The burning issue - Walt Patterson

Fire is at the root of our climate problems and it is time we put it out, writes Walt Patterson, Associate Fellow at Chatham House. “We need to switch from using fire to using electricity.”

Walt Patterson's
 "Electricity Vs. Fire:
The Fight for our Future".

Is climate complicated? Yes – except in one key respect. Countless reams of disputed text preceded the Paris Agreement of December 2015. Media coverage before, during and after the summit was hectic with controversy. Yet all the furious disputation that surrounds the climate issue can be traced back to a single common four letter word. The word is fire.

Why fire? In the headlong climate debate worldwide, no one talks about fire. They talk about fossil fuels, about emissions, about carbon dioxide, about increasing global temperature, about floods and droughts, about sea-level rise, about melting glaciers and collapsing ice sheets. These, however, are symptoms of what is wrong. They are not the cause. Somehow the commentators fail to notice or remark that all of these factors arise because of fire.

Read the EnergyPost story by Walt Patterson -“The burning issue.”

Why hydrogen fuel cell cars are not competitive — from a hydrogen fuel cell expert

Hydrogen fuel cell cars
are a "bad idea". 

The widespread introduction of hydrogen fuel cell cars is a bad idea, writes Zachary Shahan, editor of Cleantechnica.com. According to Shahan, hydrogen fuel cell cars will never be able to compete with battery-electric cars. Policymakers should focus on stimulating electric transportation. Courtesy Cleantechnica.com.

One of Cleantechnica’s regular commenters recently dropped a very interesting link into the comments of an article about Hyundai’s apparent shift in focus to battery-electric cars. As he prefaced it: There’s actually a long list of problems with fuel cell cars. From someone who actually built fuel cell cars: http://ssj3gohan.tweakblogs.net/blog/11470/why-fuel-cell-cars-dont-work-part-1.

It is a long piece, and it’s in three parts. Admittedly, it would be nice if the author updated it to match the current market — it was published in February 2015 and is dated in a couple of parts.

Read Zachary Shahan’s story on EnergyPost - "Why hydrogen fuel cell cars are not competitive —from a hydrogen fuel cell expert.”