— 2 — Our annual Holiday Dinner event takes place at the MAC club on Tuesday, Dec. 18th. I hope I’ll see many of you there. Our flyer had the weekday in error, and I regret that oversight by our intrepid proofreading team (which included me). I am reminded of the Pogocomic strip, wherein Walt Kelly’s storytelling often lamented that Friday the thirteenth didn’t always occur on a Friday. (And so, Dec. 18 is not a Thursday.) A longstanding PSU benefit for RAPS members has been the annual distribution of the Campus Directory. We are informed that the directory will no longer be printed. So the RAPS Board and I encourage you to participate in the new RAPS Membership Directory. A second letter will come to you concerning this matter. Please respond and participate. Our monthly speaker program in October had Kilong Ung give an emotional chronicle of his journey from the Cambodian killing fields to Reed College to Portland’s Rosaria. In November we learned from Prof. Pah Chen how a hydrogen economy might not be just a science fiction alternative to humanity’s petroleum-based lifestyle. Our thanks to Marge Terdal in her role as your RAPS Program chair. I wish to introduce one of your new at-large RAPS Board members, Charlene Levesque. She retired as PSU’s experienced and respected manager of Campus Event Scheduling this year and joined our board. Her life story begins in pre-World War II Chicago, and includes an eight-grade country schoolhouse, marriage and family, moving to and raising sheep in Eugene, and publishing the Black Sheep Newsletter. Prof. Johanna Brenner’s Returning Women’s Studies course in the mid-1980s “changed her life.” Hired in 1994, Charlene quickly became PSU’s Campus Events scheduler, a responsibility that she handled in the most professional manner—and I speak from the position of registrar, which I held. Charlene comes to serve RAPS while dealing with personal issues that have brought the support of PSU women. In addition to her service to RAPS, Charlene volunteers in the PSU community, serving on the Walk of the Heroines board, the MLK Celebration committee, and the African American Visual Arts committee, among others. Happy holidays! —Bob Tufts President’s Message Hydrogen economy: Not hype, but a lot of hurdles ahead A world fueled by hydrogen holds some absolutely enticing promises—energy independence, an improved environment, and enhanced human health. It’s just that the road to that world has a few potholes, as Pah Chen, professor emeritus of mechanical engineering, explained last month during the second edition of RAPS 2007-08 Speakers Series. His talk was titled “Heading toward a Hydrogen Economy: Real or Hype?” The answer is: It certainly isn’t hype, but it’s a long way from real. In a hydrogen economy, society’s energy needs—for the car you drive or the house you heat—is derived from hydrogen. The benefits are clear and almost enchanting: carbon-based fossil fuels would be eliminated, and with them those nasty greenhouse gases and other pollutants. The crushing problem of dwindling petroleum supplies would vanish. And there’s plenty of hydrogen to go around; it’s bonded to water in every drop on the planet. And that’s one of the central problems; hydrogen is always bonded to something else, and breaking that bond is expensive. Today, said Chen, most hydrogen is produced using fossil fuels—gas, oil, and coal—the very fuels the hydrogen economy would eliminate. The “holy grail” of hydrogen production, he explained, is electrolysis using hydropower, nuclear power, wind turbines, or solar power. At this point, however, those methods are not economically feasible. So what would make a hydrogen economy feasible? Higher oil prices, lower air quality, and government regulation. If government demands it, said Chen, the hydrogen economy would become much closer to reality. Although the hydrogen economy may sound like fantasy, several European nations, which are looking seriously at hydrogen, would disagree. So would energy-challenged Japan, which has drawn a “road map” to a hydrogen economy.
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