Reply #7: It can be thought of as "burning" in the sense that waste heat

[NNadir]

is rejected to the environment when one reforms natural gas. Technically it's slightly different in that the oxidant in this case is water whereas most of the time in traditional "burning" the oxidant is oxygen.

Natural gas reforming to make hydrogen to run cars will probably stand as the dumbest energy idea of the twenty first century. I say that in full knowledge that there are still 96 years left in the century.