Keith wrote:
yea, but dino diesel is still much cheaper.

Only if you measure "cost" strictly by the number of dollars you are
hauling out of your wallet when you fill up.

There are higher health, esthetic, and environmental "costs" associated
with the use of fossil fuels than with renewable resources.

I wouldn't want say that we have ever fought a "war for oil," but with
worldwide demand for crude oil steadily increasing and the US currently
importing the vast majority of the oil we need for daily consumption,
that's a scenario that looms as a distinct possibiilty in the
not-so-distant future. (Societies have fought wars over scarce
resources for thousands of years).

I'd hate to think that brave young men and women would ever have to die
so that our country could secure a political or territorial foothold in
one of the few remaining petroleum-rich nations. Transitioning to
biodiesel and other renewable resources will forestall the day when I
have to pump a couple of gallons of somebody's blood into my fuel
tanks. Would I spend another $2 a gallon, for the rest of my life if I
needed to, if I knew that my decision was "buying back" even a single
life of even a total stranger that would otherwise be sacrificed? I'd
like to think that I would. Would I spend another $3 a gallon, or $4,
if I knew that such an expenditure would prevent thousands, tens of
thousands, or hundreds of thousands of battlefield and collateral
deaths? Once again, I'd like to think that I would.

If we ever get to the point where we are spending 100's of billions of
dollars on some future war fought primarily to secure a political or
territorial foothold in an oil producing region, those costs would
eventually have to be paid back to the federal treasury- by the first
generation to come along with the nads to say "We will make sure that
our government
has adequate revenue to fund its spending" or the first generation to
find itself so disastrously in debt to recently-Communist China that it
has no choice. Taxes would need to be increased, (and that's a cash
cost to everybody), or existing revenues increasingly diverted to debt
service with a corresponding reduction in essential or useful services.

If we ever got into a situation where we were fighting wars for oil,
the defense costs would probably be several dollars per gallon of oil
imported. Something to think about when considering the "cost" of
diesel.

I burn B20 in my boat. That's the only biodiesel blend available around
here without schlepping the fuel down the dock in 5-gallon cans.
Because I'm unwilling to run back and forth from the dock to a
biodiesel producer with a couple of 5-gallon cans, I am in the same
situation as most other people- doing a lot less than I potentially
could to make the conversion to renewable resources. It's easier to
talk the talk than to walk the walk, isn't it? (I would burn B50, B80,
or maybe even B100 if it were available at the fuel dock).