I’m begining to think the hydrogen economy may be closer than we realized. There has been a sudden increase in hydrogen FUD lately. This makes me think somebody out there is getting scared that a conversion to hydrogen might hurt their profits. First we had the report from MIT that said vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells would have just as much green house gas emissions as traditional fossil-fueled cars, so there would be no reason to favor them – oh, but wait, in the fine print we read that the report assumes we’re going to burn fossil fuel to make the hydrogen to put in the fuel cells that power the cars. The whole point in converting to hydrogen is so we’re not burning fossil fuels, of course.

And now we’ve got a Caltech study that tells us using hydrogen will damage the ozone layer – oh, but wait, in the fine print we read that the report assumes that 20% of all hydrogen produced will accidentally escape into the atmosphere. So, are we supposed to believe this would cause worse damage than if 20% of all crude oil leaked out of oil tankers into the oceans? I’ll still go with hydrogen thank you very much. Also in the fine print of the Caltech study, you’ll discover that it’s all just based on guesswork and no one really has any hard data that proves even the massive hydrogen emissions they hope for would cause any damage.

Next, I suppose they’ll be telling us hydrogen is dangerous because, unlike safe fossil fuels, it might catch fire or a that a switch to hydrogen would result in more people being run over by hydrogen powered cars. It all makes one wonder who’s paying for these loony anti-hydrogen studies all of the sudden though.