alt.energy.renewable

Just because the current way its being done is stupid dose not make it
a bad idea, I'd wager those studies don't take that into account. Its
easy to get angry when you see people suffering. You have to bare in
mind that over time markets will adapt and people adjust their diets
and when food prices rise fallow land is put into production and more
people grow gardens. We face a world with shrinking resources and
growing population. Sadly with global over population, erosion of farm
land desertification from global warming, people as close to the edge
as those poor in Haiti and millions of others will either adapt or die
out within 20 to 30 years anyway.

Certainly spending 3/4 a gallon of fossil fuel to produce 1 gallon of
biofuel (as is done now) dose not make very much sense. And using the
grain part of the plant to produce said fuel is just asinine when
anywhere from %50 to %90 of the energy of the plant is in its body.
(thats 2 crops for the price of one if you are smart about it) The
only reason that the current administration in Washington subsidizes
biofuels in their current form of production is that it is a diversion
from any real departure from fossil fuel, and is a back door giveaway
to big oil(Bush and Cheyenne have repeatedly demonstrated they are
nothing if not shills for big oil). That and the fact that midland
America has corn on the brain and a serious lack of imagination,
insight and progressive thinking.

Plants are made mainly of cellulose. Cellulose is just another
hydrocarbon chemically very similar to most fuels. All you need to do
is rearrange its structure a bit to turn it into fuel. There are
literally hundreds of patents for devices that can turn plant matter
into varying synthetic biofuels using a number of techniques. The
technology to do this has evolved tremendously. You can make just
about any fuel out of plant matter, from Natural gas to methanol to
diesel to DME (for plastics). Synthetic biofuels from crop waste,
timber waste and garbage is definitely a smarter way to go than grain
alcohols. If done intelligently and done at sufficient scale can
certainly compete with $2. to $3. a gallon at the pump.


On Feb 24, 3:24=A0pm, "calderh...@yahoo.com"
wrote:
> The world is running out of wheat because so many farmers have


> Christopher Calder