From Metro's readers' letters:
The In Focus feature about generating hydrogen gas from water using the Sun's energy quotes academics hailing the news as an important step towards ending our reliance on fossil fuels (Metro, Mon).
I fear that a more realistic prognosis of the future of hydrogen generation using solar power would be that some oil company is going to buy the patent to the technology and bury it so deep that we won't hear of it again until we've depleted all the fossil fuels and completely destroyed the environment.
Aliaksei Holik, Cardiff.
I've heard this one before and it doth not make sense.
1. Oil extraction and refining isn't that stupendously profitable. The ten biggest oil companies in the world have a market capitalisation of $1,500 billion, about three times that of Apple. They have to make huge and risky investments and spend a fortune on maintenance etc. Why would they bother with deep sea drilling if they own a patent which will produce oil-substitute products from sunlight and bacteria/water/fresh air/whatever?
2. The real big earners from oil are the countries which collect tax from motorists on the fuel - but even if cars ran off something else, these countries could get the same amount of revenue by taxing the substitute fuel or road-user charging - and the money from extraction licences. So if anybody is doing any buying and burying, it would have to be an organisation like OPEC.
3. Let's assume that the net present value of all OPEC's future oil revenues is £1 quadzillion. If a new technology threatened to wipe out that value, then OPEC would have to pay something approaching £1 qzn for it (if the patent holder did his sums and haggled properly). So let's say that OPEC have bought and buried some breakthrough patent for £0.5 qzn. What happens if another patent holder comes along with a different patent? The first £0.5 qzn is a sunk cost, and OPEC would, yet again, have to pay something approaching £1 qzn to buy and bury the next patent, and so on, once they have bought and buried the third patent, they will be deep in minus territory so it's not even worth starting. It's like paying a blackmailer a small amount of money, he'll just keep coming back for more.
4. From the point of view of OPEC, the same applies to oil (or gas) discoveries anywhere else in the world. The competition they face from oil in the USA, the North Sea, off the coast of Brazil, the Falklands etc. will put just as much of a dent in their earnings, and when oil is discovered in these places, oil companies are rushing to bid for the licence to extract it.
5. Motorists and oil companies may be fairly reckless as to oil running out or the environment being ruined (whether that is the case is a separate debate) but it is certainly not their stated intention to achieve this. When Lord Browne and Tony Hawyard had their appointments with the school careers officer, they didn't tell them that their personal ambition was to wreck the environment and deplete natural resources and wait for the careers officer to recommend that they apply for a job with an oil major as the best way of achieving it. I assume that they studied engineering, geology, organic chemistry or economics or something and then found that the best paid and most interesting jobs they could get were with oil majors.
6. UPDATE Blue Eyes in the comments points out that patents are usually only protected for twenty years, so OPEC would not only have to acquire the patent but also bind everybody involved in developing it into very long term confidentiality agreements, destroy all workings papers and results etc, which is nigh impossible nowadays.
So the way I see it, OPEC will be pretty miffed if and when somebody develops such an alternative technology, but in the long run, there is nothing they can do about it. Oil companies won't be too fussed, because we can safely assume that it would take ten or twenty years for people to replace their cars and lorries, which is roughly the same period over which they can amortise/use up/wind down their current investment in all the rigs, refineries, tanker ships etc. and invest in the new technology instead.
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And also, a patent only lasts twenty years so even if someone did have the breakthrough patent, Dr Evil could only bury the technology for twenty years. Oil is not going to run out before that. And also, lots of countries have procedures in their patent law to stop people from burying technology in this way.
It's the same as the urban myth about the invention of the ever lasting light bulb. Which was supposedly buried by the electric bulb manufacturers. So they wouldn't go out of business when everyone had one.
BB, and the one about the invention that allows your car to run on (sea)water, which still surfaces now and again, despite it being thermodynamically impossible.
Hydrogen as a fuel solves few problems and creates a load more, compared with oil and (natural) gas.
Low energy density, ruinously costly of energy to liquefy and equally ruinously costly to keep liquid (when it's highly dangerous anyway), can't be liquefied by compression alone, has a nasty habit of escaping from anything you try to store it in...... I know fuel cells are supposed to be the answer but there doesn't seem to be a burgeoning market in fuel-cell-powered heavy machinery, and you still have to get the hydrogen to the fuel cell, or vice-versa.
Conclusion: high probability of Aliaksei being a fine specimen of one of Cardiff's prize idiots.
I think we will file that one under greens "markets dont work" meme
BE, good point, I have updated.
BB, I've heard that one too. There used to be a rumour that cars were made out of steel so that they rusted up after a decade and you'd have to buy a new one. I remember Audi boasting in the 1980s that their cars were fully galvanised, which seemed like a good idea. And generally, cars don't seem to rust anywhere near as fast as they used to, so that's that one blown out of the water.
B, that's just silly, is there really such a rumour?
FT, exactly.
S, what, are the Greens against free markets? Since when?
Protecting patents and getting the full value out of them is a full time job. The Wright brothers spent 20 years fighting in American courts to get a share of the value added to their competitors till the US government just declred that National security overrode patent rights.
So a smart inventor would sell OPEC those rights for a lot less than that. However OPEC couldn't enforce it in China (or the US if it said National Security).
I consider the latter an answer to all such conspiracy theories but the fact that inventors cannot extract the value they add nearly as well as the owners of Land, Labour & Capital can, to be a significant brake on such innovation, which is the most important adder of value.
>are the Greens against free markets? Since when?
Yes. Since year zero.
I don't think OPEC would be miffed at all. They would simply find that because western governments couldn't tax their end product as much it might just be more profitable doing something else with it. The ingenuity of man knows no bounds - especially if there's profit (or sex) in it.
The ones ive meet certainly are Mark. In theory there is free market environmentalism but the fact is most of the foot soldiers are from the loony left.
NC, maybe, maybe not. but
a) does it really matter? Inventors invent stuff for the fun of inventing, a very tiny minority make a load of money from it, but it's like a lottery, the fact that only a tiny number get rich doesn't deter people from entering and
b) we also know that Land will soak up most of the gains created by Labour/Capital (which are to all intents and purposes the same thing).
SB, I is disappoint. You mean they believe in trade tariffs, subsidies, regulations, restrictions, that sort of thing?
L, oil is good for lots of things, but as a natural-ish raw material, it's unbeatable at powering motor vehicles. That's a far better use than plastics or electricity generation.
Strictly speaking its currently unbeatable as a source of energy for internal combustion engines. And five star smells sooooo good.
"B, that's just silly, is there really such a rumour?"
Hell, yes. Try putting "engine running on water" into the YouTube search engine.
"There used to be a rumour that cars were made out of steel so that they rusted up after a decade and you'd have to buy a new one."
That was no rumour, that was fact. Nowadays all manufacturers use some sort of ant-rust treatment on the metal inside and out before it is painted, but when I bought my first car in the 80's, it was painfully obvious that the manufacturers only painted the bits that showed. Why do you think there are so few (real) Minis about these days?
S, so you think so too?
Aren't the greens always saying how great it is that we can reduce our 'carbon foot prints' by buying cheap food from far flung parts of the globe because it's grown in a less energy-intensive fashion (more sunlight, cheaper manpower) and that the pollution caused by the transport is far less than what UK tractors would have emitted to grow the same food?
With the bonus that the money the farmers earn is ten times more likely to benefit the farmers and their families than a similar amount in aid payments?
L, I don't like the smell, I just like the sound when you accelerate. God that sounds childish in print.
B, OK, the rusting bit is probably fact, but the cunning scheme didn't last forever though. Nowadays they put all sorts of electronic wizardry in which is guaranteed to break down instead.
Also, a patent is public record. You can go on the USPTO website and search for them.
An inventor would instead have to create it as a trade secret (like most of Google's search tech, Irn Bru formula). This has limited protection. You can sue an employee that leaks a trade secret, but you then can't do much if the world gets hold of it. It would be very risky to do with a super new efficient technology.
MW Well, if it's the noise it makes that makes it all worthwhile try listening to the small block Chevy in a Lola T70 at full chat, or the Cosworth screamer at 8750 revs in the thing I race....
Cars were never designed to rust!
Lancia almost went out of business as their rustproofing and low grade steel was so poor.
* Lancia is a byword for rust.
My 1979 Beta actually rusted away. It had so much rust it failed MOT and was scrapped.
From wiki - In the UK (Lancia's largest export market at the time) the company listened to the complaints from its dealers and customers and commenced a campaign to buy back vehicles affected by rusting the subframe problem.
Lancia had a one year anti -corrosion guarantee.
They were forced to introduce a 6-year anti-corrosion warranty - an automotive first in the UK.
Whilst later Betas had reinforced subframe mounting points and post-1979 cars were better protected from the elements, these issues damaged the whole marque's sales success on most export markets.
So, how does this theory work?
The manufacturer designs a car that rusts, so forcing the owner to buy a new car.
But the negative publicity forces the manufacturer to buy back the rusty, useless car and offer a generous part exchange on a new one.
That still doesn't help, so the manufacturer has to offer the longest anti-rust warranty available to win back angry owners.
There is no contract that says a motorist must continue buying the same brand.
An unusually rusty vehicle, like the Lancia beta, soon becomes an unsaleable product.
And the manufacturers reputation is ruined.
I have never bought another Italian car.
Not in 30 years.
And the original mini rusted because water came up through the poorly welded floor and settled and so the floors rusted away. As did the headlights which didn't fit properly and again water collected. Same as on the MGB and Princess.
Poor and too small drain holes in the doors, that were easily blocked by dirt and leaves let water settle inside the door panels. Salt, air and water did the rest.
Poor car manufacturing and strikes that meant cars had to be rushed on the few days a year a factory actually made them is what caused 1970's cars to rust. And the paint was a lot more expensive and did not have the same paint technology as today's.
"I have never bought another Italian car.
Not in 30 years."
About that long ago I was in the Transvaal. The air is so dry there nothing rusts. Except Alfa-Romeos.
L, engines going full tilt are irritating, I just like the acceleration bit.
BQ, there is a grey area between 'designed to rust' and 'manufacturers were pretty indifferent whether cars rusted or not' but all your anecdotal certainly supports the second possibility. Whatever the truth, manufacturers have appear to have sorted this out by and large.
B, what about Lancias?
I seem to recall a company in the 70s that offered to coat the floorpan of your car with some "magic" formula to stop it rusting - probably just spraying a coat of plastic onto it. Was their name "Ziebart"? You would find them among the back streets of industrial estates with the paint and bodyshop outfits etc. They seemed to vanish overnight when car manufacturers started using proper paints.
"B, what about Lancias?"
Never saw any. Perhaps they'd already all rusted away. A colleague of mine had the Alfa, which, he claimed, was the only rusty car in the Transvaal.
MW - You're probably right, since my higher range hearing is buggered. But, when you're sitting in the thing and it goes onto the cam and keeps winding itself forward it really is something special - trust me, it is.
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