I love biofuels, BUT...

There is currently no marketable alternative to fossil fuels.  There may be next year.  There may be in five or ten years.  But at the gas pump today, and tomorrow, fossil fuels are your only option.

So when the Glorious Leader explains that the key to solving the current high gas price problem is to "invest in alternative energy" he is saying that he has no damn clue what he is talking about.  Investing TODAY does nothing for the prices today or tomorrow.  But when the media is in your corner I guess anything makes a good soundbite.

And I am a HUGE fan of biofuels, especially from algae and farm waste.  Cellulitic ethanol is a great way to create energy from farm waste.  Algae is a great way to make fuel from the CO2 put out by coal or oil electric generating plants.  These are great potential solutions.  The current high prices are brought on by several forces.  Falling dollar value, greater international demand for petroleum products, and an uncertain commodities market because of "civil unrest" across many of the oil producing nations (the best thing that can happen to lower prices is war between two oil producing countries that cause them to crank up production to fund the war efforts).

Unfortunately investing in technologies NOW will do nothing tomorrow.  Even investing in proven Coal To Liquid (CTL) technologies today will not affect the pump prices tomorrow (but in a few years probably).  For the record, corn ethanol as a fuel is a waste of corn, taxpayer dollars, and good moonshine.

I know my history, the first internal combustion engines weren't running on gasoline and diesel.  They were running on alcohol blends and plant oils.  If that was the case back then, why did we switch to fossil fuels?  Simply because fossil fuels are cheaper than crop fuels.  And now the Glorious Leader wants more crops to go to fuel...it is as if someone is ignorant of history.

Crop fuels compete in two markets, both fuel and food.  This raises the price for both.  In order to keep the streams separate you need to give up on things like corn based ethanol, wind power, and go with some stuff that works.  Nuclear energy, CTL, and then invest in things like algae based biofuels and wave power generators.