One of the major news stories of the last few months has been biodiesel and ethanol fuel. These products are advertised as being environmentally friendly, to the planet and will save billions of dollars versant imported fossil fuels. It brings me to wonder where people making such statements were educated. It's a synch that it was not in the sciences.

The most recent article dealt with the fact that the government, ever the paragon of dumb ideas, was courting farmers to produce corn, canola and other crops that have the ability to be converted into some form of alcohol. In fact any vegetable or fruit can be distilled to produce alcohol.

Let us understand how this process is planned to work. 1) A farmer is induced to grow a crop by federal farm subsidies that the distiller can use. 2) The distiller is given tax incentives to set up an operating plant. 3) The refiner mixes the distilled spirits with fossil fuels, mostly imported, and produces the fuel. Right off the top we see that our taxes and subsidies pay no small part in this laborious equation. What we are doing in the process is wasting time and money without any rational gain.

Fossil fuels consisting of gasoline, oil, kerosene, jet fuel etc are mined all over the world. The continuous drivel that we are running out has been the mainstay of the environmental lobby for decades, you remember the very same people who opposed with all their might the production of electricity using nuclear fuels. The very same people who have blocked the disposal of nuclear waste at Yucca Mountain Nevada, and have thereby made spent fuel storage on site the norm, a dangerous wasteful expensive and nonsensical process. The have also been at the leading edge of driving to cost of nuclear generating plants to levels that made their construction impossible.

The problem is that the environmentalists who are the cartelists for all these so called environmentally sound ideas seem to lack any reasonable education in the sciences. To their credit they have recently begun to understand that nuclear generation is not only save if designed with proper engineering, but is also the most environmentally save means of producing electricity.

On the fossil fuel side of the equation we are currently paying about $ 50 per barrel for oil. In the 1930's the Germans under the Nazis succeeded in the development and implementation of producing fossil fuels from anthracite coal. They had many operating plants through Axis territories. In the 1980's the UN brought an embargo against the Republic of South Africa due to their racial policies. The South Africans unable to obtain fossil fuels hired some German engineers and built a substantial number of plants, still operating today that produce fossil fuels from coal. These pants operate under the name of Sassol; you can purchase stock in them.

The interesting fact on this issue is; the United States has the largest known reserve of anthracite coal in the world. The production cost of converting the solid coal product into liquefied fuel is approximately one half the cost we presently pay for imported fossil fuel. Or about $ 25 per barrel.

The question this brings to mind is; why are we wasting time money and effort in the production of alcohol-based fuels, when we know with absolute certainty that we have a supply of fossil fuels that will sustain our use of such fuels into the foreseeable future, when we will develop a new technology to replace fossil fuels? The answer to that question I leave to you.

A. H. Krieg is a revisionist author on 20th century history his books are available form all booksellers, or www.a2zPublications.com

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