no quick hydrogen fix

Over at eSkeptic (see http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/08-03-12.html), Alice Friedemann has a long and eye-opening article about the possibilities of "hydrogen power" as our salvation from global warming. Working on the principle that any fuel stratagem adopted enthusiastically by Our Glorious Leader must be useful solely as a Halliburton cash cow, I hadn't devoted too much thought to the hydogen approach, but Friedemann spells out just quite how useless the approach actually is. I strongly exhort you to read the whole article; in the meantime, here's its conclusion:

Conclusion

At some point along the chain of making, putting energy in, storing, and delivering the hydrogen, we will have used more energy than we can get back, and this doesn’t count the energy used to make fuel cells, storage tanks, delivery systems, and vehicles. When fusion can make cheap hydrogen, when reliable long-lasting nanotube fuel cells exist, and when light-weight leak-proof carbon-fiber polymer-lined storage tanks and pipelines can be made inexpensively, then we can consider building the hydrogen economy infrastructure. Until then, it’s vaporware. All of these technical obstacles must be overcome for any of this to happen. Meanwhile, the United States government should stop funding the Freedom CAR program, which gives millions of tax dollars to the big three automakers to work on hydrogen fuel cells. Instead, automakers ought to be required to raise the average overall mileage their vehicles get — the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard.

At some time in the future the price of oil and natural gas will increase significantly due to geological depletion and political crises in extracting countries. Since the hydrogen infrastructure will be built using the existing oil-based infrastructure (i.e. internal combustion engine vehicles, power plants and factories, plastics, etc.), the price of hydrogen will go up as well — it will never be cheaper than fossil fuels. As depletion continues, factories will be driven out of business by high fuel costs and the parts necessary to build the extremely complex storage tanks and fuel cells might become unavailable.

The laws of physics mean the hydrogen economy will always be an energy sink. Hydrogen’s properties require you to spend more energy than you can earn, because in order to do so you must overcome waters’ hydrogen-oxygen bond, move heavy cars, prevent leaks and brittle metals, and transport hydrogen to the destination. It doesn’t matter if all of these problems are solved, or how much money is spent. You will use more energy to create, store, and transport hydrogen than you will ever get out of it.

Any diversion of declining fossil fuels to a hydrogen economy subtracts that energy from other possible uses, such as planting, harvesting, delivering, and cooking food, heating homes, and other essential activities. According to Joseph Romm, a Department of Energy official who oversaw research on hydrogen and transportation fuel cell research during the Clinton Administration: “The energy and environmental problems facing the nation and the world, especially global warming, are far too serious to risk making major policy mistakes that misallocate scarce resources."

Nobody needs to be told (well, nobody except a few flat-earthers and Creationists) that the time is long overdue for us to take major strides to diminish anthropogenic warming. We don't have time or resources for false starts along the road to that goal -- assuming the goal is any longer attainable at all, after the delays caused by the prevarications and procrastinations of Il Buce and his chums. Friedemann's article is to be welcomed as a scotcher of some highly damaging pseudoscience.