Why do we have experts? Because none of us can know enough about everything. We have experts out of necessity. We need experts in our version of civilization because they are highly skilled at things the rest of us couldn’t understand without dedicating our lifetimes to rigorous fields of study.

But here’s the irony: we choose our experts largely based on things other than our understanding of their expertise. We are incapable of choosing experts based upon any understanding of their expertise because we simply don’t understand their expertise. I suppose I should moderate this claim. Many of us have some glimmering of understanding of what many experts have a say. Some of us have intuitions which offer valuable guidance to us when an expert goes beyond the evidence (or contradicts the evidence). Occasionally, some of us spend the weeks or months necessary to dig into the data to raise necessary questions about the conclusions of experts.

As you point out, though, most of us usually choose who to trust as experts based upon their looks, eloquence and other social factors having nothing to do with their competence as experts.. As long as experts are benevolent and wise (in a well-rounded way), the situation is tolerable. But what happens when our experts become as corrupted as those who wave money in front of them? What happens when our experts become as corrupt as the moneyed members of our corporate/political system? We already know the answer, because we’ve seen it often enough. All too many experts, whether in the courtroom or in the form of public opinion, draw the curve based upon the flow of money money and only then do they plot the data. We see it when “experts” write reports downplaying the dangers of tobacco and climate change, for instance. On all too many occasions, those with big money use experts as puppets to give their corrupt positions the cachet of scientific respectability.

The bottom line is that expertise enables us to do things that no society can do without experts. On the other hand, unless our experts stay independent, thoughtful and benevolent, we become vulnerable to the whims of those wielding power.

The process is being touted as a low pressure, low cost method to power hydrogen cars. There are still technical hurdles: How to control the release of the alloy into the water by demand, how to store (buffer) the excess hydrogen, how to get the sludge out, and so on.

Also, the price of gallium metal is currently high because it is mostly used in ultra-pure form in the semiconductor industry (gallium is the basic building block of LED’s and high-speed military processors). The aluminum alloy can use much lower grade gallium.

Of course, you need to use electricity to make the aluminum. The best technique is to set up an aluminum refining plant at a power plant (ideally nuclear, hydro, or wind to reduce the greenhouse potential).
The energy you get out is necessarily less than what you put in. But it is still more efficient than many other hydrogen transportation ploys such as liquefying, high pressure tanks, or metal hydrides.