Why not to use bio fuels, Why Hybrids suck.
 

Just felt like standing on a soapbox for a while... please ignore me... :)

E85 is a blight on the planet, Its being backed by the Oil companies because they get the ethanol out of South America and mark it up 300 to 400 percent. The oil companies fought it tooth and nail until the govt agreed to make it so only fuel companies can sell alcohol to automobile customers and or transport it for automotive use, the small amount of gasoline in the formula is to keep it in their control.

I need a new bumper sticker "Save the Ozone Layer - Kill a rain forest."

There is no Bio-mass based fuel currently that does not do more damage than good to the environment. Alcohols and Bio-deisel combined cannot make 1/3 of a percent difference in world oil consumption if we planted every square inch of available soil to the correct crop. Canola is a highly destructive soil depleting crop, it needs LOTS of fertilizer, guess where they get that? OIL. Alcohol is highly Dependant on electricity for its manufacture. Biodeisel is project to provide a replacement for 3 days of the US fuel supply this year if every ounce of oil available is used.

The hybrid cars are even worse. The energy consumed to build the extra bits to make a small car a hybrid would build the average SUV/Hummer. The only place a hybrid pays is if you drive extremely high mileage in the city. The non hybrid cars only give up a small mileage gain on the highway. (< 2 mpg in most cases.)
Hybrids are rolling Super-fund cleanup site waiting to happen, everything in the battery is nasty and expensive to recycle.

Check out Hybrid battery replacement prices, a Ford Escape battery is 7200 bucks. And most of these batteries last less than 5 years.

The gov killed LNG vehicles WHY? Ford had almost all their line available for natural gas, the Government killed the tax incentives to build them now all the car companies have abandoned them. We had infrastructure, there are a lot of LNG pumps around the country, the fuel was economical its basically unlimited compared other fuels. Best of all it was possible to fuel them in your garage if you had natural gas in your area. Oh wit its hard to collect taxes on that way HMMMM.

Ok gonna go tap another beer and watch late night tv....

Dave

Another check mark against bio fuels. According to this month's Motor Trend, it takes 900 gallons of water to irrigate the corn needed for one gallon of ethanol. For biodiesel from soy it's even worse. 5,000 gallons of water to irrigate enough soy beans to make a gallon of biodiesel. There is a bunch of interesting info in that article. You should check it out if you're at all interested in this stuff. I believe that got most of the data from a study that Sandia did.

I think to most people simply to believe they are part of the solution is enough for them to ignore the other factors that go into producing hybrids/biodiesel/E85.

Another example is these carbon credits. People will throw money at anything that makes them feel better. What a joke! I say if you are going to buy carbon credits, buy some Paxil too and you will feel twice as good about your carbon footprint.