A Polar Bear on an ice flow in Manitoba, Canada where increasing temperatures have brought rapid environmental change (AFP File Photo)
Elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere, this phenomenon is commonly referred to as “spring.”
Still, the EU is determined that the conversion of foodstuffs into environmentally friendly fuels isn’t a matter of great concern:
The EU Commission on Monday rejected claims that producing biofuels is a “crime against humanity” that threatens food supplies, and vowed to stick to its goals as part of a climate change package.
“There is no question for now of suspending the target fixed for biofuels,” said Barbara Helfferich, spokeswoman for EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas.
“You can’t change a political objective without risking a debate on all the other
objectives,” which could see the EU landmark climate change and energy package disintegrate, an EU official said.After all, there are too many Haitians, right? And they really have done quite a job of messing up their environment, haven’t they? Wouldn’t want to mess with those targets.
But perhaps, if there are still any Haitians around, Haiti might prove the sort of country that really could use some US military redeployment.
UPDATE: Twenty Chicagoans dead due to global warming
I am no friend of the Euoropeans and their rules about just about everything and I think that global warming has been hyped out of all proportion…. But I have to say after years and years of low commodity prices there is nothing horrible about $6 corn. I used to farm and I damn near lost my ass working 7 days a week on that farm. It took outside income to pay the bills.
I had to listen to all sorts of people treat me like welfare queen because of the horrors of subsidies and time and again people told me that if we just got rid of the subsidies, prices would go up and that would help poor countries. After all subsidies keep prices down and they can’t compete and they need to be able to make money growing crops. etc.
Most of the money you pay for food does not go to the farmer. There are all sorts of people between the farmer and the table and when producers are paying $4 for a gallon of diesel fuel they are not exactly working with a huge profit margin here. I can remember corn prices 40 years that were just about the same as corn prices 5 years ago. It is not rational to expect corn to stay at $2 a bushel forever.
I think that turning garbage into oil makes more sense, but a lot of money and resources have been put into these bio diesel plants. It is not reasonable to just pull the plug on them now. Brazil has huge reserves of oil and they also use bio fuels.
A lot of those people are so poor that food would have to be free for them to afford it. What they need are resources that allow them to have some income. This is about free markets. I have noticed that even on the right there is a tendency to like markets a lot more when stuff is cheap. Unless you happen to be the one selling of course.
And besides, all the commodities are higher right now. Just look at gold and oil.
I’m sorry, but although I’ve never begrudged farmers price supports, I am one of those who feels that people’s lives are more important than ADM.
Terrye – it’s called blood money. What we should do is turn the starving Haitians and Africans into something useful… can we cram them in our gas tanks? in this manner, we can de-populate as well as re-formulate all in one fell swoop. We could have bumper stickers for our cars that make us feel good… “This Car Runs on 85% Dark Meat”
Blood money? Are you serious? In 1977 the price of corn was about $1.89, if you figured inflation that would be over $6 a bushel right now. And how much of those prices you see now are due to higher fuel prices? And what about the processors and the people who make a living retailing the food? Is it blood money for them?
For years I listened to people who hate subsidies talk about what a great thing higher prices would be for poor countries. Why they could create wealth growing crops if only those subsidies did not keep prices at low levels.
How do you know that these prices would not be higher anyway? And is that what the right is going to say? That farmers have to limit markets for their products and restrain prices for the poor, but no one else has to?
Anthropogenic Warming (A.W.) is not established to the extent many think. A consensus is not a substitute for a proven event. The probabilistic modeling used to predict climate changes are scenarios and only as good as the parameters & defined variables in the model. Remember the Ptolemy Model for plantary motion. It was the consesus for hundreds of years until Copernicus came along. The facts about A.W. are that the phenomenon is poorly understood and contaminated by skewed data
Case in point:
Anthony Watts is a broadcast meteorologist who is leading an all-volunteer effort to photograph and document all of the weather stations in the GHCN. He started in the US and now 1/3 of US stations have been photographed. 85% of them do not meet the minimum standards of NOAA and have a strong warm bias. The NOAA specifies that temperature sensors should be a minimum of 100 feet away from buildings, concrete, and asphalt.
This indicates that up to half of the observed warming is not real. Watts presented his findings to scientists at UCAR. You can see examples of warming bias here:
http://www.norcalblogs.com/watts/weather_stations/
In a little town not far from me they finished a bio diesel plant that had been under construction for years. It took YEARS for this plant to get up and running, it is jobs for people in a rural area where there are not just a lot of jobs and now a bunch of self righteous city people are going to accuse them of making their living off of blood money.
News flash: those folks were starving before there was biofuel. You can look it up folks.
And what is more that corn is being grown by American farmers, it is not crude being sold by the Saudis.
Terrye – I dont particularly care if it took centuries to build those friggin processing plants. Tom Harkin and the Corn Growers along w Al butthead Gore sold us a bunch of crap. Now, the planet’s population is in greater peril because of the mandates. “Gore Lied, Haitians Died”. Take the bio diesel plant and recycle it to do something else… like a museum to a hall of shame. Name it after Tom Harkin.
As for employing people… hmmm… prostitution employs people. Selling crack employs people. And anyway, in accordance with your “logic”, we could say “those people were unemployed long before the plant was built”. so, BFD.
I tell you what. I think drug companies should give their AIDS meds to Africans. After all those people are dying, they have no money and to try and squeeze it out of them is blood money. Nothing less.
And why just Africans? By all means let’s make health care free. Heaven forbid people should pay for something they can not live without.
I think that it might be more useful to the Haitians to try and help them create an economy so that they can actually afford to buy food and gas and meds. But what the hell.
If people were going to call people monsters for making ethanol maybe they should have thought about that a long time ago.
Blood money. Christ.
Enoch:
Oh please. This is not about Al Gore. In fact I live in Indiana and Lugar has been pushing ethanol for years. And for years corn was cheap and those people were still starving because they are poor. There is not a shortage of corn now. No more than there is a shortage of oil.
Do you want the state to fix the price?
Enoch:
When it comes to be a condescending urban prick you could give Obama a run for his money. My point is that a lot of money has been invested in that plant. The investors are not monsters.
And you know what? It is the farmer who has to grow that corn. You won’t. Like most consumers you think that farmer was put on this earth to feed you and if he can make a little something in the process that is ok…but his real reason for being is to service others. To feed the poor people.
We have been using corn for sweeteners in coca cola for years. We have been using it to make plastic. Corn has all sorts of purposes. Soy has been used for making oil for years as well. The only thing new here is that the whole issue of corn will be politicized just like global warming has been and a lot of people who do not know what they are talking about will try to make a political issue of it all.
Terrye, I feel your pain because it’s mine too.
In my area we used to raise cattle, sheep, and goats. I’ll tell you how bad it is: there is no longer anywhere in my county to sell them. That’s right — it’s not just the producers; there wasn’t even enough money in it to support an auction!
That being said — there’s a word for turning food into fuel, and the word is insanity. The world as a whole produces enough food for everyone; shortages are almost always due to the failure of politicians, not of farmers. Never the less, the margin is not anywhere near enough to justify food-based biofuels. That’s not even counting satisfying your pique with Exxon-Mobil by replacing them with Archer-Daniels-Midland.
I have friends and customers in Iowa and Nebraska. They, too, are ecstatic. They are also incredibly shortsighted, because when the actual outcome (as opposed to the theoretical benefits) if this crap become apparent, they’re going to be such deep-dyed villains in the eyes of the world that hiring Sauron to do them in will sound perfectly reasonable. The damned leftists who set it up aren’t going to carry the can for their misrepresentations, either. They have too much political pull. Farmers have none.
Yeah, you’re going to make money for a little while. But the payback is going to be, in the vernacular, a m– f–r.
Regards,
Ric
Terrye – If people were going to call people monsters for making ethanol maybe they should have thought about that a long time ago.
Many of us were. But we had the 10% mandates crammed down our throats for teh environment.
When it comes to be a condescending urban prick you could give Obama a run for his money.
I am not an Urbanite. A prick maybe.
Do you want the state to fix the price
No. But I do not think we should be in the business of subsidies (also price fixing) of anything. $.50 on the gallon for an inferior product no one but Harkin and Lugar and the Cornholers want. It is less efficient, more costly to produce than refining oil, and is causing prices to sky-rocket. Did you know (and I know you must), this is the first year ever that the US has had to import foreign-grown corn.
Shall I go on? And if you do not value life… all life. Then on what foundation is your Conservatism built?
My point is that a lot of money has been invested in that plant. The investors are not monsters.
If by monster you mean someone who is willing to make money in spite of any ethical consideration, then by all means invest in RJ Reynolds…
but his real reason for being is to service others. To feed the poor people.
I call BS on this. The myth of the independent farmer is just that… gone the way of the dinosaurs. small producers are just part of the larger macro BIG FarmingCo now. Dont give me the sob story of the family farm. Yes, farmers have been milking the golden cow for far too long.
Obesity is epidemic in the USA and you’re worried about a some biofuels?
I don’t think it’s a problem nor a solution.
Ric:
Well the infrastructure dies with the farmers. Who is the last guy going to sell to?
Fine, so let them turn garbage into fuel, fine with me. But that does not make this blood money.
Back in the 80s people started talking about growing grain for fuel in an effort to help create more energy diversification and independence. The intent was never to starve people.
And I am not sure it is starving people today. The prices of commodities like corn stayed so low for so long that people seem to think that any rise is a crime against humanity.
Back in the early 50’s my grandfather could sell a crop of corn and clear enough money to buy a tractor. No way could he do that today. Were those people starving then? Were they producing more of their own food? What is the difference? Because blaming farmers is insane.
My God, with fuel where it is higher prices are necessary if people are going to be able to grow anything.
some biofuels could be beneficial by using nonfood vegetation for example
starvation is not a problem usually of lack of available food but is a problem of lack of funds to pay for existing food or a lack of distribution of distant food sources.
enoch:
Oh yeah, I like that. Trash the farmer. Bitch at him when the prices are low and the subsidies are high and bitch at him when the prices are high and the subsidies will not even kick in. Well, if that life is such a gravy train my friend where the hell is everyone?
Tell you what, grow your own food. Buy a cow, feed it, breed it, birth it and milk it. You don’t need that farmer.
Ric, as usual, said what I was going to say, only better.
Terrye – the price of groceries has gone up some 35% over the course of the last year in Wisconsin alone. Dont tell me about not being able to afford a new tractor. We cant afford shit either. Gas at $3.50/gallon, dairy, beef, poultry, cheese all sky-rocketing. Why? well, because the farmers cant afford to feed their livestock… because of teh ethanol.
And no one said farmers did this on purpose. I think they would have rightly been appalled had they foreseen the UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES. But now that their neighbors are set to be corn millionaires, all bets are off. Everybody’s in… they have a word for that. And that word has to do with the WHO touring without Keith Moon.
“You can’t change a political objective without risking a debate on all the other
objectives,†which could see the EU landmark climate change and energy package disintegrate, an EU official said.
– Yes, we know. Its called the law of unintended consequences, and because the Left willfully ignores such things, along with long term planning, you have the prime reason no one wants to trust them with the keys to the liquor cabinet.
Terrye – this is not a personal attack. If I am wrong in the assertions, refute them. I am open to learning and changing my position. Convince me.
I tell you what, right now farmers pay property taxes that are in far in excess of what most Haitians make in a decade or two. Let’s just do away with those taxes and then the farmer won’t need a whopping $6 for a bushel of corn.
And what is more you can stop telling him how to farm and what land is a wet land and what land has to go into conservation. You stop eating up his land with your subdivisions and zoning his ass out of his business.
You can tell the FDA and the EPA and the USDA and all the other alphabets to get off his back and let him farm what he wants, when he wants and the way he wants.
And since we are so damn worried about the Haitians we can ask the rest of America to go on this austerity trip. No reason why the farmer should be making this sacrifice for the poor alone.
Tell the people who turn that corn into something people can actually eat that they have to cut their profit margins. Because thus far when farm prices go down, food prices do not follow. They keep up with the rate of inflation even when corn and soybeans and milk go down. Gotta do something about that, sounds like blood money to me.
Enoch:
I spent my youth and years of my life working for less than minimum wage on that farm. I milked the cows with a broken bone because my husband was working off the farm and someone had to milk the cows. It is damn personal to me. I was a farmer for too many years for it to be anything else.
Cry me a river about your taxes. I live in Wisconsin.
As for telling the govt agencies where to go, I agree.
But look, you take money from the devil and the devil has a price. And the price is regulation.
Terrye – again, this is not a personal attack. Just refute what my assertions are. Like I said, I love to learn and I would love to hear a farmer’s side of it.
A subsidy is a deficiency payment. It is the difference between basic cost of production and market prices. High commodity prices restrains subsidies. That is why so many people who hate subsidies and assume that farmers will grow corn no matter how crappy the price is were wanting the subsidies gone. They thought prices would go up on the world market and that would be good for poorer countries who could not afford to pay the subsidies and needed the higher market prices. Now the prices are higher and the same people are bitching that it is in fact bad for the poor.
What they really want is low prices forever and ever until the end of time. Screw the market.
And gas prices have gone up more than that enoch, go yell at the Saudis. And for years when those commodity prices were going down enoch, did the grocery prices go down? Did anyone even bother to wonder about that?
– BTW, just to give your ulcer garden an additional boost, at $4 dollars a gallon, fuel will just reach the same cost/value ratio it had in 1974. I know that Ric knows the answer to this question, but I’ll pose it for comments from the pw peanut gallery.
“What is the real difference for the consumer now versus the 1974 time period, given real fuel prices, adjusted for inflation, are roughly the same, if not in fact, still slightly lower?”
– (intelligibility counts as 50% of your final score)
Terrye,, that sounds like a lot of work, growing your own food. Yupp. They’d better think twice before trashing the farmer.
No, what I want is for a bushel of corn to cost what it should cost. I want farmers to compete to grow the best product for the right reasons. I want farms that cannot compete with other farms to go out of business. I want the government and pork monkeys to go to hell. I want the market, not Harkin and his buddies, to determine what the market wants, what it needs, and what it is willing to pay and from whom it prefers to buy to rule.
Corn millionares? Do you know how insane that is? Corn was damn near this high 20 freaking years ago.
Teh Investors, Terrye. Teh Bubblin Crude of Corn.
And what is what it should cost enoch? Who gets to decide that?
So let us pass a law and say it is blood money for anything that can be eaten to be turned into fuel. Years ago a friend of mine said that African farmers used sunflowers for fuel. Is that blood money?
Terrye,, that sounds like a lot of work, growing your own food. Yupp. They’d better think twice before trashing the farmer.
DataDave – trashing lawyers hasnt seem to have had an impact on the liaring profession. trashing professors hasnt seemed to have had any impact either. what makes you think trashing farmers will stop them from doing what they do?
Terrye – And what is what it should cost enoch? Who gets to decide that?
erm… the market
I’d explain supply and demand at Terrye, but she’d probably shoot at me. Hey, you asked.
And the expression is “chip on the shoulder,” not “ship on the shoulder,” which confusion may have led to the Aircraft Carrier on her shoulder, with airplanes and crew.
You want farmers to compete? Well that is where that property tax thing you care so little about the alphabets come into play. You want farmer to compete, but you want to pretend it is a level playing field and it is not.
bbh, where are your sources? We’ve passed the 1974 level awhiles back in the $3.30 a gallon range I heard on NPR awhiles back.
And of course your sources neglect the far greater percentage of income now going into health care, insurance, communications and debt than the average person had in the ’70’s.
I lived the ’70s and it was tough…but things were incredibly cheap then too. A good studio apartment was a 100 a month. And gas was too. (even with inflation included.) The ’70 oil crisis was a crisis of lack of petro, not costs. ‘course we didn’t drive SUVs then and even muscle cars had better mileage than many of the cars on the roads today. But then I had a ten speed bike and a VW bug and that was cheap driving for sure. Fuel for heating got tough in the later 70s that’s for sure and much of that was due to speculation and Mobil’s monopolistic control (then as now).
ahhhh. bring on the subsidies… bring on the tariffs. bring on the protectionism. … and then, for good measure, bring on Ethanol. Sounds like a viable plan.
Well enoch, the market has set these prices at what you call blood money levels.
Terrye, you misunderstand me. I don’t begrudge you the money, although I wish some of it would come my way — but our area isn’t favorable for corn growing, and my place is too small to be profitable anyway.
I’m talking about next year or the year after that. Grain, to a close first approximation, is fungible — grain grown in one area can be swapped with that from somewhere else at no or low cost. People have preferences, like the different sorts of rice favored in different parts of the oriental lands, but in general you can make things out of most any grain. What that means is that if prices go up, or there’s a shortage, in one area, the effects are felt throughout the world. High prices or short supplies in Nebraska means people in Kyrgystan get less to eat.
And when that works its way through the world’s markets, the Left is going to go insane(r). Fatcat plutocrats stealing food from the poor is going to be the least of their accusations. You don’t like what Enoch is saying; what’re you going to say when that, and worse, is what people are saying all over the planet, with no dissenting voices and no defenders for you? And those of us who are paying, rather than profiting, are going to lose by it, too. How would you like a United Nations Energy Agency, with the legal power to tell you what kind of car you can drive and how warm your house can be in winter? It could happen, and pictures of starving Africans juxtaposed with shots of people commuting in dually pickups will be part of the propaganda. That’s what the people who have tricked you into this want, and they’re rubbing their hands in gleeful anticipation of the campaign to put it in place, while you congratulate yourself for finally making a living.
You’ve been had, Terrye. The worst part of it is that you’re gonna take the rest of us with you when you go down.
Regards,
Ric
Mero:
Supply and demand is a concept I understand. I think it is enoch who is having a problem with it.
no. the market is getting f&*^% by the subsidies, tariffs, and protectionism that our poor farming brethren have been voting into office and investing in.
But an investment in a personal computer and a high-speed connection eliminates buying music, movies and porn from your budget. C’mon, dataD, gotta look on the bright side sometimes.
well Enoch, you’re right in that all people can and should be critically examined. Farmer’s too.
My thoughts are similar to Michael Pollin’s: too much corn, too much use of petro. to farm. (called “Heavy Metal Farming”) too much debt for farmers to keep getting bigger and more in debt. Too much competition between farmers and too little between processors and monopolistic agra businesses. Prices for food probably should be higher for better food and lower prices for our inflated health care system. And less parasitic legal entities such as lawyers true.
There’s a problem with bio diesel and ethanol.
I work to earn money, first and foremost to buy food. To do that I have to buy gas to put in my car to get back and forth to work. With bio fuels, I’m not putting food in my car to enable me to buy food? Might as well get a horse.
And that’d be a godsend to someone. My dad raises horses (you haven’t got a corner on the market for carring about rural people, Terrye) and there is no market. He keeps breeding his mares though and using the money he gets from his law enforcement pension to feed them. Someday someone may want to biuy horses and I guess he’s banking on sooner than later.
My grandfather was a dairy farmer. Maybe you’d like to talk about the price of milk sometime? I know that despite milk selling at nealy $4/gallon in my neighborhood, that the farmers aren’t seeing anything like that. Milk is a little different though, prices are far more directly controlled by the government than other food.
But back to fuel, ethanol has been a huge corporate welfare boondoggle. Congress enacted a law that allowed car manufacturers to take excess mileage credits on any vehicle they built that was capable of burning an 85% blend of ethanol, better known as E85. General Motors took advantage of the credits, building relatively large volumes of the Suburban as a certified E85 vehicle. Although in real life that generation of the Suburban got less than 15 mpg, the credits it earned GM against its CAFE ratings meant that on paper, the Suburban delivered more than 29 mpg. What the excess mileage credits actually did was save Detroit millions each year in penalties it would have owed for not meeting the CAFE regulations’ mileage standards.
It’s also not necessarilly a sure source of fuel. Brazil (you mentioned Brazil) — which had worked toward energy independence since the mid-’70s oil crisis and had already mandated that the percentage of ethanol in its fuel be raised to 24% — was forced to import ethanol refined by the Archer Daniels Midland Co. (a corporation, not *genuine* farmers) when that nation’s sugar-cane crop suffered a devastating drought in 2000. Brazil has learned that a year of poor crops is just as damaging to its national fuel supply as Iran taking its oil off-market would be to the rest of the world.
There’s also a difference a difference in fuel consumption–there have been occassions when I don’t get the number of miles I should from a tank of gas, no matter how carefully I monitor my engine ( watch the tac when accellerating and keep it at or below 2500 rpm). E85 gets 15-30% less mileage per the same volume of gas. I’m not saving enough on the, albeit, cheaper fuel to make up the difference. So the fuel retailers are also making extra money, especially if they could be selling the ethanol blend for the $.60 less/gallon I’d need to make it economical for me.
Dedicating the entire US agricultural production to the production of both Ethanol and Biodiesel would only compensate for 12% of gasoline consumption and 6% of diesel consumption.
And since we have people about who scream when what they think is bad science is thrown about, The National Academy of Science says it’s not a good idea too. http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060710/full/news060710-4.html
– “bbh, where are your sources? We’ve passed the 1974 level awhiles back in the $3.30 a gallon range I heard on NPR awhiles back.”
– I believe if you look into it that 070 difference has been eaten up in the last year of inflation. So we’re probably close to even again. In any event the pain seems disproportionate to the “difference”, and that was the ficus of my question.
– You started to develope some good starts on the problem. Obe you touched on was a little skewed to rural residency I think, the averages being more like $170 for rent, and $100 for fuel. Still the ratio today is much greater for lodging versus fuel. So that would be one factor.
– But as a “collective” problem, what you’re showing is the real cost of maintaining a certain quality of life then versus today.
– I’m interested in everyones thoughts on this. As has been said, the first step in attacking any problem is defining it.
– Clue: Neither party’s pols are willing to define the problems, all the problems.issues, not just fuel, honestly.
No Ric, I understand all right.
For years they called the Farm Bill the Food Security Act. The point being to keep a cheap steady supply of food available for people. That is why there was a support program. To create stability and keep prices from spiking. Of course some people hated that. They wanted the market to govern food prices. Fine, but the market has been governing oil prices and we can see where that leads.
I have not been had. The market price for corn is not outrageous. Back in 1983 corn was $4.50 a bushel here in Indiana. Now it is almost $6.00 a bushel, decades later.
I understand what you are saying and to be truthful I would not be surprised if the whole thing did not crash. Crashes happen in commodity prices from time to time.
What I resent is the characterization of blood money for the production of something like soybeans or field corn.
And right now rice and wheat are going up and so far as I know the Asians are not making ethanol out of rice.
damn, thor
“music, movies and porn”.
eh, I forgot the Necessities:
Memories of the way things used to be…have sort of faded. My Record collection. Art House movies with the g/fs. And those stinking Playboys and Joy of Sex under the bed.
And I forgot all those quarters for pacman and astroids too.
enoch: Those protections are there for consumers as much as farmers. Otherwise there might be food shortages and charges of blood money.
But what the hell, if you want to buy milk from a Mexican dairy go right ahead. They don’t have all those pesky health standards to contend with, no doubt you could save a few pennies.
No, Terrye, they’re not. That’s what fungible means. High corn prices means everything goes up, because every grain is as good as every other grain.
Regards,
Ric
PS the spam filter is killing my posts when I try to link again. www-randomuseless-info/gasprice/gasprice-html — change the dashes to periods.
How about just looking at the fact that it takes more than the energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline to make a gallon of ethanol, which has less than half the energy content of gasoline? In other words, the whole bio-fuel thing is a fraking stupid thing to do, and is only being done because politicians like to look like they’re “doin’ sumpthin'” even when keeping their hands off would have been a better move.
Because of the price increase in corn, more farmers are growing corn when before they were growing something else. The demand for corn is artificially high. Since corn is used for cattle feed, this drives the price of beef and dairy products higher. It is really really stupid and I wish it would stop, but I don’t see that happening in the near future.
Terrye: No insult meant, but you’ve not demonstrated this so far. In fact, you seem to conflate a “modified market” with a “free market” at every turn. Oil isn’t remotely a “free market,” at least not in the US – it’s a heavily regulated market, and it’s also a heavily regulated market internationally, with regional alliances of oil-producing nations setting prices through control of production. Oh, and the big f****** war in the Middle East, that might affect prices, too.
If you want to talk about property taxes and fuel policy and whatnot, cool, but you keep jumping back to “setting prices” and obsessing on “blood money”, so you’re just going sideways.
And I’m SO with cranky and RTO on ethanol, as a fuel, it’s almost as bad as hydrogen (another, still smaller debacle – only a few billions wasted on that).
It’s not the prices that are going to kill poor people in other countries, it’s supply.
You think we’ll divert a portion of fuel production back to food, just because people are starving in Africa? They can afford 6$/bushel, much more easily than $10,000/AIDS cocktail, and they don’t need wristwatches to make the corn effective.
We started importing corn this year. We’ll be a net importer in two more years at the same rate. Where’s the corn going to come from?
And right now rice and wheat are going up and so far as I know the Asians are not making ethanol out of rice.
Maybe not, but are they shifting their production… or is there a higher demand for rice now that no one can afford the staple of corn and wheat?
BTW – I think I misspoke about this being the first yr of corn imports to the US> it is actually the first time we have imported wheat. Apologies. My Mistake.
Believe it or not I am not a huge fan of biodiesel. I just think that attacking farmers because of this is ridiculous. Especially when you consider all the years of low prices. Now prices go up and people who usually talk about the market act as if that is a shocking event. As if prices are supposed to stay down forever for farmers.
yes, I understand supply and demand and if farmers decided to lay off planting for awhile just to drive up prices I think most people would consider that criminal. But they have not.
Eh, RTO made my point better anyway.
No enoch, there is a higher demand for rice because the Asian economies are demanding more raw materials of all kinds.
Have you seen the price of scrap steel lately?
A few years ago the price of wheat was so low that the US planted less than at any time since 1917.
And has for hay, it is higher too. I blame horse people for that. Last year a friend of mine stopped growing corn to grow hay for horses. Damn horses, they eat…people in Africa starve.
Terrye, show me any comment here where the farmer has been blamed? I see politicians being blamed mostly. Most farmers I know are not happy about the sitiation because thay know they’re caught in the middle, yet again. They reaize, even if you don’t, that it’s not sustainable, but they have to take the profit where they can.
But if you’d rather play the politics of outrage game, piss on ya.
Terrye – erm… are you saying they are having larger families or eating more per capita or living longer or all of the above? Or are they now building infrastructure out of rice?
I don’t blame the farmers one bit. I blame the idiot politicians for going forward with the bio-fuel debacle. The farmers are just trying to make a buck. No problem with that.
I do have a problem with one thing, and that is the fact that the vast majority of farm subsidies go to the giant farming corporations which actually have the ability to absorb short-term losses in some areas because they own so much land. To me, the money should be there to help make sure a local farmer survives a bad season or two.
Yes, but one of the reasons we import corn is that so much land is going to subdivisions and you can not grow corn just anywhere. Maybe if the city people would all go live in a swamp it would help.It is the least they can do.
cranky-d – nicely put. I do wish youd add in an occasional swear word or five once in awhile.
– How about rapidly growing demands for fuel, and all materials/services/resources, in China and India?
– Big deal? Not so much? Long term effects?
enoch:
I am saying they have more money and they can actually afford to buy food, and many of them are leaving the small farms, just like westerners did when they had the chance.
Maybe if the city people would all go live in a swamp it would help.It is the least they can do.
if we start with the whack jobs in NYC and LALA Land, I second this emotion.
although I think the EPA has regulations against dumping raw shit into the protected swamplands.
RTO:
I think you need to read some of enoch’s posts if you think no one is talking trash about the farmers.
And piss on ya too if you think farmers are living on blood money.
It’s true – I did/do blame farmers to some extent. As in, they share the burden for LOOOOVING the cornholers and their pork.
I blame Archer-Daniels Midland for any corn-related insanity. Those guys have a corn lobby going that will not quit. And like I said, most of the pork, such as it is, goes to farming corporations, not to family farms. Many family farms get none of it.
The thing is if we have a true free market in agriculture then the possibility of shortages has to be part of that, otherwise prices will never rise. That is my point. People talk about the market forces, but they do not really want to live with them.
Big Bang, the italics confused me but I’ll try to give some ideas as to what you seem to be asking and others chime in please:
*I believe much of the inflation of the last few years is caused by the drastic rise of fuel costs more than any other factor. (But the credit crisis and the Fed printing more bucks to bail it out is also a big factor too.)
*yeah, w/o much thinking I’ll admit but housing is a big inflationary factor. Unfortunately, the Federal govt. in it’s calculations of inflation purposely omit shelter costs in the excuse that it was too hard to differentiate between large regional differences and thus put much less emphasis upon shelter costs. Largely during the Reagan administration but in others too there was a de-emphasis of the inflationary costs of housing perhaps to placate politics or just because so many variables are needed and also ‘choice’ people choose to buy too much house or not. I was shocked that they’d just throw their hands up on housing inflation……as in real life shelter is usually the most expensive fixed cost for Americans. ‘Core Inflation’, CPI ofter use rent as an indicator but ignore financial costs of ownership and market driven inflation of housing which oft increases much faster than the CPI can monitor. Also: “Income taxes and investment items (like stocks, bonds, life insurance, and homes) are not included.”
*’necessary’s creep’ (made that up) things that are “necessary” are so much more now…(like cell phones, and coffee bean grinders!)
cranky:
Cargil puts them all to shame. They are the really big guys.
“go live in a swamp”
Never been to Houston, have you?
Oooh, the Cargills. They keep their involvement real quiet-like. However, I should have thought of them as well. They don’t mind spending a lot of money to get their way, that’s for sure.
Actually enoch I know a lot of farmers who would like nothing better than for the government to get out of agriculture. I have heard it several times. But they want the right to control their production, create cartels, etc. In other words they want to be able to do the kind of things other business people can do without anyone whining about it. However, as we know there are a lot of consumers who think that market oriented agriculture is a fine thing just so long as there is a lot of something.
But if they found themselves looking at an empty dairy case that would change. Panic, full crisis mode and pandemonium would follow.
Aw, Terrye, do you just love typing “blood money” over and over?
Got no time for you hurt feelings. You have a point to make then make it. Leave the croc tears at home with your crinolines and dolls. You don’t care more than anyone else. You don’t count more either.
Cranky:
yes, so far as I know they are still private, and they are into everything. In fact I have wondered how it is that they don’t break any monopoly laws. That is vertical integration for you, big systems agriculture.
RTO:
Speaking of croc tears that is what started this discussion. Someone made some remark about putting dead Africans in the gas tank etc. That is emotional manipulation. The idea is that biodiesel=starvation. Not poverty mind you, but farmers.
And I never said I counted more. I know I don’t.
Tell you what: I’ll offer a compromise.
The ethanol subsidy stays, but to qualify for it the production process has to be petroleum-free.
That is, the land gets tilled and the corn planted using ethanol-powered tractors and machines. The fields get maintained and cultivated by equipment entirely fueled by ethanol, and the harvest and transport ditto. The ethanol-producing plant must use nothing but ethanol as fuel for the process.
I’ll even spot you the fertilizer, which is made from petroleum (and contains more energy per unit weight than gasoline, as a fellow called McVeigh memorably demonstrated) and the heat for the farmer’s house and the ethanol producer’s offices.
Under those circumstances I would bet $100 that not one ounce of ethanol would escape from the cycle to be sold as fuel for other vehicles.
Regards,
Ric
Dave, as an annual average, inflation has declined over the last three years.
2005 3.39%
2006 3.24%
2007 2.85%
It’s been declining monthly for the last 5 months as well.
The Fed printing more bucks is inflation. The Credit “crisis” is, however deflationary, the burst of any market bubble is.
Ric:
Sounds like a plan.
Biofuels does equal starvation. It is going to kill people if we let it become entrenched on our system. You don’t agree, than feel free to state your case. We get that you were angered by the way the argumet was framed. Now maybe you’d like to offer a rational counter?
Terrye: Cargill remains a private entity to this day, and they have no reason to ever go public. They have bushels of money.
Ric, that is an excellent idea. Can I further add that after an initial start-up, they have to continue to run the machinery just on the ethanol they produce? I would be willing to bet a lot more money that it will not be possible.
I will lift that restriction, however, if they only use silage to make the ethanol and still sell the corn as cattle or people feed.
– “Under those circumstances I would bet $100 that not one ounce of ethanol would escape from the cycle to be sold as fuel for other vehicles.
– Which should have been a full bullhorn blast right in the ear of any politician getting it in their head that there was voter gold in them thar kernels, but as usual was ignored, either from a lack of education in the whole energy house of cards, or political expediency.
– I, for one, simply cannot wait to turn our health care system over to theat same house of cards.
BTW, I brought this up with a cousin of mine a few years ago. According to him, the actual process of making the ethanol is a net energy gain, so you get more out than you put in. However, when I asked him about the (rather large) costs in energy from the machinery to grow and transport the corn, he did not have an answer.
We do, of course. It does not work. Oil represents millions of years of concentrated energy from Mr. Sun that went into feeding plants and critters. You simply cannot get the equivalent energy concentration in a very short time.
You canna fool entropy, baybee.
– Question Ric. Has anyone done a realistic study to see if an “augmented” system has some merit. In other words a group of farmers in a given area get together in a collective. The required fuel to harvest the total acreage is determined, and that portion is set aside to grow only biofuel. Only those biofuels grown as a part of the harvest may be used, from start to finish.
– If the refinement is cost effective, and by eliminating all aspects of normal transporting/sales/distribution, maybe bio could compete.
There’s also a transportation cost hiddenin ethanol. It cannot be blended with the fuel and then transported because it has a shorter “shelf life” than the fuel itself. The ethanol has to be transported separately and added to the regular fuel at each site. Parallel logistics structure and extra trucks are needed to do this.
And I’m just waiting to see what “old” ethanol does to an engine and what kidn of blowback comes from that.
That’s inherent in the requirement to be petroleum-free. The only other source of ethanol in quantity is reformation from methane, i.e., natural gas, and that process is extremely expensive if you have to de-methylate it or use ethylene as the feedstock.
Look, ethanol and methanol would be vital components in a nuclear economy. Carrying fission powerplants around is hard and gets you talked about in biker bars. Using nuclear energy to produce ethanol from waste biomass would give you a portable energy source that didn’t involve paying Arabs, which would be a good thing; it wouldn’t really matter that the process was, overall, an energy consumer. Even then, though, making fuel out of food is stupid to the point of being suicidal. You need to think, too, about soil conditioning — the residue from ethanol production could be returned to the soil, but you’d have to add more fertilizer.
Trying to make ethanol using only ethanol would be a downward spiral, with more being consumed in production than is produced in many cases, and only a very small net product in the best case. Making ethanol using petroleum as the energy input simply demonstrates that our Lords&Masters are trying to get by with room-temperature IQs.
Regards,
Ric
Yeah, I should’ve seen that. Oh well.
We are of a like mind. You just put forth the energy plan I espouse to anyone who will listen. Build a bunch of nuclear power plants and use excess energy to produce fuel of some kind which can power long-range vehicles (biodiesel is probably the better choice IMO). For the short-range vehicles, use electricity. The battery and capacitance storage technologies aren’t there yet, but I think they’re getting there.
I guess my point is, any solutions we attempt should work now, not ten years or more from now. Eventually if we develop better technology, what we do now will be replaced with something better once the power plants and vehicles come to the end their life-cycles.
Cranky, there are so many gotchas involved in biofuel, its crazy. Crazy that people think there’s a way to make it a mainstay fuel source. Anyhow you stated some of the good one’s I’d left out–so not better, just different.
Cranky-d and BBH,
OK. Ethanol is produced by distillation, that is, by evaporating the ethanol out of the solution, then condensing it. The latent heat of evaporation of ethanol is 846 kJ/kg; burning ethanol in oxygen yields 1409 kJ/mol. One mole of ethanol is 46 gm, giving 21.7 moles/kg, so the heat released is a bit over 30,000 kJ/kg — a very respectable gain — in the ideal case. Of course that doesn’t even count the pumps and lights in the plant, much less the necessity to keep the yeasts warm while they’re working. The equivalent numbers for gasoline from “sweet” crude give better than 100:1 ratio, though — and you don’t have to till, plant, cultivate, and harvest the raw materials using fuel-hungry machines.
If there’s no overall gain there’s no overall gain, and the way you set up the financial system to support the technology doesn’t matter.
Regards,
Ric
– I’m not familiar with the costs of fuel production, either oil or competing types, but a few weeks ago we did some calculations in another post, just looking at the fuel versus food per acre in terms of feeding a child for some length of time, versus running an average vehicle, and the food production so completely outstrips fuel production that its just as Ric says, suicidal to even consider biofuels in the way its being promoted. Nuclear of course, could go a long way to level the playing field, but as was said, even if it (biofuels) remained less than cost effective, the effect of its mere presence in a sustainable way would have to have an effect on worldwide oil markets just from its continued existence.
Ric, I wasn’t trying to justify biofuels at all. I simply see that it might be possible to use them in a small amount of vehicles if you have another energy source (like nuclear power) that can help absorb the net energy loss in creating the fuel in the first place. Biofuels give you an energy density greater than what a battery can currently supply, quicker “re-charge” rate (filling a tank is faster than charging a battery), plus biodiesel is compatable with current distribution methods.
In fact, I’m pretty sure I already agreed biofuel is a net loss. I guess I wasn’t clear.
Sorry, but ethan
I just read through this thread and I think it’s been one of the most fascinating, informative and productive debate threads I’ve read in a long time. Thanks to all.
It was also amusing to see dataD try real hard to chime in and in doing so rendered “D” a silly little fool.
My “D” = datadave, not to be confused with cranky-d, just to be clear.
WTF is an “ice flow”?
Bloe me.
Sorry, but ethanol mandates are absolute fascistic BULLSHIT.
Our amazingly stupid “representatives” are running inflation up our asses so that they can look “green”. I mean, why would anyone give a shit if ethanol costs more than it is worth?
Fuck them.
If you are a farmer, you love this stinking piece of crap legislation. But it is a major reason for the the inflation that is happening, and whacking the shit out of the working family.
$4.00 a gallon? Sorry, but we, as your elected representatives, just don’t give a shit. We want the Marxist greens to love us. And what better way to show it than to shove ethanol up our collective asses? Or maybe we should give them a blow job in appresiation?
I say: Fuck you motherfucking “green” asshioles who are willing to screw the whole world’s economy with your “green” initiatives.
This is absolute BULLSHIT!
It’s great to be a farmer right now, huh? When the USA has to import corn, something is seriously wrong.
What a bunmch of fucking idiots we have in our Congress.
Anytime our representatives are licking the butts of “Greens”, we are screwed. And it is wet enough in Congress right now to float a battleship.
And that is EXACTLTY what is happening now.
We have enough problems without these “Green butt-lickers” doubling inflation by mandating ethanol.
Horseshit! And the farmers love it, and spew bullshit to try to make it right.
I grew up on a farm, and I say – go fuck yourself if you are that greedy. Our food prices might be so high that you (as a farmer) are actually able to buy a couple of 70 inch HDTV’s, but this stupid, stupid, stupid ethanol mandate is going to kill the rest of us.
Why is the US importing corn? Because we hgave a bunch of total clueless, egotistical, moronic assholes representing us in the government.
FUCK THOSE IDIOTS!!!
OOPS…There I go again. I sometimes have a problem with anger – espedially when useless mental midgets (or do I mean “fidgets?) cost me more bucks out of an already too short supply of money…
I don’t know. Am I too angry? I don’t think so.
Luckily, I live too many hours away from DC.
In case I haven’t been clear enough – ethanol mandates REALLY PISS ME OFF!
It’s kind of weird if we’re to have a recession that doesn’t have whining about the family farmer involved. Part of my family is married into “family farmer” I guess but they’re part of a ginormous co-op thinger and they’re a lot a lot rich and all high-tech and gps and modeling about everything, but except for them everyone else has gotten out of farm things, without a lot of whining involved. I’m just saying I’m mostly a lot happy for ADM and people what are like that to take over. I think Big Ag gets a bad rap, when for real a lot of the subsidy crap is pitched to people that really don’t have otherwise viable enterprises, and don’t have the grace to move on. Also, organic hippy boutiquey farmers are fine and all but they need to be completely handled separately from real agriculture. A lot of this stuff gets all conflated I think.
Stressing the food and agriculture sector with warped subsidies should ultimately a lot produce some innovation and efficiencies, but really I think mostly to the benefit of other countries. I don’t think this is a screw-up, I think there are people what are really wanting to break the political influence of their domestic ag sector by shunting them into energy and leveraging resource scarcity into “sustainable development” schemes. I think Jeffrey Sachs types are a lot involved.
My gut tells me these people will devote a lot more energy into the second implication – the “much more serious cooperative effort” part – than they will into lobbying against biofuel subsidies.
The left is against domestic energy production. They’re complicit in derailing domestic food production. And they are against free trade. It’s not exactly anti-capitalism… they have a very different idea of the free market than what we’re used to I think. Mostly I think they want to hobble the U.S. and Europe while using free market economic techniques in developing countries to create an economic counterweight.
Release!
You’re only in the batter’s box swinging a fungo, using the nine-iron to cut through a corn field.
When you’re serious, step up to the plate, let out the exact names of who needs to be duct taped to wings of the space shuttle. I’m digging it.
“The left is against domestic energy production.”
n then the right here complains about biodiesal or biofuels….
can we be consistent in our strawmen, please?
adding Haiti into the mix (which is a special right wing playground) defeats any demonization of “the left” entirely.
can we talk about the playgrounds being created in neighboring Dominican Republic? Major investments into golf courses by I am sure “leftist moneybags” right next to those starving Haitians.
hmmm, golf courses in general????
and Inflations estimates by the US Govt. are as cooked as my tax returns…opps. I’ve noticed an incredible de-emphasis of shelter costs and it’s right under the noses of the public.
Sort of like the phony unemployment stats that neglect that many, many Americans are ‘contract laborers’ who are not counted if they lose their livelihoods, MicroSerfs as an example, and also the ‘discouraged worker’s’ who also not counted which could be a whole whooping 5 percent added unto the phony stats the govt puts out there. The guy we just “hired” yesterday who’s unemployment benefits are finishing next week will likely enter the shadow economy.
way to go Thor….nine iron and all. Not that I know about such things….
happyfeet, whatever happened to that web romance you had going, with nishi? Find some ‘release’ man, please!
Trash the farmer.
Personally, I hold farmers completely blameless. I tend to want to trash the corn-ethanol lobby, instead. Farmers are going to maximize their income however they can; I don’t begrudge them that.
Corn-based ethanol, on the other hand, makes absolutely no sense. It’s more energy-efficient to actually burn the corn for heating fuel than it is to convert it to ethanol.
I’ve got similar problems with the sugar lobby, FWIW. Not saying the corn lobby is run by the same group of thugs that the sugar lobby is run by, mind you.
“trash the farmer” ought to have been in quotes, above.
Biodiesel or biofuels doesn’t produce any energy, datadave person, not the corn-based kind. It just inefficiently changes energy from one form to another.
…and of course we should go the route that disturbs the world food market the most, FIRST, before we do anything so rash as screw up the Kennedy’s view from Martha’s Vinyard by putting windmills there.
The Democrats killed a solar power initiative here in California cause of they wanted it to mandate the use of union labor. They’re a lot retarded when it comes to things like governing I think.
Enoch, “Heavy Metal Farming” is hugely dependent upon petro fuels. Terrye knows of what she speaks. Next to financial costs for paying for all that Heavy Metal that spews food out of it’s maws: huge tractors, combines, etc, petro is next on the list of unavoidable expenses. Farmers are only passing on the ‘inflation’ from above. Truckers will tell you the same story.
Next ‘evildoer’?
she or he, w/e sorry Terrye?
People do not realize that the grain is still used for feed after processing. Critics say that if that grain goes to ethanol, people starve, but the truth is after processing the grain is still used for animal feed. That is why a lot of people say it is a net gain to make fuel. In any event, the farmer just wants a decent price for what he sells. That is all he cares about. And when the idea of ethanol first came about it was bipartisan and no one talked about global warming.
There’s about a 1 to 1 ratio for energy produced vs energy expended re corn. It’s a very inefficient way to produce energy. The Brazilian method is to refine cane sugar into ethanol. They’re output ratio is about 7 to 1. Much more efficient. Corn is not the answer. Sugar beets? Maybe. Just prom a cost basis perspective growing fuel looks like a dead end. There are interesting things being done with slaughterhouse waste. There is a refinery in Pennsylvania that is turning offal into high quality oil. This country sits on enormous deposits of coal. With crude doing for 117 dollars a barrel, coal conversion is looking very good.
Any decently efficient process for extracting energy-producing substances from corn will have, in the process, extracted nearly all of the caloric value from the corn.
Critters can digest cellulose, though, so maybe it’s ok. Cellulose, not coincidentally, is potentially a much better source material for ethanol production, so maybe soon the critters won’t have much at all to eat.
That was back when pretty much everyone was ignorant WRT whether it could actually pan out, efficiency-wise. That excuse no longer works.
Which tends to make it a bit less valuable for animal feed than pre-processed corn, or practically anything else.
Whoops. Last sentence belonged in first paragraph. I started inserting other comments, and bingo: clusterfnck.
I work to earn money, first and foremost to buy food.
Geez RTO, you must be really fat.
.
.
kidding
He eats three times a day, but his metabolism eats five times a day.
Ooh. I gotta get me some of that metabolism. Will eating a greasy pork sandwich served in a dirty ashtray give it to me?
the difference between Right and Left in a nutshell
FedX: yeah, a huge example of the ‘shadow economy’ right in your face.
“”Ten years of beating my brains out for them, and they throw me away like I was a piece of garbage,†Jean said.
that’s right-wing.
Patagonia: “Chouinard has a simple philosophy that he says ensures that employees don’t abuse their flextime. “Hire the people you trust, people who are passionate about their job, passionate about what they’re doing. Just leave them alone, and they’ll get the job done.â€Â
that’s left-wing.
so being against ethanol isn’t a universal here….good.
thank Terrye for enlightening us.
I’m not anti-ethanol, dave; I’m anti-ignorance. Ethanol I happen to be quite fond of, particularly on the rocks with a lime wedge.
so being against ethanol isn’t a universal here
No, just among those of us who can:
a) Do arithmetic.
b) Understand the law of conservation of energy.
c) Don’t have a personal economic ax to grind.
d) Have some shred of moral conscience.
Again, I’m pro-ethanol. I even like it carbonated, with some hops and a dash of complex unfermented sugars.
Sometimes I even like my ethanol made from corn. I wouldn’t dream of pouring it in my gas tank, though.
I guess race cars at Indi 500 might have a problem with that. http://auto.howstuffworks.com/question202.htm
sometimes you guys just make me laugh so hard it’s why I keep coming back.
Sometimes I even like my ethanol made from corn.
I’m pretty much a strict barley ethanol man, myself. Either dilute and carbonated with hops, or distilled in a square bottle with a black label. I’m not picky.
sometimes you guys just make me laugh so hard
Methanol and ethanol aren’t the same thing, dave.
Add organic chemistry to the apparently endless list of subjects of which you are invincibly ignorant.
Someone please explain the difference between methanol, nitromethane and ethanol to dadadave.
If you’re ever in town, dave, I’d be happy to buy you a few rounds of methanol.
slart:
Ever hear of mash? And I do not mean the TV show. Corn mash, left over from making moonshine. It is much the same thing as what we are talking about here. Hogs love it. I know a lot of farmers who swear the feed is actually better after processing and considering the fact that they are feeding the cattle and the hogs out and need those calories and carbs to put weight on that animal I think they might know a little bit about it all.
My whole point is that attacking people who work at biofuel plants like enoch did and comparing them with prostitutes just because they want a good job is ridiculous. Saying on one hand you want a strict market system while at the same time accusing farmers of starving people because they produce soybeans and field corn that is used for ethanol is insane. It really is.
So, what happens if they just kill all biofuel production? Oh happy days, commodity prices bottom out and we have another farm crisis. Great. And then what? Will farmers produce more cheap corn? Will they respond to the inevitable collapse by producing more food or less? If we were stick with the old supply and demand model, they would produce less in an effort to drive up prices. How will that help those Africans and Haitians that so many people seem to have developed the sudden need to worry about?
I sometimes suspect dave has been drinking methanol. It would explain a lot.
So, dave: do you prefer industrial solvent or hand-squeezed Sterno? Any particular vintage?
Ever hear of mash?
Ever hear of the law of conservation of energy?
Sounds like a Bollywood production.
And I also think that you can make fuel out of anything. Garbage, manure, tree tops, just about anything.
Spies:
I live in a house with only 1110 sq feet and I supplement my heat with wood. I drive a small car that gets over 30mpg and I do not make any unnecessary trips. Yes, I know about conservation. I have never been wasteful. It is not my nature. Too bad the same thing can not be said for the average American. I look at those big ass houses and watch people take their vacations far from home and I wonder just how they can afford to do it all.
I’m sure their efficiency requirements are right up there with what’s needed to make corn-based ethanol marketable, right? Plus, they’re likely to be ace chemists!
Good thing I’m not doing that, then.
I’m not doing that, either.
My regard for the intelligence of my fellow humans will be bolstered somewhat, and we’ll (not coincidentally) quit wasting gobs of money on a no-win energy technology.
true methanol is mostly currently from natural gas..but it is alcohol none-the-less
http://www.methanol.org/pdf/RenewableBioMethanolFromSugarBeetPulp.pdf
Really, if spies is such a smart guy and he really should solve this problem for us. After all, there is most definitely a market for such knowledge. Why yak about it on the internet when you have all the answers?
Yes, I know about conservation.
Whoosh!
Hint: calories are calories. If you take energy out of the corn to burn as ethanol, the residue has less energy in it than it did before.
Oil might very well make it to $125 a barrel. Now it would seem to me that if there is a fuel we need to be thinking about replacing, it is petroleum. Because commodity prices are going to continue to climb so long as the oil prices go up whether you kill biofuel or not.
if spies is such a smart guy and he really should solve this problem for us.
I don’t need to.
Lots of REALLY smart guys have already solved the problem, and are working on even bettter solutions as we speak.
Too bad that ignorant, superstitious hippies like dave won’t let us build any of this stuff, isn’t it?
Even if you get rid of ethanol production and prices decline, farmers will just react by trying to drive up those prices because let’s face it folks, you can not produce $2 corn when you are paying $4 a gallon for diesel fuel.
Well, there is more food value to corn than just the sugars. Which is one of the reasons why it makes more energy-sense to just burn the corn than it does to ferment it.
I’ll send you a half-gallon, dave; let me know how it tastes.
Spies:
Have you ever fed cattle? I have. I used to own a dairy farm. Do you have any idea how many additives is in feed? I used to use everything form sorghum to cotton seed oil. In fact if you are looking for carbs, cotton seed is better than anything else. I grew corn silage, and bought processed feed and made hay. And I have known a lot of farmers who say that making the ethanol does not destroy the food value of the grain. Now if you are feeding high moisture corn that might be different, but in that case you are buying corn from the field anyway or growing it yourself.
Well if that is true spies and the problem has been solved why are we discussing it now? We should just let you move onto finding away to bring about world peace.
Have you ever fed cattle? I have. And I have known a lot of farmers who say that making the ethanol does not destroy the food value of the grain
They’re wrong.
As Slart points out, there is still some residual food value (mainly cellulose, which ruminants can digest). Nonetheless a lot of it is gone.
No free lunch, Terrye.
Well if that is true spies and the problem has been solved why are we discussing it now?
Try reading. Because ignorant, superstitious hippies like dave won’t let us build them.
They’d be wrong. It doesn’t totally destroy the food value, but it does remove about 80% of the calories, which by definition removes food value.
BTW, Terrye, I have fed cattle. I’ve also studied basic physics and chemistry.
Next.
actually ethanol is recommended for consumption either. So should we ban the Indi 500 for the starving Haitians?
and eliminate golf courses for their waste of cropland?
trying to paint environmentalists as the bad guys is pretty darn hard work for you all here…. how about looking at why oil companies have paid billions for marketing to suppress knowledge of alternative fuels.
SB&P: there’s also the residual protein and fats, which accounts for about 15% of the food value of corn.
dave: you’re no longer even attempting to make sense.
Slart: good point. Although I’d think that the lipids could be converted to biodiesel fairly easily. Why not go all the way?
isn’t recommended for comsumption: alcohol, ethanol, methanol, what’s your poison?
and I ran out of my special coffee creamer yesterday.
I know I recommend it. I even follow my own recommendations, from time to time.
I tend to paint environmentalists as the bad guys when they’re actually acting as the bad guys. As in: this particular case.
Here‘s a writeup of an environmental good guy, though. Enjoy.
trying to paint environmentalists as the bad guys
Any group that’s responsible for the deaths of millions of people from malaria, the starvation of millions more through opposition to genetically-engineered crops, and the grinding poverty of billions due to their opposition to nuclear power is made up of “bad guys”, in my book.
But then I’m funny that way.
the point is this thread’s going no where. ethanol isn’t evil is it?
trying to make anti-environmentalists seem caring about Haitians starving is not happening. Or vice-versa.
alcohol, ethanol, methanol, what’s your poison?
Tell ya what, dave: I’ll match you shot for shot. I’ll drink Black Bush, you drink industrial methanol.
We’ll see who keels over first.
Only for datadave, I also recommend methanol consumption. Try it with a nitromethane kicker.
Nixon! That’s old as the hills, slart. That’s when there were Republican environmentalists and Senator Jeffords could hold his head up being one. Then you got Rush Limbaugh defining the party w/ Tom Delay, the lowball bug sprayer, wanting every toxin avail. for his profit.
Rush Limbaugh, Rush Limbaugh…I forget which National Convention he presided over. Wasn’t he a Senator or a Governor, once?
now we’re getting jokey and time for work…but thor with his nine iron kinda shreaded the whole concept of Rethugs caring about Haitian’s starving and he did it in about three words.
but i’d like us all figure what ‘inflation’ is all about and how the Republican party has made it a policy to deny that it even exists. Sort of like Global Warming; first deny it, then try to make it perverse, then pretend they cared about it all along. (kind of like Nixon)
And to return briefly to the meta-subject of this blog: No, Terrye, you don’t get a pass because you feel insulted. If you agree to participate in evil, you can’t justify it with “Oh, well, I was going broke and this is profitable.”
Even if ethanol did in fact yield energy, there isn’t enough cropland in the U.S. to make a noticeable dent in our fuel requirements. And since it does not, it means that demand for petroleum isn’t affected or perhaps goes up; meanwhile people go hungry because the foodstocks have been diverted into a boondoggle. Anybody who agrees to participate in the scam is either blind and deaf or cynically cruel, and I’m not sure which is less admirable.
Regards,
Ric
Wow…Republicans are denying the existence of inflation. What will datadave make up next?
Datadave, the perpetual-motion factoid machine.
DataDave, I liked your earlier comments, to the effect that, what the hell, most of us could stand to lose a few pounds, so a little famine couldn’t hurt. And that we should just have less food, of the higher quality, more expensive sort.
Good solutions, though the people who suggest that it’s unhealthy to lose more than a pound or two a weeki might take issue with it. Oh, BTW, don’t try to buy more than two bags of flour or rice at your local Costco – grocerly retailers have started rationing grains and related products, like Canola oil, limiting customer purchases to one unit.
This kind of WholeFoods eco-energy eco-food policy needs a good slogan. I suggest, “Fuck the Poor! They only eat shit food and keep McDonalds in business!” Either that, or you could stick to the traditional mush-headed leftard slogans, like “because I care” or “saving the Earth,” or maybe even “for the children.” Hey, did you see the special on Discovery last night where a bunch of scientists went to Alaska and proved there was global warming by rappelling and white water rafting? It was pretty cool, and don’t you dare try to deny the science behind it…
but i’d like us all figure what ‘inflation’ is all about and how the Republican party has made it a policy to deny that it even exists.
And dave, having had his ass handed to him yet again, starts trying to change the subject.
Hey, dave, how do you explain this?
Notice how inflation rose through the Dem years of the sixties, dropped sharply after Nixon took office, spiked again about the time Nixon left office, dropped again under Ford, reached truly horrific levels under Carter, and dropped sharply under Reagan?
Goofball.
The “Indie(sic) 500” thing is a diversion so stupid I’m surprised even you would trot it out, dataless.
Racing cars use methanol fuel, and have for at least forty years. Alcohol burns while liquid where gasoline has to be vaporized, making carburetor and injector design simpler; it doesn’t explode violently in the gaseous state like gasoline does, which improves safety and was the original reason for its adoption; and pumping the extra volume through the engine assists in cooling, so the radiator can be smaller for less air resistance. If you built street cars using the same design principles a Prius would get about 8 MPG, and if the racers were allowed to use whatever they liked the cars would run on naptha and nitromethane and to Hell with the safety issue — the cars would be faster and run longer on a tank of fuel, and occasionally blowing a couple dozen fans and a driver into pink goo would just be a cost of doing business.
Regards,
Ric
Because, really, who couldn’t stand to be blown into pink goo?
it doesn’t explode violently in the gaseous state like gasoline does, which improves safety
I think I heard that another safety reason is that alcohol-based fuels can be easily extinguished with water, because (unlike gasoline) alcohol will mix with water. That’s why 151 proof rum will burn, but beer or even normal-strength hard liquor won’t (at least, not very well).
SBP: yeah, that’s right. It’s another part of the safety issue, but the lack of explosions is the main thing. Oh, and alcohol has a higher octane rating, so the compression ratio can be higher, which partly offsets the efficiency loss — and racers don’t give a f* about NOx, because in the grand scheme of things they use so little fuel that the contribution is negligible. If the whole fleet ran on racing-engine principles the Wyoming mountains would look like LA in the late Sixties, with everything else in proportion.
Regards,
Ric
Stooopidity like data’s should be painful. Sadly, it is not.
naptha and nitromethane and to Hell with the safety issue
That would be really fun in May, so long as the explosions were on the other side of the track from where I was.
And another thing, also to SBP: I know exactly what datadave would say about your Republican vs. Democrat inflation statistics, and so do you if you think about it. In fact, he’s already said it (prebuttal?) Republicans cook the books to understate inflation.
And in fact he’s partly right. Republicans and other rightists do, in fact, tend to understate inflation — but what he misses is that Democrats and other Leftists work hard to overstate it. In both cases that’s because inflation is a way to make massive transfers of wealth from private hands to Government, and the Left loves both that and the fact that they can escape involvement by pointing at “the greedy merchants” as the cause of it all.
Problem nowadays for that tactic is that the lenders and other fatcats have fully internalized the lesson, and have computers and data sources not available to earlier generations. Set off a populist inflation-storm nowadays, and the bankers ride it all the way to the end, making money at every point — to a large extent they get the benefits and Government does not. Either way the ordinary citizen gets his assets destroyed, which is part of the point for the Left (it generates more dependents) but a consolation prize at best. That’s why, absent idiots like Mugabe, inflation as a tactic has been pretty well abandoned by the dictators, tyrants, and oligarchs who used to love it.
Datadave fulminates about the present situation because it actually isn’t “inflation” at all. Inflation is a vicious-cycle rise in prices without a corresponding rise in costs; at the end everybody’s at status quo ante except the Government, it’s just that the numbers have more digits before the decimal. What’s happening now is a real cost increase working its way through the economy. It means the Left can give their “rob the fat merchants!” impulses full rein, but they aren’t getting the benefit they expect, thus angst and the emphasis on other wealth-compensation measures.
Regards,
Ric
I can’t stand it! First it’s STUPID, STUPID, STUPID ethanol.
And, after that, I seem to have seen a claim that STUPID, STUPID, STUPID global warming is even worth mentioning.
Asshats, unite!
“…then pretend they cared about it all along. (kind of like Nixon)”
Nixon cared about global warming?
The man was a GENIUS, I tell you.
Oh, sure. I go sleep for a few hours, and all Teh Stoopid comes out.
Sweet baby Jesus behind the wheel of a runaway tractor-trailer truck, there’s some weapons-grade dense on this subject.
Bad economics, bad physics, and bad chemistry make bad politics.
And it’s double-plus love for the people who promoted “ethanol” as an “efficient alternative” and then, when pointed out that it’s less efficient, open up with the “diversion machine gun.”
Except dave, no love for the methanol-swigging jr. high student.
Test
I’ve tried twice before now:
Using some easily obtainable statistics, I get a cost of %0.15/bushel for diesel fule for corn production. Up from $0.10/bushel. That’s a significant increase, but a nickle isn’t an unmanagable proportion of $2.00. Given that increase, we’d expect the price of corn, proportionately, to be about $2.65/bushel. Shall we conclude that someone’s doing some gouging at $6.00?
RTO: Counting Crows?
It must. The paper I found bases this on the direct measurement of a 1000 acre operation in 2005.
This is a dying thread but I’ll abbreviate in it’s last moments (a problem of these blogs right or left, is that ‘discourse’ is limited by fast rhetorical rejoinders devolving into ad hominem attacks that have to be done within a 48 hour max ‘thread’ cycle. Many of my last statements on these after the 48th or sooner hour are left lingering in cybernothingness.)
anyway, what was the thread?
No. Ric, inflation in the 70s was also caused by oil price hikes and the offseted costs of the Cold and Hot War (‘nam) after which military hardware inventories were huge [I even had a student job prowling those huge inventories] but products that people wanted like petro were limited. The Nixon/Ford years were pretty brutal but Carter paid the price as he also fired up the antiSoviet thing in Afghanistan, and banned the US from the Olympics and then had Iran blow up in his face with some help from Republicans eager to get into the White House.)
Oil Prices did fall as tax breaks initiated under Carter revitalized innovation (and wasted tax monies too but that’s the price of innovation….I am talking about the major investments into the Overthrust Belt north and west of Denver (jeff’s bailiwick) of which I had a very minor role –of supervising construction of a concrete built oil pumping station in the middle of 20 below 0 temps for one period) but that poured major bucks into KBR, Fluor, etc’s bank accounts..just in time for Reagan to claim credit for stuff happening under Carter. Oil prices went down under Reagan thanks to Hussein and Iran battleing it out and needing every nickel to get funds for their armies…somehow they kept pumping the oil while killing million(s). And then there was the special arrangements between Reagan’s men, Iran and Israel. But meanwhile huge tax increases were put on the working class (huge social security tax increase w/ conservative Dems helping out) and unionism died under it’s own trade against trade divisiveness with a huge help from corporate/Republican bullytactics ala Reaganism). And the long slide into further economic class division that keeps getting worse year by year ever since the ’70s.
Inflation is just that: class divisiveness. Wages stagnant, prices go up. Profit is guaranteed as necessities are commodities gaining fast gains over much slower labor cost increases.
Right now: I heard an expert on commodities say that w/o speculation, oil would still be about 50 to 60 dollars a barrel, corn much less than 6 bucks a bushel (or whatever?) and same for rice (a huge 50 percent markup currently just for speculators). The commodities markets makes Chicago a much bigger hub of capital now than NY (which ironically mimics the Obama vs. Hillary debate). Murdock buying DowJones….that’s a losing thing. London and Shanghai are eclipsing NYC as international hubs and Chicago’s Mercantile is onto short term gains that are unsustainable but very profitable in the short run.
{Insert retaliatorily idiotic right-wing talking points here. It’s not worth my time, frankly.}
You know, for a paragraph there I thought dave was within shooting range of reality, and then PSHOW!, straight off into the vacuum of Outer Left.
Tell us the one about Carter again, dave, it’s always a hoot.
If you want substantive responses, dave, here’s a hint, seriously: Be reflective, not reflexive.
Just try it, trust me. It may not work the first time, but with practice, it will.
well, tell me about Carter and Brez. supplying the Afghan anti-commies with weapons, fighting the ‘evil empire’ by Not going to the Olympics, (while Bush is going to the commie Olympics, actually increasing defense spending at the end of his short term and how conservatives negotiated with America’s Real enemies, the Islamic fundamentalists . I didn’t like Carter’s conservative Democratic positions…but give him credit for doing just about everything Reagan did (except for Reagan’s antiEnviromental, pro-deficit policies).
Ethanol does NOT make you vehicle get better MPG. And because it is so expensive to refine and transport (as far as I know it can NOT be pipelined only tanker trucked), there is no cost savings.
Using 20% of the total corn crop to make ethanol is idiotic. The reverse “solution” would not be better either. Dump that 20% back into the foodstuffs market instead of the bio-fuels market and watch the “fun” rollercoaster recession in the commodities market.
We should have started drilling in Alaska 10+ years ago (Thanks Clinton). There is an estimated 700 years of oil in and around the US. What the hell are we waiting for????? The bottom line is……………………………………………………..MONEY!!!!!!!
Money controls EVERYTHING. We have forgotten this. Money (profits) controls the oil prices. “Tax ‘BIG OIL’, that will fix ’em” says Hillary Clinton. BIG OIL will just pass that on to you and me. “Global warming” is only an issue because it MAKES MONEY. It is now called “Climate change”, because it was too cold this year for any “warming”. Buy a “voucher” and you are “green”. How stupid is that? When are we going to PUT A STOP TO ALL THIS STUPIDITY?
“700 years of oil in and around the US”
probably snake oil
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