And why not plant these nuts in Saudi too? It's quite deserty there too, hmm?

Many times at startup I've smelled a goodly whiff of freshly burned fuel drifting down the cabin.

In the future this should flush out all those on board with nut allergies before takeoff so that I can eat my complimentary peanuts in peace.

Something would have to change before large scale cultivation of Jatropha is a goer in Oz. In a sizable part of the country (WA) it's a prohibited noxious weed.

See http://www.biofuelreview.com/content/view/28/2/

Much of the desert hosts a very fragile ecosystem, and I can just imagine the howls of protest from the greenies once some crusader starts hawking photos of dead <insert cute marsupial species here> with a plantation (probably owned by big oil) in the background. Can't imagine the graziers would be too happy either - it is highly toxic.

...when I bought up the Sahara desert! well WHO'S LAUGHING NOW?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemp

... and no, its not yer stoner stuff.

Hectares or square kilometres? Make your mind up!

Mines the one with the 4 inch by 12 cm pockets.

Now that the world is running short of food and the demand for food is increasing, (hence the rising price and shortages of rice) we can devote huge tracts of land that are currently used to produce food, to produce fuel instead.

It won't be in deserts, there will be government subsidies to grow it everywhere.

Way to go!

Now where did I see the last place that used synthetic fuels and oils . of whom one of the greedy seven sisters grabbed a majority of patents and copyrights of processes involved from a certain Chemical Plant Giant of a corporation as war reparations and then stripped of all it's assets in a beleaguered but now since reformed country in central Europe in 1945 !

Life moves in the same endless mobius loop it seems !

I've seen the future, and it's blimp shaped.

If I have the chance to fly over 12 hours with only the pacific under me, give me kero any day, rather than bio fuel.

and what little there is, is too cold and too dry

"why can't some big research-based companies look into such gems as the hydrogen-fuelled tube vehicle: http://www.fuelcellpropulsion.org/PublicOutreach/Websites/Publications.htm"

I read some place that if you took a TransRapid Maglev train (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transrapid), stuck it in a tube with the air pumped out so that the pressure in the tube was equivalent to being at an altitude of 30,000ft the train would easily be capable of 1,500km/h+ and it's purely electrically based.

No need to have a tube loaded full of explosive hydrogen. No tanks full of highly reactive pure oxygen. No need to develop aerostatic hydrogen bearings. No massive power-hog water splitting plants to get your massive quantities of hydrogen and oxygen.

The upside of the maglev train system is that in an emergency, all you need to do is blow some safety covers on the tube to allow it to re pressurize to normal atmospheric air pressure, eliminating the need to vent massive quantities of hydrogen. If there is a major failure in the train (train wreck) then you don't risk a Hindenberg type disaster.

You can also line the outside of the maglev's tube with solar panels to provide power generation for the system reducing or eliminating the use of any non-green forms of power generation.

Then the fact that the maglev is a proven technology with systems in service around the world, and not a "Hindenberg-in-a-can" theoretical system, should make this the much better option.

Mines the one made of kevlar with the nomex outer lining, and breathing apparatus.

Tonnes of the stuff is wasted everyday, it is the most abundant bio material on the planet . Only problem is turning it into a viable fuel source. oops.

Good article over at Wired;

http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/15-10/ff_plant

In other words the Australian cattle farmer lobby is much more powerful than any green fuel lobbies. I am placing a 8:1 bet that if petrol reaches 250$+ a barrel the WA administration will do a U-turn on tiptoe and tell the cattle farmer lobby to go sod off.

Every major airline is cutting services. Several small ones have gone bankrupt in the last month.

The world is facing peak oil, and no amount of biofuels will make up the decline in supply. Oil jumped a record $14/barrel on Friday. Ten years ago oil WAS $14/barrel.

Biofuels will not save mass aviation, but they might be the final nail in the coffin for the world's rainforests.

Not sure what you're saying. Peak oil is physical reality. Agreed we haven't begun to feel the full economic implications yet, but we will, probably in the next two years. Sure China is building 10M extra cars a year, but if they can't pump or buy the oil, then they aren't going to be driven very far.

Oil represented about 1% of global GDP ten years ago. At $130 it represents 6.5%. About half this price is the real cost of developing new oil fields and pumping old ones, the rest is profit which is (to a large extent) recycled into the larger economy. It simply means the rich get richer whilst the poor get poorer.

The oil price is rising hyperbolically (faster than exponentially). So is the real cost of new oil production. Once (real) total energy costs reach about 15% of GDP, modern industrial civilisation becomes untenable. At current rate of increase, we reach that point in under two years. The price of oil cannot then increase further (in real terms - ignoring hyperinflation). The world economy MUST then shrink in line with the oil supply. All business as usual economic models then become invalid. Total financial collapse is inevitable.

You're such a cheery, uplifting type. Great bedtime reading.

My understanding of peak oil is that peak oil is the point where we have reached the maximum barrels/day that this planet will ever produce, and from there on in, production will only decline. As production declines, and demand grows, of course, prices will rise, and we are all...well...you know...

Have we reached peak oil though? I don't know about that. In fact, I honestly doubt it. (Full disclosure, I live in a province with one of he largest reserves of oil in the world, and our economy is overheating trying to get it all out of the ground yesterday.) I think we have a ways yet to go on peak oil, not because there are more reserves than stated, or because demand will fall, but because more and more money and talent is being put into exploiting the last remaining reserves on earth.

The debate is academic, really, because nobody, regardless of what they say, honestly knows the production values of every oil company on earth even over the past ten years, let alone into the future. (So many lies have been told, and figured fudged humanity may never know the true tale.) That said, let me paint a different picture:

I believe that we still have at least a decade, maybe more of rising production, as new technologies come on-stream, and we simultaneously run every reserve dry in our quest for that last, final drop. When that peak is crested, however, there will be no gradual economic slowdown, not even a "depression" like the early 20th century. The curve won't be bell shaped, it will reach a peak, and then plummet. With 10, 20, maybe even 30 years ahead of us, my dad, the elder Bush family, that whole generation can die happy, never having seen the hell that they hath wrought.

I, on the other hand, by the time I am their age, will probably survive just long enough to be killed by a friend or neighbour for food, water, or gasoline. It hurts my green, left-leaning soul to say this, but...environmentalism is a huge, tragic mistake. Certainly, pollution, renewable energy, happy pandas and environmental toxins matter, and they are important. The harsh, harsh truth, however, is that the money going towards everything except solving the growing food crisis, population boom, and finding new, renewable sources of energy is a tragic waste that could well be the doom of us all.

We need to stop having so many babies. We need to find food to feed those we've got, and by the gods, we need to save every last precious drop of oil we have, because there so very, very many things that we make out of it that we have absolutely no (viable) way of making any other way. An example? Plastics. We can recycle only so hard. Certain plants can be used to make plastics, (that involves quite a bit of hocus pocus, from what I understand,) but it would never meet even the smallest fraction of demand. Having a healthy, green earth won't do us any good if we wipe ourselves trying to control the last remaining resources on earth. And if we DO get to wiping ourselves out, after a few thousand years, those who (might) survive should have a healthy, green earth...with no oil.

Now of course, these are opinions based entirely on my personal paranoia, research on the internets, and via a few interesting scientific journals, and a healthy dose of alarmism, but they may yet be valid. Your mileage may, of course, vary.

Dead vulture, because I'm probably allready to old to survive the looming resource wars.