Joel

Bill

Compared with a car, an airplane, and particularly a passenger-rail car, look very good. Passenger buses were disappointing, though.

Joel

Bill

Joel

there is currently some effort going into developing viable processes for ethonal from wood waste - not sure about waste output from the processes, but I've heard some of the waste from corn ethanol is going to animal feed!

pellets for wood stoves should definitely be one use, and seems like that could be pretty easily set up with existing technologies, and have an assured market ... I know here on Vancouver Island there's usually not enough pellet supplies to meet demand, and more readily available supplies would get more folks to switch from burning wood to pellets

Bill

But something that is often missed here is that large inputs of nitrogen fertilizer are used to grow corn, and that fertilizer is often created from foreign oil by the Haber process. This, added to the processing and transportation of the corn based fuel starts too look like we might as well just use the oil in the first place.

Likely most people just ignore the source and treat the fuel as free and zero input.

It seems like its a similar situation with the Prius, folks will ignore that its a newly created high-tech vehicle made with a tremendous amount of input energy, to feel like they are saving the world by using less gasoline.

I all for research into better sources of energy, but lets be sure that our "alternative" energy sources are more than just another way to waste the same amount of energy under a different brand name.

Kyle

Remember all of those science-fiction movies from the '40s where all of the cars of the future looked a lot like the bulbous models then popular -- except without wheels? People's views of the future often are informed by what they know.

I suspect alternative fuel production is like that, too. It's based on oil crops because that's what we know. I have no doubt that improved "refining" techniques will make the process of creating alternative fuel more efficient. I also have no doubt that, as we get more serious about producing such fuels and actually spend money to research them, we will find that corn and soybeans are, in fact, pretty inefficient compared to other crops or substances. There has been encouraging research on using some algaes to produce biodiesel. Perhaps the carbon/energy costs of producing biodiesel from algae will be far more efficient than current methods. There likely is a nuisance crop or weed that proves to be a much better source of ethanol than corn. I think time and research will improve upon this. Otherwise, I agree with you, Kyle: we're just moving the problem.

I have concerns about using food crops as corn for fuel. Look at what's happened in Mexico when due to corn prices going up for fuel use many people were priced out of corn for food. That is how the free market works but may be a path to avoid going down. And as good as sugar cane is for making ethanol you have to clear land to grow it and that can be a problem in the tropics. There is some research showing that some willow trees are a better source for making ethanol than any other crops grown for that use. Sometimes this all just boggles my mind but sitting around and waiting for the future to hit just isn't a good choice.

I was listening to a program the other day and the guest was lamenting the dwindling of heavy train passenger service in the US. He was saying the passenger trains are one of the most fuel efficient modes of moving people. I'm afraid that the "slowness" of the service doesn't meet the needs of most people. Plus it's so expensive compared to air travel. We went from Seattle to Vermont last year and looked at taking the train and having a sleeper room. The cost for one was more than the cost of both of us flying. Obviously I don't have any answer for all this. Tom

I don't think anything beats an airplane for cross-country traveling. But by the time you get to the airport for the Homeland-Security-mandated two-hour wait, get on the plane, wait on the tarmac because of weather or gate congestion, arrive, etc., I would think the train becomes quite competitive as far as time. Now the price ... that would need fixing to become competitive.