Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 04/13/2008 8:09:45 AM PDT by milwguy
CORN should be used for food, not motor fuel, and yet the United States is committed to a policy that encourages farmers to turn an increasing amount of their crop into ethanol. This may save the nation a bit of the cost of imported oil, but it increases global-warming gases and contributes to higher food prices.
more stories like thisCandidates for president need to tell Americans the truth about ethanol, but they are falling over themselves in pursuit of the farm belt vote. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton want more ethanol factories built than even President Bush envisaged when he called for 15 percent of US gasoline consumption to be replaced by alternative fuels by 2017. John McCain, who correctly called the ethanol push a boondoggle in 2000, now says that it is "a very important way to achieve energy independence."
Ethanol consumes almost a quarter of US corn production. The energy self-sufficiency that all the candidates seek should not come at the expense of the environment or the food supply.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Rather than admit the unintended consequences of his misguided and fallacious global warming dogma, Saint Al is continuing his crusade, and along with help from the UN, and the socialist environmental movement, the future of our plantet is in peril, not from CO2, but from Al Gore and his minions.
Sharjah, April 7 : Amid a continued global shortage of food supply because of severe droughts in several countries and with grain being diverted to biofuel production, the world is in the grip of a food crisis, WAM news agency reported Monday citing a UAE daily editorial.
Peacekeeper shot dead in Haiti food riots
Food riots in developing countries will spread unless world leaders take major steps to reduce prices for the poor, the head of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said yesterday.
Death toll rises in Haitian food price protests
Supports ethanol subsidies & “farm safety net”. (Nov 1999) Triple use of biomass, ethanol, plant-based textiles, etc. (Nov 1999) http://www.issues2000.org/Al_Gore.htm#Farm_Policy
Food production itself is energy-intensive. You’re adding the additional cost associated with rising oil prices to the higher prices associated with lower supply. The net result might very well destabilize the third world and lead to major disruptions in the Western democracies. All this to forestall a crisis that doesn’t exist, and that even if it did exist wouldn’t pose a significant threat even in the long term. Only a madman could dream up such a scheme.
Since I live in the South, I would LOVE for somebody to figure out how to turn Kudzu into fuel.
Or a Politician.
Will pigs eat kudzu?
A fact that even the most uninformed congress critter should have known.
Is this so? Any similar info on wheat, rice, barley, soybeans?
The warmists are all about 3rd world body county. They love dead Africans and dead Latin and South Americans. It serves a dual purpose in their warped worldview. The deaths caused by their policies furthers their Malthusian fantasies and it enables them to call for ever expanding roles for the UN and other NGOs. Remember who invented Eugenics—liberals. Remember who implemented the final solution—hard left fascists. Remember who pushes the fantasy that is enviro nonsense— leftists. Remember who pushes abortion at any time, in the black and brown community—leftists. They are all about death—24/7/365
You can drink ethonal though. Then you would not care if you had anything to eat.
The warmists are all about 3rd world body COUNT.
Nice going Libs!
The statistic on corn is correct, and it is magnified by the fact that farmers are switching to corn from soybeans or wheat and barley because of the price. This year, with wheat and soybeans back to record prices , many farmers are switching back to wheat and soybeans, which will only magnify the problem because corn is so essential as feed for chickens, cows, etc and used to make corn syrup, etc.
If the wet, cold spring continues, the problem with corn will be much worse, because even MORE farmers will switch to soybeans because they can plant later and still get full harvest. I saw a statistic somewhere about how fast yields for cron go down for each week later in the season it is planted. It is a pretty dramatic dropoff if planting is delayed even a couple weeks due to wet, cold conditions.
Ethanol is for drinking.
Hati is black with a French heritage and is doomed.
Food prices result fron total failure to be able to tend for themselves. If they would go to school instead of procreate....no problems.
Gore, and those who follow him, consider humans to be an undesirable infestation on this planet.
Ted Turner said we have too many people on the planet and not enough buffaloes. Guess he is wright. I can just imagine that he drives a Prius around the ranch.
This is going to get serious real quick. The Asian’s and Indian’s of means are probably stocking up now..and that will create more shortages. If India curtails exports to Africa and Middle East(where they send rice)..that will make things worse.
This is a man made famine..as most are. Due to the popularity with the farmers in the US, no politician is going to touch it until it is too late.
We use powdered Kudzu root as a starch substitute.
I believe the huge increases in grain prices is because of the rush for most farmers to plant ethanol type corn crops.
The sudden drop of supply has driven the prices of grains higher. It also has to do with the price of oil greatly effecting the costs for fuel, fertilizer (yes, made from oil) and seed.
Milk has hit 4 bucks a gallon because dairy feed has become more expensive and the cost to produce it has increased along with most other commodities.
I haven’t raised pigs for a few years but I know goats and horses love it. I think pigs will eat anything so they probably will eat Kudzu. My horses loved it and would eat it before they would eat horse feed. Kudzu is edible for humans and animals. It grows up to a foot a day and is uncontrollable. Animals can’t eat it fast enough. Some chemicals that they try to kill it with actually have made it grow faster. :-)
Kudzu looks to me like a prime candidate as a bio-fuel since it is not serving any other purpose except for covering everything in it’s path.
That’s what happens when ever you introduce an unnatural plant to an area not native to it’s growth capacity. It will take over and push the rest out. Sort of like the Star thistle epidemic in the west. Upset the balance, upset the cart and the horse.
IMHO
Semper Fi
An Old Man
Ohh WOE is me... whys everybody pickin on me???
The politicians simply pander to the madmen.
,/center>
We Republicans need that farmer vote and I need many millions of dollars to build my library which I expect to get from the Ethanol Lobby. So git over it and keep pumping that corn into your tank"
It’s been around down here as long as I can remember. I was reading that it grows better in the deep South than it does in it’s native country.
Corn syrup. Yup ya gotta have that coke!
US farmers produced about 13.2 billion bushels of field corn last year. About 20% would have been necessary to support ethanol production in 2007, most estimates are that it will be closer to 25% this year. Not that anyone on these threads cares, but the corn used for ethanol production is still used as animal feed.
Can’t make it into corn flakes, or corn syrup though.
All because of a imaginary being known as "climate change."
Over 50% of field corn was used for animal feed before ethanol.
What Mr. Lucky is pointing out to you is that by using the distillers’ grains coming out of ethanol production, you have no net loss of foodstuffs here.
"The Ethanol boogie makes you boogie-woogie all the time."
At least Hadacol was "comparable to a vitamin-enriched Manhattan cocktail." And we weren't stupid enough to put in our gas tanks.
I remember the promotions, "Three months ago I couldn't read or write, but after only a few bottles of Hadacol, I am now teaching school."
Today, "Three months ago my carbon footprint was as big as Al Gore's but after only a few tanks of Ethanol it's zero.. damn car won't work."
This is the problem that the greens never consider. They claim to be so intelligent but they only seem to be able to comprehend a very simple picture of climate and relationships.
There are always unintended costs and there are not easy solutions. I suppose if they accepted those two ideas then they wouldn’t be so supportive of big government. I’d like to see someone calculate the environmental cost of big government. I’m sure it wouldn’t be a pretty picture.
China and India have both suspended exports of rice due to their own or expected shortage of rice/grain.
The food riots aound the world won't be pretty. I expect Europe to be overwhelmed by Africans and our borders won't even slow down the masses coming from the south.
Are you not getting enough high fructose corn syrup in your diet?
Ask your Grandpa what he knows about making moonshine.
The deliberate burning of food for fuel while humans starve ought to be an eleventh Commandment.
“Thou shalt not destroy food while Thy neighbor starves.”
***CORN should be used for food***
Alcohol from Corn IS classed as a “food”. Check with any nurritionist. Not a proper food but it is used by the body to produce heat and energy.
Now, mix a little ketone with it....and denature it is another matter.
Pig manure is famous for its generation of methane.
Feed pigs kudzu, collect the manure and feed it in to a digester (no extra enzymes needed) and collect the methane fuel. (Watch “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome” sometime)
I have read of farmers running their farm implements on their own methane generated in this fashion. (Should be of interest to you).
It would take a bit of investment in equipment. But for a pig farmer it would be fairly low cost fuel. I understand that the manure has less odor after it goes through the digester.
I wonder how it would taste after aging in American Oak for 10 years;)
Even the left-wing press knows ethanol is not the answer. It’s worse for the environment than gasoline, and has less energy, per unit of volume, than gasoline. Not to mention that it’s having the indirect effect of raising food prices.
What we should be doing is expanding the drilling for oil in ANWR and in the vast deposits discovered in North Dakota.
If that is the case, why are poultry and cattle producers literally going out of business? The ycan’t afford the grain to feed their animals. What is the cost of the residual from the ethanol plants? If they are selling it to farmers to feed their animals why do they need a huge subsidy from the gov’t and a tariff on Brazillian ethanol? The ADM ethanol scam piggybacked on Al Gore’s global warming movement to scam the american people. The amount of energy we are derving from this fuel is next to nothing when the cost to raise the corn, harvest it, distill it, transport it, and blend it is considered. It must just be a huge co-incidence that the price of corn only started to SKYROCKET when the ethanol mandates came about? No cause and effect there.
Try to find any processed food without corn syrup in it. You would starve.
why are poultry and cattle producers literally going out of business?
Because they were marginal to begin with. Raising chickens has always been a near profitlesss business.
I had a professor who frequently told us that the best way to go broke was to raise chickens.
But recent research at Kansas State University has found that cattle fed distiller’s grain have an increased prevalence of E. coli 0157 in their hindgut. This particular type of E. coli is present in healthy cattle but poses a health risk to humans, who can acquire it through undercooked meat, raw dairy products and produce contaminated with cattle manure.
And of course, there's the intentional murders of well over 60 million people, just since the early 1900s. I will say this about the left though. The best thing about being a "liberal" is that you never have to take responsibility for your actions, nor pay any consequences. Sort of like Peter Pan, they never have to grow up.
Mark
A big problem with leftist (i.e. marxist) thought is "dilectical materialism," a part of which is the belief that "things happen in a vacuum," and that things inevitably lead from one to another, operating only in cycles, through the "law of negation." It's a bunch of crap.
Mark
They’re going out of business because there is an oligopoly in the cattle feedyard business. The feedyards aren’t increasing their prices and they’re hedged on the wrong side of the situation.
Congress has consistently failed to investigate any aspect of the big cattle feedlots and packing houses over the years - from the near total take-over by illegal alien labor, to the safety and sanitation practices, to the price manipulation.
Any time you hear of a feedyard crying about going out of business, you should wish that they would stop crying about going out of business and simply go out of business. It is the only way we’ll see a reform of the cattle industry and better pricing given to stockers and cow-calf producers.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.