This is an interesting story that raises as many questions as it answers. Can we in America plant a crop that is equally efficient at generating ethanol? How much rainforest is being destroyed to grow sugar cane? Given the aggressive lobbying, can Congress look past the bribes to a sane energy policy? Can American beaches one day be filled with well-oiled Brazilian women? Is it possible to convert without a military dictatorship?

ZAZ:

This is an interesting story that raises as many questions as it answers. Can we in America plant a crop that is equally efficient at generating ethanol? How much rainforest is being destroyed to grow sugar cane? Given the aggressive lobbying, can Congress look past the bribes to a sane energy policy? Can American beaches one day be filled with well-oiled Brazilian women? Is it possible to convert without a military dictatorship?

You forgot the most important question of all: Why is Brazilian porn, on the whole, so much better than porn from anywhere else in the world?

In Canada we're using ethanol converted from whale blubber.

/not really
//it's actually Rita McNeil blubber

Until you run out of whales. Then you'll have to start using people.

If you look at that report, the social democracies of Europe publish 2 papers to our one.

Anybody can get published in an era where a literature survey covers 8,000 journals. From eyeballing the graph in the referenced PDF file it looks like each European paper is cited 30% less.

Anyway, Brazil's conversion to ethanol is not a scientific breakthrough of the type one would find published as leading-edge research in a high-impact journal. It is an engineering, social, and governmental accomplishment.

I think it's also important to post pictures of Brazilian babes every 10 posts or so.

Somehow it just seems right that my 69th approved link is trying to turn sexual.

blahblahblahblahblah, when it comes to how "great" our country is. THe fact is that these social democracies, which you conformists label as "socialist" with every other sentence you write, they do pretty well. blahblahblahblah

Since I have no idea what you're saying, here's a picture of a rabbit with sugarcane and a samba queen on it's head:

The only reason The United States is still dependent on foreign oil is that the people who have been made staggeringly rich and powerful from that situation are very interested in it continuing. Not only are there big oil lobbies, but our President and Vice President are people who got where they are today by selling oil and weapons.

I'm sure its purely a co-incidence that we're now using lots of weapons in an oil rich country.

BigNick:

The problem is, one gallon of ethanol does not contain the amount of energy as one gallon of gasoline.

This is all true but "the problem" is not clear. If a completely renewable, cheaper, and clearner energy source is less than half as efficient as fossil fuels there is no problem.

However, I think there are energy 'return on investment' issues if we step back a bit and look at the bigger picture. The energy required to till the fields, plant the crops, produce the fertilizer, harvest the crops, mill the harvest, and distill the alcohol may be dangerously close to or greater than the energy yield of the alcohol produced.

I hope not. If the equation doesn't balance, perhaps using solar and wind energy sources for key parts of the process will help. There's lots of energy out there in very unexpected places. Devices comprised of bouys connected by cables to ocean floor mounted generators could easily power mid-sized coastal cities just by harnessing the power of the waves.

Hemp cars, dude

Bahamut: How's that?

I read about it years ago and just did a Google search on "power from ocean waves" and got a nifty link to Ocean Power Technologies. Ocean waves raise and lower a bouy that is fixed by a cable to an ocean floor mounted generator that converts that motion into electrical power.

Google can be your friend too.