Hydrogen Safety Compared to Gasoline

In article , "LongmuirG" wrote:

H2-PV NOW, possibly a kissing cousin of Global Warming @ARMY.com, wrote: Katrina, Rita, Wilma, Ivan, Emily, Stan, Tammy, Jeanne, Frances, Charlie are all just previews before the main event. That's what happens NOW, not what happens when Global Warming really hits hard.
Safe prediction -- when "Global Warming" really hits, life will go on.

Sure, but what about human civilization?

Just as life has already survived for hundreds of millions of years (or longer), through hurricanes, volcanoes, Ice Ages, meteor strikes, nuclear attacks, Marxism -- oh!, and global warming. When global warming happens (again), there will be changes; but there will be changes even if global warming does not happen in the next few decades or centuries.
Calm down. Light up a wood fire. Enjoy looking into the flames -- it can be so relaxing!

We will live with hydrogen because we want to. All other considerations invalid.

Joshua Halpern writes:

1. Any practical fuel cell motor vehicle will use reforming from methanol or some such.

Why not just burn the methanol? Multiple conversion steps are BAD.

2. In a hydrogen cycle, the hydrogen is generated by electricity which is generated somewhere else at a central facility. If you John McCarthy the cost of electricity, then the rest of the issues are irrelevant.

Why not just use the electricity? Multiple conversion steps are BAD.

3. We are past peak oil, or damn near close to it.

Non sequitur. * -- * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews.

Don Lancaster writes:

would be 9600 square inches. At 10 kilopsi, the total bursting force on the container would be just under ONE HUNDRED MILLION POUNDS.
NOBODY but NOBODY could possibly be stupid enough to suggest turning these loose on the general public.

Even if making such a thing wasn't science fiction. * -- * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews.

"Nanook" wrote in message

In article , "Dave Gower" davegow.removethis.@magma.ca> writes:
With reference to methane, Sorry to tell you this but huge amounts are released every day from a wide variety of natural sources. Capturing some of that as a fuel before it gets oxidized is not going to affect the balance of greenhouse gasses. If anything it might reduce them.
This isn't my argument, but, I would agree with you when you are talking about capturing methane that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere in the near term, i.e., cow farts, muncipal sewage treatment generated methane, refuse landfill generated methane, etc.
But releasing methane that would otherwise be sequestered deeply underground in geological formations or under water in hydrate formations, is another matter altogether.

Agreed. Shaking the methane out of clathrates in ocean sediment would not be carbon neutral.

However, I think there are natural sources for much of the current heating of the planet, specifically increases in solar radiative output, and increases in volcanic processes.

Solar variations could explain only about 10-30% of the post 1970's warming. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=171 http://www.mps.mpg.de/en/projekte/sun-climate/
Volcanoes in general have a short term cooling effect due to putting aerosols into the stratosphere. Their output of CO2 is very small compared to anthropogenic releases, about 1:150 http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/Gases/man.html

Mars and Pluto are also undergoing heating at present and I'm pretty sure that our CO2 output isn't responsible.

There is not any convincing evidence for anything but regional changes on Mars. This myth has grown out of a couple of snapshots of a single ice escarpment over a few years, hardly a reason to claim a long term global trend. As for Pluto, do you have a source for this claim? Pluto's year is about 289 earth years and it has a very eliptical orbit, kind of hard to make the claim you did above with such limited knowledge over less than one season let alone an entire single year.
Here's a discussion of the Mars myth: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=192

There was a 100 year period during which there was essentially no solar sunspot / flare activity; and during that period the temperatures were lower than normal on earth. Now, we're going through a period where the solar activity is higher than normal so it doesn't seem unreasonable to expect temperatures to be higher than normal.

Look here at a few centuries of sunspot activity: http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/stp/SOLAR/SSN/image/annual.gif
The correlation in the late 20th century is not good.

The solar flux is also up somewhat. The Sun is considerably more stable than many other stars of similar size that we can observe but it still is to some degree variable.

This is a good discussion of solar influences: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=180

We find wooly mamoths frozen in the arctic with bits of apple still in their mouths. Now, present day climate wouldn't support any trees above the arctic circle but at one time there were apple trees there, a temperate climate had to exist at that time. But we weren't around pumping CO2 into the air back then so there must have been other things contributing to the warmth in the arctic then.

Do you happen to have any reference for this apple-eating wooly mammoth thing?
Yes, climate has varied in the past and it haas varied for many different reasons some better understood than others. The present day climate change is very well understood and is different. Simply noting that something happened before without humans does not in any logical way show that humans are not causing it today.
The other important difference between the glacial-interglacial cycles is the rapidity of the current change. It is on the order of 100 times faster today. This may also not be unprecedented in geologocal history but there is very strong evidence that whenever such a change has happened, whatever the cause, it was a catastrophic event for the biosphere.
-- Coby Beck (remove #\Space "coby 101 @ bigpond . com")

"Nanook" wrote in message

My own personal viewpoint is even if we had been producing no CO2, we'd still be seeing global warming right now from natural sources.
I think we're making it happen faster and more dramatically, but I think it would happen with or without us.

Have a look here for a comparison of global temperature hindcasts over the last century with and without anthropogenic influences: http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/figspm-4.htm
According to the AOCGCM's, not perfect but better than your or my specutations, without human influences we would have seen a slight cooling.
-- Coby Beck (remove #\Space "coby 101 @ bigpond . com")

"Nanook" wrote in message

In article , "LongmuirG" writes: Thomas Lee Elifritz wrote: Apparently GHG emission is not part of your scientific vocabulary?
If you dig a little deeper, you will find that the scientific term for molecules which absorb & re-emit infra-red radiation is "Radiatively Active Gas".
"Green House Gas" was a junk science term, popularized by political extremists with no understanding of science and even less interest. It is not clear if the extremists adopted "GHG" out of ignorance, or if they were frightened by the concept of radiation in Radiatively Active Gas.
Either way, the extremists drive the funding, and once proud scientists are now using the junk science term -- especially when they are looking for funding. It tells us something about the anthropogenic global warming alarmists that even their language is the language of junk science.
I think you're typing a lot without really saying anything.

I have to agree with that!

Solar radiation peaks in the visible but is also significant in near IR. When it is absorbed by the ground and warms the ground, the ground re-radiates it in the millimeter range, 1000x longer wavelength.
If you have a gas that is transparent in the micron range but opaque in the millimeter wavelength region, you have a "Greenhouse Gas", there is nothing "junk" about this term; it is analogous to glass used in greenhouses which is transparent in the micron range and opaque in the millimeter range.

However, he has one small thing correct: the Greenhouse Effect is misnamed. The way a greenhouse works is by trapping air, not radiation. By stopping convective cooling the ground and surface air temperature inside the greenhouse gets much warmer than the surroundings. It is fundamentally different than what is now widely refferred to as the earth's greenhouse effect.
Is this evidence that climatologists are incompetent or quacks? I think that accusation says much more about the accuser than the accused.
-- Coby Beck (remove #\Space "coby 101 @ bigpond . com")

"Paul Vader" wrote in message

Joshua Halpern writes: 1. Any practical fuel cell motor vehicle will use reforming from methanol or some such.
Why not just burn the methanol? Multiple conversion steps are BAD.
2. In a hydrogen cycle, the hydrogen is generated by electricity which is generated somewhere else at a central facility. If you John McCarthy the cost of electricity, then the rest of the issues are irrelevant.
Why not just use the electricity? Multiple conversion steps are BAD.
3. We are past peak oil, or damn near close to it.
Non sequitur. * -- * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. Why not skip the hydrogen and go nuke.

So, this thread isn't even necessary.....

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Joshua Halpern wrote:

Global Warming @ARMY.com wrote: we know we have.
Most of those cost about as much energy to extract them as you get from them. You are talking about shale and oil sands. Oil has to be well about $50 a barrel to make that attractive. The cost of pumping a barrel of oil in the Middle East is a few dollars, if you don't expense the army.
josh halpern

Shale and oil sands are two very different animals. I haven't seen a good estimate of the cost to produce shale. There is no commercial production at this point. But oil sands is being extracted for total costs in the range of $20 - $25 per barrel now. A more efficient technology used by OPTI Canada is expected to shave about $7 a barrel off that when it starts up later this year. About 1 million bpd of oil is currently being produced from the oil sands, and that is expected to about triple over the next five years.

Lloyd Parker wrote:

Evolution is a slow process. Organisms cannot adapt to rapid change.

Obviously, you know little about the present 'state of the art' of evolutionary theory. Its name is Catastrophism, and is basically the study of how things change VERY RAPIDLY when the exrement hits the air moving instrument in the environment.
It is also why many folks look at evolution with very questioning eyes...
Charlie

oilaholic wrote:

Joshua Halpern wrote:
Global Warming @ARMY.com wrote:
we know we have.
Most of those cost about as much energy to extract them as you get from them. You are talking about shale and oil sands. Oil has to be well about $50 a barrel to make that attractive. The cost of pumping a barrel of oil in the Middle East is a few dollars, if you don't expense the army.
josh halpern
Shale and oil sands are two very different animals. I haven't seen a good estimate of the cost to produce shale. There is no commercial production at this point. But oil sands is being extracted for total costs in the range of $20 - $25 per barrel now. A more efficient technology used by OPTI Canada is expected to shave about $7 a barrel off that when it starts up later this year. About 1 million bpd of oil is currently being produced from the oil sands, and that is expected to about triple over the next five years.

Shale has yet to show an EROEI of greater than one. Oil sands are poor at that. That we are out of natural gas as feed stock for oil sands also needs to be considered. It means using oil sands to produce hydrogen. There is waste water that has to be dealt with. No, it is not expected to triple until 2015 and that is without the natural gas problem.
Once global production of oil goes into decline it could head down at some 3 to 5 million barrels a day per year. Two mb/d in 9 years will hardly make a difference.
Best, Dan.
-- "We need an energy policy that encourages consumption" George W. Bush.
"Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy." Vice President Dick Cheney

"Nanook" wrote in message

In article , "Dave Gower" davegow.removethis.@magma.ca> writes:
With reference to methane, Sorry to tell you this but huge amounts are released every day from a wide variety of natural sources. Capturing some of that as a fuel before it gets oxidized is not going to affect the balance of greenhouse gasses. If anything it might reduce them.
This isn't my argument, but, I would agree with you when you are talking about capturing methane that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere in the near term, i.e., cow farts, muncipal sewage treatment generated methane, refuse landfill generated methane, etc.

Trouble with this though, is when such methane releases are captured, the methane is then burned for energy. This merely converts one mole of methane into two moles of water vapor and one mole of carbon dioxide. None of which are routinely sequestered.
Is the radiant properties of methane that much worse than water vapor and carbon dioxide that there is any real benefit in this? Or is it just 'fooling' ourselves into thinking that capturing natural methane releases has any affect on the issue.
daestrom

Coby Beck failed to live up to his reputation, writing about global temperature:

This is a strange assumption. Why should the error band increase going back in time? Because the ink on the records fades?? Accurate thermometers have been around a long time, regular readings from hundreds of stations have been available since decades befor that record starts.

Think about normal scientific error bands. Start with what we mean by "global temperature" - you know, the temperature that is supposed to have increased by about 0.8 Celsius degree over the last 100 years? Is there a temperature gauge somewhere in the Sierra Club's palatial headquarters which reads the "global temperature" accurate to 0.01 Celsius?
In my neighborhood, difference between daily low & high is often over 20 Celsius degrees. Difference between winter low & summer high is over 50 Celsius degrees -- and we are looking for year-on-year average global temperature differences measured in hundredths of a degree? Quite a challenge!
To come up with a definitive annual average global temperature, we would first have to decide what we wanted to measure -- temperature at ground level? Or 1 meter above ground? Or 3 meters above ground? Then we would have to take many measurements and average them over time & location. Say we took a fairly coarse discretization -- one temperature reading per hour per square kilometer. Over a year, that would be roughly 8,800 readings at each of 510 million locations; 4.5 trillion temperature readings. We would have to correct each reading for calibration, and then adjust them all to a common datum. (Temperature varies with elevation, of course, and it is about 9,200 meters from the lowest point to the highest point on the Earth's surface). Next we would need to develop an objective unbiased methodology to modify those adjusted readings for local effects -- some of those square kilometers are going to include things like volcanoes & steel mills. Then do the arithmetic and we have got our annual average global temperature for one year.
Of course, we don't actually measure 4.5 trillion real temperature readings per year, so all we can get is an approximation to the true annual average global temperature, incorporating many assumptions. How good an approximation? Great question! It would be nice to know, especially when we are trying to measure such tiny changes.
Now, how do we come up with the global temperature for the year 1900? In 1900, horsepower meant exactly that. Sailing ships were still in use. No human being had even reached the South Pole, let alone measured its temperature. How do we confirm the calibration of old temperature records from 1900? Obviously, there are lots & lots & lots of assumptions in the global temperature for 1900.
It is fairly obvious that the uncertainty band for "annual average global temperature" gets wider as we go further back in time and have to rely on increasingly sparse, decreasingly reliable records. And if we take account of that increasing uncertainty, the alleged "global warming" trend may well disappear into the error bars.

Charlie Edmondson wrote:

Lloyd Parker wrote:
Evolution is a slow process. Organisms cannot adapt to rapid change.

Obviously, you know little about the present 'state of the art' of evolutionary theory. Its name is Catastrophism, and is basically the study of how things change VERY RAPIDLY when the exrement hits the air moving instrument in the environment.

There's no such theory as "Catastrophism" currently valued in biological sciences. The last major proponent of such an idea were the Creation-Science gang and they have been discredited by failure to do actual "science". Catastrophism had a prior day of celebrity describing Noah's Ark Geology, but that too has been retired for over a century.
"Punctuated Evolution", with punctuations of rapid divergence of variety, amid long eons of stasis, has been argued back and forth. The principle mechanism is internal, not external. Species evolve greatly and diversify greatly, when their homeobox genes are mutated. For most victims of this mutation, the result is death, stillborn, or painfully crippled short lives. A few out of millions survive to pass on the genes, mostly recessive, which infiltrates the species until recessive-recessive pairs of mates become common. Then the mutants not only have express the mutant traits, but they also have a selection of mates to pick from, relatively suddenly on a deep-time scale.
This is internal changes inside the organism, inside the species. The environment can be helpful by not being overly stressful during this transitionary period. In short, catastrophes work against successful mutations. Catastrophes can change the local dominance of a species by exterminating prior niche competitors, but that only changes the percentages of pre-existing players, not evolve new ones.

It is also why many folks look at evolution with very questioning eyes...
Charlie

No they don't, bozo. Nobody who has looked at the evidence has deep doubts that evolution is how we got here. Even the mainstream churches admit that evolution was the method used by God. Only the idiots clinging to ignorance question evolution as plainly visible -- after all, humans have created numerous "new species" by science for over 75 years now, showing it takes no God-like intervention to make new species. Nothing more than natural laws is required to evolve species -- you probably ate some that you bought from the grocery store this past week. GMOs make your cheese; yeast in your bread, beer and wine; corn in your chips. GMOs have escaped from the labs and farmer's fields and re making new super-weeds as you read this, with alien genes never seen before on planet earth. Bacteria are making human insulin which they have no evolutionary need of, and its a good thing too because the rBST hormone they give to cows to make more milk is an insulin-like molecule which may be important in causing the epidemic of type II diabetes. One out of eight people in New York City now has diabetes -- something new under the sun, but something unlikely to ever have occurred in nature peaceably or catastrophically.

"LongmuirG" wrote in message

Coby Beck failed to live up to his reputation, writing about global temperature: This is a strange assumption. Why should the error band increase going back in time? Because the ink on the records fades?? Accurate thermometers have been around a long time, regular readings from hundreds of stations have been available since decades befor that record starts.
Think about normal scientific error bands. Start with what we mean by "global temperature" - you know, the temperature that is supposed to have increased by about 0.8 Celsius degree over the last 100 years? Is there a temperature gauge somewhere in the Sierra Club's palatial headquarters which reads the "global temperature" accurate to 0.01 Celsius?

I am not the right person to give you any detailed explanations of how this is done. I would like to repeat one of my questions to you that you snipped: why should anyone think that the fellows at GISS are less competent than you and unable to think of the things you can rattle off in a usenet post? Seriously, why would you yourself rely on your own speculations? If you had any serious concerns you would try to find out how it's done, which from the wild speculations below it is clear you have not. I don't think you understand statistics and how sampling is done and how many samples it takes for statistical conclusions. Again, I am not the right person to explain it to you.
I will take a few pot shots at you below where it is most obvious you are off base.

In my neighborhood, difference between daily low & high is often over 20 Celsius degrees. Difference between winter low & summer high is over 50 Celsius degrees -- and we are looking for year-on-year average global temperature differences measured in hundredths of a degree? Quite a challenge!

I don't believe that it is such a technological challenge to measure 1/100th of a degree celsius. But anyway, I think the high precision numbers you do sometimes see are results of the mathematics and as they come with ranges and error bars you are really just creating a strawman here. You are also getting confused by number of decimal places versus significant digits. If we have a measured change of .8oC over 100years this is .008oC per year, both figures are one significant digit. That does not mean anyone is claiming they measured 14.003oC one day and 14.011 the next.

To come up with a definitive annual average global temperature, we would first have to decide what we wanted to measure -- temperature at ground level? Or 1 meter above ground? Or 3 meters above ground?

You must also ensure that wind and rain and direct sunlight do not bias your readings. Yes, these things have been thought about and standards set. It is not however required that every station adhere to the same height standard as every other, only that they each be consistent. No one cares if the global average temperature at 2 metres is 14.50 or 14.51 the information of interest is the change over time. Consistency is the only requirement.

Then we would have to take many measurements and average them over time & location. Say we took a fairly coarse discretization -- one temperature reading per hour per square kilometer. Over a year, that would be roughly 8,800 readings at each of 510 million locations; 4.5 trillion temperature readings.

This is just ridiculous overkill. You know nothing about sampling data. Nor are hourly readings required for this analysis, just the daily high and low.

We would have to correct each reading for calibration, and then adjust them all to a common datum. (Temperature varies with elevation, of course, and it is about 9,200 meters from the lowest point to the highest point on the Earth's surface).

Again, irrelevant except where you can show a particular station has changed its altitude due to subsidence or geostatic rebound or whatever else might effect it.

Next we would need to develop an objective unbiased methodology to modify those adjusted readings for local effects -- some of those square kilometers are going to include things like volcanoes & steel mills. Then do the arithmetic and we have got our annual average global temperature for one year.

Why do you find this so daunting? But rejecting the ridiculous premise of one station every kilometer we can avoid volcanoes and most steel mills.

Of course, we don't actually measure 4.5 trillion real temperature readings per year, so all we can get is an approximation to the true annual average global temperature, incorporating many assumptions. How good an approximation? Great question! It would be nice to know, especially when we are trying to measure such tiny changes.

Why don't you read all about it here: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2005/
Follow the links, read the papers, ask the authors for clarifications. Or do you prefer FUD over facts?

Now, how do we come up with the global temperature for the year 1900? In 1900, horsepower meant exactly that. Sailing ships were still in use. No human being had even reached the South Pole, let alone measured its temperature. How do we confirm the calibration of old temperature records from 1900? Obviously, there are lots & lots & lots of assumptions in the global temperature for 1900.

You are again arguing from ignorance and assuming that the people who study these issues know less than you. Why would anyone believe that? Why would you believe that? There are indeed issues similar to what you describe. But they are problems that get solved not issues everyone obediently ignores so as not to anger their Greenpease masters.
If you are dealing with all manner of random errors it will not effect your trends, the real challenges are in identifying sources of bias (such as urban heat islands) and coming up with methods for correction. But these are not show stoppers, they are things that very smart people study and deal with.

It is fairly obvious that the uncertainty band for "annual average global temperature" gets wider as we go further back in time and have to rely on increasingly sparse, decreasingly reliable records. And if we take account of that increasing uncertainty, the alleged "global warming" trend may well disappear into the error bars.

Did you look at these? http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/fig2-1.htm
The error range is way too small. Besides, that wishful thinking cuts both ways, why are you not warning us that the trend may actually be much larger?
Did you look at the borehole records? Less resolution but longer term and all modern-day direct measurements: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/globalwarming/pollack.html
Satellites, radio sondes, surface readings, borehole readings, ocean temperature measurements, world-wide glacial response, it all agrees. Aren't you tired yet? You must be because you ignored most of my post.
-- Coby Beck (remove #\Space "coby 101 @ bigpond . com")