Environment & Energy

The fossil fuel industry, even that part of it seeking to rebrand its products as "hydrogen" has never demonstrated much intellectual power, because basically, it's an anti-science effort to ignore the laws of thermodynamics.

The lack of intellectual power is obviated by the well known (sometimes taught and exposed at a grade school or junior high school level) logical fallacy of "guilt by association" or sometimes "poisoning the well."

One doesn't need to be too sophisticated to find thousands of references to it.

I generally have seen this nonsense over the years from antinukes, and as is the case for most intellectually hollow crap put forth I have a standard response, since it's really not wise to waste too much time on anti-science anti-intellectuals.

It goes like this:

Adolf Hitler directed Ferdinand Porsche to design a "people's car" which proved to be the Volkswagen Bug, at the time, one of the most fuel efficient cars in the word:

Hitler and 'his Volkswagen'



That would be Ferdinand Porsche looking on smiling.

Now, the fact that the origin of the Volkswagen Bug was ordered by Hitler, and that Ferdinand Porsche delivered the design of the car does not mean that the Volkswagen Bug was an unreliable car, or that its status as one of the most fuel efficient cars on the planet was untrue in the 1950's, 1960's or even the 1970's, the latter decade being the one in which bullshiters began predicting a "hydrogen economy" "by 2000."

Nor does the role of Ferdinand Porsche in this bit of history imply that Porsches are shitty cars. They are decidedly less shitty, say, than million dollar hydrogen buses that blow up when being refueled.

Fuel cell bus in California destroyed after explosion during refuelling.

Similar to the above analogy, it does not follow that if the orange pedophile in the White House is against hydrogen that it is therefore true that hydrogen is a good thing. The laws of science, which dictate that hydrogen is overwhelming a filthy fuel made from fossil fuels with exergy destruction, are not controlled by the orange pedophile's opinions.

Most people here - who at least nominally oppose the fossil fuel industry, although many not as much as I do - know that the orange pedophile is a fucking idiot, far too stupid and uneducated to understand hydrogen marketing is absolutely and incontrovertibly a tool to increase the use of fossil fuels, since making hydrogen destroys some of the exergy of the fossil fuels used to make it.

Regrettably there are still people all around the world whose education doesn't include even a whit of scientific training, and they of course, can buy into this anti-science, anti-intellectual fossil fuel rebranding.

I do have scientific training - lot's of it in fact - and so I can see through this tiresome filthy scheme very easily, just as I can see through the childish "guilt by association argument."

I rather enjoy the transparency of these fossil fuel greenwashing ads that run almost daily here, with clearly well funded videos, and am always pleased to point them out. The poor logic of marketeers often needs to be confronted, especially those selling very dangerous ideas, whether it be a claim that smoking is good for you or that hydrogen is "green."