Pseudo-environmentalists and other dingy greenish confused types get tetchy when you point out that their ideas are nonsense. It has become dead common to see posts insisting that critics stop criticizing lame ideas.

University of Minnesota researchers published a paper saying that "even if every acre of corn were used for ethanol, it would only create 12 percent of the ethanol needed for U.S. motoring fuel.

Researchers at Magleve Research Center of the Polytechnic University of New York wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post that went even further, stating that even if all U.S. farmland were used to produce ethanol, we couldn't produce enough fuel for transportation. . .

Instead of wasting your keystrokes slamming biofuel for not being panacea, talk about the other solutions to the problem -- conservation through increased use of mass transportation, better fuel efficiency, other alternative fuels (Fischer-Tropsch diesel, tar sands oil), and possibly producing hydrogen from renewable resources.

No answer is complete, but picking on biofuels and not the lame CAFE standards and auto companies is just wrong.

Given that biofuels won't help yet they are sucking resources out of the economy, providing a wide playground for politicians with bags full of pork, and continuing to distort the agricultural and energy economy with senseless subsidies, criticism is not wrong. It's very right. Doing the wrong thing isn't justifiable. That CAFE standards might also be improved doesn't change this. Biofuels are dumb.

There might in future be some biofuel applications that are smart. The technologies used at present are primitive and ineffective but others are in development that may prove useful. But it will always be a boutique energy source that exploits inefficiencies in other systems that will in time be corrected.

All the organics that are called wastes have better uses than burning for fuel, but the cost of using them sometimes is greater than alternatives. That is changing as fast as the energy system is evolving. Sensible policies must consider all of the competing uses of organics and their dynamics. Ramping up a biofuel industry just as the value of organics for other, better uses is rising is foolish.

It isn't just that biofuels are a trivial part of any energy mix - though they are - it is also that it's not a smart way to use those resources. Dirt burning doesn't make sense no matter how you look at it. At best it is a temporary measure to use organics that are not being well utilized now, and only makes sense if the usage is viable without supporting subsides or sneaky subsidies through regulation and mandates. If we're going to subsidize uses of resources, let's at least subsidize wise uses of them rather than foolish uses.