I went to the Man…or Astroman? website the other day and noticed that one of the band members had been working with an alternative fuel initiative. I went to the site and was curious what my dad would think about it, as he works in the petrochemical industry. This is what Dad said*:

Yes, I have. You can make a fuel out of many things, e.g., potatoes (remember vodka?). The Germans in WWII and the South Africans during the embargos they withstood because of apartheid came up with a lot of chemistry to make transportation fuels from wood and especially coal. If you have a lot of coal and are really desperate for liquid fuels, it works, but it is expensive. Biodiesel is essentially vegetable oil. It is not necessarily more environmentally friendly. Just because something is made from a renewable resource doesn’t mean that it is necessarily so. For example, ethanol from corn, which is promoted like mad by ADM and politicians from the Midwest (and consequently subsidized by the federal government), actually takes more fuel to create than it generates. To put it another way, using ethanol increases our dependence on foreign oil, which is the exact opposite of what ADM will tell you. I suspect this would also be true of biodiesel made from soybeans expressly as a fuel. If this were not so, we would be using it now and people who make it wouldn’t be pleading for subsidies. In the case of biodiesel made from the leftovers from McDonald’s French fry cookers, you are probably saving fuel on a net basis, if the energy involved in collecting it, purifying it, and distributing it is not more than is derived by using it. I have heard that vehicles running on it leave the odor of French fries behind. Love, Dad

Science! It comes in handy.

• and his views are his own and do not represent the views of his company yadda yadda yadda.