Articles by John McGrath

It’s going to come via coal

This news from China is not encouraging:

Beijing has settled on a national standard for methanol as an automotive fuel, a decision which will legitimise and bolster a market that has been growing rapidly without central government approval ...

By the time the plants, which convert coal to liquids, start producing in 2011 to 2013, China's oil demand will have doubled, allowing methanol to supply about 10 per cent of the market.

Oil imperialism is going to be the end of us

Via Political Animal, this little nugget got me thinking:

In other words, the bill to bring Army and Navy battalions back to the status they were in before the invasion ... [will be] $50 to $100 billion. "The next president will face a staggering bill," Wilkerson says, not even counting the costs of further efforts in Iraq.

So, not counting the cost of the war itself, just returning U.S. armed forces to the fighting condition they maintained back in ye olden dayes of Feb. 2003 will cost as much as $100 billion. The estimates for the total cost of the war have been pegged as high as $2 trillion.

We talk a great deal about the "externalities" of oil. It's important to remember that one of its costliest externalities -- probably No. 2 behind climate change -- is American military spending in the Persian Gulf, and at least two major wars.

Yes, charcoal

I'm shamelessly spreading this link around, because it's one of the most interesting pieces I've read in a while: Engineer-Poet at his blog The Ergosphere has a detailed and fascinating exploration of the possibility of using charcoal (derived from biomass and wastes) to fuel America, with many, many charts and numbers for the wonkishly inclined.

The short version is: If we're smart about it, we can generate enough electricity and liquid fuels from biomass in the United States to replace all fossil fuels and then some, plus rejuvenate long-suffering American soils, plus sequester billions of tons of CO2. Check it out here.

France to slap tariff on U.S. over Kyoto non-compliance

For the non-nerds out there, that's "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch." Everybody's gotta pay sometime.

Which brings me to this: The European Union may apply a tariff on nations that don't sign on to Kyoto, or who fail to meet their obligations. This would include America and Canada.