Reply To: The recent "discovery" of Dark Matter

[Transmute]

Corn to ethanol, yes I agree that is a joke, but cellulose to ethanol (or butanol) has much greater promise, all agricultural waste could become fuel without harming food production.

1. If we retire the gasoline engine what do we replace it with? Hydrogen has major limitations in storage and fuel cell prices have got to drop a full 10 fold! Batteries could replace short range transport, Metal-air fuel cells have potential, but lets be honest all of this requires massive infrastructure change.
2. I would love to replace coal with fission: pebble bed reactors, maybe even thorium cycle, but the general public will never go for it, their too afraid of the N word (no not the personified N word, the N word erroneously associated with giant mushroom clouds.)
3. Ethanol does not present the same ground water contamination problems, ethanol is very biodegradable.