We have hundreds of years of Western coal to dig up and burn. Bring in the big boys with their big toys like this one
Isn’t there already a 50 cent/gal subsidy on ethanol? $1.00 on bioDiesel?
I heard on the radio that Mexican farmers are plowing-under their agave crops to plant corn. People don’t realize how serious this will become a few years down the road.
It will make not a shred of difference though — the leftist answer to their inevitably short-sighted approaches is that we need more of the same and all will be well.
They’re morons.
And the market will produce more corn now that prices are higher.
Why isn’t govt intervention in order to bring an orderly transition to differnt fuels?
Strictly my opinion, but the market will not change the way we fuel our vehicles, and that fuel and oil is a serious national security liability (IMO)by funding our mortal enemies and chaining the US to fuel competition with China, a rapidly growing china that wants gas as much as we currently do, if we don’t transition, we will be paying ever higher prices for the same commodity and THEN we switch to ethanol?
That makes -0- sense, better to do it now, then suffer and THEN switch.
I would love to be shown were I am wrong on this, and please take the totality of what I said, and not fixate on “Govt intervention in a market”.
Yogurt went from .69 to .99 OVERNIGHT! And I get LESS MPG’s per gallon with this crud. All to prop up the corn farming friends of the RIGHT AND LEFT!
Only a fool would use his food for fuel.
Ethanol is for drinking, not for driving.
Ethanol has little impact upon food prices. For example, feed costs are not computed in dairy prices paid to farmers. World demand, drought and supply are key to those prices. Farmers are price TAKERS not price MAKERS. Stores have increased energy and labor costs that do get passed on to consumers. $3.17 buys a bushel of corn from a farmer. That’s 56 POUNDS. That’s a lotta flakes. And consumers pay $4.00 for less than a pound of breakfast cereal. As for taking food away from livestock, ethanol produces a coproduct called DDGs that has the fats and proteins needed for them. It’s food AND fuel. Don’t believe the lies of big oil. Learn more at http://www.foodandfuelamerica.com
Ethanol is NOT a dopey idea. You are actually being shortsighted. Corn based ethanol? Yes, it is a joke. Costs more or as much to produce as the energy you get from it. Where it can work, is creating the infrastructure for ethanol. In a few years, you will have cellulosic ethanol, made in large part by waste products of current logging and farming. If the infrastructure is there, the businesses will be willing to take the risk. They will not invest the billions needed, without the infrastructure they need to make it viable.
When we can use wood pulp, unneeded agricultural products (corn stalks/husks, grasses, etc.) it will be huge. It will not happen if we don’t begin the switch.
As a matter of fact, if the dairy farmer plants more corn than he needs, he can offset his milk production costs with the extra money he makes marketing his extra corn.
I don't think ethanol is "bad" at all, it is a good additive to gasoline, especially the crappy water laced fuel they produce now. It helps keeping that water from precipitating out, and prolongs the storage properties of gas, not to mention preventing your fuel tank from rusting out, which is a terrible problem with the fuel they make today, especially if you put it in an old pre-60's steel fuel tank.
It also burns cleaner, And increases the octane value.
It is NOT a fuel replacement however. 20% ethanol is about the limit to any benefit ethanol blending can provide, and because it replaces other types of fuel additives, it doesn't (or shouldn't) increase the cost of gasoline at those levels.
The increased corn prices shouldn't be cause for any whining either. It's about time farmers were actually paid above what it costs to grow a crop. They should remove the subsidies now.
This ethanol mandate has such obvious, long-known, widespread bad effects that it’s impossible that they are in fact “unintended”.
Ethanol - what a bargain - one acre of good farmland tied up for four months to produce fifty gallons of product - when are the greenies going to smarten up and realize that their alternate energy schemes are all so inefficient that they’ll bankrupt the country trying to implement them - or is bankruptcy really what they’re after.......
The author of that piece is very intelligent. I like how he writes
A lot of people don't realize that there's less energy in ethanol than in gasoline, and consequently, you burn more of it to produce the same work in an internal combustion engine. The more you burn, the greater the exhaust.
Mark
I have used union 76 for years that does contain ethanol. I use it because Calif has MTBE in all the other gas and that stuff is deadly on the water systems let alone our lungs. I have not really found any problems accept that my fuel pump in my truck gas tank started to not hold pressure.
Corn planting is up 19% this year from last year. We will be up to our @sses in corn. It won’t affect food prices at all.
The whole story is a yawner.
I am still looking for the consensus of scientist who say a CO2 molecule from ethanol is better for global warming reduction than a CO2 molecule from gasoline. Gotta be some reason for this stupidity.
Ethanol production has caused corn based livestock feed to go from $4.00 per 100# a year ago to $8.50 per 100# now. We are seeing this in the cost of meat, eggs, dairy products, anything that uses corn oil, or corn syrup and even canned corn and corn on the cob. Besides that, it’s more expensive than the gasoline that it is supposed to replace.
This has to rank up there with global warming as one of the stupidest things that has ever been perpetrated on the American public.
We have hundreds of years of Western coal to dig up and burn. Bring in the big boys with their big toys like this one