Comments justlou has made

One further note

And among the users of that oil, will it be burned with tremendous inefficiencies while propelling 5000 pound steel chariots down the fire highway or will it be made into products like plastic tubing for geothermal systems that help us reduce our consumption of coal?

To put a little meat to this thought, the plastic tubing for one 150 ft. deep geothermal loop costs about $400.00 retail.  I don't know how much oil is consumed to make that one loop.  For a home heating/cooling system it takes one loop per one ton of capacity.  So, for a 3 ton unit, the cost is going to be about $1200.  There is a warranty of 50 years on the plastic loops.  

Now consider that $1200 will purchase about 300 gallons of gas priced at $4.00 per gallon.  At 20 mpg that 300 gallons will take you about 6000 miles or probably about a half year of driving for many US drivers.  

My intentions are to illustrate the difference between using the oil resource wisely for lasting effect or using it unwisely for temporary and unsustainable "gain".  

You can argue that we can do both, but our profligate use of it is raising the cost of using it wisely and could be making the long term use of it for beneficial purposes practically impossible.  We should be squeezing the flood gates on this vital resource and turning a Mississippi scale flow into a very long lasting, seeping spring flow.  On Take note, everyone: Oil is not energy posted 1 year, 3 months ago 6 Responses

Well Home Town Boy

The country is built on illusions and McCain is depending on it.   On John McCain doesn't know how many houses he owns posted 1 year, 3 months ago 15 Responses

Too Late Joe

There is too much inertia and lag time built into the public and personal infrastructure to achieve anything like an aggressive move.  The twenty year lead time you refer to would have been about 1995 when Bill Clinton was president, Al Gore was Vice President, and the US was relatively flush in revenue growth. Our "progressive" leadership pissed away the prosperity.  Had we maintained the wise leadership of Carter we might have had a chance.  But Reagan ushered in an era of profligacy and we are drowning in our own recklessness.

We are not only not going to spare our children the worst impacts of peak oil but we old farts are going to feel the reckoning in our lifetimes.

A progressive president won't have a chance unless the people are ready for a major change.  I am not sure a majority is ready or will have the where with all to do it.  On Short-term dip in oil prices will not offset long-term increases posted 1 year, 3 months ago 17 Responses

Downsizing To What?

If some of the big SUV owners are downsizing it appears that many are downsizing to vehicles that are getting pretty crappy mileage.  And it seems that the press is partly responsible in burnishing the image of many of these vehicles as being  "Misers".  
'Misers in Disguise: A Dozen Unlikely Fuel Sippers'
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/automobiles/17MISERS.ht ...

There are a few decent vehicles in this lot, but the majority fall into the 19 to 24 mpg range.  Can anyone accurately characterize these as being "fuel sippers"?  

Jeez, it is going to be a long time to get the US fleet to anything closely approaching fuel efficiency if people keep inching up the curve.  $4.00 per gallon is not high enough.  
On No schadenfreude over the death of SUVs posted 1 year, 3 months ago 59 Responses

To Complete the Note

Our exercise of freedom as we currently understand our profligate ways puts our long term enjoyment of real freedoms and liberty at most risk.    

 On On energy, survey results show public favors supply, increasingly favors Republicans posted 1 year, 3 months ago 11 Responses

The Stewards of Profligacy

If you did not have the opportunity to hear Andrew Bacevich on Bill Moyers yesterday evening, here is the transcript:
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/08152008/transcript1.ht ...

An excerpt which adds great insight to our thread:

BILL MOYERS: Now you go on to say that there was another fateful period between July 1979 and March of 1983. You describe it, in fact, as a pivot of contemporary American history. That includes Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, right?

ANDREW BACEVICH: Well, I would be one of the first to confess that - I think that we have misunderstood and underestimated President Carter. He was the one President of our time who recognized, I think, the challenges awaiting us if we refused to get our house in order.

BILL MOYERS: You're the only author I have read, since I read Jimmy Carter, who gives so much time to the President's speech on July 15th, 1979. Why does that speech speak to you so strongly?

ANDREW BACEVICH: Well, this is the so-called Malaise Speech, even though he never used the word "malaise" in the text to the address. It's a very powerful speech, I think, because President Carter says in that speech, oil, our dependence on oil, poses a looming threat to the country. If we act now, we may be able to fix this problem. If we don't act now, we're headed down a path in which not only will we become increasingly dependent upon foreign oil, but we will have opted for a false model of freedom. A freedom of materialism, a freedom of self-indulgence, a freedom of collective recklessness. And what the President was saying at the time was, we need to think about what we mean by freedom. We need to choose a definition of freedom which is anchored in truth, and the way to manifest that choice, is by addressing our energy problem.

He had a profound understanding of the dilemma facing the country in the post Vietnam period. And of course, he was completely hooted, derided, disregarded.

BILL MOYERS: And he lost the election. You in fact say-

ANDREW BACEVICH: Exactly.

BILL MOYERS: -this speech killed any chance he had of winning reelection. Why? Because the American people didn't want to settle for less?

ANDREW BACEVICH: They absolutely did not. And indeed, the election of 1980 was the great expression of that, because in 1980, we have a candidate, perhaps the most skillful politician of our time, Ronald Reagan, who says that, "Doom-sayers, gloom-sayers, don't listen to them. The country's best days are ahead of us."

BILL MOYERS: Morning in America.

ANDREW BACEVICH: It's Morning in America. And you don't have to sacrifice, you can have more, all we need to do is get government out of the way, and drill more holes for oil, because the President led us to believe the supply of oil was infinite.

BILL MOYERS: You describe Ronald Reagan as the "modern prophet of profligacy. The politician who gave moral sanction to the empire of consumption."

ANDREW BACEVICH: Well, to understand the truth about President Reagan, is to understand why so much of what we imagined to be our politics is misleading and false. He was the guy who came in and said we need to shrink the size of government. Government didn't shrink during the Reagan era, it grew.

He came in and he said we need to reduce the level of federal spending. He didn't reduce it, it went through the roof, and the budget deficits for his time were the greatest they had been since World War Two.

BILL MOYERS: And do you remember that it was his successor, his Vice President, the first President Bush who said in 1992, the American way of life is not negotiable.

ANDREW BACEVICH: And all presidents, again, this is not a Republican thing, or a Democratic thing, all presidents, all administrations are committed to that proposition. Now, I would say, that probably, 90 percent of the American people today would concur. The American way of life is not up for negotiation.

What I would invite them to consider is that, if you want to preserve that which you value most in the American way of life, and of course you need to ask yourself, what is it you value most. That if you want to preserve that which you value most in the American way of life, then we need to change the American way of life. We need to modify that which may be peripheral, in order to preserve that which is at the center of what we value.

The ABCs of GMOs

"what benefits do GM crops offer that outweigh sustainable farming practices?"

I don't think this is an either or question.  GM is not something that is standing out there by itself, outside of the context of the system it augments.  GM crops could fit within a sustainable farming system.  

In the current system, GMOs are an increasingly key component of a heavily industrialized ag production system, off and on the farm.  
GMO are facilitating increasing crop yields which are instrumental in keeping large scale producers competitive in a low margin business environment.  The introduction of herbicide and insect resistant crops is making it much easier for the large farmers to become even larger.  And with this development, their ties with the large agricultural input suppliers and the commodity marketing firms becomes more and more interdependent.  And this interdependency grows increasing political power to effect huge policy moves like ethanol from corn (which keeps prices moving upward to pay for those rapidly escalating input costs like GMO seed).  

And these rapidly escalating costs do require us to ask just how long any of this is going to be economically viable.  New figures for 2009 reveal that break even prices for corn will shoot up to about $4.00 per bushel and about $8.00 per bushel for soybeans.  It is safe to say that we no longer have a cheap food policy in the U.S.  
On Prince Charles sparked controversy when he expressed doubt in GM crops posted 1 year, 3 months ago 53 Responses

$4.00 Floor

There is also a case to be made for cheaper oil and gas to economically ease the transition away from oil.  But this would only work with heavy governmental interventions into the market, increased taxes, regulation, subsidies, and tax credits to vastly improve efficiencies and provide incentives for investment in alternatives.  

Washington just can't seem to play out the latter scenario.  

So, it seems that price shocks accompanying oil depletion will continue to rule and, poorer, we will run the gauntlet of keeping the wheels on the costly, inefficient  machine while squeezing capital and resources for the frugal future. On Demand destruction is driving prices down, but is that a good thing? posted 1 year, 3 months ago 12 Responses

Corn Folly Blues

The real world and not some ideologically compromised Washington bureaucrat will be the ultimate decider of how much corn continues to be pissed away on America's highways.

Moving up the demand curve toward 55% of the corn crop along with tight supplies and short carryovers will keep corn prices high enough to make corn ethanol unprofitable.  And should that 55% become completely untenable when a major Midwest drought significantly lowers crop yields, the government would be forced to enter the market, ration supply and at least temporarily reduce  the corn ethanol squeeze.  

Should Obama become president, I don't expect any change in the policy with a new EPA administrator.  And especially not if Bayh, a champion of corn ethanol, becomes his VP.
In a technocracy, chosen technologies, good or bad, along with the ideologues, special interests, investors, and compromised politicians and appointees have a long shelf life and momentum -- the blind stampede.  And it is largely those of us who have fuel tanks to fill and who are geared to the technocratic machine that are ultimately responsible for this fiasco.  But even though we are dependent on it does not mean we have to defend it or justify it by furthering irrational or insane course adjustments.    

 On The discredited agency upholds the biofuel mandate posted 1 year, 3 months ago 11 Responses

John

So should we dump jesus and support our local shamans?  

Please, please, please, that was just a joke and not intended to hijack this thread. But it does address a question about the hierarchy of authority which does affect about every sphere of our lives and has some relevance here.

 On What's the deal with Republican attacks on the tire gauge? posted 1 year, 3 months ago 21 Responses

McCain and Bush Play Role in Lower Prices Too!

Nancy Pfotenhauer, Adviser to McCain on the Newshour yesterday:

"We need to increase domestic production, and we need to do it now. The American people are aware of this. We've already seen the futures market and the signaling that's occurred that has helped lower prices because President Bush and Sen. McCain have actively called for it."

If McCain has such magical powers without becoming president just imagine what he could do should the public make him the lord of oil.  

And if any of you are as irritated by this woman, Nancy Pfotenhauer, as I am, then this would be reason enough not to vote for McCain if just to keep from seeing her face on TV for the next 4 years.  Lying is bad enough but lying with a big shit eating grin is extra bad.  On House Republicans' magical thinking on oil prices posted 1 year, 3 months ago 9 Responses

Re MadMac on Taxes

... perhaps because you don't want to, is that what the political Right has done well in the past - not so well in recent times - is leave people alone and keep tax rates down.

Can you tell me why I, as a small business person, pay the self employment tax on social security, medicare and medicaid that takes 15% of my income?  This was part of the social security fix implemented during the Reagan administration.  So, Reagan doubled that tax for me.  And now, a surplus portion of my social security taxes go toward reducing the operating deficit created by George Bush's income tax cuts on wealthy americans.  

So can you see why some of us are skeptical about any claims made by Republicans that they are cutting our taxes or making government smaller?  Republican rule is by the elites and for the elites.  How in the hell they enlist the support of the common man I'll never figure out.    
 On What power politics looks like posted 1 year, 3 months ago 14 Responses

Salemguy

You are on!

And you are right on to some very logical and informed questions of projected demands for fuels.  Anyone making these kinds of projections has extreme tunnel vision obscuring the rapid pace of changes, both positive and negative, happening in the world today.  These kinds of projections are also based heavily on a growth oriented worldview that dictates that our future economic health is dependent on growth and that any constraints to that growth can be overcome -- the cornucopian vision.  This is and will likely remain the dominant worldview among world leaders.On NYT: Consumers are complaining about ethanol-spiked gasoline posted 1 year, 3 months ago 11 Responses

Gen Zero Minus One

BioD., I share your viewpoint.  But, it is easier to get my head around the concept of a flex fuel hybrid getting 50+ mpg burning an ecologically, economically, and climatically sane source of ethanol with a return on energy investment of 10X than it is to get my head around a FFV pickup or SUV getting 15 to 20 mpg burning corn ethanol with a return on energy of 1.25X (and even that is questionable).  

And this picture becomes more complete with about 75% fewer cars on the road or 75% fewer road trips due to expanded mass transit and more walkable and bike friendly cities.  If you consider all the wealth that we have pissed away on auto "ownership" and oil and all the infrastructure needed to facilitate this cluster*($% then you can imagine a brighter future for alternative uses of that wealth.  

We should stop calling corn ethanol "generation one".  How about "generation minus one" or "generation zero"?.  On World Bank finally releases 'secret' report on biofuels and the food crisis posted 1 year, 4 months ago 65 Responses

Gustavion

Most of the monumental screw ups by this administration were easily predictable and they were predicted.

Unfortunately their path was eased by the complicity of the majority of Congress, Republicans and Democrats included.  Much of the current press on biofuels came right out of the heartland.  On World Bank finally releases 'secret' report on biofuels and the food crisis posted 1 year, 4 months ago 65 Responses

Transition Myth

Let us think about this mumbo jumbo hype about first generation fuels as an essential transition to 2nd generation fuels.  How long has it taken to blend 10% ethanol almost nationwide?  Not very long and really at not much infrastructural cost.
And there really won't be enough corn ethanol to ever supply many of the E-85 pumps that we are subsidizing.  And it won't take much time to make that switch either if 2nd generation fuels ever get off the ground.  The biggest impediment to ever get a much bigger supply of E-85 into the market would be the availability of flex fuel vehicles.  The cost per vehicle is not that great so I see no big deal about attempting to get this initiated now especially in newer high mileage automobiles and those designed to burn ethanol much more efficiently than current flex fuel vehicles.  

So, corn ethanol as an essential transition fuel is just bull shit. So, can we stop checking that box among the rest of the myths?    

 On World Bank finally releases 'secret' report on biofuels and the food crisis posted 1 year, 4 months ago 65 Responses

Doesn't take an economist

It does not take an economist to trace the global commodity price impact of taking a third of the US corn crop for ethanol production. And it does not take much to see through the propaganda wars between those who share the economic gain and those who sense any responsibility for the pain. Or to see who is winning the PR war.    

It is also safe to say that rapidly rising costs of production have not worked their way into market prices yet.  The drastic price rises in fertilizer costs for example are not being reflected in commodity prices.  Current high prices of corn and beans are largely buffering these higher costs in the US.  But they are impacting the abilities of poorer nations to increase their own food production.  

US growers compete in a world market for fertilizers.  Corn production is a heavy user of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.  Increasing corn production for the growing ethanol market had to have had a major impact on world wide fertilizer demand.  Fertilizer is now viewed as a strategic commodity.  

All of this should be a huge flashing red light, not just on making fuel from food, but on the industrialized model of food production itself.  Were we eating more whole foods, eating less meat, pasturing more livestock, not making ethanol from corn, etc., we could probably eliminate one half of US corn and soybean production or at least that portion consumed via the industrial chain in the US. We were driving our bodies on this crap before we were driving our cars on this crap.  It is insanely self perpetuating, but highly unsustainable.  On World Bank finally releases 'secret' report on biofuels and the food crisis posted 1 year, 4 months ago 65 Responses

First Generation Success?

The first generation has been so successful that it is killing itself.  Unless second generation cellulosics come to the rescue soon all that investment in infrastructure will be just a piss in the wind (and another big opportunity cost toward getting it right to begin with.)  But, expect first generation to be a dead horse walking via expanded government subsidies and bailouts for bankrupted corn ethanol plants (and significant investors). So, you'll get to pay more via taxes for that 10% of corn you put into your tanks.

And rbright, thanks for looking after those investors.  They need all our continuing and forced support.    On NYT: Consumers are complaining about ethanol-spiked gasoline posted 1 year, 4 months ago 11 Responses

Bioregionalism

I had not thought much about this lately, but this post refreshed the idea.  

Google "bioregionalism" and you will find a wealth of good references on the subject.  On Can locavores embrace a truly place-based agriculture? posted 1 year, 4 months ago 14 Responses

From PRWatch.Org

Ethanol Lobby's "Alliance for Abundant Food and Energy" Seeks to Gorge on Tax Subsidies

Source: Washington Post, July 25, 2008

"Monsanto, Dupont, Archer Daniels Midland and the PR giant Burson-Marsteller are some of the corporations behind the Alliance for Abundant Food and Energy. No doubt feel-good ads from this front group will soon fill the airwaves, especially in Washington DC. The Washington Post reports, "A group of the world's biggest agribusiness companies announced it will use lobbyists on Capitol Hill and national ads to build the case for fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel, even as grain prices climb worldwide. The biofuels industry has blossomed under federal mandates requiring the United States to increase alternative fuel usage by 2009. The mandates are under attack from groups who blame the new industry for rising food prices that have sparked riots and hoarding in several countries. ... The alliance has a budget of several million dollars for the campaign, but it did not disclose the exact amount."
http://www.prwatch.org/node/7590

And a rundown on Burson-Marsteller:
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Burson-Marstel ...
hmmm... Mark Penn and Hillary Clinton  

When Washington goes bipartisan you can bet some big money interests are involved.  And when the truth is getting too close to those interests, put the PR industry to work on altering the image of that reality.  Funny how close this PR industry is to the workings of DC.  So, get ready to gag on the PR ads from this group.  We hear enough of it already from their benefactors and voices in DC.

  On If we just trust Monsanto and ADM, we can eat and drive to our heart's content posted 1 year, 4 months ago 20 Responses

"Green" Fuel Washing

Why certainly, the future holds great promise for both corn fuel and food production.  There is a long waiting list for new green machines from Deere.  Monsanto is raking it in with protection from "brown baggers".  Lots of coal trains rolling into ADM ethanol plants.  The future could not be brighter!  I'll call my representative today and tell him that we need to increase the mandates for corn ethanol.  
On If we just trust Monsanto and ADM, we can eat and drive to our heart's content posted 1 year, 4 months ago 20 Responses

Some Ironies

Crop farmers are mixed about having more acres put into production.  If more acres mean lower crop prices and lower margins then that could hurt all producers.  With rapidly rising costs of production, why would anyone want more competition which could raise the price of production inputs and lower their commodity prices?  

We taxpayers have made a contract with those farmers who enrolled in CRP.  They made an agreement with us that they would take land out of production for 10 to 15 years in exchange for an annual rent payment from us.  We also paid a big chunk of their costs for land preparation, seed and planting of these CRP acres.  In the case of native grass plantings, it takes a few years for these plantings to become established. Early outs from contracts would happen on many of these lands before the full benefits of the plantings are achieved.  We have an investment in these lands and we should not allow any landowner to shirk his contract obligations to us by not paying the penalty of doing so. We should demand repayment of all rental payments and cost share payments if landowners choose to opt out. They have a choice.  

Ironically farming is one of the least regulated industries in the US.  They want about every freaking subsidy that we are willing to give them and then gripe like hell when they don't get their way or when we try to impose some sensible regulations on their industries.  And they have been largely successful in doing so.  I expect our weenie farm state legislators to bend over the barrel on this one too.  Weeeeeee!  

 On WaPo's misguided call to scale back the Conservation Reserve Program posted 1 year, 4 months ago 10 Responses

Sustainability?

In what context?  In the context of 9 billion people on earth?  In a rapidly growing technocratic civilization?  Most likely not.  Sustainable for a generation maybe.  But sustainability to me implies tens of generations and practices which enrich and not diminish the wildness of the earth and which do not take more and more of the earth's primary productivity for the ends of man.  "Sustainability" in the Big Man/Small Nature worldview should be tempered with a huge question mark.  On Are biofuels a core solution? posted 1 year, 4 months ago 201 Responses

Feasibility

Where organic matter would be depleted rapidly, fields harvested for residue could possibly only sustain such a harvest maybe once every 5 years or so.  So, this would expand the range of harvesting around any plant.  Which would add to transport costs.  

Adding up all these factors I wonder how the biomass to biofuel logistics, yield and efficiencies compare with direct combustion as as source of heat or electric generation in small scale, local facilities?  On USDA scientist: Some crop residues may be too valuable for biofuels posted 1 year, 4 months ago 12 Responses

Some More Fodder for Thought

Ron, good write up.  

One main point as this might affect soil health:
the combined impact of reduced residues and organic matter with increased wheel traffic on farm fields from the bailing and fetching of crop residues from the field to transport trucks.  Farmers are very sensitive about soil compaction. More compaction means more tillage, more costs, and less yield to boot.  

I don't anticipate many farmers being interested in purchasing or leasing all the additional machinery, trucks and trailers that would be needed to make this extra residue harvesting operation possible.  It would involve heavy investments plus potential economic opportunity costs as it competes for timely harvesting, transport and storage of their grain crops. And, it would involve hiring more farm labor which is not that easy to find in the Midwest. Plus, farmers are already seeing some major bucks going out for diesel fuel.  Why add another significant drain?  

I anticipate that the companies processing the residues into ethanol would have to vertically integrate much of the harvesting and transport of residues to their plants.  I can't imagine too many farmers being interested in having these companies mucking up wet fields and compacting soils with their heavy equipment.  And as to the economics of vertical integration, well, there just have not been too many of these agriculturally based companies surviving. If they have, they are in very concentrated locations and are processing very high value commodities.  

It is easy for arm chair pipe dreamers to come up with schemes like converting residues to ethanol.  But it seems like bad design building another monster to perpetuate bad design with liquid fuels.      On USDA scientist: Some crop residues may be too valuable for biofuels posted 1 year, 4 months ago 12 Responses

John and Wolverine -- Drift

I did call the IL Dept of Ag that does regulate spray drift.  The standards state that no drift is allowed by any means of application including aerial, ground or even hand.  I smelled it but that could have been the odor from the petrochemical carrier of the active ingredient.  Unless I could document some actual deposition or damage with samples or photographs it would be just about impossible to pursue a complaint.  Plus, the aerial pilot was not spraying over residences, but was circling his plane over the town to maneuver for his next spray swath on the field next to town.  That in itself was bad enough from the safety point of view and not "prudent" according to the FAA official I talked with.    

Rather amazingly, I asked the state official at the IL Dept. of Agriculture how many reports or complaints of spray drift had been filed last year in the entire state of IL.  How does 60, yest sixty, sound to you?  I am sure the actual number would have been in the thousands.  The size and scope of agriculture just cows most folks into a state of submission.  Most people just conform and don't complain even when it affects them or they don't recognize chemical damage when they see it on their plants or whatever.  Of course some people do have the balls to discuss such issues directly with the applicator or neighboring farmer and are satisfied with "we'll try to be more careful in the future".  Been there myself a couple times.  But, living the middle of this corn/soybean factory, I usually get several adrenaline rushes each spring when the applicators are out spraying on very windy days which has happened quite frequently this year.  

You are right about the part of the reach of local police but only as it affects the spray drift portion.  But local police do have some jurisdiction over civil aviation.  If they see some pilot doing something dangerous they do have the authority to hunt the pilot back to his base of operation and pursue the issue with him.  On Transportation sector lies at the root of U.S. energy problem posted 1 year, 4 months ago 26 Responses

The Maddening World of Corn Fuels First Hand

I was petroling up at a local gas station in a small central IL town a few days ago.  The station has an E-85 pump that has been dispensing it for $2.95/gallon for several weeks.  

I struck up a conversation with a Monsanto seed co. employee who was driving a new Chevy Silverado 4 X 4 pickup and was filling it with E-85.  He told me the truck was averaging 14.5 mpg.  No comments from me, but my thought was --  that sucks. No wonder GM is going broke. And the ethanol plants that are buying corn at $6.00 to $7.00 per bushel and selling it below cost are certainly not making any profits either.  Double suck.  

Yesterday I was driving back through the same town and a spray plane was applying fungicides on a corn field right on the edge of town.  He was making his turn around directly over the heart of the town.  And he was low!  When we got downwind of the field a very strong chemical odor permeated the air.  I could not freaking believe it!  When I got home, I called the town police dept. to ask if any of the town residents had complained.  My call was routed auotmatically to the county sheriff's office.  I talked with a detective and asked if they had received any complaints.  No. Not one.  In fact he had not received a single complaint in the six years he had been a detective.

Curiosity got the better of me and I called the local FAA office and talked with a flight standards official.  I told him about the incident and asked him if there was any regulation about crop sprayers flying low over towns.  Surprisingly, there does not seem to be.  They have to fly a minimum of 500 ft. elevation when they are traveling from field to field or from base to field.  But when they are actually making their spray runs, the minimum does not apply.  I asked him about the safety of flying low over populated areas like I saw.  He just said it was not prudent.  He also told me that if I saw something like that again I needed to get the N number off the side of the plane and try to get photographs.  He said that in IL right now  there are 320 pilots from out of state, besides our own resident pilots, applying fungicides to the corn crop.  This practice has really escalated in the past couple of years after agronomists documented the yield increases resulting from these chemical applications.  

The thought occurred to me later about the kind  of measure anyone would use to justify getting a few more bushels per acre of corn by risking the safety of local town residents?  The crop was not at risk of a major yield loss from some serious pest problem.  But this kind of symbolizes the entire system in the way that we lopsidedly weigh the short term economic benefits of an industrially based system of agriculture against the long term perspective of environmental quality, biological diversity,  sustainability, and longevity of rural communities.

I am sure that the vast majority of the farm community is very happy with these scenes of progress around here.  But sometimes, it all looks like a war to me. And one that we may not survive for even 50 years.  

Why am I such a cynic?    On Transportation sector lies at the root of U.S. energy problem posted 1 year, 4 months ago 26 Responses

Huh?

American advancement vs. the environmental principle?  Rubbish.  How could environmentalism and patriotism be mutually exclusive?  Because I highly value environmental quality and ecological diversity does not mean I do not love my country.  But it does mean that my environmental and ecological values can be used to measure the sanity of our leadership in  balancing those values with other values they hold in high regard, like economic expansion. And my love of earth within and beyond any artificial political border does not mean that I cannot also share an affinity with our national legacy.  And that our care for the earth will have much more long range impacts on our security as a nation than will any sense of identity with a concept as alien and inimical to life on earth as GDP. As a patriot and an environmentalist, I call for a saner measure of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Because of myopically impaired, economic extremists, we are in the process of wiping out all three.    
On Should we question the patriotism of deniers? posted 1 year, 4 months ago 17 Responses

A Real Conundrum

How to keep the wheels on an energy hungry and crumbling infrastructure while integrating it with and transforming it into an energy lean and sustainable network.  There will be powerful forces that insist on continuing to build the unsustainable part of it while other forces fight on the definition and design of what is truly sustainable.  Attempting to piggy back on to a design nightmare based on the cheap fossil fuels may be our biggest obstacle to reaching the dream of sustainability.  On Obama, transportation policy, and the highway bill posted 1 year, 5 months ago 9 Responses

No MO MoJo

Interesting.  There is growing evidence that the stuff we flush down our toilets is having bad impacts on aquatic life in streams in MO and elsewhere.  This includes pharmaceuticals and other human health care and hygienic products.  So, what is interfering with the reproductive abilities of stream organisms, could very well be having similar impacts on man.  

I think researchers will find that much of the problem in MO streams is pretty much homegrown. It and all states have quite a stew brewing with hundreds of chemicals from a variety of sources.   On Why are sperm counts so low in the show-me state? posted 1 year, 5 months ago 8 Responses

Last Resort

When the US fleet averages over 50 mpg, and there are half the number of automobiles on the road in the US as there are now, then we can possibly discuss burning the last of it.  Or we could leave it for future generations.  But we probably won't since the current generation always must live like it is the last generation on earth and that we must have it to burn in 15 mpg SUVs (which sadly served ailing corporations but now represent a huge drag on the economy).  

We can shape the machine or be shaped by the machine.  We can live as a democracy as if people and the environment mattered or we can live as a technocracy and let the machine decide our fate.

If the oil were to be used to help us build a sustainable system that did not run on oil that would be a powerful argument to use it.  But if it is being tapped to merely temporarily power an inherently unsustainable system then that is a very sad and tragically fateful use for it.  When it is gone, then what?  

The democrats must fight myopically insane policy with long range vision and be able to distinguish the difference between balanced policy and poll rape.  Caving in to feed the endlessly growing demand side of the equation only feeds the Cheneyesk dead enders.  If democrats want to repeat their sad chapter of running scared on the vote to give GW the green light on invading Iraq then they will bend over on drilling.    
On How greens and Democrats can win the energy debate posted 1 year, 5 months ago 19 Responses

$10.00/Bushel Corn on the Way?

Commodity Prices Show No Let Up:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/business/12crop.html?_r ...

The corn crop is about as bad I have seen in Illinois in a long, long time.  Much of it was planted late.  Some has been replanted twice due to flooding.  A lot is still under water with more rain coming.  Some still has not been planted.  

Several of us here predicted the consequences of a bad corn crop following the huge ramp up of ethanol production and how this could impact markets to the point that government intervention might be needed to ration a short crop.  We did not have to wait long.

The corn/soy industrial complex has been very effective in persuading the public and public officials that corn ethanol has not had a large impact on food price inflation.  Yet economic studies show that biofuels have caused about one third of food price inflation.

Much of the industry propaganda now points out that we are now too dependent on corn ethanol to back off feeding the monster, substantiating another of our predictions.

E85 is selling for about $2.95 per gallon in our local stations.  But, were price reflecting current costs of production at $7.00 per bushel corn, the price should be at least $4.00 per gallon and once again, not competitive with regular gas or E10.

As others here have alluded to, and to redo a point
I have made here many times before, the current crop prospects and markets illustrate the lunacy of attempting to energize an infrastructure built on densely concentrated energy collected over eons of time with the annual production of extremely costly, risky and inefficient energy plantations that compete with a hungry planet for food production and a dieing planet for ecosystem services and banks of biodiversity.

When things go in a wrong direction, the current is strong to keep them flowing downstream.  And the muddy rivers and streams flowing from the Midwest reveal just how much our way of life sieves out just  a bit of the goody in all the resources we churn.  And the same with the river of oil that seeps through our system with not much of any lasting and positive legacies to show for our waste.

We really are over the falls.   On New surveys suggest changing views on biofuels posted 1 year, 5 months ago 20 Responses

How the Farm Bureau Sees It (fuel vs. food)

"Farmers can and do grow enough to displace some of our oil imports, which also will help lower fuel prices and improve the environment.  

It seems no matter what American farmers do, they will always be somebody's whipping boy.  But claiming that they're taking food out of peoples' mouths is a new low.

Which would you rather support: Middle East palaces, or a homegrown fuel industry that creates jobs and economic renewal in the U.S.?"  
Farmweek, Feb. 18, 2008On With wheat stocks at all-time lows, a fertilizer magnate utters the F-word posted 1 year, 9 months ago 28 Responses

Reply to Tom

Roundup use is definitely up.  But this has replaced many other herbicides that had been used on corn and soybeans prior to roundup resistant cultivars.  Those replaced herbicides include those like Atrazine and Lasso, both of which leached into groundwater and are present in home wells scattered through the Midwest.  Roundup is deactivated by soil contact so it can be assumed that from this standpoint this has been a more environmentally beneficial means of weed control.

But, from other aspects, like the evolution of Roundup resistant weed strains, there may be trouble ahead for the future of Roundup.  By applying one chemical over such vast areas and many different weed species we are selecting for resistance.  

Same with the Bt gene in corn.  This trait has been so successful that farmers have adopted it on too much of their corn acreage.  They are supposed to be (regulated) planting a percentage of their acreage in non Bt varieties to reduce the potential for the buildup of resistant strains of target species like corn borer and rootworm.  But there apparently is some cheating going on and many farmers are not following the guidelines.

This has been one of my chief criticisms of GMOs -- can we successfully keep ratcheting up the gene technology to keep ahead of pest resistance?  All of this depends on keeping the wheels on a system that is inherently unsustainable and continuing to develop scientific elites in functioning universities.  Can we maintain these higher and higher levels of complexity to keep this high tech system afloat?  Can the Monsantos of the world continue to pull the rabbit out of the hat?  And can the basic agronomic inputs keep up with the genetics?   On GMO giant Monsanto wows Wall Street, consolidates its grip on South America posted 1 year, 9 months ago 6 Responses

Holly Folly World

A giant phallic symbol would fit the environs very well.  On What would you build on the land near the iconic Hollywood sign? posted 1 year, 9 months ago 7 Responses

Bean Sammy

Good points.  

Attempting to force low density, energy inputs into a system built on dense energy inputs will lead to all kinds of inflationary insanity and conflicts among competing needs (e.g. food vs. fuel).  

And our capitalist system that has been hijacked by money managers that are absconding with much needed capital for the sake of building huge personal fortune is threatening our future.  Unfortunately our political system has aided in this folly, along with the folly of an unnecessary war.  The house of cards is collapsing.  Is it worth rebuilding or should we be picking up the pieces and building a truly sustainable system that reflects real vs. artificial value.  We can't keep supporting such folly and creating sustainable alternatives with the same limited resources.  At some point I truly hope that an alternative vision would emerge in our current political process, but such big visions may just be too bold for the holders of folly.  On Researchers find corn ethanol, switchgrass could worsen global warming posted 1 year, 9 months ago 111 Responses

Life Cycle Costs for Petroleum

are also likely to increasing for some sources of crude:  "Refinery Pollution May Soar"
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chi-greenhouse_1 ...

As oil becomes more difficult to source and refine, taking more energy in the entire process, CO2 emissions will increase per unit of oil extracted from the process.  

This is why it is so very urgent that we first begin doing every thing possible to drastically cut petroleum consumption.  In light of many of these recent reports energy policies such as our new CAFE standards are dangerously inadequate.  Watching new car ads on TV is just so depressing.   On Researchers find corn ethanol, switchgrass could worsen global warming posted 1 year, 9 months ago 111 Responses

Land, fertilizers, etc.

Fertilizer for switchgrass: We've batted this one around here several times, but the switch grass proponents continue to propagate the myth that we can grow it forever with relatively few inputs.  Removing tons of this biomass per acre per year will over time remove hundreds of pounds of basic essential elements like phosphorus and potassium over time.  Continuous production of grass will also deplete the soil of nitrogen.  These three big essential elements will have to be replaced by fertilization.  And it ain't going to be be organic (shit).  If you have not been paying attention, fertilizer, as reflected in recent price doubling of the big 3, is starting to get scarce from ramped up worldwide demand.  

Land: Again, the promise of vast acreages of "marginal" lands are proposed for switchgrass production.  But guess what?  These marginal lands are not going to produce the magical numbers of tons of biomass per acre that proponents often cite.  Much of this land is arid or semi arid.  Much is of inherently low productivity.  And very importantly, much of it is far removed and scattered from potential ethanol production plant sites which meet the production requirements (rail transport, water supply, energy supply, etc.).  

 On Researchers find corn ethanol, switchgrass could worsen global warming posted 1 year, 9 months ago 111 Responses

Waiting for Version 2.0 with "context"

The biofuel proponents have successfully dampened some of the criticism of corn ethanol by claiming we need it to set the stage for more environmental successors like cellulosic versions.  So, they claim, we need to continue the big subsidies to enable the infrastructure developments that will be in place when version 2.0 is online.  

But a lot of environmental losses will have taken place by the time version 2.0 is here.  And to keep the pipelines filled, version 1.0 will have to stay in place for a very long time as version 2.0 is phased in. So, the planet has to continue taking a big hit of heroin until we can get it on a dose of methadone.  We are so fucked!  

Industry shills like Bob Dineen state that we have now grown so dependent on ethanol that the global warming costs have to be considered "in context".  
I guess we are going to continue to suffer with the "context" our leaders in Washington see vs. the "context" of  the biosphere.  Will we push ahead to double the output of corn ethanol or will we call for a moratorium on future corn ethanol development?  

We need to extend the debate about our addiction to oil to our addiction to all liquid fuels.  The answer is not to continue growing the supply but to begin dismantling the infrastructure built on liquid fuels and replacing it with wisely designed systems that largely free us from pumps. nozzles and internal combustion.  

Alternative fuels in unsustainable systems only perpetuate and ratchet up the technological dependency on unsustainable systems.  Ethanol is a prime example of technocratic muddling -- allowing bad design to dictate our future.  In this context, we are not free men.On Researchers find corn ethanol, switchgrass could worsen global warming posted 1 year, 9 months ago 111 Responses

99 Years

99 Years to recapture the "lost" CO2 with biofuel crops.  

Millions of years to recapture the biodiversity lost in the conversion of natural ecosytems to energy plantations (assuming man is long extinct).  

8 months to keep pandering for corn ethanol votes.  Priceless.  

OK. A confirmation of what several of us have been screaming about.  Now, will Congress and Pelosi, or Hillary and Obama get the message?  Or are we going to have to keep screaming?  

My guess, our leaders will reinforce their fallibilities by proving the old adage -- when you are in a rut, keep digging. I can hear them reflecting the industry line:

Industry groups, like the Renewable Fuels Association, immediately attacked the new studies as "simplistic," failing "to put the issue into context."

"While it is important to analyze the climate change consequences of differing energy strategies, we must all remember where we are today, how world demand for liquid fuels is growing, and what the realistic alternatives are to meet those growing demands," said Bob Dineen, the group's director, in a statement following the Science reports' release.

"Biofuels like ethanol are the only tool readily available that can begin to address the challenges of energy security and environmental protection," he said.

Beware ... Insurgents

YES!  Next thing is a 4 hour work day.  More time for play!  Family!  Friends!  Voluteerism!  Ecological restoration!  Outdoor recreation!  Gardening!  Foraging!  Hunting!  Gathering!  YES!

Keep it up folks!  Question what drives this system and why alternative visions of living on earth are forced to the "kooky" margins.  

Ok, quit your "fuckin' A man" dude dreaming and get back to humping for bucks.  You'll have time for all that leisure after you accumulate your load and retire inside a gated community somewhere in the sun ... with the Joneses.  On If people want to keep up with the Joneses, could they at least adopt a different set of Joneses? posted 1 year, 10 months ago 128 Responses

John

The question was not about corn vs. switchgrass.  I think I made my case concerning potential impacts on fauna. Of course, the addition of switchgrass would diversify the ag landscape benefiting some species.   But one grass species  is not going to add that much biodiversity alone or for the limited diversity of species it attracts.  Just not that much there other than cover which would be wiped clean each year.  

The current amount of corn will be kept growing until the fuel and the fertilizer runs out or becomes too expensive to produce it (phosphorus and potassium about doubled in price and nitrogen increased by 50 to 70% in the past year).  And despite what the proponents say, switchgrass would also deplete the soil of nutrients and would require fertilization to maintain adequate levels of productivity.  Not as much as corn, but this is not going to be some self sustainable production system like the cellulose advocates state.  On Better agronomy for energy crops posted 1 year, 10 months ago 14 Responses

First Steps?

2005 bill = first step
2007 bill = first step

? When are we going to get past all the first steps?

And this positive vote by Obama ranks no where in magitude to the positive vote by Clinton for the war in Iraq.  Given the opportunity costs of this one vote for war, there is no way I can believe in Clinton.  (By the way, my other home state senator, Durbin, voted against the war resolution).  Obama is still my candidate, by default, if not by conviction.  I still have to have some hope that there is something left to believe in here.  On What does the 2005 energy bill vote say about Obama? posted 1 year, 10 months ago 8 Responses

Winter Cover Crops

Vinod:
"winter cover crops grown on current annual crop lands, using the land during the winter season when it is generally dormant (while improving land ecology)"

Unless you wish to lose all credibility, you need to stay out of the agronomics on this stuff or hire yourself a good agronomist.  

On "current annual crop lands" cover crops would be sown after harvest.  This leaves just about enough time to get the cover crop established before the cover crop goes dormant during winter.  Growth resumes in the spring but this is when spring tillage happens for the next annual crop of corn or beans.  So, when is this accumulation and harvesting of biomass of the cover crop going to occur?  The cover crops, except perhaps in the extreme southern states, will not be growing during the dormant season.  That is why they call it dormant!

You would be wise to leave cover crops entirely out of your arguments (which I find to fantastically optimistic)!   On Where will biofuels and biomass feedstocks come from? posted 1 year, 10 months ago 16 Responses

We Are

so far out on the limb of overreach that we are losing all perspective on what is truly sustainable.
In a time of extreme myopia keeping the wheels on for another 50 years is considered a great feat of disproving the Malthusians while we undermine the base of life for the next 10,000 years.  We have the collective mind of Hitler in the bunker.
  On 'Green empire' like 'military intelligence' posted 1 year, 10 months ago 66 Responses

Rush and The Rulers of the World

Rush is just boiling down the essence of the Bush/Cheney energy policy -- increasing production of oil, gas and coal to match rising energy demands.  In this respect, Rush still speaks for many on the production side of the coin in this country.  By God, we have a right to it and we'll defend our freedom to consume at any cost (to those poor bastards sacrificed for Rush's line of elitist bullshit).  To think that people like Rush have been ruling the world!...

"First, let me make it very clear, poor people aren't necessarily killers.  Just because you happen to be not rich doesn't mean you're willing to kill."
George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., May 19, 2003
369 DaysOn Notable quotable posted 1 year, 10 months ago 21 Responses

CAFOs, flight, etc.

Re youth flight, you can't just single out CAFOs in Iowa, but see this as part of the whole industrialization process of agriculture in the  Midwest that has diminished the quality of life and undermined local communities.  

The mega CAFOs are particularly egregious.  But, I need to point out the problem with cattle and hog feeders that practice open livestock operations in close proximity to streams and rivers.  During heavy rain events these operations contribute heavily to the degradation of waterways.  I do not see much evidence that these operations are being monitored or regulated by any governmental agencies.  

I do not defend CAFOs but I can't help but wondering whether or not small CAFOs might not be more environmentally sound than the open operations that continue to heavily degrade woodlands, riparian habitat, and streams.    On Conservation title schemes, youth flee CAFO country, and a side of E. coli beef posted 1 year, 10 months ago 6 Responses

The Car of the Future

for a planet of 9 billion people is no car at all (thanks for reminding us Elizabeth Kolbert).  On Prius: Green or greenwash? posted 1 year, 10 months ago 36 Responses

Teddy Roosevelt?

or FDR?  

And in a negative way, we have to look at Cheney and Bush in leading the country toward a war of choice, a bad choice, but a choice that many politicians including Clinton and Edwards followed.  On Are Obama and Edwards promising ponies? posted 1 year, 10 months ago 24 Responses

The Implications

of weaning our emissions of CO2 by 80 to 90% are beginning to sink in to the minds of those thinking about the implications (a very tiny minority).  

All those global tourism dollars represent an opportunity cost for creating a world that is sustainable.  If a large proportion of your economy is dependent on the continuation of fossil energy expenditures your economy is on the wrong energy path for your own country as the rest of the world lured toward your destination.  Maintaining the unsustainable is a drain on building the sustainable.  We cannot keep attempting to do both and reach a sustainable landing.

So, at what time does a one-earth consciousness vs. a global consumptionness kick in?  And when do people really stop thinking, "hey that jet is going there anyway with or without me"?  And when  do the Kiwis start thinking, "hey we need to roll up the welcome mat and get on with living on this island for eternity"?  On Tourism and carbon neutrality posted 1 year, 10 months ago 12 Responses

Once again, To What End Here?

Tom,

Thanks for your good reporting and insights.  

Once again, I am lead to ask, "What is the end here?".  If it is a quest for sustainability, none of this indicates such.  If the end is economic growth, jobs, prosperity, consumer satisfaction, maintaining a positive GDP, then this gets the job done ... temporarily.  But all of this utterly fails the key test of reducing our dependence on fossil fuels.  Even without the threat of climate change, why should we keep moving out on the branch of finite energy sources and increasing the odds of a global collapse?  There is no magic bullet to sustain our currently overbuilt infrastructure so why keep building on it with more blind faith?  

The insanity of all this is getting just too surreal and ridiculous to bear.  I am just about to lose it.  On Cheap coal and $100 oil posted 1 year, 11 months ago 13 Responses

The Clintonian Middle

No matter what the rhetoric, whichever Democratic candidate viable enough to become president would govern from the Clintonian middle established by the meister himself. Gore probably would have continued to fit into that mold had he become president.

Whether or not this will be enough to accomplish anything effective on energy or the environment is the big question.  My bias is that it will not be and that too many other neglected mega issues will keep our concerns below the threshold level to permit timely, effective action in Washington.  

For Nader to pick Edwards out of the litter because his populist rhetoric more closely matches his own, places undo faith in the real differences among all these candidates and what each of them can actually achieve within the bounds of Washington politics.  

Nader is right about one thing -- it all really sucks! On Darth Nader endorses Edwards instead of Green Party candidate posted 1 year, 11 months ago 38 Responses

A Clinton Miracle

"Clinton will win narrowly." everyone & DR

It will take a miracle by Clinton along the lines of making a $60,000 profit on an initial investment of $1,000 in cattle trades:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/whi ...

"Banana, banana, banana!  Everybody like banana!  Nobody like banana!"  

Is this all getting a bit too surreal?  On 2008 will see another peaceful transfer of power in the U.S. posted 1 year, 11 months ago 20 Responses

Some Conservatives Agree

that it is insane:
http://www.cei.org/pdf/5532.pdf

All for now, the river calls, it is boatin' time!
Have a great day everyone.
LouOn A new piece on the insanity that is U.S. ethanol policy posted 1 year, 11 months ago 7 Responses

Media "Balance" = Misrepresentation

Glenn Greenwald:

As I've documented before, the media -- with the filibustering GOP in the minority -- now routinely refers to the "60 votes required to pass a bill in the Senate," as though that's the most normal and natural state of affairs in the Senate, rather than what prevails only when a filibuster is invoked. It's precisely because Beltway reporters slothfully refer to the "60-votes required to pass," rather than making clear that Republicans are engaged in a filibuster to obstruct legislation, that such a misleading picture has been created. Thus, they endlessly depict these filibusters as noting more than a "failure on the part of Democrats to obtain the 60 votes required to pass."

Because of that, the public is largely unaware of just how obstructionist the Republicans have been because most Beltway journalists haven't reported it. And they haven't reported it because the rule they follow most religiously is that they never will describe the facts as they are if those facts reflect poorly on Republicans, because to do that means that they are "unbalanced" and "biased" and will be attacked as such. In Beltway journalism circles, misleading though balanced accounts are always preferred to factually truthful, "unbalanced" ones. Republicans always have a valid point, their version is always reasonable and worthy of respect, even when false.

UPDATE: Steven Greene of North Carolina State University's Department of Political Science emails as follows:

A quick and dirty Lexis/Nexis search reveals that in 2007 the Times had 83 stories with the term "filibuster" and the Post had 187. Over the same period in 2005 (seemed like the first year of a Congressional session was the fair comparison), the term "filibuster" appeared in 358 Times stories and 407 Post stories. The data therefore totally back you up on this.
Those facts are, of course, just "the liberal version."

As several commenters have noted, and as I alluded to but didn't state quite as clearly as I should have, Kane's claim that reporters typically "talk about the need for 60 votes to break GOP filibusters" just isn't true. As the collection of articles I gathered here demonstrate, the standard formulation doesn't even include the word "filibuster" at all -- just as those LEXIS figures also reflect -- but simply notes that Democrats "failed to obtain the 60 votes required for passage." The picture that has been presented, then, almost entirely excludes the chronic obstructionism via filibuster which has defined the Senate GOP's behavior all year.

Forget the "United" States

and go with the states that are united to do something meaningful.  Washington needs to get out of the way.

Counting on national elections is counting on the media to inform the electorate about the issues, for the candidates and parties to get beyond soundbites, and for the electorate to pay enough attention to the details to make sound judgements.  If the past is prelude, this doesn't provide much hope for change.  

And just for once, I'd like to see Congress put a smaller, cleaner bill into the docket.  One that can't be spun by either party and see just where both sides line up on it.  The democrats should put that tax break for big oil into a separate little bill next year and put the Republicans in the hot seat on it.  Set their ass on fire and fan the flames. This bullshit of Mitch McConnell going on TV and bragging about how the republicans are "molding" legislation should get the intense scrutiny it deserves.  On Dems can't overcome filibuster threats to get decent legislation -- so what should they do? posted 1 year, 11 months ago 31 Responses

Happy Greenings!

We are growing "green" jobs here.  John Deere is growing the shit out of green machines.  People are driving big "green" FFV pickups and SUVs on all that green corn that is bring more "green" backs to Big Green AG.  So we are turning the Gulf "green".  Green is good. Eat green. Drink green. Smoke green. Drive green. Be green. Be happy.

Greenings to all!  On The ethanol boom could trigger a 'tipping point' in the Gulf posted 1 year, 11 months ago 5 Responses

Lost in the Numbers

I am confused about what any of this will actually mean in terms of any reductions.  If the reductions are stated in terms of decreases in projected growth does this really mean an increase from today's numbers?  And if there is an actual increase of energy consumption and CO2 emissions while we say we need a decrease, does this represent progress?  Or are we opting for  progress as measured by intensity per economic unit as Bush proposes?  

 On If we put narrative above policy, how might the energy bill have played out? posted 1 year, 11 months ago 12 Responses

Cost and Source of Nitrogen

Please excuse the lengthy excerpt, but I think you will find the following article very relevant to our ongoing ethanol discussion and debate.  This article gives some perspective on the size of the 2008 corn crop, how much nitrogen has been applied for it this fall, prices of nitrogen as affected by the cost of natural gas, and the source of nitrogen.  

We now import 80% of the nitrogen.  Some of this is coming from Russia.  Didn't we get a lecture recently from a Mr. Coleman about not being concerned enough about importing oil from Russia?  And how homegrown ethanol makes us more secure?  

As I have predicted in earlier comments, the economics of production will rattle the cage of ethanol more than any of our expressions of outrage.  Let's hope that we don't get caught up in an inflationary spiral that brings us all down with it.  

Will anhydrous ammonia costs tip the balance in the battle for acres?

Jeff Caldwell  
Agriculture Online News and Features Editor

11/20/2007, 12:49 AM CST

In the battle for acres, one key variable is input costs and what it could mean for 2008 corn, soybean and wheat acres. Clearly, wheat inputs are on the low end of the spectrum, but with the corn market lingering on the high side, a farmer can justify higher input costs if he or she can lock in that sought-after target price, even if it means another year of continuous corn.

With the 2007 corn harvest in the books, farmers are now turning to fall fertilizer applications. Does the amount of anhydrous ammonia (NH3) leaving Midwest cooperatives and retailers foreshadow the size of next year's crop? If so, the 2008 corn crop could be a big one.

"There's a lot of anhydrous [ammonia] going out right now," says Dave Lund, location manager of Heart of Iowa Cooperative in Nevada, Iowa. "There's not going to be much switching acres around, at least around here."

Elsewhere in the Corn Belt, anhydrous sales are big -- enough so that farmers like Agriculture Online Marketing Talk member jkaahend says corn is surging ahead early in the battle for acres in his area of west-central Indiana.

"The local fertilizer plant is looking at a possible record amount of NH3 being applied this fall, with the combination of good corn prices and great weather for getting it applied here," jkaahend writes. "That has changed greatly in the past few weeks. The talk a month ago was more beans, to avoid the high input costs of corn."

The jump in sales have made NH3 concerns a common thread in corn country. In central Illinois, Farm Business Talk member ILStUFH has watched orders eclipse supplies at his ammonia facility, and filling those orders is only contributing to the rising costs.

"Pretty much any plant around here in central Illinois is out of its allocations for this fall. At the plant where I work, we are 300 tons over what we were allocated. So we have ours coming from Henderson, Kentucky, six hours one way," ILStUFH writes. "We were told that, once we are out of what is coming in from Kentucky, the price is going up. We are looking at around $610 to $620 next spring. Ridiculous."

More continuous corn?
Even if the market tilts in favor of soybeans -- as high as $10 per bushel -- that may not be enough to convince farmers to abandon a corn-heavy rotation. At least not under current market conditions, says Marketing Talk membercoup.

"It looks like there will be more of an increase in corn acres than the increase from the previous year," coup says of his outlook for '08. "Soybean acres in '08 are in real trouble. $10 beans sure hasn't got folks interested.

"From the looks of things, corn acres in this part of Illinois will increase about as much in '08 as they did in '07. Beans are going to need to be put on the endangered species list."

With all the NH3 leaving Corn Belt cooperatives and retailers this fall -- so much that some outlets are running short on supply -- that means corn is winning the battle for acres, right? Not so fast, says Iowa State University farm management specialist Don Hofstrand. Hofstrand, who closely follows the relationship between the energy and commodity markets, says a return to more corn in '08 isn't the sole reason for the exodus of NH3 this fall. It's definitely on the battlefield, but potential increases in NH3 prices in the spring are weighing more on farmers' minds.

"Concerns for what prices are going to be next spring are a big factor. Concerns are bigger than facts right now," Hofstrand says.

NH3 cost drivers
The marketplace for anhydrous ammonia is highly volatile right now, for several reasons. Natural gas accounts for 80% of the cost of producing ammonia, according to Hofstrand, so it's easy to point to that sector in determining the source of future price spikes.

"The cost of natural gas is the major factor in determining the price of ammonia and the cost of ammonia is a major factor in determining the price of nitrogen fertilizer," Hofstrand says.

But, other factors could contribute to the rise in NH3 costs. At the same time U.S. corn production has increased, domestic ammonia production has actually declined steadily since 2000. "From 2000 to 2006, ammonia production declined from 18 million tons to 10 million tons, a 44% decline," Hofstrand says. "During the same period, the number of ammonia plants declined from 40 to 25 and production capacity declined from 20 million tons to 13 million tons."

A third part of the equation lies in how the market's replenished lost domestic production -- imports. In the last decade, imports have gone from 35% of the total market to 80%. This climb in imports -- largely from the Trinidad and Tobago Republic, Ukraine, Russia and Canada -- has set into motion a chain of events that has, and will likely continue to weigh on domestic production.

"Natural gas prices are substantially lower in many other parts of the world. Several of these locations can produce ammonia, ship it to the U.S. and sell it at a lower price than that of domestic producers," Hofstrand says. "So we are losing our ammonia industry to foreign suppliers."

With more imports, adds Hofstrand, will come higher costs incurred by the end-user. "Natural gas price is not the only factor to consider. The cost of shipping is another. Ammonia is a hazardous material and must be transferred in pressurized containers."

Cost is king
While some farmers may have already made their acreage decisions for the 2008 crop, the decision for many will, in the end, boil down to input costs. And, with such a jump in NH3 prices seen on the horizon for next spring, this may alone be enough to tilt the balance away from more corn and more toward a traditional corn-soybean or wheat rotation.

"The cost issue enters into the calculus of determining what to do with acres next spring," Hofstrand says. "Some farmers I've talked to tried second-year corn for the first time this year and it didn't pan out. They had a yield drop and were concerned with the additional grain to handle. But, at the same time, the beans looked fairly good."

When it comes to anhydrous ammonia prices, as it stands right now, Hofstrand says the current anticipation of higher prices next spring has eclipsed the actual price tag of NH3 now in terms of an acreage decision factor. Because of this combined with foreseen variability in the corn market, the scale at this point may be evenly balanced in the battle for acres.

"A big question is: What kind of corn prices will we need to maintain these corn acres?" Hofstrand says. "Some are looking at moving back to a traditional perspective -- it's shaping up for a good acreage battle for next spring."

Source:Agriculture Online
http://www.agriculture.com/ag/story.jhtml?storyid=/templa ...On The ethanol boom could trigger a 'tipping point' in the Gulf posted 1 year, 11 months ago 5 Responses

Canis

Are we not all cogs in the machine?  Is man not the ultimate domesticate?  The machine has us and we are just taking more along for the productivity ride.  "Breakthrough" to most means more machine, more complexity, more ratcheting up the gizmos, and salvation via the next magical acronym.    On Why bees and pigs are not machines posted 1 year, 11 months ago 12 Responses

Counting the Ethanol and CAFE Votes

Here's the deal. In recent elections, the Republicans have established solid majorities in the South and the Mountain states, while the Democrats have secured strong footholds in the Northeast and the West Coast. But in 2004, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Michigan were "swing states," defined by a projected margin of victory for either major political party of 3% or less. These five states are at the core of a rapidly disappearing American center composed of 64 electoral votes, which neither party can afford to lose.

I'll go one step further. Michigan, with its heavy dependence on the success of General Motors and Ford, also benefits from biofuel subsidies. Recent increases in fuel-efficiency standards have provided loopholes for so-called flex-fuel vehicles that can run on E85 (85% ethanol blended with 15% gasoline), whether consumers ever use E85 or not -- and Detroit has invested heavily in flex-fuel vehicles rather than in increased fuel efficiency. That probably won't change with the fuel-efficiency standards in the president's new plan. These loopholes, after all, allow GM and Ford to continue their dependence on trucks and SUVs -- two segments where they remain profitable.

Source: 'The Politics of Ethanol'
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2007/05/15/the-poli ...
On Why did Dems bargain down the energy bill? posted 1 year, 11 months ago 6 Responses

The Treehugger Link

With biofuel production continuing to gather apace, it will become necessary for industry and governments to tackle rising nitrous oxide emissions - sooner rather than later.

Hmmm... doesn't this add to our argument that we are adding unnecessary complexity and unknown downstream consequences to "reducing" our dependence on oil?  The biofuel we substitute does not appear to be any more sustainable and may be just as or more damaging as the petroleum it is intended to replace.  And proposing that government or industry is going to keep pace with the unintended consequences of our muddled approach is putting too much faith in the same government and industries that steered the ship into the storm to begin with.    

If we do not quickly redesign the physical infrastructure that oil built and oil maintains we will keep getting ourselves into this continuous ratcheting up process of never ending fixes in which the last fix creates the need for additional fixes.  

First -- shrink the liquid fuel sink!  Growing both the source and the sink gets us nowhere.  Design an infrastructure that will allow us to  reduce the number of autos on US roads by 20% by 2020.  That would mean something!  On Once in place, the RFS will be nigh impossible to eliminate posted 1 year, 11 months ago 35 Responses

Re: Ron

When you add it all up it amounts to a bunch of nonsense.  

By 2020, corn "reduces" our gas consumption by maybe 3%.  In the meantime we burn a bunch of it in FFVs getting 15 to 25 mpg. Along with projected demand growth, these low mileage vehicles on the road and on the salesroom floor will increase our overall fuel consumption by 20% by 2020.  And they get 20% lower mileage burning E85.  In the meantime the degradation of our waterways from agriculture continues as before.  So, by 2020, where are we exactly?  By 2020 are we any further along the road toward true sustainability?  What has capturing this solar energy with fossil energy actually gained us other than temporary transfers of capital?  

Needed: incentives to cut oil demand by 20% within 5 years, by 2012.  

The markets and the economy will be far more effective in reducing consumption than anything Congress has the guts to do at this point, which ain't enough.  The price of oil and gas is not high enough... yet.  We are still drifting in LaLaLand.  

Washington lags at least 20 years behind the needed time to act and then muddles the results. Lets see, by 2020, our road fleet will be averaging about 30 mpg -- 50% better than cars were getting in 1920.  Something ain't right about this picture.   On Once in place, the RFS will be nigh impossible to eliminate posted 1 year, 11 months ago 35 Responses

Environmental Working Group Report

EWG did a very good study related to this post:

'Trouble Downstream: Upgrading Conservation Compliance'
http://www.ewg.org/reports/compliance

Among the findings:
*The standards only apply to Highly Erodible Land (HEL) which leaves out a large percentage of lands still subject to erosion.

*Standards are very flexible.

*Monitoring is incredibly limited to less than 1% of the HEL lands.

*Monitoring is very lax in finding only about 2% of lands out of compliance.

*Of those 2% out of compliance of the less than 1% monitored, about 80% of these are overturned during appeals.  

Bottom line is that we cannot expect the USDA to set any meaningful standards or even enforce the weak ones in place.  There have been so few enforcement applications that the "stick" of losing farm subsidy payments for lack of compliance is a tremendous joke.  

The high costs of farming, and the high cost of fuel along with technological improvements in farm machinery and tillage equipment have done far more to reduce soil erosion than any regulations coming out of Washington. I don't think we should let the farmers off the hook on this for there are serious soil erosion and water degradation problems remaining.  But unless we make a serious stab at reforming the federal agencies (USDA, NRCS, FSA) responsible for setting standards, monitoring, and enforcing, these agencies will continue to effectively look the other way as farmers do what ever the hell they want to, continue to suck the public teat, and scream like hell if government attempts to get serious about regulating the farm industry.On Agriculture is drunk on corn-based ethanol posted 1 year, 11 months ago 8 Responses

AG Visions = More Shit In

Illinois Farm Bureau President, Philip Nelson speaking at the IL Farm Bureau annual meeting last week in Chicago:

Nelson told members he envisions a future in agriculture, within the next decade, when farmers can consistently grow 300 bushel corn, 80-bushel beans (soy), and produce 800 gallons of ethanol from every acre of corn....
The livestock industry in the state also will be poised for growth as feedlots could open next to ethanol plants to take advantage of distillers grain as a feed source.

To expand on my earlier comments, the maximum theoretical corn yield is about 470 bu/acre.  The highest yield record I know of in IL is 370 bu/acre.  This was grown on 20 acres with the application of over 500 lbs of nitrogen fertilizer/acre!  It is also interesting to note that commercial corn yields have averaged about 50% of the yields recorded in yield contests.  So, if you divide 370 bu/acre by 2 you get 185 bu/acre which is not too far off my estimate of average yields topping out at 175 bu/acre.  This is the US average.  The IL average did reach about this 175 bu yield this year but IL has some of the best corn land in the US and got some just in time rains.

Are our policy makers determining policy in the real world or in the visions of how the Ag lobbyists want the world to be?  

Also, the quote about feed lots locating near ethanol plants should turn the heads of some locals who have been bamboozled by ethanol boosters who claim the plants' odors are "tolerable".  

Are we getting a glimpse yet of what the world will look like if "we drive on corn forever" (ADM greenwash ad)?  Which really begs the question of sustainability.  When they start out full of shit it is amazing how much more shit the corn ethanol promoters will eat to maintain their front.  On Once in place, the RFS will be nigh impossible to eliminate posted 1 year, 11 months ago 35 Responses

Regulatory Ambiguity

If the bill is ambiguous about agency authority then Congress should precisely state what it has in mind regarding which agency should have the authority.  

The auto makers obviously want to keep their guys in charge at NHTSA.  If the bill is written tightly with few loopholes there should be less opportunity for the car makers to monkey with the rule writing no matter which agency is in charge.  

Legislating in Congress is a real mess.  It is obvious by now that they cannot reform themselves.  On Yet more energy bill woes posted 1 year, 11 months ago 3 Responses

15 Billion Gallons to the Rescue

How much corn does it take to make 15 billion gallons of ethanol?  

The amount would surpass over half of US corn crop in 4 of the last 6 years and over 40% of the 2007 production boosted by a substantial increase in acreage.  We saw big jumps in food prices this year when ethanol was set to take about 25% of the crop.  So what can we expect in the future when ethanol takes 50% or more?  More importantly, what severe effects might we see if corn production falls as it regularly does in the corn belt?  

Agricultural economists give us a good window on future corn production scenarios.  One, that I cited in an earlier post can be read at:

2007 U.S CORN PRODUCTION RISKS: WHAT DOES HISTORY TEACH US?
http://www.farmdoc.uiuc.edu/marketing/mobr/mobr_07-01/mob ... ...

My earlier comments containing excerpts from this study are in the thread at the tail of:
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/12/6/162114/094

One noteworthy excerpt:

An important public policy question, then, is, with an extreme shortfall in production, would the market be allowed to allocate the crop among users or would such a shortfall in corn production induce government intervention? The norm from past experience with rationing has been to allow the market to allocate the crop, with the largest adjustments taking place in the livestock sector. However, there has been one exception. Short supplies and high soybean prices in 1973 resulted in an embargo on U.S. exports. Such an embargo on corn exports might be considered following a large shortfall in production, but the potential negative impact on longer-term trade relationships would make an embargo a very unpopular alternative. The financial implications of high corn prices for livestock producers might evoke intervention in the allocation of supplies between domestic livestock producers and processors of corn.

In Bush's last year look out for all kinds of rule writing that work against our interests.  The foxes are prowling and Bush and his agency cronies are holding the hen house door wide open.  Are feathers hanging from Congress' mouth?  On Bush to ethanol industry: don't worry, you're gonna get your fat mandate posted 1 year, 11 months ago 10 Responses

Re: Biod.

Yes, exactly.  I didn't know how to link directly to the quote.  

Thanks for reading my comments.   On The neverending debate on corn ethanol continues posted 1 year, 11 months ago 20 Responses

Re: Biod.

Too many inconvenient truths for Mr. Coleman who conveniently did not respond to my posts about the risks imposed by short corn crops on future market allocations stressed by an increasing demands from ethanol.
See: "Implications of 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol" in http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/12/6/162114/094

When the public gets blindsided by ethanol's growing take there will be a lot of "out of order" signs on the E85 pumps.  On The neverending debate on corn ethanol continues posted 1 year, 11 months ago 20 Responses

Re: Bummer

Look on the bright side of it.  Some of us have seen this coming and experienced your pain since the late 60s.  So be happy that you have just had a few years of grief.  

The New Yorker magazine has some great environmental cartoons.  I'll share a few that I can remember (without the cartoons of course).  

Couple women standing at a bar together: "I hate to admit it, but a man with a big carbon footprint makes me hot."

An amphibian emerges from his evolutionary journey from water to land and sees a sign on shore:
"The beginning is near."

A down looking fellow sitting on a couch with a cell phone to his head: "Making a difference doesn't make a difference."

So, to any of you optimistic climate activists who have read this post, all I can say is thanks for trying and don't worry about "preventing us from focusing on the survival requirements of the human enterprise" (bit of a stretch IMHO).   On It's too late to stop climate change, argues Ross Gelbspan -- so what do we do now? posted 1 year, 11 months ago 45 Responses

New Founders

Like Noah, many who read this site are aware of our tenuous reliance on a hydraulic civilization -- for us built on the unsustainable flow of fossil fuel vs. irrigation water in his time.  We return to the same questions posed to man since the  beginning of his journey from hunting and gathering.  We converge upon a broad, raging and rising river and seek a passage through a narrowing and unknown canyon.    

We are all drifting on uncharted waters with dreams of establishing a sustained means of living.  Unlike Noah, who founded in wild nature, we can no longer look to the wild to plant our seed, to blunder upon new shores of undiscovered territory to found new colonies.  Our only hope is to resurrect something useful out of the beast that brought us here, to use the beast to destroy its maladaptive nature, to use oil and coal to get us off oil and coal, and to break it into many more adaptive parts upon which each of us can help found a new way of living with earth based on old ways with twists of the new.  And with us, most importantly, we need to bring as much wild nature -- our true foundation -- as possible.  Or, if this is much too centered on us, let us hope that wild nature brings as many of us with it as possible.  

Live simply and be rich in wonder. Hold on!  

Out there,
Lou

 On Scaling back our energy-hungry lifestyles means more of what matters, not less posted 1 year, 11 months ago 24 Responses

Travel not needed?

Tell me how many of you could live in the middle of hundreds of square miles of corn and soybeans and not feel the need to escape?  I live in the biggest sacrificial landscape in the United States.  Every day I live here is a sacrifice.   Tell me I should not escape to places that do not destroy the soul of the nature lover.  I created an oasis of native biodiversity on my property that provides some happiness but it is no substitute for the happiness I derive from wild places.  

What is worse, living here in a developed landscape and traveling to the wild on occasion, or moving to a wilder area and contributing to develop the shit out of it?  I don't fly.  I have not built a vacation cabin in the woods.  My travel is limited to within my state and a couple of adjacent states -- mainly canoeing and camping.  

I don't justify my impact but just relating how one person lives out conflicts between finding happiness and attempting to live more sustainably.  

Nothing new for me since I became aware of this in the '60s when this very same discussion was very much alive in the minds of young idealists.  I hope it does not escape its new founders as they find their niche in the machine and struggle with compromises.        On Scaling back our energy-hungry lifestyles means more of what matters, not less posted 1 year, 11 months ago 24 Responses

This Sums Up my View of the MEGA City

The newly ascendant mega-cities in the developing world, though, can dishearten even the most persistent optimist. They are relentless agglomerations of people, drawn not so much by the promise of prosperity as by the hope of survival.

It is internal migrant populations that are pouring into most of these exploding urban areas. In China, for instance, 150 million people have left their rural homes in the last 10 years, leaving a dearth of workers in the agricultural sector. Political and war refugees, too, flow in steadily. A fortunate few may realize a steady income, maybe even own property, but most live in slums whose filthy water, political chaos and nonexistent municipal infrastructure would startle Dickens and Marx.

The United Nations estimates that, today, 2.8 billion people live on less than $2 a day. And it is this huge, desperate underclass that is filling these mega-cities. Children are more likely to roam in gangs than attend school. Cholera and typhoid -- diseases listed as "rare" in Western textbooks -- are endemic. Often there is no geographic core, just as there is no governmental core to oversee the chaos. Parts of these cities are modern, with the familiar skyscrapers, highways and BlackBerry-toting workers. Yet they are surrounded by rings of shocking poverty where millions live in paper-covered hovels.

Without some concerted action from nations and international institutions, these mega-cities will grow larger and more desperate. Philanthropy helps, but these developing countries need public policies that promote property ownership, increase access to credit and enhance government transparency.

There is no quick panacea to improving the lot of billions of people; it took more than 50 years to address the slums of the 19th century. But there is an urgency to today's task. The slum dwellers of Lagos and Manila and Karachi are part of the global economy, bound to the rest of the world. Their misery will spill beyond their borders, and if that happens, our urban age risks becoming a global nightmare.

from: 'Mega-cities, mega-problems
Billions in the developing world are shifting from rural to urban areas, bringing poverty to dangerous new levels.'
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-retsinas28feb28 ...On Why clean coal is so darn appealing posted 1 year, 11 months ago 37 Responses

Erik

I got a few extra hoes around here.  Any of you who want to love one of those hoe handles for several weeks next summer in the blazing sun need to post here.    

Please, spare me the red dreams.  People here would rather starve than replicate the Cuban experiment.  A lot of people were "smiling" at Jonestown too.  On What a fossil-fuel free agriculture might look like posted 1 year, 11 months ago 68 Responses

Implications of 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol

It remains dubious if Congress thought through the potentially serious repercussions of producing 15 billion gallons of ethanol from corn.  

I attempted in earlier posts to bring the issue of potential shortfalls in corn production to the ethanol policy debate.    

How much corn would be consumed by 15 billion gallons of ethanol?
15 billion/2.65 gallons per bushel =           5.66 billion bushels of corn!

How does this compare with yearly production in the US?
from: National Agricultural Statistics Service
http://www.nass.usda.gov/QuickStats/index2.jsp

Year Acres       YLD  Production
2007 93,616,000  153  13.2 billion bu.  
2006 78,327,000  149  10.5 billion bu.
2005 81,779,000  148  11.1 billion bu.
2004 80,929,000  160  11.8 billion bu.
2003 78,603,000  142  10.1 billion bu.
2002 78,894,000  129   9.0 billion bu.

As you can see 5.66 billion bushels exceeds over 50% of US corn production in four out of the last
six years and over 40% of the 2007 crop!

You can also see that in 2007 corn acreage increased significantly.  How long can this increased production be sustained and at what cost?  

What are the market and economic implications of adding such a large demand from ethanol on the US and world economies and food supplies?

A projection produced by University of IL ag economists last spring is quite revealing.  I am excerpting some relevant passages from their study but I encourage you to read the entire report:  
2007 U.S CORN PRODUCTION RISKS: WHAT DOES HISTORY TEACH US?
http://www.farmdoc.uiuc.edu/marketing/mobr/mobr_07-01/mob ...

A crop 20 percent smaller than expected would magnify the need for rationing outlined under the previous scenario. A crop of 9.832 billion bushels and year ending stocks of 414 million (4 percent of use) would allow consumption of only 10.37 billion bushels, 17.4 percent (2.18 billion bushels) less than consumption with a crop of 12.29 billion bushels. Compared to the scenario of expected production, use by category is forecast to decline as follows:

Feed------down 22.6 percent

Exports--down 20 percent

Ethanol---down 10 percent

Other -----down 10 percent

As in the previous scenario, consumption by category could deviate substantially from these projections, but total consumption would be limited by available supplies. A period of extremely high prices would be required in order to force such a large reduction in use. To reduce corn use for ethanol production, for example, corn prices would have to be high enough so that the most inefficient plants were unable to recoup variable costs of ethanol production. With ethanol prices near $2.20 per gallon, that price could be near $6.00. The average farm price for the year would likely exceed $5.00 per bushel and is forecast at $5.25. The high prices would force a substantial reduction in livestock numbers, increasing meat supplies in the short run, but resulting in much smaller supplies after that. Meat production could eventually decline 10 to 15 percent, resulting in escalating retail meat prices. The high prices would have significant negative financial implications for livestock producers, forcing some to discontinue production entirely.

The historical pattern of the difference between actual and expected production suggests that the odds of a shortfall of 10 percent or more is not trivial. Shortfalls exceeding 10 percent occurred, on average, about once in five years since 1970. Shortfalls exceeding 20 percent of expected production would require significant rationing and very high prices, with potentially very negative implications for some users of corn. Shortfalls of that magnitude have occurred, on average, about once in 12 years since 1970.

An important public policy question, then, is, with an extreme shortfall in production, would the market be allowed to allocate the crop among users or would such a shortfall in corn production induce government intervention? The norm from past experience with rationing has been to allow the market to allocate the crop, with the largest adjustments taking place in the livestock sector. However, there has been one exception. Short supplies and high soybean prices in 1973 resulted in an embargo on U.S. exports. Such an embargo on corn exports might be considered following a large shortfall in production, but the potential negative impact on longer-term trade relationships would make an embargo a very unpopular alternative. The financial implications of high corn prices for livestock producers might evoke intervention in the allocation of supplies between domestic livestock producers and processors of corn.

The current situation in the corn market may have other policy implications. Corn prices are expected to remain generally high and extremely volatile for an extended period of time. The combination of a low level of stocks and an increasing portion of corn consumption occurring in the ethanol sector, where demand is relatively price insensitive, suggests that prices will be extremely responsive to small changes in U.S. and world production prospects or changes in demand for corn in any other sector. Prices of other commodities will also be influenced as the market attempts to allocate production resources, primarily land, among the various crops. Provisions of the new "farm bill" are expected to reflect this changing environment of high and volatile crop prices. In addition, careful consideration of potential market impact should be given to policies encouraging additional bio-fuels production. Other considerations might include provision for a corn reserve in years of large production to provide a buffer for a future shortfall in production.

The questions remain:  
Do all the potential risks involved in ramping up corn ethanol production outweigh the projected marginal reductions in oil usage?  
And are our policy makers in Washington using biofuels to substitute for the really meaningful things we need to be doing to reduce our total oil consumption?  

We had better plan our needed sacrifices instead of blundering into them with really lousy legislating.   On Bartlett opposes energy bill over RFS posted 1 year, 11 months ago 12 Responses

Break the Bill Apart

Have separate bills for CAFE, for RFS, and the other features.  

To do this like the House did it and allow no one time to read the entire bill and then debate it on the floor is just lousy legislating.  This just gives the lobbyists free reign.  

These comprehensive packages allow too much crap to get through while attempting to pass the better stuff.  

Better to take more time and get it right.  On Bartlett opposes energy bill over RFS posted 1 year, 11 months ago 12 Responses

Might Work

Just downscale your models to about 50 million people in the US with most of them being subsistance farmers.  

And set up a system to get the Amish to start having 20 kids per family.  Cause Americans have become way too soft in the body, head and work ethic to make any of your ivory tower dreams become reality.  

I am almost 56.  I am a farmer and do a lot of manual labor.  Frankly, folks, it often sucks.  When you weenies peer out your air conditioned offices when the temp is 95 degrees and 80 percent humidity think about how the Mexicans suffering in the heat to feed you are feeling.  

Yeah I can see your model working but you better hand over the production to the brown skinned people to get it done.  Oh yeah, did you factor in all the millions of acres needed to feed your plow horses and oxen?  

It all might happen.  But I expect the human population to plummet to about 1 billion by the time the transition is completed.  On What a fossil-fuel free agriculture might look like posted 1 year, 11 months ago 68 Responses

Disaster Bound

Bookerly,
No, I meant exactly what I said.  Just because urbanization is the trend does not mean following it is right for China and India.  Do you really want a billion people continuing to crowd into mega urban areas in China and adding to their astronomically bad environmental disaster zones?

There is no damn way that China or India are going to be able to continue their path to industrialization without completely destroying their countries.  A large segment of their populations must remain in the rural districts.  They can lead meaningful and sustainable lives there like they have for thousands of years.  The mega urban areas of the world are becoming true hell holes for the majority of their inhabitants.  

Lou   On Why clean coal is so darn appealing posted 1 year, 12 months ago 37 Responses

If you read the science seriously

then the next president will have the most troubling and complex task ever faced by any president.  Climate change envelopes all.  Let us hope that if becomes president his "serious conversation" cuts to the chase most clearly, persuasively, wisely and powerfully.  With 5 seconds on the clock, I'm ready to give it to the guy calling for the ball.  
On Obama expecting 'serious conversation' about 'drastic steps' on climate change posted 1 year, 12 months ago 19 Responses

BidD.

Yes.  I hope they are successful but I don't have much confidence considering the rapid pace of destruction and the poverty, corruption and outside forces like China voraciously consuming that country.On Saddening video report on Indonesian palm oil plantations posted 1 year, 12 months ago 3 Responses

Need to Break the Comprehensive Crap

There may be some stuff in this bill that does need some further work.  

Why can't Congress break these comprehensive packages down into bite sizes and really debate and work on each segment as separate bills?  

Why kill the entire package if there are some legitimate gripes about parts of the package?  The legislators are pros at adding amendments and poison pills that stymie progress.  

We need a reform of Congress if we are going to make real progress.  There are scoundrels on both sides of the aisle that exploit the weaknesses of the institution.  On Senate Republicans vow to filibuster energy bill posted 1 year, 12 months ago 9 Responses

He Got the Next one Right

Although I think you are largely quibbling about semantics on this post, Friedman largely gets the big picture right in his next column:

"To: President Ahmadinejad

From: The Iranian Ministry of Intelligence

Subject: America

As you'll recall, in the wake of 9/11, we were extremely concerned that the U.S. would develop a covert program to end its addiction to oil, which would be the greatest threat to Iranian national security. In fact, after Bush's 2006 State of the Union, in which he decried America's oil addiction, we had "high confidence" that a comprehensive U.S. clean energy policy would emerge. We were wrong.

Our fears that the U.S. was engaged in a covert "Manhattan Project" to achieve energy independence have been "assuaged." America's Manhattan Project turns out to be largely confined to the production of corn ethanol in Iowa, which, our analysts have confirmed from cellphone intercepts between lobbyists and Congressmen, is nothing more than a multibillion-dollar payoff to big Iowa farmers and agro-businesses.

True, thanks to Nancy Pelosi, the U.S. Congress decided to increase the miles per gallon required of U.S. car fleets by the year 2020 -- which took us by surprise -- but we nevertheless "strongly believe" this will not lead to any definitive breaking of America's oil addiction,"

from:

'Intercepting Iran's Take on America'
 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/05/opinion/05friedman.html ...

Is Friedman blowing smoke on this?  He is on solid ground:

"Even if the bill becomes law, the fuel-economy improvement that it calls for will probably not be great enough to prevent some increase in American fuel consumption because of the expected growth in the number of cars on the road and miles traveled.

In 2020, the combined total of gasoline and ethanol use would be slightly higher than it is today, according to David Friedman of the Union of Concerned Scientists, on whose calculations the Democratic leaders relied."

from yesterdays article: 'Calculating Energy Bill's Real Figures'
 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/washington/04fuel.htmlOn We are not yet the 'people we have been waiting for' to solve 'global weirding' posted 1 year, 12 months ago 15 Responses

Corn Grows Back?

"corn grows back and an oil reserve doesn't"

So, does this corn grow back all by itself, in a self sustaining kind of way?  

Sure, it grows back and is processed -- each year -- by the same inputs of fossil fuel energy.  

It appears that you are using your own choice of "facts" to justify your energy argument.    

If we go down the corn road we will be faced with a spiral of inflationary costs associated with both fossil fuel energy and production inputs.
The cost of corn production is rising very rapidly.  

Mr. Coleman, you have avoided addressing any of my criticisms.

Please respond.

 On The global nature of global warming posted 1 year, 12 months ago 70 Responses

Meeting My LOW Expectations

"The fleet average for vehicles in the 2020 model year would be set at 35 miles per gallon, versus about 25 miles per gallon for cars and light trucks today. Both numbers, though, come with a familiar caveat: actual mileage may vary.

In fact, the actual performance falls short of the current standard by about 20 percent, as would be true as well of the higher standard if the proposal becomes law.

Manufacturers will be encouraged to keep selling cars that can burn rich mixtures of ethanol with gasoline, even where there is no place to buy it. The compromise phases out the credit for building "flex fuel" cars more slowly than current law does."

 'Calculating Energy Bill's Real Figures'
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/04/washington/04fuel.htmlOn Greens need to learn how to celebrate their friends and their movement posted 1 year, 12 months ago 31 Responses

What Happens Here

What we do in the US with ethanol does impact the destruction of rainforests and other endangered ecosystems off shore.  Our biofuel policies have huge leak overs in all kinds of ways.  And US firms are major investors in off shore biofuel schemes that are endangering critical ecosystems.  The demand we create here for future biofuels does have far reaching consequences for the entire planet.  

So while many of us agree that ethanol will have a place among a diversity of energy sources it will be very difficult in a global economy to confine biofuel production in an ecologically responsible and sustainable niche.  There are troubling signs in many places already.  Mr. Coleman seems to want to push the responsibility for containing biofuel onto the environomentally conscious consumer rather than on the biofuel investment community.  And that, as consumers, is what we are ranting about.  And he doesn't like it.

Mr. Coleman downplayed the role of corn ethanol on food prices but he did not address the point I attempted to make about its impact on prices when we encounter a major down year in corn production.  Since we ramped up production we have not seen a bad crop year.  Although farmers do receive a small percentage of food prices, the ethanol boosters are not going to reform the basic economic reality of food processors, feeders, packers, and retailers pushing on their costs to the consumer.  The ethanol industry has yet to experience the enormous consumer backlash that will occur when a major drought hits the Midwest.  

Mr. Coleman also argues about the potential benefits of low wholesale ethanol prices.  This is somewhat laughable considering that the industry is pulling back planned production for the very reason that the wholesale price is too low to incentivise investments.  And if the infrastructure was in place for people to purchase cheaper ethanol vs. gas, the projected supply would not meet the demand except in very limited locales.  

And this is probably the niche for ethanol -- in limited locales close to the points of production.  We should not even be considering building ethanol distribution pipelines.  If consumers in the Midwest can benefit from local production this would have the same impact on reducing oil demand nationally as attempting to push this fuel to all parts of the country via government mandates and subsidies.  People in the Midwest live in this sacrificial landscape; let us benefit from some of the "external" costs of ag production.  And our state (as well as your federal) tax dollars are also subsidizing local production so let us reap the local rewards first.  If Illinoisans and Iowans can drive on E85 more economically and ecologically than on gas, OK.  But pushing this nationally is stretching both the economical and the ecological arguments for it.    

If Mr. Coleman wishes to put a better face on ethanol he should address the "Ethanol Guzzler" bumper sticker that the Renewable Fuels group has printed.  I'd like to see some evidence that the ethanol trade is lobbying Congress to remove the Flex Fuel Vehicle loophole in the CAFE standard.  When I see signs that the ethanol industry is attempting to conserve ethanol AND oil by promoting highly efficient cars, I'll put more stock in Mr. Coleman's arguments.  On The global nature of global warming posted 1 year, 12 months ago 70 Responses

ODO

The real world fleet average for cars and light trucks (which includes a shitload of SUVs) is about 5 mpg below the average fleet mileage for cars and light trucks reported by CAFE.

This is what I have been ranting about.  The NHTSA numbers in their reports are bogus!  And the auto companies are rewarded for the permitted lieing.  The standard is a big lie!On Pelosi says bill up for vote next week will contain CAFE, RFS, and RES posted 1 year, 12 months ago 29 Responses

What Slide?

I'm gonna be on the UP elevator with all the  winners!On How will you ride the slide? posted 1 year, 12 months ago 7 Responses

BOGUS = Food Prices more Affected by Oil

The ethanol industry has been propagating a lie about high oil prices having more effect on  food prices than ethanol policies do.  This is strange ,but expected, considering that the agricultural economists are flat out stating that ethanol is the primary culprit.  Not only is the ethanol demand increasing the price of corn but it substantially increased the price of soybeans and wheat which were pushed into smaller acreages by the big jump in corn acreage.  So please, if you have to push your product, don't try to hide its impact by finding false scapegoats.

I am attaching a very interesting post that supports what many of us have been saying about the wisdom of using food as an oil replacement:

"Ethanol and food price volatility
If this is what we get in a good year, what will happen when we have a bad crop?

American consumers are starting to see some of the consequences of our ill -fated ethanol policy in the prices of everything from meat to ice cream. While well-fed Americans may gripe, the implications for those in sub-Saharan Africa are quite alarming.

All of these concerns arise from the higher average price of corn that necessarily results from an increase in the use of the corn crop for ethanol production. But another issue well worth considering is the effect on the volatility of corn prices.

Food prices naturally are quite volatile because unpredictable and uncontrollable variation in weather can produce a bumper crop one year and a big shortfall the next. Usually consumers are able to mitigate somewhat the consequences of the volatility of supply by switching between foods depending on what is most cheap or expensive at the moment. However, whereas the demand for food is relatively price elastic, the demand for gasoline is quite inelastic. If the quantity of ethanol demanded does not fall much when there is a bad crop, the quantity of corn used for all other purposes must make an even bigger proportional adjustment. For example, if 1/2 of our corn crop were devoted to ethanol production and ethanol demand were completely price inelastic, a 10% reduction in corn production would require a 20% reduction in use of corn for other purposes.

A recent analysis by University of Illinois Professors Darrel Good and Scott Irwin notes that over the last half-century, corn-production shortfalls as big as 30% are not that uncommon. Very inelastic demand means that having a stable, reliable source for fuel is a very high priority for consumers. Having the supply for such a commodity depend on something as volatile as U.S. corn production does not seem like such a brilliant idea."

from:  http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2007/07/ethanol_and_f ...On The global nature of global warming posted 1 year, 12 months ago 70 Responses

Answers about Trucks, SUVs

From CAFE Overview, http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/cars/rules/cafe/overview.htm

"Who classifies vehicles for the purposes of CAFE and how is it done?
Authority to establish vehicle classifications for the purposes of calculating CAFE was delegated to NHTSA. Specifically, the definitions are as follows:

1. Passenger Car - any 4-wheel vehicle not designed for off-road use that is manufactured primarily for use in transporting 10 people or less.

2. Truck - a 4-wheel vehicle which is designed for off-road operation (has 4-wheel drive or is more than 6,000 lbs. GVWR and has physical features consistent with those of a truck); or which is designed to perform at least one of the following functions: (1) transport more than 10 people; (2) provide temporary living quarters; (3) transport property in an open bed; (4) permit greater cargo-carrying capacity than passenger-carrying volume; or (5) can be converted to an open bed vehicle by removal of rear seats to form a flat continuous floor with the use of simple tools.

Light trucks that exceed 8,500 lbs gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) do not have to comply with CAFE standards. These vehicles include pickup trucks, sport utility vehicles and large vans.

A study prepared for the Department of Energy, in February 2002, by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory found that 521,000 trucks with GVWR from 8,500 to 10,000 lbs were sold in calendar year 1999. The vast majority (82%) of these trucks are pickups and a significant number (24%) were diesel. At the end of 1999, there were 5.8 million of these trucks on the road accounting for 8% of the annual miles driven by light trucks, and 9% of light truck fuel use."

I expect that most of the loopholes will be retained or expanded upon in the new energy bill.

* The point I tried making earlier is that the fleets ARE NOT meeting the current standard and the industry is masking their deviations by crafting rules that allow them to significantly  over represent their true fleet mileages.  On Pelosi says bill up for vote next week will contain CAFE, RFS, and RES posted 2 years ago 29 Responses

WRONG !!!!

"marking an historic advancement in our efforts in the Congress to address our energy security and laying strong groundwork for climate legislation next year.  We are confident that this final product will win the support of the environmental, labor and manufacturing communities." Pelosi's web statement

Pathetic!  
On Pelosi says bill up for vote next week will contain CAFE, RFS, and RES posted 2 years ago 29 Responses

Added Note to Above

The implications of my earlier comment is that the auto companies have been permitted by NHTSA to avoid paying billions of dollars in civil penalities by facilitating and enabling the overreporting of their fleet performances.  

Can we trust anything coming out of Washington?  This is just utterly corrupt!  No doubt that the NHTSA is an agent of the auto companies!

Hope I made your day.  On Pelosi says bill up for vote next week will contain CAFE, RFS, and RES posted 2 years ago 29 Responses

Ethanol = A Pilot Light

to maintain a faint glimmer of hope that the unsustainable built on oil and coal can be sustained.  

Everything that we live on is subsidized in many ways.  The combined effects of government and commerce enable our living well beyond the means of the earth to support it. And the drive toward greater globalization is taking us further out on the limb.  

If we do not think more radically about the basics like the demand for mobility, our physical organization, the needs for maintaining growth in a capitalist system, etc. we are just deluding ourselves and losing the bigger picture.  

As for the specifics of subsidies for corn production if want to really get into the weeds, we could add up a really large list including farmers' exemptions from sales taxes on all their production inputs (at least in Illinois), the subsidized roads and waterways for moving inputs to the farm and their production to markets, their exemptions from stricter environmental regulation, etc. etc.

We really need to think about the implications of making the earth a photosynthetic energy plant to meet the needs of a species that has already appropriated way more than its sustainable share of primary production.  The meaning of the earth is NOT man.   On The corn industry hopes Congress will pull its fat out of the fire posted 2 years ago 44 Responses

Some Observations/Comments

Plans for building several new corn ethanol plants in IL are "on hold".

The cost of growing corn is rising rapidly.  The supply base really opens the taps when the price of corn goes up.  And the rising price of energy inputs in this high energy system adds significant pressure.  

Expect to start seeing ethanol blends greater than 10%.  This is part of Congress' push to stimulate production of flex fuel vehicles (by giving CAFE credits).  E-85 is not taking up the surplus fast enough.  So why not mandate E-20 blends?  

There has not been a significant corn production failure since the ramp up in ethanol production.  A few inches of rain at the right times spell the difference between a disaster and almost record yields.  

Cellulosic is still a long, long way from commercialization.

All of this is a really bad sign that we have  overreached on oil and grow more dependent on it by the day.  On The corn industry hopes Congress will pull its fat out of the fire posted 2 years ago 44 Responses

Coal = Our Savior?

Shouldn't there be a challenge to this claim about coal being so good for the progress of humans?  

Was some other form of "progress" not achievable in the absence of coal?  Something much more sustainable, intelligent and progressive?  Something that may not have thrown us on to such a trajectory that threatens the biosphere to such an extent as coal does?  

There are alternate fates of civilizations.  Our fate should not be ordained by what resource or energy source brought us to this crossroad.  On Is the analogy between climate change and Hitler's atrocities appropriate? posted 2 years ago 49 Responses

Major Extinction Events

"No one doubts that many species are likely to survive and flourish as a result of global warming, and so will some well-adapted or lucky members of other species." canis

But what about the communities of species that coevolved over millions of years?  What about keystone species that are critical to the health of every ecosystem?

What about weedy, invasive species that are already destroying native ecosystems around the planet?  

The best analogy that could be made between the global catastrophe confronting us is that of the major extinction events that have visited the planet several times. "Holocaust" is not nearly big enough to describe it.    

There is absolutely no was that we can continue on our path of substituting more and more technological services for the diminishing ecological and environmental services of planet earth.  We are inverting the pyramid of life with man, the "meaning of earth", becoming the base via his technological prowess -- a true prescription for collapse on a global scale. On Is the analogy between climate change and Hitler's atrocities appropriate? posted 2 years ago 49 Responses

"the meaning of the Earth"

Do we really believe that all of this is for us?  That all life evolved on this planet for us?  That man is the end all or just the end?  This is the epitomy of creationist world view and one reason we find ourselves in such a mess today.  

Man must humble himself, not exalt himself as the "meaning of the earth".  Big wild nature/small domestic man.  On Is the analogy between climate change and Hitler's atrocities appropriate? posted 2 years ago 49 Responses

Visionaries

simply don't get elected.  They get branded as being too far out there -- "Mr. Moonbeam".  People just want someone to keep the wheels on even if they are uncertain of the direction. When the economy gets really shaky people all people will want is a foundation of security, no matter how it is derived. Compromise will be all the vision that we will get out of Washington.  When all your roads lead there, expect the road builders to be in charge.   On The next president needs to move with speed and clear vision on mitigating climate change posted 2 years ago 10 Responses

Yesterday and Tomorrow Revisited

Illinois electric interurban railway history and video:
http://will.atlas.uiuc.edu/index.php/prairiefire/segment/ ...

Ron, sorry to hijack the biofuel thread but I think you can see the link.  Interesting to see how transportation and electrical distribution were united at one time.  
On An alternative view on biofuels, from a Briton in Sudan posted 2 years ago 19 Responses

Yesterday and Tomorrow

I drove by an abandoned interurban railway, electric generating station.  Very small and elegantly designed.  Within a mile was a test tower for a proposed wind generating farm. Kind of a vision there.  Wind moving people.    

"mobility demand and the physical layout of our lives" INDEEDOn An alternative view on biofuels, from a Briton in Sudan posted 2 years ago 19 Responses

"Get It Up" Spammer

Get it down!On Is agribusiness behind the ouster of one of its biggest critics? posted 2 years ago 5 Responses

Ron -- Beyond GDP

EXCELLENT!  Thanks for sharing this.  A wealth of good information is on the Beyond GDP website including the background paper for the conference: http://www.beyond-gdp.eu/download/bgdp-bp-mbgdp.pdf info.  On IPCC says debate over, further delay fatal, action not costly posted 2 years ago 16 Responses

The vision of the future

will select for the best technology to fit that future.  If we see that the Washington bunch leading us in the wrong direction do we want them selecting the technologies that fit their direction?  What are we going to get if we put them in charge of technology "investments"?  (We sure as hell don't want guys like Gingrich getting their fingers back in the cookie jar!)

Maybe it is time for a vision revolution.  The states seem to be leading the way.   On NYT's Andy Revkin and E. O. Wilson get suckered by Newt Gingrich's phony techno-optimism posted 2 years ago 24 Responses

Technology for What Ends?

If the end is to just develop alternative sources and systems then we may just be patching up an inherently unsustainable system.

If new technology implies that we need to radically rethink the existing infrastructure, transportation networks, electrical generating and distribution networks, organization of cities, trading systems, etc. then I think we might have a shot at developing some really revolutionary technological ideas.  

But, if we are confined by thinking inside the box of our existing ways of living then I am not very hopeful that the techno/magic machines will get us very far down a more sustainable pathway.  

The magic may not be in the machine but in very fundamental changes in the way we organize ourselves socially, politically, geographically, commercially, ecologically, etc.  

What is it about our current way of living that is sustainable?  And to what end might we find ourselves if we keep attempting to perpetuate this growing technocracy?  Has the machine become the end?   On NYT's Andy Revkin and E. O. Wilson get suckered by Newt Gingrich's phony techno-optimism posted 2 years ago 24 Responses

Growth in Disaster Areas?

Should the US discourage growth in areas of the US that are highly prone to natural disasters including hurricanes, wildfire, persistent droughts and water shortages, flooding and future sea level rise?  On Leave suggestions in comments posted 2 years ago 35 Responses

PV

We are in very deep shit Peter.  Although I hate to think that "humans have become the meaning of the earth", I have to admit that this pretty well sums up the world view of most people, the center so to speak.  If you believe that the best hope for earth resides in wild nature then alienation and gloominess is probably a fitting reaction to a future increasingly dominated by domestic, alien man. We'll ride the "center" all the way to the end.     On NYT's Andy Revkin pens another stinker on the so-called 'center' of the climate debate posted 2 years ago 42 Responses

Yeah, Pretty sure Odo.

I would not compare anything happening in SCal with the rest of the country.  In the Midwest that I am most familiar with, most people do not live anywhere close to one mile from a supermarket.  Even if they do, walking a mile in January, with wind chills in the single digits, in half frozen slosh, and  carrying two armloads of groceries sucks even for 20 year old college students.  Of course, trying to negotiate all this is made even that much worse by the car infrastructure.  On Delusional Beltway optimism about energy posted 2 years ago 32 Responses

When the Future

is designed around no cars then I'll feel more optimistic.  Getting as many people as possible out of cars and avoiding getting new drivers into cars is our best hope.  

When you build an infrastructure and a transportation system around such flawed power inputs, trying to find alternatives is just perpetuating inherently bad design.  These discussions illustrate just how technocratic all of us have become.  We are letting a really shitty technological concept become our master and shape our future.  On Delusional Beltway optimism about energy posted 2 years ago 32 Responses

Excellent Critique

When there is this kind of bipartisan support for any legislation I have to wonder about it.  So much for the Democrat's promise of reform.  Bastards!

I do wonder about the need for the upgrade to the lock and dam system on the Mississippi.  Why?  Ethanol production is now consuming more corn than is exported.  More is slated for ramped up ethanol production.  So, will this be reducing the traffic on the rivers?  If so, then what is the urgency?  

Thank you Mr. Grunwald for this excellent critique and for reminding us of the poor progress being made in restoring the Everglades.  On Why Bush's water-bill veto was actually a good idea posted 2 years ago 11 Responses

Middle of the Road Visionary?

If you think you can live with a compromiser then Obama may be the guy.  But I've about up on discovering a real visionary among any presidential candidates.  The system just does not select for vision, at least at the national level.

For me the new luster on Obama started wearing off when I first heard him talking up coal to liquid.  I wish I could have more hope, but I think a lot of policy, no matter who the candidate is, will be limited by the rigid mechanics of keeping the gears meshed and turning in this technocratic beast. Our destiny may be set.  

  On Obama condemns mining reform package as too hard on the mining industry posted 2 years ago 18 Responses

Kif, You Got the Idea

Many years ago, Al Gore proposed the idea of making the environment our central organizing principle of governing ourselves.  This did not get much reception at the time he said it.    

One of the presidential candidates could "break out" if they could iterate a vision with the environment as its core.  Putting this all together into a vision that all nations on earth could organize around would really help to give all of us more hope that the future is not as black as I and many of us often see it.  I think that many of us saw that Al Gore "got it" and why Al gave us some hope.  On New Kaiser poll reveals voter priorities posted 2 years ago 9 Responses

Some Perspective in History

Knowing where we came from may help us to shape visions of a viable and sustainable future.

Environmental historians like William Cronin gave us a sweeping view of how frontiers were developed and how trade expanded development inside and outside those frontier areas.  A masterpiece, "Nature's Metropolis, Chicago and the Great West", "is the story of city and country becoming ever more tightly bound in a system so powerful that it reshaped the American landscape and transformed American culture.  The world that emerged is our own."

Books like Cronin's give us the full range of the development of economies from the local frontier communities to the global level, how local communities interacted and grew through trade, the development of transportation networks and technology, and how all this impacted on the natural resources and ecosystems within which all this happened.  This really puts all that economic mumbo jumbo into perspective.  On We don't need to destroy our economy to save the planet posted 2 years ago 79 Responses

Baselines? "Foreign" Oil and CAFE

"reduce electricity consumption 20% from projected levels by 2020"

Just wondering who gets to set the projected level by 2020 and what happens to the goal if the real level by 2020 is way over the current projected level.  Why not use a specific date like 1990 as they do with greenhouse gas goals?  

And, this bugs the crap out of me, but why do politicians have to keep using "foreign" to describe oil?  Why can't they just say we have to reduce our dependence on OIL?  Our dependence on ALL oil is the problem.  Politicians have been saying this crap about foreign oil for more than 30 years and we keep using more of it.  They have not reduced our dependence on foreign oil one iota mainly because our demand keeps right on growing.    

And about those CAFE standards:  Read Elizabeth Kolbert's book review in the November 5, 2007 edition of the New Yorker -- 'Running on Fumes, Does the "car of the future', have a future?'

Excerpts:  "Talking up the car of the future, McCarthy suggests, is just another way Detroit has found to insure that it never arrives.  It is worth noting that the average new car sold in the U.S. today gets twenty miles to the gallon, which is virtually the same as it got in 1993, when the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles was launched, and -- remarkably enough -- less than Henry Ford's Model T got when it went on the market, ninety-nine years ago last month."  

"But, improving gas mileage will take us only so far.  Once the Chinese and the Indians really start driving, double or even triple fuel efficiency won't suffice."  

Bottom line: "the car of the future may turn out to be no car at all."  Let Hillary try telling that to Americans.   On Some reflections on the strengths and weaknesses of Hillary's new proposal posted 2 years ago 9 Responses

Yes ODO

We do know that, and that is why I modified my comment about rain replenishing aquifers in the humid, eastern part of the Midwest.

Erik, runoff from ag is responsible for like 75% of stream and river quality problems in the Midwest.  So, yes, keeping everything we can on farm fields including more water, carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and soil would improve environmental quality and aquatic ecosystems.  Ironically many quality problems originate with managing "excess" water via runoff and drainage tile systems.  Flushing in both ag and urban areas is a major problem.    On More evidence that industrial ag is destroying the planet posted 2 years ago 18 Responses

Odo

Tell me how attractive is the global vision?  Are not local communities still resisting it?  People get a much greater sense of identity from their local communities than to they do to being global citizens.  

Not sure where you get the idea that localization is going to be mandated.  By whom or what?  Globalization is the centripetal force on earth now, not the pull of local communities.  Do you get the "with us or against us" message coming out of the local communities?  

If localization is not a choice then what other choice to people have than to adapt to the pull of the global flag?  
On We don't need to destroy our economy to save the planet posted 2 years ago 79 Responses

Look Out!

When times of scarcity merge with our merry ways you can expect a lot more of this kind of communications justifying anything that keeps our economy and our country safe from perceived threats to our security.  To keep the wheels on, the illogical will be the logic of the day .  If you see zany now just wait.  The Bush years will seem like the good old days of zaniness and schizospin.

Can you imagine a world without bombers and fighter planes?  By god, lets hope that someone on this earth survives to see it.     On Stop misleading the public on liquid coal posted 2 years ago 4 Responses

Nine Billion

There is absolutely nothing to be optimistic about 3 billion more people on a planet that is dangerously overpopulated with 6 billion.  The world has about 1 billion extremely poor people today.  Expect that number to double by the time population tops out.  

But I give the woman who asked the question credit for broaching the unspeakable.  When the question of growth of any kind comes up you can expect such "reasonable" responses to prevent any divergence from the path that brought us here.

Question growth.  Question what it is about our capitalist system that demands growth for its survival.      On Gore: Population one of the causes of climate change, but not one of the policy solutions posted 2 years ago 6 Responses

Reply to Trock

"And frankly, I really wouldn't care that much whether polar bears have a hard time or not.   Nature is filled with animals that are eaten every day in a very brutal and vicious food cycle.  If we need to we could just catch some fish and seals for them and feed them ourselves, it would be less work than changing how we use energy.  It's about the humans that global warming matters."

This is just about as short sighted of a world view as the deniers represent.  

We are all descended from the wild.  And it is the wild that promises us the best hope that life will continue on this planet.  I have no faith that man can manage every last corner of the planet.  And it it would be a very dark sign if we had to resort to feeding polar bears to save them from global warming.  It is critical for the survival of large mammals that their populations do not fall below minimum levels to maintain adequate genetic diversity to insure their long term survival and ability to adapt through evolution.  And it is critical that very large contiguous areas of habitat are maintained to facilitate gene flow through their populations.  One of the biggest potential threats of global warming is a continuation of the fragmentation of large wild areas.

Life on earth is most threatened by the domination of the large man/small nature paradigm.  Your anthropocentric world view is at the heart of our global environmental crisis.  Putting the biggest seed package of biodiversity through the rapidly approaching gauntlet should one of our main goals -- eternal life on earth.  On One last rant from the Senate's loopy streetcorner anti-prophet posted 2 years, 1 month ago 34 Responses

Understand?

"Justiou - I don't think you understand us truck guys."  No, I guess not since I don't identify with my trucks, but I do know broken down trucks.  

I own a Chevy Silverado and a Ford F-250 that I use for work.  I wouldn't put a ton in either one of them.  But I do have a gooseneck trailer for the F-250 that I can haul some real loads on.  

But when I am not working I prefer to drive the Toyota Camry which gets double and triple the mileage of the two work beasts.  

My first Camry purchased in 1990 got 34 mpg on the highway.  In 17 years, other than the high mileage hybrids (there are some hybrids getting lousy mileage), the auto companies really have not improved much.  My expectations of getting 40 mpg for any future vehicles are not unrealistic.  
On Tell BioD what car to buy posted 2 years, 1 month ago 27 Responses

Bizarre?

If the tense is wrong, correct it.  If you want to see bizarre look at your freaking website.On No supply-side energy solution will come to our rescue posted 2 years, 1 month ago 16 Responses

"Surprisingly Good Gas Mileage"

Would you please comment on what you consider to be good mileage?  

Top mileage I have seen for a pickup in the US is about 26 mpg.  Sorry, but I don't consider this good.  

I might be waiting a long time, but I don't consider anything under 40 mpg as being good.  

We really need to be pushing higher standards.  Which means getting rid of a lot of weight we are moving around needlessly.  What ever happened to the idea of simplicity?  There is a tremendous amount of crappola built into modern vehicles, much in the name of luxury.  Who needs all this crap?  On Tell BioD what car to buy posted 2 years, 1 month ago 27 Responses

Couple of Thoughts

1. I saw a consumer news segment touting the "good" mileage of some crossover/small SUVs -- about 23 combined city/highway and 15 city mpg.  
If people are thinking that this is "good" then we have big problems.  Is the media is helping to seduce people who are getting really bad mileage into thinking that this is "good".  Are peoples' standards this low?  

2. Canada tar sands.  From my limited reading the exploitation of Canada's tar sands will result in environmental consequences far worse than drilling in ANWR.  Yet, I have seen so little outrage compared with what happened with our stopping the drilling in ANWR.  So what is up here?  Are we going to burn Canada's oil without even stopping to consider and compare?  Our national hypocrisy is flashing red here.  Shouldn't we be organizing huge boycotts of the oil companies who will be importing this Canadian crude?  On No supply-side energy solution will come to our rescue posted 2 years, 1 month ago 16 Responses

Reply to Murray

"James Hansen, by contrast, has a lot of scary things to say, but I'm eternally grateful that his position on all of it - soot in the arctic, the precedent for really rapid sea level rise, all of that - is that, well at least this means that that utopian renewable-energy future we need is coming that much sooner, because humanity collectively now has absolutely no choice but to develop it. And that's something to look forward to. Whereas all your articles offer is the prospect of inexorable catastrophe."

Alex Murray.

"really rapid sea level rise"  
Would you please explain how this differs from the "prospect of inexorable catastrophe"?  

How in the hell is hearing the "prospect of inexorable catastrophe" from James Hansen make it any more palatable than hearing it from Joseph Romm?  

Or why does that mean "that utopian renewable-energy future we need is coming that much sooner, because humanity collectively now has absolutely no choice but to develop it."  I would really like to know what signs you are seeing out there that this utopian future you hope for is coming that much sooner.  There are obviously some pretty powerful forces we are dealing with that do not see any alarm or are discounting the alarm enough to keep us daudling until the "inexorable catastrophe" is upon us.  

If anything, judging from the priority most people place on global warming in the polls, most people do not clearly perceive the alarm or have shut their eyes and ears to any signs of impending catastrophe.  At least you are listening to James Hansen.  On The ocean carbon sink is saturating posted 2 years, 1 month ago 3 Responses

Even If

we did not spend any money combatting global warming would we do any better at fighting all those other big problems than we are now?  Will Will continue to champion all those other causes?  Of course he won't.  

Many of the problems Will cites would be simultaneously attacked in an integrated approach to reducing greenhouse gases, redesigning energy paths and forming sustainable communities.  The dollars saved by energy conservation alone would go a long way toward dealing with those other issues.  The opportunity cost argument against attacking global warming just doesn't make sense to any but the messenger slayers (note Will's jab at the Nobel peace prize).On George Will's latest column tests the limits of self parody posted 2 years, 1 month ago 5 Responses

Reformed

FOX News has a job for you.  On 2007: A record-setting U.S. drought year posted 2 years, 1 month ago 22 Responses

Biofuels

There are no bright lights in biofuels.  If anything this corn fiasco should be a hammer blow revelation that we have greatly overreached on oil.  We should be clawing our way back to the mother trunk instead of weakening the limb that we find ourselves hanging on.  Drastic reductions in consumption is the first place to begin. Continuing our appropriation of the earth's primary productivity is not.  

Big wild nature/small domestic man.   On Nature on ethanol posted 2 years, 1 month ago 11 Responses

BioD

"There is no way anyone is going to drive a Prius twenty thousand miles a year instead of ten just because it gets twice the gas mileage of the Subaru Outback it replaced." BioD.

I'd agree with overall, total miles driven, the higher mileage vehicle will probably not double mileage driven.  

But, for long, several hundred mile journeys, where you have second thoughts about driving the Subaru, you would be less inclined to have second thoughts about starting the journey in a Prius.  

How many people have any hesitation about driving anywhere?  On The CAFE standards vs. carbon tax debate is more complicated than we imagine posted 2 years, 1 month ago 19 Responses

Economic Growth

as currently defined, coupled with population growth is a major part of the environmental/ecologic/energy crisis.  There can be no glossing over this simple fact.  If this viewpoint diverges from "progressive" environmentalism that many of you promote to sway the masses then so be it.  Most people are accepting of the necessity for some sacrifice and are not that enthralled with the present scenario.  

Many of us can consume far less than we do now and still maintain an adequate standard of living. Cornucopianism is not a sustainable vision.  On Time to end the phony and historically inaccurate debate posted 2 years, 1 month ago 17 Responses

If Hansen's Ten Year Unit

really means anything we are screwed. Very likely CO2 emissions will continue to rise rapidly over the next 10 years.  Overcoming the climate skeptics was the easy part.  Now it is starving the beast and the beast is going to roar!  

As long as AutoNacional can weasel out of CAFE by mythologizing that they are providing the vehicles we are demanding they will get their way with Congress.  And as long as the public gains their sense of identity from pounding pavement with big/powerful/safe/cool/sexy then Congress will be safe in continuing to perpetuate the myth.

Don't give us real, long lasting liberty but give us ten more years of borrowed and bridled liberty.  

We have a destiny with Reckoning which grows  with each missed and muddled opportunity.  The Big Suck is fast approaching.  How many Hansen units will pass before we finally get it?     On The CAFE standards vs. carbon tax debate is more complicated than we imagine posted 2 years, 1 month ago 19 Responses

Environmental Improvement?

"It is hypocritical of industrialized countries to skew their internal markets towards agro-fuels in the name of environmental improvement" Ron

Ron, I would not say environmental improvement is the main driver of ethanol in the US.  Energy security/independence is the primary stated goal.  But the main driver is, of course, improving the bottom line for corn farmers, ethanol producers, and the ag production input industry.  

Kill the demand instead of growing the supply.  There is no way to justify any conversion of wildlands in Brazil from a net energy or carbon point of view.   On Evaluating U.S. and EU policies posted 2 years, 1 month ago 11 Responses

Big Empty

Economic revitalization probably won't come to many rural communities from ethanol growth.  My county is projected to lose a third of its population by 2020.  Adding a hundred jobs in ethanol plant here and there will not have much impact.  

Much of the wealth garnered by farmers from higher crop prices will leave the farm and flow into industries providing production inputs.  Input costs are rising rapidly with higher crop prices.  Farm equipment manufacturers will prosper and  dealers of tractors and combines will be able to maintain their already consolidated positions.  The absentee owners of farmland, many who do not live in the same rural communities, will gain from higher farm rents.  

So, I do not see the potential for much of the added prosperity to actually stay on the land and do the local communities that much good.  But the base of industrial crop production will be bolstered at least temporarily.  

It really is time to end the myth of the family farm. This only furthers bad farm policy.  On Evaluating U.S. and EU policies posted 2 years, 1 month ago 11 Responses

Reasons for favoring game birds

"the implementers have decided, for reasons of their own, that the game birds are the wildlife they would most like to help.  But can we be clearer about what the "reasons of their own" are?"  whitewolf

First, let me clarify my earlier comments a bit.  There are some native species of grassland birds that are favored by some of the native grass species planted for game birds.  But the tall grasses often planted are not that good for bird species that thrive in short grass habitats.  In fact, pheasants really do better in shorter nesting cover like an alfalfa and brome grass mix.  The heyday of pheasants in corn/bean land happened when mixed crop and livestock agriculture dominated the landscape and pasture and hay crops densely dotted the map.  This more diverse farm habitat also favored many of the grassland birds.  As livestock left the farms and corn and soybean acreage muscled in, both pheasants and native grassland birds declined precipitously.

Also some of the declining grassland birds need very large, nearly contiguous blocks of habitat.
The fragmented, widely scattered character of CRP plantings have not been that good for these species.  

Now to your question.  Conservation organizations like Pheasants Forever have been a very strong voices in how CRP is administered.  Their species of choice is  Chinese Ditch Chickens, aka pheasants.  Although many members of PF do have  conservation interests beyond making habitat for pheasants, their main focus has been to boost declining pheasant populations in the Midwest.  

Also state departments of natural resources or conservation are very instrumental in writing up conservation plans for CRP participants.  And the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) has required specifications for planting cover that is designed for pheasant or quail habitat.  NRCS is very tight with PF.  NRCS often refers their CRP clients to PF for seed and planting services.  

PF will be the main lobbying force in fighting early outs from CRP.  They have worked diligently in Washington to maximize and maintain CRP acreage.

All of this is based on a rich tradition of pheasant hunting on the farms.  Many middle aged farmers hunted birds during the heyday of the 50s when pheasants flourished.  So many of them were open to groups promoting a pheasant revival.
But this interest among farmers will fade with $4.00 per bushel corn and $10 per bushel soybeans.

I don't want to be completely negative about CRP -- it has done some good -- but I would not be averse to completely scraping CRP in favor of a program more aligned with ecological restoration of natural remnants on private and public lands.

Thank you for your kind comments.  On U.S. conservation land may soon end up in your gas tank posted 2 years, 2 months ago 9 Responses

Show Me the Mileage

Any actual petroleum offset gained by ethanol may be zeroed out by the lower mileage in vehicles burning it.  So after all this what have we actually gained?  

We are pulling our collective paddle through the water without actually moving the boat forward.  The evidence is showing that we are moving backwards and drifting downstream toward the falls.  But proponents will tell us the scenery is still looking good.  On New study claims ethanol and biodiesel may actually boost GHG emissions posted 2 years, 2 months ago 28 Responses

Gonzo

You get it.

For a rating system like the one discussed here to have any real world impact the location of the building site would have to be heavily weighted against all the other positive attributes of the buildings themselves.  

So there should be negative values applied in big doses for the choice of building sites instead of simply zeroing out the building site if it does not meet the incredibly weak criteria in the standard.  In this system you could have a platinum rating but have a building five feet above the 100 year flood plain (How many 500 year floods have we encountered lately?  Lots!) or 100 feet from a site that would be history in the next category 5 hurricane (but evidently from the comments here, this passes some folks' sustainability test OK).  Insane!  

And as you say, the environmental costs for you commuters over the lifetime of the "green" building more than offsets any gains from said construction by many factors.  

How many bridges do you have to cross to get to that new building?  Your increased gas tax dollars will take care of that, eh?  No?  Well, we'll just have to grow the economy faster with more green buildings to help pay for it.  On Should USGBC certify a 15,000-sq.-ft. home as green? posted 2 years, 2 months ago 40 Responses

Moralizing and Very Weak Site Selection Criteria

Sean, I accept your point.  

On site selection, the criteria used to allot a point for good site selection are incredibly weak.  Based on what I can see from the photograph, I'd give the site a heavy negative number representing the sustainability of the building site.  But from the criteria used in judging the suitability of the site, it would probably receive a positive "one"!?!???:

 SS Credit 1: Site Selection
1 Point
Intent
Avoid development of inappropriate sites and reduce the environmental impact from the location of a building on a site.
Requirements
Do not develop buildings, hardscape, roads or parking areas on portions of sites that meet any one of the following criteria:

• Prime farmland as defined by the United States Department of Agriculture in the United States Code of Federal Regulations, Title 7, Volume 6, Parts 400 to 699, Section 657.5 (citation 7CFR657.5)
  
• Previously undeveloped land whose elevation is lower than 5 feet above the elevation of the 100-year flood as defined by FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency)
  
• Land that is specifically identified as habitat for any species on Federal or State threatened or endangered lists
  
• Within 100 feet of any wetlands as defined by United States Code of Federal Regulations 40 CFR, Parts 230-233 and Part 22, and isolated wetlands or areas of special concern identified by state or local rule, OR within setback distances from wetlands prescribed in state or local regulations, as defined by local or state rule or law, whichever is more stringent
  
• Previously undeveloped land that is within 50 feet of a water body, defined as seas, lakes, rivers, streams and tributaries which support or could support fish, recreation or industrial use, consistent with the terminology of the Clean Water Act
  
• Land which prior to acquisition for the project was public parkland, unless land of equal or greater value as parkland is accepted in trade by the public landowner (Park Authority projects are exempt)
  

So, a weighting of one point for a highly, potentially disastrous building site?  What kind of rating system is this?  One to promote growth, wherever, I'd judge.  On Should USGBC certify a 15,000-sq.-ft. home as green? posted 2 years, 2 months ago 40 Responses

Location? Paint it black and bail it out!

I'll measure the greenness of this project after the next big hurricane hits this area and how much of our taxes go toward subsidizing the reconstruction of any dwelling or publicly funded infrastructure in this area.  Check out the picture -- water on two sides of the house and maybe 5 feet above sea level!  

Sometimes we lose sight of the big picture.  Florida is the most disaster prone state in the US.  Should we be promoting any kind of certification or providing incentives for people to be building on that site?  

Freedom, our cherished freedom, allows people people to make really stupid choices and then we reward them with gold stars.  People, we just aren't being smart here.

Give this project the big, black stamp of disapproval.  There is my reader opinion, and thanks for requesting it Joe.  On Should USGBC certify a 15,000-sq.-ft. home as green? posted 2 years, 2 months ago 40 Responses

Jones

"clear preferences for various imagined environmental outcomes. For example: "99.9999% of the coastal areas will become sacrificial landscapes..." " Jones

The point I was trying to make is that if global warming does happen more rapidly than predicted by models and vast coastal areas are threatened by extensive flooding, the vast majority of these will never be protected.  Part of this would be due to an overall impoverishment of civilization accompanying global warming and resource depletion.  Our capacity to protect and mitigate would be greatly reduced from our relatively prosperous state today.  On Lomborg misrepresents possible sea-level rise posted 2 years, 2 months ago 27 Responses

Despite all the Models and Predictions

The signals we are receiving almost daily point toward more rapid melting and sea level rise than many predicted earlier.  

How can any nation get richer while coastal ecosystems, the nurseries of many ocean fisheries and the barriers against coastal erosion, are being inundated all around the world?  There may be a few very high value areas protected at tremendous cost but 99.9999% of the coastal areas will become sacrificial landscapes preserved only in photographs and memories.  

To believe that we are going to be able to adapt to rapid climate change by being more prosperous in the future is being dangerously delusional.  These people have a cornucopian vision rising  out their asses.  On Lomborg misrepresents possible sea-level rise posted 2 years, 2 months ago 27 Responses

What If?

What if we designed a world that funtioned when the wind blows and the sun shines?  

What do we need to run 24/7?  Does this fast paced world have us on a treadmill?  When you think about it -- why?  Where is it getting us?  

Unless we can think outside the box we'll be constrained by this kind of "can't".  

Plus, small scale, decentralized storage will probably be more feasible than large scale, centralized storage.

Living with renewable energy will entail a true revolution.  The power centers that be will fight it tooth and nail.  It does not lend itself to maintaining the status quo or the drive toward globalization.  Choosing to go this route sets up a real conflict between world views.  

Some will try to make it an ad on to the main operating system.  But try making it the alternate operating system and you got yourself a real fight. On American Electric Power to install large battery banks to store wind energy posted 2 years, 2 months ago 10 Responses

Future Scenario of Coal and CCS

In an ideal world, politically and economically, and technologically and geologically, we might be able to trust that all future coal plants would be able to sequester carbon.

But, given our nature to muddle into the future, and given a rather bleak forecast of that future due to our propensity to muddle, very that few of these coal plants will ever sequester carbon.  

Once society is dependent on these plants does anyone believe that we'll really have a shutdown switch under our control that will stop production if the costs exceed what an economically constrained society can afford?  

And I can imagine that the "easy" sequestration would be done first.  It is very likely that a curve of sequestration would follow -- a depletion of our technological and economic means to sequester.  

So, then where are we?  Further out on the proverbial overshoot limb of unsustainabilty with weakened means to fashion a truly sustainable future.

We are on the wrong path with coal.  Ratcheting up the coal technology and complexity does not remove us from that path.  

We need political leadership that helps us better define the mission to the right path.     On Why Edwards' 'ban' on coal plants does little good against climate change posted 2 years, 2 months ago 42 Responses

Joseph, Thanks!

Thank you for presenting this testimony before Congress!  
LouOn Coal-to-liquid is a dead end if there's a price on CO2 posted 2 years, 2 months ago 3 Responses

Yes Ironically Funny but on the Mark

In the early 70s there were a lot of earth friendly folks (dirty hippies) displaying ecology logo stickers displayed in car windows. This struck me as very ironical.  

Of course no pollution is optimal.  Putting 6 billion people behind the wheel of "green" autos spells disaster.  But putting only elites behind the wheel still passes the test?  

We need to be shooting for a way of living that the earth could live with if every person on earth decided they wanted to live with it.  Not a way of living that will take four more earths.

But, naturally, the chosen will choose to keep their chosen status even with a color coat that masks or deludes.On Norway bans generic green terms from auto advertising posted 2 years, 2 months ago 9 Responses

Well so no more Johnny jokes?

Here is one lad that won't be paying for my social security!

Wonder if I can purchase an offset by keeping this kid on a bicycle instead of demanding a car from the old man when is 16?  

Tragically sad that the kids will be the ones who finally get serious about this after it is too late.  

Needs to be broadcast on the evening news along side the Viva Viagra and the heart pill ads.  

And here's George Bush's response: Maybe we need to start some Mad Max survival courses in the school curricula. Gotta teach these youngins how to adapt to climate change.

 On Greenpeace ad on climate change posted 2 years, 2 months ago 19 Responses

Nuc

What you need to remember here is that while new fields are being discovered the good old fields are being rapidly depleted.  Peak oil factors in to the curve these new discoveries.  With rising world oil demand we'll have depleted the goody within the boomer generation's tenure.  Overextending our dependence on a shrinking resource is utter insanity.  By not applying the brakes now, by living like ours is the last generation on earth, we are dooming future generations to pauperized lives and endless resource wars.  There is no exaggerating the threat facing us.  

Question growth!  

  On A gaggle of URLs posted 2 years, 2 months ago 24 Responses

Don't Concede the Growth Curve

If we concede the growth curve of total energy usage is going to continue on the upward slope we will be compromising the entire way up.  If we decide we have reached the peak of fossil fuel usage right now then the only way is to force adaptation to a downward slope.  We need to focus the mind before we are forced to focus the stomach.  On 'Clean coal' is an oxymoron posted 2 years, 2 months ago 12 Responses

Authoritarianism

Can you please explain how our current system of global capitalism is not authoritarian?  

Are we the voices of the interests that are leading civilization over the cliff?  

Do you really think we have any kind of control to be able to turn any taps monopolized by the current system?  

If your point is aimed toward anyone reading or posting on this site you could have done it less cryptically.  It does seem to be a stretch.    

 On Fear of death leads to authoritarianism, not sustainability posted 2 years, 3 months ago 33 Responses

Localization?

I commented earlier about taxation.  Many of the internet companies do not collect state sales taxes.  This is primarily a problem of governing.  While many states are suffering with budget woes, they somehow do not have the will to implement a tax on all internet sales originating within their borders.  Very unfair to local merchants who are forced to collect sales taxes.  

So, the topic of this post is very relevant from the standpoint of furthering the globalization of commerce.  Your purchases from these companies may be helping a wee bit on a global level, but what does it do toward weaning us off the globalization stampede and helping your local communities?  

The moral and ethical issues involved in trade extend much deeper than computing our CO2 footprint.  If localization is a real goal in building sustainability then we really need to think about internet commerce.  What kind of jobs and job skills is this system generating and where?  Does it select for the kind of skills, crafts, etc. that will be needed in a sustainable world, in the development of local economies?  

Does being able to sit at your computer and command the movement of goods from around the globe to your doorstep reinforce a cornucopian world view?  On Apparently no one is immune to greenwashing posted 2 years, 3 months ago 32 Responses

New Species Name in Order

"The capacity for self-deception is the most frightening propensity of our species."

This is my lie and I deny I ever said it.  
Yes, we live based on deception and delusion.  

The rocket culture may be entering its spore stage before it can jettison its manifest destiny, before it can become native.  Aliens from around the world flock to an alien culture, adrift without roots.   On On the climate change 'point of no return' posted 2 years, 3 months ago 9 Responses

JMG Please Clarify

I am not sure I got your point about my costs.  I pay for the number of KWH that I consume each month. The less I use, the less I pay.  Switching to more efficient light bulbs, refrigerator, air, etc., I save over the long run.  So, who is paying fixed utility bills other than some renters?  

I don't get your concept of utility service providers. All services for a fixed fee?     On And it's goood ... posted 2 years, 3 months ago 14 Responses

Funny Story About Food Miles

In 1976 I enrolled in ag school at the U of IL at Champaign/Urbana.  On my application form for grad school I made the mistake of expressing interest in organic agriculture.  The very first day in my vegetable crops production class, I, full of enthusiam, asked the professor about trucking vegetables 1000 miles vs. producing  locally.  Recall that this was shortly after the oil shortages and price spikes resulting from the OPEC embargos.  At that time profs in such conservative ag colleges weren't used to hearing such questions but he was prepared for the organic boy.  Evidently, my application had been discussed among the profs.  
He asked me, "Are you Mr. ***?"  Set back, I said, "Yes."  And then he answered, "Why don't you go ask Ralph Nader?"  

So, Tom, for some of us older green weenies, the Backlash started a long time ago.  Most folks are quit happy not to have a skunk thrown into their "progress" party.  Questions such as these just get a lot of folks' backs against the wall and they will react to defend their concept of progress, particularly when they have vested interests in said progress.  The problem is that with many of our  alternative visions and proposals, we just don't have a lot of alternatives materially or conceptually available to offer and give people a real choice.  Isn't this one of our biggest predicaments?  We can't tear down without first building up.  But we do need to start by weaning the old ways and moving the new to the front teat.  There will be some squealing among teat mates in the process and some concealment or confusion of identity among potential front teat mates.  This is where the vision thing comes in to help weed out the imposters and usurpers.  This going to be a big long struggle over who gets to set the dominant vision of the future.  As we have seen, many currently on the front teat are usurping by cloaking the old with a very thin coating of green so we have to remain vigilant and not be fearful of backlash, squealing, biting and kicking.    On The vexed question of exactly how far our food travels. posted 2 years, 3 months ago 19 Responses

Randy

There are some extreme, anti environment Republicans.  But it is a very big mistake to paint all of them with such a broad brush.  And it would be an equally big mistake to put all your faith in Democrats to move on the environmental cause.  Both parties need to be dilligently watched and goaded.  The Democrats have proven that they can be just as corrupted by the money game in Washington as Republicans.  So, how do the Democratic presidential candidates' environmental policies differ that much from the Republican candidates?    On Along with a rambling social commentary posted 2 years, 3 months ago 20 Responses

Obsessed?

The discussions here have explored just how interrelated global warming is to many of the crises we face in so many areas -- environmental, ecological, political, sociological, international, demographical, economical, medical, etc. etc.  Unless we see the complexity of the problem our approaches to combatting it can be counterproductive and damaging to the other environmental causes we all care about.  On Other enviro issues are getting less attention posted 2 years, 3 months ago 29 Responses

Bailo

Why bother spending so much of your time here?  Doesn't Rush Limbaugh have a ditto head blog for you?   On Other enviro issues are getting less attention posted 2 years, 3 months ago 29 Responses

Hey Over There

I see it all as one big integrated package --   one vision that has the capacity to unit all mankind in taking the care of the earth as our most urgent and permanent purpose for being here.  

Do you see any of your leaders in Britain with this vision?  A Churchill for planet Earth?  God, we need a leader who will inspire heroic action and turn things inside out.      On Other enviro issues are getting less attention posted 2 years, 3 months ago 29 Responses

Lost

Any idea that we are better off dewilding instead of rewilding is giving far too much weight to the quest for fuel to maintain the unsustainable.  Attempting to justify the domesticaton of the wild from a carbon or a fuel point of view is purely BS and dangerous.  Jesus Christ, what kind of balance are we using to weigh these arguments?  BIOD speaks the language of life but I am afraid some people just don't comprehend it.  We are dealing with an alien culture here.On Saving and restoring forests better for climate than switching to biofuels posted 2 years, 3 months ago 12 Responses

Hey you Math Wizards

Ok here is your math problem (been too long since I was in school):
25% reduction in energy consumption per unit of GDP by 2030
plus
3% annual growth of GDP
Equals how much growth in total energy consumption?  

I am doing a wild assed guess here, but wouldn't a 3% annual growth of GDP just about double the size of GDP by 2030?  So, wouldn't this mean about a 75% increase in energy consumption?  

Jesus, are we going to be living with Bush's legacy until 2030?On Pacific Rim countries vow to do ... very little posted 2 years, 3 months ago 3 Responses

Sam

I don't know the details of the project in Panama or even the details.  But if this is where I think it is, Bocas del Toro, the problem is not just one little project like this, but the sum of hundreds of similar projects, large and small.

Take a look at just one realty website and you will get some idea of this issue:
http://www.bocasdeltororealty.com/index.asp

And some idea of the biological and ecological significance of the area:
http://www.stri.org/english/research/facilities/marine/bo ...On Temptation posted 2 years, 3 months ago 17 Responses

Exactly

This should have been the government's highest priority following 9/11.  This would have sent a much more positive message to the world community instead of invading Iraq.  Not doing so has made us less secure and made our economy less resilient in handling future price shocks and fuel shortages.  On Finally some mainstream focus on efficiency posted 2 years, 3 months ago 12 Responses

Interesting Observation Steven T

There is so little nature left even in some rural areas heavily dominated by agricultural development.  So we seek escape where there is some primary nature remaining and then we put stress on those areas by developing and crowding them with a heavily technological interface between us and said nature.  I have often wondered about the sense of soul having left places pauperized of natural diversity in both urban and rural areas. So, it is very fitting to this discussion that you ask your questions.

In this context,how can we make our local communities more natural settings when escape during times of growing shortages might become a real luxury for the masses now crowding highways and airways?

Look at many of the "green" areas in your local environment and in many cases you will see these areas dominated by the weedy growth of alien species, a landscape with no identity or ownership, green to the eye during summer, but absolutely uninviting.  Ecological restoration in our home communities has the potential of employing literally millions of people in full time stewardship jobs.  I then have to ask, where is the wealth to do this?  And what is done with  wealth as influenced by the values and priorities of each of us individually and as a community --  which takes us back to the original question of this post.  

I would not say all is lost for I do see some towns and small cities which do look like very inviting places to live and not surprising, they also attract a lot of visitors.     On Temptation posted 2 years, 3 months ago 17 Responses

West meets East

How exactly do we mesh this western, linear world view with the cyclical eastern world view?  No doubt the cornucopian view is in the driver's seat and that is the problem.  Transforming our thinking will be vital to making a transistion toward sustainability and toward a small man/big nature paradigm.  A few of us are at that realization but even we are being constantly pulled into the vortex of the big man/small nature paradigm.  A revolution is in order, but unless people's heads are oriented in the right direction to lead it, they won't be happy with what is coming.  On Substitution isn't the solution to peak oil posted 2 years, 3 months ago 17 Responses

Celebrity

Celebrities live the American life on steroids.  It is only natural that their exposure to hypocrisy would be that much greater than each of our own.  On a worldwide scale of living standards, each of us is living like royalty, even the most frugal among us.  And each of us has our own degree of hyprocrisy.  

We are all searching for a better way to live a life that will not degrade the planet, to be leavers and not takers.  We certainly don't have all the answers but we have a pretty good idea of what the goals need to be.  The same with many of these celebrities.  And, although I don't think much of the power of elites, if that power is applied wisely for the good of the planet, then we better count them as friends.  On Don't pretend to write about this stuff out of concern, please posted 2 years, 3 months ago 21 Responses

Other Factors

Many of the crop experiments testing the influence of higher carbon dioxide levels on photosynthesis and yield were conducted in very controlled, growth chamber like environments.  In the real world production will be affected by many environmental factors that are not controllable.  Higher temperatures during grain fill will reduce the number of days that grains are being filled, decreasing yield potential.  Higher night temperatures will increase respiration rates, decreasing grain fill.  Plus warming will be associated with extremes of drought and flooding which can reduce production.  Other biological factors affected by temperature and CO2 include weed, disease and insect pests also enter into the equation.  

Can the gene jockeys keep ratcheting up the biotechnology to compensate for all the potential negatives associated with warming and higher CO2?  Very unlikely.  

Food vs. energy production is also a key determinant.  As is our continuing destruction of prime farmland in the US. On High CO2 crops could be low on nutrition posted 2 years, 3 months ago 4 Responses

Thanks to all you cyclists!

Every time a car driver sees a cyclist he should be reminded -- why do I need to be moving 6000 pounds of steel to move my body?  We got a serious case of auto obesity going on here and you cyclists get blamed for clogging the arteries!  But just another case of how ridiculous can we make this simple thing of living on earth.  You bikers represent a liberated life and a lot of people just don't like to be reminded of just how unliberating our way of life has become.  Those 6000 pounds represent a lot of chains that the earth is left to drag. And we can't cover those tracks anymore.     On Watch out for that flaming bag of McNuggets posted 2 years, 3 months ago 6 Responses

Another way to get to $8.00 per gallon

We already would have $8.00 per gallon gas without taxes if all of us drove Ford SUVs and pickups that, according to Ford, we are demanding.

How is it that the auto companies can continue to propagate the lie that they are giving us what we are demanding?  Like we are demanding more conflict in the Middle East, more global warming, higher driving costs, etc.?  

Ford: How about helping to manufacture demand for more efficient cars and trucks and then delivering those products?  Enough of this save us before we kill again BS! On The CEO of Ford Motor Co. ... posted 2 years, 3 months ago 6 Responses

No Mulligans

Don't forget that only about 13% of the energy in gasoline is actually moving our current breed of automobiles down the highway.  

So, until we have a significantly more efficient means of improving this efficiency it is just criminal to put this much energy and capital development into a liquid fuel that gets used this inefficiently (worse than gas).  

There is a place for a limited use of ethanol in vehicles that have the capacity of getting over 100 miles per gallon.  It is just crazy to waste such a resource in vehicles that are getting 10 to 15 miles per gallon.  

This is a case of really needing to put the cart before the horse.  Get a much higher efficiency in infrastructure and transportation in place while we are researching promising means of ethanol production.  In the meantime, this will stretch oil supplies out and give us more energy to put into developing a truly sustainable infrastructure.  

We could not be doing this more ass backwards than we are.  

The financial picture the past few days should be a big wake up call -- we do not have unlimited energy and capital to be wasting on massive projects that do not get us closer to the goal.  We need to be doing this right.  Our opportunity to take mulligans is fading.On Don't let the one color your feelings on the other posted 2 years, 3 months ago 68 Responses

The Way I Read This

"or from engaging in behavior that conflicts with one's beliefs."

I look at this more as applying to myself rather than to others who neither believe nor act on those beliefs.  I have lived with this "tension" since I became environmentally aware in the late 60s.  In those early years I radically attempted to engage in behavior -- no car, vegetarian, organic farming, etc. -- that did not conflict with my environmental beliefs.  But as time wore on I compromised more and more until now, I am once again greatly aware that my behavior is way out of sync with my values and beliefs.  I make some amends around the edges when I can, but in the main, my lifestyle pretty much not in accord with my beliefs.  But, I am aware of it and do not deny that I am injuring the planet.  I am troubled though about going beyond the necessities and expending energy on the pursuit of luxury, sport and travel.  I used to have a real guilt trip about doing this when I was younger, but now it is like, hey I missed out on a lot of this cool shit when I was younger, life is getting short, and I am going to have some fun even if it means pouring a shit load of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.  So, I think a lot of this dissonance really applies more to us in the green community than to those who just don't give a shit in the first place and deny any culpability.  

But, as I recall some dirty hippy stating long ago, it is one thing to live in the system and another thing to defend it.  

So, am I reading this wrong or what?

LouOn How the two are related posted 2 years, 3 months ago 10 Responses

Reactionary?

Falsify the debate?  How about the facts?

The anecdote in the article you cite does illustrate how this is benefiting some people.  But it also points out how biofuels are contributing to the destruction of forests in Indonesia.  Long term, those people as well as people on the entire planet will be more dependent on the environmental services those Indonesian forests provide than any benefits that will be obtained in the short term by their conversion to energy plantations.  

You ignore the issue about how biofuels are affecting food prices. From the article, "What About the Poor", I excerpt this quote:

 "In the May/June 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs, C. Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer argue that a large-scale biofuels industry will harm developing nations, not help them (How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor). The authors flatly state that "if oil prices remain high -- which is likely -- the people most vulnerable to the price hikes brought on by the biofuel boom will be those in countries that both suffer food deficits and import petroleum." Just as with palm oil, the article argues that food prices will soar as crops are grown for the biofuels market. One of their examples is casava, which is an excellent ethanol source due to its high-starch content.

In the poorest parts of sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America, where cassava is a staple, its price is expected to increase by 33 percent by 2010 and 135 percent by 2020...

The production of cassava-based ethanol may pose an especially grave threat to the food security of the world's poor. Cassava, a tropical potato-like tuber also known as manioc, provides one-third of the caloric needs of the population in sub-Saharan Africa and is the primary staple for over 200 million of Africa's poorest people. In many tropical countries, it is the food people turn to when they cannot afford anything else. It also serves as an important reserve when other crops fail because it can grow in poor soils and dry conditions and can be left in the ground to be harvested as needed."

I don't think anyone on this site has argued that ethanol from sugar cane is adding to the destruction of the Amazon.  I have argued that the US is contributing to the destruction of the Amazon by using more corn for ethanol.  This has decreased US soybean production, raised the price of soybeans, and stimulated more production of soybeans in the Amazon.  

What I have also written here and elsewhere is that the Cerrado in Brazil, a vast savanna ecosystem of 160,000 species, is under dire threat of expansion of cane and soybean production.  This is proceeding at an alarming pace with a major input of US grain corporations and billionaire investors like George Soros.

So, tell me, how have you adopted the thinking of reactionary conservatives?  Not by reading much detail in these or previous posts or any of the cited articles.  Before you start assigning labels, you might want to bone up on a bit of history.On The need for good research posted 2 years, 3 months ago 11 Responses

"What About the Poor?"

Another very good article on how poor nations are coping or not coping with the high price of oil (also discussion of biofuels including palm oil):

"What About the Poor?"
by Dave Cohen

http://www.aspo-usa.com/index.php?option=com_content& ...

an excerpt:
"A cynic might say that the poor have always suffered at the hands of the rich, and there's no reason to believe that will stop now. The predicament in the developing world brought about by the oil price shocks ultimately results from overwhelming, wasteful demand for oil in places like the United States, and increasingly, China. Peak oil is an issue for most developing countries only insofar as they are suffering even more now than they already were. This is one of the many reasons why there's no ASPO-Uganda. It's becoming long past peak for the poor, so let's hope they can reorganize their local economies to replace something most of them never had much of to begin with--oil & gas products."On The need for good research posted 2 years, 3 months ago 11 Responses

Interesting stuff

Good article.  Some thoughts:

"Grain processors such as Cargill Inc. and Bunge Ltd. have been paying farmers a premium of up to 60 cents per bushel or more to grow the soybeans for them."
I am guessing that these big grain processing companies are making quite a bit more than the extra $.60/bu that they are giving the farmers for these healthy beans. There is something wrong with the market here -- the added value is not being transferred from the consumer down to the farmer to compensate him for the lower yields and the added costs of segregating this production in the grain stream.

The tie in with ethanol is a classic example of how many government programs work against other programs.  This is often the result of so many interests having a hand in the cookie jar that there is no cohesive center to the whole mess.  In some ways, I agree with the Republican principle of smaller government partly as a result of seeing the Republicans with so many of their grubby fingers in the cookie jar. And of course, they make the same argument against Democrats, but the dems just aren't as hypocritical about it.     On Yet another distortion to correct a distortion posted 2 years, 3 months ago 3 Responses

Obama and Coal

It is difficult to imagine any of the candidates saying anything radically different about coal.  So, Obama is positioning right in the center on this energy resource.  Illinois has several new coal mining and power plant projects either in construction or in the planning stage as well as the hoped for FutureGen project it is bidding on.  There is a huge constituency for coal in IL but I hear very little in the media here reflecting any adversary positions. Obama is on very safe ground with his position on coal and corn ethanol.  

Yes, this is all very unsatisfying, but I don't think we are going to be hearing anything really  visionary from any of the presidential candidates.  The vision is going to have to come from the bottom.  

Power down. On YearlyKos: Obama and coal posted 2 years, 3 months ago 13 Responses

And Guilt Free Too!

Imagine the place without any development.  

I had the opportunity to see a lot of Panama in the 60s before the invasion of los ricos developing the shit out of some of its pristine beaches and natural areas.  It is truly disheartening to see those areas now.  

Ex pats from the states are on a land buying spree all over Panama and Costa Rica.  Land prices has risen to levels similar to the states.  

I really cannot understand how people can live in these developments "guilt free".  They must have a hell of a lot less sense of ethical constraint than I do.

Hawaii is screwed so lets go screw some fresh paradise in Costa Rica.  Rich! On Might want to check the elevation first posted 2 years, 3 months ago 4 Responses

WOW!

You might also add:
Rising health care costs.
Increase in obesity and associated chronic diseases.
Approaching crises in entitlement programs.  
National trade deficits.
Growing national debt.
Cost of the debacle in Iraq (in light of these numbers Iraq presents even more of an incredible opportunity cost).

The big question still seems to be: How do we maintain the unsustainable and have enough capital, resources, and energy to build the sustainable?  

We might need to start asking ourselves -- how much of this deteriorating infrastructure do we absolutely have to maintain?  And should we not be questioning more growth if we cannot maintain what we presently have?  

And of course, why can we not build infrastructure that lasts centuries instead of decades?  

And another biggie:  What can we point to in our existing way of living that is truly sustainable?  

And why do we not reflect all of this in our economic numbers like the GDP?  I mean, should we not be in some kind of negative territory?On Bridge to the 21st century? posted 2 years, 4 months ago 12 Responses

Ron

I don't think there should be any disagreement, since I did write that ethanol has not decreased gasoline usage.  If we are still using the same or if the rate of increase has slowed, the actual number of barrels used has not decreased.  We can use some Bushian logic and say that without ethanol we would be using more gasoline, but with overall economic and population growth projections, even if we max out ethanol production, there will be little reduction in the trend line in gasoline consumption.

So again, there seems to be a very big cost for a questionable benefit.  On A: The cropland area of several states posted 2 years, 4 months ago 13 Responses

"sustainably destroy ecosystems"

Yes, this gets to the grist of it.  

We are seeking to maintain the unsustainable by continuing to destroy the sustainable by domesticating wild land.  Another case of big man/small nature paradigm.  This is a hard nut to crack.  

Power down.  On Soros, Goldman Sachs financing destruction of Brazilian forests posted 2 years, 4 months ago 5 Responses

Grass to Cows

The primary feed for cows is already grass and forage crops consumed on the pasture or on the farm the cows were reared on (before some of them are finished on corn and other fatteners in the feed lots).  So, bringing grass hundreds of miles to feed lots, as proposed by the subject of this post makes absolutely no sense.  Plus, most of the native grasses are palatable to livestock only in earlier stages of their growth while they are young and tender and before they would yield much cellulosic biomass.  So, this too, made little sense in the ag world (but great sense to some arm chair interneters).

We, of course, would be much better off eating younger cattle or bison directly off the pasture or prairie instead of sending them to feed lots.  We are very much on an SUV diet that is contributing to our monumental health (and environmental) costs.  

The problem again is not our choice of energy but the choice of what we have to power up to live.  We are powering up way more than we need.  On It's a thing posted 2 years, 4 months ago 9 Responses

This Guy is full of Crap

Some of these so called consultants are so detached from how the real world works that they spew nonsense for a living.  Not worth the carbon sourced energy I am consuming to write this.  On It's a thing posted 2 years, 4 months ago 9 Responses

READ THIS!

Anyone on this site who has posted messages hyping ethanol needs to read the Rolling Stone and the Washington Post articles.  

I have been saying much the same here for a few weeks.  The more I learn the more dire the situation looks. The numbers in the WAPO article are staggering.  

The policy this country has set in legislation is leading much of this destruction.  And it is very sad to see such "progressive" people like George Soros funding this blind stampede along with the likes of Cargill.  

This is INSANE! and we need to be MAD!  On His new piece says so in downright shrill terms posted 2 years, 4 months ago 10 Responses

Biofuels article in Rolling Stone

For a related article about ethanol and other biofuels read:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/15635751/ethan ...

The article refers to an ongoing debate between Robert Rapier and Khosla about the future of biofuels.  

Be interesting to read Rapier's take on LS9 in his R-Squared Energy Blog.  On New company says it can make better, cheaper biofuels posted 2 years, 4 months ago 40 Responses

Lot of Ammo

Lot of ammo to work on with this post.  

Question about whether our and other nations' arms sales are helping to stabilize or undermine the stability in the region.  

Also, while the US has a presence in the middle east there will be a rivalry among the nations there to get the most goody they can from the US. They have economic interests in keeping the pot stirred to a rolling boil.  

And probably most importantly all of this represents a monstrous opportunity cost in terms of what this money is not being spent on in such a critical time.  Money diverted to arms and warmaking is money that is not available for building security based upon sustainable infrastructure and employment opportunities.  The lack of job opportunities for young men in the Middle East is driving much of the violence there just as it is in our urban cores.  And sadly, oil and the corruption and disparity of income it fosters are at the heart of much of their problems.  On The Middle East posted 2 years, 4 months ago 12 Responses

Attempted Answer on Conservation Reserve

CRP or the Conservation Reserve Program is designed to achieve conservation goals including reducing soil erosion and sedimentation in waterways, improving wildlife habitat, taking flood prone areas out of crop production, etc.  Much of this land is enrolled in ten to fifteen year contracts, although some of it is now in permanent easements. The emphasis has shifted over time toward utilizing more native species of grasses, forbs, trees, and shrubs.  

As currently written, CRP prohibits the commercial harvest of any type of crop from these lands while under contract.  The only waivers have allowed farmers to harvest forage or graze these lands when they have suffered extreme drought situations.  

There is now an effort by farm groups to combine some of the features of the CRP program with some kind of biomass energy program.  While this might preserve some of the benefits of CRP for soil conservation, it is difficult to see how this would benefit wildlife after all the top growth is harvested.  

I might also add that some farm groups are now lobbying to allow farmers to get an early out from their CRP contracts without being heavily penalized financially.  These farmers want to convert this land to corn production.  

One of the big problems with CRP was that the administrators of the program did not target the land put into CRP to achieve the greatest soil conservation good.  When crop prices were low, there was a substantial economic incentive to put just about any land into CRP instead of only the most erodible land.  So, a great amount of tax payer dollars were spent on a program that could have done much more good for the money spent.  On A conversation with energy guru Amory Lovins posted 2 years, 4 months ago 11 Responses

Project Types

I opened up the PDF files describing the standards.  The project types were listed at the bottom.  There were more than I copied here, but just wondering what you think of these:

A. Project Types
GE AES Greenhouse Gas Services will initially develop and/or market GHG credits from, and develop and adopt methodologies
for, the following project types:

1. Coal mine methane
   
2. Water and wastewater treatment
   
3. Landfill and waste management

Sorry

Your biomass numbers are quite fatally flawed as well.

Tell me how you can average 15 tons of biomass per acre on a hundred million acres?  This sounds like a hell of yield.  Maybe on the best land, but you are talking about a lot of marginal land and also western, arid land. And what forests are you willing to sacrifice to convert into energy fields?  

And 100 gallons of ethanol per ton?  What is the net yield per ton?

The wildest projections of ethanol production in this country do not come anywhere close to replacing 75% of the gas we currently use, let alone what will be needed 20 years from now if growth projections occur.  On Forthwith debunked posted 2 years, 4 months ago 13 Responses

WooHoo!

So, I'll fork out $10,000 more for this vehicle and gain 5 more mpg in the city and zero mpg on the highway?  Now that is progress!

"GM officials, in the Washington, D.C., area Tuesday to demonstrate pre-production versions of the vehicles"  

I expect Washington politicians to eat this up  and probably mandate that the government order a bunch of them.  Paint them black, make them flex fuel, and call them green.  On Great news posted 2 years, 4 months ago 3 Responses

How About the Amazon

Ron, how many more acres of Amazon rainforest are being converted to soybeans as a result of the higher soybean prices caused by reduced soybean planting in the US (almost 50% more acreage in corn in Illinois this year -- that is land that would have been planted in soybeans)?  

The downstream environmental costs of more corn planting will be with us for a long time.  For what?  A delusion that we are now more independent of middle east oil?  So how do we measure our false security?  Higher food costs and ecological degradation?  

How can we express our outrage?  Do you think the Center for American Progress will sponsor some counter videos for our perspective?  On Hillary pays tribute to Iowa politics posted 2 years, 4 months ago 23 Responses

Excuse me

Geoff, not David.  On It's sometimes problematic to attribute migration specifically to climate change posted 2 years, 4 months ago 9 Responses

Optimism?

I really wonder.  How can people like Gore say they are optimistic while at the same time saying we need to make "changes that will take major leaps of political will far beyond what current politicians see as feasible."  If global warming is an emergency can we wait until the political will is there far beyond what is currently feasible?  

I have heard similar comments from E.O. Wilson regarding human population growth.  While saying we will need 4 earths to support 9 billion people he states that he is optimistic that we can do it with one earth.  

I know that people like optimists, but are these major spokesmen really being genuinely honest?    On Al Gore does both posted 2 years, 4 months ago 6 Responses

The Radical Approach

This is a very serious op ed that should be getting more attention here.

Attempting to restructure and reengineer an infrastructure designed around the automobile is going to be a supreme challenge.  It is not only the physical infrastructure but also the broken communities that will be a part of the overall equation.  

I do have to question the need to accomodate "significantly more people" into the developed footprint.  Does California need significantly more people?  Would it not make more sense to redistribute population into areas where resources and energy are not already stretched to capacity?  On Necessary posted 2 years, 4 months ago 3 Responses

What is Next

Hillary joining the NRA? Come Fall, we'll see Hillary in camo hunting coat carrying a couple dead geese across a harvested Iowa cornfield.  

As the Little Big Woman says, "sometimes the world is too ridiculous to live in" unless you can give back as much as you can take.  

Hillary, transforming dirty political power into clean burning ethanol.On Hillary pays tribute to Iowa politics posted 2 years, 4 months ago 23 Responses

So

What is happening in China and India?  They got your gloating right up their smoke stacks.  On In which I rejoice posted 2 years, 4 months ago 3 Responses

So....

Collapse is not a very real possibility?  

A threshold of sustainability may not have already been crossed?

GDP is not a flawed measure of economy?

Growth cannot be questioned as a cure all?  

That there is not a major reckoning on the horizon?  

That our economic and political leadership offers practically no hope that we will deal intelligently with this reckoning?  

That unjustified techno/optimism is not leading us further out on the limb of overreach?  

That Malthusian theory has really been negated?

That our already overpopulated planet can endure another 2 to 3 billion people crowding into blighted hell holes?  

Sometimes pessimism is a better survival tactic.  And sometimes optimism leads to very tragic mistakes.  On How to talk about the future without depressing everyone posted 2 years, 4 months ago 54 Responses

Growth

Unless we uncouple our economy from any form of growth as currently measured by GDP we are absolutlely screwed.  There is no question that this huge global economy is not going to make it through the approaching bottleneck.  So, how do we downsize this beast while "growing" the economy.  Unless we radically redefine growth as a measure of progress we are just contributing to our future collapse.  And if ecological restoration is not a primary part of the equation in determining progress, we are really screwed.  So how does your economic vision include more rewilding and less domesticating of nature?  

And trying to get 9 billion people through this approaching bottleneck just is not going to happen without a major dieoff.  There is a certain amount of exemptionalism displayed in the above posts.  Sorry, but the doom and gloom is very much warranted.  On How to talk about the future without depressing everyone posted 2 years, 4 months ago 54 Responses

Growth

What does more money in everyone's pocket really represent?  If the earth is the bottom line source of that wealth, if we are not putting more back than we are putting into our pockets, isn't this a problem?  If we can define wealth as what we give rather than what we take, we might have a chance.  But our whole identity with our economy is now aligned with what we consume so we do seem to have a problem here. And growth is cited almost universally as the APC = All Purpose Cure.
 On How to talk about the future without depressing everyone posted 2 years, 4 months ago 54 Responses

Black is Still Hot

"New coal plants bury 'Kyoto'
New greenhouse-gas emissions from China, India, and the US will swamp cuts from the Kyoto treaty."
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1223/p01s04-sten.html

Not sure that things have changed much since this outlook in 2004.  And fueling much of this projected growth in China and India is their trade with the US. Increasing costs to build plants here may not be as much of a deterrent over there.  Again, a case of outsourcing our environmental costs and sharing them with the world. So, is there ever any good news about coal?    On For once posted 2 years, 4 months ago 7 Responses

Marginal land is cheaper

Marginal land is cheaper period.  But the per unit production costs are higher due to its inherently lower productivity.  And much of this marginal land is not already in corn.  It is in pasture, improved or unimproved.  I would put a higher value on keeping this land in pasture, producing food and wildlife than in converting it to cellulosic crop production.  It is somewhat paradoxical to extol the virtues of putting cow poop back on the land while advocating an industrialization of that land via cellulosics. I don't think a mass scale production of cellulosics is going to be pretty or benign.  On A guest essay from ED's Scott Faber posted 2 years, 4 months ago 32 Responses

Good for the Environment?

"Expand the production of ethanol from crop wastes and prairie grasses -- taking the pressure off corn. Even better, that strategy would produce many more side benefits for the environment."

Scott, be careful of what you ask for.

Crop wastes?  What is wasteful about crop residues that protect the soil from erosion?  What is wasteful about crop wastes that add organic matter to the soil?  Remove these wastes on many soils and what do you get?  More silt, chemicals and nutrients in streams and rivers.  And less organic matter that reduces soil productivity.  So this is good?

And prairie grasses?  Ok, I'll concede some benefits here.  But, there will also be some environmental costs.  These crops will be managed with herbicides and fertilizers.  Removing all the top growth will eliminate the ability to manage these plantings with fire.  So, you will be substituting herbicides to help control weeds.  And there will be ample inputs of nitrogen to stimulate a lot of top growth.  And you will be erasing a lot of wildlife habitat with each harvest.  And you will probably be sacrificing more natural, diverse and self perpetuating natural ecosytems in the process of conversion to monoculture grasses.  So, please tell me how this is good for the environment.

Green is often just another shade of brown.  The problem remains that we have tanks to fill with liquid fuels.  And the number of tanks is growing along with the mouths to feed.  
On A guest essay from ED's Scott Faber posted 2 years, 4 months ago 32 Responses

I wish it was just stupid!

But ideology trumps intelligence with these conservatives.  

The Pew Center found:
"Among Republicans, higher education is linked to greater skepticism about global warming -- fully 43% of Republicans with a college degree say that there is no evidence of global warming, compared with 24% of Republicans with less education."
http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=303 ...

I know some conservative Republicans who are  educated and employed in biology and natural resources and who do not believe in global warming.  In their eyes global warming is a "liberal's" issue.  Their reactionary nature  rejects a message like "An Inconvenient Truth" from Al Gore simply because it came from Al.  I also add that several of these people religiously listen to and ape Rush Limbaugh. On Tom DeLay crawls out from under his rock posted 2 years, 5 months ago 7 Responses

Threading the Needle

Obama cannot take the big machine through the needle's eye by trying to finesse some BS to sooth both sides of the debate.  I don't think any of the candidates have the vision thing to do anything more than feed the machine with technocratic spiel. Obama needs a trip to the mountain top.   On It ain't working posted 2 years, 5 months ago 6 Responses

Some Responses to David Morris

"None of the commenters addressed my proposition that ownership and scale be taken into account."

Actually, I (justlou) did address this in my first comment:
"Even with local production, the economics dictate very large scale development of infrastructure on the farm and in the factory."
I believe this will be the case.  Regardless of ownership, the development of cellulosic ethanol is not going to be some farm shop welding project.  The scale and investment costs on this will be huge.  There is also a question of how you will get farmers to invest in the machinery and buildings to harvest and store the massive tonnages of material.  And how they will allocate time from their existing crops to harvest the alternative cellulose crops.  None of this is going to happen without huge investments of taxpayer dollars in the form of subsidies and loans.  So, just how local is it?      

"This is a reason for stockpiling crops"

With increasing world demand for both food and fuel, do you really think we can stockpile enough crop to make up for a severe shortfall in production?  Plus, what would be the potential cost to the economy of $10 or more per bushel of corn if a serious drought does occur in the Midwest?  Remember, I am focusing on corn ethanol here, the subject of the original post, and not your advocacy of decentralization which I happen to agree with.

"Steenblik says that the first cellulosic ethanol plants will use corn stover.  I'd actually prefer that"  

Agronomists warn that removing the stalks from the fields would result in a reduction of soil organic matter on at least 50% of crop land if this becomes widely practiced.    

" amazingdrx says E15 lowers mileage by 10 percent or so.  E15 is not sold"

Not yet.  There are proposals in the works to increase the ethanol content in gasohol from 10% to 15%.On With the right rules in place, it could work posted 2 years, 5 months ago 115 Responses

Still Skeptical Here.

The author brushes aside most of the critic's arguments about corn ethanol in a disingenuous manner -- they have not similarly criticized other energy sources so this nullifies their arguments against corn ethanol.  

As a complete system, I could almost buy the author's arguments.  If we could couple a realistic level of ethanol production with very highly efficient vehicles then I'd be more open to giving it some slack.  But, the current system of burning corn ethanol in low mileage,flex fuel vehicles is almost criminal.  The models that are being churned out by Detroit have the potential of being on the highway another 20 years.  

The environmental and ecological costs of cellulosic ethanol have barely been touched upon.  As one example, whatever species of plants that win out the selection process, the massive acreages of these species will provide habitat to many insects, birds and mammals. So, give them a home and then wipe the landscape clean.  Where will they find refuge -- in corn and soybean fields?  

Even with local production, the economics dictate very large scale development of infrastructure on the farm and in the factory.  

Finally, you are looking at a system that runs on an annual production cycle.  With all the potential environmental disturbances that could reduce the annual capture of sun energy by photosynthesis, it is difficult to imagine this happening without a backup of stored fossil fuel energy.  

The argument of this author seems to be along the lines that future developments in cellulosic technology justify this current production of corn ethanol.  Always there seems to be this faith that we can keep ratcheting up the technology to sustain our current path.  The result seems to be that we are carried further out on a limb that grows weaker at the base.  It is not unreasonable to question whether at some point a sustainability threshold is being crossed. And to question what the end is that justifies this continual ratcheting.    On With the right rules in place, it could work posted 2 years, 5 months ago 115 Responses

WHOOPEE!

36 mpg by 2022 on auto mileage!  Whoopee!

Hmmm...in 1990 I bought a Toyota Camry that got 34 mpg.  So, looking ahead to 2022, the US car industry will be getting a little better average mileage than I was able to purchase 32 years ago.  You guys are to be so commended!  

The highest mileage for any pickup truck on the market in the US is 26 mpg while a good chunk of your fleet gets what?  Maybe 15 to 17 mpg?  And even less on the flex fuel gizmo loophole that Congress gave you. You know if you guys keep giving away the huge rebates on these gas guzzlers, a lot of fuelish americans will keep thinking they are getting a great deal.  And tell me, how is it that you guys can manufacture such demand for these heavy beasts to commute to work and drive around town like a rock?  And don't give me that crap about giving the consumer what they demand!On