Perhaps I am being simplistic, but doesn't it make more sense in the short term to adapt our engines to the biofuels, rather than the other way around? It seems that we are seeking to force square pegs into round holes.

Summary: rats and Europeans.

They still cut the last one down, no?

I'm confused about the continual obsession with the Easter Island Collapse.

Whether the Rapanui settled Easter Island in 1200 AD or 900 AD what difference does it make? Whether they collapsed because of European germs and rats or the human habitation denuded the local environment or a combination of the two is rhetorical. Most anthropologists would agree that the Rapanui were by no means a flowering society by the time Captain Cook and his thugs arrived to visit the remanants of this flawed environment in the 1800's.

Here are the basic facts as I understand them:

1. The island was geographically isolated.
2. The Rapanui obsession with Moai construction would have no doubt distracted from the necessary work of survival on a small finite island.
3. The construction of Moai was not in practice by the time the Europeans arrived. Many of the statues had already been destroyed. This makes common sense. When people are starving they would have retaliated against the local Big-Men. I say men because it has been documented that it was not a political monopoly. The local groups competed for status by the size of Moai that individual chiefs built.
4. The destruction of local fauna was history by the 1800's.
5. The remanants of Rapanui natives were already in starvation by the time of the European arrival. No doubt they would have been able to put up little resistance to either germs or steel.
6. Whether the rats overwhelemed the few remaining trees (if there were any left by this time) or not is irrelevant.

There is a long held notion that indigenous peoples are somehow noble and are far wiser stewards of the environment than evil Europeans. This notion is patently false.

The historical precedent is simple: Humans, without exception, are an invasive species and are largely destructive to local environments.[**sustainable societies are hunter gatherers. The introduction of farming spurred modern civilizations 10 to 12 thousand years ago.]

The warning of the Easter Island collapse for earthlings is this:

We are a small, isolated and finite planet with no neighbors and the local big-men (nations) compete for finite resources and hegemony.

Will we overwhelm our local environment, the earth? Probably.

First of all, just "Robert", please. "Mr. Rapier" has an odd feel for me.

If you look at cellulose - and I recently wrote about this in one of my essays here - there are several avenues of attack that could turn that cellulose into something like hexane or other C4-C6 molecules in the gasoline range. My thoughts were that a thermochemical process had the highest probability of success, and it sounds like what they have done. Whether or not this breakthrough is significant, from my perspective it is important that we have some sort of breakthrough in this area - and I don't believe that will be via the historical fermentation route for cellulosic ethanol. That avenue - in my opinion - is a commerical dead end.

I do agree with the poster who bemoaned the ICE. We are going to have to transition away from these for personal transportation. But long-range transport will continue to have a need for liquid fuels. And there is a lot of biomass that is truly waste and currently going to landfills that could be utilized for some energy via some sort of cellulosic process.

and fires are a normal part of the life cycle of forests.