nationalize the fed
nationalize the fed's JournalHydrogen Fuel Finally Graduating From Lab to City Streets
Christopher Martin Bloomberg News Jun 5, 2014
Once relegated to the realm of science projects, hydrogen fuel cells are starting to displace fossil fuels as a means of powering cars, homes and businesses.
H2 station, Copenhagen, Denmark. H2 stations can be installed in 48 hours.
On June 10, in the latest addition to mainstream fuel-cell use, Hyundai Motor Co. will begin deliveries of a consumer SUV in Southern California. The technology is already producing electricity for the grid in Connecticut. AT&T Inc. is using fuel cells to power server farms, and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. uses hydrogen-powered fork lifts. Later this summer, FedEx Corp. will begin using hydrogen cargo tractors at its Memphis air hub.
“This is the most exciting time for fuel cells in my career,” said Daniel Dedrick, head of hydrogen and combustion technologies at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore, California. The hydrogen market “is starting to accelerate.”
Fuel cells produce electricity from hydrogen in a process that dates back to the 1830s, yet high costs have historically made the technology better suited for Apollo space missions and Soviet submarines. In recent years, the technology has made big strides, and prices are falling. And because the process produces little or no greenhouse gases, hydrogen power stands to get a boost in the wake of President Barack Obama’s recent call for tighter controls on carbon emissions...
...“The shift to hydrogen is inevitable, and it’s happening faster than we expected,” said Amory Lovins, founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a non-profit clean energy research organization based in Snowmass, Colorado...
MORE: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-04/clean-hydrogen-advances-amid-fuel-cell-technology-gains.html
Swiss scientists achieve safe method of turning hydrogen into liquid fuel; could be paired w/solar
for powering homes overnight
Transforming hydrogen into liquid fuel using atmospheric CO2
EPFL scientists have completed their solution for transforming hydrogen gas into a less flammable liquid fuel that can be safely stored and transported
Hydrogen is often touted as the fuel of the future. But because this gas is highly explosive, it must be stored and transported under pressure in specialized and expensive containers. Hydrogen therefore has issues in terms of safety, logistics, and profitability that could significantly limit its wider use. However, a solution might lie in research by EPFL scientists, who have developed a simple system based on two chemical reactions. The first reaction transforms hydrogen into formic acid, a liquid that is easy to store and less flammable than gasoline, while the second reaction does the reverse and restores the hydrogen. Another possible application of their technology would be to use atmospheric CO2 to synthesize a number of useful chemical products.
Gabor Laurenczy's team has already developed a process for transforming formic acid into hydrogen gas. The method was the subject of several articles, one of which appeared in Science, and it is currently under industrial development. But a complete and coherent system would also require the inverse process: transforming hydrogen into formic acid. This has now been achieved, completing the cycle, thanks to the financial support of EOS Holding. The scientists in Laurenczy's team have described the process in a Nature Communications article...
...The two chemical reactions – hydrogen to formic acid and back to hydrogen - are catalytic: the advantage is that nothing is lost in the transformation, and the process can thus be used in constructing sustainable devices...
Full article: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2014-06/epfd-thi060214.php
The only exhaust from Hydrogen is water. The Hydrogen age is here, no more fossil fuels. Imagine if a fraction of the money given to oil, fracking and nuclear fission was given to Hydrogen research.
Everywhere one looks on the net people expect huge (unrealistic) leaps in battery tech- so more cars can run on electricity made from coal- but seem to think that Hydrogen tech is somehow stuck in time. "There will be no way to contain it, ship it or use it cheaply" they say, over and over and over again, ignoring the fact that all of those things are being done today. Why is that? It's bizarre.
Michael Hastings: Bergdahl-America's Last Prisoner of War from 6/7/12
Three years ago, a 23-year-old soldier walked off his base in Afghanistan and into the hands of the Taliban. Now he’s a crucial pawn in negotiations to end the war. Will the Pentagon leave a man behind?
By Michael Hastings June 7, 2012
Bowe Bergdahl prepares for graduation from basic training near Fort Benning in Georgia. Family Photo
In June 2012, fearless Rolling Stone contributing edtior Michael Hastings wrote the definitive first account of Bowe Bergdahl — the young American soldier who was captured by the Taliban and became the last American prisoner of war. Hastings, the journalist who brought down the career of General Stanley McChrystal in these pages, died in a car accident one year later. Bergdahl was freed this weekend. Hastings' incredible story is available in full here:
The mother and father sit at the kitchen table in their Idaho farmhouse, watching their son on YouTube plead for his life. The Taliban captured 26-year-old Bowe Bergdahl almost three years ago, on June 30th, 2009, and since that day, his parents, Jani and Bob, have had no contact with him. Like the rest of the world, their lone glimpses of Bowe – the only American prisoner of war left in either Iraq or Afghanistan – have come through a series of propaganda videos, filmed while he's been in captivity.
The Rise of the Killer Drones: How America Goes to War in Secret
In the video they're watching now, Bowe doesn't look good. He's emaciated, maybe 30 pounds underweight, his face sunken, his eye sockets like caves. He's wearing a scraggly beard and he's talking funny, with some kind of foreign accent. Jani presses her left hand across her forehead, as if shielding herself from the images onscreen, her eyes filling with tears. Bob, unable to look away, hits play on the MacBook Pro for perhaps the 30th time. Over and over again, he watches as his only son, dressed in a ragged uniform, begs for someone to rescue him.
"Release me, please!" Bowe screams at the camera. "I'm begging you – bring me home!"
My Decade of bin Laden, by Michael Hastings
Private First Class Bowe Bergdahl arrived in Afghanistan at the worst possible moment, just as President Barack Obama had ordered the first troop surge in the spring of 2009. Rather than withdraw from a disastrous and increasingly deadly war started by his predecessor, the new commander in chief had decided to escalate the conflict, tripling the number of troops to 100,000 and employing a counterinsurgency strategy that had yet to demonstrate any measurable success. To many on Obama's staff, who had been studying Lessons in Disaster, a book about America's failure in Vietnam, the catastrophe to come seemed almost preordained. "My God," his deputy national security adviser Tom Donilon said at the time. "What are we getting this guy into?" Over the next three years, 13,000 Americans would be killed or wounded in Afghanistan – more than during the previous eight years of war under George W. Bush....
Full article: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/americas-last-prisoner-of-war-20120607
Rolling Stone: 13 Things You Need to Know About Bowe Bergdahl
Key facts from the late Michael Hastings' profile of the freed Taliban POW
By Tim Dickinson June 2, 2014
The late Michael Hastings wrote the definitive magazine profile of Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for Rolling Stone in June 2012. Now that America's Last Prisoner of War has been released, in a prisoner exchange for five high-ranking Taliban officials, Hastings' piece continues to offer crucial context – about why Bergdahl volunteered for service in the first place, about how this intense, moral young man became so horrified by America's "good war" that he walked away from his unit's remote outpost in eastern Afghanistan in 2009, and about the abortive negotiations that could have secured Bergdahls release years ago.
Here 13 things you need to know about the American POW who is coming finally home, in the words of Hastings' 2012 feature.
Read Hastings' full feature on Bowe Bergdahl, "America's Last Prisoner of War"
1) Bowe grew up near Hailey, Idaho, the son of California expats and ski bums Jani and Bob Bergdahl, who lived "nearly off the grid" on 40 acres, home-schooling Bowe and his sister Sky in a demanding curriculum:...
...4) Bergdahl's unit in Afghanistan — part of the Obama surge — was beset by deficits of leadership, "a collapse in unit morale and an almost complete breakdown of authority."...
...5) As his tour dragged on, the hellish reality of war — including seeing an Afghan child run over by an American truck — weighed on Bergdahl, who came to see America's presence in Afghan as "disgusting."
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/13-things-you-need-to-know-about-bowe-bergdahl-20140602
Hydrogen: The fuel of the future. If energy storage is the problem then hydrogen provides a solution
28/05/2014 Paolo Bert cospp.com
Hydrogen makes for the ideal choice of energy storage as it has high energy content. It is also clean, versatile and abundant. The key to unlocking hydrogen's potential for energy is on-site hydrogen generation and storage, argues Paolo Bert.
With the world turning away from fossil fuels in the face of growing regulation and looming emissions targets, renewable energy sources are undoubtedly the future. However, as the Institution of Mechanical Engineers recently warned in a report entitled Energy Storage: The Missing Link in the UK's Energy Commitments, the future viability of renewables relies largely on the ability to store renewably generated energy.
Being able to store renewably generated energy means
it can be consumed when the energy is needed,
irrespective of weather conditions
Since the shining sun and blowing wind may not coincide with energy demand, the sun or wind's potential for energy generation will be lost if it is not somehow saved. This is the intermittency challenge of renewable energies. It is principally for this reason that energy storage is so important, as being able to store renewably generated energy means it can be consumed when needed, irrespective of weather conditions.
If energy storage is the problem, then hydrogen provides a solution.
How can hydrogen be used to store energy? Through the process of electrolysis, where an electric current is passed through water, hydrogen and oxygen are produced. The electricity used to split the water into hydrogen and oxygen can be drawn from a grid supply, or indeed be taken directly from a renewable source, such as a wind turbine or solar panel...
The Acta Power – the 'Hydrogen Battery'
– is a self-recharging fuel cell power system
Full Article: http://www.cospp.com/articles/print/volume-15/issue-3/features/hydrogen-the-fuel-of-the-future.html
Edward Snowden on 911
“You know this is a key question that the 9/11 commission considered, and what they found in the postmortem when they looked at all the classified intelligence from all the different intelligence agencies, they found that we had all of the information we needed as an intelligence community, as a classified sector, as the national defense of the United States, to detect this plot,” Snowden said.
“We actually had records of the phone calls from the United States and out. The CIA knew who these guys were. The problem was not that we weren’t collecting information, it wasn’t that we didn’t have enough dots, it wasn’t that we didn’t have a haystack, it was that we did not understand the haystack that we had.”
‘If we’re missing things like the Boston Marathon bombings where all of these mass-surveillance systems, every domestic dragnet in the world, didn’t reveal guys that the Russian intelligence service told us about by name, is that really the best way to protect our country or are we trying to throw money at a magic solution that’s actually not just costing us our safety, but our rights and our way of life,” Snowden said.
The Snowden Interview- a segment you didn't see
Snowden’s comments surrounding the failure of dragnet surveillance in stopping the 9/11 attacks were censored from the prime time broadcast and instead buried in an hour long clip on NBC’s website.
NBC’s decision to bury Snowden’s comments is unsurprising given the fact that the 9/11 attacks are exhaustively used by the federal government as the prime justification for surveilling millions of innocent Americans. Snowden remarked on the government’s prior knowledge of the accused Boston bombers as well, also cut from the prime time interview.
-Mikael Thalen
What you didn't see:
“You know this is a key question that the 9/11 commission considered, and what they found in the postmortem when they looked at all the classified intelligence from all the different intelligence agencies, they found that we had all of the information we needed as an intelligence community, as a classified sector, as the national defense of the United States, to detect this plot,” Snowden said.
“We actually had records of the phone calls from the United States and out. The CIA knew who these guys were. The problem was not that we weren’t collecting information, it wasn’t that we didn’t have enough dots, it wasn’t that we didn’t have a haystack, it was that we did not understand the haystack that we had.”
‘If we’re missing things like the Boston Marathon bombings where all of these mass-surveillance systems, every domestic dragnet in the world, didn’t reveal guys that the Russian intelligence service told us about by name, is that really the best way to protect our country or are we trying to throw money at a magic solution that’s actually not just costing us our safety, but our rights and our way of life,” Snowden said.
Green hydrogen facility opens at Berlin airport, with first refueling of fuel cell vehicle
(edit: Not the Berlin airport facility, just a picture of panels at Neuhardenberg solar park- latitude 52 degrees North)
The first fuel cell electric vehicle has been refueled at the ‘Green Hydrogen Hub’ (H2BER) of the Total multi-energy fueling station at the new Berlin Brandenburg Airport (BER) under construction in Germany, using hydrogen produced onsite via electrolysis using wind and solar energy.
In addition to refueling fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs), the H2BER project also anticipates operation of a combined heat and power (CHP) plant with regeneratively produced hydrogen, and its supply into the public gas network. It thus offers an opportunity to conduct research into the 'energy transition'n as a single system...
Edit: Add picture- maybe that will help people visualize the fueling of hydrogen cars. It's a difficult concept, isn't it
The Parliamentary Secretary of State to the Federal Transport Minister, Katherina Reiche, refuels a fuel cell electric vehicle for the first time at the ‘Green Hydrogen Hub’ (H2BER) of the Total multi-energy fueling station at Berlin Brandenburg Airport.
...H2BER’s operating principle is based on applying hydrogen as an energy source produced using wind power and solar energy. Initially the electricity required will be provided by a nearby wind park. Hydrogen production at high wind speeds will also be tested and observed by scientists in a dedicated research campus.
Total is operating two hydrogen fueling pumps at the site, one for cars and one for buses, as well as offering natural gas (CNG) and LPG fueling, and even charging points for battery electric vehicles. The company is also integrating a rooftop solar installation, developed by its photovoltaic subsidiary SunPower...more
http://www.renewableenergyfocus.com/view/38624/green-hydrogen-facility-opens-at-berlin-airport-with-first-refueling-of-fuel-cell-vehicle/
Toyota wants you to meet an 'obsessed' hydrogen fuel cell engineer
Danny King May 8th 2014 green.autoblog.com
Like a television-broadcasting company covering the Olympics, Toyota is looking to market its future in hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle production by taking the personal approach. In this case, the Japanese automaker is telling the backstory of Jackie Birdsall, an engineer at Toyota Technical Center who Toyota says is "obsessed" with fuel-cell technology
Talkin' 'Bout a Revolution
And now, as an engineer at Toyota Technical Center, Birdsall is "obsessed" with bringing fuel cell technology to the masses. But perhaps you need to be obsessed when you're trying to change the world. After all, revolutions don't blossom from complacency...
"So I can work on a car that has zero emission, that uses fuel you can make from any domestic resource, fills up in a matter of minutes and can completely replace the internal combustion vehicle?" She says. "I became obsessed."
There's that word.
"Right now, I have the best job in the world for me," she says. "I'm going to lose my mind when the first vehicle rolls off the production line. To be talking about a full commercial launch, that's pretty much the biggest victory I can have in my life."...
Full article: http://green.autoblog.com/2014/05/08/toyota-wants-you-to-meet-obsessed-hydrogen-fuel-cell-engineer/
Perhaps many people here know more about Hydrogen and cars than this top Toyota fuel cell engineer does. I doubt it though.
(PDF) http://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/pdfs/10001_well_to_wheels_gge_petroleum_use.pdf
Batteries or Fuel Cells? http://cleancaroptions.com/html/batteries_or_fuel_cells-.html
https://people.hofstra.edu/geotrans/eng/ch8en/conc8en/energycontent.html
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