* Posts by Mark Mayer

1 publicly visible post • joined 18 Apr 2007

Ethanol cars unhealthier than petrol ones?

Mark Mayer

Other Biofuels?

Ethanol is a bust and a boondoggle for Big Ag special interests. Besides these health concerns, there are a lot of other reasons why ethanol is not going to be an effective solution.

I am curious about whether bio diesel, especially algae based bio diesel, suffers from the same health problems as ethanol. Bio diesel has a lot of advantages over ethanol: it's carbon neutral, it's scalable (meaning it can be manufactured in the backyard, by neighborhood coops, townships, on up to large scale enterprise), very low to no sulfur emissions, transportable via existing pipelines (ethanol must be transported in tanker trucks or by train), more efficient production than corn based or even sugar cane based ethanol, especially when produced from algae (we're talking magnitudes more efficient), and in the case of algae based production, the process can also be used to clean waste water and scrub the carbon from smokestack emissions. As a short term to intermediate term solution, bio diesel seems like a no brainer. The problem is that Big Agriculture is making a major lobbying push for corn based ethanol, and the politicians from corn growing states in the U.S. are getting their panties all moist.

I'm a conservationist, but I think Nuclear should play a part in the solution. It's the lesser of two evils, by far the lesser. Those that are not even willing to discuss or reexamine nuclear energy are closed minded ideologues.