Oil spill essential for marine life...says GOP candidate

[Aggie]

Transportation is a tough one.  I'm not sure that anyone is currently doing it, but if the Fischer-Tropsch process was applied to gasified wood biomass from managed forests, a carbon-neutral (provided energy inputs were from non-petroleum sources) synthetic diesel could be produced.  I'd have to see the numbers on British Columbia's peak harvesting numbers from the good ol' days of the forest industry (80's & 90's, before the Japanese economy crashed and the Yanks started imposing illegal tariffs) to estimate how much could be replaced.

I am still a big proponent of switching focus from crude oil to natural gas (methane), which could possibly satisfy some transport applications.  From the environmental perspective, it's less energy intensive to extract, process and move, and has reasonable waste-biomass derived sources already in place (i.e. human waste, feedlot effluent, landfills, composting plants). From an ecological perspective, aside from drilling waste disposal, a conventional gas well is inevitably a much cleaner beast than an oil well, although salt water and hydrogen sulphide production can still be an issue. Whether it makes sense from a GG gas standpoint is another story - it's more potent than CO2, and greater use will inevitably lead to greater releases; however, if there is a motivation to capture waste-associated methane production, it may balance out.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Transportation in the short term will keep using fossil fuels, but cleaner alternatives like gas are in full implementation already, back home more and more cars are being converted simply because nat-gas is substantially cheaper than gasoline. Biodiesel is also growing it's share and eventually in the next 10-20 years ethanol from cellulose will be readily available. The main pressure is the price of oil:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c7/WTI_price_96_09.svg/600px-WTI_price_96_09.svg.png

Contrary to the 70s the pressure isn't only the price but the availability of technology and a more robust consciousness about dependence on oil.

IMO the beloved dream of the oil industry (a high price) is precisely what will move the alternatives sooner.