BeIR/webis-touche2020 huggingface dataset:
Renewable vehicles better than Pickens' natural gas cars

"What Pickens Has Right, What He Has Wrong". ClimateProgress. 28 July 2008 - "Advocates of NGVs claim that with the right government support, natural gas could displace more than 10 billion gallons of gasoline equivalent by 2017. But given the evolution of electric vehicle technology and renewable power technologies, the question is whether personal transportation is the highest and best use of America’s natural gas supplies."
Inconsistent wind energy in Pickens Plan can be accommodated

"What Pickens Has Right, What He Has Wrong". ClimateProgress. 28 July 2008 - "The biggest complaint about wind power -- that it is an intermittent resource -- can be solved with emerging storage technologies, including plug-in hybrid vehicles that recharge at night when the wind blows best and feed electricity back into the grid during the day when the vehicles are parked at home or work. That brings us to the second part of Pickens' plan and to Joe's correct judgment that using natural gas to run vehicles rather than power plants is a bad idea."
Natural gas burns more cleanly than gasoline in general

"The Natural Gas Alternative". ConsumerReports.org - "CNG is much cleaner-burning than gasoline. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, CNG can reduce carbon-monoxide emissions by 90 to 97 percent and nitrogen-oxide emissions by 35 to 60 percent when compared with gasoline. CNG can also potentially reduce non-methane hydrocarbon emissions by 50 to 75 percent, while producing fewer carcinogenic pollutants and little or no particulate matter. When the 1998 Civic GX was introduced, the EPA cited it as having the cleanest internal combustion engine ever tested."
Pickens Plan requires infeasible electric grid upgrades

Kate Galbraith. "Pickens Plan Stirs Debate, and Qualms". New York Times. 5 Aug. 2008 - "Despite the high costs, Pickens touts the economic growth the expanded wind farm industry could provide...Even after the farms are built, though, a revamped—and extremely expensive—power grid would be needed...The prime locations for wind farms are in remote regions with limited or no electric infrastructure, so new construction would be needed to provide ways to move electricity from the farms to population centers...Pickens estimates the transmission infrastructure could cost another $200 billion—an effort he likened to the government-funded construction of the U.S. interstate highway system, which kicked off under President Dwight D. Eisenhower."
Wind energy production is inconsistent relative to demand

Mark Landler. "Sweden Turns to a Promising Power Source, With Flaws". New York Times. November 23, 2007 - "Sweden’s gleaming wind park is entering service at a time when wind energy is coming under sharper scrutiny, not just from hostile neighbors, who complain that the towers are a blot on the landscape, but from energy experts who question its reliability as a source of power. For starters, the wind does not blow all the time. When it does, it does not necessarily do so during periods of high demand for electricity. That makes wind a shaky replacement for more dependable, if polluting, energy sources like oil, coal and natural gas."
Pickens Plan favors technology over better market guidance

John DeCicco, a senior fellow with Environmental Defense - "You can’t pick today what’s going to work in the marketplace tomorrow, the best you can do for policy is to set a general goal in terms of carbon reductions – put a price on carbon - and then let the market sort out what it [the technological solution] is going to be, not Pickens, not President Bush, not Senator so- and so. So, we ultimately believe in the invisible hand, ironically, even though we are environmentalists, rather than throwing a lot of money at some investor or somebody’s favorite solution – that’s the larger message here."[2]
Wind requires natural gas back-up (contrary to Pickens)

"Pickens Plan Leaves U.S. Energy Security Blowing in the Wind". Institute for Energy Research. 11 Jul. 2008 - "Wind energy needs backup power that comes mostly from natural-gas fired power plants...Because wind is intermittent and unreliable, new wind generation requires the building of backup electrical generation. Most commonly, backup generation is provided by natural gas-fired power plants. Unlike coal or nuclear power, which can literally take days to heat boilers up to the appropriate temperature, natural gas turbines can spin up and produce electricity very quickly. Thus, the federal government should open new areas for natural gas production to meet growing demand for power, just the opposite of what the Pickens Plan espouses (“this is one emergency we cannot drill our way out of”)."
Wind energy is non-dispatchable

"Pickens Plan Leaves U.S. Energy Security Blowing in the Wind". Institute for Energy Research. 11 Jul. 2008 - "Unfortunately, energy consumers can’t tell the wind to blow more when they need more electricity. Typically, the winds blow most consistently in the morning when electricity demand is low, and less during the afternoon when electricity demand is high. The hottest days are the days without wind, leaving the peak load to be met by conventional energies. Reliable operation of the electricity grid requires generation that can be turned on and off the “flip of a switch.” Wind power cannot provide this flexibility."
Hydrogen fuel-cell cars are really electric cars

Wayne Cunningham. "Driving It. Why Hydrogen will fuel future cars." 11 Apr. 2007 - "Every major automaker has a fuel cell research car that works. I've driven many of them, and the driving experience is very good. A fuel cell car is really just an electric car that powers its motors from a fuel cell. The fuel cell takes hydrogen and combines it with oxygen to make water, H2O. The byproduct of this process is electricity, which gets fed to the motors. Most importantly, the electrical output of a fuel cell pack is strong enough to give an electric car reasonable acceleration."
Electricity for hydrogen production can be made 100% 0-emission

From an environmental and global warming standpoint, it is a good idea to move onto the electric grid for all of our energy because most future "green" energy will produce electricity. Nuclear, solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, wave, and tidal energy all produce electricity as their consumable energy product. By relying on electricity, hydrogen fuel cells will become increasingly clean as society transitions to these cleaner sources of electricity production.
It is not too energy-intensive to compress hydrogen

Amory Lovins, CEO of Rocky Mountain Institute. "Twenty Hydrogen Myths". 20 June 2003 - "Myth #8. Compressing hydrogen for automotive storage tanks takes too much energy. Compressing hydrogen to fill tanks to 350 bar using standard 93–94%-efficient intercooled technology takes electricity equivalent to about 9–12% of the hydrogen’s energy content. However, most of that compression energy can be recovered aboard the car by reducing the pressure back to what the fuel cell needs (~0.3–3 bar) not with a throttling valve but with a miniature turboex.
Hydrogen fuel can be made by clean nuclear electricity

Prof. Otto G. Raabe, Center for Health and the Environment. "Hydrogen cars can solve foreign oil problem". USA Today. - "Because hydrogen fuel can be made from water via electrolysis, all that is needed is plentiful electricity. The United States has enough nuclear fuel in the form of plutonium-239 and depleted uranium to supply all of our electrical power needs for the whole century using modern, safe nuclear power plants." Many consider using nuclear electricity a sound approach to combating global warming because it does not emit any greenhouse gases.
Hydrogen cars are like high-performance electric cars

Wayne Cunningham. "Driving It. Why Hydrogen will fuel future cars." CNET. 11 Apr. 2007 - "It's important to keep in mind that a fuel cell car is just an electric car that happens to derive its electricity from a hydrogen-oxygen reaction. Any other source of electricity could work. The reason that automakers are focusing on hydrogen is because they find it the most practical solution for achieving the performance we've come to expect from our cars."
Hydrogen fuel cells require technology breakthrough

Joseph J. Romm said in an interview with Motor Trend: "we need three technological breakthroughs for these vehicles to be realistic in the near term: a fuel-cell-membrane breakthrough...Right now, the membrane's durability is about 1000 hours, and it's easily poisoned by such things as sulfur in the air. These are nontrivial problems, and they'll have to be solved while simultaneously reducing the cost of the fuel-cell's membrane by a factor of 100."[4]
Hydrogen is not readily available on Earth

"So far, hydrogen-powered cars are fuel for future thoughts". USA Today. 21 July 2008 - "Unfortunately there is no readily available source of molecular hydrogen (H2) to be found on our planet. There is lots of hydrogen, but it is found as part of larger molecules, most commonly water or hydrocarbons. To be able to use hydrogen in a fuel cell, those hydrogen atoms must be stripped from hydrocarbons and reformed into H2 or electrically disassociated from oxygen in water."
Too much energy is required in producing hydrogen fuel

"So far, hydrogen-powered cars are fuel for future thoughts". USA Today. 21 July 2008 - "According to Frank Kreith (J. of Energy Resources Technology, December 2004) more energy is required to produce the hydrogen fuel than is available from 'burning' that hydrogen in a fuel cell. Substantially more electricity could be produced by burning the hydrocarbon in a conventional electric utility than could be produced in a fuel cell from the same material converted to hydrogen; too many conversion steps in the hydrogen production process."
Hydrogen vehicles will arrive too late to help climate change

A National Research Council report that pegs 2020 for the arrival of the mass-market fuel cell vehicle. According to USA Today, "That's the best case scenario, of course, assuming technology, government, industry and the public all cooperate on bringing hydrogen cars to the nation's highways."[1] Yet, the IPCC says that steps must be taken immediately to stop global warming. This means that hydrogen fuel cell technology is out of sink with the immediacy of global warming.
Hydrogen in cars is less dangerous than gasoline

Wayne Cunningham. "Driving It. Why Hydrogen will fuel future cars." CNET. 11 Apr. 2007 - "Fuel cell critics point out that hydrogen is flammable, but so is gasoline. Unlike gasoline, which can pool up and burn for a long time, hydrogen dissipates rapidly. Gas tanks tend to be easily punctured, thin-walled containers, while the latest hydrogen tanks are made from Kevlar. Also, gaseous hydrogen isn't the only method of storage under consideration--BMW is looking at liquid storage while other researchers are looking at chemical compound storage, such as boron pellets."
Hydrogen cars will help end foreign oil dependencies

Hydrogen fuel cell cars do not use gasoline or diesel. They use hydrogen, which is universally available in all countries. Hydrogen, therefore, will help lower dependencies on foreign oil. This is important to the economic and energy security of nations. This was the primary rationale behind a $1.2 billion investment by the US government in hydrogen cars. US President George Bush said, "hydrogen-fuel initiative to reverse the nation's growing dependence on foreign oil."[3]
Hydrogen cars can become 100% clean; hybrids cannot.

Hydrogen vehicles emit only water from the tail-pipe, while hybrids still burn gasoline and emit CO2 and other greenhouse gases from the tail-pipe, albeit in smaller amounts than ordinary gasoline cars. It is important to eliminate the emission of greenhouse gases from the tail-pipe and move to electricity-based cars, such as hydrogen cars, that can become 100% clean as electricity moves to entirely 0-emission sources of power.
It's OK to use more energy to make hydrogen than is obtained out

Wayne Cunningham. "Driving It. Why Hydrogen will fuel future cars." CNET. 11 Apr. 2007 - "The most common way to produce hydrogen is electrolysis, running a current through water and causing the hydrogen molecules to separate from the oxygen molecules. Critics point out that it takes more electricity to create the hydrogen then it will generate in a fuel cell. While that is true, it also takes energy to create a gallon of gasoline. Oil has to be pumped, transported, and refined."
Hybrids outshine hydrogen cars in performance and price

Joseph J. Romm, author of "The hype about hydrogen", said in the movie "Who killed the electric car" (2006), "Miracle 5 is you have to hope an pray the competitors in the market place don't get any better because right now the best car in the market place just got a lot better. The hybrid vehicle. Still runs on gasoline you can fuel it anywhere. It has twice the range of a regular car. And if battery technology keeps getting steadily better than the best hybrid and then plug-in hybrid in the year 2020 will be vastly superior to the best hydrogen car."
Clean materials and processes can be used to produce hydrogen

Arthur St. Antoine. "Hydrogen, Fuel Cells, and Reality". Motor Trend. - "processes show some long-term promise for producing low-cost, clean hydrogen, including reforming biomass feedstocks like corn-based ethanol (which can be carbon-dioxide neutral--releasing only as much CO2 as the plants consumed in the first place), and experimental methods like converting sugar water to hydrogen at around 400 degrees F using a nickel-zinc catalyst or starving green algae cells of sulfur to cause them to generate hydrogen."
Hydrogen fuel cell containers are weak/dangerous at present.

Joseph J. Romm said in an interview with Motor Trend: "the storage issue is a potential show-stopper--it's clear that you can't build a hydrogen economy around high-pressure on-board storage. It would be fatal to H2 cars if they were prematurely introduced into the marketplace with this inadequate storage technology. I don't think your average soccer mom or dad wants to be a foot away from 5000- or 10,000-psi hydrogen canisters--which in industry are treated with great respect, put in separate facilities with blow-out walls, and so forth. We need--according to the American Physical Society--a whole new material for storage, and if you were to ask me how long might it take, the answer is it could take a very long time."[5]
Hydrogen is flammable and dangerous

Patrick J Coyle. "The Hydrogen Debate Continues". Suite 101. 9 Jul. 2007 - "Hydrogen is a light, very flammable gas. It burns at a much wider range of concentrations in the atmosphere than propane (Wald), and requires less energy to ignite. This means that hydrogen is much more likely to catch fire than are hydrocarbon fuels currently in use."
Existing pipelines can be used in a new hydrogen economy

Amory Lovins, CEO of Rocky Mountain Institute. "Twenty Hydrogen Myths". 20 June 2003 - "Myth #5. Hydrogen can’t be distributed in existing pipelines, requiring costly new ones. If remote, centralized production of hydrogen eventually did prove competitive or necessary, as this myth assumes, then existing gas transmission pipelines could generally be converted to hydrogen service, e.g. by adding polymer-composite liners, similar to those now used to renovate old water and sewer pipes, plus a hydrogen-blocking metallized coating or liner (analogous to those used in composite hydrogen tanks), and by converting the compressors."
A small and growing hydrogen infrastructure already exists

Amory Lovins, CEO of Rocky Mountain Institute. "Twenty Hydrogen Myths". 20 June 2003 - "Myth #1. A whole hydrogen industry would need to be developed from scratch. Producing hydrogen is already a large and mature global industry, using at least 5% of U.S. natural gas output. Globally, about 50 million metric tons of hydrogen is made for industrial use each year."
Hydrogen cars will be economically viable soon, not in decades

Wayne Cunningham. "Driving It. Why Hydrogen will fuel future cars." CNET. 11 Apr. 2007 - "Many articles I've read covering specific fuel cell cars point out the cost of the car, usually in the millions of dollars. But this dollar figure has no relation to any hydrogen fuel cell production vehicle that will eventually be offered for sale. These research cars are hand-built and use experimental technology created in limited amounts. The most expensive material used in these cars is the platinum covering the nodes in the fuel cells. Other than that, the car consists of motors, wheels, a frame, and body. And there are even fuel cells under development using different, cheaper materials."
Hydrogen cars will create new industries and jobs

Dennis Weaver, an actor and public spokesperson for alternative energy, said in a 2008 interview with Motor Trends, "[hydrogen fuel cell vehicles] would give our economy a tremendous boost. Our economy has always been stimulated by new technology, by innovation, by new ways of doing things. When we went from the horse and buggy to the automobile, the automobile industry created a tremendous amount of new jobs we couldn't even foresee."[2]
Refueling with hydrogen will be cleaner and easier

Arthur St. Antoine. "Hydrogen, Fuel Cells, and Reality". Motor Trend. - "Expect gassing up with hydrogen to be a much more sanitary and more automated task than you're used to with gas and diesel. Standards are under development for an intelligent filler neck integrated with a ground strap (to prevent static electric sparks), and a communications link between the tank and the pump to monitor pressures and temperatures. Robotic refueling has also been demonstrated. The goal is to be able to refuel within five to 10 minutes"
Hydrogen storage in cars is available and affordable

Amory Lovins, CEO of Rocky Mountain Institute. "Twenty Hydrogen Myths". 20 June 2003 - "Myth #7. We lack a safe and affordable way to store hydrogen in cars. This problem was solved several years ago. Such firms as Quantum (partly owned by GM) and Dynetek now sell filament-wound carbon-fiber tanks lined with an aluminized polyester bladder instead of the traditional solid metal liner (cutting weight by half and materials cost by a third). Such carbon tanks have ~9–13 times the performance of an aluminum or steel tank, but can’t corrode and are extremely rugged and safe, unscathed by crashes that flatten steel cars and shred gasoline tanks. The car isn’t driving around with highly pressurized hydrogen pipes, either, because the hydrogen is throttled to the fuel cell’s low pressure before it leaves the tank. Such aerospace- style tanks holding up to 700 bar (~10,000 psi) and proven over 1,655 bar (~24,000 psi) have been tested by GM and others in fuel-cell cars and are legally approved in Germany; U.S. authorities, who have licensed 5,000-psi (~350-bar) hydrogen tanks, are expected to follow suit shortly. Linde AG recently installed a 700-bar German filling station for Adam Opel AG."
Hydrogen produced from coal-electricity is still cleaner than gasoline.

Some argue that it is no better to produce hydrogen fuel cells from electricity that is "dirty", such as coal-generated electricity. Yet, even if coal was the only source of electricity production (which it is not), hydrogen would still be cleaner than gasoline cars. The reason is primarily that it is more efficient to burn coal on a massive scale to generate electricity for vehicles than it is to burn gasoline on a micro-scale in individual vehicles. The later releases more emissions.
Subsidies can reduce price incentive to conserve oil.

"The Cost of Oil Subsidies." New York Times Editorial. August 1, 2008: "Across the developing world, governments are subsidizing energy, blunting the incentive to conserve by keeping prices low. [...] experts say that government subsidies are exacerbating their unquenchable thirst for oil. Keith Bradsher reported in The Times that China is expected to spend about $40 billion this year in subsidies. Venezuela and Egypt are forecast to spend more than 5 percent of their total economic output on subsidies this year. Indonesia is predicted to spend almost as much, the International Monetary Fund estimates. In all, the I.M.F. says that 48 countries are shielding consumers from high energy prices with subsidies."
Fossil fuels critical to modern economies; subsidies justified.

Bryan Jennings. "Should oil subsidies be eliminated in the US?" "No" essay on Helium: "Everything in the US Economy relies on transportation. The shoes your wearing? They were shipped on some vehicle that used gas, be it the container transport from China or the truck on the interstate from the warehouse, the cost of transportation is reflected in the cost of your shoes. The same is true of food, of computers and electronics and anything physical and tangible that is sold in stores. It affects things like the prices charged by UPS, or the Post Office or any other ship company. It, in essence, makes the economy work. All aspects of transportation, be they plane, boat, train or truck, require oil. Different types of refined oil true, but oil none the less. Subsidies provided by the US government keep oil relatively inexpensive. Though there are many who complain about the reality of $3 gas, it is a far cry for what is charged in other oil consuming nations. Imagine the US economy functioning on $7 gas such as they have in Britian. It could not be done, at least, no without the price of everything else rising to reflect this."
Far more subsidies go to oil than renewables.

Andrew Revkin. "All's not fair when it comes to energy subsidies." New York Times Dot Earth Blog. August 2nd, 2010: "The financial consultancy, based in London, estimated that around $45 billion or so was doled out in subsidies for renewable energy sources like wind and solar power in 2009, noting how this compares to the most recent International Energy Agency estimate of global subsidies propping up fossil fuels. For 2008, the agency reported last month, such supports totaled around $557 billion — which was a big jump from the $342 billion in 2007."
Subsidizing oil helps promote economic growth.

"Why Nations Subsidize Oil: Growth." Rush Limbaugh. July 8, 2008: "The whole lesson to learn here is, when entities, bureaucratic governmental entities realize that growth is necessary, they realize that energy must be affordable and it has to be as cheap as it can be for people. The Democrat Party is the party in this country opposing that very concept. Which is why this is a gold mine year for the Republican Party. How can a party whose essential belief is that this is a nation in a state of decline and deserves to be in a state of decline, by the way, because the rest of the world justifiably hates us because they justifiably recognize we have stolen all of their resources, that we have sent our armies and our Air Force all over the world and we have killed innocent civilians, of course the rest of the world should hate us, because so many leftists hate us for the very same fallacious reasons. So we owe a debt and we need to pay a price. We need to be in a state of decline. We need to learn what our imperialism has forced other people around the world to experience and live."
Fossil fuel subsidies mainly benefit gas-guzzling wealthy.

"The Cost of Oil Subsidies." New York Times Editorial. August 1, 2008: "Governments in developing countries say they must shield the poor from high energy prices. They worry that eliminating subsidies might lead to inflation at a time when prices are rising broadly. But these subsidies are misguided and mainly benefit the well-off, who own big cars and fly in jets, as well as energy-intensive industries, which are not usually those that create most jobs."