Why the hydrogen economy is a dumb idea

[tevarin]

There are no hydrogen mines on Earth. You have to extract hydrogen from some other compound (methane, water, etc), which costs energy

Comments

[anonymous]

Duh

[tevarin]

I'm a bit more optimistic. I think we can keep most of our profligate energy culture and still transition without too much misery. As oil prices go up, the incentive to find alternatives (and exploit marginal sources like oil shale, etc) will increase, slowing down the problem and turning a sharp crisis into a long term annoyance/opportunity

Re: Duh

[tevarin]

Ok, in retrospect I guess the points I made in the post are kind of obvious. But Zubrin's article really made me think about how all the various disadvantages of hydrogen combine to make it an almost monochromatically red herring for alternative energy research.