A bad idea, plus lots of cash 7

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1. 

   BlackbirdHighway Posted 5:08 pm
   08 May 2009

   It's even worse than this. Much, much worse. Growing corn is a water intensive endeavour and we are depleting water resources to produce this corn.The Ogallala Aquifer is being drained and may go dry in as little as 25 years. It wil ltake a very long time to refill, possibly as much as 5000 years.Without the aquifer, much of Nebraska, Kanasa, Colorado, and Texas turn into a mini Sahara. The dustbowl of the 30's will be a picnic in comparison.It is bad, very bad to drain this precious resource for food. To pay farmers with tax dollars to drain it just so that politicians can get corn state votes is fantastically, horrifically bad.The Colorado River now runs dry before it reaches the Gulf of California. The level of the Great Lakes is dropping. We don't have enough water to go around for our basic needs, let alone to waste it turning food crops into fuel.  

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2. 

   enviroperk Posted 8:42 pm
   08 May 2009

   I hope this message can reach the masses that can influence our esteemed law makers at a higher level that the many industrial-farm lobbies. The farm lobbies  that are apparently authoring these laws on behalf of our representatives.Corn-Ethanol as a motor fuel is bad in every way.  Just to examine one of the minor contributors of the problem - fertilizer. When I grow corn, I am only successful with a "side-dressing" of a substantial amount of ammonium nitrate. A fertilizer made in the US via Heterogeneous catalysis which requires a huge amount of natural gas as the methane componet.It has been suggested, that the huge up spike in natural gas prices that lead to the huge spike in spot electric prices during the summer seasons in the last two years were due solely to increased demand for corn-ethanol.In addiion, the problem here is that fertilizer prices world-wide experienced a jump, resulting in increased cost of many crops, not just corn, worldwide. Now here in the US your food budget for vegetables may be 1% of your income. In developing countries in may be 70% of your income.The cruel price we extract from the most vulnerable peoples of the world because we now want to take road trips with more ethanol in our tanks is heart-breaking.As an aside:My 80 year old uncle tells me that our family farm went to mechanized agriculture, they got a tractor to replace the mules, because the cost of fuel and purchase price  to run the tractor was less that the acreage of lost production to feed the mules. Granted that was 1930 and they didn't have electricity until 1955, so they were always a bit slow on the uptake.The point is: do fossil fuels, which don't take away from food production, have an edge over ethanol in that respect?

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3. 

   Alec Johnson Posted 7:42 pm
   09 May 2009

   I'm not sure I fully understand what you mean by "bioelectricity." It sounds lovely but if it still involves growing something to be burnt and somehow translate the resulting heat into electricity, then I'm not so sure it's a good idea, even if it is, as you say, more efficient. If you could unwind that more in this column or in reply to this note, I'd be very grateful. 

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4. 

   MidWestBug Posted 9:52 am
   11 May 2009

   The real question to ask is:  Who's scientists are you going to listen to?Those bought and paid for by the oil industry?The oil industry, and all their millions of $ in lobbying power are pushing for the false "science" of indirect land usage - which is how they calculate Ethanol to be bad for the environment.  But it doesn't pass the smell test at all.Indirect Land Usage basically states that for every acre of corn we grow in the US, the Brazilians have to burn down an acre of rain forest to grow replacement food.  That is like saying if you eat at a Chinese restaurant tonight - a family in China will go hungry.Our ability to increase yields for Corn has increased 5 fold just in the last few decades alone.  We are currently using the same amount of land to grow corn as we did in 1940.  No requirement to burn down rain forest.  None.  Zilch.  Zippo.  Just think about it... Ethanol.  It's Alcohol.  In fact it is the exact same alcohol we drink (in lower concentrations) in beer and wine.  How hazard can something be - that is fit for human consumption?  Now try drinking crude oil.  Have a glass of that tonight instead of beer.There was an article last month that mentioned there is STILL a mess up at the Exxon Valdese spill.  20 years later – the ecological impact continues.  We grew all the Corn we needed last year for food, we exported a record amount, we made all the Ethanol we wanted… AND we have a surplus beyond that.  AND corn yields are continuing to increase. I want to make fuel here – good clean Ethanol.   

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5. 

   sindark Posted 10:16 am
   11 May 2009

   It seems like the most probable path to de-carbonized transport is the
   conversion of all short and medium-range vehicles to electric power, with liquid
   fuels reserved for vehicles that must travel long distances, aircraft, and
   vehicles operated in remote areas. Producing energy from biomass has another
   potential advantage, if carbon
   capture and storage (CCS) proves viable. By adding CCS to biomass-fueled
   power plants, net reductions in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide
   could be achieved. In time, it seems likely that the many government policies promoting the
   widespread use of biofuels were an ineffective response to both concerns about
   climate change and about energy security. In particular, ‘mandates’ that a
   certain fraction of vehicle fuels be biofuels do not necessarily do a good job
   of aligning outcomes with climate change objectives, since they are insensitive
   to both the lifecycle emissions associated with the fuels and to the economics
   of producing them.

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6. 

   Serge S. Gilbert Posted 1:10 pm
   18 May 2009

   My thought in response to Midwestbug is that if biofuel is all that he or she cracks it up to be, then why is it in need of subventions from the Obama administration or any other government in the form of subsidies or regulation.  If the oil industry is conspiring to cast a dark shadow upon biofuel and good, clean ethanol, at least it is doing it with its own money (if you view the oil industry as unsubsidized, which I don't).  Why should farmers be subsidized to ask for subsidies to do what they are already making good money doing anyways?  Item, even if the percentage of biofuel requirement couldn't be traced directly to rainforest depredations, why would that be an argument in favor of biofuel, if in fact biofuel can survive on its own legs.  Furthermore, someone is converting the carbon sinks into cash crops or slashing and burning them for a one-time gain; if one insists that this is not being done in the name of agriculture, then some other culprit must be found, and none of the usual suspects are more likely than biofuel.  I doubt it could be suburban sprawl, for example, although I haven't researched it thoroughly.  Furthermore, even if, as I suspect, the amount of lands converted from carbon sink to agricultural use far exceeds the amount converted from agricultural to some urban or suburban use, the growth of the urbs or suburb is thoroughly codependent upon the growth of agriculture, adn the growth of both flourishes only at the expense of the pristine carbon sink (which benefits the urbs or suburb in other ways such as biodiversity, civic identity, aesthetic, etc.).   In short, I see no reason why this line of critique against government subvention of biofuel should not be aggressively be pursued and even used to dismantle said subvention if no compelling argument is raised to the contrary. 

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7. 

   scarletlew Posted 5:23 pm
   18 May 2009

   Um... I think that's really a bad idea. It's a waste of money. Why not just focus on developing useful car parts instead like volkswagen oem parts that are highly functional and might be green too?

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