Posted on 03/29/2008 3:33:03 AM PDT by stickman20089
Yet another prominent scientist has joined the chorus against crop-derived biofuels, as Lewis Page reports.
Dr Richard Pike, chief of the Royal Society of Chemistry, has said that biofuels are a "dead end" and "extremely inefficient", and that the government was wrong to impose a requirement for 5 per cent biofuel content in motor fuel by 2010.
Dr Pike points out that "the 80 tonnes of kerosene used for a one-way commercial flight to New York is equivalent to the annual biofuel yield from an area of approximately 30 football pitches." At this rate it would take the whole of Britain's farmland just to run Heathrow.
It really is time to stop this nonsense. To produce these crops people are farming intensively, using more fertilizers and pesticides. In poorer countries people are cutting down virgin rainforest to plant biofuel crops. Poor people are finding corn and wheat priced out of their market, and the tanks of 4x4s are taking the food from the plates of poor families.
(Excerpt) Read more at adamsmith.org ...
Well, that just the corn average Americans refuse to eat. < /sar >
All kidding aside, these probably are contracted sales. With the price of corn going though the roof, I imagine exports will decrease in the future
Then read how we gave up on getting free because some clueless people decided to love oil more than freedom.
The rest has been known for a while, but you can't switch to major use of Ethanol as a fuel without having any Ethanol to switch to. This is a sucker play for those who want to give over the care and guidance of our country to foreign interests.
You are just knee jerking. Learn more, think more.. this war will not be won in Iraq alone. This is the time to get even more determined to exert our freedom.
Understand, Grain based Ethanol is a passing thing.. but a necessary thing. Do not let folks talk you into surrendering here at home.. when we are winning abroad.
Cue the HEMP lobby!
Just wait til there’s a DROUGHT!!! Idiocy!
Just wait til there’s a DROUGHT!!! Idiocy!
This is because we are vulnerable, more than folks apparently understand.
If we withdrew ethanol from Gasoline mixes now, the price of Gasoline would rise perhaps significantly. Not because, we would have less fuel, though this would probably tighten the fuel market considerably.. but as we will have given up our escape plan, the futures market would push the price of a barrel to $150 or more with no possibility of relief.
One of the distortions that is being used is that it takes more fuel to create a gallon of ethanol than a gallon of ethanol, and this is probably true.. but its not like you think. Not a gallon of gasoline, but equivalent energy such as Natural Gas, and fuel in creating the various components such as the yeasts and processing the waste materials. Such that we gain more than 1 gallon per gallon of ethanol produced. But, the problem of mass producing enzymes and yeasts for truly large scale production from non-grain sources is being worked out and this takes time and capital and testing at scale.
This has been laid out as a national security priority and not as as the most economical move in the short term but buying oil in a tight fuel market is not the most economical move.. but we will be glad if one day we find our supply cut by 25%.
Now many folks want to get us into a corner so badly that we have to start drilling and refining US Oil reserves, but that corner may not be something we get to turn. Its very much like deciding to elect a Democrat to show the rascally Republicans they need to shape up. Folks tried that in 2006 and see what we got, more Democrats and tax increases already passed to make the additional cost of fuel a joke compared to what they plan to take out of your pocket directly.
This is how conservatives are knee jerked into self-defeat.
Don't fall for it.
I suggest you take your wife for a Burkha fitting.
Grain based ethanol is costly and as the price of fuel and grain goes up, it gets more costly. You don't have to whine, knee jerk or legislate to stop its production. Economics are against it in the long term, but the short term requires ethanol to be produced in mass quantities before we attempt to produce it in truly massive quantities.
Right now, many different technologies are being tested, literally tens of test plants all competing to find which processes deliver the goods. The plan is to produce Ethanol for less than $1.50 per gallon by 2011 and that would force the price of gasoline down to about $2.30 more or less over the next 10 years. And by 2022, we will have replaced our entire dependence on the Mid-East.
Which means we still need to produce or buy the other 75% from Canada, Mexico and our own production.
Drawing it in a cartoon doesn’t make it true. I need, maybe 10 gallons of fuel to plant, fertilize, spray and harvest an acre of corn. That acre will yield 200 bushels, which in turn will yield almost 600 gallons of ethanol and 3,600# of distillers dried grains.
We can import ethanol from Brazil for far less than we produce it here. US ethanol production is payola to special interests, farmers and their politicians, nothing else.
CEO’s can make millions of dollars but thats ok by some on FR, but the minute a farmer starts to get a fair price for his crops, then the complaining starts. Go figure. Corn is just like anything else, no one really cared until oil went up and corn became more valuable because of ethanol. Then here come the speculators driving up the price and the farmer gets blamed. The real news is the everyday farmer is not the one making the big money from this. For those who think that the corn just simply disappears here is some info. http://www.ethanol.org/index.php?id=38&parentid=8#Distillers%20Grain
I’m not defending or promoting ethanol, just defending the American farmer. There have been reports that defend both points of view pro and con, so the jury is still out IMO.
These amazing scientists, they have time to do their science and time oeft over to jump into politics.
Big Corn and Ethanol Hoax
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WalterEWilliams/2008/03/12/big_corn_and_ethanol_hoax
A texan here to give you the “comprehensive oil independency intiative.”
1. Drill the East and West coasts for oil.
2. Drill the East and west coasts for Methane Hydrate.
3. Drill the Gulf for oil.
4. Drill Alaska for oil.
5. Drill the Gulf for Methane Hydrate.
6. Drill The Antarctic for oil.
7. Begin processing the oil shale.
8. Expand available farm land for diesel and ethanol. Say, 140 million acres or so can be put into production.
At this point, Saudi Arabia is a small player and we can afford to tell them to take a hike.
Dr. Williams has been misinformed.
What form of energy source to provide heat is required to process oil from shale?
Where is Dr. Williams’ column wrong? Just saying he has been misinformed is not helpful.
For instance, the claim that ethanol is less "efficient" than gasoline. Ethanol has a lower BTU content than an equivalent volume of gasoline, but it burns more efficiently. That is, less of it remains unburned (which is why it is added as an oxygenate to gasoline). Perform your own little experiment , if you wish. The next time the little woman hosts a pot luck after church, empty the ethanol out of one of the burners under the warming tray and substitute gasoline to see if anybody notices.
Dr. Williams also assumes that corn used as ethanol feedstock is not available for feed; it is. While people don't eat the same grades of corn used for ethanol, livestock do and all of the nutrients contained in the corn originally, except for the starch, remain in the spent distillers grains.
Dr. Williams also assumes that the ethanol blenders' credit (which is paid to oil companies, not farmers or distillers) is a subsidy on top of crop production subsidies; it is not. The use of corn for ethanol has raised the price of corn above the target levels, eliminating direct subsidy payments (and actually reducing corn subsides from the levels paid prior to the ethanol boom - even if the payments to the oil companies are thought of as farm subsides).
Dr. Williams claims that it takes 1,700 gallons of water to grow a bushel of corn. I dunno, that may be right. But what Dr. Williams doesn't mention is that the water is called "rainfall". In my part of the mid-west, we get about a million gallons of rainfall per year per acre, whether we grow corn or not. What Dr. Williams should have mentioned is that it takes about 8 gallons of water to refine a gallon of gasoline, but only about 3 gallons to distill a gallon of ethanol.
It's that sort of stuff.
Annoying “politically correct” things, that may never go away because they generate government/corporate revenue and increase political power:
Biofuels
Swirly bulbs
Plastic, or was it paper
Global Climate Change
Road toll’s
Taxes (insert type)
Plastic auto bumbers (oxymoron)
Fees (unregulated taxes)
Seat belt alarms
“Press 1 For English”
Ms
Right Turn Only
“Gas only” fireplaces
Ted Kennedy
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