"limitless" hydrogen under our feet

[odysseus2000]

I think we all agree that electric motors with their torque characteristics and clean properties are hands down the preferred route and have been for a long time. Even those smokey old diesel electric railway units attest to that. However, surely the real problem is battery storage efficiency which is just not sufficiently advanced enough to accomodate most of our daily requirements. They are heavy, bulky and expensive compared with the calorific content in a typical ten gallon tank of fuel.

My unofficial sampling of folk with electric cars is that Tesla are fine and not that noticeably different from combustion due to the Tesla Super Charger Network. Those with other models especially VW, are less happy with range and chargers. A neighbour with an Audi etron is not happy even though it saved him several thousand in benefit in kind tax, but the range and lack of chargers stresses him. There is a range of variability in other marques. A neighbour with a BMW says its the best car he has ever owned, easily getting to his daughters over 200 miles away.

Clearly it depends on how far you drive etc. Most folk seem to use cars for shopping and school runs and any electric car seems fine and far lower cost to run and service than a combustion variant.

The success of Tesla cars is recorded in the remarkable statistic that the Model Y is now the most popular selling car in the world.

Regards,

[tjh290633]

A friend today drew my attention to https://www.ceres.tech/ who have technology in both green hydrogen generation and in fuel cells. There is a lot on their website, with many links to YouTube videos.

Well worth having a look.They claim 80-90% efficiency in hydgrogen generation by using waste heat.

TJH

[Jam2Day]

At the risk of upsetting a few ardent climate change folk, ironically, I am reminded of the wry comment made by Ahmed Zaki Yamani, the acting Minister of Oil for Saudi Arabia in 1970, notably, 'The stone age did not end because we ran out of stone'. The sentiment is clear enough. Progress is inevitable and should be allowed to follow its course over time through evolution and not revolution. There are far too many people looking in the wrong direction, but then, that is probably because they are being encouraged to do so.

[JohnB]

Have you read Jared Diamond's "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed". He notes that the Easter Islanders ran out of trees.

[Jam2Day]

Have you read Jared Diamond's "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed". He notes that the Easter Islanders ran out of trees.

I am aware of this, but I would suggest they were not helped by their own stupidity when a little land management and recycling would have helped. Rocket science it is not. However, to be fair, the Great Dustbowl of the US prairies occurred for similar reasons. Trees which bound the topsoil together, were felled at an alarming rate to make way for open farmland. Consequently, all that rich soil was washed away and blown into the Mississippi (always a challenging spelling) and dumped in the Gulf of Mexico. Aw gee, shucks. The same thing, of course, is happening in South America where huge swathes of slow growing hardwood forest have been decimated to make way for cattle farmers to provide Joe Six Pack from the US of A with copious quantities of life challenging burgers. Funny old world.

[XFool]

These are not, IMO, symmetric positions: On the one hand Trump, on the other hand... whoever you like!
We know that anything Trump says is BS (well, don't we?) and not an argument for anything, So we only need to concern ourselves with assessing the other side.

No we don't.

With Trump on one side, yes we do!

There are a number of well respected scientists who don't agree with the co2 argument, but are not vocal due to fear of losing grant money.

Umm... Sounds dubious to me. It sounds like the claims of 'mavericks' who always claim that "the priesthood" is against them, suppressing their ideas.

They have various ideas, many associated with changes in solar output and it is hard to be sure that they are wrong and the co2 arguments are right.

I'm sure they do. But do they have the evidence that solar output has altered significantly over the last 200 years and by what mechanism? AFAIK the consensus is that the sun's output has not varied by a significant amount over two centuries.

There have been many consensus in science that have proved to be wrong. At one time anyone who mentioned continental drift would be failed in Oxford Geology. I had a contact there who outlined how hostile the vast majority of the community was to the ideas of continental drift and then when the undersea evidence appeared the entire field embraced continental drift. I could cite many other examples.

I knew this would come up and of course it is true. Whence, science being a progressive enterprise, the originally maverick view - when real evidence is clear - becomes incorporated into the mainstream and in its turn becomes part of the consensus. That's science!

However, the parallel view - often implied and pushed by alternative or anti-science sources - "I am a maverick (like Galileo etc.) so my views must be right!", doesn't usually work out; especially in the absence of agreement with evidence and reality.

In the 1960's fears of a coming ice age were common.

So it is said, often on climate change denier sites.

Well, I remember Fred Hoyle wrote a book called "Ice", I think (but in the early 1980s). Interestingly, there were concerns about SO2 emissions and aerosols causing cooling. I believe none other than Mr Climate himself (James Hansen) was even involved in the early research. But then, advances in understanding revealed the real problem. That science once held the phlogiston theory of heat doesn't prove the science of thermodynamics is dubious. And remember, we now know that long ago, back in the 1960s/70s, global warming was already recognised by some scientists. The problem being that they were the scientists best placed to understand the issue - scientists working in the oil industry for Exxon.

The scientists hired by big oil who predicted the climate crisis long ago

The Guardian

Experts’ discoveries lie at the heart of two dozen lawsuits that hope to hold the industry accountable for devastating damage

[odysseus2000]

XFool
Umm... Sounds dubious to me. It sounds like the claims of 'mavericks' who always claim that "the priesthood" is against them, suppressing their ideas.

odysseus2000 wrote:
They have various ideas, many associated with changes in solar output and it is hard to be sure that they are wrong and the co2 arguments are right.

I'm sure they do. But do they have the evidence that solar output has altered significantly over the last 200 years and by what mechanism? AFAIK the consensus is that the sun's output has not varied by a significant amount over two centuries.

Science rarely ever reaches a definite conclusion until forced into to something by experiment or observation.

There are arguments based on the known output of the sun and modelling of the future that are in conflict with other models which are also based on future modelling and put things down to co2. The entire situation is extremely complex and with out co2 there is a belief by some that the earth would have average temperatures well below the freezing point of water. For example have a look at this

https://web.archive.org/web/20210605120 ... -calculate

I have no idea who is right. We currently have rising temperatures, but not so long ago we had a mini-ice age. As I have said I think humanity ought to move away from co2 generating fuels for many reasons, but I can not say from my scientific studies that e.g. Trump is clearly wrong and co2 is clearly causing climate change. There are very complicated arguments both ways and complex systems like this often develop in ways that no one predicts with often surprising feedback loops that suddenly become important as systems evolve. In the solar system we have a hot planet Venus, believed due to a greenhouse trapping of gas and a cold planet Mars, believed to be due to not having enough trapping of sun light and the orbit of the Earth is between the two.

Regards,

[ursaminortaur]

XFool
Umm... Sounds dubious to me. It sounds like the claims of 'mavericks' who always claim that "the priesthood" is against them, suppressing their ideas.

odysseus2000 wrote:
They have various ideas, many associated with changes in solar output and it is hard to be sure that they are wrong and the co2 arguments are right.

I'm sure they do. But do they have the evidence that solar output has altered significantly over the last 200 years and by what mechanism? AFAIK the consensus is that the sun's output has not varied by a significant amount over two centuries.

Science rarely ever reaches a definite conclusion until forced into to something by experiment or observation.

There are arguments based on the known output of the sun and modelling of the future that are in conflict with other models which are also based on future modelling and put things down to co2. The entire situation is extremely complex and with out co2 there is a belief by some that the earth would have average temperatures well below the freezing point of water. For example have a look at this

https://web.archive.org/web/20210605120 ... -calculate

I have no idea who is right. We currently have rising temperatures, but not so long ago we had a mini-ice age. As I have said I think humanity ought to move away from co2 generating fuels for many reasons, but I can not say from my scientific studies that e.g. Trump is clearly wrong and co2 is clearly causing climate change. There are very complicated arguments both ways and complex systems like this often develop in ways that no one predicts with often surprising feedback loops that suddenly become important as systems evolve. In the solar system we have a hot planet Venus, believed due to a greenhouse trapping of gas and a cold planet Mars, believed to be due to not having enough trapping of sun light and the orbit of the Earth is between the two.

Regards,

Venus is much hotter than Mercury despite being much further away from the Sun and this is down to the Greenhouse effect of Venus' thick atmosphere.

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/resources/681/solar-system-temperatures/

Mean Temperatures on Each Planet
Planetary surface temperatures tend to get colder the farther a planet is from the Sun. Venus is the exception, as its proximity to the Sun, and its dense atmosphere make it our solar system's hottest planet. The mean temperatures of planets in our solar system are:

Mercury - 333°F (167°C)
Venus - 867°F (464°C)
Earth - 59°F (15°C)
Mars - Minus 85°F (-65°C)
Jupiter - Minus 166°F (-110°C)
Saturn - Minus 220°F (-140°C)
Uranus - Minus 320°F (-195°C)
Neptune - Minus 330°F (-200°C)
Dwarf Planet Pluto - Minus 375°F (-225°C)
.
.
.
In general, the surface temperatures of planets decrease with increasing distance from the Sun. Venus is an exception because its dense atmosphere acts as a greenhouse and heats the surface to above the melting point of lead.

The Little Ice Age was regional rather than global just affecting part of the Northern Hemisphere.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

The Little Ice Age (LIA) was a period of regional cooling, particularly pronounced in the North Atlantic region.[2] It was not a true ice age of global extent.[3] The term was introduced into scientific literature by François E. Matthes in 1939.[4] The period has been conventionally defined as extending from the 16th to the 19th centuries,[5][6][7] but some experts prefer an alternative timespan from about 1300[8] to about 1850.[9][10][11]

Global average temperatures show that the Little Ice Age was not a distinct planet-wide period but a regional phenomenon occurring near the end of a long temperature decline that preceded the recent global warming.[1]
The NASA Earth Observatory notes three particularly cold intervals. One began about 1650, another about 1770, and the last in 1850, all of which were separated by intervals of slight warming.[7] The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Third Assessment Report considered that the timing and the areas affected by the Little Ice Age suggested largely independent regional climate changes, rather than a globally synchronous increased glaciation. At most, there was modest cooling of the Northern Hemisphere during the period.[3]

[JohnB]

These aren't beliefs, they are facts and theories, because its science. Of course without CO2 the temperature of the Earth would be below zero, that's because of its warming properties, and why more CO2 means more warming. Vague 'but scientists might be wrong, they don't know everything' comments are dangerous as they give self justification to people who don't want to change their lives. The same is true of this hydrogen nonsense.

[odysseus2000]

These aren't beliefs, they are facts and theories, because its science. Of course without CO2 the temperature of the Earth would be below zero, that's because of its warming properties, and why more CO2 means more warming. Vague 'but scientists might be wrong, they don't know everything' comments are dangerous as they give self justification to people who don't want to change their lives. The same is true of this hydrogen nonsense.

This is anti science.

Climate is a very complex issue & saying there is only one opinion when there are others is a faith based approach, not science and treats people as though they are too stupid to understand that different approaches come to different conclusions. We have only recently experienced mass anti science during the pandemic with all manner of nonsense presented as fact & governments forcing through agenda that had no scientific certainty. Moving all elderly patients from hospitals back to care homes at the beginning of the pandemic lead to many unnecessary deaths and happened due to bad science from the Imperial Group in terms of projected illness rates that were vastly higher than happened and there were many similar mistakes made with on going negative consequences.

Science is inconvenient in its uncertainty, but the alternatives of false certainty have been shown over & over to be worse.

One strong voice who does not believe the current co2 hypothesis for climate change is profiled here in wiki:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nir_Shaviv

Regards,

[XFool]

These aren't beliefs, they are facts and theories, because its science. Of course without CO2 the temperature of the Earth would be below zero, that's because of its warming properties, and why more CO2 means more warming. Vague 'but scientists might be wrong, they don't know everything' comments are dangerous as they give self justification to people who don't want to change their lives. The same is true of this hydrogen nonsense.

This is anti science.

Climate is a very complex issue & saying there is only one opinion when there are others is a faith based approach, not science and treats people as though they are too stupid to understand that different approaches come to different conclusions.

And yet you more than once mentioned the opinion of Donald Trump... That certainly is NOT "science"! Why would anyone take seriously the opinion of Trump on climate change? His opinion on the matter (whatever it be) is surely more irrelevant than anything in the entire history of irrelevant things.

Again, far too many people defer to what this or that politician or media say or have said. This is at root something happening in the natural world. Listen to what climate scientists say about it. That is what Greta Thunberg has herself always said.

We have only recently experienced mass anti science during the pandemic with all manner of nonsense presented as fact

We have certainly seen that. I know I have.

& governments forcing through agenda that had no scientific certainty. Moving all elderly patients from hospitals back to care homes at the beginning of the pandemic lead to many unnecessary deaths and happened due to bad science from the Imperial Group in terms of projected illness rates that were vastly higher than happened and there were many similar mistakes made with on going negative consequences.

Not so sure about those comments. Particularly about "bad science from the Imperial Group in terms of projected illness rates that were vastly higher than happened". I do hope here you are not referring to that well quoted figure of "He said 500,000 would die" nonsense, that was all over the Internet? Because that would be an exactly similar example to the above "Greta Thunberg said... <something she didn't say>" nonsense!

Science is inconvenient in its uncertainty, but the alternatives of false certainty have been shown over & over to be worse.

One strong voice who does not believe the current co2 hypothesis for climate change is profiled here in wiki:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nir_Shaviv

Well, if it's true, it will in time be confirmed by the evidence. Or not.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nir_Shaviv#Rejection_of_human-caused_climate_change

"Nir Shaviv has been a speaker for the Heartland Institute."

Um...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartland_Institute

"The Heartland Institute is an American conservative and libertarian public policy think tank known for its rejection of both the scientific consensus on climate change and the negative health impacts of smoking.

Founded in 1984, it worked with tobacco company Philip Morris throughout the 1990s to attempt to discredit the health risks of secondhand smoke and lobby against smoking bans. Since the 2000s, the Heartland Institute has been a leading promoter of climate change denial."

[odysseus2000]

XFool
And yet you more than once mentioned the opinion of Donald Trump... That certainly is NOT "science"! Why would anyone take seriously the opinion of Trump on climate change? His opinion on the matter (whatever it be) is surely more irrelevant than anything in the entire history of irrelevant things.

Again, far too many people defer to what this or that politician or media say or have said. This is at root something happening in the natural world. Listen to what climate scientists say about it. That is what Greta Thunberg has herself always said.

All politicians get their ideas from advisers. The point about Trump, whether one agrees or not, is that he might get elected & so in formulating a view of a subject one has to know both the views of folk who one agrees with & the ones one disagrees with. A barrister e.g. would be expected to know the arguments of the opposing council as well as of his case.

Yes, there are personal attacks on all scientists with opposing views, but I personally know him & I have been to some if his lectures that were detailed & well reasoned. I always seek out both sides to any issue & I make sure I know both as clearly as possible.

Regards,

[Sorcery]

These aren't beliefs, they are facts and theories, because its science. Of course without CO2 the temperature of the Earth would be below zero, that's because of its warming properties, and why more CO2 means more warming. Vague 'but scientists might be wrong, they don't know everything' comments are dangerous as they give self justification to people who don't want to change their lives. The same is true of this hydrogen nonsense.

This is anti science.

Climate is a very complex issue & saying there is only one opinion when there are others is a faith based approach, not science and treats people as though they are too stupid to understand that different approaches come to different conclusions. We have only recently experienced mass anti science during the pandemic with all manner of nonsense presented as fact & governments forcing through agenda that had no scientific certainty. Moving all elderly patients from hospitals back to care homes at the beginning of the pandemic lead to many unnecessary deaths and happened due to bad science from the Imperial Group in terms of projected illness rates that were vastly higher than happened and there were many similar mistakes made with on going negative consequences.

Science is inconvenient in its uncertainty, but the alternatives of false certainty have been shown over & over to be worse.

One strong voice who does not believe the current co2 hypothesis for climate change is profiled here in wiki:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nir_Shaviv

Regards,

Another one here with Physics Nobel laureate https://joannenova.com.au/2023/07/anoth ... astasized/

[mc2fool]

& governments forcing through agenda that had no scientific certainty. Moving all elderly patients from hospitals back to care homes at the beginning of the pandemic lead to many unnecessary deaths and happened due to bad science from the Imperial Group in terms of projected illness rates that were vastly higher than happened and there were many similar mistakes made with on going negative consequences.

Not so sure about those comments. Particularly about "bad science from the Imperial Group in terms of projected illness rates that were vastly higher than happened". I do hope here you are not referring to that well quoted figure of "He said 500,000 would die" nonsense, that was all over the Internet? Because that would be an exactly similar example to the above "Greta Thunberg said... <something she didn't say>" nonsense!

But they did say it: "In total, in an unmitigated epidemic, we would predict approximately 510,000 deaths in GB".

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/mrc-gida/2020-03-16-COVID19-Report-9.pdf, page 7.

But the important word is unmitigated, i.e. if the government/society did nothing. And, yes, 510,000 was a lot higher than happened, because the government/society did something to mitigate it.

Now you may well argue (and many do) that what the govt did wasn't always optimal, but to claim that the Imperial projections of what could happen if nothing was done were "bad science" 'cos they were higher than what did happen after something was done is akin to claiming that Y2K was never a problem 'cos no planes fell out of the skies, etc.

[XFool]

Not so sure about those comments. Particularly about "bad science from the Imperial Group in terms of projected illness rates that were vastly higher than happened". I do hope here you are not referring to that well quoted figure of "He said 500,000 would die" nonsense, that was all over the Internet? Because that would be an exactly similar example to the above "Greta Thunberg said... <something she didn't say>" nonsense!

But they did say it: "In total, in an unmitigated epidemic, we would predict approximately 510,000 deaths in GB".

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/mrc-gida/2020-03-16-COVID19-Report-9.pdf, page 7.

I know they "said it", but they said it in the same kind of way that Greta Thunberg "said" something she didn't say or even mean. Just like Greta's statement, it is all over the Internet - as an accepted and commonly quoted falsehood. That was my point.

But the important word is unmitigated, i.e. if the government/society did nothing. And, yes, 510,000 was a lot higher than happened, because the government/society did something to mitigate it.

Quite so. It was the model's base line figure if nobody did anything. Pretty well the only figure ever quoted on t' Internet, I wonder why?
All other - lower - figures were the model's answer to greater and greater possible non-pharmaceutical interventions.

Now you may well argue (and many do) that what the govt did wasn't always optimal, but to claim that the Imperial projections of what could happen if nothing was done were "bad science" 'cos they were higher than what did happen after something was done is akin to claiming that Y2K was never a problem 'cos no planes fell out of the skies, etc.

Indeed. OTOH I also remember what Neil Ferguson actually did say, admittedly as an-off-the cuff remark rather than in a scientific paper: "We'll be doing well if we have no more than 40,000 COVID deaths in the UK".

So, at around 300,000 COVID-19 related deaths in the UK, we can see how well we did in practice.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/totalcovid19deathsintheuk

As ever, there are facts and there is propaganda. Important not to get them muddled up, IMO.

[mc2fool]

But they did say it: "In total, in an unmitigated epidemic, we would predict approximately 510,000 deaths in GB".

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/mrc-gida/2020-03-16-COVID19-Report-9.pdf, page 7.

I know they "said it", but they said it in the same kind of way that Greta Thunberg "said" something she didn't say or even mean.

You're being clear as mud here and I'm not sure how you can say in the same sentence that you know they said it but they said it in a way that they "said" something they didn't say or even mean!?!

As shown above, they (Imperial) said it and it was definitely something they did say and they did mean. If you are saying that other people misquoted and/or misrepresented them (e.g. by leaving out the "unmitigated") then better to just say so, old chap, rather than this messy conflation of "said it", said, "said" and didn't say!

[XFool]

I know they "said it", but they said it in the same kind of way that Greta Thunberg "said" something she didn't say or even mean.

You're being clear as mud here and I'm not sure how you can say in the same sentence that you know they said it but they said it in a way that they "said" something they didn't say or even mean!?!

Oh come on! You have answered this yourself, above - before even I did.

What is the problem?

As shown above, they (Imperial) said it and it was definitely something they did say and they did mean. If you are saying that other people misquoted and/or misrepresented them (e.g. by leaving out the "unmitigated") then better to just say so, old chap, rather than this messy conflation of "said it", said, "said" and didn't say!

This should be obvious. Why is it not? I made, correctly in my view, a parallel with the Greta Thunberg 'quote' - also all over the Internet. Where she did not mean/say what she is commonly falsely reported as meaning/saying. This falsely (re)interpreted statement of hers is what is commonly reported and quoted all over the Internet as what she "said", rather that what she actually did say and mean.

In like manner, it was reported all over the Internet (likely still is) that Neil Ferguson had 'falsely predicted' 500,000 deaths from COVID-19 in the UK. This is usually used in order to discredit him, to discredit the IC science, to discredit the COVID "plandemic" etc. etc.

I am/was already aware of that figure of 500,000 in the IC report, but also of the table of interventions that it appeared in - where it was as you yourself have already explained - their model's baseline, "No intervention" figure. i.e. Something that was never going to be in reality for, even if the UK government denied the very existence of COVID-19 and did absolutely nothing, the public would get wind of something being up and take action for themselves. As it was, the UK government did not deny the existence of COVID-19 and did take action to intervene. What we may think of those actions is an entirely different matter.

There is more than one way of lying, or even of just being mistaken.

Seems simple enough to me...

Whatever happened to the hydrogen?

[mc2fool]

You're being clear as mud here and I'm not sure how you can say in the same sentence that you know they said it but they said it in a way that they "said" something they didn't say or even mean!?!

Oh come on! You have answered this yourself, above - before even I did.

What is the problem?

As shown above, they (Imperial) said it and it was definitely something they did say and they did mean. If you are saying that other people misquoted and/or misrepresented them (e.g. by leaving out the "unmitigated") then better to just say so, old chap, rather than this messy conflation of "said it", said, "said" and didn't say!

This should be obvious. Why is it not? I made, correctly in my view, an exact parallel with the Greta Thunberg 'quote' - also all over the Internet.
:
Seems simple enough to me...

I'm sure you knew what you meant.

BTW, I have no idea what "Greta Thunberg 'quote' " you are referring to. It's just another cryptic reference to me. Best to make such references explicit and not to make assumptions that people will be able to guess at any analogies you employ...

[XFool]

I'm sure you knew what you meant.

BTW, I have no idea what "Greta Thunberg 'quote' " you are referring to. It's just another cryptic reference to me. Best to make such references explicit and not to make assumptions that people will be able to guess at any analogies you employ...

OMG. In that case I both repeated what she had said (the gist, in my words, from memory) and gave an explicit link to her archived Twitter post in my original post (not my OP "original post" on this thread...). I cannot control whether people choose to follow them or not. That is entirely up to the reader, surely?

Plus, a certain base level of knowledge is surely necessarily assumed by people interested in/discussing a particular issue? Do I have to explain who "Trump" is? Do I have to explain what a "President" is? Do I have to explain what "the USA" is? Do I have to explain who "Greta Thunberg" is? Do I have to start with "A is for Apple, B is for Breakfast..."?

I only know what I know, I cannot know what others do not know.

[mc2fool]

I'm sure you knew what you meant.

BTW, I have no idea what "Greta Thunberg 'quote' " you are referring to. It's just another cryptic reference to me. Best to make such references explicit and not to make assumptions that people will be able to guess at any analogies you employ...

OMG. In that case I gave explicit links to that in my original post (not my OP "original post" on this thread...).

On the previous page I see. Yes, it passed me by, it didn't seem important.

But on the "said it", said, "said" and didn't say, if you thought that was clear then that's your view I guess. A simple addition of "others incorrectly claimed s/he said" would have made it a lot clearer, and that's my view.

Plus, a certain base level of knowledge is surely necessarily assumed by people interested in/discussing a particular issue? Do I have to explain who "Trump" is? Do I have to explain what a "President" is? Do I have to explain what "the USA" is? Do I have to explain who "Greta Thunberg" is? Do I have to start with "A is for Apple, B is for Breakfast..."?

Don't be silly.

I only know what I know, I cannot know what others do not know.

Indeed, so if you assume what other people know then you might find that people think you come across as cryptic....

But enough, back to the topic....