Phil Fraering writes

Uh, Gary, the reason noone's started more research into getting oil from coal is that it's cheaper to get oil from oil. While we are too dependent on foreign sources right now, the price of oil has never been cheaper than now and could go up probably a lot and not raise the price of gas much compared to how much taxes and inflation have raised it since 1972.

Phil, currently a barrel of oil is a little under $17. That would make a gallon of gas less than 40 cents if it could be refined, distributed, & retailed at no cost. I realize that is just about "dirt cheap". Still, the Fischer-Tropsch reaction is over 90 years old & Germany fueled its part in World War II with it. By now, you would think that we could squeeze oil out of coal "dirt cheap". Its been more that 50 years ago that Germany ran its war effort on this process. I agree with you that it would be very hard to beat the price of oil. Still, the world handles its war machine as though oil were quite precious. You should cure the world of this illusion! Ok - admittedly, an oil embargo that was differentially placed on some nations & not on others would raise the manufacturing & shipping costs of the embargoed nations & put them in a bad trade position.

Look, I'm tired Phil, if I had known my article would just tire & annoy you, I never would have writ it!

and this is cypherpunks. Agreed. My article is not well coupled with the official topic of cypherpunks & it would not be a good thing to tie up too much of cypherpunks bandwith with it. I had hoped to do a quick hit & run with it with cypherpunks & post it on other lists as well. I must give you credit, Phil. It was a damd cagey move on your part to do a bad review on a part of my post & say nothing good about my post at all. As we all know, nothing kills a thread faster than that! And then to give me shit about wasting Cypherpunk bandwith - the ICING ON THE CAKE! Phil is on top of things. I am admonished! Unless someone says something to provoke or encourage this thread, I'm dropping it from Cypherpunks.

I'm willing to discuss energy policy, etc., over on extropians@extropy.org anytime you're willing to fork over the money to access it (if I have time; I often don't).

But anyway, you might want to check out that recent NOVA episode, "The World Is Full Of Oil." Thanks for the tip. You & NOVA are probably right. The world is

I've dropped out of the Extropian's list. Its all I can do to keep up with just this list. Also, I don't want to pay the money & I don't approve of the way the fools hounded Tim May. Phil, I must also disagree with the way you handled your criticism of my post. You panned part of it & then seemed imply that you had fully reviewed it with that. probably up to its ass in oil. There is some speculation that oil was not derived from fossilized plant life. On a more serious note, I value the time & bandwith of the Cypher- punks. I posted the post here because I believe that it has rare & valuable information that Cypherpunks would be interested in. Hopefully, I have not wasted much of many Cypherpunks time. Yours Truly, Gary Jeffers