Ethanol imbecility

[The_Professor]

Comments are hereby solicited....

The ethanol imbecility continues, and I despair of rationality in these United States. We are all for Free Trade in industries where US workers were becoming middle class. We're happy enough to export the jobs of the mill workers and sewing machine operators. Ethanol is different. We can import all of that stuff that we want at far lower prices than we are paying for domestic ethanol. We've doubled the price of corn, we're destroying the water ecology of half the continent, and it takes enormous amounts of energy to make the fertilizer to produce ethanol domestically. Meanwhile sugar countries like Brazil -- and Cuber for that matter -- would love to sell us ethanol at much lower prices, but we have a big tariff to stop that. And, of course, we subsidize ethanol production here as well. All to the benefit of a few big companies (and, yes, some small farmers).

If anyone wants to know how democracies fail, look at our energy policy, or lack thereof. We have invested a trillion dollars in a war to stabilize oil supplies -- does anyone sane or insane suppose that we would have put the entire might of the empire into Iraq if it weren't for Middle East oil? -- when a fraction of that invested domestically would have given us energy independence.  I said all this back before the invasion when the costs were thought to be about $300 billion. Three hundred billion is a lot of money, and that much invested in nuclear power, developing domestic oil resources, and sponsoring X-Projects on efficient transportation using electricity would have given the US energy independence; and if $300 billion wouldn't do it, the $1,000,000,000,000 -- one trillion dollars -- the war actually cost certainly would have. We'd also have Solar Power Satellites and a Moon Colony (you build the Lunar Colony on weekends and third shifts while constructing Solar Power Satellites).

Note that it wouldn't have mattered who won what election. We still wouldn't have energy independence or have made the investments to become essentially independent. 

Follow the money.

http://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/view491.html

[Xavier_Onassis]

If anyone wants to know how democracies fail, look at our energy policy, or lack thereof. We have invested a trillion dollars in a war to stabilize oil supplies -- does anyone sane or insane suppose that we would have put the entire might of the empire into Iraq if it weren't for Middle East oil? -- when a fraction of that invested domestically would have given us energy independence.  I said all this back before the invasion when the costs were thought to be about $300 billion. Three hundred billion is a lot of money, and that much invested in nuclear power, developing domestic oil resources, and sponsoring X-Projects on efficient transportation using electricity would have given the US energy independence; and if $300 billion wouldn't do it, the $1,000,000,000,000 -- one trillion dollars -- the war actually cost certainly would have. We'd also have Solar Power Satellites and a Moon Colony (you build the Lunar Colony on weekends and third shifts while constructing Solar Power Satellites).

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I agree with all this, except the bit about the Lunar Colony. I think that if Gore had been permitted to be president, we would not have any Iraq War, and therefore there would be no buggery of the dollar as is currently happening, and at least we would not have pissed away billions on a useless war.

Ethanol from corn is not a useful plan, other than in the enrichment of ADM. Ethanol and Methanol from other crops, notably cellulosic crops and biodiesel from something like desert jojoba makes a lot more sense. Even nuclear power makes more sense than the Iraq War.

[The_Professor]

I concur, XO. The economics behind ethanol do not make any sense -- except to a select few.

And, we seriously lack ANY real energy policy that might put us on a road toward energy independence. Whether Gore would have changed that -- hmmm, I doubt it. Poliiticans follow the money, regardless of their stripe. There is simply too much money in oil.

[Richpo64]

>>...and at least we would not have pissed away billions on a useless war. <<

This is probably true. We likely would have pissed away billions on useless social programs and detroyed healthcare while attacks like 9-11 would have continued and our economy would have become excatly what Algore wants, more like a third world economy. Welll for everyone but Algore that is. He'd be jetting around in Air Force One eating little Debbie cakes till the fat in his eye lids caused him to go blind and he needed a scooter to get around.

[The_Professor]

Perhpas Gore is secretly on the payroll of a liposuction clinic? (as many of us are)

Seriously, it is not clear to me that Gore is all he is sometimes cracked up to be. Seems a bit opportunistic to me. The best thing about Gore is Tipper, whom the Democrat Party has silenced since the days she spoke out too mightily on issues they didn't like.

[Richpo64]

No, algore is simply a sociopath. He has to have the attention, facts be damned. As time goes on scientists are proving him to be an alarmist at best and a liar at worst. I think he's both, and a fascist. He will put up with no decention. I'm sure if he had his way people who disagree with his little fantasy would be locked up in reeducation camps.

[Michael Tee]

I assume the Lunar Colony remarks were made humorously, but otherwise the article seems to make sense.  Brazil is waaaay ahead of us.  I was in Recife over 20 years ago and I remember a guy (the local VW salesman) driving my wife and me around after we met by chance in a restaurant, and we went by miles of cornfields, which the guy told us were being grown for ethanol for cars.  I'd never heard of production-line cars running on ethanol before (I think it was an ethanol-gasoline mixture) but I wish I could remember the percentages (of new ethanol vehicles in the annual sales figures and of ethanol in the fuel tank.)  They indicated to me it was a lot more than a niche market even then.

Some parts of the article, though, I didn't get.  If it takes lots of energy to make the fertilizer to grow the corn, aren't the same costs gonna have to be factored into the price of Brazilian or Cuban ethanol as well?  Or are their climate and soil conditions more conducive to growing corn with less fertilizer?  Also there wasn't really much economic analysis of the competing interests that are at work in Congress - - I would assume that both agribusiness and the petroleum industry are big boys and have their own little sections of K Street all locked up.  Who are the big owners in each?  More than likely the same families hold the controlling interests in both sectors.  Maybe not.  Is it that agribusiness can make money without ethanol and leave it to the petroleum industry to profit from gasoline because it has no other venues for raking in the shekels?  The whole piece was really deficient in needed background economic analysis.

[Plane]

There is ethanol and there is methanol equal in terms of fuel, both could be made from stuff that is presently agricultural waste.

Since much of our fertilizer and pesticide is made from oil we need to rase our crops with less anyhow.
But how much land should be devoted to raiseing fuel crops?
Consider that the raiseing and harvesting will also require fuel.

[Xavier_Onassis]

The trick will be to make biodiesel and alcohol out of crops grown on land that is currently used for pasture or not used at all.
Jojoba grows well in the desert. Switchgrass could be a good source for cellulosic ethanol or methanol.

You could use biodiesel in the harvesters, or perhaps alcohol or solar charged batteries, or batteries charged b wind or geothermal power.

Either would be better than Hydrogen-fueled fuel cell engines, becausae Hydrogen is likely to be made from natural gas, of which the supply is not sustainable.
You could use wind power, solar power or tidal power to charge the batteries to produce Hydrogen by electrolysis of water.

The technology is mostly already available, it is the processes that need to be developed to make these economically practical..

[Amianthus]

Either would be better than Hydrogen-fueled fuel cell engines, becausae Hydrogen is likely to be made from natural gas, of which the supply is not sustainable.

There are alcohol reformers that strip the hydrogen out of alcohol as well.