Bush proposes alternative energy sources.

news.yahoo.com...

Biodiesel is something i have not heard much about, says its more expensive but less dependence on foreign oil. im goin to look into it but this could be the starting of new hope for America and the world.

Originally posted by deltaboy
news.yahoo.com...

Biodiesel is something i have not heard much about, says its more expensive but less dependence on foreign oil. im goin to look into it but this could be the starting of new hope for America and the world.

more expensive!!! i guess thats why bush and CO. love the idea...

I am always surprised when discussions of alternative energies turn to mention biofuels. This area of biofuels have been studied quite a bit by hemp activists and, in a sense, was pioneered because of hemp. Auto giant, Henry Ford, conducted pioneering work in biofuels made specifically from hemp. Ford dropped his research into hemp fuel after Rockafeller, owner of Standard Oil, "suggested" that he do so. Research into bio fuels seem to center around ethanol made from corn. Keep in mind that corn used for this still requires fertilizers and insecticides while hemp is naturally insect resistant and hemp growth actually enriches the soils instead of depleting it. I'm all for biofuel, especially if it is made from hemp.

biodiesel certainly is no replacement for oil, because it would be a mammoth task to build the necessary fields of shallow pools, and there's simply not enough room, hemp is no alternative eiter, check out lifeaftertheoilcrash.net...


"Biofuels such as biodiesel, ethanol, methanol etc. are great, but only in small doses. Biofuels are all grown with massive fossil fuel inputs (pesticides and fertilizers) and suffer from horribly low, sometimes negative, EROEIs. The production of ethanol, for instance, requires six units of energy to produce just one. That means it consumes more energy than it produces and thus will only serve to compound our energy deficit.

In addition, there is the problem of where to grow the stuff, as we are rapidly running out of arable land on which to grow food, let alone fuel. This is no small problem as the amount of land it takes to grow even a small amount of biofuel is quite staggering. As journalist Lee Dye points out in a July 2004 article entitled "Old Policies Make Shift From Foreign Oil Tough:"

. . . relying on corn for our future energy needs would devastate the
nation's food production. It takes 11 acres to grow enough corn to fuel
one automobile with ethanol for 10,000 miles, or about a year's driving,
Pimentel says. That's the amount of land needed to feed seven persons
for the same period of time.

And if we decided to power all of our automobiles with ethanol, we would
need to cover 97 percent of our land with corn, he adds."