Under the blunt title “Ethanol is Stupid,” a letter in the Concord Monitor makes a cogent case against corn-based ethanol:
Most ethanol is made from corn. However, that corn must be supplied in enormous quantities, and corn is used in much food for humans and animals. If we use corn for fuel, more will need to be grown, on huge farms receiving government subsidies. We are paying extra so that our food can be used for fuel.
The corn is grown using chemical fertilizer, which is awful for the environment. Most pesticides are made from petroleum, exactly what ethanol is supposed to be preventing the use of. Also, the machinery on big farms needs massive quantities of gas.
The next step is even worse. The corn, grown with petrochemicals, must be distilled in factories to become ethanol. These factories need to get their energy from somewhere, and that somewhere is fossil fuels. It takes about nine-tenths of a gallon of fossil fuel to make a gallon of ethanol. Ethanol pollutes the environment about the same amount as if we just used fossil fuel.
Wow—scathing. Turns out the author is Madeleine Stewart of Epsom. Mass.—all of 13 years-old. And in this case, she’s got a more sophisticated understanding of things than either the outgoing or the incoming president.
How much will nuclear cost U.S. citizens?
EPA capitulates on ethanol, hearts clean coal
Comments
View as Flat
GreyFlcn Posted 4:18 am
23 Dec 2008
http://greyfalcon.net/eoth2.png
-David Ahlport
Permalink
GreyFlcn Posted 4:18 am
23 Dec 2008
-David Ahlport
Permalink
GreyFlcn Posted 4:20 am
23 Dec 2008
http://greyfalcon.net/etoh2.png
-David Ahlport
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 4:48 am
23 Dec 2008
Maybe Grist needs a new guest contributor? Someone that has the perspective of upcoming generations of voters?
Let's hear her take on nuclear power and clean coal now, please.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
Permalink
biodiversivist Posted 8:05 am
23 Dec 2008
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/horsey/viewbydate.asp?id=17 ...
My favorite cartoon on this subject is by
Michael Ramirez:
http://earthfirst.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/corn-for-food.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~russ676/photo/food%20gas%20chart1.gif
Why is America in such deep doo? You tell me. A quick look at the comments below her letter:
DrX cheering the kid on ; )
fiddlingassblower telling her that the findings of the International Panel on Climate Change is no more valid than Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.
Another lost soul wanting to know (after just having been told that high mileage cars can "help out" to the tune of a 50% reduction in GHG and oil use) "If ethanol isn't an alternative to help out then please tell me what is?"
A concerned commenter, who obviously only frequents pro-ethanol websites, admonishes her to not visit anti-ethanol websites. He claims to be embarrassed for her but I think he just embarrassed himself.
Me, misspelling her name and screwing up a link.
....and on it goes as one commenter after another uncritically parrots some Renewable Fuels Association propaganda they read somewhere. One of my favorites is using the insignificant impact of corn prices on a box of Cornflakes to prove that raising the price of corn has an insignificant impact on starving children around the world.
Crush the contents of that box into a powder and it would fit in both of your fists. Convert it back into corn meal and it might fit in one fist. You don't have to be a genius to see why raising the price of a fistful of corn won't have much impact on a box of Cornflakes. By the same token you don't have to be a genius to see how raising its price 135% in four years will impact poor people. America accounts for 70% of the world's corn exports.
And food is just one of the issues with this ecologically and financially bankrupt idea.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
Permalink
Jonas Posted 8:54 pm
23 Dec 2008
75% of the world's hungry and poor people are farmers living in the developing world.
Why are they hungry? Because they don't have the money to buy a diversity of food. And why don't they have the money? Because they don't have access to profitable agricultural markets.
If we could help these farmers produce biofuels, they could receive more money for their work. And they would become less poor and less hungry.
In short, in order to fight hunger and poverty, an increase in agricultural prices is a good thing. Remember 75% of the world's poor and hungry, are farmers in developing countries. They make more money and go less hungry when they get better prices for their products.
So contrary to what you think, economists understand that an increase in corn prices is actually great for the world's poor.
Best regards and welcome to the world of complexity!
Jonas
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 1:45 am
24 Dec 2008
Sure it's hopeless, but their energy and enthusiam seems to make anything possible.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
Permalink
biodiversivist Posted 4:15 am
24 Dec 2008
I've tried to teach my daughters these skills. When a kid gets on the internet for information (to learn how to care for a chicken or rabbit or whatever) they are inevitably confronted by contradicting advice from "adults."
My daughters have become pretty adept at zeroing in on highest probability advice (the wheat in all of the chaff).
Does the adult poster make sense, contradict himself, or fail to cite strong sources (or any sources for that matter)? Is this adult rude? There are all kinds of between-the-line clues that can help.
Jonas moniker, have you contradicted yourself or have you contradicted the other guy who shares your moniker? This post is about corn ethanol:
You say here:
But I do have the impression that Americans are not yet much involved in biomass. It must be that their attention is kept off of this most important of renewables, because of their mania with stupid liquid biofuels. They're wasting all that biomass and land on the least efficient of all options. Biomass for electricity and heat is five to ten times more efficient than converted into liquid fuels.
And here you tell us:
If we could help these farmers produce biofuels, they could receive more money for their work. And they would become less poor and less hungry.
And here you are (in a post about 25,000 poor African families who were convinced to grow biofuel instead of food and are now staving off starvation with food aid because nobody bought their inedible biofuel crops) calling other posters you disagree with "racists" (you have also been known to call them liars, fascists, and worst of all, dumb dumbs).
Teach children how to find the wheat for the chaff.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 4:35 am
24 Dec 2008
Mass delusion melting away like fog in the sunshine? Under the glowing energy of informed pragmatic idealistic youth. Sure, I think Obama might listen to people like Madeliene (sp).
Where our voices are eclipsed by lobbyists and experts.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
Permalink
GreyFlcn Posted 4:48 am
24 Dec 2008
Land
Fresh Water
Fertilizers
Also Jonas
If we could help these farmers produce biofuels, they could receive more money for their work. And they would become less poor and less hungry.
It also means that the cost of all their INPUTS goes up.
http://www.alternet.org/environment/52073/
So if they aren't participating in the biofuels market, or aren't selling that specific biofuel crop, it hurts them.
It also removes the local availability of food, because they are producing a product which is not benefiting from this biofuel boom.
All the while driving the impetus to deforest as much land as possible.
And to farm the land until it's barren, and then move on.
_
It's the same crap as what happened when the World Bank decided to demand that all these poor countries grow coffee.
http://www.globalexchange.org/campaigns/fairtrade/coffee/ ...
-David Ahlport
Permalink
Avelhingst Posted 11:12 am
24 Dec 2008
Permalink