Why Bush's H-Car is Just Hot Air

The New Republic ^ | February 18, 2003 | Greg Easterbrook

[MurryMom]

Thanks for your thoughtful response.

Your response is consistent with good economics, except the part about increasing tariffs 10-15% on all goods. I would prefer raising taxes only on motor fuels by about 15-20%, with an offsetting reduction in income taxes so that the fuel tax hike would be revenue neutral. Limiting the tax increase to petroleum products will encourage conservation and have a disproportionate effect on trading partners like Iraq, from whom we currently import 1 million barrels per day mostly as a result of production cutbacks in Venezuela.

Increasing tariffs on all goods on an across-the-board basis would be self-defeating in many ways, including the likelihood of retaliation by our trading partners; harming U.S. export industries; and inflating the prices of imported goods here in the U.S.

[Ditto]

Do you run your car on flashight batteries?

No, and I don't put gasoline into my flashlight either. It leaks all over the place. ;~))

Try to understand that different applications have different economics. You can't broad brush the economics with general principles as this article attemptes to do. The only way to measure the economics of various transport fuels is against the costs of other transport fuels. Will H2 ever have better economics for transport than hydrocarbon fuel? I don't know. But IMHO, it's worth a few billion to find out.

[discostu]

Can stop in the second paragraph, this is an obvious hitpiece with no intention to inform and lots of intention to twist and lie. We mocked Gore not for saying the IC engine should be replaced, but for saying it should be OUTLAWED in 2005 whether OR NOT there was a viable alternative.

[eastsider]

Wind power can make electricity cheaper than coal. Bacteria can produce Hydrogen VERY cheaply.

Bacteria? Sounds intriguing. I have a 150-gallon turtle tank with scads of bacteria. When can I quit my day job? : )

[Shermy]

Whatever happened to America's famous "can do" attitude?

It gets smeared by sophisticated PR schemes of those who have something to lose.

[MurryMom]

We mocked Gore not for saying the IC engine should be replaced, but for saying it should be OUTLAWED in 2005 whether OR NOT there was a viable alternative.

If you mocked Gore for the reason stated in our post, you were misinformed. In Gore's 1994 book, Earth in the Balance, he predicted that fuel cell technology would be commercial for autos in 25 years, which was within a year of the prediction that Bush made in his 2003 State of the Union address.

[Mr. Jeeves]

If President Gore had made the exact same proposal this article would never have been written.

[Ditto]

The scale of flashlight batteries is a bit different from that of automobiles. The two can hardly be compared.

Why. There are electric cars on the market filled to the gills with very large "flashlight" batteries. It seems my point went way over your head. What I was attempting to tell you is that in viewing the economics of various "energy sources", the application for which it is being applied is the critical factor. There is not a hard and fast energy-in vs energy-out rule of thumb when determining economics as this article, and you seemed to imply. A solar powered swimming pool heater can make sense and a lot of people buy them, but a solar powered snow blower does not have a market.

The application drives the economics which drives the market.

[NittanyLion]

It seems my point went way over your head. What I was attempting to tell you is that in viewing the economics of various "energy sources", the application for which it is being applied is the critical factor. There is not a hard and fast energy-in vs energy-out rule of thumb when determining economics as this article, and you seemed to imply.

It did go over my head - sorry.

You're obviously right. The efficacy of hydrogen fuel cells will have to be measured against the efficacy of other fuel sources. Based on the idea that more energy is needed to produce the hydrogen, it seems highly unlikely that this will ever be a more viable fuel source than petroleum products.

[rintense]

Dream big, and dare to fail...

We wouldn't have landed on the moon, either.

Seems to me that the real reason Bush's plan won't come to fruition will be because of the UAW- not science.

[discostu]

Well any of those kind of predictions do need to be mocked because they've all been false. Solar power has been "5 to 10 years" from being a viable alternative since Nixon. Hollow promises. We still should be working on alternative fuel sources (for reasons that have zero to do with polution), and someday they will be useful. But projecting when is a fool's errand and nobody should do it.

[Ditto]

Based on the idea that more energy is needed to produce the hydrogen, it seems highly unlikely that this will ever be a more viable fuel source than petroleum products.

Not necessarly. It depends entirely on the total costs of petrol-based alternatives vs. the total costs of H2.

Just like the flashlight battery, the laws of thremodynamics don't apply to economic choices. It's the costs that matter.

Again, I don't know if it will come to pass, but I think it's worth some money to research it. Fuel cell technology has arrived and is commercialized. Using hydrogen as a fuel for those cells is a logical next step in the research.

[from occupied ga]

But IMHO, it's worth a few billion to find out

Here we go again. Whose couple of billion? Yours? Please feel free to contribute, but don't force me to contribute to something that I KNOW is a giant boondoggle designed to take plundered taxpayer money and give it to industry.

Just like ethanol as a motor fuel with many of the same conversion inefficiencies.

I never though I'd agree with MurrayMom an anything, but I think that she actually has a good point here about the wastefulness of exploring H2 as a fuel (even a blind hog finds an acorn now and then I guess)

Sometimes I put gasoline in my flashlight and it works fine You just have to find the right kind of flashlight.

[jpl]

The whole entire premise of this column is deeply flawed. Our energy policy isn't perfect, but it's not nearly as bad as the liberal hand-wringers like us to believe. The danger of so-called "greenhouse gases" is a myth, as is the notion that we're going to "run out of oil" in the next 30-40 years. And contrary to what paranoid liberals like to believe, there's no big conspiracy to keep fuel efficiency down. There are very fuel efficient hybrid cars available right now. Most people are simply quite willing to trade fuel efficiency for convenience and safety (that pesky free market at work). I would prefer that we had more domestic oil production, and hopefully President Bush will be able to succeed at securing this.

[MurryMom]

If President Gore had made the exact same proposal this article would never have been written.

History tells us otherwise. Gregg Easterbrook pointed out in this article that he also criticized the Clinton-Gore administration for their automobile policies just before the 2000 election, as follows: The supercar effort, which ended up spending $1.6 billion to accomplish nothing (see "Political Mileage," by Gregg Easterbrook, October 9, 2000), was always a smoke screen. By linking to Mr. Easterbrook's 2000 article, you will learn that Mr. Easterbrook is mainly an enemy of bad policy, not an enemy of Bush per se.

[radioman]

Simple, yes. Efficient, yes. But NOT cost effective.

It's not cost effective today, but what about tomorrow?
When I was a boy you could buy a brand new Ford cheaper than a Television. NBC insisted that there would never be a need for more than a dozen Television cameras!

[from occupied ga]

Billions have been spent on trying to make a viable electric vehicle. Big waste of money. At least a significant portion of it was paid for by the electric company stockholders (who had their dividends reduced by the amount of money wated on this)

Still a large chunk was taxpayer funded and to what end? There aren't any electric cars on the market that are worth a crap. The true cost per is supposedly over $100,000 each (although the cost for lease purposes is set to mid $30k)

I smell corporate welfare.

[triplejake]

For what it is worth, the author of this piece has defended Bush's environmental record in the past:

http://www.tnr.com/043001/easterbrook043001.html

[Ditto]

I smell corporate welfare.

No doubt. But that is another issue. We were discussing the merts/economics of H2 as a transport fuel.

[Britton J Wingfield]

Republicans relentlessly mocked Al Gore for saying the internal combustion engine should be replaced by something better, and now George W. Bush is saying exactly the same thing.

Not at all. Internal Combustion can be fueled by hydrogen quite easily. BMW already does this.