On Tue, 12 Jun 2007 15:57:49 -0400, "Dan L."
wrote:

[...]

Bio-mass -
Agicultural, kiss all forest good-by, not just the rain forest.

[...]

Whoa, podner. Why drag the rain forest into this discussion.
It has enough problems already!

Industrial hemp might be the answer.

My credentials: Your correspondent hasn't smoked a joint since the
60's-that-were-really-the-70's. I have no illusions that growing
hemp would turn everybody on; in fact what you'd have to go through to
get high on industrial hemp doesn't bear examining g.

Doesn't it seem a teeny bit self-serving of candidates and the
un-informed media to keep plugging corn-as-fuel with all the downsides
repeatedly enumerated even in the pop media,*

I'm not just talking about relatively low mileage; what about jacking
up the price for cultures whose basic food comes from corn.

* (not the most serious of which is that I can't find corn oil which
I've used for cooking since forever...)

This non-examination of industrial hemp as a source for automotive
fuel is 1000% based on the enthusiastic propaganda of Big Oil,
pandering to Bush's religious-nut "base", as well as to the general
ignorance of Joe/Jane Beercan, who don't differentiate between
marijuana and its industrial big sister, which has been used since
pre-Biblical times for everything from cloth to oil. It grows on any
kind of ground; requires almost no attention; is self-renewing.;
doesn't drive up the price of a basic food like corn by diverting
part of the crop to the Quixotic search for alternative fuel.

Read up on this. There are many titles out there on the subject (full
disclosu one of which I edited) which paint a dismaying picture of
how Big Oil/Auto and Puritanical racists many decades ago managed to
push through legislation confabulating industrial hemp with marijuana.

Persephone