By Robert Bradley Jr. — August 23, 2023
“If you want to continue to be frustrated with a failing worldview, stay in your present state of denial. If you want to better understand reality and be happier, a different worldview based on sound intellectual premises and comporting to the real world awaits. The choice is yours.”
In a recent piece in DRILLED, climate activist Amy Westervelt asked: “Why is Fairness Being Ceded to the Fossil Fuel Industry?” The simple answer is the physical fact of energy density and the verdict of billions of us all day, every day, resulting in a global market share of fossil fuels of 82 percent. (And that percentage should be 90 percent or so if government was energy-neutral.)
Ms. Westervelt should read Vaclav Smil to understand what energy density is (the sun’s work over the ages); why it drives energy markets (superior economics); and why renewables are worse for the environment (land and other infrastructure bloat). She should also study classical liberalism to understand business rent-seeking under political capitalism, government failure, and the climate-industrial complex. Yes, she is on the wrong side as far as “social justice” is concerned.
Amy, what about consumers, taxpayers, and basic economic freedom? Just road kill on the road to serfdom? In politicians and government we trust? Elitism begins with the climate power brokers.
———————
With the wrong worldview, Amy is perplexed and angry at a world that does not share her concerns, for the large part. Her article begins:
Now that we’re seeing such stark evidence of the climate crisis in every corner of the world, what is it that still makes people turn away from addressing the issue?
Amy turns to “fairness”:
People aren’t a monolith and there are lots of different reasons why someone might be for or against acting on climate, but one thing I’ve been thinking about is the basic concept of fairness, and how absolutely wild it is that somehow the fossil fuel industry has managed to wrap itself up in it, convincing people that its product is the only solution to poverty and inequality in the world, when no industry has done more to rig the system, tip the scales in its favor, and capitalize on the misfortunes of average people.
It’s a conspiracy, in other words. Not consumers making their best energy choices in the marketplace. It is Big Bad Oil polluting the political process and the minds of all.
Falling back on an exaggerated litany of weather alarmism, she asks:
It’s not [fair]! … Neither are the impacts of extreme weather events [resulting from] … the product they’ve worked so hard to addict us all to.
She then rants:
You know what else isn’t fair? The way they’re going after protestors while working at the same time to expand their own speech rights, or the billions they spend on misleading advertising and lobbying every year, or the amount of power they wield not only in D.C. but all over the world…more power than any one country’s government, or the way they’re buying up sports to make us feel even more dependent on them, or the way they tell developing countries they’re going to make them rich and solve their energy access issues and then just take their resources and turn their countries into plutocracies where somehow even fewer people have access to energy, the list goes on and on and on.
If only Amy understood political capitalism and Statism to find the very corrupted system that she advocates to advance her ends. Big Brother for me but not for thee.
She continues:
So how is it that the climate movement has ceded fairness to the fossil fuel industry? How has the world’s most powerful and profitable industry so easily convinced so many people that actually it’s constantly being victimized, that they’re the ones fighting for the little guy and really it’s the climate activists who are elitists, that somehow nonprofits are the greedy pigs, not multi-national corporations?
The answer is big, bad PR firms!
Well, as one PR insider put it to me recently, it’s not the companies that made that happen, it’s the PR firms! This sort of redirection is their bread and butter. Got a client with a problematic product? Connect them to something that people like instead—football, Americana, freedom; distract them with sporting events and museum sponsorships and scholarships for poor kids; project their problems onto the other guy, accuse them of the stuff your client is doing; connect your client to a cause, an identity; talk about the jobs they create (and never talk about the workers they kill, or the jobs they replace with machines to make more money); make everything about the demand, not the supply—they’re just giving you what you want, if you don’t like it, take a look in the mirror.
She then falls into an unstudied, elitist we are good, the world is bad.
The climate movement has truth and moral clarity on its side, and for a long time people within it believed that was enough…. Climate folks are waking up to that fact, and fortunately there’s one area where truth and ethics can give you the upper hand: storytelling. The fossil fuel industry doesn’t have any authentic stories, and even with budgets that dwarf those of any environmental group, it’s hard for smoke and mirrors to be more compelling than authenticity.
Exactly wrong, Amy. If you want to continue to be frustrated with a failing worldview, stay in your present state of denial. If you want to better understand reality and be happier, a different worldview based on sound intellectual premises and comporting to the real world awaits. The choice is yours.
Appendix
DRILLED states:
We independently report every story we publish and do our best to report accurately, fairly, and truthfully, wherever the facts lead. But we don’t believe that “objective” means toothless, or necessitates false equivalence.
If we have documentation of malfeasance, we say so. For too many years the notion of objectivity in journalism has been used as a cudgel to scare off investigative reporters, and to imbue the status quo with a value it doesn’t necessarily deserve. We strive to hold the powerful accountable across industries and across the political spectrum by following the story.
When corrections and clarifications come to our attention, we will update articles and podcast episodes accordingly, note the correction, and make any needed changes to headlines, summaries, and social media.
Amy, can you debate rather than assume climate alarmism and forced energy transformation? The importance of not making energy more expensive/less reliable for the average person and family? The peril of politics and knock-on-the-door Big Brother?
Energy density? >> A NO BRAINER — It’s called Uranium – U92
It is called Thorium Liquid Salts Cooled Reactors…….apparently there are some people still unaware of this fact.
No, most people that know anything at all about thorium MSRs know they are still “just around the corner”, meaning at least another 30 years away.
China just started one up – is that imaginary? China obtained the basic tech from the USA.
Please get back to me when one has produced commercial-scale power for one year at a >60% availability rate . . . anywhere in the world.
Hint: the first nuclear-reactor rocket, KIWI-A, was “started up” in 1959, more than 60 years ago, and you can see just how many of those are in operation on launch vehicles or spacecraft today.
They ran one for a few years in the 1960’s They liked it’s safety but you couldn’t make a bomb from the waste. So MSR’s are actually here not around the corner.
OK . . . 63 years and counting . . . I’m so glad that MSRs are “actually here”.
Where in the US can I go see one that is currently supplying commercial power?
Well, let’s present the whole truth here.
According to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (see https://thebulletin.org/2022/06/molten-salt-reactors-were-trouble-in-the-1960s-and-they-remain-trouble-today/ ), the test-only Molten Salt Reactor Experiment ran intermittently from 1965 to 1969.
This, from the aforementioned BAS article:
” . . . the fact that the reactor operated for just 13,172 hours over those four years, or only around 40 percent of the time. In comparison, the average commercial nuclear power plant in the United States operates at upwards of 90 percent of the time. The longest periods of sustained high power operations in the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment were between February to May in 1967 and late January to May in 1969.
“During its operational lifetime, the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment was shut down 225 times. Of these 225 interruptions, only 58 were planned. The remaining interruptions were due to various technical problems . . .”
So, 167 unplanned shutdowns over four years of intermittent operations (a average rate of one unplanned shutdown every 79 hours of operation). It leaves me wonder just who “liked its safety”?
I bet she lives off-grid and only gets all her energy (now and then) from ruinables and doesn’t use a car. If not, she is a hypocrite on stilts.
Apparently lives in Truckee California, married with 2 kids, so they almost certainly have two cars, an SUV for her, and something similar to a Ford 150 for him.
Wonder what they use for winter heating ? 😉
She thinks that reality is too confining.
https://www.anthropocenemagazine.org/2014/10/reality-is-too-confining/
The Donner party lived just above Truckee for a few months using only natural energy one winter.
Take EVERYTHING (goods, services, transportation, etc.) dependent on petroleum, coal or natural gas away from her and see how long she survives. These eco-warriors need to abide by these restrictions going forward, or STHU.
Now that we’re seeing such stark evidence of the climate crisis in every corner of the world,
We haven’t seen it in the U.K. Not even close
NOR anywhere else. Lots of weather of course!
Just the media slipping in ‘global warming’ or ‘climate change’ at every opportunity even the Maui fires. In Oz we have had a couple of double whammy’s with +ve IOD + El Nino (hot dry this side) or -ve IOD + La Nina causing very dry, hot and windy weather hence big fires or very wet, slow moving rain cells causing floods respectively. Sweet FA to do with so called climate change just good old normal systemic oscillations combining like ocean waves and tidal components to produce peak events, like sound and vibrations etc.
Two basketballers walk into a bar – OMG its genetic engineering!!!
Now that we’re seeing such stark evidence of the climate crisis in every corner of the world, what is it that still makes people turn away from addressing the issue?
Really? Every corner? How many countries have experienced unusual flooding over the past 5 years?
How many countries have experienced unusual droughts over the past 5 years?
How many countries have experienced unusual wildfires over the past 5 years?
And what percentage of all the world’s countries does that come to?
Or even better, what percentage of the earth’s land surface has been affected by unusual flooding, droughts and wildfires over the past five years?
The floods had to be bad now 73 % of the earth is now covered with water. Do I have to add the sarc tag? In the end idiots will believe anything.
Those who SHOUT “energy density” – as in this post – are clueless as to how energy gets turned into useful work. Sure, there are a lot of kcal per kg in gasoline or diesel or jet fuel, but unfortunately, the engines that turn that chemical energy into actual useful work waste about 70-75% of that energy as waste heat. Ever heard of a radiator? Or a fossil-fueled power plant that doesn’t feature a humongous cooling system? Where the heck do you think all that waste heat comes from? What the heck do you think “waste heat” means?
Even nuclear, as the commenter SteveG points out, which has much higher intrinsic energy density than fossil fuels, still wastes about 70% of that energy into waste heat.
Anyway, for purposes of vehicles and aircraft, hydrogen is easily stored in enough quantity to provide equivalent operating range to gas or diesel vehicles or aircraft. Hydrogen is as dense as the engineers want to compress it to – to 10,000 psi or more. It’s just structure, and the weight of fuel saved more than compensates for the weight of a high pressure tank to hold the miniscule amount of hydrogen needed to provide hundreds of miles of range. The same can be adapted to any vehicle or aircraft.
There are lots of arguments against the EV industry and PV panel industry that DO make sense, such as China’s dominance in the markets. Essentially we’re rewarding China while punishing Russia with our oil policy and electrification policy. That needs to be considered.
In any event the fossil fuel industry is real and dominant and functions extremely well, so to throw it all away for the religion and left wing politics of global warmunism is sheer insanity.
Over time, we’ll all be driving or flying vehicles and aircraft that are electrified, either directly via batteries or indirectly via fuel cells, and generating electrical power from something other than carnot cycle power plants fueled by fossils or even nuclear. Guaranteed, because the efficiency is much higher from fuel to wheels or fuel to your home or business than any internal combustion engine or carnot steam cycle can ever possibly be.
But don’t shout dumb untrue arguments which only sound moronic to engineers and others who actually understand how fuel gets converted to useful work.
The average efficiency of an ICE is more than 30%, so the waste heat cannot be more than 70%. Jet turbines reach some 50+% efficiency.
A liter of fuel has some 10kWh of energy, which means 3+ kWh from ICE and 5+ kWh from a jet turbine.
The current Li-ion battery density is around 300 Wh per kg, or ten times less than the usable mechanical energy from a liter of diesel.
Besides, that’s the main reason of not having viable electrical planes.
The average efficiency of an ICE ranges between 25 and 30%.
The Lithium ion batterry delivers energy at an efficiency greater than 100%. Electrical power systems within any EV or fuel cell vehicl delivers greater than 99% of what it receives from the energy source. The electric motors in EVs all operate between 95-97% efficiency (motive power out to electrical energy in. Every degreed engineer knows this stuff.
Duane just looking over my thermo book and it says W = VI dT as far as electrical work is concerned. How does this get greater than 100%?
It also says Q – W = dE. How does this get greater than 100%?
Even if your overall numbers are correct 50 kG of IC fuel requires 500 kG of battery or more to replace it so the car is much heavier. SUV’s end up weight the same as a Humvee. And then there is the self important, narcissism of the drivers all pumped up by their self importance, moral superiority and ability to accelerate to 100 mph in a few seconds. Who needs our roads cluttered with EgoVees?
BTW, why do EV’s have ‘range anxiety’ associated with them? Because of the above weight difference and the engineering consequences let alone the cost and up fron ‘carbon footprint’ of the batteries and the over engineered chassis etc.
“The Lithium ion batterry delivers energy at an efficiency
greater than 100%.” so with a Lithium ion battery you get more energy out
of it than you put in? Do you understand what a perpetual motion machine is
after all you just described one. Just charging a battery and discharging any
battery you have losses. Where did you go to school? I certainly do not want
the “Every degreed engineer knows this stuff.” who knows this stuff
building anything for me, since it is totally wrong. Transformers are around
98% and do now work they only transform one voltage to another. A motor is not
95 to 98 % the best is around 90% and in a car that would only be at option
running speed. Enen at 90% efficient there will be lost heat. Have you every
touched a working electric motor most are warm and some you may get burned.
Duane…….Hydrogen is just about the worst fuel imaginable for vehicles of ANY sort. Energy density isn’t something that can be dismissed with a wave of the hand as you appear to be doing here. Hydrogen can be compressed, as you say, but nobody in their right mind should consider its use in commercial aircraft stored at pressures of 10000psi.
On the other hand, when you combine hydrogen with carbon it becomes hydrocarbon (like kerosene/Jet-A1) a safe, easily transported, light (low SG), high energy-density liquid that can be stored in unpressurised tanks on commercial aircraft. Being chemically bound with carbon transforms an inconvenient gaseous fuel (hydrogen) into an easily-dispensed, high flash point liquid fuel. What’s not to like?
Energy is much more dense for hydrogen when compressed to typical pressures in FCVs, which is 10,000 psi, than is contained in gasoline or diesel. About 1.4 kg of hydrogen will power an FCV for as many miles as the same vehicle with a gas or diesel engine that uses/is tanked more than 50 pounds of gas or diesel. AND a fcv has an overall energy input to energy expended at the wheels more than double of any ICV. Facts.
So I am not saying that energy density is meaningless … I am saying the ignorant don’t really understand that energy density is intrinsic energy (chemical or nuclear) input per unit of work performed.
Duane: Perhaps you can use your vast knowledge of hydrogen fuel to provide basis specifications for a hydrogen tank that will hold sufficient fuel to provide power for a Boing 747 and an 8,000 mile range. Hint it needs to be smaller than the airplane an weight less.
HYDROGEN?! Where do you GET the hydrogen??
Hydogen IS NOT AN ENERGY SOURCE. It is an energy SINK, once you account for all the energy used to produce it, compress it, store it (including inevitable leakage) and pump it WHILE keeping it compressed (good luck with that in the hands of amateur “fuel pumpers”).
Good luck with battery-powered aircraft Duane. The landing weight of a bpa is the same as its take off weight. Imagine….
There are already a lot of fuel cell powered aircraft either in production or in design/development now. They have the same range as any fossil fueled aircraft, but have much higher fuel efficiency and lower maintenance costs than piston or turbine engines.
Battery powered aircraft are a much bigger challenge unless/until battery technology is improved a great deal.
Right now, the most fuel efficient designs are either fuel cell or hybrid fuel cell-IC. Aircraft need a lot of power to take off and climb, but relatively little power is needed to cruise and descent. Hence a hybrid makes a lot of sens.
Duane:
Remember the first rule of holes!
There are also solar cell and human muscle powered aircraft. Neither will replace actually useful aircraft anytime in the foreseeable future.
“”Over time, we’ll all be driving or flying vehicles and aircraft that are electrified””
I’ll have a pint of what you’re having
I don’t think it comes in pints, probably packets.
Yeah but you only need a line or two.
Perhaps do some actual math or engineering research before making statements that are, in your own words: “dumb untrue arguments which only sound moronic to engineers”.
Modern cars are 34% efficient as per the following example:
4 cylinder car gets 35 MPG and needs 30 shaft horsepower to go 65 MPH. So it burns 1.857 gallons of gasoline to go 65 miles in one hour. That is 241.4 MJ of energy in the gasoline. (130 MJ/gallon). The power needed to move the car is 30 HP (which I have actually measured), or 22,500 watts, times 3600 watt-seconds per hour is 81 MJ. 81 MJ / 241 MJ is 33.5% efficient! (diesel trucks even better approaching 40% on the highway)
Hydrogen is a stupid fuel, and does not provide better energy density that say Jet fuel for aviation. Hydrogen at 5250 psi has a density of 26.1 kg/m³. Jet fuel has a density of 800 kg/m³. Hydrogen energy is 120 MJ/m³ and jet fuel is 35 MJ/kg. So we have the hydrogen with 3,132 MJ/m³ and the jet fuel has 28,000 MJ/m³. Burning either in a turbine will yield similar Carnot efficiency, of around 35-40% depending on the generation of high bypass engine. So bubba, jet fuel is almost 9 times better energy density than compressed hydrogen. (not to mention H2 embrittles steel, and can pass through most materials used to store it compressed)
Regards electrifying aviation – it is a pipe dream and hogwash! The biggest electric motor developed by Siemens for aviation is 1 MW. Which is a mere 1,333 HP. That is roughly the size of a small turboprop engine, or ones in medium sized helicopters. And current battery technology can’t even provide the 30-45 minute reserve that all passenger aircraft must have regards their “fuel” when you compare battery weight/energy to that of jet fuel.
To put some numbers to the problem let’s consider the ubiquitous Boeing 737-800. It uses CFM56 engines and at takeoff rotation speed, the two 737 engines develop 14.25 MegaWatts of power, and consume 5,448 kg/hour of jet fuel to do so (and instantaneously 14.25 MW is 14.25 MJ for a watt-second is a Joule). that jet fuel flow contains 53 MJ so 14.25/53 is 27% efficient at takeoff. (that is 19,000 horsepower, and a 777 develops close to 120,000 horsepower)
At cruise the engines develop 13.75 MW, and consumption is down to 2,043 kg/hour, or 19.9 MJ. So at cruise the 737 engines are 13.75/19.9 = 37.5% efficient.
Furthermore those 737 engines at cruise are utilizing some of the energy and a proportion of the “waste” heat to deliver 16.1 kW of electrical energy to power the plane’s flight deck and cabin, plus another 30-60 kW to both pressurize and heat the cabin air (at 35,000 feet the air temp is -55)! Electric airplanes must use battery power to do these things, further reducing the potential range from engine thrust.
Finally, an EV is not much better than an ICE in terms of efficiency for the same reasons as illustrated in the above paragraph. That is the ancillary systems needed to safely operate the car that are not part of the motive power output of the motors. That is HVAC, power steering and power brakes each of which in an EV needs separate motorsand heaters or refrigeration loops to operate those systems, whereas in an ICE they are merely driven by the engine, or a byproduct of the engine’s vacuum. All told when you add up all the ancillary power drains, the EV comes in about the same as the ICE example above in terms of final overall efficiency. ( the preceding items plus things like power loss on charging, discharging, windshield wipers when it rains and actually needing to heat the batteries when it’s cold, etc etc) Just because electric motors can be 90+% efficient does not mean the entire vehicle system is 90% it comes out to the 35-40% range when you account for all power draws from all systems!
Very nice write up.
Thanks.
That’s what I was thinking….the “waste” heat in an ICE vehicle isn’t always wasted. Like in cold climates and in winter. That “waste” heat is very useful in keeping the occupants of said vehicle warm, without any extra effort or energy loss.
Very little of the waste heat, even in winter, goes to the space heater in the vehicle – only a tiny percentage.
Most cars DON’T get 34 mpg. The ones that due are generally hybrids meaning they already feature electric propulsion.
The bottom line is that a typical passenger car with a 16 gal. fuel tank on a fillup today costs around $50-60 to fill up (14 gal fill), and the average EV getting a full charge with equivalent range as the ICV costs less than $15 to charge up at home … more on the road, but most EV owners charge at home because that is not only the cheapest but most convenient, and they never have to go to a gas station.
The true measure of efficiency is miles per dollar. Everything else is just the engineering explanation why ICVs are horribly inefficient.
Again, where do you think all that heat that is given off by the radiator, and by the exhaust and the exhaust system, and the hot engine, comes from? You don’t need an engineering degree to understand that, just common sense.
I don’t know where you get your numbers from.
None of my families cars average less than 38 mpg in mixed town and country use that includes
Toyota Verso
BMW 5 Series
BMW 3 Series
Mini
Citroën Xantia
The BMWs and Xantia have all done over 150K miles. The Xantia is a diesel dates from 1992 and rarely does less than 50mpg.
The fuel costs are not like for like. The actual cost of the petrol or diesel is around 53p per litre or £2.45 per imp gallon.
So the Xantia costs 5 pence a mile in fuel and 8 pence per mile in tax. The Mini and Toyota are more like 10p per mile in tax.
Your BEV will HAVE to pay a mileage charge of 10p a Mile minimum to replace the fuel duties and VAT then add the VED (Vehicle Excise Duty). Currently BEVs are subsidised by ICE drivers
My Peugeot 407 diesel regularly got down to 5 l / 100 km ( = 47 US mpg) on intercity drives and about 8 l/100 km around town (= 29 US mpg). Our Hyundai hybrid typically did about 5 l/100 km around town.
The only rational option in EV’s is the PHEV (i.e. ICE w short range battery). In Oz the average road trip for cars and light vans etc is only about 30 km (~19 miles) so a 50 km range is fine for 80 – 90% of the distance travelled. The rest is at maximum fuel efficiency so probably about a 90% fuel reduction without the lunacy of half a ton or more of batteries plus heavier chassis etc and putting up with rev heads getting off on 0 – 60 mph in 2 seconds or so.
Use of “average” where it provide no meaning.
Vehicles must be safe and dependable.
The vehicle required for such trips must be:
Selling EV vehicles based upon “average” should be considered fraudulent.
Most people aren’t any kind of “average”.
Then there is the problem, still, of people charging their vehicles during evening and nighttime hours.
What do they have in reserve? Hamsters in exercise wheels driving tiny generators?
Great taste, Ben!
Equivalent range?! LMFAO only if you’re a big enough SUCKER to believe that EV “range estimates” are anywhere CLOSE to *real world* range under *real world* conditions.
Sounds like you driver a car or truck with a large engine. Your expectations give you away.
My wife’s ICE engine car easily gets over 34mpg.
My GM truck does not.
Evaluation of Fast Charging Efficiency under Extreme Temperatures
Germana Trentadue, Alexandre Lucas, Marcos Otura, Konstantinos Pliakostathis, Marco Zanni and Harald Scholz
2018
“…
The present study focused on the evaluation of the electric vehicle (EV) charging process with fast charging devices (up to 50 kW) at ambient (25 °C) and at extreme temperatures (-25 °C, -15 °C, +40 °C). A sample of seven fast chargers and two electric vehicles (CCS (combined charging system) and CHAdeMO (CHArge de Move)) available on the commercial market was considered in the study.
…
The lowest and highest power conversion efficiencies of 39% and 93% were observed at -25 °C and ambient temperature (+25 °C), respectively.
…
Efficiency values of fast charging columns declared by manufacturers have been confirmed during the test campaign at room temperature (25 °C). However, the results presented in this paper have demonstrated that extreme low temperatures strongly impact the power level, the duration of the charging process and, consequently, the efficiency of the various chargers.
…”
The climate apparatchiks never do the sums, do they, they just flog the ‘headline’ idea and interrupt whenever someone starts to point out the details of reality. Crypto scumbags are at about the same level these days and you can trace the method back to the snake oil sales folk and beyond.
I agree, a superb summation of the essentials.
Now is the time to inquire about battery losses, during charging and also when demand draws from the battery. Even the wires require a penalty for direct current load usage.
“Ford CEO Gets Hit with a “Reality Check” While Driving One of His Overpriced Electric Vehicles“
Duane says:”…hydrogen is easily stored…”
Tell that to the Hindenburg. Why would anyone want a 10000 psi bomb under their butt?
I don’t want H piped into my house!
But you don’t mind having explosive gasoline in your fuel tank, or propane in your home heating tank or your barbecue.
Hydrogen burns with a colourless flame, has a habit of leaking and it is therefore difficult to detect when a leak is ignited.
Diesel (which can tricky to ignite) and petrol are not stored under pressure. Hydrogen is pressurised at about 500 bar propane at 2 or 3 bar. Unless you know something different.
I wouldn’t like anyone swapping a hydrogen patio heater tank with very high pressure hydrogen involved.
Why swap flammable gasses and liquids for something more dangerous in many ways, as you rightly say life is dangerous enough already.
The Hindenburg had almost zero internal pressure … and the hydrogen only burned (not exploded as you claim) because the envelope was torn allowing air/oxygen in to mix with the hydrogen. That has as much relevance to a FCV as a horse and buggy has to a modern passenger vehicle.
The hydrogen at high pressure cannot get air mixed in with it. It requires oxygen for hydrogen to burn. The only area where hydrogen is stored is at far greater pressure than the ambient atmosphere. If there is a failure of the storage tank (extremely unlikely) or even just a leak, the hydrogen will just vent into the air and become immediately dlluted and, of course, being far lighter than air, will dissipate vertically upwards and not into the passenger compartment. Unlike gasoline or diesel which if spilled usually spills into the passenger compartment, and being much heavier than air, leaves a concentrated plume of explosive vapors or even liquid fuel where the passengers are.
It is for the same reason that the second largest cause of fatalities in aircraft accidents, after blunt force trauma, is fire. All that fuel (JP4 or gasoline) causes everyone inside to fry, literally. That is what happened to the twin towers on 9.11.01 – it was not the impact of the aircraft hitting the buildings that brought them down, it was the massive volume of liquid fuel that burned and burned and burned until it melted the steel structure (as well as consuming every person inside the building.
Funny, not one of the cars I ever owned had fuel lines *inside* the passenger compartment. So how exactly does “spilled” fuel get IN there?!
And while gasoline is volatile and will evaporate and thereby produce explosive vapors, diesel fuel is NOT volatile and not easy set ablaze. Drop a lit cigarette into a puddle of diesel fuel, and the diesel fuel will extinguish it as if you dropped it in a puddle of water.
As for your comment below, the fact that you make such silly claims is an embarrassment to your supposed profession!
Keep it up and we’ll have to dub you “The Michael Mann of Engineers.”
My 54 Chevy was industry standard. For vehicles all fuel lines run in a protected shadow along the car’s frame. Gas tanks are under the car body, gas lines anchored to the frame run all the way to the engine bay and into the fuel intake system.
Even dishwater knows better.
Lots of air in the atmosphere of stars where the high pressure hydrogen has been burning for billions of years.
Duane says:”… (not exploded as you claim)…”.
I never used the word “exploded”. I quoted you about storing. You said it was easily stored. That is not true. The Hindenburg stored it in a bag at atmospheric pressure and it burned. So it is not easily stored.
People downvoting long proven engineering facts cited by an engineer. Gee, the ignorant sure know how to downvote any truth that doesn’t fit their narrative. Unfortunately, way too many of the anti-warmunists are just as ignorant and impervious to facts as are the warmunists
I’m an engineer (electrical) and I downvoted you. I work with motors and control systems in an industrial environment.
Bless your heart…
Duane says:”… facts cited by an engineer.”
You never put any citations in your posts. No links, no book quotes, nothing.
What is the energy required to disassociate H2 from something? I.e. CH4, H2O etc
And what is the energy of combustion when burned?
I admit my degree was gotten years ago but I still remember that “nothing is nature is reversible”. So you are talking out your you know what.
I was trained as and electronic technician, they was a time I could calculate the voltage and phase in an AC circuit and give you the power losses at each step. I work on the practical side and have replace more than one motor both AC and DC. Nothing big mostly old computer disk drive motors then the platters were 15 inches across. I at least know all power system have losses and those count up. Computer or car or the electrical power delivered to you they are losses and most are in the 2 to 10% range at each step.
Nonsense.
You have not stated one engineering fact in your battery vs ICE vehicle delusions.
You have been corrected by several engineers in this thread and they did use engineering facts.
It is downright funny the way you segue from bald faced lies to projecting your own ignorance and osmium brain density onto others.
No one here is fooled by you, at all.
” … hydrogen is easily stored…. The same can be adapted to any vehicle or aircraft.”
So, what type of hydrogen car do you drive? How much did it cost you, as a smart engineer, to convert your car?
(I would like to have a flying car too …)
The climate movement has truth and moral clarity on its side, and for a long time people within it believed that was enough…. Climate folks are waking up to that fact, and fortunately there’s one area where truth and ethics can give you the upper hand: storytelling.
Leftys don’t do irony.
Amy Westervelt is dysfunctional and proud of it. She studied some variety of communism at U Cal Berkeley, then started writing and talking environmental nonsense. She lives in Truckee, California, which is just west of Reno, Nevada, where liberals live to not be associated with Nevada, and where the honor is to pay 3 times more taxes than in Nevada. She probably has a picture of AlGore in her bathroom. All of this makes here wildly popular with other WOKE Dysfunctional Wakadoodles. In case you have a doubt, yes, I hope Trump is re-elected.
Her grasp of science/physics/engineering comes from a degree in “Comparative Literature”, whatever that is.
Carl Sagan predicted…..
Dr Sagan said something to the same effect in an interview on PBS many years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDCGnAYH-Aw
He warned that if the populace remains largely ignorant on matters of science and technology, then govt will run us instead of the other way around.
For anyone wanting to find out a little more about what role Ms Westervelt plays in the Clima-Change™ issue, I have two posts on her at my GelbspanFiles blog, here and here, detailing how she appears to be little more than another prominent useful idiot who’s enslaved to the same two sets of worthless ‘leaked industry memo sets’ that every other prominent accuser is who claims skeptic climate scientists are paid by Big Oil to spread disinformation. At one of Westervelt’s audio interviews of Naomi Oreskes, Oreskes herself describes Westervelt in the pre-interview setup as her “good friend and colleague” (3:58 point here). That last item pretty much tells us all we need to know about which side Westervelt is on and whether there’s any merit to the implied description of her as an ‘investigative journalist.’
quote:“It’s not [fair]! … Neither are the impacts of extreme weather events [resulting from] … the product they’ve worked so hard to addict us all to.
She completely and utterly misunderstands what addiction is and that one point alone consigns her entire rant to the bin
Why: Addiction is not intrinsic to humans, it is not a disease, it is not in any way ‘infectious’ or transmissible.
When people take on ‘addictive’ or self-destructive habits, yes it is from folks who ‘work hard‘ to bring on the affliction
The people who are doing this ‘hard work‘ are people who are inflicting Stress upon others.
(Can anyone accuse Exxon of doing that?)
Stress takes on myriad forms, be they financial, romantic, bereavement/grief, physical or mental torture/abuse, physical/verbal abuse from peers (e.g how autistic children are treated by other kids but also by well-meaning adults)
etc etc, you get the drift……
It’s a hormonal thing and stress always causes Cortisol levels to rise and that makes us ‘physically and mentally uncomfortable’
Always being in the fight or flight mode is not nice
If whatever stress persists over extended time, the affected persons will eventually discover ways to ‘make themselves feel better‘
i.e to escape the feelings of stress, to cover up or disguise the Cortisol pumping through their brains
There are vast numbers of things that do that but unfortunately most of them are = Chemicals
And the nature of the human brain (Homeostasis) means that ever more must be used/consumed to have the same effect as previously.
Enter: Comfort Food. Instantly absorbed sugar in massive quantity.
Thus enter: Massive and chronic ill health, both physically and mentally.
e.g. Lizzo and Brandon
$4trn per year in the US alone – and none of that actually delivers any cures.
It cannot. Only the removal of stress is the cure.
Enter also: Dunning Kruger = climate science.
Sorry hun, You have Dunning Kruger and you are the source of the stress and hence, the addiction you think you know about
Well, that was a fact-free rant. At no point did she cite any evidence for her wild allegations of conspiracy by the fossil fuel industry. (In passing, I would like to mention that I’m still waiting for my cheque for doing their bidding.) All she does is whinge “Whaaa, it isn’t fair. People want to listen to facts and reasoned arguments from both sides, and that just ain’t right!”
A truly puerile performance by this adolescent. Where’s the adult supervision?
Energy Density is the answer.
Some of the questions?
What provides the direction “downhill”? Energy Density variation.
What provides the rate of experienced time? Local Energy Density.
What provides useful work? Energy Density difference.
For reliable 24/7/365 zero-carbon sources of energy, nuclear is unmatched. High energy density is the reason.
Molten salt reactors are now being heavily promoted as the best solution for the long term future of nuclear power. But we aren’t necessarily done with light water fission reactors.
Greater thermodynamic efficiencies can be gained from Gen IV supercritical water reactors. SCWRs are high temperature, high-pressure, light-water-cooled reactors that operate above the thermodynamic critical point of water (374°C, 22.1 MPa).
The reactor core may have a thermal or a fast-neutron spectrum, depending on the core design.
In an episode of Titans of Nuclear from August 14th, 2023, Bret Kugelmass, CEO of Next Energy, interviews Armando Nava-Dominguez, Technical Lead for the Supercritical Water Reactor Project (SCWR) Gen IV Project at Canadian Nuclear Laboratories:
Armando Nava-Dominguez: ” …… I found a very interesting paper from the ’90s that explains that in a very short paragraph and it says, “There is nothing critical about supercritical. Supercritical is a thermodynamic expression describing the state of our systems where there is no clear distinction between the liquid and the gaseous space. That means they’re homogeneous fluid. Water which is at a state of pressure above 20.1 megapascals.” What it says, there is nothing fancy about supercritical conditions. And actually, supercritical fossil-fired plants, they have been operating at supercritical conditions since the 1960s. This technology is mature. It is available and is nothing that we cannot achieve. It is a proven technology.”
Bret Kugelmass: “I honestly could not agree more. And this is why I have been trying to find someone like you to explain to me why this wasn’t the natural progression of PWR and BWR technology, as opposed to why everyone feels like they need to advance the nuclear technology development roadmap by throwing water out the window and switching to a different coolant when the coal industry has already proven that you can get your higher temperatures and higher efficiencies with water.”
From the Wikipedia article on supercritical water reactors:
“The supercritical water reactor (SCWR) is a concept Generation IV reactor designed as a light water reactor (LWR) that operates at supercritical pressure (i.e. greater than 22.1 MPa). The term critical in this context refers to the critical point of water, and must not be confused with the concept of criticality of the nuclear reactor.
The water heated in the reactor core becomes a supercritical fluid above the critical temperature of 374 °C, transitioning from a fluid more resembling liquid water to a fluid more resembling saturated steam (which can be used in a steam turbine), without going through the distinct phase transition of boiling.
In contrast, the well-established pressurized water reactors (PWR) have a primary cooling loop of liquid water at a subcritical pressure, transporting heat from the reactor core to a secondary cooling loop, where the steam for driving the turbines is produced in a boiler (called the steam generator). Boiling water reactors (BWR) operate at even lower pressures, with the boiling process to generate the steam happening in the reactor core.
The supercritical steam generator is a proven technology. The development of SCWR systems is considered a promising advancement for nuclear power plants because of its high thermal efficiency (~45 % vs. ~33 % for current LWRs) and simpler design. …….”
From the article: “Now that we’re seeing such stark evidence of the climate crisis in every corner of the world”
No, that’s not what we are seeing. That is a figment of your imagination. Any weather statistic you look at shows the climate is not in a crisis. The facts show we are not experiencing unprecedented weather today because of CO2 or for any other reason.
The statistics are easy to find. They tell the real story. There is no climate crisis. It’s all just weather, and it has happened in the past, and for the most part, has been worse in the past than it is now.
Claiming we are living in an exceptional era is not backed up by the facts.
As a side-note: Why are climate activists so angry?
Almost everything she believes just isn’t true. That’s what’s been ceded. She feels things and that make her truth. Facts and reason are immaterial.
Quote mentioned at lead-in of above article:
“If you want to better understand reality and be happier, a different worldview based on sound intellectual premises and comporting to the real world awaits.”
That quote is not attributed, but whoever made it simply does not understand reality. Reality is that for the real world that exists today, human civilization has progressed, almost exclusively, by use of fossil fuels over the last, say 300 years . . . certainly since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. EVERYTHING since then—from modern medicine, to mass manufacturing technology, to use of grid distributed energy, to personal and group modes of transportation, to modern telecommunications and computing devices, to man’s entry into the Space Age and widespread, multi-functional use of orbiting satellites—can be attributed to use of fossil fuels, with just a smidgen (<10%) due to “green renewables”, and that being mainly hydroelectric power.
The assertion of a possible different worldview “based on sound intellectual premises and comporting to the real world” is nothing more than a word-salad and is patently ABSURD, whether on not it promises happiness.
“quote is not attributed“
I think you can attribute it to Amy Westervelt.
“The fossil fuel industry doesn’t have any authentic stories, …”
This person is in a parallel universe, where “authentic” and “stories” have different meaning than on Planet Earth.
There is no sense naming any of the fantastic stories of transitioning from human muscle power through the various stages until now. She would choose to not understand.
She probably thinks that “The Day After Tomorrow”, “2012” and “An Inconvenient Truth” are authentic stories.
I’m perplexed and angry that some people have a free pass to the front of the line for five minutes of fame on the stage with another uniformed opinion helped along by agents of bias.
Well, be careful of what you wish for . . . look at what commonly happens with “five minutes of fame”:
“Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools”
— Bible, Romans 1:22, King James Version (KJV)
Now that we’re seeing such stark evidence of the climate crisis in every corner of the world,
One individual is unlikely to have personally seen evidence of anything in every corner of the world. What they have “seen” are media accounts of weather events restricted to certain locations that have occurred intermittently for centuries. Or outright fraud, like the freon/ozone hole hoax. Even if the lady had been a witness to weather “catastrophes” how would it be possible for her to evaluate them in a climatic context?
Wow, many of these CAGW advocates have an amazing lack of awareness of what they are championing. Imagine a bunch of laying hens (assuming chickens could think and reason like humans) condemning the farmer who houses and feeds them, as well as the company that makes their chicken feed. The farmer, the coop, the chicken feed, all must be stopped. The hens want freedom and the farmer and all he stands for is evil. So one day the farmer complies with their demands, and lets them loose. He stops feeding and sheltering them. They disperse into the forest to start their farm-free lives. But very quickly the hens begin to starve for lack of food, and those that don’t starve are picked off by predators. Perhaps a few come back to the farmer to beg forgiveness and be let back into the coop.
Amy is like one of the hens in this scenario. She wants humanity to be “free” of fossil fuels and, presumably, all that is made from them. Earth will be a veritable Eden again without said fuels. The climate will be stable and perfect. No wildfires, no storms, no floods, no heat waves.
But in reality, all of those calamities will still happen. And, Amy and most of the rest of humanity will be like the hens in the forest. Short, hard lives struggling to deal with so many things that fossil fuels have made irrelevant. If it’s cold, gather firewood and build a fire. If it’s hot, either find a body of water to take a dip in or just deal with it. If you get sick, just hope your body’s immune system can deal with whatever microbes or viruses that are assaulting it. If you have a need to travel further than you can walk, saddle up your horse (assuming you have one) and go for a ride. Or if you are more well off, maybe you have a coach you can hitch a couple of horses to. If you stay up later than sundown, light some beeswax candles (and there won’t of course be any whale oil to be had) or an oil lamp (with plant or animal based fats). Need to wash your clothes? Go get a bucket of water and a washboard. Need new clothes? Get yourself an old foot treadle sewing machine or find someone who sews who has said foot powered machine. But before that, you need to find someone who can hand weave you some fabric….
Of course Amy Westervelt and her fellow travelers are on the right side of history. Of course they are more moral, more informed and all-around better people than those who don’t believe.
Of course it’s only ignorance and greed that keeps us locked into fossil fuels. Of course it’s a conspiracy by powerful corporations controlled by a shadowy capitalist cabal.
Forgot the /sarc
She is exactly the type of intolerant ideologue that would happily send millions to reeducation camps or worse because they do not agree with her.
Capitalism is Amy’s answer: Convince the people to revert to a 18th century lifestyle, and creative destruction does the rest.
But she cannot or will not do that. Why?
Is Duane a nom de guerre for Griff?
Why is it that anybody who’s sceptical is automatically labelled as “the fossil fuel industry”. I have news for her – we are not, we’re just individuals who have a questioning nature and can see through the prime claptrap that’s being spouted by people like her.
Little spoiled children always complain about fairness when they do not get their way.
I couldn’t read the whole thing, she is an idiot.
I’m with you she lost me at, “seeing climate change effects all around”
This younger generation consists of the dumbest and most cowardly people we’ve ever seen. If it weren’t for the generations that preceded them and their accomplishments, these useless breathers wouldn’t last for a month. They thrive on back-patting virtue signaling while never presenting anything outwards other than rank stupidity.
The question she doesn’t ask is how did Al Gore’s wealth increase from $1.6m on leaving office to $200m now.
It wasn’t shrewd investment, or maybe it was