Blowing Smoke. Why the Hydrogen Economy Just Hit a Recession in the U.S.
By Eastan McNeal on June 7, 2009 at 3:45 PM in Current Affairs
Obama, Axelrod, Jarrett
I am sure some of you have seen the video of dumbo standing in the receiving line greeting the people getting off his own plane and you have heard all about the folks that, probably just minutes before were wiping powder from his upper lip, did not shake his hand.
But, who were those dignitaries anyway?
The Axelrod – Jarrett Energy Corporation.
That’s who.
American Secretary of Energy Steven Chu is cutting 100 million dollars from hydrogen fuel cell vehicle research. “We asked ourselves, ‘Is it likely in the next 10 or 15, 20 years that we will convert to a hydrogen car economy?’ The answer, we felt, was ‘no,’” said Chu.
Meanwhile Iceland has already successfully converted Reykjavik’s city bus fleet to hydrogen, is working on powering ships with hydrogen and is building hydrogen fueling stations around the country for future cars. The country’s new venture, SMART-H2, has partnered with DaimlerChrysler, Norsk Hydro, and Shell Hydrogen to work on development and marketing. Old man Rockefeller thought once, I am sure, “Hey. My buddy Henry Ford will have a whole bunch of these car things on the road in 10 or 20 years. I better plan to get them some gas.” Thinking that 20 years is not a long time worked out ok for him. But this group in DC is so short-sighted they could not see their feet if their toes were sticking out of their bippy.
They, the future billionaires who adopted the punk child we call president, don’t care if things GET better. They just want it to LOOK better while they get better gold-lined retirement parachutes for themselves. If you think the CTA, the largest fuel purchaser in Illinois, that Valerie Jarrett ran for ten years, is going to switch to no-carbon power then I have an island in Lake Michigan I want to sell you.
Obama’s payback to the Wall Street old-school energy investment-laden banks will come to haunt us when the rest of the world goes to the true energy future, hydrogen. Later I will get back to the crooks. But, for now, let’s talk about hydrogen – the Obama abandoned element.
Why is this element, which holds the top spot on the periodic table of elements, so important to the survival of this planet? Answer: It is a freedom loving radical that just won’t go away. It is the ultimate renewable. For example if you use hydrolysis to break water into hydrogen and oxygen and then burn the hydrogen, the exhaust is water vapor. Right back where you started.
Hydrogen, like most radicals, does not naturally exist by itself. But there is a problem associated with its use, and that problem has been Astroturfed to the ground. The story goes like this: To make hydrogen we need to expend more energy to pull it from its periodic friends than it gives us back when it is used to create power. Why then do we even consider this element? The answer is there is free power available. When the wind is blowing and the sun is shining use turbines and panels to create electricity that is used to make and store hydrogen. Why then don’t we make it a primary objective in our goal for energy independence and carbon footprint reduction?
Ask David Axelrod and Iranian born Valerie Jarrett’s former and future business clients. They did not see the hydrogen revolution coming and all their money is still in legacy energy. Coal and oil are getting billions in taxpayer giveaways in Obama’s 2010 budget and true alternative energy is getting the alternative – a slap in the face.
Here is a short file on one of Axelrod’s clients. Commonwealth Edison is the Illinois electric company once run by CEO Tom Ayers. I suppose that the inheritor of Tom’s vast stock holdings in that company, fire-cracker Bill, is enjoying the profits from his street thug Obama investment. Heck, this was easy. Ghost write a book for the boy, hook him up with some radical-turned-bought-off-elected figures, line him with Wall Street money and make promises to legacy energy companies (and their suppliers such as GE) that, like the NAFTA language, campaign promises are just that.
From the Axelrod diary: AF1. June 3.2009. Get the boys to write a confusing sans-Israel Muslim-centric speech for Barry that has the world press confused and occupied for at least a week while I meet with oil ministers to explain my new Astroturf campaign for building eco-nut support for higher oil prices. The first people to get off the president’s plane in Egypt were not finance, diplomatic or human rights representatives. The first folks that stepped out of our plane to meet the royal dictators was Axelrod and Jarrett – the tag-team currently unknown as the CEO and COO of the Board of America run company once known as the United States.
Jarrett sat on the board of USG who makes sheetrock in Mexico and used U.S. Government financial assistance (hmm – What’s that GM plan again?) to exit from an asbestos-triggered 2006 bankruptcy. Where does that gypsum plant get its power? No. Sorry. Solar is not the answer. At least she is not afraid to publicly use the same word for Obama that she used for Daley in the 1990s: He will “TAKE POWER AND BEGIN TO RULE.” At 27 seconds into this video clip.
Now. To get back on track. No. Sorry. Our editor in chief has suggested that our articles be short. Otherwise the bots will get confused when trying to decide which talking points they are supposed to use while spamming us. I will come back with more on the Eco-Terrorist oBOMBa in a later post. Hint. He has never lived outside of the concrete jungle so, since rivers, mountains, clean air and wild mammals were not mentioned in Bill Ayers’ “Dreams of my drunk pappy” book, they do not exist in his storybook world. And, if we get eight years of this joker in the Whitehouse, these messy nature things won’t exist anywhere in America either.
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he will take power and begin to rule.strange..
don’t these people know the potus works for us……
Meeeshelle is doing her part to help the use of oil.
She and the girls are spending and extra day in Paris to shop. Isn’t that just peachy. Two planes and two sets of secret service protection.
They could not be bothered to booster relations between counties. Diss dinner with the French president and his wife. So why were Meechelle and the girls on the trip?
WOMEN WITH INTELLIGENCE AND EXPERIENCE,MEN WHO SUPPORT THEM AND COUNTRY BEFORE PARTY ALWAYS
PUMAS,BUBBA,EQUALISTS AND THOSE PEOPLE RULE
From what I read, the girls, grandma and a couple of cousins flew in afterwards to join Meechelle in Paris. I do hope that they remembered to reimburse the government for the flight costs for grandma and the cousins. So that’s an extra plane that wasn’t used for the original trip since I doubt that Malia and Sacha flew commercial.
That’s the second picture I’ve seen in the past couple of days where it looks like someone is bowing as they address Obama. Perhaps it’s just the camera angle.
Wow! Great article, Easton! Infuriating. I always knew Axlerod was a snake, but that Jarrett is sure up to her eyeballs in conflicts of interest. This is one for the bookmark.
It is sickening to read about people like Axelrod and Jarrett and any number of other handlers in 0bama’s coterie — he is their boytoy and ticket to their millions and billions. But write we must with the hope that people will wake up someday.
That top pic is a still shot from this Youtube. It says BO got snubbed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t439ruGCqRw
The man isn’t bowing to BO. He had walked right past BO even though BO had his hand out to shake. It happens more than once.
Boy that must have hurt. Its one thing to have someone put out their hand and not shake your hand. But if you have your hand out and not get it shaken that is a definate snub
Oppss Is our fearless Obama losing face already?
No, he is just proving once again that he knows nothing about protocol. NOTHING. When one arrives on an official visit, one is greeted by the person hosting the visit, in this case King Abdullah. The visiting dignitary does NOT get in the receiving line and greet his own people. Apparently, the only person on the plane who didn’t know that was Obummer. He should have been introducing those people to the King, not acting as a host and greeting them. They were correct to ignore him. He made a fool of himself by sticking his hand out to be shaken by his own staff.
Thanks for posting this link.
Didn’t they realize they were in the presence of greatness?
Eastan, you make following the money too easy. Let me summarize. Two of BO’s closest and most trusted advisers, David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, who propelled him into the White House, are principals in businesses that represent monied interests in fossil fuels. The new Energy Secretary promises stimulus funds will go to expansion of hydrogen fuel technologies. The people cheer. Then, BO visits OPEC countries, reassuring his Muslim friends, business will continue as usual, making a good faith showing back home to cut funds presumptively allocated to hydrogen, before these funds are spent.
I cannot think of a better reason to illegally take over a car company than to ensure they continue manufacturing cars propelled by the internal combustion engine, burning fossil fuels.
jbjd very nice summary. I can not say that I am shocked.
BINGO!
[...] Read more: Blowing Smoke. Why the Hydrogen Economy Just Hit a Recession in … [...]
We can have a hydrogen car economy and green energy. Mitsubishi Nuclear makes nuclear power plants of various sizes, and guess what the main by-product is?? Hydrogen!! They also dispose of and replace the fuel for the power plants. So we can have green power, and hydrogen to run cars and other vehicles. I live in a small town in a rural county, and they have a plant that will provide energy for 30,000 people for 30 years for $20 million dollars. We only have about 13,000 people in my county, so that would last us almost 70 years, or so. (Math is not my strong suit, heh.)And the byproduct of hydrogen could fuel our cars at low cost. It could be sold for the cost of storing and distribution. Why doesn’t anyone know about this? Why don’t they look into it, given Mitsubishi has an office for that purpose right in Washington, DC. Check out their web site. Please bear in mind that I am not a techie type, and know little or nothing about nuclear power plants. But from what I have read, these are as safe as they can get, no weapons grade fuel used, and they are sealed, so no maintenance screw ups like Three Mile Island are possible. The Japanese are very good at this sort of thing, and they are reasonably priced too. I think they would be a great stop gap between coal/petroleum use and solar/wind development. Check out the website..
http://www.mnes-us.co/htm/ourproducts.htm
Wow! This article is a steaming pile of crap.
1. To people in the scientific community, Bush’s hydrogen plan was a joke- a make-believe world where your car runs on clean hydrogen that you fill up at the local hydrogen station or is produced in your garage, and it was about as close to a flux capacitor for your DeLorean as it was to a Honda FCX Clarity in your garage. The problem is that it takes more energy — a lot more with today’s technologies — to create a kilogram of hydrogen than a gallon of gas. And there’s no infrastructure in place to deliver the fuel to the hydrogen cars that quite a few of the car companies also developed at a major loss.
2. Obama’s Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, is a scientist of the 1st order. There is NO reason to think this decision was made on the basis of anything other than good science. This decision by the Obama administration is what happens when you appoint an expert in his field to oversee government programs. Next thing you know, useless boondoggles are being cut and rational decisions are being made.
3. The writer actually refers to Valerie Jarrett as “Iranian born Valerie Jarrett”. That’s a clue as to what level this article was written at.
You’re going to eat these words one of these days. One of the narratives among the best financial analysts these days is that the US needs a huge boost from a major scientific accomplishment–a renewable energy source, or something equally ground-breaking–to save our fiscal future.
Iceland is leading the way with hydrogen, while Obama, Jarret, Axelrod, and Chu are dragging their feet, and pandering to Saudi Arabia.
Oil and Coal are devastating this country. Our foreign and domestic policies are all based on carbon, destroying our environment and our treasury in the process.
It’s amazing that Iceland–a tiny country whose financial situation is MORE dire than our own–can manage to innovate, but we cannot. Like Brazil, which is now completely energy independent, using something as crazy as sugar cane, Iceland isn’t obstructing its own future. Instead of spewing your paltry defenses of ObamaWorld, you ought to be asking yourself why they aren’t working harder to protect our treasury and our country, not to mention your gasoline prices, which are going UP.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1727312.stm
Agree on all counts. Great analysis. Hydrogen is the energy of the future and it’s cost to use, make safe and produce has come down greatly the last 10 years, partly in response to more govt. support and finances of the last administration. Other countries are working hard on this. The US has a chance to be a leader here, but the “green, global warming advocates” sham Obama energy czars (or whatever they call themselves), are so beholden and in bed with the oil moguls/producers overseas and here, that they will never really promote energy independence for the USA. There are numerous ways for us to become energy independent and leaders in alternative energy production while we use our own resources as an interim solution. This is known and our own govt. is holding us back. Let the states handle some of this and we might get better outcomes. The feds are pocketing money and sending it on to their good buddies overseas. We still don’t know where the stimulus monies are going do we? What happened to the TARP dollars hmmmm? Corruption is running at the highest levels of our govt. and it is not going to slow down unless someone has the b***s to stand up and call them out. Won’t happen with this crew and the msm in their pocket. Keep exposing them however and maybe sometime in the future their rotting ways will collapse on them.
Love it Love it
Perfectly RIPE for a PALIN administration next go round since she wants us to use ALL OF OUR RESOURCES and seems to know her OIL as well as the NEXT YAHOO BUBBLE LIVING MOE RON in Washington!
And wouldn’t be so LIKELY to kiss/hug or bamboozle the Saudis into bombing us again! I’d stand next to her to protect us too!!!
W00T!!
Sad to say I think this whole article is right on target.
Great topic.
How do we produce hydrogen cheaply and cleanly in the quantities need to replace gasoline and diesel?
If we use electrolysis of water, it takes approximately 200kWh of electricity to produce enough gasoline to equal 1 gallon of gasoline. Assuming 15-cent per kilowatt (much more expensive if solar is used), that would be around $30/gallon of for the equivalent amount of gasoline. Then you need to use additional electricity to compress the hydrogen to a high pressure in storage tanks for sue in vehicles. Take that 200Kwh of electricity per equivalent gallon and multiply it times 148 billion gallons of gas we use a year and you can see that none of us will see even a fraction of the wind power plants and or solar power plant built in our life-time to come close to producing that amount of power. Hydrogen fuel cells (now) are around twice as efficient as a combustion engine but still year away from being ready to replace the internal combustion engine.
The most common and cost effective method used to produce hydrogen now is reforming natural gas with steam. So you take an already burnable fuel and the add energy in the form steam to covert it into hydrogen and carbon products. So for every equivalent gallon (~2lbs of hydrogen) you create around 18lbs of carbon dioxide. Then you still need to use electricity to compress it. I think companies like Shell are salivating over the prospect of selling hydrogen produced with this method.
Using nuclear power to produce hydrogen is an option.
I have to admit that Iceland does not use wind or solar to extract hydrogen. They use water and volcanoes. They have an abundance of both. But I do want to take issue with the idea that wind and, especially, solar will continue to stay expensive to produce. The economy of scale should kick in, the output will go up and cost of these systems will go down if there is a world-wide demand for wind and solar systems that were used by giant electric company suppliers to produce power for hydrogen extraction.
You wrote a well-founded argument and I hope you will continue to think about, research and discuss this issue.
On nuclear power, Anne Lauvergeon is my hero.
I didn’t mean to argue against it (hydrogen), only point out the reality if it. Hydrogen is an energy carrier. It takes energy to produce it.
The is a proposed offshore windpower plant CapeWind in MA that has been blocked by pols on both side of the aisle. It is billed as being able to produce ~1492000 MWh of electricity per year. This is a big wind power plant by US standards.
It takes ~200KWh of electricty to produce enough hydrogen to equal 1 gallon of gasoline.
If CapeWind were built (I hope it will be) and used soley to produce hydrogen, it would produce roughly the quivilent of 7,460,000 gallons/yr. Going by 2006 numbers, we used ~2.4 billon gallon of gas/yr in MA.
Gee, so typical Obama. Great post, thank you.
…lmao INDEED!