[JamesP81]

Biodiesel can be made from used cooking oil. There's enough of that in US restaurants to make a sizable dent in our dependence on ME oil supplies. It takes less energy by far to produce biodiesel than it does ethanol, because of the recycling.

That might be so; but it's still not enough. It would take several acres of soybeans to produce enough biodiesel for one car for a year. We're talking about hundreds of millions of acres of crops. As you say, that can be reduced by using waste cooking oil, but it simply won't be enough.

The only long term solution is electric cars and nuclear power. A company called Tesla Motors makes an electric sports car which can be charged overnight and has a range of 250 miles. Now, I'm certainly not suggesting that this car is practical. It's $90,000 price tag and somewhat experimental design means that, for now, it is nothing more than a novelty. I have a pretty long commute to work, but even so, if I owned one I could drive to and from work and run all my errands on one charge pretty easily.

As I said, this vehicle is a novelty, but it's practical cruising range serves as proof of concept that an all electric car is a feasible alternative. The power that car runs on did not come from any source in any way related to the middle east.

[Tenacious 1]

[The only long term solution is electric cars and nuclear power]

Do more research on this. The electric cars and even some of the hybrids today actually use more resources to build and operate over thier lifetime than some of our fuel guzzling SUVs. I am still working on the research for this. But, I have confirmed that the nickel mine in Canada that produced the orr for the Prius is one of the largest polluters in the WORLD. The components to get the batteries made literraly are shipped around the world for assembly is several different countries. The chemicals and processes to get these "electric/hybird" cars built use and enormous amount of energy to construct. The selling point that they use less fuel to drive is only one componenent that is lost on the overall energy usage of the machine in its lifetime, which is projected to only last about 100,000 miles. SUVs out of detroit are running 250K miles these days and take significantly less energy to produce. They use more fuel to drive, but are significantly more efficient to produce.

Like I said, I am in the process of trying to objectively debunk this. But so far I can confirm that these innovative little fuel starved techno machines are production resource hungry tyrants.

BTW - Electricity still needs to be produced to charge these cars. The electricity is still largely produced by fossil fuels. If the envirowackos would let us build about 50 more Nuclear power plants in this country, I would support more electricity usage.

Finally, my motivation for alternate energy is national security driven, not to avoid human caused global warming. I want America to be 100% independent for energy production.