Thus the logic behind this exchange:

RR quote: Page 150: When writing that algal fuel mimics fossil fuels without fossilization, he writes “Skipping the fossilization step not only saves 200 million years of pressure and heat, but lowers production costs significantly.” I can’t really comprehend this one.

Reply:
Consider the true cost of production for fossil fuels. Failing government subsidies, fossil fuels would cost around $15 a gallon and that’s ignoring their ecological cost. Oil fields must be found and developed at huge cost. Extraction and transportation add significant additional costs.
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The tempting thing about all of the bio-fuels (methanol, ethanol, butanol, algae, methane and methane recapture, etc.) is that they are already above ground with us. The expense and energy consumption of finding, drilling, developing water seperating infrastructure, etc. that is currently used in oil production must be compared to the infrastructure needed to produce the bio-fuel competitors to the oil.

At the base level, all the expense with the bio-fuels is getting the hydrogen, or energy content out (this is also true of oil, but must include the cost of first getting the oil from deep below the ground or ocean.

Alas the effort of getting the energy out of the substence, whatever substance, always seem to be more difficult than expected.

In a post above, oldfarmermac said
"Now if I(and I am sure many or most other OD regulars) am often confused as to the actual facts regarding many serious issues and the most likely implications thereof,what chance does Joe SixPack or your high school English teacher-who most likely has only the barest fig leaf of a science course to her credit-have of sorting out the sci fi from the science?"

People are not as dumb as they are often presumed, but oldfarmer is correct that there is a lot of confusion out there. This is caused by an over abundence of potential options, many of which seem at first glance to be relatively equal in their potential. But "relatively" equal makes all the difference when your talking about billions of barrels of oil equivalent.

Which is easier to get the energy content from...ethanol, or butanol, or should you just burn the natural gas directly you otherwise may use in either of the alcohol fuels? How about algae, how does it stack up against the alcohols? What about methane, why not put every biological product you have in a methane digester? And what about methane waste recapture...how much is out there?

It becomes very much the same as attempting to pick financial investments: We can say that stock X has potential...but perhaps Y would be better...or a fund combined with stock X and a hedge with LLP's?...in other words, what is the "perfect" solution? And under what exact situations does it continue to be "perfect"?

Of course if we throw using solar or wind to drive the process (ethanol, butanol, methane, etc., or algae or whatever)into the mix we are putting in yet one more ringer: If you used solar and wind to drive the distillation of ethanol or butanol, how would it compare to algae? And you have opened up the question as to why we don't just use the solar energy directly to charge batteries, compress air, even to produce hydrogen or as thermal energy to heat homes? The variables keep climbing and the "perfect" solution seems even further from us...

As much as we hate getting off our ass and actually building something, we are finally going to have to because it is the only way to see which one will actually deliver in the field. Right now, wind, PV solar and thermal collecting solar (concentrating mirror) at least have the advantage of being out there in the field, along with nuclear energy. We can at least see that they work and approximately how much they cost. Likewise ethanol, but you have to do a lot of discounting to account for the issues of government subsidies and the impact on food prices, consumption of topsoil, water, natural gas, etc.

If ethanol is nothing more than "attempting to create fuel by sucking sunshine through a corn cob", then algae is nothing more than "attempting to create fuel by sucking sunshine through pond scum." Is it the best way?

It becomes obvious that we seem to believe we can produce enough "energy" to drive other processes (if we spend enough money and effort) but that we still are certain we will need a high density/portable/clean form of liquid fuel. Of course with a little thought and engineering we may not need as much liquid fuel as we think we do.

Either way, let's try some of this stuff. If true catastrophic collapse is on the way anyway, what do we have to lose? We can at least have some fun on the way out.

RC