I just read a passage in the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Energy, Second Edition, Copyright 1981, that really chaps my hide. It's not the content that is irritating, but the date at which such a clear statement about the link between fossil fuel use and climate change was published. It was even by reputable experts in a readily-available, general-audience book. The rub: our parents ignored it.
From page 330, in an entry called "Hydrogen-fueled technology", subsection "Hydrogen-fuel economy":
Lawrence W. Jones, Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of Michigan, wrote these paragraphs along with a generally insightful technical analysis of hydrogen-based energy technologies, based wholly on academic articles published from 1971 to 1979.
That was 30 years ago. What have our parents done in that time to fix the problem? What will we do?
According to the US NOAA, actual CO2 concentration increased by 9.7% from 1979 to 2000. It increased by another 4.4% from 2000 to 2008. What will it be by 2030?
P.S. There's a nice photo of a smiling energy entrepreneur standing next to a shiny late-70s Chevrolet Monte Carlo on page 328. On the trunk lid are painted two words: "HYDROGEN POWERED". Way to go, Roger E. Billings of Billings Energy Research, Inc.
Links:
US EPA Climate Change web page
US NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory CO2 data
Billings Energy Corporation (yes, Roger E. Billings is still alive and kicking)
From page 330, in an entry called "Hydrogen-fueled technology", subsection "Hydrogen-fuel economy":
The driving motivation for the hydrogen fuel economy is the search for a cyclic, indefinitely viable energy metabolism pattern to replace the current reliance on fossil fuels as these approach exhaustion and their recovery ceases to be economically attractive.
While coal is widely heralded as an economically attractive long-range replacement for fossil hydrocarbons (with synthetic hydrocarbon fluid fuels manufactured from coal), it is also limited, albeit at a more future date than petroleum... Even here, however, caution is necessary in view of the possible buildup of CO2 in the atmosphere to a level that would severely modify the global climate. Data collected since 1950 show that atmospheric CO2 has been rising at a rate of 0.3-0.4% per year; between 1958 and 1979 it rose by 6.4%. This corresponds to about half of the carbon burned as fuel remaining in the atmosphere as CO2. Extrapolation to the end of the century [2000] indicates that atmospheric CO2 will increase another 10-15%, and that by about 2030 it may be double the present level. This could lead to a global warming of about 3°C, resulting in major and deleterious large-scale climatic changes. It therefore seems most prudent to endeavor to understand totally the consequence of carbon release on the global climate, as well as in the meantime seriously to pursue alternative energy systems not reliant on carbon.
Lawrence W. Jones, Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of Michigan, wrote these paragraphs along with a generally insightful technical analysis of hydrogen-based energy technologies, based wholly on academic articles published from 1971 to 1979.
That was 30 years ago. What have our parents done in that time to fix the problem? What will we do?
According to the US NOAA, actual CO2 concentration increased by 9.7% from 1979 to 2000. It increased by another 4.4% from 2000 to 2008. What will it be by 2030?
P.S. There's a nice photo of a smiling energy entrepreneur standing next to a shiny late-70s Chevrolet Monte Carlo on page 328. On the trunk lid are painted two words: "HYDROGEN POWERED". Way to go, Roger E. Billings of Billings Energy Research, Inc.
Links:
US EPA Climate Change web page
US NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory CO2 data
Billings Energy Corporation (yes, Roger E. Billings is still alive and kicking)
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