Carbon Cycle:

Oil shale fascinated me back when I was a kid. I actually used a Fresnel lens to heat a lump of oil shale and could smell the crude oil that hot spot was generating. The problem with oil shale is that some of the oil has to be consumed in order to free the remaining oil. Canada is continuing to expand its shale oil production. It is definitely something that America will have to do. However if you think strip mining leaves the land a mess I assure you that mining oil shale is even more destructive to the landscape.

See: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=bakken+oil&spell=1

As I see it we have two limits on carbon based fuels. The first is their decreasing availability and their escalating cost. The second is the environmental considerations. The level of atmospheric CO2 is far higher than it should be and control of CO2 levels simply must be part of any overall energy policy.

I have been trying to establish the parameters for using high growth algae to harvest the CO2 and turn it into cells. These algae cells could be sun dried and then burned as fuel in a generating plant. There is of course a lot of math and some genetic work that must be done. Such an approach creates a solar driven carbon dioxide recycling energy generation system. The overall carbon foot print would be zero and yet energy would be generated. Such a system would continue to generate energy on cloudy days.

Over sizing the algae ponds initially would mean the carbon footprint could become negative until these ponds brought better balance to the earth’s atmosphere. Where we store the excess dried algae might become a problem. Perhaps it could be formed into sludge and pumped back into the oil fields we have depleted.