The ethanol hoax is a drop in the bucket compared to the magnitude of the great global warming scam. Soon they will be taxing carbon dioxide emissions with "carbon credits" or some kind of cap-and-trade scheme. The scare tactics and hysteria generated by the those believing and promoting the myth of man-caused global warming are already creating a worldwide economic disaster, and there is more to come.
Peter
Big Corn and Ethanol Hoax
By Walter E. Williams CNSNews.com Commentary March 12, 2008
One of the many mandates of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 calls for oil companies to increase the amount of ethanol mixed with gasoline. President Bush said, during his 2006 State of the Union address, "America is addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world." Let's look at some of the "wonders" of ethanol as a replacement for gasoline.
Ethanol contains water that distillation cannot remove. As such, it can cause major damage to automobile engines not specifically designed to burn ethanol. The water content of ethanol also risks pipeline corrosion and thus must be shipped by truck, rail car or barge. These shipping methods are far more expensive than pipelines.
Ethanol is 20 to 30 percent less efficient than gasoline, making it more expensive per highway mile. It takes 450 pounds of corn to produce the ethanol to fill one SUV tank. That's enough corn to feed one person for a year. Plus, it takes more than one gallon of fossil fuel -- oil and natural gas -- to produce one gallon of ethanol. After all, corn must be grown, fertilized, harvested and trucked to ethanol producers -- all of which are fuel-using activities. And, it takes 1,700 gallons of water to produce one gallon of ethanol. On top of all this, if our total annual corn output were put to ethanol production, it would reduce gasoline consumption by 10 or 12 percent.
Ethanol is so costly that it wouldn't make it in a free market. That's why Congress has enacted major ethanol subsidies, about $1.05 to $1.38 a gallon, which is no less than a tax on consumers. In fact, there's a double tax -- one in the form of ethanol subsidies and another in the form of handouts to corn farmers to the tune of $9.5 billion in 2005 alone.
There's something else wrong with this picture. If Congress and President Bush say we need less reliance on oil and greater use of renewable fuels, then why would Congress impose a stiff tariff, 54 cents a gallon, on ethanol from Brazil? Brazilian ethanol, by the way, is produced from sugar cane and is far more energy efficient, cleaner and cheaper to produce. Ethanol production has driven up the prices of corn-fed livestock, such as beef, chicken and dairy products, and products made from corn, such as cereals. As a result of higher demand for corn, other grain prices, such as soybean and wheat, have risen dramatically. The fact that the U.S. is the world's largest grain producer and exporter means that the ethanol-induced higher grain prices will have a worldwide impact on food prices.
It's easy to understand how the public, looking for cheaper gasoline, can be taken in by the call for increased ethanol usage. But politicians, corn farmers and ethanol producers know they are running a cruel hoax on the American consumer. They are in it for the money. The top leader in the ethanol hoax is Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), the country's largest producer of ethanol. Ethanol producers and the farm lobby have pressured farm state congressmen into believing that it would be political suicide if they didn't support subsidized ethanol production. That's the stick. Campaign contributions play the role of the carrot.
The ethanol hoax is a good example of a problem economists refer to as narrow, well-defined benefits versus widely dispersed costs. It pays the ethanol lobby to organize and collect money to grease the palms of politicians willing to do their bidding because there's a large benefit for them -- higher wages and profits. The millions of gasoline consumers, who fund the benefits through higher fuel and food prices, as well as taxes, are relatively uninformed and have little clout. After all, who do you think a politician will invite into his congressional or White House office to have a heart-to-heart -- you or an Archer Daniels Midlands executive?
(Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., and a member of the Board of Advisors for the Media Research Center's Business & Media Institute. The views expressed are those of the writer.)Copyright 2008, Creators Syndicate, Inc.
Showing posts with label corn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label corn. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Ethanol Fuel Not The Answer?
This is a discussion about some alternatives to gasoline for powering vehicles. It presents some useful facts to consider.
Peter
Shuck the ethanol and let solar shine
Solar power and compressed natural gas offer more-efficient energy technologies than planting, fertilizing, harvesting and refining fields of corn into fuel. Investors, take note. Congress, listen.
By Jon Markman
New research by a University of California petroleum engineering professor suggests that worldwide crude oil supplies will start to run so low over the next nine years that resource-blessed countries like Saudi Arabia will begin to hoard them for domestic use instead of exporting -- and states with large reservoirs of natural gas, like Montana, will seek ways to avoid sharing with less-advantaged neighbors like Oregon.
Attempts to forestall the political and economic damage by turning aggressively to agriculture for "renewable" transportation fuel in the form of ethanol will prove futile, according to professor Tad W. Patzek, as new calculations show that the entire surface of the Earth cannot create enough additional biomass to replace more than 10% of current fossil fuel use.
The process of sowing, fertilizing, reaping, distributing and refining corn and grasses for ethanol feedstock uses up nearly as much carbon energy as fuel farmers claim to save, and it generates so much soil degradation and toxic byproducts that widespread use will leave the Earth denuded and hostile to human life within decades, according to the professor's data.
Apocalypse now, again Patzek, in a controversial paper presented last month to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, says military battles over fast-depleting fossil fuels will combine with insufficient replacement strategies and escalating population growth soon to imperil the human race unless coordinated global efforts to curb energy demand are taken quickly. "Change will be made for us unless we make changes," he said in an interview from his UC Berkeley office this week.
Of course, we are accustomed to apocalyptic statements about the environment these days, after recent campaigns to raise awareness of ecological disasters ranging from global warming to the destruction of the rain forest. But we can't really do too much about those beyond changing a few light bulbs and recycling cereal boxes.
Yet a provably insane public policy focused on ethanol production is something we can urge politicians to halt. We can also demand that tax dollars and product development funds be spent on more long-lasting transportation fuel solutions based on solar energy and compressed natural gas. And as investors we can take positions in companies that are likely to benefit from improvements.
Let me explain the problem in the simplest terms. The main thing you need to keep in mind is that all energy on our planet comes from the sun. Through the magic of photosynthesis, shrubs and trees hundreds of millions of years ago grew plentifully worldwide in swamps. They died, were covered by layers of sediment amid tectonic change, and were then baked via geological processes into oil, gas and coal.
Fast-forward to the early 1900s, and petroleum engineers figured out how to discover, exploit and transport this buried treasure on a mass scale. Then followed the greatest explosion of industry, freedom and wealth the Earth had ever known. For 100 years, as long as supplies were abundant and cheap, all was well. Enter the sport-utility vehicle, air conditioning, two-hour commutes to work, $200 cross-country flights and skyscraper cityscapes lit up all night.
The big drain Is this sustainable? At the risk of sounding like an environmentalist crackpot, maybe not.
It's now becoming clear to scientists that half a billion years' worth of natural energy production has been drained in a century. As production has slowed amid intensified demand from emerging nations, prices have risen eightfold to allocate diminishing resource to those with the greatest ability to pay. Now scientists like Patzek say depletion has reached the phase when it will accelerate exponentially with rising needs.
Figure there's maximum another 100 years left, but after only another eight years the difficulty of acquiring it will be felt so dramatically that governments of exporters will feel compelled to stockpile instead of trade.
As importers foresee an impasse -- and observe the painful ineffectiveness of simply grabbing resources, as the United States is accused of doing in Iraq -- new sources are needed or our way of life must plainly end. The solution? That's where it gets interesting.
Sun block The U.S. agriculture lobby is incredibly powerful, and it has somehow managed to convince Congress that our next 100 years of energy should also come from the sun. Not in its most efficient route, directly transformed by the magic of electronics from solar rays into electricity via large and small grids of photovoltaic cells. But in the most inefficient way possible: From the growing of corn and then its refinement into fuel.
How inefficient is the ethanol solution? When you break the "agrofuels" system down scientifically, you can see that 99.9% of the energy in sunlight is lost in the process, with the greatest waste coming in the creation of ammonia-based fertilizer from natural gas, and in the refinery. That is, for every unit of energy that is put into creating agriculture-based fuel, almost three-quarters of it is dissipated before it actually does any work. The greatest amount of energy lost is not in the creation of ammonia-based fertilizer, as many believe, but in the refinery.
Of course, an even bigger problem is that the 6.6 billion people on Earth need all the food they can get, so every acre taken out of wheat, rice and soybean production to feed our 1 billion cars is an acre that won't feed starving kids. As Patzek notes pungently in his paper, after a lot of math to prove the point, "Our planet has zero excess biomass at her disposal."
One better solution is solar energy created at the municipal level by massive photovoltaic cell facilities, at the street level by home-based grids and at the transportation level at lots where electric vehicles' batteries can be charged. Photovoltaic cells lose only about 80% of the sun's energy to dissipation, making them at least 100 times more efficient than ethanol after the fuel cost of growing and refining the biomass feedstack is accounted for.
The sun doesn't have its own lobby or a voting bloc in the presidential primaries, so research and funding has lagged. U.S. and European industrial giants General Electric (GE, news, msgs) and Siemens (SMAWF, news, msgs) are working hard at this solution, as are many intriguing U.S. and Chinese small and midsize companies such as Suntech Power (STP, news, msgs), First Solar (FSLR, news, msgs), Trina Solar (TSL, news, msgs) and MEMC Electronic Materials (WFR, news, msgs).
For transportation, most energy experts agree that compressed natural gas, or CNG, is an ideal long-term choice. It is not only much more plentiful in North America than oil -- negating the need to depend on unstable regimes in Nigeria, Venezuela and Russia -- but also many times more efficient. CNG only loses 5% of its power in the transportation and refinement process, and has two other benefits: Its emissions are much less toxic than gasoline or diesel, and when a CNG tank is hit in a crash it is much less likely to explode than a gasoline tank.
As I wrote back in August, many countries are depending on CNG trucks for their large truck, taxi and bus fleets, so this is not some pie-in-the-sky idea. What's lacking in the United States is a distribution network and convenient filling stations -- though you can actually install equipment at home to fill a CNG car or truck from your current heating gas line.
A pilot project in California, moreover, may pave the way for thousands of heavy-duty trucks to be retrofitted with fuel injectors made by a Canadian company called Westport Innovations (CA:WPT, news, msgs) in conjunction with engine maker Cummins (CMI, news, msgs). The conversion kit allows Peterbilts and Kenworths to run clean-burning CNG instead of filthy diesel.
Stall on ethanolIt's been a hot year for ethanol, but has it been too hot? Two industry executives discuss the problem.
In short, there is nothing we can do about the depletion of the sun's bounty from the bowels of the Earth. But we can stop the politically cynical ethanol scam in its tracks, and try to move the debate and our own consumption toward solar and CNG. Of course, the best solution of all is to cut down on wasteful uses of energy such as long-distance commuting, and shipping off-season fruits and vegetables up from the southern hemisphere, and to encourage cities to step up mass-transit development efforts.
It's easy to just ignore the problem with our usual American bluster, but 30 years from now our grandkids are really going to wonder what the heck we were thinking.
Fine Print To learn more about Patzek, visit his Cal Berkeley Web site. Here is the paper he presented at OECD, titled "How Can We Outlive Our Way Of Life?" (.pdf). It's quite readable every for lay people and explains a lot -- so take some time to go through it. To learn more about Clean Energy Fuels, click here. To learn about Westport Innovations, read here. . . . Learn more about GE solar projects here. . . . To read more about Suntech, click here. . . . Learn about MEMC Electronic Materials here. . . . To learn about First Solar, check its Web site here. . . .
When it's available next year, I'm thinking about trading in my trusty Ducati Monster , which I use for my two-mile commute, for the Enertia electric motorcycle. There's also a hydrogen-powered motorcycle in the works called the ENV. . . . There's a sweet Mercedes-Benz, the 200 NGT, available only in Europe, that runs on CNG. Check it out here. To gas it up at home, check out the Phill by FuelMaker. . . . For more background on the ethanol craze, check out my April 5 column on the corn boom.
Peter
Shuck the ethanol and let solar shine
Solar power and compressed natural gas offer more-efficient energy technologies than planting, fertilizing, harvesting and refining fields of corn into fuel. Investors, take note. Congress, listen.
By Jon Markman
New research by a University of California petroleum engineering professor suggests that worldwide crude oil supplies will start to run so low over the next nine years that resource-blessed countries like Saudi Arabia will begin to hoard them for domestic use instead of exporting -- and states with large reservoirs of natural gas, like Montana, will seek ways to avoid sharing with less-advantaged neighbors like Oregon.
Attempts to forestall the political and economic damage by turning aggressively to agriculture for "renewable" transportation fuel in the form of ethanol will prove futile, according to professor Tad W. Patzek, as new calculations show that the entire surface of the Earth cannot create enough additional biomass to replace more than 10% of current fossil fuel use.
The process of sowing, fertilizing, reaping, distributing and refining corn and grasses for ethanol feedstock uses up nearly as much carbon energy as fuel farmers claim to save, and it generates so much soil degradation and toxic byproducts that widespread use will leave the Earth denuded and hostile to human life within decades, according to the professor's data.
Apocalypse now, again Patzek, in a controversial paper presented last month to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, says military battles over fast-depleting fossil fuels will combine with insufficient replacement strategies and escalating population growth soon to imperil the human race unless coordinated global efforts to curb energy demand are taken quickly. "Change will be made for us unless we make changes," he said in an interview from his UC Berkeley office this week.
Of course, we are accustomed to apocalyptic statements about the environment these days, after recent campaigns to raise awareness of ecological disasters ranging from global warming to the destruction of the rain forest. But we can't really do too much about those beyond changing a few light bulbs and recycling cereal boxes.
Yet a provably insane public policy focused on ethanol production is something we can urge politicians to halt. We can also demand that tax dollars and product development funds be spent on more long-lasting transportation fuel solutions based on solar energy and compressed natural gas. And as investors we can take positions in companies that are likely to benefit from improvements.
Let me explain the problem in the simplest terms. The main thing you need to keep in mind is that all energy on our planet comes from the sun. Through the magic of photosynthesis, shrubs and trees hundreds of millions of years ago grew plentifully worldwide in swamps. They died, were covered by layers of sediment amid tectonic change, and were then baked via geological processes into oil, gas and coal.
Fast-forward to the early 1900s, and petroleum engineers figured out how to discover, exploit and transport this buried treasure on a mass scale. Then followed the greatest explosion of industry, freedom and wealth the Earth had ever known. For 100 years, as long as supplies were abundant and cheap, all was well. Enter the sport-utility vehicle, air conditioning, two-hour commutes to work, $200 cross-country flights and skyscraper cityscapes lit up all night.
The big drain Is this sustainable? At the risk of sounding like an environmentalist crackpot, maybe not.
It's now becoming clear to scientists that half a billion years' worth of natural energy production has been drained in a century. As production has slowed amid intensified demand from emerging nations, prices have risen eightfold to allocate diminishing resource to those with the greatest ability to pay. Now scientists like Patzek say depletion has reached the phase when it will accelerate exponentially with rising needs.
Figure there's maximum another 100 years left, but after only another eight years the difficulty of acquiring it will be felt so dramatically that governments of exporters will feel compelled to stockpile instead of trade.
As importers foresee an impasse -- and observe the painful ineffectiveness of simply grabbing resources, as the United States is accused of doing in Iraq -- new sources are needed or our way of life must plainly end. The solution? That's where it gets interesting.
Sun block The U.S. agriculture lobby is incredibly powerful, and it has somehow managed to convince Congress that our next 100 years of energy should also come from the sun. Not in its most efficient route, directly transformed by the magic of electronics from solar rays into electricity via large and small grids of photovoltaic cells. But in the most inefficient way possible: From the growing of corn and then its refinement into fuel.
How inefficient is the ethanol solution? When you break the "agrofuels" system down scientifically, you can see that 99.9% of the energy in sunlight is lost in the process, with the greatest waste coming in the creation of ammonia-based fertilizer from natural gas, and in the refinery. That is, for every unit of energy that is put into creating agriculture-based fuel, almost three-quarters of it is dissipated before it actually does any work. The greatest amount of energy lost is not in the creation of ammonia-based fertilizer, as many believe, but in the refinery.
Of course, an even bigger problem is that the 6.6 billion people on Earth need all the food they can get, so every acre taken out of wheat, rice and soybean production to feed our 1 billion cars is an acre that won't feed starving kids. As Patzek notes pungently in his paper, after a lot of math to prove the point, "Our planet has zero excess biomass at her disposal."
One better solution is solar energy created at the municipal level by massive photovoltaic cell facilities, at the street level by home-based grids and at the transportation level at lots where electric vehicles' batteries can be charged. Photovoltaic cells lose only about 80% of the sun's energy to dissipation, making them at least 100 times more efficient than ethanol after the fuel cost of growing and refining the biomass feedstack is accounted for.
The sun doesn't have its own lobby or a voting bloc in the presidential primaries, so research and funding has lagged. U.S. and European industrial giants General Electric (GE, news, msgs) and Siemens (SMAWF, news, msgs) are working hard at this solution, as are many intriguing U.S. and Chinese small and midsize companies such as Suntech Power (STP, news, msgs), First Solar (FSLR, news, msgs), Trina Solar (TSL, news, msgs) and MEMC Electronic Materials (WFR, news, msgs).
For transportation, most energy experts agree that compressed natural gas, or CNG, is an ideal long-term choice. It is not only much more plentiful in North America than oil -- negating the need to depend on unstable regimes in Nigeria, Venezuela and Russia -- but also many times more efficient. CNG only loses 5% of its power in the transportation and refinement process, and has two other benefits: Its emissions are much less toxic than gasoline or diesel, and when a CNG tank is hit in a crash it is much less likely to explode than a gasoline tank.
As I wrote back in August, many countries are depending on CNG trucks for their large truck, taxi and bus fleets, so this is not some pie-in-the-sky idea. What's lacking in the United States is a distribution network and convenient filling stations -- though you can actually install equipment at home to fill a CNG car or truck from your current heating gas line.
A pilot project in California, moreover, may pave the way for thousands of heavy-duty trucks to be retrofitted with fuel injectors made by a Canadian company called Westport Innovations (CA:WPT, news, msgs) in conjunction with engine maker Cummins (CMI, news, msgs). The conversion kit allows Peterbilts and Kenworths to run clean-burning CNG instead of filthy diesel.
Stall on ethanolIt's been a hot year for ethanol, but has it been too hot? Two industry executives discuss the problem.
In short, there is nothing we can do about the depletion of the sun's bounty from the bowels of the Earth. But we can stop the politically cynical ethanol scam in its tracks, and try to move the debate and our own consumption toward solar and CNG. Of course, the best solution of all is to cut down on wasteful uses of energy such as long-distance commuting, and shipping off-season fruits and vegetables up from the southern hemisphere, and to encourage cities to step up mass-transit development efforts.
It's easy to just ignore the problem with our usual American bluster, but 30 years from now our grandkids are really going to wonder what the heck we were thinking.
Fine Print To learn more about Patzek, visit his Cal Berkeley Web site. Here is the paper he presented at OECD, titled "How Can We Outlive Our Way Of Life?" (.pdf). It's quite readable every for lay people and explains a lot -- so take some time to go through it. To learn more about Clean Energy Fuels, click here. To learn about Westport Innovations, read here. . . . Learn more about GE solar projects here. . . . To read more about Suntech, click here. . . . Learn about MEMC Electronic Materials here. . . . To learn about First Solar, check its Web site here. . . .
When it's available next year, I'm thinking about trading in my trusty Ducati Monster , which I use for my two-mile commute, for the Enertia electric motorcycle. There's also a hydrogen-powered motorcycle in the works called the ENV. . . . There's a sweet Mercedes-Benz, the 200 NGT, available only in Europe, that runs on CNG. Check it out here. To gas it up at home, check out the Phill by FuelMaker. . . . For more background on the ethanol craze, check out my April 5 column on the corn boom.
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Corn And Ethanol: The Insanity Of Using Corn For Fuel
In this article, the author, Alan Caruba, explains what I and others have been saying about the insanity of using corn to create ethanol which is then added to gasoline and used as a fuel in motor vehicles. He says we will soon be using the equivalent of the entire corn crop of the state of Iowa! If you have ever driven through Iowa in August when corn is at its peak, the thought of using all of it for fuel is mind-boggling.
He maintains that using corn in this way has already driven up the price of corn and will increase the price of thousands of other things we depend on. He says this ill-conceived government-mandated manufacture of ethanol will do severe damage to the American economy. Keep in mind that this is being done in the truly ignorant belief that somehow this use of ethanol is going to help control global warming and at the same time, reduce our "dependence on foreign oil. The idea is if we use ethanol, maybe we won't have to fight wars in the Middle East. That is also one of the dumbest concepts I've heard in a long time.
Is it too late to reverse this rush to make ethanol from corn. Is it too late to stop the construction of these ethanol refineries? Is there any way to stop this disaster in the making? Someone is to blame. Does anyone have any ideas?
Peter
Corn Facts, Not Corn Flakes!
By Alan Caruba
CNSNews.com Commentary from the National Anxiety CenterAugust 07, 2007
There's a whole aspect of life in America about which fewer and fewer Americans know anything. It's farming. Some two percent of the population feed the rest of us, who have no idea how what they produce gets to our plate. Responsible for everything we eat, agriculture is also an essential element of our nation's economy.
E. Ralph Hostetter, the publisher of American Farm Publications, is one of the most cogent, sensible voices on issues concerning farming today. Recently he wrote about the impact of biofuels. You might think he would be all for converting corn into ethanol, but Hostetter is not. He sees the insanity of using corn -- a crop used in the manufacture of 3,500 commonly used products during their production or processing -- in this fashion.
"The American public is told by our government the rate of inflation in 2006 was only 2.2 percent," wrote Hostetter. "However, when price increases in food and energy were factored in, the reality was that actual inflation was 4.8 percent, or an increase of 118 percent what the nation was told. "The volatility of food and energy prices is such that the government's Consumer Price Index conveniently ignores them. That doesn't make the problem go away, but it does mislead the public.
"Today, 60 percent of the American corn crop is fed to U.S. livestock," noted Hostetter. "Therefore, as the price of corn is forced up by the demands of ethanol production and many natural causes such as weather, so is the price of meat, poultry, eggs, milk and more than 3,500 products American use every day. "Among the products affected by the rise in the cost of corn are cake mixes, pizza, beer, whisky, candies, cookies, corn flakes, cosmetics, instant coffee, carbonated beverages, fertilizers, vitamins, tires, toothpaste, paper products, pharmaceuticals such as aspirin and more than 85 different types of antibiotics. And that's just a short list.
Across the board, the price of a bushel of corn was up six percent in 2006 because of federal government mandates for the production and use of ethanol. "Corn production for the nearly 7 billion gallons of ethanol production at the present time requires about 16 million acres or 20 percent of the total 80-plus million acres presently in corn production," Hostetter noted. In the effort to cash in on the federal ethanol mandates, production facilities cannot be built fast enough. In Iowa, when 55 ethanol plants become fully operational, they will use virtually the entire corn crop of that State!
Proposals in Congress to increase biofuel production "will require nearly 100 million acres of corn, approximately a 25 percent increase above the present 80-plus million acres," said Hostetter, which means that other crops such as soybeans and cotton will not be planted.
At present, the U.S. "supplies 70 percent of world corn exports of some 55 million tons of corn. It is now estimated that ethanol production in 2006 consumed about 50 million tons." Goodbye world corn exports and the money generated for the U.S. economy. Instead that corn will be added to gasoline in the form of ethanol.
It's not like the world is running out of oil for gasoline. There is no rational or scientific reason to reduce the use of gasoline except for the charge that automobile and truck use generates "greenhouse gases", but 95 percent of all greenhouse gases is water vapor!
Environmentalists and the U.S. Congress want to destroy the U.S. economy by diverting corn from feeding the livestock and other food products that we consume and the thousands of other uses for which it is required.
In 1992, Al Gore's book, "Earth in the Balance", was published. It is his screed about the way everyone is participating in the destruction of the Earth. He wrote, "...it ought to be possible to establish a coordinated global program to accomplish the strategic goal of completely eliminating the internal combustion engine over, say a twenty-five year period." Look under the hood of your car. That's an internal combustion engine.
Driving up the cost of corn is pure genius if you want to inflict financial pain on everyone and destroy the nation's economy.
(Alan Caruba writes "Warning Signs," a weekly column posted at the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center. The views expressed are those of the writer.)Copyright 2007, Alan Caruba
He maintains that using corn in this way has already driven up the price of corn and will increase the price of thousands of other things we depend on. He says this ill-conceived government-mandated manufacture of ethanol will do severe damage to the American economy. Keep in mind that this is being done in the truly ignorant belief that somehow this use of ethanol is going to help control global warming and at the same time, reduce our "dependence on foreign oil. The idea is if we use ethanol, maybe we won't have to fight wars in the Middle East. That is also one of the dumbest concepts I've heard in a long time.
Is it too late to reverse this rush to make ethanol from corn. Is it too late to stop the construction of these ethanol refineries? Is there any way to stop this disaster in the making? Someone is to blame. Does anyone have any ideas?
Peter
Corn Facts, Not Corn Flakes!
By Alan Caruba
CNSNews.com Commentary from the National Anxiety CenterAugust 07, 2007
There's a whole aspect of life in America about which fewer and fewer Americans know anything. It's farming. Some two percent of the population feed the rest of us, who have no idea how what they produce gets to our plate. Responsible for everything we eat, agriculture is also an essential element of our nation's economy.
E. Ralph Hostetter, the publisher of American Farm Publications, is one of the most cogent, sensible voices on issues concerning farming today. Recently he wrote about the impact of biofuels. You might think he would be all for converting corn into ethanol, but Hostetter is not. He sees the insanity of using corn -- a crop used in the manufacture of 3,500 commonly used products during their production or processing -- in this fashion.
"The American public is told by our government the rate of inflation in 2006 was only 2.2 percent," wrote Hostetter. "However, when price increases in food and energy were factored in, the reality was that actual inflation was 4.8 percent, or an increase of 118 percent what the nation was told. "The volatility of food and energy prices is such that the government's Consumer Price Index conveniently ignores them. That doesn't make the problem go away, but it does mislead the public.
"Today, 60 percent of the American corn crop is fed to U.S. livestock," noted Hostetter. "Therefore, as the price of corn is forced up by the demands of ethanol production and many natural causes such as weather, so is the price of meat, poultry, eggs, milk and more than 3,500 products American use every day. "Among the products affected by the rise in the cost of corn are cake mixes, pizza, beer, whisky, candies, cookies, corn flakes, cosmetics, instant coffee, carbonated beverages, fertilizers, vitamins, tires, toothpaste, paper products, pharmaceuticals such as aspirin and more than 85 different types of antibiotics. And that's just a short list.
Across the board, the price of a bushel of corn was up six percent in 2006 because of federal government mandates for the production and use of ethanol. "Corn production for the nearly 7 billion gallons of ethanol production at the present time requires about 16 million acres or 20 percent of the total 80-plus million acres presently in corn production," Hostetter noted. In the effort to cash in on the federal ethanol mandates, production facilities cannot be built fast enough. In Iowa, when 55 ethanol plants become fully operational, they will use virtually the entire corn crop of that State!
Proposals in Congress to increase biofuel production "will require nearly 100 million acres of corn, approximately a 25 percent increase above the present 80-plus million acres," said Hostetter, which means that other crops such as soybeans and cotton will not be planted.
At present, the U.S. "supplies 70 percent of world corn exports of some 55 million tons of corn. It is now estimated that ethanol production in 2006 consumed about 50 million tons." Goodbye world corn exports and the money generated for the U.S. economy. Instead that corn will be added to gasoline in the form of ethanol.
It's not like the world is running out of oil for gasoline. There is no rational or scientific reason to reduce the use of gasoline except for the charge that automobile and truck use generates "greenhouse gases", but 95 percent of all greenhouse gases is water vapor!
Environmentalists and the U.S. Congress want to destroy the U.S. economy by diverting corn from feeding the livestock and other food products that we consume and the thousands of other uses for which it is required.
In 1992, Al Gore's book, "Earth in the Balance", was published. It is his screed about the way everyone is participating in the destruction of the Earth. He wrote, "...it ought to be possible to establish a coordinated global program to accomplish the strategic goal of completely eliminating the internal combustion engine over, say a twenty-five year period." Look under the hood of your car. That's an internal combustion engine.
Driving up the cost of corn is pure genius if you want to inflict financial pain on everyone and destroy the nation's economy.
(Alan Caruba writes "Warning Signs," a weekly column posted at the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center. The views expressed are those of the writer.)Copyright 2007, Alan Caruba
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
More Unintended Environmental Consequences
Is going green always good? This article from the Washington Post, (not noted for being paid stooges of the oil industry) points out one of the many negative consequences of taking a knee-jerk, poorly thought-out reaction to global warming.
There is so much pressure to limit carbon dioxide emissions and control global warming, that grave mistakes are bound to happen. Growing corn to produce ethanol, which supposedly produces less "greenhouse gas" than burning gasoline, is a prime example of global warming hysteria gone mad.
This example relates to the Chesapeake Bay, but the same consequences lie in store for every drainage area, river, and lake in areas where more corn is being grown. Of course this applies to almost every State in the lower 48 United States. Some farmers, mostly large corporate farmers are going to benefit, so too are the ethanol producers who already receive an approximate 50 cent per gallon subsidy to make the fuel competitive with gasoline.
Now we have laws, and we're locked in to spending billions on a scientifically and economically unsound attempt to curb global warming and "reduce our dependence" on foreign oil. This one action alone, producing fuel from corn, is going to cost everyone dearly. We have ourselves to blame for listening to the global warming alarmists. The cost in terms of money and damage to the environment will only worsen.
Peter
'Green' Fuel May Damage The Bay
Ethanol Study Has Dire Prediction for The Chesapeake
By David A. Fahrenthold Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, July 17, 2007; Page B01
A surge in the demand for ethanol -- touted as a greener alternative to gasoline -- could have a serious environmental downside for the Chesapeake Bay, because more farmers growing corn could mean more pollution washing off farm fields, a new study warned yesterday.
The study, whose sponsors included the U.S. government and an environmental group, predicted that farmers in the bay watershed will plant 500,000 or more new acres of corn in the next five years. Because fields of corn generally produce more polluted runoff than those of other crops, that's a problem.
"It's going in the opposite direction from where we want to go," said Jim Pease, a professor at Virginia Tech and one of the study's authors.
Ethanol, a fuel made from processed and fermented plant matter, is an old invention with enormous new cachet. Proponents say that it offers an alternative to oil imported from overseas and that it emits fewer greenhouse gases than fossil fuels. In his State of the Union address in January, President Bush called for its use in motor fuels to be increased sevenfold by 2017. Already, 15 ethanol facilities are either planned or under construction in the mid-Atlantic, according to yesterday's report.
But ethanol's boom has also produced a variety of unintended, and unwanted, consequences. Because the primary ingredient at U.S. ethanol plants is corn, the price of that grain has shot up, making everything from tortillas to beef to chocolate more expensive.
In the Chesapeake area, according to the study, the drawback to ethanol's boom is that more farmers have planted cornfields to take advantage of the prices. Corn harvests are expected to increase 12 percent in Maryland this year and 8 percent in Virginia, according to a forecast in March from the U.S. Agriculture Department.
Although the spike is expected to be greater in Mississippi, where forecasters predict a 179 percent jump, across the vast Chesapeake watershed -- extending from southern Virginia to Cooperstown, N.Y. -- smaller shifts can add up. The authors of the study released yesterday forecast that over the next five years, the area of land newly planted with corn could be as much as 1 million acres, four times the size of Fairfax County.
Those shifting to corn production included Craig Giese, a farmer with 600 acres on Virginia's Northern Neck. Giese said in a telephone interview yesterday that he planted 50 new acres of corn after prices climbed from about $2.30 per 56-pound bushel last year to about $3.40 this year.
But Giese said he left many of his acres planted with soybeans to ensure against a disaster if corn prices drop or a drought makes the plants wither.
"If you put in all corn, you could hit a home run, with the prices we have now," said Giese, whose farm is near Lancaster, about 120 miles from Washington. "But . . . you could also go belly up."
More cornfields could be trouble, the study warned, because corn generally requires more fertilizer than such crops as soybeans or hay. When it rains, some of this fertilizer washes downstream, and it brings such pollutants as nitrogen and phosphorus, which feed unnatural algae blooms in the bay. These algae consume the oxygen that fish, crabs and other creatures need to breathe, creating the Chesapeake's infamous dead zones.
Governments around the bay have pledged to cut their output of nitrogen by 110 million pounds by 2010. But the study estimated that an ethanol-driven increase in cornfields could add 8 million to 16 million pounds of pollution.
"We've made it that much harder to meet our bay restoration goals," said Beth McGee, a senior water quality specialist at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, an environmental group based in Annapolis. McGee helped compile the study released yesterday.
The impact could be lessened, McGee said, by measures that trap farm pollution before it can reach a stream. These include forested "buffers" along rivers, where plants can filter runoff, or "cover crops" that soak up fertilizer after the main harvest.
U.S. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) has pushed for such measures to get federal funding from the 2007 farm bill, which is scheduled for a markup in a House committee this week. McGee said yesterday's report was timed to show the need for those funds.
There is so much pressure to limit carbon dioxide emissions and control global warming, that grave mistakes are bound to happen. Growing corn to produce ethanol, which supposedly produces less "greenhouse gas" than burning gasoline, is a prime example of global warming hysteria gone mad.
This example relates to the Chesapeake Bay, but the same consequences lie in store for every drainage area, river, and lake in areas where more corn is being grown. Of course this applies to almost every State in the lower 48 United States. Some farmers, mostly large corporate farmers are going to benefit, so too are the ethanol producers who already receive an approximate 50 cent per gallon subsidy to make the fuel competitive with gasoline.
Now we have laws, and we're locked in to spending billions on a scientifically and economically unsound attempt to curb global warming and "reduce our dependence" on foreign oil. This one action alone, producing fuel from corn, is going to cost everyone dearly. We have ourselves to blame for listening to the global warming alarmists. The cost in terms of money and damage to the environment will only worsen.
Peter
'Green' Fuel May Damage The Bay
Ethanol Study Has Dire Prediction for The Chesapeake
By David A. Fahrenthold Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, July 17, 2007; Page B01
A surge in the demand for ethanol -- touted as a greener alternative to gasoline -- could have a serious environmental downside for the Chesapeake Bay, because more farmers growing corn could mean more pollution washing off farm fields, a new study warned yesterday.
The study, whose sponsors included the U.S. government and an environmental group, predicted that farmers in the bay watershed will plant 500,000 or more new acres of corn in the next five years. Because fields of corn generally produce more polluted runoff than those of other crops, that's a problem.
"It's going in the opposite direction from where we want to go," said Jim Pease, a professor at Virginia Tech and one of the study's authors.
Ethanol, a fuel made from processed and fermented plant matter, is an old invention with enormous new cachet. Proponents say that it offers an alternative to oil imported from overseas and that it emits fewer greenhouse gases than fossil fuels. In his State of the Union address in January, President Bush called for its use in motor fuels to be increased sevenfold by 2017. Already, 15 ethanol facilities are either planned or under construction in the mid-Atlantic, according to yesterday's report.
But ethanol's boom has also produced a variety of unintended, and unwanted, consequences. Because the primary ingredient at U.S. ethanol plants is corn, the price of that grain has shot up, making everything from tortillas to beef to chocolate more expensive.
In the Chesapeake area, according to the study, the drawback to ethanol's boom is that more farmers have planted cornfields to take advantage of the prices. Corn harvests are expected to increase 12 percent in Maryland this year and 8 percent in Virginia, according to a forecast in March from the U.S. Agriculture Department.
Although the spike is expected to be greater in Mississippi, where forecasters predict a 179 percent jump, across the vast Chesapeake watershed -- extending from southern Virginia to Cooperstown, N.Y. -- smaller shifts can add up. The authors of the study released yesterday forecast that over the next five years, the area of land newly planted with corn could be as much as 1 million acres, four times the size of Fairfax County.
Those shifting to corn production included Craig Giese, a farmer with 600 acres on Virginia's Northern Neck. Giese said in a telephone interview yesterday that he planted 50 new acres of corn after prices climbed from about $2.30 per 56-pound bushel last year to about $3.40 this year.
But Giese said he left many of his acres planted with soybeans to ensure against a disaster if corn prices drop or a drought makes the plants wither.
"If you put in all corn, you could hit a home run, with the prices we have now," said Giese, whose farm is near Lancaster, about 120 miles from Washington. "But . . . you could also go belly up."
More cornfields could be trouble, the study warned, because corn generally requires more fertilizer than such crops as soybeans or hay. When it rains, some of this fertilizer washes downstream, and it brings such pollutants as nitrogen and phosphorus, which feed unnatural algae blooms in the bay. These algae consume the oxygen that fish, crabs and other creatures need to breathe, creating the Chesapeake's infamous dead zones.
Governments around the bay have pledged to cut their output of nitrogen by 110 million pounds by 2010. But the study estimated that an ethanol-driven increase in cornfields could add 8 million to 16 million pounds of pollution.
"We've made it that much harder to meet our bay restoration goals," said Beth McGee, a senior water quality specialist at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, an environmental group based in Annapolis. McGee helped compile the study released yesterday.
The impact could be lessened, McGee said, by measures that trap farm pollution before it can reach a stream. These include forested "buffers" along rivers, where plants can filter runoff, or "cover crops" that soak up fertilizer after the main harvest.
U.S. Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) has pushed for such measures to get federal funding from the 2007 farm bill, which is scheduled for a markup in a House committee this week. McGee said yesterday's report was timed to show the need for those funds.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Ethanol For Your Car or Milk For Your Babies?
We've come a long way. Blame Exxon/Mobil and Halliburton. They say a gallon of milk now costs more than a gallon of gasoline. How can that be? Call it environmental hysteria. Governmental stupidity. Now we're plowing up Iowa and growing corn to feed our SUV's instead of our children. Am I missing something in the logic of this? Is this the price we're willing to pay to free ourselves from our "addiction" to foreign oil?
I've been saying this is going to happen. Higher food prices, first my corn flakes and milk, but now beer and tequila (see the stories below). People are only going to be able to take so much of this hardship. We're going to have to become like the Irish and drink up while we can, global warming, flooding, Chinese or not. (See photo below).
Peter
See here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18946296/
I've been saying this is going to happen. Higher food prices, first my corn flakes and milk, but now beer and tequila (see the stories below). People are only going to be able to take so much of this hardship. We're going to have to become like the Irish and drink up while we can, global warming, flooding, Chinese or not. (See photo below).
Peter
See here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18946296/
Forget worries about $4 gas ... now it’s $4 milk
Ethanol production, worldwide demand sends prices for dairy goods soaring
Charles Rex Arbogast / AP
The price of a gallon of milk has flirted with the $4 level in much of the country. Companies that use dairy products are passing along costs — but not Domino's Pizza, since competition is too feirce.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Liz Kooy loves sharp cheddar cheese and is willing to pay almost any price for it.
“Ten dollars a brick, I’d still buy it” and cut back on other purchases, the 36-year-old social worker laughed as she browsed the dairy aisle in a grocery store near downtown Chicago on Wednesday.
She might want to start looking for places to cut back.
Dairy market forecasters are warning that consumers can expect a sharp increase in dairy prices this summer. By June, the milk futures market predicts, the price paid to farmers will have increased 50 percent this year — driven by higher costs of transporting milk to market and increased demand for corn to produce ethanol.
U.S. retail milk prices have increased about 3 percent, or roughly a dime a gallon, this year, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
But University of Illinois dairy specialist Michael Hutjens forecasts further increases of up to 40 cents a gallon for milk over the next few months, and up to 60 cents for a pound of cheese.
That would drive the cost of a gallon of whole milk around the country to an average of $3.78, based on the USDA’s monthly survey of milk prices in 30 metro areas.
Ethanol demand causes rising food prices
May 27: Corn is more expensive these days because of ethanol demand. NBC’s Scott Cohn reports.
Nightly NewsPrices in the last survey, earlier this month, ranged from $2.76 a gallon in Dallas to $3.86 in Chicago and $4.09 in New Orleans, where the dairy industry has struggled to bounce back from Hurricane Katrina.
Hutjens and others said higher gasoline prices have increased the costs of moving milk from farm to market, and corn — the primary feed for dairy cattle — is being gobbled up by producers of the fuel-additive ethanol. The USDA projects that 3.2 billion bushels of this year’s corn crop will be used to make ethanol, a 52 percent increase over 2006.
Ethanol has increased the average American's grocery bill $47 since July, and Iowa State University study concluded.
“There is no free lunch,” Hutjens said. “That corn then has to come away from that dedicated resource.”
Chris Galen, a spokesman for the National Milk Producers Federation, pointed to another factor: Global demand for milk, he said, has grown in the past few years, primarily in the new Asian economic powers.
U.S. food cost up $47 per person due to ethanol
Biofuel brews up higher German beer prices
Ethanol boom may fuel shortage of tequila
“China of course is a big story,” he said. “They’re consuming more (milk protein); they’re using more dairy ingredients in animal feed.”
In years past, that demand might have been met by Australia and New Zealand, he said. But drought in Australia and the limits of New Zealand’s dairy industry have pushed China and its neighbors to buy American.
Hutjens said the biggest dairy price spikes are likely to come later this summer in the areas farthest from the Midwest corn and grain fields that feed most of the country’s dairy cattle.
CONTINUED: Worst in southeast and California
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