The Ethanol Hoax

[babylonsister]

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070423/von_hoffman

The Ethanol Hoax

Nicholas von Hoffman

snip//

Hey, no Al Gore, please. Do not listen to that man. He's a politician. He's doing it to get elected even if he is not saying so. Listen to George Bush, who has gotten himself elected and is running the country on the premise that carbon dioxide is nothing but the bubbles in the beer he no longer drinks.

The Bush position is: Why should we do something if the Chinese are not doing anything? As long as they are ruining the earth, we must do it first and bigger. Bush is hardly by himself on this one. It seems almost every major industrial group in the country is as committed to inaction as he.

The global-warming naysayers would have us believe there is a one-shot, magic cure that will preserve the earth in a cooly livable form without our having to do anything or change our ways or spend any money. For the time being the magic cure is ethanol. Ethanol will stop global warming, and as an added plus, it will make the agribusiness interests richer and insure that the GOP carries the corn growing states of the Midwest. Talk about living happily ever after!

In a few years the articles and books about the ethanol hoax will begin to appear, and we will learn who got rich while the earth got warmer and almost nobody--at least nobody important, nobody with influence and power--took note. The effects of global warming are all around us. Anybody with a backyard garden knows about them, but the garden lobby does not swing a heavy club.

So here we are, like the polar bear marooned on his little, melting iceberg, snuffling here and there, looking out across the warming sea, hoping to God somebody throws him a fish. Well, bless us all, but are we truly too dumb and too selfish to save ourselves and our children?

[youngdem]

1. Kick! Ethanol is a government scam and Midwest vote buying scheme in one

ALL that ethanol is gonna do is help some farmers out a little, drive food prices up across the board (since corn is in nearly everything), drive gas prices way up, buy off some voters until both sides are equally on board, then enrich some cronies before the whole thing is exposed. All the while our dependence on foreign oil will hardly be scratched, billions will have been spent on ethanol plants and rail infrastructure, and we will have DICK to show for it.

Ethanol is INDEED a scam. It is a delta NEGATIVE fuel (except for switchgrass).

[L. Coyote]

3. Cows eat corn too. Milk, butter, cheese, chocolate, et.al. to rise in price with tortillas...

And, what do the tractors burn to produce corm. Diesel fuel imported from the Mideast, et.al. It is so little gain for such immense damage around the world to food prices. Traditional people everywhere now have to compete with Hummers and SUVs for a meal. Guess who will win this battle. The people will starve, of course.

Building ethanol plants is big business. Farmers love the higher crop prices. This only works out economically if the price of oil remains high.

And, what if there is a disruption in the "food" supply due to global warming/droughts.

The human race has become a mindless automaton driven by self-interests at the basest level, without few considerations beyond one's own bank account. And, those who act with conscience are simply outnumbered.

[TheWraith]

4. Milk, butter, cheese, and chocolate do not contain corn.

In any event, while ethanol is a silly effort, there's no reason to worry about corn shortages. We produce so much that we could actually do with producing a lot less, since if there weren't such a massive surplus it would make corn syrup a less attractive alternative to real sugar in a lot of products.

[yellowcanine]

7. Actually the price of corn has been going up and most ag economists attribute it to increased demand

as a result of ethanol production. There also has been an indirect effect on wheat and soybeans, which can be substituted for corn to a certain extent. It is real. And there haven't actually been "massive surpluses" of corn since the early nineties when the Chinese started ramping up their imports of corn to feed cattle, chickens and hogs in an effort to provide their citizens with more meat. China also imports a lot of corn fed animals from the U.S. and elsewhere.

[Tyler Durden]

2. Don't you know the biggest problem facing us is...

ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION!!??!!

BUSH SAID SO, IT MUST BE TRUE!!!!

[damntexdem]

5. The Chinese have higher fuel-efficiency standards for their cars than the U.S. does.

The scam is not ethanol, it's making it from corn.

[sbyte]

6. What are the alternatives

The debate is not over. look what short search of google turned up.

"Global Warming, Greenhouse Gases, Carbon Dioxide Emissions and Population"
www.bagley123.wanadoo.co.uk/global-warming.htm

" A Report Media Will Ignore: Cosmic Rays Cause Global Warming"
newsbusters.org/node/10750

[Strelnikov_]

8. Corn Ethanol ia a viable energy carrier, nearly as efficient as ReH fueled fuel cells

In any viable future, we will still need a source of energy dense liquid fuel, primarily for mobile equipment. Biodiesel for the big stuff, and ethanol for the little stuff, that cannot be practically electrified. But marketing either of these as an energy solution for continuance of the easy-motoring SUV life is fantasy.

Producing corn ethanol as an Energy Carrier is perfectly viable. Most of the food value remains following processing (more ‘human’ food from wet vs. dry milling, less ‘net’ energy) so the ‘fuel or food’ argument is not an issue. The only question, for me, is where does the energy input for production of the ethanol come from (most of which is consumed in the ethanol fuel plant) since corn ethanol is not an energy source. Using natural gas or coal makes no sense from an energy standpoint since liquid fuel can be made from these sources directly with a viable EROEI (5+). Using these sources to produce ethanol is essentially throwing away 4 units of potential liquid fuel energy for every one unit of corn ethanol energy produced.

Why not renewables, such as wind generated electric, as the process energy source? We would then be converting renewable wind energy to a readily storable, energy dense form.

Basically,

1 Unit Corn + 1 Unit Energy -> 0.7 Unit Food (Corn Equivalent) + 1 Unit Energy (liquid fuel)

And as for why so much corn is grown? Storage, yield and adaptability to the major growing region in this country. Sugar cane has to be processed as soon as it is cut, sugar beets similar (unless frozen, as they used to be able to do in the Red River valley), whereas corn can be readily stored for long periods. Humans were growing lots of corn long before ADM and Cargill.

As for soy biodiesel, 80% of the food value of the soy remains after processing, so this is also not a ‘fuel or food’ issue. The process energy required for biodiesel is less than that for corn ethanol. Again, run the crushers, millers and dryers off of wind generated electricity, and you are converting wind to a storable, energy dense liquid fuel with minor loss of net food production.