Posted on 05/03/2008 5:23:49 AM PDT by kellynla
ping
Biofuels: No Blood For Oil!
(But starvation is ok.)
Ending the corn ethanol nonsense seems to generate consensus across the political spectrum. But don’t expect action anytime soon. Too many well-connected political interests spent years pushing this boondoggle, and they won’t let it go without a big fight.
I just e-mailed my Rep. last night to lead or support stopping the Ethanol mandate.
A Perfect Storm of Stupidity ~ al bore & the lib/dems!!!!
Don't give Bush and the GOP Congresscritters a pass on this one. An agenda this stupid usually requires bipartisanship.
This is a non starter, baby. The second sentence was even worse. Can't imagine why it takes so much text to repeat the talking points.
Agree. Many Republicans pushed this silly agenda too.
True enough, as far as it goes.
If the US had spent the same effort on drilling known reserves and recovering tar sands as we have ethanol, we would be much better off. The article fails to broach this subject.
And on another front, the article mentions fuel from cooking oil (biodiesel) as if it were part of the problem. This is a relatively small movement and not using food stock to make fuel. Leave that out of this.
That sounds very much like the entire man made global warming scam.
Time and again it is proven that free markets are the most efficient must of the time most humane means for making economic decisions. In fortunately, free markets have to compete with class baiting politicians and pseudo intellectuals.
But that doesn't do anything to win the farm belt vote, does it?
IDIOCY.....burning FOOD for Fuel!!! God will get us for this.
I bet it never dawns on 80% of the country that a lot of our problems come from politicians actually carrying out their constituent’s flawed desires. It always feels much better to blame congress than ourselves.
* Cease all ethanol production. It requires more energy to make than it yields and the unintended consequence is higher food costs. Corn production shifted from feed-corn to subsidized corn for ethanol. Just say "no" to ethanol!
* Immediately create only ONE "blend" of gasoline and cease regional blends which are stupid, costly, and meaningless. Even if this is the "cleanest" blend, just make it ONE and be done with it. Trucking custom blends around the country is wasteful.
* Drill for oil in Alaska, Gulf of Mexico, and other sites in the CONUS as a matter of national security.
* Construct state-of-the-art refineries and/or retrofit current and dormant ones and crank up production.
* Make all “carbon credit” scams unlawful.
* Construct SEVERAL, regional Pebble-Bed Reactors (or other similar designs) that are not considered "breeders", are rechargeable, and cleaner than any current nuclear generator design.
* Use the residual heat from the reactor above to process motor fuel from coal and/or shale. Even though Clinton "stole" some of the best coal reserves, we still have a lot to use.
* Have Iraq pay for its freedom, and maybe even pay us back for their freedom. We'll still need their oil.
* Bust up the cartels or at least be independent enough to make the cartels inconsequential.
* Convince local taxing bodies to lift or fix the sales tax on gasoline so that as gas prices go up, the local tax collectors don’t see a windfall revenue jump at the expense of the consumer.
Just a comment that this folktale is not worth further comment.
Converting coal to oil is profitable when oil prices are higher than $40/barrel. (That’s the break-even point for the process.)
With oil at $120/barrel, we still aren’t seeing much in the way of coal-to-oil.
That begs the question... Why? With today’s prices, it would be VERY profitable.
I would venture that all the money being thrown by the government at corn-based ethanol is a barrier to entry for private capital into coal-to-diesel. It's one thing to compete against the market. It's another to compete against an industry favored by Washington.
Spelled A-r-c-h-e-r D-a-n-i-e-l-s M-i-d-l-a-n-d
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