books:

	Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil Robert Zubrin Prometheus Books, 2007 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 54 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Energy Victory shows how we could be using fuel dollars that are now being sent to countries with ties to terrorism to help farmers here and abroad, boosting our own economy and funding world development. Furthermore, by switching to alcohol fuels, which pollute less than gasoline and are made from plants that draw carbon dioxide from the air, this plan will facilitate the worldwide economic growth required to eliminate global poverty without the fear of greenhouse warming. Energy Victory offers an exciting vision for a dynamic, new energy policy, which will go a long way toward safeguarding homeland security in the future and provide solutions for global warming and Third World development.

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A MUST READ

If you are tired of spending your dollars on gasoline produced from oil from Saudi Arabia, Iran, Venezuela,and other OPEC countries, many of whom hate the U.S.,this book is a must read. Dr.Zubrin's argument is simple: to become independent of foreign oil, stop using gasoline made from oil and turn to alcohol based fuels; ethanol and methanol. Methanol is the fuel used by the Indy 500 drivers. It's cheap to make and can be made from coal, natural gas and almost any biomass (including the leftovers from the manufacture of ethanol.)One needs a flex fuel engine to use it, but that only costs $150-200 per car. Congress could subsidize this for $150 million per year, and mandate a flex fuel engine for every car sold here. In three years that would put 50 million cars on the roads, creating a market for entrepreneurs to provide the pumps to deliver methanol to the marketplace. It would also help farmers in poor countries as well as take the pressure off of food crops presently used for ethanol and presently driving up many food prices. It is the Saudi's, the farm lobby and the oil company's stranglehold on Congress which is preventing methanol from coming to market. "Energy Victory" sets forth the problems and provides details of the solution to weaning ourselves from foreign oil.

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A promising and powerful vision of the future. Highly recommended!

Whether you're interested in your pocketbook, your safety, or your environment, this book should be on your Must Read list. Zubrin does an excellent job of summarizing the horrible current energy situation and of outlining a viable plan for world prosperity and energy independence. The alcohol-based liquid fuel economy represents a realistic and beneficial goal that is well worth our striving for. While the world will probably never reach a point where fossil fuel resources such as oil become unnecessary, there are so many good reasons to support an agriculturally rooted alcohol industry. Methanol and ethanol can be produced anywhere in the world, helping to bring poor nations out of poverty, providing increased supplies of fuel for growing worldwide demand, and creating price-suppressing competitors to cartel controlled oil producers. The only reasons I can imagine for opposing this potentially world changing and almost costless plan are completely inadequate. Environmental: We can't ruin the Earth by farming more land!, and Societal: Alcohol production will take away from food production and poor people will starve! Both of those issues are adequately covered in the book. Long term, this plan has enormous consequences. Don't miss this book.

ENERGY VICTORY is not a political book at heart. While there are numerous cases where Zubrin shows his leanings as far as corruption in Washington and the War on Terror, the basis of his plan has nothing to do with politics. Even if you don't agree with his almost eager sounding suggestions of ending the financial support of terrorists by bombing oil fields in Saudi Arabia and Iran, you have to agree that it would be better for us not to be sending these undeniably corrupt and freedomless countries so much of our money. Many of the world's largest oil exporters have the worst records on human rights and destabilize the political culture of the world. Even those who disagree with the War on Terror agree that sending less money over there would be a good thing.

The one thing that Zubrin glosses over a bit is the impractibility of actually converting biomass into methanol or ethanol. Transportation costs of biomass represents a huge limitation on this process. The US DOE recently set up a number of pilot cellulosic ethanol plants across the United States. Current projections indicate that to make cellulosic ethanol production competitive, biomass needs to be grown within 15 miles of ethanol plants. In order for a plant to stay operational year round and have enough biomass to run at full capacity, these plants need to be situated in some of the most fertile land we have. Much better would be to find a way to utilize more marginal lands for ethanol production. Some of this issue will be resolved by adjustments in delivery methods. Trains and barges are more efficient than trucks. Also, some form of pretreatment or compaction of material at smaller, more immediate locations could help ameliorate this problem.

Also, it is not exactly clear why methanol is so much easier to produce from biomass than ethanol. Theoretically all plant biomass should be capable of being turned into either. In practice plant cell walls (which have evolved to be resistant to physical, chemical, and biological breakdown) have proven to be extremely recalcitrant to processing. This will prove a challenge for both methanol and ethanol production, but is being worked on by scientists and engineers around the globe. Microbial and plant genetic engineering, and chemical and industrial engineering will solve these limitations and Zubrin's plan will come to pass.

This book presents a bright and promising vision of the future. Read this one and recommend it to your friends. The more people that are aware of the possibilities, the faster this transition will occur, and the better the world will be.

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worth reading

On the positive side, I think that the author marshals sufficient evidence to support his thesis that a flex-fuel mandate would be an excellent idea. On the negative side, the overall dogmatic tone and hysterical right-wing war-mongering in the book undermine his credibility. For example, in two separate places in the book the author suggests that unprovoked unilateral bombing of Middle Eastern oil facilities would be a good idea. This type of unnecessary belligerence invariably creates more problems than it solves, but you'll rarely hear this from the folks who delight in practicing the all-too-common forms of religious, racial, and cultural bigotry that justify these attitudes.

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Worth serious consideration, but very antagonistic.

Dr. Zubrin is a visionary, and his case against the US dependence on foreign oil, particularly Saudi oil, is a strong one. His mission is to mandate flex-fueling the American automobile so that alcohols may be burned in the car, and OPEC can be busted. Unfortunately he goes out of his way to antagonize some natural allies in this mission: environmentalists, climate change alarmists (particularly Al Gore), green technology advocates, anti-nuclear activists, and others will bristle at some of Zubrin's opinions. Nonetheless the basic technology of converting to flex fuels is sound and deserves serious consideration. Methanol seems more promising than ethanol to me as a future fuel, and interested readers will want to look at the work of Dr. George Olah regarding this fuel option (See his book "Beyond Oil and Gas"). Olah has invented a process that can convert carbon dioxide into methanol that is very promising: It can sequester the greenhouse gas and produce a fuel with essentially a zero net carbon footprint. This technology is not covered in Zubrin's book. In fact, Zubrin needs to explain more about the underlying technology of producing these alcohols. While skeptical of environmentalists, he is not critical of some other cherished energy options: he advocates fission, but his solution to nuclear waste (petrify it into glass, put it into barrels, and drop it into mid-Pacific Ocean seabeds) will unnerve many. His rosy depiction of fusion may be unrealistic. Flex-fueling is much more attainable for the near future. I have little doubt that Americans need to work a lot harder at getting off oil. Both liberals and conservatives, skeptics and environmentalists, can probably agree with that goal.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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