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NNadir

(34,597 posts)
3. This kind of obscure "drill, baby, drill," crap is not something on which the planet should be bet.
Fri Nov 24, 2023, 02:56 PM
Nov 2023

To the extent geological hydrogen exists, it is almost certainly the result of thermal supercritical water reformation of dangerous fossil fuels in deep reservoirs.

The Maxwell Boltzmann distribution assures that any hydrogen released into the atmosphere will boil off into space, as does the helium found in dangerous natural gas. This is why, despite being the most common components of the universe as a whole, both are rare on Earth.

We are now approaching half a century since the publication of the first issue of the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy in 1976, 47 years to be exact.

In 1976, the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel carbon dioxide in the planetary atmosphere was measured at the Mauna Loa CO2 Observatory for the week beginning November 14, 1976 at 330.19 ppm.

The most recent week:

Week beginning on November 12, 2023: 421.22 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 417.31 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 395.64 ppm
Last updated: November 24, 2023


Weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa

That, my friend, is the real price of dicking around with wishful thinking and hyping obscure but essentially trivial information, a little over 91 ppm of carbon dioxide to the planetary atmosphere in just 47 years.

No one has been able to address the terrible physical properties of hydrogen, its extremely low critical temperature around 33K - only helium has a lower critical temperature - its extremely low viscosity, making it easy to leak, its incompatibility with many metals inducing brittleness and failure, and the high energy costs of pressurizing it for the purpose of transporting it.

We've been drilling the hell out of the planet for over a century. It is possible that there is small amounts of geological hydrogen, again from supercritical water reformation in the hot interior of the planet. We've probably been burning some for decades without even knowing it, since historically gas chromatographs used hydrogen as a carrier gas and wouldn't be detected in natural gas.

So what?

I'll attribute faith in this nonsense as geological hydrogen as a possible "solution" to climate change as stuff appropriate for E&E, Ennui and Excuses. It's meaningless and useless.
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