Welcome to the weekly round-up. This week I’ve got almost 100 links to skeptical salaciousness, inconvenient truths and junk science; and one sizzling link for the hottie. I spoil you. Get caffeinated and jump in. Part One: Al Gore and Friends Al Gore…

The true cost of gasoline and diesal fuel is never mentioned in the ethanol argument. About half of the defense budget goes towards protecting middle east oil fields, and the shipping lanes to get it here.

As to corn based ethanol, all that is removed is the carbohydrates, leaving about 17 lbs of a 56 lb bu of corn. Water comprises 15% of the weight by the way.

The 17lbs left is pure protein, currently a great animal feed. Since many parts of the world have a protein shortage, it cost much less to ship protein than whole corn.

Funny, it was less than 5 years ago that everyone blamed farmers and corn for making everyone fat.

The amount of BTU’s of energy to raise corn and make ethanol is also without merit, since much of the energy is natural gas, not liquid fuel. Natural gas is used to make fertilizer, and runs much of irrigation wells.

For much of the corn belt, water is drained away from fields, not applied to the fields. Check out “tile drainage” in the midwest corn belt.

I’d much rather have a natural molecule of ethanol than the gas additive MTBE as once used (since it is a know cause of cancer), but that is just me.

- The Cat

“…making more and more people dependent on Uncle Sam.”

oakpack on April 10, 2009 at 5:26 PM

And that, my dear oakpack, is the entire point of view of the Left in a nut shell corn husk.

Ethanol may be an expensive failure that makes the poor less able to feed themselves, but it looks like a political winner for the Left for those very reasons.

And cap-and-trade will be the same, multiplied by 1000 or so.

Ethanol was good for my family. We managed to unload a few square miles of farmland in April‘08. Got top dollar too.

My only fear is that I may need the land for the survival bunker if our socialist/facist ways continue.

Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than smart.

riverrat

riverrat10k on April 10, 2009 at 2:59 PM

Edited for month correction

My only fear is that I may need the land for the survival bunker if our socialist/facist ways continue.

Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than smart.

riverrat

If we didn’t heavily restrict foreign grown sugar, and ban foreign made ethanol, we wouldn’t have to use corn to make ethanol in the first place.

Cinematicfilm on April 10, 2009 at 1:52 PM

Dead and dying ones.

This explains why farmers are conservatives. They know how to manage and calculate costs.

Rather than just admit that the ethanol program is a flop, both in terms of emissions controls and in replacement power for gasoline,

In what universe did you take chemistry? Ethanol is in fact clean burning. Unless you’re talking about petroleum based fertilizers, which is a boogeyman invented by the greenies. Maybe you actually believe CO2 is a pollutant! Never mind conveniently ignoring the byproduct of the production of ethanol from corn can be used as feed for cattle. And ignoring the protectionist sugar lobby which will tell any lie to keep foreign sugar out of the us. Saying ethanol is a flop in terms of emission controls is extremely inaccurate. So you don’t get the same energy value from ethanol that you get from gasoline, BIG DEAL. If that eliminates the brown cloud across the front range I do not see that as a bad thing.

Steve Z on April 10, 2009 at 12:17 PM

And how much fuel/energy is consumed producing gasoline? Are you assuming that corn is the only source of ethanol? That would be silly. Where do get 3L of gasoline to make 4L of ethanol? That sounds extremely suspicious and misleading.

Given the scientific knowledge I am surprised I haven’t seen some rube hawking HHO as the ultimate solution.

Brazil has been successfully using ethanol for years. The flop mentality is just ignorance.

Weltkaiser only in his own vane dreams, the political timing is appropriate, given the European media ridicule from France and Germany howling at Obama: “Yankee Go Home!”

This may have already been pointed out, but ethanol can be produced from non-food plants, like switchgrass. Moreover, this stuff can grow in places where corn and other food plants cannot, so it wouldn’t be using land that could be used for growing corn.

Methanol can be produced with just about anything. It can be made from your trash. So I don’t see these bio-fuels as necessarily using food products to produce fuel.

JS on April 10, 2009 at 11:57 AM

Good point. Biofuels aren’t good or bad per se, but somebody has to do the math and determine the net energy loss or gain, and the net FOOD loss or gain per acre.

Brazil makes a lot of ethanol from sugar cane, which is a much more efficient process than corn ethanol, and a net energy winner, although somebody might need to consider the food cost of the lost sugar.

This is where free markets, NOT directed by government subsidies, can help. If the lost sugar supply increases sugar prices, Brazilian sugar growers will sell their sugar on the open market instead of converting it to ethanol, or if the price of ethanol increases, they will convert it to ethanol.

When the government tries to force the market in a given direction, as the US government has for corn ethanol, we get stupidities like people starving and food prices rising, while farmers convert valuable corn to fuel at a net energy loss, while doubling the overall CO2 emissions. In a truly free market, no one would buy ethanol from corn (unless it was from corn stalks, which have no food value), and corn products would be cheaper, meat would be cheaper, gasoline would be cheaper, and less CO2 would be emitted.

What would it take to convince Obambi of these truths?