. A constitutional republic is a specific type of representative democracy where the people elect officials to govern, but those officials are strictly limited by a supreme, written constitution designed to protect minority rights from majority rule.
I remember a conservative friend who lived in Hawaii who complained that the native people objected to a project directed from Washington to build something at the top of one of their volcanoes, on the basis that this was their holy land. My friend asked, “Doesn’t the majority rule?”
“Not necessarily.” Trying to make my point in the simplest way possible, I explained, “People have rights. My neighbors like me, but imagine that they didn’t, and 20 of them, a 20:1 majority, wanted to come in here and beat me to death. I have a right not to murdered. When you think about it, we’re lucky not to live in a country where ‘the majority rules.’”
“Oh. I guess you’re right,” my friend said.
My biggest beef with Trump isn’t the many individual points of failure, but the fact that they are all the product of the mind of a criminal sociopath whose only way of thinking is self-enrichment, normally at the expense of anyone who cannot serve to make him richer and more powerful.
Neil DeGrasse Tyson says that our problem isn’t that our children don’t understand science, but that our adults don’t.
Three comments:
1) Wind is not a finite resource as long as the sun comes up every morning and disproportionately heats the Earth’s surface. 8th grade Earth science.
2) Wind doesn’t cool anything except the skins of certain animals that perspire. 9th grade biology.
3) Putting one’s ignorance of public display is not a strong idea, even in rural Texas.
-
Greenhouse Gases11 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Climate Change11 months ago
Guest post: Why China is still building new coal – and when it might stop
-
Greenhouse Gases2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Climate Change2 years ago嘉宾来稿：满足中国增长的用电需求 光伏加储能“比新建煤电更实惠”
-
Renewable Energy8 months agoSending Progressive Philanthropist George Soros to Prison?
-
Climate Change2 years ago
Bill Discounting Climate Change in Florida’s Energy Policy Awaits DeSantis’ Approval
-
Carbon Footprint2 years agoUS SEC’s Climate Disclosure Rules Spur Renewed Interest in Carbon Credits
-
Greenhouse Gases11 months ago
嘉宾来稿：探究火山喷发如何影响气候预测