Sunday May 11, 2008, 1:11 pm
It is not biofuels that are making food expensive it is the price of crude oil.

Monday May 12, 2008, 1:33 pm
I think bio fuels have opened the door to higher prices, but we have to consider the world's growing population (more demand= better money for products)and also the fact that every year, in many countries, thousands of acres are abandoned because people think agricultural work is "too hard and tiring" and they will be better off living in cities.

Monday May 12, 2008, 3:11 pm
Yes, growth and development are destroying the rain forests! It is ironic that the PRC actually stopped listening to themselves and decided to get in touch with reality. Now the People's Republic of China is more concerned with being the greatest industrial nation in the world than Marxism. The irony is that Marxist countries in some ways are good for the environment; the government does a poor job providing for its citizens and consequently consumption of resources is low.

Do you care about the price of food and oil? How many children do you have? Do you drive an SUV? Do you eat too much meat?

I applaud Care2 for leading the way. You encourage people to eat vegetarian, use rail for transport including Amtrak, and believe in family planning.

It is also true people in poor nations are moving from the jungle to the cities. Ironically in America there is a reverse trend. People are moving from the city to the country. For example one of the wealthiest states is Colorado, which has low in resources and factories. The appeal is getting back to nature.

Monday May 12, 2008, 3:53 pm
The NH house just passed a bill that would help stimulate biofuel production from waste vegetable oil bought from restaurants. There are so many places to get the biomass for biofuels that our food supply shouldn't be a problem.

Monday May 12, 2008, 4:16 pm
The cost of crude has a huge impact on the cost of food from transportation to the fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides it's used to make. Before the recent spike in oil prices though, the cost of corn was skyrocketing as it became a valuable commodity for the production of ethanol. This had a cascading effect on the cost of other grains. As agricultural concerns turned their production toward this more profitable endeavor, consumers turned more toward the lower cost alternatives of rice, wheat, etc. Unfortunately, less of these commodities are available as the growers switch over to the higher price-per-yield production of corn. This diversion of a large portion of food stocks to fuel production combined with the increase in the cost of petroleum products has resulted in a catastrophic increase in costs across the board. The price of wheat flour has almost tripled in the past year while wheat production is at its lowest in 60 years. To place the blame squarely on petroleum prices or ethanol production would be a gross oversimplification of the issue. Ethanol, however, is the factor in this interplay over which we have the most opportunity to effect positive influence.

Thursday May 15, 2008, 10:31 am
Instead of using precious grown food crops to produce biofuels, which is an expensive way to produce biofuel, the manufactured inconvenience to boost capitalism, waste food is a more viable answer. Get those old Kelloggs Corn Flakes out and place them at the doorstep of the Whitehouse for processing. :P

Grrr, in the first discovery to the alternate fuel source, we thought WOW at last we can shake our dependence for fossil fuels ..gradually.

Not in this case. A more highly recommended alternate fuel source is hydrogen, produced through Stan Meyer's cracking process of water into hydrogen and oxygen molecules ... Remember ... H2O

What is Water? Click to learn;
http://www.healthymagnets.com/cgi-local/SoftCart.exe/water.htm?E+scstore

Thursday May 15, 2008, 5:29 pm
Hydrogen power is quite possibly the least well understood alternative to fossil fuels even though the principles governing its use are quite simple. It requires more energy to free hydrogen from its bonds with other elements (water being the most accessible source) than is produced by combusting it. Some unethical folks are currently marketing (via spam) a product called DriveWater which uses simple electrolysis to liberate hydrogen and oxygen from water and inject it into the combustion chambers of your car. Don't buy it, you'll use more gas to produce the electricity for splitting the water than you will save by burning the hydrogen. You will never get more energy out of a system than is input into it. This is the first law (not theory) of thermodynamics.

Stan Meyer had what appears to be a unique idea. He alleged that he had developed a way to liberate hydrogen from water which allowed the energy from combustion to be greater than the energy used to liberate it. If true, this would not be a violation of thermodynamic law since the total energy input into the system must include the energy already stored in the system. Unfortunately, and in spite of freely available schematics of his invention, the results he claims have never been reproduced.