I just finished digging through about three feet of frozen global warming to get to my secondary wood pile, and considering the depth of the global warming and the length of the path, I had quite a bit of time to think about this climate change phenomenon.
The reason why I had to dig to my secondary wood pile is because I already used all the wood in my primary wood pile, and here it is only the last week in January with plenty of winter still to come at us. I didn't keep the path to the secondary wood pile cleared of previous deposits of global warming in November and December because the self-styled climate experts were saying that the earth is warming up and I was expecting rain, not three feet of frozen global warming.
OK, maybe I really wasn't expecting rain all winter in the Northeast, but it certainly is possible, and I wasn't expecting to use so much wood. Also, when you have an elderly person living in your home with a keen memory about the way things were way back when, you learn that much of what is portrayed as new, unexpected and alarming weather science really isn't any of that.
For instance, my 94-year-old mother lived and worked on a farm throughout her teen years - the late 1920s to the mid-1930s. She distinctly remembers that everyone had two pairs of boots for working in the barnyard. One pair was for the muddy season, partly in the fall but mostly in late March and early April, and the other pair, called Arctics, was worn in the winter snow.
But there were two winters in the 30s, she says, when the farm in upstate New York, about 10 miles northeast of Albany, had virtually no snow, and precipitation was usually in the form of rain. She remembers this because everyone in her family remarked all winter long about how they never changed out of their mud boots and into their Arctics.
Interestingly, they didn't blame the Republicans, or anyone named Bush, they just figured it was part of the normal cycle of warmth and cooling.
Anyway, as I was finishing the path to the secondary wood pile, and shivering in the below-zero global warming temperatures, I was thinking that I still have to split the wood in the pile, which will take me a few hours a day over several days and keep me warm even before I burn it. That got me to thinking about spring when higher temperatures will return, all this frozen global warming is going to melt, and we'll be facing an overabundance of liquid global warming.
As it melts off of my yard it will run downhill and enter a stream that will merge with other streams that eventually will empty into the Connecticut River and add to the spring floods.
This in turn got me to thinking about alternative energy sources, because even though I don't agree with climate change junk science, wealth distribution, or the One World Order I still don't like the pollution that comes from burning fossil fuels, especially when there is a fuel readily available that could replace them overnight. Hydrogen.
Fossil fuels were living plants and animals around 300 million years ago in the carboniferous era. That is, until "climate change" occurred in the form of an ice age that flattened, evaporated and otherwise destroyed the swamps and tropical vegetation.
Looked at from a distance there was a lot going on then. Oceans dried up or ran off to join other oceans, continents pulled apart in some places, collided in others, mountains rose, and species went extinct. Ultimately the swamps were covered over by land or sea and under great pressure the former life forms became oil, natural gas and coal lying undisturbed mostly beneath the earth's surface. Until millions of years later when Jed Clampett from the Beverly Hillbillies found it and became the very first oil-based instant millionaire.
But the really great thing about that era was the oxygen content in the atmosphere. Approximately 35 percent compared to 21 percent today. Where do you think all that oxygen went between then and now?
Well, I was taught in science class that matter can neither be created nor destroyed, only changed in form, so it stands to reason that if the oxygen levels fell and the ocean levels rose, a lot of that oxygen must now be locked up with hydrogen in water molecules.
Frankly, I don't think we need all the water that is in the oceans. I don't think it will help any this spring when massive piles of frozen global warming suddenly melt and run downhill, unless enough of it goes over rocky spots during the downhill rush, becomes oxygenated and helps increase the lobster population in Long Island Sound.
Otherwise, we'll have more water than we need, again, and it will just create problems with the natural salinity of the oceans. So why don't we intercept some of this water before it gets to the oceans, break it down through electrolysis, vent the oxygen to the atmosphere and burn the hydrogen to fuel powerplants, industries and automobiles?
The knock on using hydrogen is that it supposedly would require a major infrastructure to produce, store, and distribute - much like gasoline. Nonsense. Enough hydrogen to fuel a car could be produced through individual converters in our autos. And, while it is often claimed that it takes more power to separate hydrogen from water than the hydrogen produces when it is burned, that wouldn't really matter to me if I could just fill my car's fuel tank with water instead of gasoline.
I wouldn't be buying the water from some cartel in South America, or the Middle East either. If I needed more power for electrolysis, I could order a bigger alternator and heavier wiring to produce the power. Even the extra power requirements wouldn't be as heavy or take up as much space as the motor and batteries for an electric car. As long as it was being produced inside my vehicle, who cares?
If there was a major water spill in the Gulf of Mexico or Alaska, how would we know? Besides, at least one inventor has shown that radio waves can break water down too, so this power issue may not be a real issue. Did you know that nuclear submarines already use this technology, except that they keep the oxygen and vent the hydrogen to the atmosphere? That's how they can stay underwater for months at a time.
How much has been spent plugging and cleaning up the Gulf of Mexico after the BP spill last summer? Nearly a hundred billion dollars? I'll tell you what; give me one percent of that and I'll hire one hundred of the best chemists, electrical and mechanical engineers we can find, at exorbitant salaries. I'll give them one year to solve the power problem and sweeten the pot with a percent of the profits.
Bet you a really nice dinner we can do it!
Another great thing about burning hydrogen obtained from water is that we'd be venting the oxygen back into the atmosphere, we wouldn't be polluting, and the by-product of burning hydrogen is water vapor.
Aside from the overwhelming greed of the oil lobby, and spinelessness of our politicians, can you give me a legitimate reason why we aren't doing this already?
Monday, January 24, 2011