Electric cars have been getting a lot of buzz lately, but a more immediately viable transportation fuel of the future could be liquid derived from coal. Scientists have devised a new way to transform coal into gas for your car using far less energy than the current process. The advance makes scaling up the environmentally unfriendly fuel more economical than greener alternatives. Full Story »
Posted by Kevin Barry
This goes out of it's way to discuss the negatives of CTL success, an unusual counter to the typical press release approach of glorifying the new technology. The imbalance is not that bad though, and a pretty good overview education can be gleaned from this story. Odd that none of the links provided are to the Science article that is the key source.
A report on how to turn coal into fuel. One-sided, forgetting about the greenies. Will make a lot of environmental mad.
An interesting look at the difficult balancing act of cost, polution and energy alternatives. It made no mention of China's rapid economic expansion still at 6.5% and their vast coal mining operations. A good article and well done.
Moving away from coal and petrol fuels while laudable and will happen in time. Developing alternatives from OIl via coal to fuel might release us a bit from middle eastern oil, which is worthwhile on its own.
In an article that is highly hyperlinked, there is no link to the Science Magazine article on which it is based, and no date and page citation (Science 27Mar09, pp 1680-81). This may have been acceptable in days of print journalism, but it is no longer.
An incremental innovation to a known process. Reducing CO2 is a matter of science and technology but mainly of politics. BTW: Megawatts are a measure of power, not energy. An unaceptable error in a publication as Wired.
An interesting and fairly-balanced article that talks about an alternative fuel for cars that can be produced from coal. Whereas "alternative" recently has been associated with "green", this fuel could produce double the CO2 of normal petroleum fuels when consumed. The focus of the article is on the issues this could have on the fight against cliimate change.
Personally, I say one of the best ways to avoid consuming fuels is to ditch your car - ride a bike or walk whenever you can. There, problem solved. :)
This story is very lacking in facts. I'm surprised the author actually put in the piece about that CTL fuel produces twice the Co2 as standard gasoline. The author fails to mention what specific energy is in the CTL (hint, it's less than gasoline) or that at 350 megawatts to produce 80,000 gallons of fuel is a net loss in energy. Overall, the story is poorly researched and reported.
I seriously doubt this story was written by Alexis Madrigal. It appears to be another coal industry sponsered article thats long on glory an short on facts (like clean coal).
Not bad, but fails to address how devastating this would be to the landscape, air, water, food supply...
Hemp grows in all fifty states, reaches heights of 16 ft in 3 months and actually helps rejuvenate soil. Methanol from hemp would be a superior fuel to both E85 and liquid coal in many ways, and all other products made from the plant are an extremely safe and efficient way to store carbon.
Author Alexis Madrigal fails the balance test by not at least questioning the anthropogenic model of climate change. Nearly every paragraph is premised on the assumption that carbon emissions are causing climate change--therefore any technology that prolongs our dependence on fossil fuels is dangerous and counterproductive. This sort of imbalance misleads the reader to adopt radical positions that could prove very harmful.
I am not a strong advocate of coal as a primary energy source, especially in a massive country like China where emissions are largely uncontrolled. I believe that all alternatives to fossil fuels should be pursued aggressively. Nevertheless, unproved assumptions about the causes of climate change have no place in setting policy, especially when those assumptions result in economically, and therefore socially, damaging legislation.
If you actually believe CO2 is a problem and that there is any possibility of doing anything about it solar and wind are not a solution. Nuclear is. Coal to oil plants are being built in China, right now. China will continue using massive amounts of coal. Abolishing our coal use will simply put us at a competitive disadvantage and have negligible effect on CO2.
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