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What the Experts Are Saying
 As unscholarly as my reaction to this book may sound, it can best be summed up with, I love it. I know of no source that gives the kind of reliable and cogent data, relevant context and reasonable interpretation that I find in Smelling Land.
Professor Scott’s facts are straight and his conclusions are logically based on those facts – something very rare in most of today’s energy/environmental publications. His unique ability to “connect the dots” helps clarify and illustrate how each issue relates to the wider system. Anyone with an interest in energy and environmental issues needs to read Smelling Land. Similarly, every university, corporation, and governmental body should have a copy in their library. 
– BEN BALL
Adjunct Professor of Management and Engineering (retired), MIT
Vice President, Strategic Planning (retired), Gulf Oil Corporation
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Smelling Land presents a passionate and compelling rationale for hydrogen – the “gold standard” of energy currencies. David Sanborn Scott eloquently makes the point that the urgent global challenge posed by energy use and climate change is not just about energy sources and applications. The challenge hinges on the energy carriers (or using the useful Scott-coined word, energy “currencies”) that move energy from its sources to its services.
Smelling Land’s anecdotal style coupled with uncompromising science will appeal to scientist and engineering specialists, yet it is easily accessible to general readers. This is a book that will both delight and surprise. But be warned – it will change your view of the future of planet Earth.
– DR. PHILIP COCKSHUTT
Director, Energy Research,
National Research Council of Canada, 1976-1986
Executive Director, Energy Council of Canada, 1991-1997
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David Scott’s new book, Smelling Land, takes the reader beyond the current series of books that describe the science of climate change and the need for reducing greenhouse gas emissions into a discussion of the economy and technologies needed for a sustainable future. Its critical virtue is that it provides not just suggestions or targets for incremental changes, but a practical blueprint for something fundamentally different: a solution to problems rooted in our current industrial and community practices. For those who take the climate challenge seriously, Smelling Land is a book that must be read.
– THE HON. DAVID ANDERSON
Director, Institute for the Environment, University of Guelph
Minister of Environment for Canada, 1999-2004
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Scott takes us on a personal journey of discovery, his odyssey, that led him to conclude hydrogen and electricity will one day become the twin currencies that drive civilization. He carries us along through each stage of that journey as a mentor, so we understand how he arrived at his conclusions without imposing those conclusions on us.
Scott is a prophet in the old sense, but he’s not a soothsayer. Instead, he exhorts us to be clear in our language and thinking as we confront today’s energy and environmental challenges. This is his greatest gift: teaching us how to look at challenges from all sides, inside out and backside-to front, and teaching us how to think. We can each draw our own conclusions about the potential for hydrogen, but Scott gives us the tools to consider, to imagine and to assess, so that we can set sail on our own odysseys.
– DR. MARK PETRI
Program Manager, Emerging Energy Technologies
Argonne National Laboratory, Chicago
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David Scott’s perspectives and writing style are unique, and from my reviewing process I can say that Smelling Land is as technically sound a book as it’s possible to have. Speaking as one who has spent the last two decades working on the issue of how to provide sufficient yet sustainable energy supply, I find Smelling Land important, thought-provoking and timely.
– DR. ALISTAIR MILLER
Senior Scientist Emeritus
Atomic Energy of Canada Limited
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David has done what he does best: “use language as the machinery of thought” to detail the future of energy systems. A must read for an insight into the Hydrogen Age by the author who created much of the nomenclature. The chapter on “metastability” strikes me as being of special significance.
– DR. GEOFFREY BALLARD
Co-Founder, Ballard Power Systems
Member, Order of Canada‘
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Smelling Land needs to be read by everyone working in the energy area – hydrogen, solar, nuclear, fossil. The book ties them all together. I also recommend it for all students entering or thinking about entering engineering. This is not a text book, it is a technological philosophy book that that can steer career choices. To me, Part Six, “Earth’s Energy System,” is the heart and soul of Smelling Land. It explains the concepts of energy, entropy and exergy in a clear, simple even lyrical way. A gut-level appreciation of these concepts is essential if we are to think seriously think about Earth’s energy systems, upon which humankind’s survival depends.
– DR. KENNETH SCHULTZ
Operations Director, Energy Group
General Atomics, San Diego, CA
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In an engaging, highly readable but never trivial manner, Smelling Land sets out how our energy system really works. David Scott’s credentials for doing so are impeccable. He has served at the highest levels of the international hydrogen community. The book can be read and enjoyed at several levels by science and non-science audiences. David Scott is known for his almost clairvoyant ability to see the forest (energy systems) above its trees (individual technologies) – and then to explain how the trees are evolving.
Smelling Land is timely and urgent. To my mind, it gives the single comprehensive strategy that can attack climate change. I know of no other book that does this so well – and none which so well equips the reader to judge new and stimulating ideas.
– A.K. (SANDY) STUART
Chair, Export Development Canada, 1993-1997
Member, Order of Canada
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