Open The Pod Bay Doors, HAL (Digest #487)

>RE: 1) Global Energy Strategies. I submit that any serious discussion in
>this topic area is negligent without a critical analysis of Rifkin's new
>"The Hydrogen Economy": http://www.gristmagazine.com/books/books091802.asp "
>
>Dear SSI List;
> I don't get the connection between the caption, Open The Pod ... and
>Global energy, but I want to insert into the discussion a very useful and
>short but precise article on energy from Science magazine. The article,
>Advanced Technology Paths to Global Climate Stability: Energy for a
>Greenhouse Planet, by Martin I. Hoffert, et al, including 17 others, one of
>whom is John S. Lewis, Science Vol. 298, page 981-987 (only 7 pages) 1 Nov.
>2002.
>
Agreed! Compared to Rifkin, who rants on and on without much of a
reality check to science, this is the real thing.

It was, in fact, this article that I reviewed in the kuro5hin essay I
mentioned. Any serious discussion
of this topic is negligent if it doesn't acknowledge the points made in
this Science article (and unfortunately it's not available for free on
the web, but your local university library should be able to get you a
copy). Hydrogen is nothing but an alternate energy storage medium - it
doesn't solve the energy problem at all.

In response to "tangoman's" taking offense at my comments - all I meant
by your being "misleading" was use of "only 30%" to refer to the US
dependence on Middle Eastern oil, and then in the next sentence "over
60%" which was Asia's total import percentage. In fact, the total import
fractions are not that far apart. You can argue all you want over
projections 20 years out, but the truth on the ground right now is the
US is about as dependent on oil imports (yes, including from Canada and
Mexico) as any part of the world, and in reality more dependent than
most because oil makes up such a relatively large fraction of our energy
use. France may depend on imports for 95% of its oil use, but it uses
less than 1/10 the oil that the US uses, so it's dependency is in
reality far less (because it has other significant energy resources in
case the oil runs out).

It doesn't help our arguments (even with one another) to use numbers in
ways that tend to mislead.

Arthur