is now available in its' entirety at this site of the Wall Street Journal
http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/kstrasselpw/?id= ...

Good morning everyone, and would like to invite you for daily updated news on biofuels, ethanol, emissions and climate to:

http://www.ethanol-news.de

http://www.ethanol-news.de

Apparently there was an Ethanol Lobbyist posting over on energy blog saying the "Dried Distillers Grain" makes the whole corn price thing moot.

Catch being Distillers Grain isn't suitable for human consumption.

http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2007/05/biofuel ...
_

While it's great to get people rilled up on Ethanol

One has to consider all those can be sidestepped by switching to other Ethanol production methods.

Performance (Butanol)
Compatibility with existing infrastructure (Butanol)
The Energy Balance (Other crops, Butanol)
Food Prices (Other crops)
_

The real issues are:
CO2 balance (4% to 0.5% to negligible  - Especially when produced using coal.)
Air pollution reductions (It would make things worse.  - Especially when they allow this)
Opportunity Cost for TaxDollars to achieve the above.  (over $2.5 billion a year and it's barely offset even 1% of our Oil use.  About 12x the amount of federal subsidy given to solar.)

In addition to:
Arable Land Resource Demand (Too damn much)
Water Resource Demand (Too damned much)

_

When dealing with someone who will use every chance to deny what your saying, try to make sure you have bulletproof arguments in hand.

Try to avoid falling into the trap of letting them set the frame for your arguments.

Ah yeah,

And of course, more on the CO2 balance

Rainforest Deforestation.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070208-et ...
http://news.mongabay.com/2007/0516-ethanol_amazon.html

Which is a lot more serious than losing a few trees.
http://greyfalcon.net/palmoil
http://greyfalcon.net/soy

However losing the rainforrest trees is more like a triple-whammy when you add on their albedo effect, where the sun is most intense.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/12/planting_trees.ph ...
http://www.llnl.gov/pao/news/news_releases/2005/NR-05-12- ...
(^^^ Note the "trees add to global warming" part of this study is "On time scales longer than a few centuries".  Only reason I bring it up is to reinforce the importance of tropical rainforrests)

Seriously ethanol-man (you of "http://www.ethanol-news.de"), you should learn a little of the  Netiquette.  I mean, a mention or two of a website is OK, but when I start to see them everywhere, all the time, it starts to look like a flavor of spam.

But here's a suprisingly big performance weakness with biodiesel.
http://www.biodieselmagazine.com/article.jsp?article_id=1 ...

Now you see it: The Democrats, Barrack Obama and Gore are basically shills for biodiesel.

Do you think for a minute any of them believe in the claptrap of AGW?

Nope -- but collecting fees for scaring America into giving up its cropland, raising the price of food and selling us corn for $3 a gallon sure makes sense.

John Bailo, The "Denier Guy"
You Read It Here First

Now you see it: The Democrats, Barrack Obama and Gore are basically shills for biofuels.

I don't deny this.

Catch being the Republicans are even bigger shills.

Basically need Iowa to win a presidential election.  And they know this.  So unless you bend over backwards to please the "corn gods" then you aren't going to win.

So everyone is forced to pay homage to Iowa.

Or as another skeptic puts it.  (Jabailo, you'd like this guy)

According to Reuters:

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said he wants markets to set policies on low carbon fuels, and called for eliminating subsidies and tariffs related to ethanol. "We need to take down the barriers we have created," Schwarzenegger said at a symposium on low carbon fuels at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in Berkeley, California.

The United States, he said, subsidizes domestic corn-based ethanol and imposes a 54-cents-per-gallon tariff to limit cheap ethanol imports from Brazil. "It makes absolutely no sense. It's crazy, and it's definitely not in the best interest of the customers," said Schwarzenegger.

... He did not offer specific alternatives to the tariffs and subsidies, but said the market should be allowed to come up with the best solutions after targets are set by governments like California's.

"We set the targets. The market decides how best to get there," Schwarzenegger said. ... He called on the U.S. Congress "to adopt a fuel policy that works."

GreyFlcn: First, the Brazilian rainforest is already under threat as a result of U.S. support for corn-based ethanol and EU support for biodiesel. Corn acreage in the USA is up 15% this year, soybeans acreage is down 11%, and more of the soybeans that are being produced are going into the production of biodiesel. Meanwhile, China and other countries are consuming more and more soybeans.

Who is making up the difference? Argentina and Brazil, for two. And where are some of Brazil's soybeans being produced? In the Amazon.

So certainly promoting and protecting U.S. corn-based ethanol is not an answer to protecting the Amazon.

On a life-cycle basis, studies of Brazilian ethanol show it yields much greater improvements in CO2-equivalent emissions than does ethanol produced from grains grown in temperate regions. Basically, sugarcane produces more material that can be fermented per hectare, and much less energy is required to transform it into ethanol. Many if not most plants producing ethanol in Brazil use the bagasse for process heat and to generate electricity, which also helps the CO2 balance.

No sugar cane is being produced in the Amazon; rather, new production is taking place on former pasture land, including in the Cerrado. Questions have been raised as to whether the ploughing up of this land will release more carbon into the atmosphere.

It is as unrealistic for people in the global North to expect countries in the South, such as Brazil, to just freeze their agricultural development without some kind of compensation, at least as long as such compensation (e.g., in the USA through the Conservation Reserve Program) seems to be the norm provided in the North. Meanwhile, one way to avoid further agricultural pressure on places like the Cerrado is for the North cut its need for liquid transport fuels in the first place -- and stop subsidizing the consumption of biofuels.

David: From reading between the lines in the article from my previous post, I would guess that what Gov. Schwarzenegger would recommend is a similar policy at the national scale as what he has proposed for California. But some reporters seem to have a problem with a politician pronouncing that he or she is against a subsidy. Apparently, calling for the elimination of a subsidy is not regarded as a policy in their eyes.

What are we really discussing here?  In my opinion, it is about how we replace the diminishing oil supply, avoid overheating the planet, and avoid destruction of the planet's natural resources (such as soil) and animal populations.

Some politicians may soon start waking up - this is indeed a crisis.  A quick ethanol switch does not work.  Deeper changes in social attitudes worldwide are needed.  Careful analysis of inputs and outputs of each choice are needed.  They are still playing games and trying to bring home the pork.

It is time for Americans to listen to science and scientists like we have not done in many years - perhaps have never done except when it comes to space flight.  Well, these decisions affect the future of the planet.  Some have criticized Al Gore and the Democrats - well they may have joined in some of the mistaken initiatives, but Al Gore did raise a good contrast. Paraphrasing:  Hmm, bars of gold, hmm, entire planet, hmm, difficult choice (note: it is sarcasm).

David Alexander PlanetThoughts.org Love your Planet.