Whether the "best" and most versatile liquid fuel is Gasoline or Dimethyl Ether I'm not chemist enough to know. I do know that that it is possible to use copious amounts of energy to "fix" carbon dioxide and water back into hydrocarbon fuels in a similar way to the "fixing" of ammonium nitrate fertiliser.
I noticed the other day that there is a new process under development that may permit such a recombinant process for hydrocarbon fuels on an industrial scale.
This would effectively put a "ceiling" on the price of fossil fuels, of course. "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
Interested in the reference to MeOMe. A certain person on dKos is a big booster. I too can't assess his seemingly convincing arguments. Put the point is, we may not need fossil fuels to power other industries. We just need fuels, and will have to manufacture them, which means there'll be less available. But not necessarily none. We will need to be more selective about what we mine. More titanium, less gold and diamonds perhaps.
It was one or more US academics, and it came from a news item on the ET morning news round, as I recall. It all sounded quite reasonable.
A bit of googling should find it... "Any economic unit can emit money. The serious problem is to get it accepted" Hyman Minsky
