VirtualOptics

An Energy Policy that Makes Cents (and Sense)

Coal ALREADY has a means to make clean energy and that is through conversion to methane and methanol...see Methanex (MEOH) who is already doing this in South America. This in turn can be converted to gasoline and diesel fuel in the short term by the Fisher-Tropse process. This is described in the following article available online: gasification.org/Docs/...
The general process is called Integrated Coal Refinement (ICR) and can be researched easily online.

Reversal conversion of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere (creating greenhouse effect) has some active research in albedo modification through increasing cloud cover over the oceans. Here is a link to a basic paper on that proposal: ccc2006.ca/docs/Abstra...

Chart of the Day: Oil and Gasoline Prices

On CNBC this past Wed morning (Feb 20) an extended interview with T. Boone Pickens disclosed his learned opinion that America MUST find an alternative to oil for fueling automobiles. We are sending $1.5 billion per day and that is going to unstable parts of the world where the easy oil is still being pumped. He predicts that oil price will drop to about $85/barrel in the second quarter, but back up to $100+ by the 3rd and 4th. Probably by next year it will reach $150/barrel. His solutions? Fuel for autos can change to natural gas, our biggest fuel resource. Electrical production can come from solar collectors in the desert southwest and from wind farms ranging from Texas to California and from Texas north through the Great Plains states. We have to move fast on this conversion in his opinion.