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Seems like a lot of folks want to shut down the oil rigs right now. They have it all figured out. Ethanol and biofuels are all we need and we should forge ahead because we have the definitive answer...

And yet another study chimes in with the next version of the ethanol source that's going to save us all. A five-year study of switch grass done by the University of Nebraska and the USDA's Agricultural Research Service was published this week by the National Academy of Sciences. Researcher Ken Vogel said he estimates that an acre of switch grass would produce an average of 300 gallons of ethanol based on the study of grass grown on marginal land on farms in Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota...

There's an 822 page energy bill headed for President Bush's desk that mandates increased fuel efficiency for car and trucks, and increased use to ethanol as a fuel source. It also bans 100 watt incandescent light bulbs by 2012, so maybe it's a good thing that newspapers are dying and we read everything online because it appears that things will be getting darker... that or we'll simply turn on enough lights to be able to see...

The Senate passed a trimmed-back energy bill that would bring higher-gas mileage cars and SUVs into showrooms in the coming decade and fill their tanks with ethanol. The measure was approved Thursday with strong bipartisan support 86-8 after Democrats abandoned efforts to impose billions of dollars in new taxes on the biggest oil companies, unable by one vote to overcome a Republican filibuster against the new taxes. The energy legislation would require that ethanol use as a motor fuel be ramped up at an unprecedented pace to 36 billion gallons a year by 2022...

You know what they say about things that seem too good to be true. There are a lot of people who want ethanol to be seen as a panacea, the ultimate solution to our fuel needs. This week, ethanol lobbyists began a push to allow ordinary cars to run on blends of 20 or 30 percent ethanol, compared with 10 percent today...

From chinaview.cn BEIJING, Nov. 30 (Xinhuanet) -- Scientists of North Carolina State University announced Thursday that they had made progress in developing new sweet potato tubers with a higher starch content that may produce more ethanol per weight than corn.     Ethanol, produced from corn in the United States, can be used in place of petroleum for some fuels...

There's a verse from an Eagles' song titled "New Kid in Town" that's appropriate in a lot of situations. There's talk on the street, it's there to remind you that it doesn't really matter which side you're on. You're walking away and they're talking behind you...

The Nissan Mixim futuristic electric coupe concept was one of the wilder cars concepts shown at the 2007 Frankfurt Motor Show. The steering wheel resembles resembles a video game controller, there's an LCD command center, and the seating arrangement is a unique 1+2. The driver sits in the middle of the cockpit and the two passengers are on either side, sitting just a little more to the rear. Nissan is planning on more hybrid cars and completely electric vehicles in a few years, but won't be focusing as much on ethanol and biodiesel...

There's a lot of speculation and discussion about ethanol and how it's going to save us going around these days. Myself, I'm a bit of a skeptic and feel that turning all of U.S. corn production into ethanol wouldn't even make a dent in our fossil fuel needs, and that we'd starve ourselves in the process...