The sky is falling ...the sky is falling...

My flight school has one of those diesel 172's. Pretty amazing piece of machinery. I was surprised at how technologically advanced the engine is. When I (And I'm sure a lot of other people) hear Diesel I think of a big tough truck or a HMMWV that can run on a fuel/air mixture composed mostly of sand. When I realized that that the engine had more in common with a Formula 1 race car than a Peterbilt I felt pretty ignorant. I also felt pretty dumb when I was told that they run off Jet A... not sure exactly what I thought they ran on however...

Oh, here's something you might want to consider. The TBO on the diesel is considerably lower than that of the original equipment.

alternatives
 

Fuel from coal. Yes it's here. A very large investment to start with but manageable. The ethanol deal is a little hoakey and a Band Aid fix, There are more BTU's underground in the state of Wyoming then in the entire Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Oil shale in the West and Canada DWARF the Middle East Oil reserves... and I suspect at these prices its economically feasible. This flying industry is not going away anytime soon.

And when Iran gets a military pounding courtesy of the US of A next year, you'll see oil skyrocket even higher. 2008 will be a tough year for the airline industry.

Just to nitpick, I hate it when people say 'carbon footprint'. Fuel burn doesn't spew out carbon, but carbon dioxide.

I understand your nit....PICK. :)

As for Iran getting its ass handed to it..... Id take 5:1 against it right now. Things are tenuous at best right now... not going to open up a third front.

Just to nitpick, carbon dioxide is not a pollutant! All animal life inhales O2 and exhales CO2. All plant life takes in CO2 and produces O2. Neat system, eh?

Great system! Except we cut down the plant life and create machines that also exhale CO2 :)

If by plant life you mean trees, there are more acres of forest land today than at the time of the Pilgrims. Also the increases in CO2 in the atmosphere stimulate forest growth.

But this thread is bout oil at $85 a barrel. That is pure supply and demand with a little speculation thrown in. Increase the supply and the price goes down. We can't do much on the demand side without irreparable damage to the economies of the Western world. We have plenty of good ole crude oil just waiting for us to tap it. Certain segments of society block that for various reasons. The best answer for electricity generation is nuclear. But you can't put that in a car or airplane...yet...