Blog #3 Alternative Fuels for US military.

A study by RAND corp came out recently that said the US military would receive no benefit from the use of alternative fuels. This comes as a hard pill to swallow by the Department of Defense and it seems pretty clear that they are unwilling to concede that RAND corp is right. Why is that though? RAND corp is backed largely by the US government and has no financial ties with any oil companies or major oil producing countries, that I can tell. I think the main reason why the government is unwilling to listen to the study is because of the millions of dollars that they have poured into alternative fuels, particularly those from seeds. But there is a major problem with growing your fuels that James Bartis of RAND pointed out in the article, seed based alternative fuels are; very inefficient, use up land that could be used to be growing food, or even use up the food that we would use as food otherwise. Even at this juncture the military is limited to using a 50/50 mix of alt. fuels and regular petroleum, which presents a clear problem when it comes to the DoD adopting alt. fuels as a way of powering our military. The government seems to be very good at spending money and continuing to spend money even when they've been told it's simply a waste of money to spend it in this area. That being said, IF the DoD and US government were able to create and use a source of valid fuel, even if it was not applicable to the mass amounts of fuel the DoD uses it could still potentially be used in production vehicles, trickling down into the life of the average joe. It's certainly not the first time the government has spent millions on that in the end actually did work/affect them to some degree, but really improved the lives of American people, baby food and electronic computers are the example given via the NASA space program. So, while the DoD may not be switching to algae or soy bean fuel any time soon, there is a chance that your car might be doing it instead. Let's hope that this is true, your tax dollars are depending on it.
http://articles.cnn.com/2011-01-25/us/military.alternative.energy_1_alternative-fuel-alternative-energy-rand-study?_s=PM:US