In 2010, when I wrote my first book: “Renewable Energy–Facts and Fantasies,” I wanted a chapter on hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles, and so I turned to the local expert on the subject, Honda’s Steve Ellis. Steve was anxious to promote his “baby,” the Honda FCX Clarity, and he figured that my book was as good a place as any to make that happen.
Yet I wasn’t convinced that hydrogen had a future, due largely to the lack of fueling infrastructure. Where battery EV owners can unplug their toasters and plug in their cars, this is anything but the case with hydrogen.
And now, not to boast, but my prediction has come true: hydrogen-fueled cars are flailing in the market. From Bloomberg:
Despite billions of dollars of investment, fuel cell cars in the US are disappearing in the rearview mirror, overtaken by battery-electric models and stalled by hydrogen shortages and soaring fuel prices. Last year, drivers bought just 3,143 hydrogen cars in California — the only state that sells them — compared with 380,000 BEVs.
Hydrogen’s proponents aren’t throwing in the towel. Toyota and Hyundai are pushing fuel cell models, albeit at heavy discounts, and Honda just announced a hydrogen hybrid version of its best-selling CR-V. California continues to build new infrastructure. But for drivers and would-be car buyers, the practical experience of going hydrogen-electric is bad and getting worse.
My suspicion, and it’s not an original idea, is that the fossil fuel industry has been using hydrogen as a red herring for the last half century. The oil embargo in the 1970s created an imperative for an alternative to petroleum, then Big Oil (without any sincerity whatsoever), immediately began promoting its “commitment” to the “hydrogen economy.” Now, 50 years later, check out your social media feed and what ExxonMobil claims to be doing in this space.
It’s nauseating. In terms of honesty and decency, these people make Donald Trump look like Mahatma Gandhi.
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I’m not sure it’s as simple as this, insofar as Bush 41 and 43 weren’t criminal sociopaths.
I happened to be driving through Manhattan on the very day that Colin Powell was addressing the United Nations just a few miles away and claimed, and I think honestly, that Saddam Hussein had “weapons of mass destruction,” and must be stopped by a U.S. military invasion.
Contrast that against what we’re doing in Iran. Fifteen years ago, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), included Iran, the P5+1 nations (the United States, China, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, and Germany), alongside the European Union made an agreement in which most of the developed world agreed that Iran must not have a nuclear weapon.
That stood firmly in place until Trump’s latest war crime, which is costing lives and choking the world economy, solely to defend our president’s neuroses.
The Brennan Center at NYU’s seminal report on this issue, The Truth About Voter Fraud, found that most reported incidents of voter fraud are actually traceable to other sources, such as clerical errors or bad data matching practices. The report reviewed elections that had been meticulously studied for voter fraud and found incident rates between 0.0003 percent and 0.0025 percent.
Does that stop liars like Mike Lee from spreading disinformation of the subject? Of course not.
There is no judgement day. There is no Saint Peter standing in front of the Pearly Gates discerning good from evil and acting according.
That’s a lucky break for Mike Lee.
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