Interesting about the excess food. You may be right about a distribution problem. The net energy derived from grain based alcohol production is something I'd like to hear more about. As I mentioned the last time I looked, abeit awhile ago, whether any net energy was produced was still in debate.
If you make ethanol or gasoline directly through coal gasification you are using a resource we have lots of. As you make high hydrogen to carbon fuels from gasification you produce CO2, but most schemes trap it and dispose of it. In effect coal gasification eliminates one of the problems using coal which is the high CO2 level produced per BTU.

Any one want to discuss why we don't go nuclear like Japan and France to reduce oil consumption in the energy sector and eliminated the CO2 arguments? :-)