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If you hang any credence on the notion of population control, why not quit with the halfway measures? A few minutes with the nuclear ?football? and 70-80% of the population problem disappears. I have no use for such talk. We have not even begun to tap the potential of technology.
According to my Kreith & Kreider solar energy incidence in the US is 200 watts per square meter. Convert to the US system that?s 63.47 BTU/hr-square foot. Figure a 12 hour day and you get 761.64 BTU/day-square foot. At 43,560 square feet per acre, solar insolation is 33,177,038 BTU/acre-day. The heating value of gasoline is 120,000 BTU/gal and diesel is 140,000 BTU/gal. So if you could harvest 100% of the solar energy falling on the US (more would be available at the equator), and convert 100% of it to liquid fuel, you could produce 276 gallons of gasoline per day or 237 gallons of diesel per day on that acre of ground. No wonder that the DOE estimates that if one could come up with an efficient means of harvesting and storing solar energy the entire transportation fuel requirements of the US could be met by covering a 125 mile square portion of the Mojave Desert with suitable collectors. Even at a 10% conversion rate, we easily have enough non-arable desert land for growing algae.
Thus far, silicon hasn?t worked out. Either it is too inefficient or wears out and under either circumstance requires storage which we still have a problem with.
Fortunately, nature has provided us with a very efficient collector/processor of solar energy ? algae. Its efficiency varies by species but all of them exceed 25% efficiency. All it needs is seawater, some nitrogen, phosphorus, carbon dioxide and sunlight and it grows like crazy. Algae concentrates energy as sugars and fats. Both are recoverable and can be concentrated as ethanol/propane/butanol or as transester biodiesel.
Two things are in the process of being worked out. First, how to efficiently and economically grow it. Up until now, algae has been more of a pest than anything else. We know a lot about how to kill it but little about how to grow and harvest it. Second is how to efficiently convert it into liquid fuel. We know that it can be done technically, but doing efficiently on a commercial scale still has to be worked out.
Sorry, I am not ready for the Gloomy Gus existentialism. Even if the Peak Oil thing is true, it matters little because we can come up with substitutes if we can get the technical kinks ironed out and get our government out of the way.
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2000 Ford F-350 Super Cab Pickup
4x2, 6 speed manual
Regeared to 3.08:1
4 inch suspension slam
Aero mods: "Fastback" fairing and rugged air dam and side skirts
Stock MPG: 19
Summer MPG: 27.0
Winter MPG: 24
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? Doubt they're efficient, though, 
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