[Physicist]

Hydrogen, they say, has one huge, basic flaw: It's an energy storage medium, not an energy source. Like a battery, more energy must be expended in its production than can be provided by its use

This stone-cold fact first appeared awfully far down in the article. It should have been in the first paragraph; then we could have dispensed with many of the idiotic claims in the article, such as:

Hydrogen-as-fuel is a surprisingly old idea. In Jules Verne's novel The Mysterious Island, published in 1874, a shipwrecked engineer suggests that when fossil fuels run out, "water will one day be employed as fuel, that hydrogen and oxygen which constitute it, used singly or together, will furnish an inexhaustible source of heat and light, of an intensity of which coal is not capable." Verne knew his physics: Pound for pound, hydrogen packs more chemical energy than any other known fuel.

How are you going to separate the hydrogen and oxygen in the first place? By burning fossil fuels.

[chimera]

How are you going to separate the hydrogen and oxygen in the first place? By burning fossil fuels.

My thermo professor used to paraphrase the Three Laws as:

1. You can't win.
2. You can't even break even.
3. Things are going to get worse and not get better.

Hydrogen as a concept for energy trasnport is pretty good until one looks at the engineering issues. Fuel cells are okay except for the fuel transport and economic issues. Then of course Mother Nature comes along and insist we balance the books. What will be the ultimate energy source? Nuclear is pretty good if you're going the electrolysis route. I have tried many gedunken experiments centered around the idea of a sunlight pumped laser to thermally separate H and O, but developing a laser of sufficient power with a sunlight pump is problematic at best. Those who propose NG and other carbon-based fuels as feedstock for fuel cells somehow seem to be defeating the purpose of the fuel cell in the sense that you are still using a depletable resource in a system that seems kind of lossy for the applications a stationary fuel cell might be matched to, although you avoid the combustion step and thus the production of byproduct gases.

[hopespringseternal]

This stone-cold fact first appeared awfully far down in the article. It should have been in the first paragraph; then we could have dispensed with many of the idiotic claims in the article, such as:

Too far into this tripe for me to delve.

If only we could turn the ignorance, stupidity, and dishonesty of "science" reporters into an energy source, then we would have something worth talking about.