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RE: The thing i like most about biofuels
By kattanna on 2/8/2008 2:33:00 PM , Rating: 1
but a farmer already does that with any crop hes gonna farm. farming a crop instead that goes to a biofuel will then at least divert part of my fuel money through the farmer instead of directly to someone offshore. Economies are about the flow of money, and if i can keep my money flowing through our own for another turn or 2, then that sounds good to me. Who knows, while im sure it is completely wishfull thinking, if they could make enough money farming for biofuels, maybe they wouldnt need so much of my tax dollars as subsidies.

corn as a biofuel i dont see being around too much longer. There are simply too many issues with it, and many other choices, regardless of what the corn lobby will tell you, LOL.

and once they finish the cycle of using renewables in all stages of the process, then gone will be the need for foreign energy sources.

Im not a oil hater, i only would like to see us work more towards energy independence, as i would like to see for any country.

RE: The thing i like most about biofuels
By dever on 2/8/2008 3:46:24 PM , Rating: 2
The problem with energy independence is not need for renewable energy sources. We have plenty of access to domestic petroleum if we were allowed to use it.

Of course, maybe this is a good strategy. Keep our domestic supplies untapped until we completely bleed off the mideast supply. The problem is, this may take a hundred years.

By kattanna on 2/8/2008 4:36:42 PM , Rating: 2
oh, dont get me wrong, im all for drilling for more oil, using our coal, and building more nuclear plants. In fact i wish we would build a whole lot more nuclear plants.

I'm also for more wind, solar, and other sources of power. In fact I'm all for anything that gives us the power we really need.

By borowki on 2/11/2008 8:46:28 PM , Rating: 2
The energy-independence crowd is just wonky in the head. As though America could safely ignore the Middle East in the age of nuclear weapons. Like it or not, our military will be involved in different parts of the world, as it has in the last century, with or without economic dependency. Aircraft carriers--that's our best tool of energy security, not corn.

RE: The thing i like most about biofuels
By masher2 (blog) on 2/8/2008 4:05:03 PM , Rating: 5
> "but a farmer already does that with any crop hes gonna farm"

Right, but we *need* to grow food. We don't need to produce ethanol fuel. And when we use so much oil to grow corn, you may think buying ethanol rather than gas is a stick in the eye to the oil barons, but it really just hurts us, not them.

The key here is efficiency. Ethanol is a highly inefficient means of turning oil, labor, and a large amount of other resources into fuel. That inefficiency costs us money and ultimately, reduces the resources we could use to truly solve problems. It might be worth it anyway if it was buying us some energy independence...but it's not. Far better to use those billions of dollars of ethanol subsidies in researching a true solution to the problem.

A free market always finds the most efficient means of production. Government mandates interfere with that, and ultimately hurts us all.

RE: The thing i like most about biofuels
By kattanna on 2/8/2008 5:09:57 PM , Rating: 2
true, but you have to remember that when we started to harvest that "waste" product in our search for kerosene, it was HIGHLY inefficient then too. over the many decades since, the process has been highly refined.

Just imagine if we had kept refining ethanol production from way back then how much more efficient we would be at it today?

By masher2 (blog) on 2/8/2008 8:15:48 PM , Rating: 2
The difference is that the products developed from petroleum refining weren't widely produced and sold *until* they were cheaper and more efficient than the alternatives.

Our production of ethanol will continue to improve as well. However, it'd do so faster and with less wasted resources if the government would stop subsidizing it. Instead of wasting time with corn, we'd be devoting all our efforts to R&D on more efficient means of production.

By Hoser McMoose on 2/9/2008 8:25:25 PM , Rating: 3
We've been making ethanol for nearly 10,000 years! How much more time do we need?

The Economist actually had a good comment about it, that we use ethanol not because it was a good solution, but just because it's something we KNOW. Simple fact is that making ethanol to power a vehicle really isn't all that different from making ethanol to drink.

By borowki on 2/11/2008 8:22:04 PM , Rating: 2
And where do you think the money that goes to Middle East countries end up? In a black hole?


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