The conclusion of Jesse Ausubel’s excellent paper should be mandatory reading for grade and high school science students, who are sure to be getting sold a different bill of goods.
Because hydrogen is much better stuff for burning than carbon, the hydrocarbons form a clear hierarchy. Methane (mjr: natural gas) tops the ranking …
The energy density of nuclear fuel is 10,000 or even 100,000 times as great as methane.
OK, I’ve mentioned this already. But here is the really good stuff:
Yet, we also know that the trend of decarbonisation s the outcome of all the blood, sweat and tears of persistent workers, engineers, managers, investors, regulators and consumers. If people stop bleeding, sweating, and crying, the same producing decarbonisation could just stop. Without heretics, there are no schisms.
And energy offers ample room for heresies. I have mentioned several, some large like
reading the Bible in one’s own tongue, and some small like sausages on Lent:
- decarbonisation has proceeded for almost two centuries and without a policy for it
- renewables are not green
- resource exhaustion is irrelevant
- hydrocarbons are not the stored energy of the sun
- utilities should embrace nuclear energy together with methane
- nuclear plants must diversify to make hydrogen as well as electricity
- nuclear is green
Received, widely held doctrines may be wise and right. But history, including the history of science, is littered with doctrines discarded as delusions.
