Smelling Land: The Hydrogen Defense Against Climate Catastrophe

David Sanborn Scott’s “SMELLING LAND” is a wonderful book and what a grasp of reality it conveys.  I found the idea of oxygen as a “fossil fuel” startling, but eminently sensible.  What a brilliant insight!  I had to re-arrange my high school chemistry concepts.  The writing style is delightful, projecting an unusually clear and broad vision.

We all know, to some degree, that we are in the waning stages of the “hydrocarbon era”.  We can reduce personal energy consumption, buy smaller cars, walk more, turn down the heat and lights, but such moves only delay the inevitable.  Even if there were an unlimited supply of oil, the attendant carbon emissions would force us in new directions.  The author conveys this reality simply, and most convincingly.  His insights, and a grasp of the facts on which he bases them, could have a profound impact on the future - if they reached the right people.  If all university engineering, physics, and chemistry students were exposed to such a lucid and fundamental vision, our future scientists would steer us in new directions.

The approach should begin with high school chemistry and physics courses.  At this level humans have surprising difficulties with fundamental physics concepts.  The focused study of physics “unmuddles” the mind, and in high school the “unmuddling” process is still in the early stages. The focus should be on addressing energy concepts in depth to provide the necessary foundation to grasp the concept of exergy, the available energy associated with a physical process.  Current high school “once-over-lightly” approaches create a false sense of understanding that is difficult to overcome at more advanced levels.

At the university level, students in the physical sciences should have a major encounter with thermodynamics.  In my opinion, the undergraduate teaching of thermodynamics needs a whole fresh approach.  It is frequently treated like a neglected stepchild, and often poorly understood by those trying to teach it.  The author’s insights and understanding would add great interest and a new sense of urgency to that field.

The general public must also become involved.  The author’s ideas can easily be conveyed to intelligent lay people, and I am convinced that considerable public interest and discussion would result.  Who would not be enthralled by the thought of a small fuel cell in the basement generating electricity for appliances and light, as well as looking after heating and cooling. Widely-read news magazines could probably be readily convinced to bring the reality before the public.

The author not only makes us aware of the urgency of the current situation, but he proposes a simple and realistic solution, justifying it with seemingly-irrefutable logic.  He makes a most convincing argument that our future will be powered by hydrogen and electricity.  He calls it “hydricity”.

If we can convince ourselves logically that a move in this new direction is not only necessary, but clearly inevitable, we must assume the new direction decisively, marshaling all of our technical and intellectual resources to conquer the technical hurdles.  A second Manhattan Project is called for.  It will take us in new directions, and the entire world will happily follow.  There will be loud interference from vested interests but for that we can prepare ourselves beforehand. 

 Hart Bezner

Hi.

It took ages, but I finally completed my reading of Smelling Land, and candidly, it is the best book on this topic that I have ever seen. It truly looks at systems rather than pieces and for me, that has been inspiring, and great source of direction.

I attach a graph that I did recently. It shows a building in downtown Vancouver that was the subject of a Power Smart Retrofit. BC Hydro had the building reviewed and they upgraded a number of systems. One project was a lighting retrofit – and I have plotted the result. The graph is a little mean to Hydro because electricity consumption is lot higher than steam use, but the percentages tell the story. (In absolute numbers, total energy use was less after the retrofit – but GHG did increase significantly…) They replaced a lot  of lighting and turned off computers – reducing the electric load – and increasing the heating load (aka the Toronto experience that you described in the book). The alarming thing at the end of this is that GHG emissions that everyone is worried about went up by more than 10%.

I would like to use this sort of data to encourage the government to give Power Smart the mandate to look at total energy use and Total GHG emissions and then see what they can do. I would suspect that they will get a different answer. Lighting retrofits that seem to be the major focus – while useful in summer, outside uses, and in places where they are not just diverting heating load to fossil fuel, need to be put to better use.

Malcolm M.

LVO P. Eng.

Chief Technology Officer

Sempa Power Systems Ltd.

Ok.  Now that you’ve read the book (or part of it), what do you think Al Gore would think of Smelling Land?

The enhanced edition of Smelling Land: The Hydrogen Defense Against Climate Catastrophe will be available for purchase on April 4, 2008.

This area is designed to encourage discussion and interest about hydrogen as a fuel alternative.  When fully combusted, hydrogen fuel cells emit water vapor.  So, what impact would a hydrogen-based transportation system have on global warming?  Why is there resistance - by both industry and politicians?

If you have an opinion about the book and would like to post your thoughts, we want to hear from you!  The author, David Scott will be monitoring the blog and will comment periodically.

Thank you for your interest and we all look forward to your comments!