Amen, although I'm not sold on "Clean" coal yet. For one it's still a non-renewable fossil fuel, and for another pumping CO2 into the ground is not a very good idea either. Pumping *anything* into the ground has been shown by geologists to be a generally bad idea, even water.

That said, if we're going to use energy to further create chemical energy reserves we can use for powering vehicles (i.e. hydrogen), that energy needs to start as electricity generated by nuclear, wind and solar plants. That's the only long-term answer to the energy crisis.

No, absolutely not. It is debatable how good biodiesel is as far as "energy balance" goes, but it is definitely not less than 1 (meaning that it takes more energy to make it than you get out of it). Some "experts" put biodiesel at 2 to 3, but it is very hard to quantify. I know a little about biodiesel because I work for a company that designs and makes biodiesel processing equipment.

Ethanol sucks for lots of reasons - mainly what MikeK pointed out before, and it's energy balance is around 1, which is still better than gasoline and diesel - both around 0.6 to 0.7.

Please do not lump biodiesel in with ethanol in the snake oil category. When gas and diesel cost $5-$10/gallon in the not-too-distant future, biodiesel will still only cost $3-$4/gallon. It also require no conversions on vehicles produced after 1990 or so, nor does it require any remapping in the ECU to work at 100%. Also it can be made from many things besides food crops - like animal processing waste, crappy seeds like rapeseed and camelina, and in the future algae.

When Diesel (the man) first conceived of his engine he envisioned it to run on vegetable oil. At the 190? Worlds Fair he ran his demo on peanut oil.

Althouogh it is technically non renewable, the united states has a several hundred year supply, more than enough to get through the impending oil crunch if the pollution aspects can be worked out.

Source

Awesome. That means future wars for economic control of the primary fossil fuel energy source can be fought on our soil, just as the forefathers envisioned! :lol: :(

No doubt biodiesel is good fuel (just like ethanol is), but it's not any sort of silver-bullet for unhitching our dependency on foreign oil.

Ah... this is true - there is no single silver bullet that will fix our oil dependency. It will have to be a multi-pronged solution.

On Ethanol, it is a great option once the technology gets there. These guys are going to be able to make it from biomass, municipal solid waste and other carbonaceous material with much less water than corn and other grain based ethanol.

As much of this is locally available, it will also permit it to be produced regionally cutting transportation costs...

$1/gal ethanol sounds like a great option in the multi-pronged attack. Go Enzymes... :)

This is the sort of thing we're working on. We call it "community scale" biodiesel. Local communities grow seed and crush oil (or make it from the local meat packing plant's tallow), and turn it into fuel for their own community. No transporting oil acros the world to refine it, then pipe it, then truck it in. It is all about keeping it local. And don't think Nevada can't benefit from this because of its climate. There is a seed crusher out in Lovelock who we are working with, and NV would be great for algae production with all the sunshine and open space.

Ethanol and biodiesel don't solve the issue which catalysed this discussion, which is worldwide CO2 production.

True to some extend, but re. biodiesel...

• turbo diesels can get great mileage, and upcoming diesel hybrids will really be awesome.
• biodiesel puts out significantly less CO2 than regular diesel, and less of the other pollutants too.
• what do you think all those seed crops and algae do with the CO2? It turns some of it back into O2.
• biodiesel has a much much better energy balance than current fuels which take more energy to drill/refine/transport/pump than you get out of them.

So it is so much better than what we have today without changing much - kinda a bridge fuel to whatever is next

I thought we were discussing ways to lower our dependency on foreign energy?

Lowering CO2 is much easier to do via technology alone. But even with cleaner burning and electric cars, cleaner power plants, etc... the energy has to come from somewhere. The goal I was discussing is changing our use of oil into the use of something else local. Hence the mentioning of coal... like Mike said, there's plenty of energy right in the soil of the US in the form of coal to give us the time needed to develop next generation energy resources. Really, the only problem with coal power (assuming something like this can be made full scale) is that it's not renewable, just like oil... but oil's got so many other issues, mostly political.

So, burn coal for the next 20-40 years in a manner that doesn't hurt the environment more, then concurrently make the shift to nuclear/solar/wind/tide/geothermal/etc power. No more dependency on the middle east, no more need to dick-around w/ crap foreign policies to protect our oil supply, more jobs in the US building and maintaining these new clean coal and nuclear power plants... and we get the benefits sooner rather than later if we were to just bleed the earth dry of oil, while fighting wars so expensive we don't have the money to invest in new energy research.

I watched an interesting episode of Modern Marvels on the history channel the other night, it was titled "renewable energy". It stated that Iceland is almost completgely energy neutral. They import a bit of oil for cars, but all their other energy requirements are met with a combination of hydroelectric and geothermal power. Once cars become electric they will be completely energy independent, with little to no pollution.

The most interesting part was that hot water for houses in Reykjavic comes from the geothermal power plant. They have large insulated pipes that run several miles from the plant into the city, then into people's homes. The hot water only loses about 5 deg f along the way!

Yeah, did they happen to mention that Iceland is the Abu Dubai of geothermal power? Geothermal is a very very good source of renewable (on the scale of human time at least) non-polluting energy, but "supply" is not sufficient to make a serious dent in our issues.

I was just playing devil's advocate for the treehuggers. Biodiesel only helps the economic isues, not the environmental. If Subaru would put out a turbodiesel hybrid Forester, I'd go get a babymomma and sell my lovechild for one.

/retroactive OT tag :D

I just get a chuckle out of a free society with a capitalist economy complaining about the price of something, when that price is resulting from our own gluttonous demand.

Nothing wrong there.

Umm, look at your own receipts? I also saw a news story about this the other day. I don't give a flying fuck what numbers some bureaucrat at the BLS put in a spreadsheet, real prices at real stores have gone up. A lot.

Lisa spends around $200 every time she goes grocery shopping for the two of us.

When I was shopping for just myself (about a year ago), I would spend around $200.

The difference is that I used to go shopping like once a month. Lisa goes around every 10 days. Shit is more expensive. On the order of from $7/day/person a year ago to $10/day/person now. Sounds like 30% is a pretty close estimation.

Biodeisel?... Ethanol?... Electric?.... Screw that. I'm gonna get my car to run on Febreze.

Yeah but you have to figure your not buying all those magazines now, like before you were with Lisa.;)

Look, more budgetary shenanigans:

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h...TPhRwD8UJMO7O0

I guess when you're a lame duck administration, you might as well give yourself as much money as possible for whatever it is you'll be doing once you're out of office regardless of fucking everything up for the rest of us. I'm just astonished that the Bush administration actually thinks the american public swallows their bullshit still. Maybe they don't... and they just don't care. :mad:

More proof that good presidents respond to the needs of the country, rather than showing up with a massive agenda and ignoring anything else.