Whats your thoughts about biofuel, flexfuel?

E-85 is nice when it can be found, around here there isn't to many filling stations that carry it. You can expect about a 20% decrease in mileage when using E-85. The problem I see is it is only around 15% cheaper than regular unleaded leading to more cost of fueling.

I think it's a bad idea--at least corn supplied. It's causing food prices to go up, and is not particularly energy-effective. This will become an unpleasant thread, though.

If George W. supports it, it's probably be bad idea.

Maybe we should keep personal political opinions away from this forum.

Given this year, I'd agree with that.

I'm just thinking about the last time this happened, it got pretty ugly.

I agree with you absolutely. It gets really, really ugly.

Please accept my apolopgy & retraction.....as soon as I can figure out how to erase my comment consider it done.

Hey, where did your "Google Ron Paul" signature go?

Corn-derived ethanol is liquid evil. The production of ethanol consumes 29% more energy than it produces, it drives up the prices of corn products for the poor, and it dumps more CO2 into the atmosphere than gasoline when you take production into account.

http://science-community.sciam.com/blog-entry/Sciam-Observations/Corn-Kind-Worst-Thing/300004380

http://www.grist.org/comments/food/2006/12/13/fuel_vs_food/

uh ... what he said!

I like hanging around with smart people.

Yeah what he said! It's not so good to engines either on the long run.

All politics aside, everything I have read tells me that bio-fuels are costing us as much energy and create as much carbon emissions during thier creation as they save during their usage. We have started seeing flour shortages here in Eastern Canada already which, I am sure, are at least 'partly' to blame on the farmers switching to bio-fuel crops.

That being said, we definitely, absolutely need to experiment with alternative fuels. So if it leads to a truly renewable and eco-friendly fuel source in the future then perhaps it is a worthy experiment.

I see a couple of experimental Hydrogen fueled buses in the city where I work as of late, as well. Ford is experimenting with hydrogen fuel in climates with greater temperature variances, Alternating hot to very cold seasons.

I am a bit more exited about these but know that realistically, production of Hydrogen is still not giving us a perfect score on the eco side. However, if it proves to be solid enough that ways are found to produce it cleanly in massive, mass production, then again, probably a worthy experiment. At least this one is not effecting our food supply.

We also have some government sponsored wind farms here that are proving interesting. Expensive to start up but soon we will just have to face that we need to spend some money on alternative energy, weather it's rate of return makes financial sense or not.

I hope these comments are broad enough to not spark too much controversy. I think these are actually very important discussions and a little heat might be better than avoiding them. Of course, I haven't searched for whatever happened last time, heh heh.

I enjoyed the politics thread when it was around 4 years ago. Sure, it got a bit unruly at times, but overall I thought it was handled pretty well.

I'm interested in what happens next election wise on the Democratic side, being a PA resident, and PA being the next big state that they will be trying to win.

ha ha peter

Yeah, I imagine your TV will sound like a town hall meeting pretty soon, with all this money the candidates have raised. They'll be able to buy commercials out the wazoo.

I continue to be interested in the race too. It's been a long time since a real, extended race like this. All too often there's a lot of piling on of the me-too voters who just go with the front-runner and that's that. Nothing interesting between early February and the conventions in the summer. In 2004 I went out of the country for a week in late January with all of the candidates lining up at the starting line, and then when I got back, Kerry was the presumptive nominee, or so it seemed.

Now, as far as I know, other biofuels are better--switchgrass comes up a lot, and that's easy to grow and actually is a net positive on energy production. I'll try to find some articles.

What Chrysler is doing is that they are currently coming out with biofuel (flexfuel) and two hybrid Hemis vehicles, and even a certified green dealership that is under construction in florida.

I saw a Hummer H2 with a license plate "TRED HVY" and it really pissed me off.

Did you bust a cap in his a$$?

No, but did have one of those "possible future" movie moments where I pictured myself ramming my car into the rear bumper, waiting for them to get out of their car to check the damage, and then grabbing their head and pounding it against the license plate until the letters were embedded in their forehead. Then, as they lay on the pavement wondering what the hell just happened, I'd say "Heavy enough for ya?"

But then someone behind me honked and woke me from my daydream and I proceeded on my way as a good citizen.

Bio diesel is as clean as any yet the U.S. put a restriction on VW and Benz, the current world leaders in clean diesel technology and resricted (stopped) their sales here. Funny how the time frame correlated with the push for flex fuel and yet the Hummer owners keep rolling along with a tax credit if they apply for status as a farm vehicle due to their weight. Oh what a world, what a world, I'm melting.

I was seriously looking at making my own bio-diesel a little while back, but the PIA of actually making it and the time consumed wasn't worth the effort for me so I'm going to buy a small car to make the 4 hour daily drive to and from work ... 90 bucks every other day for diesel is starting to make a real bad impression on my wallet.