"A theory is the more impressive the greater the simplicity of its premises, the more different kinds of things it relates, and the more extended its area of applicability. Therefore the deep impression that classical thermodynamics made upon me. It is the only physical theory of universal content which I am convinced will never be overthrown, within the framework of applicability of its basic concepts."
-
Albert Einstein
Now actually, Einstein wasn't referring to marketing; he was referring to something called "science."
He didn't know about cute videos, but had he, I'm sure that he would have found it laughable that a cute video would overturn the laws of thermodynamics.
I assure everyone and anyone they won't.
Now, hydrogen is
not a
primary form of energy. This statement does not depend on anyone's affection or disaffection for me. Nothing I can say or, in fact, that
anyone can say will change this
fact on this planet. (Hydrogen is a primary form of energy in stars, but that's irrelevant, we don't live on a star although we do have lots of starry eyed fools on this planet.)
It doesn't matter to me if a particular person don't like nuclear energy, because, being basically unfamiliar with a basic law of nature, in this case the second law of thermodynamics, it is very likely they are completely unfamiliar with
any laws of science.
Therefore, I really, really, really, really, really don't care what a person of this sort may or may not think about
me. I'm not here to be voted prom king. I'm here because the world is on fire, whether or not some asshole motoring around in sinking and dying Venice - a world heritage site - in a motor boat powered by hydrogen produced by destroying exergy on a planet where there is frankly no exergy to spare will not change this reality.
Again, the whole fucking planet is on fire. People, crops and ecosystems are dying on a continental scale.
I really don't care if someone feels compelled "to piss on" my posts. It's been going on here for several decades actually, pissing on my posts by anti-nukes. It's hardly the first time I've head someone whine about so called "nuclear waste," which has a spectacular record of not killing anyone over nearly 3/4 of a a century while the same people engaged in such whining fail to give a flying fuck about the 110,000,000 to 120,000,000 who died from dangerous fossil fuel waste - climate change is going to accelerate that death rate - in the last 19 years I've written here.
I didn't join DU in 2022. I joined it in 2002. When I joined, the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste in the planetary atmosphere - somewhere between 1% and 3% of it is released to make
hydrogen - was 372.68 ppm. Yesterday it was
417.45 ppm as we move toward the September/October annual minimum, a "minimum" which is sure to be, as it has been for the last 20 years, significantly higher than the previous years "minimum." (The 2021 minimum, reached in the week beginning September 26, 2021 was 411.26 ppm.) For all of the almost 20 years, people have "pissed on my posts." I. Couldn't. Care. Less.
Hydrogen which is not "ecofriendly," not sustainable, and not even remotely safe (except as a captive intermediate in industrial settings, where it can be used by highly trained chemical engineers)
wastes energy on a planet where there is no energy to waste.
This waste
kills people, this in vast numbers.
These are facts.
Facts matter.
I give a shit about these facts, which are
scientific in nature, and not subject to reversal by marketing video.
I can assure anyone who asks, with absolute certainty, that I will never "agree" to not comment on dangerous or malign thinking when I see it, because my view is that all of this irrationality and the refusal to confront it to be "nice," are a
cause of this outcome. I will die soon enough, and when I do, I want my last thoughts to be that I did what I could do, and said what I felt needed to be said in order to be an ethical being.
I assure you that I have no concern at all, none whatsoever, what rubes think about the energy future of the United States. The same rubes who've been carrying on about hydrogen cars, buses, boats, what have you for the last half a century, didn't amount to a hill of beans. I can call up reference to this bullshit in every decade going back to the early 1970's and have actually done so on several occasions.
(For the record, the
International Journal of Hydrogen Energy has been published since 1976. I've been accessing articles in it - on and off - for since the 1990's, mostly because I am interested in hydrogen production to capture
waste heat for
captive use, a topic far beyond the ken of the current conversation.)
None of the more rosy scenarios in there over the last 30 years have done anything at all to have prevented what is happening now, which can only be described using the word "catastrophe." Vast stretches of North America, Europe and Asia are on fire in this Northern Summer; it will be the turn of South America and Australia in the Southern Summer. (The journal itself is useful, because hydrogen is a component of syn gas.) The Rhine, the Thames, the Po, the Colorado, the Rio Grande, the Platte, have all run dry in places where they
never did before. Where's the
water for this big hydrogen fantasy going to come? Comets from outer space?
So, I'm supposed to be
amused and indifferent to bourgeois fantasies about hydrogen speed boats, am I?
Sorry, I can't be.
I don't care what the peanut gallery and its paranoid membership thinks about nuclear energy. Just like I know what
hydrogen technology is, I know what nuclear technology is, in fact on a very
deep level.
If the United States is saved, and it may not be, then the world will be saved, although it also may not be, the people who will save it will be nuclear engineers.
In other words, a wise future would be managed by
engineers, not video production companies. By contrast an unwise world - and the climate disaster now underway suggests that we do indeed live in an unwise world - will be led by people holding the laws of science and the practice of engineering in contempt while pronouncing their fantasies to be realities.
I cannot
make anyone be wise or unwise. I'm certainly aware of that. It goes with the territory. Nevertheless I feel I have
earned a right to judge what and who is wise or unwise. Anyone may disagree of course, but again: I. Couldn't. Care. Less.
I trust and hope you will have a pleasant Friday.
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