"Ethanol is foolish, Hydrogen cars a joke, Electric is polluting" Make no efforts in alternative fuel research"
Posted on 02/28/2008 7:51:21 AM PST by rb22982
The ethanol boom is running out of gas as corn prices spike
NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Cargill announces it's scrapping plans for a $200 million ethanol plant near Topeka, Kan. A judge approves the bankruptcy sale of an unfinished ethanol plant in Canton, Ill.. And that was just Tuesday.
Indeed, plans for as many as 50 new ethanol plants have been shelved in recent months, as Wall Street pulls back from the sector, says Paul Ho, a Credit Suisse investment banker specializing in alternative energy. Financing for new ethanol plants, Ho says, "has been shut down."
How can the ethanol industry be slumping only two months after Congress passed an energy bill most experts consider a biofuels boon? The answer is runaway corn prices.
(Excerpt) Read more at money.cnn.com ...
As an old engineer, I always love to see numbers quoted to the hundredth of a pound, preceded by "approximately".
Somebody got carried away by numbers on his calculator, when the whole thing is a wild-ass guess to begin with.
Perhaps you haven’t heard about the survey that showed 68.349% of the statistics quoted publically are made up on the spot ;-)
My body thinks it is. ;-)
Even if accurate, you are talking about a time when people largely grew, raised, and hunted their own food. Horse feed was also supplemented by grazing, or rather grazing was supplemented with sweet-feed.
Technically, though, I suppose your statement is accurate. I just think comparing the two is the whole apples and oranges thing. People and horses both ate oats and corn. Still do. It’s adding internal combustion engines to the mix that screws everything up.
Wheat prices are where they are because of A) the drought in Oz, which has cost their crop 3-5 million tonnes a year, B) the disastrous Pakistani harvest, and C) crop problems in Ukraine. Other nations have also had substandard crops over the past two years.
Ethanol is an idiotic boondoggle, and I'm perfectly willing to blame it and its subsidy-hog backers for a number of problems with food and feed costs, but the wheat situation is not one of them.
Note to self--Always use spell-check.
Good enough.
In any event, corn production in the US has quadrupled in the last 50 years, and is increasing faster than at any time in history, while oil production is now lower than it was 50 years ago and is decreasing faster than at any time in history.
In any event, corn production in the US has quadrupled in the last 50 years, and is increasing faster than at any time in history, while oil production is now lower than it was 50 years ago and is decreasing faster than at any time in history.
And the prices of both keep going up.
All commodities prices has gone up, food related or not.
Don’t go feeling special on us. Oregon’s governor is an ethanol jackass too.
Far away, very, very. far away. Big money's already been made...get out fast.
When a ten mile radius hole in the earth opens up centered on the capitol dome.
This can’t happen soon enough.
Non-petrolieum fuels are an absolute joke.
This is outstanding news.
Something about people refusing to learn from history being doomed to repeat it, or something like that . . . .
I’m waiting for Time to recycle it’s cover story on Global Cooling from the 70’s now that there’s snow in the middle east . . .
Everything dumb is new again.
"Ethanol is foolish, Hydrogen cars a joke, Electric is polluting" Make no efforts in alternative fuel research"
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George Mason University has a great website with new podcast commentary every Monday. Go here: http://www.econtalk.org.
Haven’t they heard of dry ice??
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