May 23, 2021
A Strategic Commodity
Winston Churchill’s decision to replace coal by oil for the primary source of power of the Royal Navy forced Britain, which at the time had no known domestic oil fields, to seek, acquire and maintain control of oil deposits in distant lands. On May 21, 1901 the Shah of Persia signed the first oil concession agreement of the 20th Century bestowing upon an Englishman called William Knox D’Arcy a special and exclusive privilege to search for, obtain, exploit, carry away and sell natural gas, petroleum, asphalt and ozerite throughout the whole extent of the Persian Empire for a period of sixty years. In 1908 oil was discovered at Masjid I-Suleiman in southern Persia, and within a year the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC) was formed. Six years later, on June 14, 1914, at Churchill’s behest -and coincidentally just fourteen days before the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria that sparked World War I- Parliament passed a bill to fund the British Government’s acquisition of a 51% interest in APOC. Thereafter Churchill promptly placed two directors on its board and negotiated a secret contract to provide Britain with a 20-year supply of oil under favorable terms. Thus, with one stroke, Churchill promoted oil to a strategic commodity and an instrument of national policy. While this British monopoly (and later, American and Russian) of the world’s oil fields amassed immense wealth for them, it also created a suffocating dependence for the (then) up and coming German and Japanese Empires that led to World War II.
Worth noting is that China, then hibernating, did not compete in the struggle for control of foreign oil deposits. Now the Asian giant –with a population four times larger than the United States- has awakened, become wealthy and powerful, and ominously served notice that it is intent on reclaiming Taiwan, which it sees as Chinese territory, and on monopolizing whatever fossil fuels may be found in the South China Sea –in its eyes a non-negotiable imperative to ensure oil self-sufficiency for its navy. In other words, the dynamics that existed in 1914 and 1941 never subsided; this time around they’re enhanced by weapons capable of ending life as we know it in a matter of minutes. There is however a sliver of hope: the universal understanding that fossil fuels, including oil, are the cause of climate change. Either we abolish their use or they will abolish us.
Clarification
As to the purpose and intent of this website, both are disclosed in the “About Us” page. Equally important, this is not a “for profit” enterprise catering to special interests; rather, we simply seek to leave a better world for our children and grandchildren.
Though not one of our collaborators is a polymath, we all face impending anthropomorphic catastrophes encompassing nearly every known discipline. Our technology, which continues to evolve at a breathtaking speed, has far outpaced our level of spiritual maturity. Artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and robotics –to name three- now threaten to wrest any vestigial control we may still have over terminal weaponry, and primitive traits like dominance, greed and lust for power still call the shots.
Anthropomorphic climate change is impervious to our needs and wants; its ramifications reach into every aspect of human endeavor –economic, psychological, military, social, and directly impacts the availability of water, energy and food, and population growth. In response, we have attempted to amass a kernel of pertinent, cutting-edge knowledge as reported by renowned specialists, and used it to suggest an original, non-permanent structural blueprint to restrain our aforementioned traits from destroying us all.
We believe hydrogen is the answer. If mass produced by electrolysis of seawater using solar energy primarily, it could be burned to create a new source of pure water to conquer drought, compensate for the depletion of aquifers and melting glaciers, ensure the production of food, and make it possible to plant trees anywhere, even in the driest deserts, to help recycle the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere. Crucially, unlike desalination, which is impractical or impossible in inland areas and a heavy consumer of energy, our suggested system would also generate electricity, not just by burning the hydrogen itself but by using gravity as shown on the front page diagram. Fusion, on the other hand, transforms hydrogen into helium. Inevitably, in time, with future and cumulative demand stemming from technologies and schemes not yet invented, our supply of water would permanently and irretrievably decline.
New Technologies and Discoveries
Great progress has been, and continues to be made, at every critical technological junction to make this feasible and economical. The price of solar panels declined about 80% from 2000 to 2020 (there’s no reason why residential consumers must be compelled to remain attached to the grid other than to continue to subsidize public utilities, which burn fossil fuels), a catalyst was discovered that minimizes the production of chlorine gas while producing hydrogen by electrolysis of salt water, numerous corrosion resistant materials for bipolar plates are being tested, and, crucially, a turbine capable of burning hydrogen directly and uninterruptedly, without fuel cells, already exists.
What’s Missing
While undoubtedly brilliant, these projects exist in a vacuum, isolated from each other: they’re not part of an all-encompassing team dedicated to replace fossil fuels with hydrogen. One way to compensate for that shortfall would be to amalgam a group of grassroots volunteer experts in the many disciplines involved to develop and publicize a comprehensive, technically-detailed blueprint that our political leaders would be hard-pressed to ignore.