hustler guy not looking for a debate but America spends more on it's military then China,Russia,Saudi Arabia,France,United Kingdom,India,Germany combined. And the new admin whats to increase that number.

Neither here nor there, but that falls squarely on the Truman Doctrine and corporate liberals dating back about 70 years when we became the world's police force. Neither Obama nor Trump can be blamed for the national defense budget differences between nations.

I believe the biggest chunk by far is entitlements.

Back to cost of cleaning up the lakes.

From my green shaded sides sorta, kinda, round about way of looking at this. How many of you guys owning a truck with this emblem on the door ever consciously chose to buy Biodiesel blends of fuel?? I'll take anyone with a new Duramax or Dodge also, cause all models were specifically updated to run at least a B20 blend. Anyone?

[ATTACH=CONFIG]565538[/ATTACH]

It's not just you modern diesel truck owners fault, it's also the American farmers who refuse to change. Can't speak for the Ethanol side, but the National Biodiesel Board is made up of a majority from the National Soybean Growers Association. All my full time farmer buddies either grow beans or corn, cause that's what they've done well with for decades. Talk to any about growing something like canola, sugar beats or cane, you may as well be asking them to grow weed... Which some are now actually pretty open to, but that's a different topic. lol

But that's the main issue with "clean" biofuels in our country. From a 2016 US Department of Energy online document on biofuel feedstocks.
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[SUP]Some plants are easier to process into ethanol than others. Some don't require many resources to grow, while others need many resources, as well as intensive care. Some plants are used for food as well as fuel, while others are cultivated exclusively for fuel production.
Nearly all ethanol produced in the world is derived from starch and sugar-based feedstocks. The sugars in these feedstocks are easy to extract and ferment, making large-scale ethanol production affordable. Corn is the leading U.S. crop and serves as the feedstock for most domestic ethanol production.
Cellulosic feedstocks are non-food based feedstocks that include crop residues, wood residues, dedicated energy crops, and industrial and other wastes. These feedstocks are composed of cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin (typically extracted to provide energy for production). It's more challenging to release the sugars in these feedstocks for conversion to ethanol. Commercialization of these processes is a funding priority of the U.S. Department of Energy's Bioenergy Technologies Office.[/SUP]
--
Sounds simple, but when ya dig into the actual numbers, we are the only country who bases our biofuel primarily off just these two feedstocks. And they SUCK in the bang for the buck category. Much like palm oil has a great yield, but people are chopping down all the rain forests to grow it... End game is a bigger issue than the pollution.

From the Green Facts website:
When ya compare the feedstock yields of sugar cane or sugar beets to Maize (corn) per Hectares. Sugar beats is 5060ltr/ha, sugar cane is 4550ltr/ha while the global average on corn is 1960 ltr/ha of ethanol .But somehow the US can squeeze 3751 ltr/ha from that same (ha) of corn planted. Either it's fuzzy math, or we use a lot more fertilizer than everyone else. By the recent increase of algae blooms on the Great Lakes, I'm betting there's one of your primary source. But canola grows great up there and doesn't require near the fertilizer of corn.

Since we started off this topic speaking of algae, that's the holy grail of Biodiesel feedstock. From a 2009 biofuels article; "Biofuel Advance Research & Development (BARD) is claiming in Biofuels Digest that it can produce "8,571,428 gallon of algae oil per acre. This is from Biofuels Digest's "50 Hottest Companies in Bioenergy. 2009.

When ya go to that company link, www.bardalgae.com, ya get nothing, they're gone. Developer is probably on a yacht somewhere off Monaco drinking like a fish. Not cause he's producing billions of gallons of fuel, but like most of these "amazing" lab experiments, it was patented and sold off for millions to some sucker. Who soon realized while those numbers are theoretically possible, the finished fuel costs like $12 a gallon to produce. Not a big market or enough subsidy to cover that one yet... lol So back to the old trusty soybean or corn plant for easy production and guaranteed money in the local farmers pocket.

What it comes down to is, unless the farmers step it up, or the every day pump price of biofuels is substantially less than fossil fuels, without mandates, people will never adopt it. And that's not gonna happen long as big oil remains in business. In the near future all I get from the biofuels industry is:

No, I'm not the first king of controversy
I am the worst thing since Elvis Presley
To do black music so selfishly
And use it to get myself wealthy (Heyyy!)

-E "Eight Mile's #1 protogy..."

i was raised to leave the river, lake and field better than i found it so we could always go back to hunt fish and ski it.
parents just need to start smackin their kids back into line again, not to mention, the paddle and pledge of allegiance back in school.

fossil fuel isn't going away anytime soon, the thought of it going away, and hearing the utopians wish for it makes me physically ill.
besides w/out gas this would be the poundfest

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA1GuJFqLlU

[QUOTE=outonsafari;4537137]i was raised to leave the river, lake and field better than i found it so we could always go back to hunt fish and ski it.
parents just need to start smackin their kids back into line again, not to mention, the paddle and pledge of allegiance back in school.

Perfectly said

Lost me at "liberal". Did not read the rest.

Lost me at progressive...did not read

Bottom line, I agree on cutting the research, it's crap. You don't need a study to come down on GE when they were polluting the Hudson, mutant fish and high mercury levels are enough. Guess what...the pollution stopped and the evil EPA forced GE to dredge their sh!t out of the river because people raised their voices. But I guess that's a bad thing right? Better to have Jack Welch line his pockets then to take care of the people who ate fish from the river though. I don't get it, are some of you for polluting our water and air? Are you defending those that do it? Where's the passion behind that? Where's the cry for cutting waste in other areas of the gov't?

Stopping polluters is a political thing, not a research thing. Unfortunately it requires documentation and back up to take these offenders to court to stop them, or are some of you against due process now? So yes it's a seeming waste of money, but some of it's needed to stop this. Take care of your planet, it gives you everything you have.

I run B20 in every diesel engine I own and have since my 7.3 turbo diesel. That includes semi and irrigation power units.
Sugar beats can be grown in pockets of the north, sugar cane can only be grown in tropical weather. Farmers are businessmen and will grow what makes the most $$ for their farm. But most are also stewards of the land that they are blessed to be able to farm so they will also grow what is best for the land. Today that includes cover crops to keep any remaining nutrients in the ground for next years crop instead of potentially getting into our water. That also sequesters carbon so it will remain in the soil as organic matter instead of "burning" off and going into the atmosphere as it does with tillage and uncovered open ground.
I'm well aware of the waist in all spending programs. I sit on 3 different boards for promoting Ag and conservation. I get very frustrated with all the time wasting with no real decisions. The budgets have become very boated and money is spent so it doesn't get removed from the next budget.
The algae bloom on Lake Erie is made worse by fertilizer run off but that isn't the cause. There is an area on the South West of the lake that is very shallow with almost no flow that gets very warm and stagnant in certain weather conditions. That is what triggers the problem. They should build a plant there to convert it to Ethanol. Or, better yet Biobutanol.