“The best they could do was produce around 7 barrels of oil for every ton of coal.
I think we could do better.”
There’s about a ton of carbon in a ton of coal, and there’s also about a ton of carbon in 7 barrels of oil. We might do a little better, but not much better, without another carbon source.
We might be able to do better in terms of time and energy.
They used a lot of fuel to make fuel.
We could probably do better in that respect, with the best of science.
I could be wrong, but it just seems like that as the technology advances, it usually gets more efficient and affordable.
It could also be why we don’t do it, because I could using incorrect assumptions about what could be done.