I study chemistry at the top university for chemistry in the entire country, and so when we’re taught something, it’s generally done pretty thoroughly, and to a pretty high level. Especially when it gets to the final year of a Masters course. So what gets irritating is when a bunch of computer geeks start debating the benefits and drawbacks of having a hydrogen economy. They really don’t understand the difference between energy sources and energy vectors - the point behind a fuel source is that there is plenty of it to mine or otherwise consume. That isn’t the point behind using hydrogen as an energy vector, which is completely different. Did you know, for instance, that it’s more economic to move energy in the form of train loads of coal than over electricity lines, despite having a national grid. But then again, it’s hard to convert both wind and uranium into coal, or better yet oil in pipelines, so the whole issue is rather more complicated than just comparing the energy efficiencies of GDI engines and low pressure polymer fuel cells.

I could explain it further, but I’m not going to. I’m just too lazy, and will only do so if it comes up in my exams in May. Lazyness is also one reason that I didn’t reply to the slashdot story, but also stopping me from bothering to reply were concepts like signal noise ratios, banging my head off of a brick wall (like Mr T does whenever electrical stupidity and ignorance crops up), and also because it’s quite satisfying to pretend to know more than someone else and lord over them. Suffice to say that I support the idea of hydrogen as a primary energy vector. That and lots of fuel cells hooked up to wind turbines.