"I also find it highly likely that in the big picture with all things taken into account, ( energy input, pollution etc, )commercial Biodiesel produced here, if not most everywhere, is probably less beneficial than burning straight Diesel and being done with it.

Marvin Trotter, County Health Officer, said visibility was at a paltry three quarters of a mile.

"When it's that low it's considered hazardous," he said. "Bombers can't land here. It is considered hazardous. Most of the problem is with particulate less than 10 microns. It goes right to air sacs so in general surgical masks don't help."

Trotter said the smoke is expected to last for at least three weeks and would continue to worsen in areas of lower elevation.

"It is worse in Ukiah and Anderson Valley and it's worse at night," he said. "Things were better when things were hotter. It's going to be a problem for about three weeks. Close your doors and windows. People can also get a hepa filter to clean air indoors. Also you can use ceiling fans. There is Carbon monoxide, benzene--a lot of things in the air. The tiny little pollutants that have been burned is the biggest problem."

The team that built it stripped the interior of everything but a seat, chopped the top to lower its wind resistance. They narrowed the rear axle, used super-hard low-friction tires and a chain drive to save weight.

The mileage from the mostly stock four-cylinder came from heating and insulating the fuel line so the gas entered the engine as lean vapor. Then they drove the car on a closed course at a steady 30 mph.

So some of that wouldn't work in the street, McMullen concedes. But if the car were made more drivable and lost 200 mpg -- it still would get 176 mpg.

So the oil shock will take time to abate. Some greens may welcome that, seeing three-figure oil as a way of limiting greenhouse emissions. Conservation will indeed increase. But everything high prices achieve could be done better by sensible carbon taxes. As well as curbing oil use, high prices have put tar sands in business which create far more carbon dioxide than conventional oil. Profits are going to ugly oil-fed regimes, not Western exchequers. And the wild unpredictability of prices will blunt the effect of dear oil on people's behaviour.

From this perspective, governments should speed up the adjustment—or at least stop delaying it. Half the world's people are sheltered from fuel prices by subsidies—which, perversely, have boosted demand and mostly benefited the better off. Now countries like Indonesia, Taiwan and Sri Lanka have begun to realise that they can ill afford this. Cutting fuel taxes in the rich world makes no sense either (see article). There are better ways to return cash to struggling voters.

The 1970s showed how demand and supply, inelastic in the short run, eventually give rise to conservation and new production. When all those new fields are on-stream, when the SUVs have been sold and the boilers replaced, the downcycle will take hold. By then the slow-motion oil shock could have catalysed momentous change. Right now motorists have no substitute for oil. But it is no coincidence that car companies are suddenly accelerating their plans to sell electric hybrids that are far cheaper to run than petrol or diesel cars at these prices. The first two oil shocks banished oil from power generation. How fitting if the third finished the job and began to free transport from oil's century-long monopoly.

"How can they claim the oil still sitting in the dumpsters being theirs since they pay the restaurants by volume AFTER it has been collected!"

"My question was regarding legality, not moral. Legality is what it boils down to, agree?"

"...the collectors overwhelmingly are a bunch of redneck cowboys and I find it highly likely that a lot of them wouldn't be bothered ( or able to read) any written contract..."

"If there is a difference between oil and trash, what is it? If it's just the value, then it seems to me the contractors want it all their own way."

He knew plastic does eventually degrade, and figured microorganisms must be behind it. His goal was to isolate the microorganisms that can break down plastic -- not an easy task because they don't exist in high numbers in nature.

First, he ground plastic bags into a powder. Next, he used ordinary household chemicals, yeast and tap water to create a solution that would encourage microbe growth. To that, he added the plastic powder and dirt. Then the solution sat in a shaker at 30 degrees.

After three months of upping the concentration of plastic-eating microbes, Burd filtered out the remaining plastic powder and put his bacterial culture into three flasks with strips of plastic cut from grocery bags. As a control, he also added plastic to flasks containing boiled and therefore dead bacterial culture.

Six weeks later, he weighed the strips of plastic. The control strips were the same. But the ones that had been in the live bacterial culture weighed an average of 17 per cent less.

That wasn't good enough for Burd. To identify the bacteria in his culture, he let them grow on agar plates and found he had four types of microbes. He tested those on more plastic strips and found only the second was capable of significant plastic degradation.

Next, Burd tried mixing his most effective strain with the others. He found strains one and two together produced a 32 per cent weight loss in his plastic strips. His theory is strain one helps strain two reproduce.

Tests to identify the strains found strain two was Sphingomonas bacteria and the helper was Pseudomonas.

1. raise prices until we reach equilibrium

2. find more biodiesel to purchase and sell

3. find more oil, construct more capacity

4. restrict who can buy our fuel

1. pros: makes good business sense, and is easy to do.
    cons: makes people angry.

2. pros: doesn't make people angry.
    cons: eats into margins, plus it is very hard to find fuel that meets all our criteria.

3. pros: the only solution, longterm.
    cons: is impossible to implement short term, and is actually quite complicated

4. pros: it forces demand down to a functional level
    cons: makes people angry, doesn't address root causes, and isn't easy to do