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Bill et. al.<BR>
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I think you are correct about bio-fuels as an alternative to oil. In fact, it will be difficult for any alternative fuel to compensate for the cheap abundance of energy from oil. Gas would need to rise over $5 a gallon to... I'm not sure at what price for gas that alternative fuels would start to compete in the open marketplace, but it's very high. And then the availability of the quantity of alternative fuels needed to replace the prodigious amount of energy from oil that we currently use is another problem, as you pointed out with your examination of what it would take to replace oil with canola.<BR>
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We have heard a lot about fuel cell cars and the coming hydrogen economy, but there is no free lunch. The hydrogen must come from hydrocarbons (propane or...) or some other source, and this may not be as cheap as oil is now. Fuel cells do produce energy from a given amount of propane that is more efficient than burning the propane in an internal combustion engine. I guess if you want to run your internal combustion car on propane this is not so hard to do?<BR>
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But unless there are some break throughs in energy technology, the world will face a major economic crisis when oil starts to run out. Using less energy per person seems like the only practical solution. Just try and tell that to the average American!<BR>
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What ever happened to fusion power? Seems like this technology is just not currently practical. If it could be made to work, this would help solve the oil crisis, but this is a big if. So much for the happy face technologists who think science and technology will solve our energy problems!<BR>
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Ted Moffett</FONT></HTML>