Free Republic

Clearly human driven climate change and anthropogenic global warming can not be defeated through political action alone. A challenge this monumental will call for more strident measures. With that in mind, the Obama administration has apparently decided to bring in the big guns… literally. The Pentagon has been ordered to “address climate change.” (Free Beacon) A new directive issued by Pentagon leaders mandates that the agency work to "assess and manage risks associated with the impacts of climate change," according to a copy of the Jan. 14 directive issued by Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work.As the Obama administration...

Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad would like to see Ted Cruz defeated, he said on Tuesday. The Iowa governor, whose powerful network of supporters is a prized political commodity, was speaking to reporters at the Iowa Renewable Fuels Summit. Branstad's son Eric is leading efforts to portray the Texas senator as hostile to ethanol, a narrative Cruz has been trying to stifle in recent weeks. Asked if he'd like the Texas senator to lose, Governor Branstad said, "Yes." "I think it would be very damaging to our state," he continued, according to Iowa's Channel 13 news. "I believe it would be...

Hawaii's last sugar plantation is getting out of the sugar-growing business. Alexander & Baldwin Inc. said Wednesday that it will phase out sugar by the end of this year. Its 36,000 acre-Maui plantation will be divided into smaller farms to grow biofuels and food crops. The land will also provide irrigated pasture to local cattle ranchers. ...

SIOUX CENTER - During a bus tour stop in Sioux Center, Iowa last night, Senator Ted Cruz expressed support for the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) through 2022. Responding to a question from an ethanol investor from Iowa about whether he would allow the landmark energy program to continue through its current expiration in 2022, Sen. Cruz responded by expressing support for the RFS through 2022. Senator Cruz also expressed passionate support for breaking through the so-called "blendwall." That "blendwall" makes it illegal for ethanol to expand its market penetration, and I intend to eliminate the EPA blendwall to get rid...

If you grow it, they will grovel. Something about the cornfields of Iowa makes otherwise sensible conservatives suddenly adopt liberal agriculture policies. In fact, our preferred candidate for President, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, supports a crop insurance provision that was tacked onto the recently approved transportation reauthorization bill. At least he's honest about it. Sen. Ted Cruz flip-flopped on the issue live on the Senate floor. As the Senate clerk was calling the roll on the crop insurance amendment, Cruz voted against it. But after Kansas's Pat Roberts bent his ear, Cruz switched his vote, supporting an additional $3...

On November 30, as the Paris international climate conference was getting underway, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced a long-overdue update of Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) requirements. Originally established in 2005 and then greatly expanded by the Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) of 2007, the RFS mandates increasing use of ethanol, biodiesel and other biofuels in America's cars and trucks. Two things were notable. For the first time, EPA set the overall mandate at levels significantly lower than targets Congress called for in 2007. Second, raising the hackles of the biofuel lobby, the Obama administration omitted the RFS...

US investment in biofuels are to be expanded under proposals advanced by the US EPA. Under the proposed rule announced Friday, the amount of ethanol in the gasoline supply would increase in coming years, just not as much as set out under federal law. That approach drew criticism from ethanol and farm groups that have pushed to keep high volumes of ethanol in gasoline. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton has called for a robust renewable fuels standard while campaigning in Iowa, host of the leadoff presidential caucuses next year. … In a bid to ethanol producers, the administration also...

<p>INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Millions of tax payer dollars stolen and now the company responsible will have to pay for their actions. Investigators say three brothers who ran E-biofuels LLC, out of Muncie, are behind the scheme and it was one of the largest fraud busts in Indiana history.</p>

A new study found that government biofuel policies rely on reductions in food consumption to generate greenhouse gas savings. Shrinking the amount of food that people and livestock eat decreases the amount of carbon dioxide that they breathe out or excrete as waste. The reduction in food available for consumption, rather than any inherent fuel efficiency, drives the decline in carbon dioxide emissions in government models, the researchers found."Without reduced food consumption, each of the models would estimate that biofuels generate more emissions than gasoline,"

Valero Energy Corp. has restarted production at a corn ethanol plant in Indiana that was shuttered more than two years ago by its previous owner. San Antonio-based Valero bought the plant in March from Illinois-based Aventine Renewable Energy Holdings Inc. for $34 million, boosting the number of its ethanol plants to 11. Valero has been preparing the plant for a restart since its purchase. Because the plant has been shuttered for almost two years, “it took a lot of preparation and maintenance,” Valero spokesman Bill Day said, but the company didn’t have to add any new equipment. During the time...

Well, who woulda’ thunk it? The Environmental Protection Agency finally decided to acknowledge the incompatibility of the Renewable Fuel Standard with both America’s declining gasoline consumption and the environmental degradation caused by the production of corn ethanol, thereby obliterating the entirely government-imposed “market” for biofuels — and what do you suppose happens? Via The Hill: Almost eight in 10 biodiesel producers in the United States have cut back production this year due to uncertainty over federal policies that encourage making the fuels, the National Biodiesel Board (NBB) said.The report released Wednesday was based on a survey the NBB conducted. In...

The Obama administration is significantly reducing the amount of cellulosic biofuels refiners will have to prove they blended into gasoline last year, acknowledging that the market lagged far behind government projections.The EPA on Tuesday said it was basing its 2013 standard on the 810,185 ethanol-equivalent gallons produced with nonfood plants last year. …

It’s an improvement, I suppose, over that one time last year when they actually tried to penalize refiners for not complying with the previous year’s standard which also vastly overestimated the amount of the required cellulosic biofuels that would exist in the real world rather than inside their self-righteous faux-green fantasies, but… that is hardly cause for celebration. Via The Hill: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Tuesday retroactively lowered the volume of cellulosic biofuel that refiners must blend into traditional fuels, aligning the 2013 mandated volume to the actual amount of fuels produced.EPA’s original mandate for 2013 was based...

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has just completed a series of landmark reports that chronicle an update to the current state of consensus science on climate change. Its conclusion: On our current path, climate change could pose an irreversible, existential risk to civilization as we know it, but we can still fix it if we decide to work together. But in addition to the call for cooperation, the reports also shared an alarming new trend: Climate change is already destabilizing nations and leading to wars. That finding was highlighted in last week's premiere of Showtime's climate change docu-drama...

Government funded, peer-reviewed study concludes biofuels worse than gasoline for the environmentThe $30 billion or so wasted each year on the federal government’s biofuels mandates and subsidies needs to end now. The program is a complete disaster, and now has been shown to harm the environment, something anti-warmist skeptics (aka, deniers) have warned about for many years.  Even the left wing UK Guardian reports via AP: Biofuels made from the leftovers of harvested corn plants are worse than gasoline for global warming in the short term, a new study shows, challenging the Obama administration's conclusions that they are a much cleaner oil...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) — Biofuels made from the leftovers of harvested corn plants are worse than gasoline for global warming in the short term, a study shows, challenging the Obama administration's conclusions that they are a much cleaner oil alternative and will help combat climate change.</p>

By incentivizing the production and mandating the consumption of first-generation biofuels — predominantly corn-based ethanol — lawmakers hoped to create a transportation fuel revolution. Instead, they've created a legislative monstrosity that has ravaged our land, polluted our air, diverted our water, driven up food prices at home and abroad, put engines at risk and cost U.S. taxpayers billions. In order to meet the excessive ethanol mandates in the RFS, more and more land has been converted to grow corn for fuel — not food. In the 16 years prior to RFS implementation, corn acreage in the U.S. rose by just...

Just when it seemed the hype over biofuels was finally dying down, the New York Times gave biofuel producers a Christmas present. On Christmas Day, on the front page of the newspaper’s business section, the Times published a piece titled “Jet Fuel by the Acre.” Written by Todd Woody, the article touted SGB, a San Diego–based company that has, it says, “succeeded in domesticating jatropha.” The subhead claims, “A start-up cracks the code to turn a bush into fuel.”

After fomenting fears of fracking and fossil fuels, the administration's campaign to put food in our gas tanks has wiped out millions of acres of conservation land, destroyed habitat and polluted water supplies. Ethanol was supposed to save the earth and pave the way to energy independence. It has done neither. We are getting closer to energy independence but it is thanks to the technology known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, that has unleashed our vast reserves of oil and natural gas formerly trapped in shale formations underneath much of the U.S. Fracking was supposed to be environmentally dangerous, a...

Regular readers know that neither Jazz nor myself are exactly what you’d call “fans” of the Renewable Fuel Standard, the epically stupid federal requirement wherein refiners must blend an ever-increasing volume of regulators’ preferred biofuels, or else purchase credits to be excused from the requirement. Through the RFS and various other means, the federal government subsidizes and creates artificial market signals for biofuels — and the fact that biofuels, as everyone involved is perfectly well aware, are absolutely not environmentally friendly, not good for car engines, and jack up world food prices, is not a deterrent. The Big Ethanol lobby,...