I was in Costco over the weekend and looked at the price of corn oil. It was about $3.20 a gallon. If nature, or nature's God, has provided us with a vast supply of naturally occurring petroleum, it seems like it does not make economic sense to make bio fuels, even if you had no tax at all. Even with the tax, gasoline is only $1.50 a gallon, and that is in the middle of a crisis of the world oil supply because of the prospect of another Gulf War and also the political crisis in Venezuela. So, if there were no tax on gasoline, or a lot less, it would be even more favorable than biofuels. It does not seem to make sense to do the chemistry yourself when it has already been done for you, and there are vast untapped resources of it sitting in the ground. If we ever run out of petroleum, we can always still grow corn and turn it into corn oil or alcohol to burn. But for now, both are economically a bad idea.
It is analagous to turning lead into gold. It can be done today with our knowledge of nuclear physics, but the cost of doing so is more than the market price of gold. Why make gold when there is an abundant supply sitting in the ground just waiting to be mined? There is virtue in not being dependant on Middle Eastern oil, mostly because it is foolish to tie our national economy, and hence its security, to a region of the world devoid of democracy and social justice, where most of the countries are backward dictatorships. Even our "friends" the Saudis, are a backward corrupt dictatorship. Damian Anderson On Tue, 28 Jan 2003, murdoch wrote: >There is a discussion group for the air car here: >http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/mdiaircar/ > >I've always thought it was an interesting concept and I try to keep my >eye on it, though they have not impressed me as really making progress >yet in business. Perhaps they will yet. Their business model seems >to be to franchise out their idea in some way. I'm not a fan of that. > >The air car was mentioned a few years ago in relation to trying to >help Mexico City cure some of its air pollution problems (i.e., zero >non-air emissions at the vehicle). > >As to the derivations of petroleum, I guess there could be some >debate, but anyway, I just tend to think of all bio and other fuels >outside of ground-sourced as "synthetic" insofar as they're made by >man taking action to do some chemistry. -- Damian J. Anderson [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.unification.net Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
