Bad Science – The editors of Washington Post show their basic ignorance of science by allowing environmentalist gadfly Jeremy Rifkin to expound religiously on the virtues of hydrogen fuel cell technology. With the unveiling of GM’s new hydrogen-powered Hy-wire, Rifkin promotes the fiberglass-framed car as “the beginning of the end of the internal combustion engine and the shift from an oil-based civilization to a hydrogen age”.

Rifkin declares: “The sun is setting on the great fossil-fuel culture that began with the harnessing of coal and steam power more than 200 years ago.”

It doesn’t take a Nobel Prize winner to poke holes in Rifkin’s proclamation, just a first-year course in chemistry and some common sense. Today, there are two primary methods for producing the hydrogen necessary to fuel the Hy-wire: electrolysis and catalytic reforming.

Electrolysis requires passing a strong electric current through water, which then breaks down into hydrogen and oxygen. However, the energy required for commercial-scale electrolysis is only available through the inefficient burning of fossil fuels or hydroelectric and nuclear power. Catalytic reforming works through a series of chemical reactions and is more energy efficient, but requires a hydrogen source other than water. The source of hydrogen, you ask? Fossil fuels.

Rifkin also doesn’t seem to realize that petrochemicals are an essential ingredient in manufacturing fiberglass, a composite of plastics derived from hydrocarbons and silicon. If anything, wide-scale adaptation of hydrogen fuel technology would further promote the use of fossil fuels, both as a source of energy and raw materials.

Al Gore would be proud. After all, he invented hydrogen fuel cell technology.