Eco-Spin: Correcting the falsehoods.

NYT: Bring on the Right Biofuels

This guy makes some good points. The current leap in the cost of foodstuffs is actually closer tied to the mortgage crisis than actual foodgrain production.

Why? Because the Fed has printed money to make the impact on bond holders softer. And since our currency standard is connected to oil, rather than that more traditional commodity gold, then everything remotely trading in dollars has gone up.

{Before you Paulians start, we actually can produce oil enough to do away with ALL importing for ten years or more. We cant produce that much Gold}

However, the guy is only MOSTLY correct, IMO, because he does a snapshot and bases his remarks on the current situation in bio-fuels. Given time and lack of ethanol debunking, it might very well have turned into a production-caused crisis.
As we see in the current rice shortage, a LOT of the market is driven on speculation.

Umm... yes..and no.

tariffs and subsidies amount to political vote-buying pandering {ahem}.

In a market-based world, they're the only way to extract extortion money from those countries you compete with. And unfortunately, for some eggheads, the world is market based, and always will be.

The real problem with the article is the assumption that ground transportation {opposed to production} vehicles in 20 years will burn ANYTHING. Think Nukes, nano-solar and nano-batteries.

There's so much going on in 'new energy', it boggles the mind! Such as ... diesel from pond scum algae is far more efficient to produce than any other bio-fuel. One problem is it needs LOTS of CO2 to do it.. FAR more than air contains. Think Coal.