(Mis)Understanding Fuel Cells
I’m always amused when I see articles on subjects within the energy space that show that the author hasn’t the foggiest idea what he’s talking about. I’m reminded of my 6th grade course in meteorology, when one of my bottom-of-the-barrel classmates wrote his final exam essay on meteors.
Here’s a feature article in Global Energy World whose author, writing on fuel cells, begins:
Investments in Fuel Cells R&D is rising all over the world as the technology has (a) lot of growth potential and has various advantages over other renewable energy sources like solar, wind etc.
A fuel cell is not a source of energy, any more than the engine in your car; a fuel cell is a device that converts a chemical fuel into another chemical, releasing electrical energy in the process.
Incompetent writers are a widespread problem, and not only with energy issues.
Years ago when I was working for a computer company, we had a summer intern who developed debugging software. A newspaper reporter found out about it and wrote an article. According to the article, the debugging software would make debugging automatic; programmers would no longer have to do it. Of course anyone who has programmed computers would understand that debugging software does not automatically do the debugging; it is simply a tool to make it easier for programmers to do the debugging.
Such nonsense writing is, unfortunately, quite common. However, unless we have a good understanding of the subject ourselves, we often cannot detect that the writer is incompetent and that the article is full of errors.
Erroneous articles can result from either incompetence or a deliberate attempt to mislead; often we cannot tell which.