alt.energy.renewable

wrote in message
news:975c0bd4-e049-4aa9-a509-a172386cd114@72g2000hsu.googlegroups.com...
>


> The technology to do this has evolved tremendously. You can make just
> about any fuel out of plant matter, from Natural gas to methanol to
> diesel to DME (for plastics). Synthetic biofuels from crop waste,
> timber waste and garbage is definitely a smarter way to go than grain
> alcohols. If done intelligently and done at sufficient scale can
> certainly compete with $2. to $3. a gallon at the pump.
>
However whatever way one looks at it I honestly can't see any alternative as
cheap and simple as sticking a pipe in the ground and pumping out decades
worth of dirt cheap, incredibly versatile and relatively secure energy
supplies.

I have to confess to not knowing very much about the subject, but looking at
the figures in the OP it would appear that when the oil rich Middle East was
opened up in 1908 the world boasted 1.7 billion people and 'compared to
today' a minuscule demand for oil based products.

If there is any truth in the predictions that we have about reached the
halfway mark in recoverable oil resources, then where would we be now if say
100 years ago we had started pumping Middle East oil from a base of world
demand standing at its present level and a global population of 6.6 billion
(expected to grow to around 10 billion within the next 50 years) with many
of them expecting their governments to deliver our Western style standard of
living?

Lastly I would hazard a guess that it's very unlikely that given the ever
increasing global demand whatever we do with bio, coal, oil shale and
remaining sources of oil and gas that we're ever going to go back to the
halcyon dirt cheap energy that even I can remember.












> On Feb 24, 3:24 pm, "calderh...@yahoo.com"
> wrote:
> The world is running out of wheat because so many farmers have


> Christopher Calder