Big Corn and Ethanol Hoax

creators.com ^ | March 12, 2008 | Walter E. Williams

[IronJack]

the best product, for the best price.

Define "best." Does that include the cost in lives of slavery to the Mideast oil sheikhs? Being at the mercy of every bedouin's whim?

Ethanol isn't THE answer. But it is AN answer.

[Sunnyflorida]

The key is the mix. We burn oil and natural gas to make electricity we should use coal and nukes. We can make gas out of coal and we can burn gas in our cars.

[Sunnyflorida]

“Ethanol isn’t THE answer. But it is AN answer. “

I completely disagree. We have plenty of natural gas and oil to power cars.

[IronJack]

lets turn food into fuel until we have to import food as well...

As I've explained a thousand times on these threads, the corn being used for ethanol production is NOT Libby's or Green Giant sweet corn. It is FEED corn, the stuff that gets fed to cattle, hogs, and sheep. What's significant about THAT fact is that the nutrients in that corn remain after the sugars for ethanol have been extracted. Corn is primarily fed for its protein content, and high-lysine hybrids retain most of their proteins after the fermentation process. The residue, called distiller's dried grain, is still a valuable feed stock.

In essence, ethanol corn does double duty: first as a fuel supplement, then as a feed grain. So the argument that we're "burning food" is utter poppycock.

[DoughtyOne]

I am open to just about anything that is reasoned.

I know some of you folks get rather exasperated that laymen shoot their mouths off on forums like this.

We laymen wouldn’t be shooting our mouths off if those who knew what they were doing had done something in the 70s.

At this point, I’m going to be a real pain in the posterior until folks who know everything get off their duffs and put an end to our exposure to Middle-Eastern blackmail.

I’m willing to be nice about it, but I’ve waited over thirty years and I’m not waiting another thirty.

We need to be energy self-suffient today. And I’ll join anyone who wants to go nose to nose with the assholes on the left, who block everything that is reasoned.

I’m also willing to go nose to nose with those who think everything is just peachy now, and we don’t need to change.

I’m sure you and I share overall goals here. I’m just getting a wee bit testy over it. Not with you in particular, I hope you know.

[thackney]

We burn oil and natural gas to make electricity we should use coal and nukes.

We use very little petroleum to make electricity. Much of what we do use is residual oil and petroleum coke. Refinery "leftovers" after products like gasoline and diesel have been removed from the crude oil.

U.S. Electric Power Industry Net Generation, 2006

Electric Power Annual
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epa_sum.html

[DoughtyOne]

That’s an interesting arguement, one that I think I can buy into. Thanks. Good points.

[thackney]

It is not a factor of cost.

Water is not an energy source.

You can separate it into hydrogen but like ALL energy conversions it requires more energy than you start with.

It is a better plan to use your source energy than waste energy converting it into hydrogen.

[Sunnyflorida]

I’m extremely happy about this also. I have seen this coming for decades. I remember seeing oil on the beach in SoCal and the idiots thought it was from offshore platforms and tankers but it was just natural seepage.

Just drove me nuts.

I’m not specifically pissed about imports from the ME. I live in FL and really hate the we import from canada and mexico. We have so much here in FL. Meanwhile all that canadian oil money comes down here every winter and they suck as bad as any arab I know.

[Crim]

Ethanol Byproducts Could Be Dangerous FORT COLLINS, Colo. (AP) ― Colorado State University researchers, following up on a study in Kansas, are trying to determine whether ethanol byproducts are too dangerous to be used as cattle feed. The Coloradoan reported that a Kansas State University study found that distillers grains, the leftovers from producing corn ethanol, are linked to a 50 percent increase in E. coli when fed to cattle. Researchers and cattle ranchers maintain the product, a byproduct of converting starch from corn into ethanol and carbon dioxide, can be a good source of nutrients when blended with other cattle feeds. The CSU research is going on at the university's research feedlot in Lamar. Two years ago about 10 million tons of distillers grains were produced nationally and that is expected to grow to 16 million tons 2010, according to an Ohio State University study. "It has just blown up so quickly," said Shawn Archibeque, an assistant professor of animal science at CSU. "Seventy-five to 80 percent of the distillers grains are being fed to dairy and beef cattle." Increased sulfur in the distillers grains comes from adding sulfur to the ethanol machines, Archibeque said. High levels of sulfur can cause sulfur toxicity in cattle. While that doesn't taint meat, cattle suffer neurological damage. Researchers are also looking at how fat levels can change when certain levels of distillers grains are introduced to the diet. --------------------

[CPT Clay]

Thanks Grampa

Since %90+ of oil is used in transportation...

Why not diesel from coal?

[CPT Clay]

Where do you get your hydrgen from?

Every method I know of is very enegy intensive(electrolosis, cracking of natural gas).

[Sunnyflorida]

20% natural gas.

[thackney]

Yes, and if the CO2 alarmists have their way, the coal percentage will go down, forcing the Natural Gas higher.

(Natural Gas is one of the quickest and cheapest initial investment to expand)

[Cringing Negativism Network]

Ethanol FUD.

[bert]

....How many of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi?.....

That’s irrelevant.

Your isolationist bent is harmful to our country. Trade is the engine that drives America.

[Cringing Negativism Network]

One-way “Free Trade” which sucks industry and wealth out of America, to our enemies, is not an engine driving America.

It is a disaster.

[Fundamentally Fair]

Plus, it takes more than one gallon of fossil fuel — oil and natural gas — to produce one gallon of ethanol.

I've heard/read this before and dismissed it. Now that Walter Williams writes it, I have to wonder. If this is true, how can anyone consider using ethanol as a fuel?

[Sunnyflorida]

You know obviously about the Destin Dome. Only one formation off the coast of FL. I’d say that at current prices and with new technology and the conservative nature and process of guessing recoverable amounts this is the first next place that should be explored.

[Fundamentally Fair]

And every dime of corn-based ethanol is one dime of non-arab oil. I'd rather see an American farmer get rich than some camel-driving bedouin who is going to use the money to poison our water.

Even if you are paying $1.25 for the dime's worth of corn-based ethanol?