don't challenge evolution....

The science / pseudoscience debates remind me of the difference between the US and the Soviet Union during the space race. The USA put all its failures & successes on the world stage for all to see. The USSR did launches under extreme secrecy, only announcing successes after the fact.

Science puts its internal squabbles, hypothesis, and ideas on the table for all to examine and criticize. ID/Creationists/Genesis Literalists will typically never even acknowledge any evidence that is not supportive of their views.

 

As usual, Helen, you say something is wrong and provide no evidence. It also appears to be dead on target to me regarding the thread's stated topic.

 

Helen wrote:

What subject?

The initial article of this thread, while interesting, has little conection with the thread title.

And if one is concerned about subject drift the way to go about it is to try to gently nudge a thread back on subject rather than to loudly proclaim (in the thread's 3rd post!) that the second post is changing the subject, especially when the first post was barely on topic itself!

That said, since we've seen nothing about the thread subject in this thread, we might as well get back to the subject of the first posting of this thread.

First of all, Tromp et al didn't claim that 20% of hydrogen for fuel would leak into the atmosphere. Their study used figures between 10% and 20%. Whether even the lower figure is reasonable I cannot say. However, it is absolutely clear that they are talking about leakage from all sources from manufacture to transportation to consumption of the hydrogen. However, "hydrogen specialist Reinhold Wurster" addresses only leakage at consumption (from consuming vehicles). On that basis alone his analysis must be regarded as woefully incomplete. Further, his argument that since hydrogen is stored in those vehicles at pressure of 700 atmospheres, so that even a microscopic leak would cause the whole transortation network to fail, is patent nonsense. Leaks can occur on all microscopic scales, so not all will be catastrophic. (This is true of many gasses, but is especially true of hydrogen, which is very mobile).

I do not know whether such microscopic hydrogen escapes can aggregately account for a significant portion of the putative 10%-20% leakage figure used by Tromp et al. It is certain, however, that "hydrogen specialist Reinhold Wurster"'s argument does little or nothing to decide the issue. It is surprising that it got published. Oh wait, it was the Tromp article that was published in Science. " hydrogen specialist Reinhold Wurster"'s remark was published only in a science journalist's report. He might have some sound arguments, but they weren't made in Sam Jaffe's article.

Tromp et al's article deals primarily with effects of high stratospheric hydrogen concentration. As such it would be a welcome addition to a scant literature on that subject. I do think that they may have succombed to temptation to too closely apply their findings to a hydrogen-driven economy. The 10%-20% leakage figures they employ may be excessive and even tendentious. A more modest title emphasizing stratospheric injection of hydrogen might have been more appropriate, although such a paper might not have been accepted by Science

Whateve, it is clear that Jaffe's short article addresses badly, if at all, any defficiencies in Tromp et al's article.

 

I am not sure of the point you are trying to make.

It seems that their chief mistake was in making a wrong assumption about leakage rates, a mistake that others seem quick to point out. Going all the way back to the Caltech press release even the authors of the report acknowledge that there is considerable uncertainty on the effects of a large amount of additional hydrogen on the hydrogen cycle and they are attempting a sort of educated guess of the the effects and listing some things that could mediate the effects.

How this relates to evolution I don't know. Crackpot ideas (maybe too strong a word here) get in print sometimes and others are usually happy to show them the error of their ways.