Seriously sick of the politics threads

[Entroper]

Rath said:

Entroper said:

Rath said:

Galaki said:
I don't see nuclear power and the likes happening. Not anytime soon. The oil lobby will strike it down.

Peak oil will be within 5 years. Something has to replace it.

Very little of our electricity actually comes from oil, though. Oil is primarily used to power transportation, with the lion's share of electricity generation coming from coal. Nuclear power isn't likely to replace oil unless we all start driving electric cars. I think going to ethanol is much more likely, especially given the recent advances in ethanol production from cellulose and other organic material (not corn).

Urgh no. Biofuels are a very bad route to take.

Biofuel crops compete with regular crops for land, essentially biofuels becoming mainstream would lead to an extremely large famine.

Yeah, like we would really create a famine just so we could drive around.  The key phrase in my post was "cellulose and other organic material (not corn)."  Switchgrass does not compete with regular crops for land, because you can grow it where you can't grow regular crops.  You can also get cellulose out of the corn husks instead of fermenting the sugars inside the kernel.  In fact, we can now use just about any kind of waste biomass to make ethanol.