Posted on 01/22/2016 3:22:35 AM PST by dynachrome
Why does Trump wish to increase the ethanol mandate?
He wants to reduce US dependence on foreign oil.
I don't know.
He is pandering to the Iowa caucus.
(Excerpt) Read more at headlineoftheday.com ...
He wants to reduce US dependence on foreign oil. (49%)
He is pandering to the Iowa caucus. (45%)
I don’t know. (6%)
What about oil whores, along with all other business whores? Or the whores of the left’s new language called crony capitalists? The crony term has become very popular even on free republic.
Yes, trump is pro business and pro taxpayer. Pure evil, just like Cruz. We must learn to hate US citizen taxpayers and their employers.
A cool breeze of common sense. Every other business with subsidies and tax breaks are good, farmers are evil and so are their products. Sarc
Frankly, oil and business whores aren’t operative in the Corn Whore state of first-opportunity-narcissistic-pandering now. It’s about stupid caucuses and ethanol and those predictive ‘independents’ and ‘mavericks’ who like their butts kissed very 4 years by all the candidates.
Next comes those dweebs in New Hampshire and then the rest of those states in this country not BEGGING to be recognized as something worthwhile when they’re not...
So, over 2 million farms is a few? Do you farm? What business are you in? Show me the calculations on corn that generates 400 gallons of ETOH/acre, a high protein livestock feed and cornstalk forage is a net energy loss. If you can show the science based evidence then I can be persuaded, but the big oil companies can’t produce them either, since they always omit the feed and forage from consideration. They also never mention that growing corn is a CO2 sink and an efficient user of sunlight to make portable energy.
Oil inventory is at a very low level. I suggest you check out Boone Pickens for his assessment. You are not a corn producer, so stop pretending. You live in an oil state.
Reducing dependence on ME oil plays well in Peoria, but from everything I have read, ethanol is NOT a viable alternative. Fracking should be such an alternative. Takes huge amounts of energy AND water to produce ethanol.”
Most manufacruring takes the same. ETOH is only a fraction of the corn picture. The urban bumpkins can’ t fathom that high protein feed and stalk forage are also produced. Corn, a bamboo relative, is a huge CO2 sink, grows to 12 feet or more in a season, captures sun energy to produce ETOH, high protein feed and cornstalk forage for livestock. The oil industry always leaves out the later parts of the story of corn.
I was in Stillwater, Ok in November and experienced a mild earthquake which occurs almost daily because of the underground caverns left empty from th oil removed.
Ditto what you said.
We're talking Iowa, here. There are only 75,000 family farms left in Iowa. Even counting 2 voters per farm, that's only 7% of the voting age population in Iowa.
Here's a link from Texas A&M university, indicating a net energy LOSS for generating ethanol from irrigated corn:
http://www.ag.auburn.edu/biopolicy/documents/Net%20Energy%20Balance%20for%20Ethanol%20from%20Irrigated%20Corn.pdf
Exactly proof that government subsidies ALWAYS disrupt the free market. I remember the 'Soil Bank' subsidies of the '50s where farmers were paid NOT to grow corn. We repeated the ditty:
Mary, Mary quite contrary, how does your garden grow
"I've put it all in 'Soil Bank', and live off government dough"
With corn, the market has been distorted so long and in so many ways, it's impossible to tell what the actual value should be. No wonder your friend has trouble with it.
Actually, the link you sent is from Auburn but is about irrigated corn grown on the high dry plains in Texas, a poor place to grow corn anyway. Most corn of course is dry land raised and the article provides some good science-based evidence, not the left’s usual attack on private businesses. The following is straight out of the executive summary of the article and is supportive of what I have written. “l.1 A more comprehensive analysis by USDA found a 34% net energy gain,2 rising to 67% after accounting for co- product energy credits.3 The consensus is that dryland production of corn results in a net energy gain of 30-70%, depending on soil productivity, production practices, and distillation technology”. Thanks for sending the link.
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/pdf/ib_32.pdf
Some snippits:
THE HIDDEN CORN ETHANOL TAX
How Much Does the Renewable Fuel Standard Cost Motorists?
2005: Congress passes the Energy Policy Act, which requires the use of renewable motor fuel under a new mandate, the Renewable Fuel Standard.
2010: For the first time, ethanol plants become the biggest consumer of domestic corn, surpassing livestock feed.
2011: Federal subsidies for corn ethanol are eliminated. The RFS mandates remain in place.
2013: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announces that the size of the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico is expected to be three times its normal size. In response, Larry McKinney, executive director of the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies at Texas A&M University;Corpus Christi, points a finger at fertilizer used in ethanol production.
January 2015: Iowa State University reports that 39 percent of the U.S. corn crop is being diverted to make ethanol.
III. CALCULATING THE RFS’s COST TO MOTORISTS
Since 1982, the price of an energy-equivalent volume of ethanol has, on average, been about 2.4 times the price of gasoline. Further, for eight years;1986, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1992, 1994, 1997, and 1998;ethanol cost at least three times more than an energy-equivalent amount of gasoline. Between 2007 and 2014, 92.5 billion gallons of ethanol were mixed into domestic gasoline supplies. Over the same eight-year period, the energy equivalent cost of ethanol over gasoline averaged about 90 cents per gallon. Motorists thus incurred about $83 billion-roughly $10 billion annually;in additional fuel costs over and above what they would have paid for gasoline alone.
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