Coal as the fuel of the future

I just saw a short piece on the news about Sasol, a South African company that's promising to produce gasoline from coal (profitably and with lower emissions). It seems that every few weeks we hear some scientist or company announce that they're about to release some revolutionary new fuel or fuel system that will solve all our oil woes.

I'm pretty jaded to it at this point.

On the other hand, I've only really been keyed in to these technologies for the past few years, which is significantly shorter than most development pipelines. Maybe some of these new systems really will sweep away our energy problems in the near future. In the meantime we need to commit ourselves to make the policy changes that will encourage future technological development while making the most of what we already have (e.g. energy conservation!).

It does appeal to me to be able to use coal as an energy source. It would seem like a waste not to take advantage of such an abundant natural resource - especially one so common in the U.S. Any move to take advantage of this technology would need to (from the start) plan how to deal with environmental effects though. I still haven't seen any sufficient efforts to sequester carbon, let alone enough to offset burning even more coal than we already do. Not to mention that coal is often mined by shearing off mountain tops....

Maybe we'd be better off without this technology after all.

Market environmentalists

Here's a balanced and thorough description of an interesting idea I've come across before:

Wildlife conservation via private ownership and sale.

It arises from the idea of the Tragedy of the commons; when everyone shares a resource, no one has any incentive to harvest it in a sustainable manner. It doesn't pay to go easy on your local fishery if all your neighbors are dredging up all the animals you spare. It's been suggested that many historically destructive extractive industries (such as commercial fishing and logging) would behave much better if they were given exclusive rights to harvest from certain areas.

This article does an excellent job of parsing out this issue - especially contrasting conservation efforts that redirected market forces and efforts that opposed them. It sounds like another messy subject that will have to be thoughtfully addressed on a case by case basis! I hope any environmentalists who oppose this approach on philosophical grounds can at least take away the lesson that shutting down supply works much better when you also address demand.

Who "killed" the electric car?

Something else I've waited awhile to find?
A good synopsis of the current state of automotive battery technology.

Nanobacteria

Here's a discussion of the supposed existence of "nanobacteria."
I'm surprised I haven't come across this topic before...