Comments on: Biodiesel to drive up the price of cooking oil
Biodiesel reduces carbon monoxide, but food prices will go up for everyone--especially fast foodies and those abroad.
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Also I was reading recently about various Palm oil plantations in Malaysia causing the deaths of indiginous people, burning the rainforests and helping to endanger the Sumatran tiger...
Does anyone else care to try BIKING to work or am I just a loony?
health benefits of biking to work aren't worth the risk of becoming
road kill.
Bikers and commuters (who are putting on makeup, reading the
paper, talking on cellphones, etc.) don't mix well.
I do bike to work.. have slacked off lately..the bus is easy too.
No. The next mass of starving people will be created by uncontrolled reproduction.
"am I just a loony?"
Possibly, not my call.
http://www.soyonlineservice.co.nz/
http://www.mercola.com/article/soy/index.htm
http://www.westonaprice.org/soy/index.html
http://www.mercola.com/article/soy/index.htm
http://www.soyonlineservice.co.nz/
production. The soy oil is a by-product. Do a google search on
this and you will see that biodiesel is a good by-crop.
Also consider all of the other forms of biodiesel production:
Waste vegetable oil
Dead animal charcasses that are not allowed to be rendered
down to animal feed
Here is a great one: Algae (not only an excellent basis for
biodiesel, but an excellent way to absorb co2 from electricity
production).
Your conserns about Malasia's biodiesel production are valid.
Sincerely,
Mark Meachen
But thats just my American ways speaking. So do what you want, I have to go out back and cut up a tree to make a bigger drive (my SUV is too big for the little drive).
Steve Sand ithinkican11@hotmail.com
burn up the calories by switching to a heathier Mediterranean diet
with olive oil..!! The change will do you good..
burn up the calories by switching to a heathier Mediterranean diet
with olive oil..!! The change will do you good..
OH MY GOD! It takes a WHOLE GALLON of vegetable oil to make a mere GALLON of biodiesel!
Please. I detest this sort of "hype". Knock it off. No one thinks a gallon of biodiesel comes from thin air. The article here makes it sound horrible by comparing apples to oranges.
The best way to make biodiesel is not with products that make part of cooking oil but instead alternatives which can be best used just for this purpose like Brazil's doing, in this case the mamona.
Best
In other words, a barrel of biodiesel costs $105.58 while crude is still under $60/barrel.
Now... how about adding a little for profits?
The costs are hidden, but make no mistake... you are paying for it in taxes. And when the subsidies are canceled or dry up... get prepared to spend a lot more for biodiesel.
Its a neat fuel source, and one that we should make available. But it isn't got to be an economic boon, and we simply don't have the capacity to do everything with biodiesel. It will probably be a small part of the energy solution, but it isn't going to dominate... not while crude is still cheap.
The fact remains that right now biodiesel is cheper at the pump.
Someone is doing something besides complaining. We have a cleaner fule source and it is renewable. Now maybe with further advances in automotive technology cars can travel longer/further with less. Maybe the process is refined, maybe another energy source comes to light. In the mean time, this is one of the better solutions and people stand to make mucho money for it. You could try to think of ways to solve its flaws. Patent them and make money. Or you can sit on c|net and complain.
I agree that biodiesel is pretty cool... but at a cost of $100+ per barrel, there is NO WAY people will accept it as a replacement for fossil fuels. Yes, the cost may come down, but the supply will never be great enough to meet the demand. Therefore, the more popular it gets, the higher the price will be.
Yes... the cost of oil will likely continue to rise over time as well, but until the cost DOUBLES, it will still be generally cheaper than running our cars on soybeans. The supply is also very plentiful despite what some people say.
So... biodiesel is a fuel that will dramatically increase the consumer's cost at the pump, and will never dominate as a primary fuel source. It is a great substitue for the "greens" among us, but other than the rich elite "greens," most people won't spend the money on it.
Some people are spending time and energy on biodiesel as you suggest - and good for them. Others are looking at the situation and realize that biodiesel, for as large as the market may become, will supply only a small percentage of the fuel we need. And those people are looking at much-needed alternatives. Everything from more efficient gasoline powered cars, to electric or hydrogen solutions, to ethanol mixtures... etc.
When people suggest that Biodiesel is cheaper and more plentiful, they are pitching a solution that is indeed a SCAM, because it is neither. And we will need far more than biodiesel to keep us going in the future...
I said this when the biodiesel promoters were quoted, "My friend works as a manager at n-named restaurant chain and let's me take away the waste fat for free. My only cost is initial startup, chemical for processing (lye...) and labor..."
And I said, no, it won't be free for long as the franchises and oil distributors (ADM...) will regulate the waste product. No more free ride once they realize they can profit from waste.
if you don't control the product, you might as well be buying it.
Think and protect. Get regulations to prevent control and monopolies on sources (solar, batteries, ...) else you will be a victim...of ignorance and greed.
Its a darned shame the most prescient authors turned out to be Frank Herbert, Aldous Huxley, and George Orwell; I was really hoping they'd be Lewis Carroll or A.A. Milne...lolllll...
Diesel engines can also be tuned to burn raw oils. A further economy of local repurposing of Solar Produced Oils, savings in transportation costs.
In the cotton growing areas of the country, cottonseed oil is a byproduct of fiber production, pure food grade cottonseed oil sold for 26 cents a pound delivered in the 2005 crop cycle. That's about $2 a gallon.
I am particularly fond of another oil, PALM oil, due to its very high productivity, as well as the palm tree's ability to grow in salty water, making energy culture possible in areas where nothing else will grow.
Both palm oil and cottonseed oil are pretty unhealthy from a cholesterol standpoint, so removing them from the food chain by price competition has a side health benefit.
There is still plenty of work to be done in the area of oil producing aquatic plants (which would clean wastewaters while making oils.)
Farming IS solar energy collection, after all.
We as a country need to decide to phase out oil- its dirty and represents an economic subsidy to people who hate us. We have to just suck up this short term hit to our economy because we will be much better off in the long term.
If reactors can be built (and the Japanese have some interesting designs) without having to inspect them to death just to get them fired up, energy independance could be our within 5 years.
Two examples of this, are the United Fruit Packing Coy's deceitful operations in South America(even got the legendary Gipper to make a fake B grade propaganda movie at one time for them!, and has been known to use the CIA, to overthrow legitmately elected democratic governments that seek to end their market control as happened in Panama!), and also Nestle's sheer size costs Coffee growers so much money that in certain countries it is far easier to make a peso from illicit drug crops than legitimate farm produce, that is purchased by foreign corporations knowingly underpaying farm growing costs!
Brazil, has shown that by extensive utilization of Sugar Cane to produce ethanol for car use, that has broken the back of the World Bank's very deliberate drive to make very cheap overproduction food crops and bought below real cost in third world countries the wholesale price for sugar, which is very heavilly utilised in all processed foods sold in Western supermarkets(upto 50% by weight in certain foods, and we wonder why both obesity and Diabetes type 2 are in such epidemic proportions in the western developed countries)
The modern trans national food corporations have become so large and dominate the market for food in such a manner, that here in the west we pay trillions in extra taxes, just to merely subsidise the farmer , whilst these companies use their operations in such a manner to avoid paying all legitimate local taxes, using very dodgy accounting supported by trans national accounting firms! So sadly the ordinary man in the street is also forced to pay for their missing taxes as well!
Only time will tell, will all farm subsidies and consequent food mountains and the waste support excessive taxes be terminated with prejudice!
What price a choice?
the Oil Companies "Spin Doctors" do the diagnostics. Diesel Valhalla !
7.5 lbs = 7.5 pints
8 pints = 1 gallon
So it takes LESS vegetable oil to make the equivalent amount of biodiesal.
Since we are a capitalist, supply-and-demand country, the easiest way to achieve this is to impose a very high federal tax on all fuels (like $1/gallon for gasoline). This would be made revenue-neutral by increasing the personal exemption amount for income tax. The justification for the high fuel tax is that a large part of our military's job is protecting the supply of Middle East oil, and so fuel users should primarily pay for it. As fuel use came down, we could safely reduce the military budget, and use that money for other things (preferably research into energy conservation and alternative energy sources, but I wouldn't rule out education and Social Security).
Hard to believe that came from a right-wing Republican, huh?
?Limits to growth? (http://www.answers.com/the+club+of+rome?gwp=11&ver=2.0.0.453&method=3). If they were right, we would probably barely, even, live today!
Björn Lundahl
Göteborg Sweden
The free market is bad at solving problems that either a) only the top 50% can understand; or b) are not noticeable by most people until it is too late to do anything; or c) require altruism; or d) have only a few consumers or a few suppliers. Why? Because, as you point out, the free market depends upon large numbers of informed people acting rationally in their own self-interest.
Incidentally, I was pleasantly surprised to read such a vigorous defense of the free market by a Swede. I thought you were all socialists. ;-)
The moment we find something that's simple and can save people money at the pump by making it themselves and they just had to find some way of making it too expensive to use!
It's like they don't want us to ever stop using gas. We'll be slaves to oil from overseas forever, or until the supply of oil runs out.
Second, there is not really much used frying oil being produced by restaurants, not compared to the number of cars in their service area. It seems abundant only because so few people are using it to run their cars.
In summary: Don't blame Shell, BP, and Exxon for this one. They've got bigger fish to fry. :-D
Too much of this money is already going to big farms as it is, not the family types that it should be going to.
Decentralize energy! Bio-diesel lends itself perfectly to this because it is not an all or nothing solution. Many governmental fleets are now running on B-20. They report excellent results with improved lubricity.
An added benefit of the diesel engine is that it's 30% more efficient than a gas engine. This has to be worth some consideration. The diesel engine invented by Rudolph Diesel was originally designed to run on non petroleum products. Products found on the farm.
I would like to see a diesel - electric, plug in type. this would give you the first 40 miles from your ordinary house charge. We have had diesel electric in subs since WW 1. I'm sure we have come a long way in the technology since then.
There are so many things that can be done, a simple light bulb can save millions of barrels. We are in the information age many jobs today don't require a 5 day physical presents. Think of all the fuel that can be saved by telecommuting and filling out reports from your computer. This would also take a tremendous strain off the current infrastructure.
- Let's look for domestic sources of oil
- by nwachai September 14, 2006 9:49 PM PDT
- Then let's go for domestic sources of oil. The so-called alternative fuels will have adverse impacts on food security. I like the work being done by the Consumer Alliance for Energy Security, http://www.secureourenergy.com, in lobbying Congress to enact laws to allow the drilling of oil and gas from the Gulf Coast of the United States.
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- Drill all you want
- by Clouseau2 September 16, 2006 5:08 PM PDT
- It won't make any difference. Oil production peaked in 1970 in the United States and has been going down inexorably, as we have used up most of our reserves. We have more oil wells (500,000) than the rest of the world COMBINED, so drilling more won't solve the problem. Drill in Alaska, drill off the coasts of Florida and California, it won't reduce our increasing reliance on imports.
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Every President since Nixon has been saying "we need to rely less on foreign sources of oil" and it has gotten worse with each administration.