[SGVLUG] Especially for Tom & his Prius....

[David Lawyer]

On Tue, Jul 11, 2006 at 09:21:13AM -0400, James Neff wrote:
> David Lawyer wrote:
> 
> >The diesel is in fact inherently a pretty bad polluter.
> >  
> >
> 
> What if we used biodiesel made from soybeans?  I don't have hard data,
> but from what I was told the carbon dioxide consumed during the beans
> growth cancels out the CO2 produced while burning it.

Not so since it takes fossil fuel energy to grow, harvest, and
transport the soyybeans.  And there's the depriciation of embedded
energy in all the machinery, farm buildings, people, etc.

> Also, soybean is
> hearty and doesn't require as many fertilizers and pesticides as corn
> does for ethanol production.  Biodiesel is a solution to the oil problem
> that we could implement now and can burn in any diesel engine without
> conversion cost. 
> 
			David Lawyer