If nothing else, coal to oil can be processed with natural gas. Heavy hydrocarbon plus light hydrocarbon equals oil. South Africa has been doing this for years. Germany did something similar during the war.
Until recently natural gas was too expensive, but now producers would love to expand the market.
COAL IS SOALR ENERGY!
You heard it here first:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2988229/posts
What would be great is to locate a coal processing plant like this right next door to large greenhouse facility.
Pump that CO2 into the greenhouses - it’s plant food after all...
The author misses the point that carbon dioxide is just an excuse. What they left truly hates is not CO2, but generated energy. And industrialization. And machines, modernity, concrete and refined metal.
What they truly want is the simplicity of primitivism, at least for everyone but themselves. They would be content to have all the benefits of a noble class, ruling over the rest of us as agrarian peasants.
Look at Al Gore, living in a ghastly mansion that consumes enormous amounts of energy, flying about in private jets, driving SUV limousines. etc., ad nauseum. Yet he is filled with sanctimony about how everyone else needs to do with less, be hotter in summer and colder in winter; drive slow and unsafe economy cars with weak engines; not fly at all, etc.
He is a terrible hypocrite, if not to his “nouveau elite” sensibilities; but he is not unique from his peers, other than “winning life’s lottery”, a fortune that he despises in others.
But while Al Gore is cynical beyond belief, the fanatical second tier of his followers are true believers in their faith of agrarian primitivism. People like Earth First! and PETA, who are motivated public pests, funded by elitist pigs like Al and “Ter-ay-sa” Heinz, wife of that lurching fop, the treacherous and cowardly John Kerry.
If scientists succeed in eliminating CO2 emissions, the plants aren’t going to like it.
None of the above bullcrap add-ons come free. They must make coal burning for electric 2-4 times as expensive. Thus making it non-competitive with natural gas etc. But what do the above researchers care? They got paid for meaningless global warming related research that cannot be deployed on an economic basis in the real world
The good professor should next direct his efforts to extracting energy from human and animal solid waste products.
Then we will get to see what happens when Fan hits the ...
Would have been nice if the story had given even an inkling as to how they extract the energy without burning it.
The environ-Wackos will find something wrong if it!!!
Likely a far more practical solution to our energy needs than worthless windmills, solar panels and the ethanol boondoggle. However the Obama administration will continue to champion losers based on environmental junk science and crony capitalism.