Fuels' gold?No mention is made in "Gas tanks could guzzle guz·zle v. guz·zled, guz·zling, guz·zles v.tr. 1. To drink greedily or habitually: guzzle beer. 2. half of U.S. corn yields" (SN: 2/3/07, p. 78) of the huge amount of petrochemical inputs required both for large-scale farming of corn and for the distilling process required to produce ethanol. When these and other environmental costs are factored in, the promotion of corn-based ethanol as fuel will ultimately be exposed as an environmentally disastrous policy. C. GREENWOOD, SACRAMENTO, CALIF. The article begs the question: Are biofuels well suited to provide a significant portion of our nation's energy pie? I think the answer is yes, but another approach is needed. We would do well to look to New Zealand New Zealand (zē`lənd), island country (2005 est. pop. 4,035,000), 104,454 sq mi (270,534 sq km), in the S Pacific Ocean, over 1,000 mi (1,600 km) SE of Australia. The capital is Wellington; the largest city and leading port is Auckland. , South Africa South Africa, Afrikaans Suid-Afrika, officially Republic of South Africa, republic (2005 est. pop. 44,344,000), 471,442 sq mi (1,221,037 sq km), S Africa. , and parts of the United States United States, officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. , where the extraction of biofuels from algae algae (ăl`jē) [plural of Lat. alga=seaweed], a large and diverse group of primarily aquatic plantlike organisms. These organisms were previously classified as a primitive subkingdom of the plant kingdom, the thallophytes (plants that grown on wastewater streams is being pioneered. Extremely prolific and among the highest oil-yielding plants on earth, algae can, without competition for arable land, feed off wastewater from cities, farms, and other provenances and serve as raw material for fuel. THOMAS SULLIVAN, VINEYARD HAVEN, MASS. |
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