Ethanol is the only thing that he’s been in favor of that makes no sense, but then again do we know all about this? Are they making Ethanol from corn cobs and not eatable foodstuffs? If so, I might be fine with that. I heard that the gov’t subsidizes ethanol, then I hear that it doesn’t. Is Ethanol good for cars/ DOes it raise the price of gas or lower it? Is it good or bad for our economy over all?
Some scientist has come up with a way to make butanol (sp?) out of corn. Much better than ethanol. Was a thread here a couple days ago.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/3368353/posts
Ethanol?
The only things I need to know about it are that it takes a gallon of diesel fuel to produce a gallon of ethanol.
Ethanol can not be delivered via pipeline like gasoline because of the water they can’t get out of it. It has to be moved by truck.
It lowers fuel mileage, in part due to the H2O that they can’t get out.
Engines had to be re-engineered to run hotter and new seals developed to accept the ethanol tainted fuel foisted on us by crooked politicians and lobbyists.
That is just scratching the surface.
Ethanol sucks in every way imaginable.
I’ll answer some of your questions.
Ethanol is made of field corn, bred specifically to produce ethanol. It is not eatable by humans, well, it won’t kill you, but you would never take a second bite.
The residue, called distillers grain, is very valuable as a feed stuff, and is most efficiently fed to beef animals, although hogs and poultry do well on it too. Beef just have a better digestive system for the grain.
Because it has been ‘predigested’ during the distilling process it is more easily converted to meat than regular corn.
Summary:
Governor Walker had the best ‘solution’ to the ethanol question. Not the one he was endlessly attacked for here on FR, but his real one, the one that came from his lips.
I think it was brilliant.
Essentially he called for a gradual elimination of government subsidies to grow the corn. AND, most importantly, a gradual elimination of federal fuel blending standards.
This gradual change would prevent wholesale farm bankruptcies, which would put our entire food supply at risk.
The end result would be ethanol would stand on it’s own, with the market dictating how much ethanol would be produced, and at what price. NO government money involved.
The end result would be a much smaller ethanol corn crop and a much smaller amount of ethanol produced.
No one knows for sure, but because of the high value of the distillers grain, I think we would still have a fairly large ethanol industry.
From what I’ve read, ethanol does suck, and I see Trump’s support of it as a sop to Iowa ethanol-corn farmers. Sort of stupid and lame and not pleasant but it’s one of the very few things he’s said that I disagree with so it’s not a big thing to me.
Trump may also not know the downsides of ethanol. I know auto mechanics hate it.