From his Stanford ivory tower, engineering professor Mark Jacobson urges that we give up fossil fuels for…what?
Jacobson writes in “Securing public health forever with clean energy“:
I ask myself, why is it so difficult for nations to reach a consensus on solving the three major problems of our age: air pollution mortality, global warming and energy security. These problems are caused by the same thing – how we obtain our energy. The solution is simple: change our sources of energy. Why hasn’t this been done? Because politicians and the public have been led to believe by industries with a financial interest in the current infrastructure that, given enough time and money, they can solve the problems themselves, or that their latest products are good enough.
Don’t be fooled by the smoke and mirrors.
Let’s look at the scope of the problems, why the most advertised solutions don’t solve them, and what will solve them.
Currently, 2.5-3 million people worldwide, including nearly one million children younger than five, die prematurely each and every year from air pollution caused by the burning of biofuels and fossil fuels. Millions more become ill due to respiratory illness, cardiovascular disease, asthma, pneumonia and other diseases exacerbated by air pollution…So, what is the solution?
It is to convert our energy infrastructure to electricity and electricity-produced hydrogen for all purposes, where the electricity is generated by technologies running on wind, water and sunlight (WWS). WWS electric power technologies include wind turbines, concentrated solar power plants, solar PV power plants, rooftop solar PV panels, geothermal power plants, hydroelectric power plants, tidal turbines and wave devices…
The only thing “clean energy” secures is expensive and unreliable electricity — in other words, poverty.
The current “clean energy” tends to be natural gas and nuclear if you take the total production costs including rare earth metals used in wind turbines and PV panels. Hydroelectric plants are really a by-product of flood control.
WWS plants tend to be very small in comparison to the power requirements of Washington, DC, and New York City. The base-line power required for urban and industrial demand is not only large. WWS power does not contribute to base-line power.
Hydrogen-powered vehicles should require daily and monthly checks by trained mechanics. Or else have an odorant added to the hydrogen gas for leak detection.