What would you do?

[jackaro]

(sorry I took so long to reply)

Main reasons;

1. a;There were food riots in at least 22 countries last year, largely because of the ripple effect of mandatory ethanol use. Likewise when they ran out of yellow corn and started to ferment and distill white corn they made it tougher on poor Mexicans and other Central American peoples who depend on that commodity to make tortillas and many of those decided to relocate in America, exacerbating another problem. It's insane to take so much needed food and burn it up. The Immorality of Ethanol

1. b;The price of feed corn tripled in a short time, so when you see the price of beef and other meats rising like a hot air balloon at the market, that is the main reason.

2. a; Doesn't cut down on CO2 emissions, on the contrary, when you consider all the fuel burned to produce the raw product, plus the energy used to produce the final product, plus transporting and mixing it with gasoline, plus the CO2 emitted by the ethanol itself, any gain is negligible.

2. b; Less dependence on foreign oil, ditto 2a.




And I suppose you have a local shiner who will sell you top quality goods at less than $2.00 a gallon???

Not more exact on the specs except that an additive or process is required that renders it undrinkable.

Ethanol as fuel is only feasible with large government subsidies.

Other problems;

Decreases life of internal combustion engines.

Corrodes fiberglass tanks on marine vessels.

Will separate from gas and cause engine failure in two cycle engines and problems for four cycle engines.

Corn is very hard on land and must be rotated with other crops like soy beans to replenish nitrogen in the soil. Alternatives to corn haven't proven to be successful except for maybe sugar cane.

Just the tip of the iceberg as to why I am totally against government mandates on ethanol use, as a matter of fact I didn't vote for Alexander last election because he voted for it, I didn't vote for his opponent but he didn't get my vote.

Here is more on how you have been deceived about ethanol.

You make very good points. I believe the main problem with the ethanol industry is that it relies on corn. Corn is one of the least efficient crops to make ethanol from, sugar cane is great but doesn't grow everywhere in the U.S. You are absolutely right about an ethanol industry only being successful through massive subsidies, but the industry could be more efficient.
I have not seen figures on the energy it takes to make ethanol or gasoline, but I doubt it takes more energy or expense than extracting and refining oil. The refining of oil is the same basic principle of distillation, boil the stuff to separate a homogenious mixture into it's constituent parts. Like I said I haven't seen the numbers, but I doubt ethanol is any more energy intensive than refining oil. Keep in mind the enormous expense of developing oil wells into being productive.

 

[Vol1312]

(sorry I took so long to reply)

Main reasons;

1. a;There were food riots in at least 22 countries last year, largely because of the ripple effect of mandatory ethanol use. Likewise when they ran out of yellow corn and started to ferment and distill white corn they made it tougher on poor Mexicans and other Central American peoples who depend on that commodity to make tortillas and many of those decided to relocate in America, exacerbating another problem. It's insane to take so much needed food and burn it up. The Immorality of Ethanol

1. b;The price of feed corn tripled in a short time, so when you see the price of beef and other meats rising like a hot air balloon at the market, that is the main reason.

2. a; Doesn't cut down on CO2 emissions, on the contrary, when you consider all the fuel burned to produce the raw product, plus the energy used to produce the final product, plus transporting and mixing it with gasoline, plus the CO2 emitted by the ethanol itself, any gain is negligible.

2. b; Less dependence on foreign oil, ditto 2a.




And I suppose you have a local shiner who will sell you top quality goods at less than $2.00 a gallon???

Not more exact on the specs except that an additive or process is required that renders it undrinkable.

Ethanol as fuel is only feasible with large government subsidies.

Other problems;

Decreases life of internal combustion engines.

Corrodes fiberglass tanks on marine vessels.

Will separate from gas and cause engine failure in two cycle engines and problems for four cycle engines.

Corn is very hard on land and must be rotated with other crops like soy beans to replenish nitrogen in the soil. Alternatives to corn haven't proven to be successful except for maybe sugar cane.

Just the tip of the iceberg as to why I am totally against government mandates on ethanol use, as a matter of fact I didn't vote for Alexander last election because he voted for it, I didn't vote for his opponent but he didn't get my vote.

Here is more on how you have been deceived about ethanol.

Thank you I didn't realize all the problems that followed ethanol.

 

[gsvol]

I have not seen figures on the energy it takes to make ethanol or gasoline, but I doubt it takes more energy or expense than extracting and refining oil. The refining of oil is the same basic principle of distillation, boil the stuff to separate a homogenious mixture into it's constituent parts. Like I said I haven't seen the numbers, but I doubt ethanol is any more energy intensive than refining oil. Keep in mind the enormous expense of developing oil wells into being productive.

Ethanol is far less efficient to produce than gasoline, despite the proponent's claims to the contrary.

Don't mislead people by suggesting that it takes more energy to produce gasoline than to produce ethanol. That is an incredibly ludicrous claim.

I've been a big fan of Amory Lovins for the past thirty years.

He has been described as six of the top ten energy experts in the world.

 

[TennTradition]

The utility of ethanol as a fuel is a huge function of its source. I agree with all of your comments (for the most part) about the downfalls of corn-based ethanol, GS. However, throwing the idea of the fuel out the window without giving consideration to other sources would be misguided, IMO. With that said, those other sources are not proven at scale and we need to be careful about ethanol standards until we feel confident we can make ethanol with:

1) A smaller carbon footprint than corn-based ethanol (which probably does emit more carbon than if you had just burned gasoline). This fuel needs to have SOME advantage!

2) Little to no pressure on domestic or global food prices.

 

[gsvol]

The utility of ethanol as a fuel is a huge function of its source. I agree with all of your comments (for the most part) about the downfalls of corn-based ethanol, GS. However, throwing the idea of the fuel out the window without giving consideration to other sources would be misguided, IMO. With that said, those other sources are not proven at scale and we need to be careful about ethanol standards until we feel confident we can make ethanol with:

1) A smaller carbon footprint than corn-based ethanol (which probably does emit more carbon than if you had just burned gasoline). This fuel needs to have SOME advantage!

2) Little to no pressure on domestic or global food prices.

Well I didn't intend to say that the idea of any ethanol use as fuel at all should be dismissed but I will say the way we have gone about it and are continuing to be forced by a misguided government to go about it is completely insane, to put it mildly.

Did you ever stop to think that many of our problems are caused by government intervention and the proposed solutions (in an ever escalating circle firing squad fashion) cause even worse problems??

And furthermore, both the original problems and the solutions are based on at best bad data and at the worst outright deception???

I'm not sure that I agree with Lovins that potential sources such as sawgrass won't take appreciable amounts of productive farmland out of the production of foodstuffs. (what about the 2 million acres of federal land the democrats just took out of any kind of use other than for them to fly over and admire while patting themselves on the back about 'saving the earth?')

The production of ethanol fuel from food or feed grains should be completely outlawed.

And just how many acres of Brazilian rain forests have disappeared for sake of the production of sugar cane??

If the basic idea is to cut back on foreign energy independence, then drill American oil and uncap those wells that were forced to sell at $5 a barrel based on an outright lie.

If you want to cut back on carbon emissions, then build cars like RMI suggests (and has demonstrated) that get 100+ mpg.

Using food and livestock feed for fuel is outright insanity.

The cap and trade boondoggle is likewise more insanity.

For one it puts and unbearable burden on the everyday citizen. It is an indirect tax of draconian proportions.

Browse through economic history of the last two millenia or even just the last century.

When the people are too heavily taxed the society withers and if it doesn't die outright, the people suffer and in most cases the otherwise peaceful exercise of liberty, productivity and pursuit of happiness ends with social upheaval and outright war whether involving foreign invaders or not.

"When taxes are too high, people go hungry."
– Lao Tsu

"The more laws and restrictions there are, the poorer the people become."
– Lao Tsu

And never forget how much of the reasoning for most of the proposed and already mandated national energy policies is the, at best, one in a quadrillion chance that human carbon emissions (while producing energy that goes a long way toward easing world poverty and hunger,) will somehow trigger some irreversible climate changes that will lead to a circumstance which exacerbates the problems we are already working on and solving on a daily basis.

The energy emperors have no clothes, their words are naked lies.

Is it racist to condemn those who live in mud huts of Africa or the gutters of India or the rice paddies of China to have to live for another thousand years in such manner because they cannot emit carbon???

(I will say that India and China would do a bit more to clean up their acts, but killing American economy doesn't do that, now does it?)

"You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children's children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done."
- Ronald Reagan

"Approximately 80% of our air pollution stems from hydrocarbons released by vegetation, so let's not go overboard in setting and enforcing tough emission standards from man-made sources."
Ronald Reagan

"All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can be stored under a desk."
Ronald Reagan

 

[gsvol]

Thank you I didn't realize all the problems that followed ethanol.

You're welcome, here is more:

Ethanol Production Consumes Six Units Of Energy To Produce Just One
(science daily 2005)

some excerpts to save time;

"In terms of renewable fuels, ethanol is the worst solution."

"It has the highest energy cost with the least benefit."

more fossil energy is used to produce ethanol than the energy contained within it.

Recently, Patzek published a fifty-page study on the subject in the journal Critical Reviews in Plant Science. This time, he factored in the myriad energy inputs required by industrial agriculture, from the amount of fuel used to produce fertilizers and corn seeds to the transportation and wastewater disposal costs. All told, he believes that the cumulative energy consumed in corn farming and ethanol production is six times greater than what the end product provides your car engine in terms of power.

Patzek is also concerned about the sustainability of industrial farming in developing nations where surgarcane and trees are grown as feedstock for ethanol and other biofuels. Using United Nations data, he examined the production cycles of plantations hundreds of billions of tons of raw material.

From one square meter of land, you can get roughly one watt of energy. The price you pay is that in Brazil alone you annually damage a jungle the size of Greece ."

And another:

Ethanol Fuel from Corn Faulted as ‘Unsustainable Subsidized Food Burning’

David Pimental, a leading Cornell University agricultural expert, has calculated that powering the average U.S. (one) automobile for one year on ethanol (blended with gasoline) derived from corn would require 11 acres of farmland, the same space needed to grow a year's supply of food for seven people.

Adding up the energy costs of corn production and its conversion into ethanol, 131,000 BTUs are needed to make one gallon of ethanol.

One gallon of ethanol has an energy value of only 77,000 BTUS.

Thus, 70 percent more energy is required to produce ethanol than the energy that actually is in it. Every time you make one gallon of ethanol, there is a net energy loss of 54,000 BTUs.

Cornell’s David Pimentel, one of the world’s leading experts in issues relating to energy and agriculture, takes a longer range view.

"Abusing our precious croplands to grow corn for an energy-inefficient process that yields low-grade automobile fuel amounts to unsustainable, subsidized food burning", says the Cornell professor in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Pimentel, who chaired a U.S. Department of Energy panel that investigated the energetics, economics and environmental aspects of ethanol production several years ago, subsequently conducted a detailed analysis of the corn-to-car fuel process. His findings are published in the September, 2001 issue of the Encyclopedia of Physical Sciences and Technology .

Among his findings are:

Ethanol from corn costs about $1.74 per gallon to produce, compared with about 95 cents to produce a gallon of gasoline. "That helps explain why fossil fuels-not ethanol-are used to produce ethanol", Pimentel says. "The growers and processors can’t afford to burn ethanol to make ethanol. U.S. drivers couldn’t afford it, either, if it weren’t for government subsidies to artificially lower the price".

(you really need to read all his findings to see how crazy our governmental energy policy is and how badly the American public has been misled.)gs

And just to make you even madder, the main beneficiaries of government subsidies have been the large corporations.

If one reads Pimentel's data and consider the fact that he chaired a U.S. Department of Energy panel that investigated the energetics, economics and environmental aspects of ethanol production several years ago, it certainly makes one wonder what is going on in Washington D. C. LSD in the water couldn't produce that sort of disconnect from reality!!!!
(same goes for LSM propaganda.)

Bottom line is (to me) if corn isn't the answer and it obviously isn't, I doubt anything else would be economically feasible either.

 

[TennTradition]

The more common EROEI (energy return on energy investment) for corn-based ethanol I have seen is between 0.96 and 1.06 - not 0.2 as a 5:1 in vs. out ratio would suggest...I am surprised by that number! Still, even at its best of 1.06 - that is horrible...considering the extra cost just to get that 6% energy "boost".

As for other sources...there is a "pretty large" jump when you go toward cellulosic materials, though I, too, worry about land use even then. I don't have that specific data in front of me, so I can't quantify it...but it's an appreciable increase.

 

[gsvol]

The more common EROEI (energy return on energy investment) for corn-based ethanol I have seen is between 0.96 and 1.06 - not 0.2 as a 5:1 in vs. out ratio would suggest...I am surprised by that number! Still, even at its best of 1.06 - that is horrible...considering the extra cost just to get that 6% energy "boost".

As for other sources...there is a "pretty large" jump when you go toward cellulosic materials, though I, too, worry about land use even then. I don't have that specific data in front of me, so I can't quantify it...but it's an appreciable increase.

When you say 'celluslosic materials', then corn, sorgham and sugar cane could be feasible but not competitive imo, plus they take good arable land to grow.

I don't even know what saw grass may be but if it worked then people would already be doing it, I think it is pie in the sky crap. Not only that, those who farm for a living will use the land they have available. I suppose if you were a devout vegetarian such as Adolph Hitler,
Charlie Manson or some of the other fruitcakes who head up multi-million dollar a year wacko-enviro NGOs that go a long way toward electing politicians and influencing governmental energy policy, then using pasture land to grow saw grass for fuel would make sense.

All that kind of thinking tends to centralize power and tell people what they can or cannot do rather than letting the law of supply and demand take care of itself which is by far the best policy in the long run, even in the short run as we have already seen.

All the reliable data I've read says you get a net loss with the best of materials.

I thought the main reason for all this was conservation and sustainability of Earth's resources, so how does it benefit us Earth citizens to clear Amazon rain forests at the rate of an area the size of the country of Greece annually???

At least with nuclear fusion, technology has reached a break even scenario.

 

[TennTradition]

At a EROEI near 1, it doesn't help anything, whether it is slightly above or below. There is no reason to do it. A reason is to look to more sustainable infrastructures, and this one is dead wrong. I'm not sure whether ethanol from algae, cellulosic feedstock, etc. will work or not...but I do know that corn doesn't and won't. We need to run away from that train....

(BTW, I think that the only way you can get a EROEI greater than 1 so you don't have a net loss is if you recycle certain byproducts of the process, which isn't always done. This has been shown to be able to close the gap a bit and give it a slightly greater than 1 EROEI, I think.)

 

[rjd970]

1. Reform the drug laws.
2. Build more nuclear power plants
3. Upgrade the infrastructure for roads, rail, power lines, etc.
4. Downsize I.R.S. and create a tax code that is simple by eliminating most deductions, and have tax rates of 15-30% depending on level of income.
5. Downsize the military and stop policing the world.
6. Back states rights by doing less at the federal level, and empower the states by devising the federal budget into block grants for states that spend it on what they see as necessary.
7. Tort reform.
8. Actually respect the Bill of Rights.
9. Work to stop illegal immigration, and allow many more legal immigrants.
10. More funding for education, especially at the college level.

Just my 2 cents...

Sounds about right to me with the exception of number 5. I agree we should stop policing the world, but a strong and powerful military is always in our best interest. #4 sounds good to, but I would keep the deduction for charitable donations. I would rather give my money to a charity of my choice than to the government.

 

[allvol123]

3. Upgrade the infrastructure for roads, rail, power lines, etc.

Have to point this one out because it looks like something straight outta Obama speak. Are people having trouble with transportation that I am unaware of? I don't seem to have any trouble. But this rhetoric gets tossed around as if we are living in Liberia. I guess it is like education or healthcare, just something to gin up taxes.

 

[MG1968]

the infrastructure improvement plan is a bunch of BS any way. During Clinton a 217 billion dollar infrastructure bill was passed and six years later a 280 billion dollar bill was passed. So for Obama to claim that we're not spending enough on infrastructure is simply not true.

If Obama was really serious about this, he would have advocated for fast tracking of contracts to circumvent the inevitable hysteria the various enviro-nazi groups come up with. However, since the enviro-nazis are a core constituency, Obama speaks out of both sides of his mouth, meanwhile nothing much ever gets done.

 

[allvol123]

the infrastructure improvement plan is a bunch of BS any way. During Clinton a 217 billion dollar infrastructure bill was passed and six years later a 280 billion dollar bill was passed. So for Obama to claim that we're not spending enough on infrastructure is simply not true.

If Obama was really serious about this, he would have advocated for fast tracking of contracts to circumvent the inevitable hysteria the various enviro-nazi groups come up with. However, since the enviro-nazis are a core constituency, Obama speaks out of both sides of his mouth, meanwhile nothing much ever gets done.

Of course it is not true. As I said, infrastructure is just one of those catch words like healthcare or education. Just mention it, and people think "oh yea, well that is a good thing to spend money on".

 

[WA_Vol]

Ethanol from algae is the way to go.

Given the right conditions, algae can double its volume overnight. Unlike other biofuel feedstocks, such as soy or corn, it can be harvested day after day. Up to 50 percent of an alga’s body weight is comprised of oil, whereas oil-palm trees—currently the largest producer of oil to make biofuels—yield just about 20 percent of their weight in oil. Across the board, yields are already impressive: Soy produces some 50 gallons of oil per acre per year; canola, 150 gallons; and palm, 650 gallons. But algae is expected to produce 10,000 gallons per acre per year, and eventually even more.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/earth/4213775.html

 

[Business]

I agree with the majority of what OE says.

Throw a big ole', badass defense budget in there and I'm down.