* * * * *
                                        
                                 Oil, schmoil …
                                        
> There was a time one could buy fuel for ones car or truck for a “Buck-A-
> Gallon” … and it is a past we can embrace right now … TODAY!
> 
> Well, at least General Motors seems to think so with its investment in
> Biofuel processing startup Coskata.
> 
> The key to the conversion approach Coskata has perfected uses bacteria to
> break down the broad array of organic waste (switch grasses, twigs, corn
> husks, leaves, landscape waste, and other non-food sources of organic
> material) and make Ethanol for a fuel mix or replacement.
> 

Via Instapundit [1], “Bacteria Delivers “Buck-A-Gallon” Biofuel Solution [2]”

Quick comment before continuing—Mark Twain said that “[h]istory doesn't
repeat itself, but it does rhyme,” and this is a good example. Back in the
late 1800s a by-product of oil processing was burned off since there wasn't a
use for it, until some clever engineers found a use for it—gasoline to power
internal combustion engines in cars.

> Scientists there say they have developed a way to produce truly carbon-
> neutral fuel and useful organic chemicals at large scale using water and
> carbon dioxide removed from the air as raw materials. There are plenty of
> schemes brewing to capture carbon dioxide, both directly from the
> atmosphere and from the stacks of power plants. All of them, for the
> moment, are costly or hard to envision at the billion-tons-a-year scale
> that would be needed to blunt the buildup of carbon dioxide in the
> atmosphere coming mainly from fuel burning.
> 
> UPDATE: 2/13, 5 p.m.: This plan has a minor hurdle, too; the electricity
> for driving the chemical processes, according to a white paper describing
> the overarching concept, would come from nuclear power. The proposal says
> it'd be worth it to have a payoff of steady, secure streams of methanol and
> gasoline with no carbon added to the atmosphere (and a price for gasoline
> at the pump of perhaps $4.60 a gallon—comparable to petroleum-based fuels
> as oil becomes harder to find).
> 

Via Instapundit [3], “Federal Lab Says It Can Harvest Fuel From Air (With a
Catch) [4]”

It's because of articles like these that I'm not overly concerned about peak
oil [5]. We're a resourceful species, and we'll find alternatives long before
oil runs out.

[1] http://instapundit.com/archives2/014606.php
[2] http://oblate-spheroid.blogspot.com/2008/01/bacteria-
[3] http://instapundit.com/archives2/015358.php
[4] http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/federal-
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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