it would require a great deal of energy. A nuclear power plant and the development of a new electrochemical process might be able to overcome that obstacle.

So we are going to build thousands of nuclear power plants in order to generate fuel from an extremely energy inefficient process, just so that we can claim to be carbon neutral?

Given that commercial reserves of Uranium are actually very limited, this pushes us towards breeder reactors, nuclear proliferation, and nuclear war - which is the reason that Los Alamos was founded, after all.

Sounds interesting although expensive. One has to see the bright spot with this new technology!

If we forget about AGW for a moment, I wonder if the properties of this artificial fuel would do anything to solve the real problem of pollution?

Unfortunately, this new idea will ruin big money's plan to make even more money. If this solution becomes viable, you can say goodbye to carbon taxes, credits and offsets ......They won't let that go without a fight!

I would love to know how much AGW funding a place like Los Alamos has received .....and yet, could very well come up with one of the best solutions yet!

Progress throught technology .......what an inovative concept!

Another blow against global wealth re-distribution!

It sounds like a great idea. However, having said that, the concept has some problems. For instance,

* a process to generate hydrogen by splitting water... This takes energy, nuclear, hydro, solar or whatever, it will take a lot of energy...

Ah, what the heck, I do like the process, especially the nuclear power and the fact that they have to use ExxonMobil's MTG process to make the gasoline. This means that ExxonMobil's stock value will remain high.

Whoopee!!!!

"The concept would be able to produce gasoline at a cost of $1.40 per gallon and it would be made economically viable at a cost of $4.60 to the consumer. Technology advances might be able to get that cost down to $3.40."

Sorry. This is the steady-state O&M costs of producing the fuel day after day. It excludes the cost of recovering the initial Capital investment, cited here as $5 Billion.

Add that in, and the true cost to the consumer will easily be 3-5 times that (depending on the assigned payback period - typically 20 years, and interest rates) quoted here.

Just leave the liquid fuels alone, and build Nuke plants to replace coal. Much more cost effective than this nonsense.

...One major caveat to building a (CO2 to gasoline) factory is that it would require a great deal of energy. ...

No surprise there, just look at the chemistry.

... A nuclear power plant and the development of a new electrochemical process might be able to overcome that obstacle.

Well, a nuclear power plant will surely provide "a great deal of energy." Of course, that nuclear plant would have to be safe and clean.

So the first postulate required by this alternative is safe and clean nuclear energy.

What would be the cost of the project? About 5 billion.

Is that before or after the safe and clean nuclear plant?

The concept would be able to produce gasoline at a cost of $1.40 per gallon and it would be made economically viable at a cost of $4.60 to the consumer. Technology advances might be able to get that cost down to $3.40.

This alternative postulates the existence of safe and clean nuclear power.

Based on that assumption, it then makes gasoline available at price at the pump-price (presumably before taxes) of $3.40 to $4.60.

The federal gas tax is in the range of $0.18/gallon, and the state rates are in the range of $0.08-0.32/gallon. So the consumer price will be something on the order of $3.58-4.92/gallon.

Closed or not, the intermediate byproduct of this alternative is CO2. The comparable byproduct of hydrogen is potable water.

Given safe and clean nuclear power and $5B to invest, what would hydrogen cost at the pump?

If the US vehicle fleet were able to, for example, capture the potable water emitted by their use, what would the value of that water be, per gallon of hydrogen consumed?

It sounds to me as though hydrogen is a better answer than this alternative -- whether or not this one can be made to work.

Here's a better idea... make fuel out of sunseed oil, a well known process, and let photosynthesis naturally extract carbon from the air and return the oxygen back. A lot of proposals currently mooted, such as burying liquid carbon dioxide on the ocean floor, are dangerous as they lower oxygen levels with all manner of unforeseen consequences. Alternatively, simply grow tons of sunseed flowers and then bury them preventing the carbon from the decaying plants being returned to the atmosphere. Consult your biology manuals and your slide rule, as I have, this will extract all the carbon you want, and then we can return to using ordinary petrol without damaging the environment.

"Consult your biology manuals and your slide rule, "

How is this supposed to work when global warming is going to make it hotter, colder, wetter, drier.
Make crops fail. Tornados, hail storms, etc

Let's put our future into growing crops under those conditions. Smart move.

This sounds like an interesting idea that's worth further research. That being said, I do think reducing coal and increasing nuclear, as a percentage of our total energy source, is a prerequisite.

Hi PaulB,

Los Alamos has many different groups, and at least one well known global warming believer (Charles Keller) and one well known skeptic (Peter Chylek) who was among 60 signatories of this letter to Prime Minister Harper.

Observational evidence does not support today's computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future. Yet, this is precisely what the United Nations did in creating and promoting Kyoto
http://www.citizenreviewonline.org/april2006/15/warming.html

On common problem everyone at Los Alamos faces is rapidly falling research money, which makes an AGW tag line an extremely valuable commodity in a proposal or paper.

Will we have to engineer cars with two "fuel" tanks now? One for petrol and another for KCO4? Will there be a distribution system? Where will the KCO4 come from and what will the environmental and economic ramifications be of the sudden increase in demand?

This all sounds great. Humans thinking their way out of a fix, but it seems to me it's just making what is already an obscenely inefficient conversion process (internal combustion) and making it even moreso.

Imagine, if you can, what it must have been like in a large metro area toward the end of the 19th century, and how much horse manure there must have been on the streets, and how much time and effort went into their upkeep. The solution to that problem wasn't diapers and low residue feed. The answer to that problem was the internal combustion engine. And now that solution has become a problem and requires a NEW SOLUTION not a way to perpetuate the problem.

You know you hear it said that the oceans are the last frontier on Earth and we look to the Moon and to Mars as new territories to be explored. Seems to me that the more we think we know about the Earth itself the more it is revealed how ignorant of the very house we live in we really are.

All the best,

Aaron

BT and AGW acolytes.

Would an automobile emit less C02 if the catalytic converter were removed. If what the AGW proponents say about CO2 is true, then fitting automobiles with a device to remove toxins from auto fumes was a knee jerk reaction with unknown consequences because the Catalytic converters turn 'most' of the toxins in auto emissions to water vapor and co2.
Could one of you calculate the amount of CO2 that would not go into the atmosphere if they were removed from all existing automobiles and calculate same if the converter is not added to future cars. Why didn't the environMENTALists in the 70s refuse to let cat converters on autos when they new full well they were creating a problem for our children to deal with? Answer...CO2 is not a pollutant, it's plant food

They're stealing my idea!!. Sometime back on this blog, I think it was the entry dealing with CO2 scrubbing, I opinied that itmight b a good idea to take the scrubbed CO2 and chemically convert it to a high-energy carbohydrtae. I figured that wecould figure out how to power the process using solar-generated electricity. The scrubbing stations could be like giant artificial chloroplasts, using solar energy to fix CO2 intoa burnable form. I know their plan is alittle different, now tell me they aren't copying me!

I'm just kidding by the way.

Here's a safe and clean idea - start driving less! If we don't ween ourselves from using petrochemicals for transportation so we can drive to walmart so we can buy more cheap chinese crap so we can take it home for a week or two until we cart off to a rented storage locker to make more room for cheap(fill in the name of your favorite south asian crap producer here)crap, than we are truly screwed! I don't often agree with Patrick Henry, but I think he got it in one on this idea. Breeder reactors and nuclear proliferation so we can feed our cheap driving habit!

This is a good idea, provided the cost per gallon be made competitive, without a lot of subsidies and accounting gimmicks.

I personally believe CO2 from human sources has little to do with climate change, but I support the idea of using less foreign oil.

For those who do believe CO2 to be a problem, biodiesel can be made from algae and other non-food crops. As Lloyd Grace mentioned previously, these plants remove CO2 from the atmosphere naturally.

Wouldn't it be more cost-effective to instead use all of those spanking new nuclear reactors to generate electricity to power electric cars?

I note with amusement that the enviros frantic search for "cures" to AGW keeps bringing them back to the same bogeymen (nuclear, mercury, even biofuels!) that engendered these groups!

air + water + chemicals + electricity = gas --> car power

or

electricity ----> car power

All they are doing is packaging power from a nuclear power plant in a form that can be used in today's car. They never laid out the amounts of energy necessary to produce a gallon of this stuff, but I'm betting by the time it gets to your cars wheels the efficiency is rather low.

If you want to use this strategy of using stationary power plants as your source for mobile transportation, this can't be the best way to move the energy.

BT,

Hydrogen could never replace fossil fuels. It lacks something very important. Density. This lack there of could never make it cost effective by its own weight.

You of all people should know better.

There is another obvious existing alternative.
Electric transport systems (esp mass transport) powered by renewable sources. Problem solved! But I guess the problem with that is that it would involve the idea of using less gasoline - and of course that's completely unacceptable! Lol. Then there's the idea of less consumers (people). Uh oh. Better not go there!..

I think based on the diagram and what they said, the process would use the EXISTING cooling towers such as those of nuclear power plants with carbon-capture equipment that eliminates the need for additional structures to process large volumes of air. So new nuclear power plants would not have to be built specifically just to do this process. (BTW, nuclear power plants are going to be built anyway, it is part of the government energy plan.) So this process would piggyback on existing power plant cooling towers and make use of the cooling towers of future nuclear power plants, that would be providing energy for homes, etc. So I think this process would complement the nuclear power plant.

It also says it will use existing industrial and transportation infrastructure. They also indicated the main markets will be aircraft and cars and trucks. The nuclear power plant provides energy, the synthetic gas provides fuel for airplanes, trucks and cars. Electric airplanes and electric trucks (major hauling ones) probably aren't going to be feasible for awhile if ever (electric airplanes?), and planes and trucks currently use more fossile fuels then our cars.

So we could stll have electric cars and hydrogen cars for the consumer.

I think this project and the many others that are out there being proposed and being researched indicate it is not business as usual. In addition to projects re windpower and solar, there really is a lot of research and potential projects that could help reduce the use of fossil fuels. (my husband and his scientist buds are working on them)

If the AGW alarmists are right and we have only a few years left and we're going to die in a great ball of fire, who cares how much this stuff costs.
Destruction of the planet versus paying $5.00 per gallon of synthetic gas for awhile until the technology improves. I think I'll pay the $5.00. The polar bears will thank you.

Well, it's another idea. Oil will not last forever or even be able to meet the world's demand at some point. And we are a lot closer to that point than most would like to admit.

I am interested in knowing if anyone has ever considered geothermal heat as a cause of melting ice sheets. This makes much more sense, to me, than a 1 degree change in the atmosphere. For instance, if the average temperature is a -20 degrees in a polar region how could ice melt so dramatically if the average temperature rises to -19 degrees?

In our northern communities (U.S.) many homes and businesses have electrical wires in the driveways and walkways that warms the ground to melt ice. Warming the ground in this manner quickly removes the ice and snow.

Geothermal activity would explain the spotty and unexplainable melting of glaciers in some regions and not others.

Science should be science and not a political football. I want the air to be clean and breathable as much as anyone. I appreciate the work that has been accomplished in the last 30 years. But I don�t appreciate that true science has been seemingly high-jacked for personal gain or to advance a particular agenda.

I truly would like to hear of research that has exhausted every possibility of geothermal activity being a source that is contributing to melting ice and changing habitats.

Five billion? 3 to 4 bucks at the pump?

Never trust initial project estimates pertaining to a concept. They end up being way off the mark over the time period from conception to reality. A more accurate cost estimate will only be realized when a complete breakout of the multitude of project facets are totally accounted for.

If the costs escalate through the roof over a 5 to 10 yers period and the project is de-commissioned, guess who's left with the bill, as usual.

Thank you dems and liberals for promising to rescue the rest of us from our depraved state of working hard, paying taxes, and enjoying our families with the leftover money that the government hasn't figured out a way to steal yet.

Now we can can be lead by the messianic Obama's to a better and more virtuous life of serving the government, and saving the world from such desperate problems as a 0.00008 increase in CO2 concentration.

Just a few weeks ago, the alarmists were still warning us that declining snow at the mid-latitudes was a terrible fact of life we were all going to have to learn to live with. The consensus of the models were in agreement about this, which proves that it must be true.

Buried By Snow, Part 1: Montreal, Canada

http://www.accuweather.com/news-blogs.asp?partner=forecastfox&blog=community

This is interesting, but why not capture the CO2 that is already being emitted into the atmosphere? Why not spend the money on nuclear and or hydrogen power? Why not spend the money on renewable sources, at least for home and auto energy uses? It is a good idea, but there are many other, cleaner energy sources being studied or currently in use, that could use the funding instead.

What about conservation coupled with wind and solar and other "green" energy resources? Hydrogen is very tempting. Who wouldn't want a car that emits water? Then again, when some people think of a car with a giant hydrogen tank, they think Hindenburg!

Why not eliminate the 5 billion in energy tax credits that benefit big oil? Or, get big oil to help pay for this technology. :) Don't laugh, it's just an idea.

Let's give the automakers some incentive to create the new technology needed to move beyond oil. What about tax credits for automakers instead of big oil? Right now, not many people are buying hybrids or electric vehicles. By the way, the diesel engine was originally designed to run on peanut oil, so we know that there are alternatives.

The problem, IMHO, is that we are so entrenched in the gasoline infrastructure, it will cost a ton of money