Is insisting on bio fuels development a potentially destructive strategy?

Question

Congressional leaders are increasingly concerned about the future of agriculture in America's breadbasket, in part because water-intensive biofuels production is threatening to suck dry the Ogallala Aquifer.

The huge groundwater reservoir's upper levels have dropped about 100 feet since the 1940s, probably because of agricultural practices in the Great Plains.

What say you?

For chilliem below:

Yup, and what happens when you have that one bad season. Oooops.

Answer 1

Biofuels as they are made now are a terrible idea. Food costs will rise, and the energy used to extract & refine biofuels is actually greater than that of fossil fuels. Not to mention, land management strategy is going to go completely haywire if the subsidies start supporting biofuels from corn - trees?? What do we need trees for, anyway??

Everyone's jumping on the biofuels bandwagon because it sounds good and politicians like a good soundbite, that's my opinion of it.

Answer 2

Me thinks -

Biofuels are just being used to prolong the use of ICEs in vehicles. The electric motor is a much more efficient and reliable method of vehicle propulsion. The technology has existed to make EV's which are comparable in performance and cost to ICE powered vehicles.
See http://www.teslamotors.com/
Even if you raise the initial cost of a vehicle, based on the alleged reasoning that motor control and batteries are costly to produce or some other such nonsense, the overall or lifetime cost would end up close to equal if not cheaper on the EV side. The components for an EV *could* be much less than the traditional ICE components. Why they aren't already is not that hard to see.

Therein lies part of the problem - more reliable vehicles means less sales in the long run and considerably less maintenance and replacement parts.

I'm not so sure that .gov should be legislating/funding energy sources and alternatives, r&d or otherwise. Too much corruption, stifling innovation, creating monopolies, etc. and a general waste of tax money. Then throw in the lobbying abuses for preferred legislation... well, enough said.
Is congress Constitutionally even authorized to do such things, or are they just going along with their typical abuses of the General Welfare and Commerce clauses?

Same issues with other renewable energy sources (solar, wind, etc.) in general.

Answer 3

Biofuels are not practical, yet for the United States.

It currently requires 3 or 4 gallons of fossil fuel to produce 1 gallon of bio-fuel.

Biofuel use should be almost exclusively reclcled products, until the technology reaches a better than 1 to 1 ratio.

Answer 4

Yes - and it's well-known, ESPECIALLY in Washington, and for the reasons you cite.

The whole bio-fuels thing is, at present, a scam to reward the Farm Lobby - nothing more and nothing less. So much for a "change" in D.C. based on the Dems taking over Congress. Not that that was ever anything more than meaningless rhetoric designed to pull the wool over the eyes of the uninformed and ignorant.

Answer 5

the biggest reason is that the conglomerates that own the fossil gasoline marketplace have spent untold billions to maintain greater fee-effective potential from transforming into mainstream. all the classified ads approximately what they're doing to help the ambience is all bull$hit. they only placed on the environmental face whilst strangling the different source that would desire to compete with or do away with using fossil fuels. the 2nd reason is we've not got here upon a source which will produce efficient potential reliably. Wind, image voltaic, wave, geothermal and nuclear all have considerable drawbacks.

Answer 6

Yes, especially since we are being held hostage by oil countries. Gotta free the hostage, then change.
We need to allow off shore drilling and build some refineries. This will allow the US time to come up with the right alternate fuel. Personally I would like to see something done with hydrogen fuel.

Answer 7

No more destructive than relying on dwindling oil reserves without attempting to find alternative fuels. A promising new break through in ethanol production will soon allow production from any plant matter.

Answer 8

Any technology that uses up our food or water to make fuel is shortsighted and seriously flawed. Bio-fuels can be a useful alternative only if they are made using agricultural by-products that already exist.

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Answer 9

Ethanol is not the answer,but something for you to think about in regards to it. We seem to have no shortage of grain to make drinking alcohol. Do we really have to add gas to make it run in a care,no. There is another process that uses used vegatable oil. I can't think of the name of the process,even though we have a plant in our town.

We could also make use of hemp(it is not maijuana).

Answer 10

To be honest, I don't know. I think there should be a high speed pipeline to transport water from the Mississippi.