W begs Congress for Off Shore DrillingFollow

I've seen data on it both ways although, like Smash said, Gbaji just said "plants" which includes sugarcane, switchgrass, etc.

Besides, if you think that "30-50%" number came from anywhere besides deep within Gbaji's ***, you're obviously on the sauce.

We'd never even get to that 30-50% number anyway

Depends. While we don't have the farm land surface area to do it traditionally, we could use vertical hydroponics to grow more than enough on lakes or the like. Although people with lake front property would likely be less than thrilled.

Sure. Ethanol as it's currently implemented in the US is kinda similar to hybrid's. They're designed to make people feel like they're doing something, without really doing much at all...

But that's not necessarily to say that using biofuels (of a variety of sorts) is the wrong way to go. We could certainly apply our bioengineering capabilities to find some form of plant(s) that could produce the needed hydrocarbon compositions to make all the forms of fuel we currently distill from petroleum. But the best way to do this would be to use some form of plant mass that would produce pretty much *only* what we want, and nothing else. It's an efficiency thing really.

Of course, such production, while efficient and renewable, would also likely be seen as "unnatural" by most environmentalists. It would also have most of the same pollution problems that current use of oil has today. But then that's inevitable as long as you're burning anything in order to produce power.

I'm pointing this out only to address the potential to use biofuels as a renewable replacement for oil. Nothing more.


IMO, the issue with environmentalists is that their real opposition is not specifically to oil or coal, but industry itself. It's my firm belief that they don't actually want "alternative fuels" if those fuels will continue to be used to power factories and whatnot. So any replacement will be opposed. I just think that if a solution is to be found and progress is to be made, we have to stop allowing the hard core environmentalists to be the arbiters of what is an acceptable solution. Otherwise, I believe we'll just sit here spinning our wheels and getting no where...


As to a hydrogen vehicle? That's great. But you still have to power it. Hydrogen does not create power. It's a power transfer mechanism. Nothing more. Like all alternative solutions, it can't be a large scale solution until it's actually implemented "large scale". Which means changing how we generate electric power for one thing. Otherwise, we're just burning coal instead of oil to power that car...

Edited, Jun 19th 2008 5:19pm by gbaji

Switchgrass. Native to most of the United States and covered most of the prairies in the US (along with a bunch of other plants, of course). Grows in poor soil, handles all sorts of climates and can be used in regions unsuitable for standard grain farming. Can produce five times the ethanol per acre as corn. Produces more than sugarcane as well plus it can be grown in cooler climes than you can grow sugarcane in.

The problem isn't ethanol so much as it's corn ethanol. A couple years ago, I supported corn ethanol as a chance to get the ball rolling with a widely available crop that had little risk to it (since you can always sell corn as food/feed). Now it's time to move on.

Edited, Jun 19th 2008 9:19pm by Jophiel

Not going to happen. You may well advocate making ethanol out of unicorn rainbows.

Of course we would. Stop being a tool and think it through. If the Dept. of Energy predicts that peak production in ANWR would lower oil prices, at most, by $2 or so and more likely by fifty cents to $1.25 per barrel then why on earth would ANWR production have stopped $4.00 gas? At best, you're talking a reduction of pennies per gallon of gas.

ANWR won't lower gas prices. ANWR won't cut our dependence upon foreign oil. The GOP has mythicised ANWR into some energy genie we need only drill to let loose but that's all political posturing. The numbers just don't support it.

Why? Because you assume oil speculators are retarded and can't read a DOE report?

"Holy cats! In 15 years, the US will be producing 3% more oil than it is right now! Sell! Sell! SELL!!!"

You're cute when you're naive.

Yeah, sure... the token amount we could tap from ANWR would send the speculators into a flurry of selling because, gosh!, that extra couple percent means we're well on our way to energy independence!

You know what will lower oil prices and diminish speculation? Not having a hawk president who saber-rattles at a major OPEC producer three times a week.