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How government makes things worse
Boston Globe ^ | March 9, 2008 | Jeff Jacoby

Posted on 03/09/2008 9:25:00 AM PDT by Kaslin

WHAT DO ethanol and the subprime mortgage meltdown have in common? Each is a good reminder of that most powerful of unwritten decrees, the Law of Unintended Consequences - and of the all-too-frequent tendency of solutions imposed by the state to exacerbate the harms they were meant to solve.

Take ethanol, the much-hyped biofuel made (primarily) from corn. Ethanol has been touted as a weapon in the fashionable crusade against climate change, because when mixed with gasoline, it modestly reduces emissions of carbon dioxide. Reasoning that if a little ethanol is good, a lot must be better, Congress and the Bush administration recently mandated a sextupling of ethanol production, from the 6 billion gallons produced last year to 36 billion by 2022.

But now comes word that expanding ethanol use is likely to mean not less CO{-2} in the atmosphere, but more. Instead of reducing greenhouse gas emissions from gasoline by 20 percent - the estimate Congress relied on in requiring the huge increase in production - ethanol use will cause such emissions to nearly double over the next 30 years.

The problem, laid out in two new studies in the journal Science, is that it takes a lot of land to grow biofuel feedstocks such as corn, and as forests or grasslands are cleared for crops, large amounts of CO{-2} are released. Diverting land in this fashion also eliminates "carbon sinks," which absorb atmospheric CO{-2}. Bottom line: The government's ethanol mandate will generate a "carbon debt" that will take decades, maybe centuries, to pay off.

(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society; Editorial
KEYWORDS: algore; demagogues; gigo

1 posted on 03/09/2008 9:25:01 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

See also: thread on grief counselors.


2 posted on 03/09/2008 9:25:51 AM PDT by relictele (Liberal: one who walks away from a TSA queue still convinced government can solve problems.)
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To: Kaslin

The Boston Globe??


3 posted on 03/09/2008 9:26:41 AM PDT by Lancey Howard
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To: relictele
See also: thread on grief counselors.

Do you have a link to that thread?

4 posted on 03/09/2008 9:35:31 AM PDT by DumpsterDiver
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To: DumpsterDiver

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1982887/posts


5 posted on 03/09/2008 9:37:05 AM PDT by relictele (Liberal: one who walks away from a TSA queue still convinced government can solve problems.)
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To: Kaslin

Just how does Jeff Jacoby survive day to day? I’d pay money to see someone do a documentary of his roamings about the Boston Globe offices. He must endure slings, arrows, brickbats and scowls, the likes of what we can only imagine at every turn in that Godforsaken land of Liberal Fascism!


6 posted on 03/09/2008 9:40:54 AM PDT by So Circumstanced
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To: Kaslin

Government makes things worse—so let’s turn our healthare over as well.


7 posted on 03/09/2008 9:42:18 AM PDT by Neverforget01
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To: Fiddlstix; Defendingliberty; WL-law; Genesis defender; proud_yank; FrPR; CygnusXI; enough_idiocy; ..
 


8 posted on 03/09/2008 9:46:11 AM PDT by steelyourfaith
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To: Kaslin

“The problem, laid out in two new studies in the journal Science, is that it takes a lot of land to grow biofuel feedstocks such as corn, and as forests or grasslands are cleared for crops”

An outright lie. Cropland has always been cropland. There is little to no land being used for crop production that hasn’t already been used for crops before.

There is more CO2 being emitted from lack of proper forest management, allowing tens of millions of acres of vegetated land to burn rampantly. Wild fires are a total mismanagement of timber resources that could effectively reduce CO2 naturally. Burning off the forests makes no sense. But the environmental freakos can overlook wildfires.

Yet they are crying about some cropland that produces corn that is processed into ethanol, and high protein corn feed byproducts.
What a crock of BS.


9 posted on 03/09/2008 9:46:58 AM PDT by o_zarkman44 (No Bull in 08!)
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To: o_zarkman44

Dumb move on their part. There are a lot of reasons to be against ethanol. Yet, they always seem to focus on imaginary reasons.


10 posted on 03/09/2008 9:50:09 AM PDT by Balding_Eagle (If America falls, darkness will cover the face of the earth for a thousand years.)
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To: relictele
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1982887/posts

Thanks for the link. It was an interesting read.

11 posted on 03/09/2008 9:54:27 AM PDT by DumpsterDiver
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To: Kaslin

Anybody want to buy some carbon credits? Almost got em printed up.


12 posted on 03/09/2008 9:55:30 AM PDT by Waco
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A Global Need for Grain That Farms Can’t Fill
NYT | 03/09/08 | DAVID STREITFELD
Posted on 03/08/2008 10:42:12 PM PST by TigerLikesRooster
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1982761/posts


13 posted on 03/09/2008 11:05:29 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/______________________Profile updated Saturday, March 1, 2008)
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Repeal the Bradley Amendment
Human Events Online | 2-27-06 | Phyllis Schlafly
Posted on 02/28/2006 3:22:02 AM EST by Orlando
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1586861/posts

“...A prime example is the 1986 federal Bradley Amendment, which mandates that a child support debt cannot be retroactively reduced or forgiven even if the debtor is unemployed, hospitalized, in prison, sent to war, dead, proved to not be the father, never allowed to see his children, or loses his job or suffers a pay cut.”


14 posted on 03/09/2008 11:14:44 AM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/______________________Profile updated Saturday, March 1, 2008)
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To: Kaslin
Another bonehead move (signing this bill) by our esteemed leader in the White House; that and banning incandescent bulbs as well as buying into the whole GloBull Warming Hoax.

Realize he is up to his neck with the WOT, but he needs to keep some focus on domestic issues as well, other than working on providing amnesty for illegals and opening borders for all.

Hey Jorge, wake up and smell the gasoline fumes, for before long, we won't have any to smell.

15 posted on 03/09/2008 11:40:42 AM PDT by Conservative Vermont Vet (One of ONLY 37 Conservatives in the People's Republic of Vermont. Socialists and Progressives All)
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To: Neverforget01

They make life worse just by showing up for work every day.


16 posted on 03/09/2008 11:45:10 AM PDT by mulligan
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To: Tex Pete

ping for later


17 posted on 03/09/2008 11:50:11 AM PDT by Tex Pete (Obama for Change: from our pockets, our piggy banks, and our couch cushions)
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To: Kaslin

bttt


18 posted on 03/09/2008 12:33:43 PM PDT by Smokin' Joe (How often God must weep at humans' folly.)
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