The conversation explores Eberhart's central thesis that energy and human imagination are inseparable. He argues that everything civilization has created, from automobiles to books, exists because humans harnessed energy to give substance to their ideas. Art and Eberhart discuss how exponentially rising energy consumption, combined with dependence on foreign oil funding hostile nations, creates both economic and security vulnerabilities.
Eberhart addresses hydrogen as a potential fuel source, explaining the scientific challenges of storage and production that make it less viable than many assume. He also weighs in on climate change, stating that the evidence for human-caused global warming is overwhelming, and warns that China has already surpassed the U.S. as the world's largest carbon emitter. The hour opens with unscreened listener calls on topics ranging from the Iraq War to personal stories.
Key Moments
Corn ethanol is a bad idea: Eberhart calls corn-based biofuels a bad bet, driven by farm subsidies, with no clear net energy gain and a side effect of pushing up food prices. He points to cellulosic ethanol as the better path.
Why peak oil is wrong: Asked whether peak oil is real, Eberhart says no. Conventional oil may peak, but tar sands and 800 billion barrels of oil shale in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming become viable once prices clear about $40 to $50 a barrel.
If the Saudis stopped pumping: Art asks what happens if the U.S. is cut off from Mideast oil. Eberhart answers: catastrophic, the whole world would go into a major collapse, comparing it to the 1970s embargo when only three million barrels were pulled.
Solar dimming and the China problem: Eberhart explains solar dimming: sulfate particulates from coal cut sunlight reaching Earth by about 5 percent, masking warming. When the U.S. cleaned its air post-Clean Air Act, warming accelerated. China is now in the same trap.
Bush's hydrogen economy is a circle: Eberhart dismantles the State of the Union hydrogen pitch: hydrogen does not exist free in nature, so isolating it under Bush's plan means burning fossil fuels to make hydrogen to burn hydrogen to get water back. No independence, possibly no savings.