Never heard of that before. (A fact which I am slightly ashamed of...)

Of course, considering how much natural gas you have to use to make Diesel fuel, (which has to be a very endothermic, energy-intensive reaction) natural gas reserves wouldn't be an indefinite solution. It would be a helpful process to help us with the transition to renewable fuels, though...


The world has enough agricultural capacity to grow more Diesel fuel than we will ever use, provided the land was cultivated properly and efficiently as it is in the US. Biomass is the solution, at least I'll place my investments there before that solar-hydrogen bull...

Although we kind of had a falling out over the past few months, the guys at CE-CERT are doing very promising research on the conversion of biomass into biodiesel...

 

Biomass and coal gasification, and then an energy-independent U.S. for hundreds of years - long enough to develop the next great energy paradigm, cold fusion or whatever.

 

I went to the site, no article

 

Probably because you're 8 months late

Here's another vision for the future that is well on it's way
http://governor.mt.gov/hottopics/faqsynthetic.asp

 

Here's what I'd do. First, make it incredibly attractive ot build nuke plants.
then i'd start investing heavily in ethanol. Look at what Brazil has done. Here's a country that has it's own renewable energy source. We could put farming back on the map in this country again.

 

Guys, Diesel from natural gas is just a stop gap measure...BioDiesel is the only real source of future diesel. The U.S. uses 1/4 of the oil produced in the world yet only produces 1/20 of its needs. That's the problem. Heating oil is #2 with dye in it....and pure #2 is available all year round. ks

 

this part of that article is enough to <edit> me off;


Why haven't synfuels been pursued in America before?
They have. In fact, the U.S. government was seriously exploring synfuel as early as 1925. In the 1940s, a Synthetic Liquid Fuels Act passed by Congress even appropriated over $80 million for research and production. By the 1950s, America was producing thousands of gallons of synthetic gasoline a day at a test plant in Missouri. But the discovery of cheap oil, combined with a lobbying effort by the oil industry, caused the government to abandon its synfuel research. During the oil crisis in the late 1970s, the federal government briefly discussed synfuel production, but abandoned the idea when the price of oil receded.

just goes to show again how the govt. is in bed with the oil industry, should never have stopped with the research & development. could have held the prices down permanatly, not to mention extending crude supply for years & years

 

...and if they HAD gone to Bio-fuels, the cost per gallon would have been higher to the consumer, and they'd be whining "Why are we paying so much for Bio when oil is cheaper?"
It's a NO-Win situation either way.

 

yes, maybe it WOULD have been at the time, but if they had kept up with the research & development they started in the 40's or even the 70's, it would have kept prices down in the long run. competition always = lower prices.

 

....except when it come to commodities in limited supply. (like fuel)

 

From what I understand the Alaskan pipeline actually burns off LP because it would be too costly to transport. If this is the case then it would make sense to build a plant there and convert it so we're not wasting perfectly good fuel.

 

Much of the Alaskan LP is used to make nitrogen fertilizer.

 

yea, I know, we were running out in the 70's