Posted on 05/05/2007 6:19:15 AM PDT by truthfinder9
There was a great piece on 20/20 last night about the ethanol fraud, read it here: http://abcnews.go.com/2020/story?id=3130684&page=1
For example:
But if ethanol made so much sense, we wouldn't have to subsidize it or mandate its consumption. Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute said, "If you can make a profit in this economy by putting something on the market, the government doesn't need to put a gun to your head."
They did not tell the rest of the story....ethanol is not a fraud. Wait and see what comes out of this technology......you will all be surprised.
I just wonder why E-85 price goes up the same as gas when it is only 15% gas????
“But if ethanol made so much sense, we wouldn’t have to subsidize it or mandate its consumption”
Ok - that makes some sense.
So as soon as we agree to stop HEAVILY subsidizing oil, roads, airports, etc, as well, we should stop subsidizing ethanol.
AS IT IS TODAY, it sure looks like a fraud to me.
Wait and see what comes out of this technology
Do tell.
You mean great things like massive tax subsidies, large amounts of fossile fuels to produce it, and high food prices?
The laughs I got from the comments section was worth the visit. :)
It takes 4.5 gallons of water to produce 1 gallon of E.
Food prices go up as a result.
Tax payer pays, pays, and pays.
The cost will always be high because of products abrasiveness on anything it touches.
It makes no economic sense but is politicallly correct.
Ethanol needed to be subsidized when oil was $20-25 a barrel. With oil over $50, corn ethanol is viable without subsidy. The current subsidy is an artifact of the oil price structure and needs to be revised.
The tricky thing, however, is that the bigger potential is in cellulosic ethanol and that has still not been demonstrated to be economical in commercial scale production. Several pilot plants are in operation and ground is being broken on the first generation of commercial scale demonstrations, but we're not quite there yet. A lot of people who would ordinarily be talking about phasing out the subsidy are hanging fire until the picture on cellulosic clarifies.
The stakes here are much bigger than a windfall (which is now occurring) for corn farmers and ethanol producers. The stakes are building out a new energy source that can supply a third, and perhaps much more, of the nation's transportation fuel supply.
Oops. The current subsidy is an artifact of the OLD oil price structure.
The last time I checked it didn't take a gallon of gasoline to produce a gallon of gasoline. Don't ethanol powered cars drive on the same roads? What exactly is the point there? All subsidised things are equal? You don't have to consume one mile of road to produce one mile of road? You don't have to burn up one airport to produce another airport? Put oil in your tank and food in your stomach. You get the same amount of energy, and more food.
Ethanol is no longer an energy loser - hasn’t been for awhile. Plus the mash is excellent cattle feed, meaning you aren’t even losing the food stream.
So you have people screaming bloody murder because ethanol is subsidized, when if you removed subsidies from gasoline, we’d likely be paying double what we are.
The point is what makes an ethanol subsidy so much worse than an oil subsidy? What makes a road subsidy worse than a mass transit subsidy?
My former senator (Dole) was nicknamed “the senator from Archer-Daniels-Midland”. If lefties had any sense (there’s a contradiction) they would stop screaming “Halliburton” and scream “ADM”. They scam TONS of money from the government through this ethanol crap.
bump
If the government is subsidizing Ethanol it is not a market economy that is driving supply and demand anymore.
The stuff seems to work well in South America.
Oil provides more revenue from royalty payments and taxes than any financial assistance it receives.
If you are talking about Brazil, they also mandate the use of ethanol there as well. Most of their transportation fuel is diesel.
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