On my last trip to Alaska, on both the way there and back, I sat next to people who worked in natural resources for the State of Alaska. Both were studying ways of using biomass to create biofuels. There is an amazing amount of research going on with biofuels of all types. This is the ultimate cash from trash crop. There is a lot of trash wood (aka biomass) in Alaska. For example, Alder - it is a weed tree and literally grows like a weed. Tremendous effort is spent to keep alder growth controlled. It’s a “biomass” product. Consider seaweed - this is a major nuisance for commercial fisherman who encounter mile long rafts of it. Another fantastic biomass contributor. Algae is not something that you would think would solve the world’s energy crises - but yes, that is also a fantastic biomass source. Algae produces 30 times more fuel than other crops and grows extremely fast (plus the food demand for algae isn’t quite as high as say, corn or soybeans. . And who would’ve thought that someday we’d want to harvest algae in the desert as some researchers at the University of Nevada are developing. Most of the folks I know creating biofuels at home today are doing it with used vegetable oil from local restaurants. Another trash item that even just ten years ago restaurants had to pay to dispose of. Now they can sell it.

This all reminds me of the movie “Back to the Future” where the mad scientist toss’s some garbage in the car’s engine and off they go at warp speed. Why are we paying to move our garbage sometimes thousands of miles away when it can be a fuel source?

I have had major gut dissonance over the global warming issue as a driving factor in becoming energy self-sufficient. And it is NOT because of the scientific basis of if global warming exists or not or based on the pros and cons of global warming. Becoming energy self-sufficient is an economic and a national security decision. It is not a decision to save the planet as I have no idea of the long term ramifications of present day alternative energy solutions I am considering. The “environmentalist” arguments are not made based on economics or defensible scientific data but on a policy of fear and manipulation that will drive significant economic gain for the ones promoting their agenda. This diagram from http://www.boingboing.net/2009/02/04/climatic-heresy-3.html outlines the politics of fear on global warming.