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Hydrogen lobbyist quits, slams oil companies’ “false claims” about blue hydrogen
- seventytwo 5y agoWhen are we going to make this and other forms of public disinformation akin to fraud? Some of the biggest, deadliest, costliest sagas now and in the past 75 years have been caused by society-level disinformation campaigns by organized groups. Yes, in the long term, the truth wins out, but usually after an incredibly hard fought battle, years or decades of damage, erosion of trust in institutions, and billions in profit rewards for the fraudsters.
- the-dude 5y agoI am wondering if you are hinting at the cold war, Vietnam or Afghanistan/Iraq. I honestly can't tell.
- sokoloff 5y agoOr the war on drugs, or the food pyramid, both of which are still happening.
- imglorp 5y agoOr smoking is good for you.
- PartiallyTyped 5y agoOr drinking a glass of wine every single day.
- q845712 5y agoleaded gasoline, the low fat diet, web 2.0, ...
- wolfram74 5y agoI was thinking the vaccines cause autism debacle, the manufacturing consent on whether or not cigarettes cause cancer, the oil companies holding their climatology research they'd finished in the 70's. But gulf war 2 probably counts too.
- mcny 5y agoI am positive growing up I read about how some anesthetic they used during childbirth in the sixties was linked to some kind of birth defect but it is ridiculous to say that about vaccines. Why is there doubt that vaccines are safe and that tobacco is harmful? I can understand reluctance to say too much of sweet smoothies filled with fresh fruits is harmful or milk/milk products are harmful because they contain lots of useful nutrients and the reality is very nuanced and our understanding will evolve over the next few decades. However, the topics you mentioned are solved issues. Why is it so easy to cast doubt about them?
- Retric 5y ago> Why is it so easy to cast doubt about them? Because people will say just about anything if you pay them to say it, and they will keep saying it for as long as you keep paying them. This feeds into people reasonable assumption that if to different people are saying different things these is some doubt about the issue.
- ben-schaaf 5y ago> Why is it so easy to cast doubt about them? The entire vaccines cause autism thing started as a disinformation campaign against the MMR vaccine in order to sell an alternative (expensive) 3 part vaccine and to win a lawsuit. The media gave the original paper huge coverage without actually reading it and it took many people a lot of work debunking and discrediting the author before he even lost his medical license. You never read "We got tricked into spreading BS" on the front page of a newspaper.
- throwaway672000 5y agoThalidomide might be what you're thinking of. Didn't realise until now that it wasn't approved in the US until the risks were well known. But in the UK at least "thalidomide was (supposed to be) safe too" is an easy argument you'll hear fairly often. >... a subsidiary of Distillers Co. Ltd (now part of Diageo plc), marketed thalidomide throughout the UK, Australia and New Zealand, under the brand name Distaval, as a remedy for morning sickness. Their advertisement claimed that "Distaval can be given with complete safety to pregnant women and nursing mothers without adverse effect on mother or child ... Outstandingly safe Distaval has been prescribed for nearly three years in this country." >Experts estimate that thalidomide led to the death of approximately 2,000 children and serious birth defects in more than 10,000 children, about 5,000 of them in West Germany
- danaris 5y agoHow about tobacco and climate change?
- brandmeyer 5y agoIn addition to sibling comments, I'd add Focusing just on industrial misinformation, I'd add - asbestos and lung disease - mercury dumping - chromate dumping - numerous workplace hazards
- jes 5y agoInfant circumcision in America is a good candidate here, sadly.
- afarrell 5y agoWhen we either A. adjust our social norms to make the world at large less punishing for pedants, “well, actually”, and those who do not “read the room” — when people are more willing to accept “well that was poorly framed but true” as a valid reason to keep someone in leadership. B. Make humans better at social interactions in general without somehow introducing tradeoffs.
- mistrial9 5y agoproduct liability truths are a third-rail in market capitalism translation: mass market products are responsible for a very large portion of the total economic GDP, and by definition, touch the lives of millions (or more) people each day. Product liability is a system of law where the brand holder does have financial responsibility when things go wrong. Truth, obviously, is the real effects of the products on people, living things, and our common environment. A third-rail is a real-live, high voltage carrier of power for trains, but the term is used to convey something too powerful to even slightly touch, at the risk of death and destruction. In colloquial political talk it means that a appointed official or elected official could be terminated by broaching the topic in public. from an "Economist magazine point of view" some products do cease to generate profit after restrictions or penalties on the market, which is "deadly" to profit. depending on your world view, many products today, like gas-driven cars, are actually toxic from the beginning, yet have so much economic and daily importance that it is collectively tolerated, until it is not. ordinary product liability, like "body burden" long lived chemistry rubbing off from sofas or children's toys, live in a gray area in markets where a change in public opinion or regulatory framework can alter the product and its market quite a bit at any time. since steady profit over time is a de-facto definition of social power, there are multiple layers of second or third order actors that delay, deny and obfuscate any change in status quo, and are paid real money to do so. activists, educators, researchers and regulators that try to change the status quo of products with facts about toxicity are then "touching a third-tail" source: research on electronics products life-cycle worldwide
- ZeroGravitas 5y agoSo, I'm very pro-green hydrogen. We need to start generating a whole bunch of it right away to start replacing grey hydrogen (fossil fuels split into hydrogen and CO2 and the CO2 vented) that we use for a variety of things today, including fertilizer. And I think it's fairly sensible to simply ban blue hydrogen and carbon tax grey hydrogen so that people don't get confused. Combine that with minimum green hydrogen mix regulations that set a glide path to 100% green hydrogen and you're done. We can bring those dates in closer once it becomes obvious it works and is the cheapest option. You've only got the political problem of corporations that benefit from the status quo inciting conspiracy theories and fascism to slightly bump their quarterly numbers. But, what I think is worth noting about this story, given that the guy runs a green hydrogen company and the other recent one about an Australian mining billionaire and right wing PM speaking out against blue hydrogen in favour of the green hydrogen their company produces, is that we've possibly hit a tipping point where starting a carbon friendly corporation is the best move today for selfish people who just want to get rich. Which is kind of a good thing, though it feels kind of weird.
- WJW 5y ago> Combine that with minimum green hydrogen mix regulations that set a glide path to 100% green hydrogen and you're done. This is only "done" in the sense that you are now moving in the right direction. It might still take several decades to actually complete the transition. New green hydrogen plants don't just pop up out of the ground as soon as the incentives are right, they take billions of investment and years of labor to construct. (Also, I don't think banning blue hydrogen and taxing grey hydrogen is something that can be done "simply". That in itself will probably take a decade to move through the slow-moving gears of government and even then there are other countries like OPEC that would not necessarily follow suit)
- ZeroGravitas 5y agoThose political processes aren't randomly slow. Someone paid a lot of money to slow them down. But my point was that the market for paying off politicians is shifting. The Australian ex-PM who repealed a carbon tax is now speaking out against blue hydrogen, because he has a stake in a green hydrogen venture. The game now is to profit from the inevitable policy response and leave governments and slow responding pension funds to carry the can for the costs of fossil fuel cleanup.
- lambdasquirrel 5y agoIt’s just so weird we’re supposed to get hydrogen from petroleum sources. It’s not like you can’t split it from water (with solar providing the energy). Everyone learns that in elementary school chemistry. Hydrogen doesn’t seem like a good idea for cars, too much dispersed infrastructure that needs to be built, that seems even more difficult to pull off than electric charging. But for airplanes, it might make more sense.
- dogma1138 5y agoYou can but it costs much more, this is why 95% of current hydrogen is produced from natural gas and hydrocarbons.
- brightball 5y agoIf you’re doing that, isn’t it better to just use natural gas directly?
- WJW 5y agoThat depends on what you need the hydrogen for. If you want to burn it in a turbine or use it in a fuel cell then yes, using natural gas directly is more efficient. OTOH, using hydrogen as a feedstock for chemical processes often can't be replaced directly with natural gas.
- digianarchist 5y agoWouldn't it be easier for carbon capture to occur when producing hydrogen and just let hydrogen consuming sources output water?
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- _huayra_ 5y agoiirc one main difficulty besides electricity is the cathode or anode material, as on industrial scale I think they may need to be replaced due to corrosion or something (again, not entirely sure). However, we really ought to solve that problem and then put hydrogen stations in sunny / windy places that just make the gas when electricity is available there. Seems like a no-brainer for the middle east with copious amounts of sun year round.
- seltzered_ 5y agoIt's worth noting that Jacob Leachman, a researcher at Washington State University, wrote against the Nytimes piece referenced: https://hydrogen.wsu.edu/2021/08/19/bias-and-green-vs-blue-hydrogen/ https://hydrogen.wsu.edu/2021/08/19/bias-and-green-vs-blue-h... To make sense of a few things, first, what are the different types of hydrogen production (from Leachman's piece): ‘Black’ hydrogen is produced from coal or oil with the highest associated CO2 emissions. ‘Gray’ hydrogen is produced from methane with steam reformation resulting in approximately 7.2 kg CO2 for every kilogram of hydrogen produced (this is the color associated with the vast majority of industrial hydrogen produced over the years, which nearly entirely go to petroleum refining and ammonia fertilizer production). ‘Blue’ hydrogen is produced with CO2 emissions but those emissions are captured and sequestered in some way, like geological storage or concrete. ‘Pink’ hydrogen is produced with no CO2 emissions but from a nuclear reactor and the associated nuclear waste (for what it’s worth hydrogen will fluoresce a beautiful pink in an arc lamp, just about the only color hydrogen ever actually is). ‘Green’ hydrogen is produced with no CO2 emissions, typically from electrolyzing water via renewable energy like wind or solar. From the OP arstechnica piece about Chris Jackson: "Jackson continues by saying that blue hydrogen is “at best an expensive distraction, and at worst a lock-in for continued fossil fuel use” which would derail goals that the country and the world have set for decarbonizing the economy. He takes particular issue with the fact that oil and gas companies have asked the UK government for decades of subsidies while also claiming that blue hydrogen will be inexpensive to produce. “If the false claims made by oil companies about the cost of blue hydrogen were true, their projects would make a profit by 2030,”" From Leachman's piece: " For what it’s worth, all you’ll see is green hydrogen in my CSA short course or on my blog, because that is the future I’m training professionals for. But you won’t see me slamming the door shut on ‘blue’ hydrogen either. The green hydrogen route with liquefaction that I’ve been pushing for over a decade now was long ridiculed using many of the same arguments as those against blue hydrogen above. Both the press and journal articles make the same mistake of casting as absolute extrapolations of the status quo without consideration for the limits of physical law. Those limits of physical law mean that if something is not forbidden, we will eventually find a use for positive means. What we really need is more research on ways to produce hydrogen (of any color) more efficiently with less global warming. Until we finally fund hydrogen research equivalently with batteries and electricity, all of this negative bias about hydrogen is turning my hair gray; no, let’s call it silver." (via https://twitter.com/hydrogenprof/status/1428359262506393602 https://twitter.com/hydrogenprof/status/1428359262506393602 ) Keep in mind the research funding is seemingly dependent on grants and funding from oil companies.
- loicd 5y agoI fail to see an economic future for hydrogen as a fuel source. If it is produced from e.g. methane (the blue version), then we are burning more methane than we would have if we had been using the methane directly. If it is produced from electricity and water (the green version), then we are wasting electricity that could have been used directly in BEVs. At the end of the day, hydrogen is always going to cost more than the energy source that was used to produce it, and it will not be competitive against solutions that use that primary energy source directly.
- Robotbeat 5y agoYup. The exception is industrial processes that use hydrogen chemically, like ammonia production and steel production.
- verelo 5y agoSo i kind of agree but wonder if it is usable as a means of storage of energy. Electricity is easy to generate but hard to store, we have done a great job of figuring out how to safely store gases. Could we not generate electricity in areas where it’s not needed and simply ship in the hydrogen? I feel like it’s a useful tool in the journey of replaying a fossil fuel economy.
- bayindirh 5y agoIsn't hydrogen is one of the hardest gases to store, and seeps out of almost everything due to being the tiniest atom/molecule of all?
- croes 5y agoIt's pretty simple. If it's a claim by big oil, it's most likely a lie.
- webreac 5y agoSo true. Wind turbines are supported by the gas lobby because thermal power plants are needed to compensate for wind variations. This same lobby is pushing blue hydrogen against green. But if wind turbines were used to produce green hydrogen, many problems would be solved : energy storage, energy transport.
- pa7x1 5y agoI think this is the way. The only way to go truly green is to install over capacity of renewables and store the excess to handle their variability. I haven't done the math but I have the impression that Li-Ion storage at that scale is not feasible or would take us too long, so I think a balance of H_2 production from excess clean production, hydroelectric storage where possible and Li-Ion will be needed. H_2 is also the only clean solution for certain forms of transportation, e.g., cargo shipping, air transportation, substitution of diesel trains and likely even heavy duty trucks. So we will need some form of clean H_2 if we want to make a clean transition in those areas. H_2 is not the devil, we must steer away from so called Blue Hydrogen (and worse forms of H_2 production). But Green Hydrogen is very likely part of the solution. At least I don't see other way out.
- duped 5y agoOr we can just use a proven technology like nuclear
- pa7x1 5y agoI'm myself a big nuclear proponent and I would like to see bigger funding towards achieving fusion. With that said, nuclear cannot solve the issues mentioned. It's great for base-load but not great to handle renewable energy variability. For that we nowadays use thermal power stations that burn fossil fuels and can be turned on and off easier. So I agree on nuclear being part of a clean energetic mix but it can't fix the problems mentioned in the post above.
- baktubi 5y agoI would like to see something like biodiesel electric hybrid. It can reuse infrastructure and could use solar to offset fuel consumption.
- gambiting 5y agoYou mean like any of the Mercedes 300de/300de powertrains? 31kWh battery mated to a 2.0L diesel: https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/mercedes/gle/107851/new-mercedes-gle-350-de-diesel-plug-in-to-start-from-over-60000 https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/mercedes/gle/107851/new-merced... Like any diesel, this one could run on biodiesel with some adjustments.
- maxdo 5y agoit feels like these guys are from the same mafia group :)
- rob_c 5y agoWhere there's money to be made there's controversy...
- nikkinana 5y agoHydrogen is their last gasp. Good riddance! Of course it'll never happen because there's supposed to be a water shortage.
- macawfish 5y agoI'm excited about a slew of new carbon capture processes that are integrated with green concrete + hydrogen production. There are an assortment of them that take things like salt water/air and calcium and produce hydrogen and lime (and sometimes brine or additional byproducts that would need to be managed) https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cement-from-carbon-dioxide/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/cement-from-carbo... https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/combat-climate-change-researchers-want-to-pull-carbon-dioxide-from-ocean-and-turn-it-into-rock-180977903/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/combat-climate-cha... https://news.stanford.edu/2019/03/18/new-way-generate-hydrogen-fuel-seawater/ https://news.stanford.edu/2019/03/18/new-way-generate-hydrog... https://fuelcellsworks.com/news/carbon-capture-process-produces-hydrogen-and-construction-materials/ https://fuelcellsworks.com/news/carbon-capture-process-produ...
- Borrible 5y agoA disillusioned straw man leaves? Send the MOD Squad! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thank_You_for_Smoking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thank_You_for_Smoking
- kelvin0 5y agoThis mans powers his entire house from hydrogen obtained via electrolysis. Very impressive, the excess solar power from his panels is used to produce hydrogen by splitting water. Stored into huge containers. Of course, he lives on a huge piece of land, would not work for most urban settings. https://www.hydrogenhouseproject.org/index.html https://www.hydrogenhouseproject.org/index.html
- zeruch 5y agoGiven that I don't trust lobbyists from the petrochem industry, I won't trust one from the "blue hydrogen" lobby either. It's all of the greediest, dumbest scorpions in an opaque bottle.
- itsoktocry 5y ago>I won't trust one from the "blue hydrogen" lobby either. Agreed, I felt the same way when this article was circulating last week. This is a guy whose career was based on, apparently, lying about the benefits of his lobby. Now he's decided to take a more socially palatable position, and suddenly we're to believe him? Sounds like his trying to get a different lobbying gig. “Instead, they’re asking taxpayers for billions in subsidies for the next 25 years. They should tell the government they don’t need it. The fact that they don’t tells you everything you need to know.” Can't we same the same about solar or EV subsidies? Isn't the purpose of these subsidies to diminish investment risk and promote new tech?
- nnutter 5y agoPhysics Girl just made a video comparing hydrogen fuel cell and batteries. The weight to energy ratio makes it extremely clear to me that there is a place for both. As far as blue hydrogen vs. green hydrogen I don’t know the details. https://youtu.be/dWAO3vUn7nw https://youtu.be/dWAO3vUn7nw
- erpellan 5y agoIf it's made from fossil fuel, whether coal, gas or oil, we cannot afford it. Any 'solution' that includes taking carbon out of the ground is not a solution. The fossil fuel industry would love to sell us on blue hydrogen. They would get to keep doing exactly what they're doing, but now with added subsidies to pay for turning it into hydrogen. Blue hydrogen would be a disaster.
- readonthegoapp 5y agoShorter lobbylist: "I got my money, suckers, now I found a lobbying job in electric. We all gonna burn but I'm gonna have a/c till the end."
- jokoon 5y agoThe solution for transport is electric trains and very lightweight electric vehicles, like electric bikes and other 4 wheel things lighter than 400kg. All powered by nuclear energy. I even foresee a network of narrow rail tracks for cities, supplied by a collection of warehouses for freight for the last kilometer to supermarkets and shops. Such rail is much easier to build on existing infrastructure.