Re: [EM] Working with journalists

[Alex Small]

Anthony Simmons wrote:

>I tried to explain that petroleum is a source of new energy, while
>hydrogen gas contains energy that has to be put there by us from some
>other source.

Maybe this is just a semantic issue (I'm interpreting the words differently
from the way you're using them), but the way I've always understood it, H2
and hydrocarbons are both sources of energy, in the sense that when
oxidized the reaction is exothermic.

Anyway, this is off-topic, but I don't know in what sense we have to put
energy into hydrogen gas.  We just need to expend energy to form it in the
first place (from water, normally).  Since in principle we should be able
to use solar energy to electrolyze water and form all the H2 that we need,
and since the oxidation of H2 only forms water (assuming no N2 is around to
form NOx due to the heat) hydrogen fuel will some day give us all the cheap
and clean energy we could ever want.

Alex