Smelling Land: The Hydrogen Defense Against Climate Catastrophe

http://www.buzzillions.com/review/smelling-land-hydrogen-defense-against-climate-catastrophe-review-11062983?prRo=0&reviewSortBy=mostHelpfulFirst&prRpp=1

Dear Dr, Scott–

It was a delight to attend your January 10, 2010 lecture in Port Townsend, WA. As a strong supporter of nuclear power, it was encouraging for me to hear your rational thoughts. I reread SMELLING LAND this past week and have the following comments:

Certainly carbon loading of the atmosphere is a problem that requires a switch away from fossil fuel carbon sources. But in my opinion, hydrogen is not the solution for road vehicles. An alternate and sustainable carbon neutral solution is synthetic hydrocarbons made with “bio-carbon” and hydrogen from water.

Of course, when fuel chemists speak of hydrogen fuel what they really mean is “synthetic hydrogen fuel”. As stated in the book, hydrogen fuel cannot be stored by any practical means in a light vehicle. Synthetic hydrocarbon fuel, on the other hand, can actually store more hydrogen atoms by volume than liquid hydrogen. So the question becomes, why use hydrogen?

Synthetic hydrocarbons such as gasoline, propane, and diesel fuel already have a supply infrastructure. Synthetic hydrocarbon fuels made from recycled bio-carbon would be just as carbon neutral as pure hydrogen fuel.

The synthetic liquid hydrocarbon economy is detailed in this report:http://www.efcf.com/reports/E08.pdf

Regards,
Bill Berson
Port Townsend WA.

This article sums up my thoughts and my feelings about the “Big Picture” when I contemplate action on one of the miriad symptoms of this perpetual growth sickness our society has.  As a “Romantic Realist”, I believe after reading your book that the slim chance of avoiding catastrophe and even reacting accordingly afterwards is what I cannot but devote my life to.  I am beginning to arm myself intellectually to meet the arguments of those I care about regarding “clean coal” and other wish-doms, but to further immerse myself in this cause is my goal; how can I do this?  I am hoping someone will “tell me what to do”, but none can tell me what to think. 

Thank you for the first step and hopefully the second!

Scott Maxwell

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/dec/14/climate-change-battle-redefine-humanity

An Open Letter to the American People,

I am writing to you today because I believe that just as the U.S.A. led the world into the Space Age and the current Information Age it should now lead us into the Hydrogen Age. It will be an age where cleanly generated electricity in combination with electrically produced hydrogen will serve all our energy needs. The only emissions from this activity will be water.

We are in a war. A war on carbon dioxide from which we cannot retreat and in which surrender is unthinkable. It is a war we must win and there is tremendous opportunity in winning it. Just as the U.S. emerged victorious from World War II and the Cold War as a stronger more prosperous nation so too will it now when it leads the world to victory over the carbon dioxide menace. I firmly believe that the way out of this situation is forward not backward and that a cohesive energy strategy around hydrogen and cleanly produced electricity is where we must go. I know in my heart that if the U.S. leads, the world will follow and we will all be the better for it.

I realize it is totally presumptuous of me to tell the American people what to do especially as a non-U.S. citizen. I make these suggestions as a concerned individual not as a representative of a country or any organization save perhaps a group of like-minded friends and family. It is impossible for a solitary person to make a difference because a solitary person doesn’t exist. According to the 6 degrees of separation anyone’s extended cascading circle of friends, family and acquaintances can theoretically reach anyone in the world in 6 steps. We are all linked by those we know and by a common atmosphere.

There will be naysayers who will argue that we can’t have the technology without the infrastructure and the infrastructure won’t be put in place without the technology. It is time to stop arguing over chickens or eggs and start building chickens and eggs.

Just as the goal of a lunar landing focused the broad vision of space science in the face of the threat of communism, the U.S. now needs a focused goal in the face of the threat of global climatic catastrophe. I believe that that goal should be hydrogen powered passenger air travel by 2015. This will mean developing a clean Hydrogen production and distribution mechanism that gets Hydrogen to airports and it means developing planes that can fly on hydrogen. This goal will capture America’s and indeed the world’s imagination. It will boldly set out a new direction for the world with the U.S.A. at the forefront. It will set the stage for spinoffs including all forms of ground transportation, new energy storage and delivery mechanisms and things that are unimagined today just as people did not conceive of the computer when Edison introduced the mass distribution of electricity for light.

Make no mistake, this is a monumental task but remember that in World War II, the U.S. turned its whole economy towards production of war materials in a matter of a year and went on to develop the atomic bomb in a matter of 4 years. Recall as well that the U.S. landed a man on the moon within a decade of setting out to do so with less available computing power than in one of today’s handheld calculators. Since then there have been incredible strides in design, engineering, materials, manufacturing and computers. The U.S. can marshal the resources of an unparalleled private aerospace industry, its space agency NASA, great private chemical and oil companies, a vast array of public and private utilities and the most extensive network of higher level learning institutions in the world. There is now also the internet which effectively links all the brainpower and cumulative knowledge in a world ready, willing and able to help work on a solution. No doubt there will be a severe adjustment process and transition technologies like plug in hybrid cars and carbon dioxide storage/sequestration along the way. It is critical however to keep our eye on the long term prize which must be set out and articulated as a greenhouse gas emission free world based on hydrogen and clean electricity. In these troubled economic times this can serve as the “New Deal” of the current century.

Although JFK’s inspirational leadership was instrumental in the lunar program and he often gets much of the credit, ultimately it was the American people who got behind the effort and made it happen. This is why I am addressing this letter to each and every American. Imagine if enough Boeing and Pratt & Whitney employees and shareholders said we want to build clean flying airplanes because we believe this will be the most important and interesting work that we will do in our lifetimes. What if American Airlines polled its customers and discovered that they would pay a premium for clean powered flights and then stepped up and said this company will buy those planes? Imagine if the great people associated with Consolidated Edison said we will re-double our efforts to produce clean electricity and come up with ways to co-produce Hydrogen whenever and wherever we have spare capacity. What if the workers and owners of EXXON said we will take the vast resources and expertise currently afforded to us by oil and commit some of them to the transport, storage and delivery of Hydrogen to airports? This is just an example but is it so far-fetched? I don’t think so. You can do this and much more. You are not a solitary person. When we think of Paul Revere we have a vision of a heroic figure riding through the night while we often forget that there were 1,000 common souls who got out of bed, put their pants on and grabbed their muskets and pitch forks. Al Gore has shaken us awake, it is now time to time to get up and fight.

In John F. Kennedy’s words:

“We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.”

I truly believe that U.S. developed hydrogen powered air travel would qualify as one of those “other things” JFK was referring to and that it will serve as a shining beacon that will lead the world out of this predicament.

André Colenbrander
Toronto, Canada

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.

David Sanborn Scott’s book is significant. It must not be ignored.

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.