NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

Guest Post by John Thorogood

AEP is the most contradictory correspondent I’ve ever come across.  I’m ashamed to say that, despite the number of Nobel prize winners my old Cambridge college produced, he went there as well!  Sometimes, when he knows what he’s talking about (economics), he writes remarkably good sense and, especially, about Brexit (hahaha)!  However, on climate issues, he’s a sock puppet for the climate vested interested rent-seekers and his normally incisive intelligence totally deserts him. 

Having said that, abiogenic hydrogen is well known and, a few years ago there was an epic fail in Sweden in a drilling project on the Siljan ring led by a Cornell U academic Thomas Gold. 

http://www.geotimes.org/oct05/feature_abiogenicoil.html .

AEP’s article on white hydrogen is, generally, quite sound although from an engineering point of view I will take issue with his comment that “hydrogen has a little understood and incalculable advantage over fossil fuels”.  It plays hell with metallurgy which compromises steel properties (hydrogen embrittlement) and is incredibly dangerous to handle because (unlike town gas, a mixture of hydrogen, methane and carbon monoxide) it is odourless.

The key point he quotes from Prof Gluyas at Durham is “Nobody has yet made a commercial discovery ready for the market. As soon as one happens, there is going to be absolute frenzy”.  The operative word being “commercial”, i.e.: unsubsidised, unlike all other renewables, see above remark about rent-seekers……

Conclusion: academically this source of hydrogen (and also helium) has been known for a long time.  The latter being produced commercially in the USA and other places.  The challenge with hydrogen being the simple economics of exploring for it, being able to drill the resource economically and then design a production system to handle, transport and distribute it safely and at a price which won’t destroy our economies.  

I’ve spent the last week working at the vast Wilton chemical complex and it caused me to reflect just how much of everything we do or use (beyond mere hydrocarbon-based fuels) depends on vast volumes of oil and gas.  When hydrocarbon production ceases, today’s civilisation comes to a full stop.  But then that’s what Pol Pot tried in Cambodia back in the 1970s and see where that ended up.