Posted on 01/26/2007 5:55:38 AM PST by randita
Blindness on Biofuels
By Robert J. Samuelson
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
President Bush joined the biofuels enthusiasm in his State of the Union address, and no one can doubt the powerful allure. Farmers, scientists and venture capitalists will liberate us from insecure foreign oil by converting corn, prairie grass and much more into gasoline substitutes. Biofuels will even curb greenhouse gases. Already, production of ethanol from corn has surged from 1.6 billion gallons in 2000 to 5 billion in 2006. Bush set an interim target of 35 billion gallons in 2017 on the way to the administration's ultimate goal of 60 billion in 2030. Sounds great, but be wary. It may be a mirage.
The great danger of the biofuels craze is that it will divert us from stronger steps to limit dependence on foreign oil: higher fuel taxes to prod Americans to buy more gasoline-efficient vehicles and tougher federal fuel economy standards to force auto companies to produce them. True, Bush supports tougher -- but unspecified -- fuel economy standards. But the implied increase above today's 27.5 miles per gallon for cars is modest, because the administration expects gasoline savings from biofuels to be triple those from higher fuel economy standards.
The politics are simple enough. Americans dislike high fuel prices; auto companies dislike tougher fuel economy standards. By contrast, everyone seems to win with biofuels: farmers, consumers, capitalists. American technology triumphs. Biofuels create rural jobs and drain money from foreign oil producers. What's not to like? Unfortunately, this enticing vision is dramatically overdrawn.
Let's do some basic math. In 2006, Americans used about 7.5 billion barrels of oil. By 2030, that could increase about 30 percent to 9.8 billion barrels, projects the Energy Information Administration.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
The writer ignores recycled biodiesel. My employer (engine repair shop) is heating his shop with engine waste oil. US restaurants produce 28,800,000,000 gallons of used cooking oil per year. When it's burned the exshaust smells like popcorn. Why this resource is so underused is a mystery.
Thermaldepolymerization!!!!!!!!!!!
Coal miners win too, the wet method of corn conversion to ethanol (large scale production) requires huge amounts of coal. Now if sugar cane was used, the production energy would be reduced, but the US doesn't support sugar cane farming.
"Biofuels will even curb greenhouse gases"
HOW???
You are still oxidizing carbon when you burn a biofuel. I don't see how biofuels will alter the so-called carbon footprint. ALL the energy comes from the exothermic bonding of Carbon to Oxygen.
Any FReepers got better ideas?
and don't try to tell me that hydrogen gas is a bio fuel ...
Because it solves the problem, at least in part.
There is money to made and power to be garnered in perpetuating the issue and spreading the 'crisis.'
and natural gas.
Oh by the way, we are running out of corn here in Iowa. Most of the plants cant get it.
Wait a year or two.
Most farmers I've talked to are afraid of history repeating itself, as it has about 20 times in the last 50 years, massive overproduction.
You can't have your cake and burn it, too.
Not sure how they could do it. Take all the land out of CRP and switch others to corn and you might squeeze out 25% more. That wouldn't cover the need with all the ethanol plants that are coming on line.
I guess when a sentence is like this is stuck in the middle of an article it means that man made global warming is an accepted fact.
Watch, see, and learn. They'll do it. They're American Farmers. We have the US Marines, and we also have the US Farmer. Both do amazing things that everyone thinks are impossible to do. Even a cursory look at history bears that out.
In 1986 the corn crop was just under 7 billion bushels. last year it was about 12 billion bushels.
That huge increase in production occured with corn in the $1.25 to $2.50 range, almost the 'disincentive to produce' price. Corn is $3.50 now, and everyone is gearing up to blow the doors off of the production levels on their farms. They're seeing this as their one shot at a repeat of what happened nearly 33 years ago in 1973, a windfall profit year.
This year is going to see a historic bin bursting crop.
Wait until the truly big breakthoughs occur, we'll see 30, 40, 100 billion bushel crops.
Did you know that corn only uses 4% of the sunlight that it receives? The implications of beeding a plant that can increase that percentage are very significant. There are hundres, even thousands, of other ways to affect total yield.
Question: Couldn't we use nuclear power to extract hydrogen from sea water to power hydrogen fuel cell vehicles?
The carbon dioxide that's put into the air by burning biofuel is recycled by the plants that are used to brew the next batch of biofuel. By contrast, burning fossil fuels puts CO2 in the air that wasn't in the carbon cycle before.
--You are still oxidizing carbon when you burn a biofuel. I don't see how biofuels will alter the so-called carbon footprint. ALL the energy comes from the exothermic bonding of Carbon to Oxygen. --
When we burn fossil fuels, we are liberating carbon that has been locked up for eons. When we burn biofuel, we are liberating carbon that was just recently taken from the atmosphere. It's called recycling.
Cellulosic ethanol has to be part of the solution. We can't turn all the corn into ethanol since it has a myriad of other markets.
Was anyone aware that Brazil will soon be independent of foreign oil partly because of sugarcane-produced ethanol.
The crazies never cease to amaze me. They twist any step in the right direction around so they can keep their jobs as alarmists. In an honest world, total world ecological balance and an end to global warming and pollution would put a LOT of people out of a job. But in this world, they'll spin it into some other danger so they can keep the industry going.
"This year is going to see a historic bin bursting crop."
Are we controlling the weather yet? Don't forget this big variable that can't be controlled. I do agree, that production ag continues to increase efficiency at a very rapid rate.
Distillation removes none of the nutrients from corn other than sugar. The principal by-product of ethanol from corn, distiller's dried grains, is a higher quality feed than the corn from which it dervied was originally.
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