> Zubrin is a neocon type who works in the defense industry. For all we know this could have been commissioned by some oil company types, or maybe he's just bei

> Zubrin is a neocon type who works in the defense industry. For all we know this could have been commissioned by some oil company types, or maybe he's just being cussed. I don't disagree with the over all message though. You'd have to change a lot of major infrastructure to make hydrogen work for a portable energy source. This credibility attack doesn't wash at all. Zubrin is a conservative thinker, yes, but he's not a spokesperson for the defense industry. He is a staunchly independent aerospace consultant whose project is humans-to-Mars. He's actually worked against industry interests since his plans are vastly less profitable than the cost-plus boondogles the traditional industry lobbies for (SLS, etc.). I think he might be speaking outside his element here, but I also think the date (2007) is very important. This was back in the middle of the worst parts of the Iraq war, with rising oil prices. Oil we got then was mostly from the middle east. People felt we needed to get off oil for economic and national security reasons, not because of climate change per se. The predictable result was blue-sky research into the hydrogen economy on things that really couldn't be deployed at that time (and still are barely deployed now, 12 years later). Zubrin's argument at the time, which this essay is a part of, was that we should switch to "flex fuel" engines which can take diesel or biofuels. Then we wouldn't be dependent on the sweet crude from the middle east. Now, in 2019, most of the oil we get is from relative friendlies in Canada and Venezuela, and we have better refineries for converting poor-quality crude from these sources into gasoline for cars. Improved battery efficiencies driven by mobile phones and notebooks have made electric storage for cars actually feasible. Solar efficiencies make locally produced energy economically viable. In short, energy world in 2019 looks nothing like 2007, and I don't think this article is very interesting at this point in time.