The H Stands For Hype
The New York Times calls hydrogen a “renewable energy source” and other silliness about using an element that’s “a thermodynamic obscenity”
MAY 09, 2024
The Sun is mainly made of hydrogen. But there is nothing new under the Sun, and that includes hydrogen.
That Old Testament reference — “what has been will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun” — is appropriate here because the hype about hydrogen seems nearly as old as the Bible itself.
On June 10, 1975, during the 94th Congress, the House of Representatives held the first of two “investigative hearings on the subject of hydrogen — its production, utilization, and potential effects on our energy economy of the future.” The hearing was chaired by Mike McCormack, a Democrat from Washington state, who claimed hydrogen “has the potential of playing the same kind of role in our energy system as electricity does today.”
In 1996, the Chicago Sun-Times declared “The first steps toward what proponents call the hydrogen economy are being taken.” In 2003, Jeremy Rifkin, an “economic and social theorist,” published The Hydrogen Economy: The Creation of the Worldwide Energy Web and the Redistribution of Power on Earth. In that book, Rifkin claimed that “Globalization represents the end stage of the fossil-fuel era.” Turning “toward hydrogen is a promissory note for a safer world,” he averred.
https://robertbryce.substack.com/p/the-h-in-hydrogen-stands-for-hype
