I have difficulty seeing how air travel will triple by 2025 given that we will most certainly have reached peak oil by then. If air travel has to compete for fuel with the remaining ICE cars then the cost of travel will be far too expensive for most people. Other than bio-fuel, I don't recall seeing any other real options for flight. (something tells me that a 40 mile PHEV airplane won't cut the mustard)

I'm sure that transportation will move to electric and bio, but not fast enough to avoid a decade or two of high gas prices.

Airbus just announced a successful test using GTL in one of the four engines of an A380 (cp. earlier tests with a B-52 by the US Air Force). The Airbus test was carried out at the request of Qatar Airways in collaboration with Shell, which is building a huge GTL plant in that country.

GTL does nothing for CO2 emissions and is expensive to produce. However, it is the easiest way to leverage the world's still-vast reserves of natural and associated gas for the aviation sector. Airbus does not expect renewable second-generation biofuels like BTL to become available in sufficient quantity or at acceptable cost much before 2020.

Like all F-T liquids, GTL is sulfur-free - unlike kerosine. All xTL fuels are chemically similar, the difference lies in the feedstock used to produce the syngas. Switching from GTL to BTL or WTL at some point down the road should therefore be relatively straightforward in engineering terms.

@ Joseph -

I suspect the Chinese did their homework on the geology underneath the Three Gorges Dam. The notion that the sheer weight of the water would cause a major earthquake seems a little far-fetched to me, I am not aware of any precedent.

The biggest risk for a dam is usually that the high pressure causes water to seep underneath or around it, eroding small tunnels in the rock. If this happens, it is an accelerating process that eventually leads to the total collapse of the dam due to inadequate vertical or lateral support. One way to counter the process is grouting, i.e. frequent inspections and plugging of any tunnels that may have formed with concrete. One particularly vulnerable dam is located North of Mosul, Iraq. Saddam Hussein had insisted on the location against the advice of his engineers.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/army-warns-of-iraq-dam-catastrophe/2007/10/30/1193618880877.html

@ Raphael:

You might want to review the events leading to the catastrophic failure of 62 Chinese dams including the enormous Banqiao Dam in 1975. An excerpt:

"On August 8, 12:30 a.m., the smaller Shimantan Dam, which was designed to survive a 1-in-500-year flood, failed to handle more than twice its capacity and broke upstream, only 10 minutes after Unit 34450 sent a request that would open the Banqiao Dam by air strike. A half hour later, at 1:00 a.m., water crested at the Banqiao Dam and it too failed. This precipitated the failure of 62 dams in total. The runoff of Banqiao Dam was 13,000 m³/s (10 acre feet/s) in vs. 78,800 m³/s (63 acre feet/s) out, and 701 million tons of water was released in 6 hours[1], while 1,670 million tons of water was released in 5.5 hours at upriver Shimantan Dam, and 15.738 billion tons of water was released in total."

This last number should give any engineer pause. To be fair, dams fail all over the world this being one of many. But the idea that people have done their "homework" sits better in some areas than others. Poor engineering, and failed human rights policy eventually yield disaster.

There is no shortage of hydrocarbons on this planet. Just in north America we have enough natural bitumen, kerogen(oil shale), heavy oil, extra heavy oil for hundreds of years of use at current levels on a BTU to BTU basis. Lets not forget that 40-60 percent of all the oil already produced in existing fields is still in the ground. Conventional extraction only yields 25-40% recovery rates. Just in the existing oil field there is 300 billion barrels still down there. Oh and lets not forget the outer continental shelf. Geologists found in the outer continental shelf 400 more billion barrels before an executive order stopped them from looking. , And the artic yes including ANWR holds at least another 100 billion or so locked under the permafrost. Plus there is on the order of a TRILLON barrels in the bitumen deposits in Alberta. And at least another trillion in the green river formation and surrounding areas in UT, WY, and CO. No there is no shortage we just refuse to extract the resources for political and up till recently economic reasons. Canada is now achieving 80% recovery rates for in-situ steam assisted gravity discharge for its bitumen deposits economical at $25 BBL, in situ kerogen diogenisis is economical at $35 a barrel with raytheons RF heating method. The outer continental shelf out the 200 mile EEZ is reachable with new ultra deep water drilling ships also economical at $35-40 bbl. All said an done with the right political will we as north Americans have hundreds of years of fuels avalible to us at any price over $50 bbl. It we only 6 years ago that oil was $25 and under for decades only spiking in the 70 and early 80’s all these other sources are just now economical and they are being exploited as such. My graduating thesis is on supercritical solvent recovery of in-situ heated kerogen. So far the best supercritical solvent is CO2 of all things. With sufficient heating of the source rocks recovery rates upwards of 75% are being acheaved at the labritory scale. The EOR is 5-8 : 1 putting it on par with Canada;s bitumen projects or deep water drilling on a BTU in to BTU of product out basis. Economically its feasible at 37 to 50 a barrel depending on the source of the megawatts of power needed to run the heaters. Off peak nuclear or coal power is 1.5 to .5 cents a kwhr. Since rock is such a good thermal barrier you can run the heaters full blast all night and then let them sit off during the peak times of day the rocks will not significantly cool using a diurnal cycling. It takes weeks to heat the source rock to temperature 16 on 8 off cycling will only extend that a few more weeks. The power economics favor the lengthened heating phase strongly. Using CO2 solves the problem of water consumption in the arid west as the process of recovery uses no water. In fact all water must be removed from the formation before CO2 is introduced as its detrimental to the upgrading and recovery process. The water removed by heating can be condensed and recovered to be used for agriculture or human use following processing to remove any volatile organics that might have come up the well string with it. Once the political go ahead is given this country can ramp up shale oil to replace all imported oil in a matter of a few years in a decade we could be mass exporters of oil yet again with 80% recovery that 1.5 trillion barrels means we have more oil than Saudi and Iraq combined only Canada and Venezuela have more hydrocarbons than us. If you include coal in the mix the us is the hydrocarbon resource king of the world. Hear again its political why energy prices are the way they are not technical. The science is there with today’s technology to rid us of imported energy forever.