Take This Cob and Shove it
Ethanol, the environutter’s solution. (HT Polinaut)
WASHINGTON (AP) - Ethanol is far from a cure-all for the nation’s energy problems. It’s not as environmentally friendly as some supporters claim and would supply only 12 percent of U.S. motoring fuel – even if every acre of corn were used.
A number of researchers, the latest in a report Monday, are warning about exaggerated expectations that ethanol could dramatically change America’s dependence on foreign oil by shifting motorists away from gasoline.As far as alternative fuels are concerned, biodiesel from soybeans is the better choice compared with corn-produced ethanol, University of Minnesota researchers concluded in an analysis Monday.
But “neither can replace much petroleum without impacting food supplies,” the researchers concluded in the paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
So now that every poliician under the stars and stripes has sold out our souls for this crap, we’re basically screwed. Thanks guys!
Oh, they fell for the old corn cob in the tailpipe trick
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“Take This Cob and Shove it”
By far the best header dealing with ethanol ever. EVER.
Yeah, it was a great header.
I’m a big supporter of ethanol (and by “big” I mean HUGE), but it’s just silly for anyone to think about replacing our petroleum use with ethanol. Ethanol absolutely, definitely, and critically has to be part of our program to reduce our reliance on foreign oil, but it’s not a silver bullet by itself. We’ll need all the ethanol we can reasonably produce, along with a whole host of other alternatives.
But, Sundog, to any extent that we “free” ourselves from petro-dependence, we’re only leaving the petro part out there to be enjoyed more cheaply by the rest of the world so that they can grow their economies on it (as we did), and potentially catch up to us. (It’s just one big world auction. Every gallon we decline makes the rest cheaper to our competition.) This “freedom” only makes sense if we can find an energy source that grants us a btu/$ gain over petroleum.
Plus, if we ever unplugged from ME oil, we’d frankly lose much incentive to keep the area stable and sane. The rest of the world, still stuck on petro, would then become (sort of) vassal states of the ME oil kingdoms (”of COURSE we’ll ban dancing – what day does that tanker arrive, Sir?”), and it would then be us v. everone else.
While it’s nice to sit around and think nice thoughts about the rest of the world catching up to us with a Big Mac in every pot while we sing “We Are The World” (no, I’m not being snarky and accusing you of that), we do live in a world economy. Are we really prepared to share the world’s resources equally with everyone else? I doubt many have done the quantitative reasoning in depth enough to figure out that that would leave us pretty much dirt-poor. If we contemplate spreading our wealth world-wide on a percap basis, then, instead of considering buying that second or third car for our household, we’re all eagerly awaiting the next thatch sale at Home Depot so we can put up a roof.
Plus, once The World has money, the world price of corn will be so high (all those unfarmable lands, all those transferred wealth dollars floating around) that the lost opportunity involved in making ethanol will be staggering.
So, unless we wean the World from petro at the same time we wean ourselves from it, we need to make sure we know what we’re causing.
(I know this sounds rather Amero-centric, and maybe even racist to some, but, really, it’s simply a “Buy American” policy writ large.)