I’ve been invited to speak at the Atlanta Science Tavern on 13 June, 2012. I’ll be speaking on “Hydrogen Cars, Ethanol, Wind Farms, and other Silly Ideas.” You can sign up to attend here.
One of the triggers for this talk was a BMW advertisement promising a hydrogen engine that “produces near zero emissions. Which means the exhaust produces water vapor, not carbon dioxide. So it reduces pollution and greenhouse gases and lessens our dependence on imported oil.”
That’s just silly, and I’ll explain why.
There are more silly ideas out there, most of them referenced by this Scientific American cover article from September 2011 on “How to Get All Energy from Wind, Water, and Solar Power by 2030.”
This is a deeply flawed (and dangerous) vision, but it’s attractive to a lot of well-meaning environmentalists. We’ll explore why it won’t work.
Bio:
Stephen Fleming is Vice President of the Enterprise Innovation Institute at Georgia Tech, responsible for economic development and entrepreneurial support. He’s a GT graduate who has been a Bell Labs physicist, telecom exec, and successful venture capitalist before returning to Georgia Tech in 2005.
References:
http://www.businessweek.com/autos/content/may2006/bw20060505_260847.htm
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=a-path-to-sustainable-energy-by-2030
