Inconvenient truth: people will go hungry

Long before man-caused global warming kills people and topples governments, the man-caused scare over global warming is going to have the same effect.

Unlike the myth of man-made global warming, the scare is real, and it is here today.

The secretary-general of the United Nations told reporters in Austria on Friday that the sudden and steep rise in food prices worldwide has developed into a global crisis.

With shortages of affordable food spreading around the world, food-related unrest has broken out in nations as diverse as Egypt, Haiti, Indonesia and Afghanistan.

One of the base causes of the shortages is the effect of global-warming concerns in the United States, where it is estimated that 30 percent of the nation’s corn crop now is devoted to the production of ethanol, rather than going into the food chain. As the “food basket” of the world, what happens in crop production in the U.S. affects the world food supply.

A noted professor of applied economics and law at the University of Minnesota, C. Ford Runge, has concluded that ethanol production in the United States - a product of the global-warming scare - has had a “clearly substantial” effect on the world food crisis.

Meanwhile, former vice president and Oscar winner Al Gore, father of the global-warming scare, has been uncharacteristically silent - as have been his liberal cheerleaders in the media.

As far as subsidys, I suspect you will find numerous businesses and industries like airlines, railroads, busses, highway construction and many others that get some kind of subsidy or tax break. What is bailing out the banks who made bad mortgages and loans? Looks like a Wall Street Subsidy to me. The bonuses some of the Wall Streeters made last year was more than many of us make in 5 years. Do they look like they need a subsidy?

railroads, busses, highway construction-More useful to the public than Ethanol, but the taxpayer coughs up too much to local gov't on ridiculous mandates that continue to keep the unions employed.

Protecting oil companies oil wells in the Persian Gulf is a Billion Dollar a Month subsidy, is it not? Escorting oil tankers through foreign seas so they can make it to America is a huge subsidy also.

Here's a hint...the military actually USES what the oil companies have to offer.

A few farmer/ investors getting a low interest loan (the ethanol subsidy) for a few million dollars to build an ethanol plant that employs local workers, and saves transporting grain hundreds of miles is pennies on the dollar compared to protecting big oil companies so you can enjoy your $3.50 a gallon gas on your drive to the grocery store.

You're making the same argument Hillary Clinton and Co. make when they say they "created more jobs"...when all they did was expand gov't. How is Ethanol keeping gas at 3.50? When oil fell in the mid 80's, Ethanol was STILL carried on the backs of taxpayers and was more expensive. So please, don't think ethanol is doing the tax payer any favor by "saving us" from big oil

I would expect someone who works for big oil to naysay ethanol. They can’t have that government protected energy monopoly anymore. All the protection money big oil has extorted from the American taxpayer is being cut off.
We don’t need to prop up any islamofacist dictatorships in farm country to make our living.

There could be a lot more oil producing states, offsetting the agriculture states, if the idiots would let domestic oil production and exploration resume.

The farm belt has replaced the rust belt in significance.
Agriculture is about the only thing still made in America.
Get used to it.

If you would like to see a return to $2.00 a bushel corn, then you will no longer see corn produced for any reason. Farming is a business and anyone with brains knows you can’t work for nothing and survive.

I highly doubt corn production will stop, because corn growers didn't get their welfare checks. This nonsense of a zero sum game in producing corn is ridiculous, b/c corn was being produced for many years before Carter came along and gave us "The Gov't solution" that you so love.

Moreover, the only reason corn growers get free pass is b/c there are 60 senators from Agri-states, who are beholden to them. Nobody mentions anything about how much corn is used in syrup for soda and soda demand is skyrocketing. Ethanol demand makes up less than 10% of the price of corn. Exports and speculators have run up food commodities just the same as they have run up the cost of a barrell of oil.

So in order to keep up with the demand overproduction happens. Continued overproduction causes the price of corn to fall; taxpayers must increase subsidy payments to corn growers, to offset the falling price.

What's worse is that continued high corn prices cause a shift in demand to other crops and products that use corn.

Yet again, even when oil fell in the 80's Ethanol was still propped up by taxpayers to offset the losses of corn growers.

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