Letters from the March 13, 2004, issue of Science News
By Science News
Dry hole?
“Tapping sun’s light and heat to make hydrogen” (SN: 1/17/04, p. 46: Tapping sun’s light and heat to make hydrogen) seems to be delivering good news for the environment: “Clean” hydrogen can be produced from water using solar energy. This seems to me, however, to be even more horrifying than the burning of fossil fuels, which I believe we will be able to survive quite well without, once we consume them all. Will we shift our voracious consumption to the extremely finite water supply? Will we pump the very basis of life out of the ground to burn, nonrenewably, in our cars? This sounds like the worst plan yet.