Corn Shortage Hampers US Ethanol Production 419
drdread66 writes "A nationwide corn shortage brought on by last year's drought has started to curtail ethanol production. While this shouldn't be surprising to anyone, it raises public policy issues regarding ethanol usage requirements in motor fuel. Given that the energy efficiency of ethanol fuel is questionable at best, is it time to lift the mandate for ethanol in our gasoline?"
Who cares if we are hungry... (Score:3, Insightful)
... As long as we can drive around cars! Cleaner burning cars too!
Re:Who cares if we are hungry... (Score:5, Informative)
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By burns worse are you saying it pollutes more? I guess it does contribute to greenhouse gases since one of the byproducts is Water Vapor.
Re:Who cares if we are hungry... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Its a gain unless the farming, harvesting, transportation and fermenting process produces more pollution per litre than the equivalent petroleum mining and processing. I don't know the numbers on that either but it's not insignificant.
Re:Who cares if we are hungry... (Score:5, Interesting)
As an Iowan who has worked for agricultural technology companies for most of the last decade, I can assure you that both sides are fudging the numbers as hard as they can. Imagine a debate where both sides used the same tactics as the climate change deniers - not the merely ignorant or skeptical ones mind you, but the industry-funded lie-if-it's-convenient corporate whores.
Re:Who cares if we are hungry... (Score:5, Insightful)
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You really have to include the cost of growing, harvesting, and producing the ethanol. Those costs are included in petrochem production.
The fertilizer is a bit less clear, but IMO should be counted.
And once you're getting close to breaking even, you sorta need to stop and step back and ask if it's really worthwhile to take a sizable chunk of FOOD FOR HUMANS and fairly inefficiently turn it into vroom vroom juice instead of people eating it (driving up the price of the food since it's less subject to market
Re:Who cares if we are hungry... (Score:5, Interesting)
But if it produces sufficiently less noxious pollutants, it can be a net gain. For example, if you had to burn 3 gallons of ethanol for 2 of gasoline
I think it's more like: You had to burn 1.5 gallon worth of gasoline in order to farm and produce the 2 gallons worth of Ethanol in the first place..... just because you had to burn that other energy separated by time and place, doesn't mean Ethanol is more efficient, even if it physically burns more cleanly -- it only seems that way because you aren't considering what you already had to burn to produce that clean-burning ethanol.
Re:Who cares if we are hungry... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd actually be curious how ethanol does versus gas and oil once BOTH sides have all their subsidies removed.
Subsidies are a pox on the free market.
Re:Who cares if we are hungry... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, I'm originally from a part of the country that was impacted by Sandy, and I got into an argument with a co-worker over subsidies for beach fill projects. While I agree that we'd be better off without subsidies, I take offense when people pretend that only the beach communities benefit from federal money. I mean, when's the last time you traveled through a suburb that paid for it's own highway system? Most of those suburbs made a developer very rich when taxpayers funded a highway through farmland.
And I'm convinced it's unavoidable. Even if the Federal government were limited to defense and courts, we'd still have certain places getting more benefit from base and prison locations, not to mention the way government contracts get granted. This is why I tend to favor limiting the size and scope of the government unless the benefits outweigh the additional monkeying around with the free market.
Re:Who cares if we are hungry... (Score:5, Informative)
Suburbs don't get developed where there isn't already good access. (Read about Robert Moses and Long Island.) Developers generally have to put in the roads that are in their development; taxes fund their maintenance.
Most suburbs are areas that were independent towns long before they were considered suburbs. Southwestern Connecticut is considered a suburb of New York City, yet consists of towns dating from about 1640, before there were even bridges out of Manhattan. Better roads, and railroads, made them more economically viable so that they grew: not developers colluding with government to put a highway through farmland.
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Plus food HAS to travel to get to a city.
I actually don't reject farmer subsidies out-of-hand, despite my dislike of subsidy in general. We need farmers. We don't "need" shore towns - that certainly is true. But we don't "need" to move out to suburbs, either. The highway system is more about convenience and comfort than need. Philly is a city built for 2 million with a population of around 1.2 million. The surrounding suburbs are a luxury for people who don't want city living.
Everyone is GREATLY affected by roads. Not so for beaches.
Says someone who's livelihood does not depend on the beach. I'd also arg
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Don't forget the Government requirement to include Ethanol in gasoline - that skews the market as well...
Re:Who cares if we are hungry... (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually ethanol burns worse than gasoline and (if you make it our way) takes more energy to make than you get from burning it, but that's ok because of, well, I have to really reach for this one -- JOB CREATION!
What I don't like is how ethanol is damaging for older vehicles. I know I have nothing to back it up, but ever since 10% ethanol started showing up at the pumps I'd swear I've had more trouble with my older car (difficulty starting, power, etc). Reading articles such as this one about the upcoming Ethanol-15 [popularmechanics.com] redouble my concerns.
It's the corn lobby and government subsidies that's driving adding ethanol into our gasoline, nothing else. I'm all for alternative-fueled cars designed to run on E85 (or E100 for that matter), but leave the stuff out of the "gas" pump.
Re:Who cares if we are hungry... (Score:5, Informative)
E10 has no effect on automotive engines except an imperceptable power reduction, and cleaner exhaust emissions. Small engines are more finicky on E10, especially the low compression flat-head designs. It helps to keep fresh fuel in the tank because it absorbs moisture from the atmosphere and wet alcohol can turn into acid, vinegar actually.
Re:Who cares if we are hungry... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Who cares if we are hungry... (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know much about this with Ethanol.
My experience with Biodiesel was that I ran B99 for 5 years. When my supplier folded, I had to switch back to petro-diesel, but commercial suppliers had switched to Ultra-low sulfur diesel, (to decrease sulfur emissions). This caused a reaction with my fuel-pump seals (NOT my fuel filter!). My fuel-pump started leaking, (and this leaked onto the wiring harness, and also ate away a temperature sensor that caused all kinds of weird symptoms for a while before I figured out what was really going on - the temperature sensor controlled injection quantity, and as that flaked out, the engine just started injecting incorrect amounts, intermittently, as the fuel temperature changed.)
Anyway - when it started to leak enough that I SAW the dripping, I rebuilt the pump with new seals, of a different type of rubber (Viton) which can handle ULSD and Biodiesel. (It was the ULSD that was really the problem - though had I not used Bio, it wouldn't have been a problem, according to VW).
The rebuild kit was $99, and it was 8 hours of my time. (a pro could have done the job in 2 hrs). I also had to replace some of the soft fuel lines, but it's hard-lines from the tank to the filter, so this was 2 soft lines from the filter to the pump.
I guess the injectors are supposed to also have some bushings that are going to fail on me as well, but 20k miles later, they seem to still be okay.
Later model VW's void the warranty if you use Biodiesel that comes from sources other than rapeseed oil. (ie. if it comes from corn oil, they say that the acid esters will eat the seals or harm the engine's emissions control equipment somehow - 2005 and later engiens have much more advance emissions control than my 2003).
So the biofuel isssue can be pretty complex. Whether ethanol is going to be any worse for those components than gasoline, I don't know. I think that diesel/biodiesel is chemically much more complex than gasoline and ethanol. And I think that Biodiesel is still difficult to produce, in reiable quantity. I don't know that anyone has a good industrial process for that yet. Not on the scale that regular diesel is produced.
Re:Who cares if we are hungry... (Score:4, Insightful)
But if you didn't have extremely cheap oil Ethonol is the only game in town.
What people miss is that all (useful) energy comes from the Sun. Fossil files are just the byproduct if burrying the prehistoric forests several times over... Ethanol is the best power-to volume you are gonna get until batteries make some major revolution or two more.
Ethanol infrastructure is necessary to have if Oil was somehow taken away overnight. It's a hedge more than a plan for everybody.
Re:Who cares if we are hungry... (Score:5, Interesting)
Australia does also use ethanol in fuel. None of it comes from crops grown specifically for it.
Most of it is made from the waste material left over from crops like sugar cane.
Burns worse? -- Hot rodders say "No" (Score:4, Insightful)
The people that really care about fuel quality -- the hot rodders -- like ethanol. The following quote is about E85 (85% ethanol) -- "When it comes to using E85 I can’t tell you enough how nice it is to tune for cars with this fuel. Burn temperatures are lower, initial octane rating is much higher than gasoline at ~105, and it’s not uncommon at all to gain 40bhp+ by using E85 alone with no other changes aside from tuning." This is from a professional tuner's article on a popular Volvo site (http://www.matthewsvolvosite.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=54435). Both ethanol and methanol are very high octane fuels which burn extremely well in piston engines. They don't have as much energy per gallon as gasoline but for power output in an engine tuned for them they are better.
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Ethanol: (Score:4, Funny)
It's what cars crave.
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It's not that we'll go hungry, it's the price of meat will go up.
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So fuel gets more expensive and meat gets more expensive...
It's like the environmentalists and PETA teamed up and won :)
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No cars burn cleanly. It's all the rubber in the tires, they make lots of nasty black smoke. Mag wheels make an impressive flame, however..
Yes. (Score:5, Insightful)
Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: No, it is, in fact, way past time.
Next question?
Ethanol from corn is height of stupidity (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ethanol from corn is height of stupidity (Score:4, Insightful)
Least efficient way of making the stuff. The tractors burn more diesel harvesting the stuff than the energy it will produce. .
Not that I am inclined to disagree, but please... [citation needed]
Re:Ethanol from corn is height of stupidity (Score:5, Informative)
This is one of those topics where there are a lot of conflicting studies on the exact numbers (on how much energy you get compared to what you put in), but it seems that everyone agrees that corn ethanol is particularly bad: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_energy_balance [wikipedia.org].
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Still the article points out corn ethanol produces 1.2 unit for every 1 unit put, so the original claim is wrong.
Re:Ethanol from corn is height of stupidity (Score:4, Informative)
Still the article points out corn ethanol produces 1.2 unit for every 1 unit put, so the original claim is wrong.
True, the wiki article suggest that you get slightly more energy out than you put in. We'd get a lot more out with cellulose based production such as switch grass.
But, the production side is only half of the picture. The other side is any inefficiencies when actually using the ethanol as a fuel. Chemical analysis of the PRODUCTION side does not always translate into real world use.
You also have the USE side. According to the US Department of Energy [fueleconomy.gov] E85 (85% ethanol - so-called FlexFuel) gives 25 to 30% less mileage. My car's manual (2012 Chrysler product) just flat out states 30% less miles per gallon, and it further states don't ever use it unless your car has a FlexFuel badge. (which my car does not).
E10 (10% ethanol), makes only a 3 to 4% drop in mileage (according to DOE). There are some stations in my area that have E15 (15% ethanol), reduces milage by 7.7% according to the DOE referenced study [ornl.gov]. My owners manual specifically warns against that as well. Essentially, the report indicated the reduction in miles per gallon continued as a linear trend with increasing ethanol content.
Further there appears to be little pollution benefit from using ethanol, contrary to the claims of some people.
Regulated tailpipe emissions remained largely unaffected by the ethanol content of the fuel.
As ethanol content increased,
oxides of nitrogen (NOX) and non-methane organic gases (NMOG) showed no significant
change;
non-methane hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide (CO) emissions declined on average for
all ethanol blend levels tested. Neither pollutant changed appreciably from E10 to E20;
ethanol emissions increased;
acetaldehyde emissions increased;
formaldehyde emissions increased slightly; and
benzene and 1,3-butadiene were expected to decrease due to dilution, but measurements
were conducted on only a subset of the vehicles and have not been thoroughly analyzed
to date.
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Citation? Common sense needs a citation?
Yes it does, because you will find that common sense isn't all that common.
Common sense is indistinguishable from religious belief and superstition in the minds of a large percentage of people.
The word "common" is as much a pejorative as anything else.
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Common sense does not require a citation.
However, that post was not common sense. It was a made up "fact" based on what someone "felt" was right.
In other words, that post was equivalent to religious doctrine.
Except people routinely feel like they'd like to lie or sleep around, so why doesn't religious doctrine say, "go right ahead"?
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I've read that hemp is a useful thing to grow to make various products like this.
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Interesting.
Since WW2 Brazil has been using home grown ethanol as a fuel because they either couldn't get oil (I'm told this is what diesel is made from) or didn't want to pay high prices for it.
Re:Ethanol from corn is height of stupidity (Score:5, Informative)
Brazil doesn't make ethanol from maize- they make it from sugar cane.
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Re:Ethanol from corn is height of stupidity (Score:5, Informative)
Since WW2 Brazil has been using home grown ethanol as a fuel because they either couldn't get oil (I'm told this is what diesel is made from) or didn't want to pay high prices for it.
Brazil AFAIK made ethanol from sugar cane. Sugar cane is an excellent choice for ethanol production; it is one of the most efficient plants when it comes to photosynthesis and it produces lots of sugar which is easy to turn into ethanol. Ethanol from sugar cane should have no problem producing more energy than is consumed.
Corn is just fairly crap all around when it comes to ethanol production.
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Ah. It's just that I'd seen it quoted so often that ethanol in general is net energy negative (which clearly can't be the case) that I didn't notice he specified from corn.
I guess most of the USA has the wrong climate for sugar cane, but how about beets? They grow in England so I suppose they're fairly cold tolerant.
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Sugar from beets is completely economically unviable. The only reason it is still grown is stupid protectionism.
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I don't know but I'm having a hard time believing it costs more to harvest than the energy it will produce. Maybe you could provide a reference for that?
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it's an employment program..
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I like the idea of growing Hemp! Think of all the uses!
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Itchy hemp fibre bags and abrasive rope to tie up annoying hippies!
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So did the government at one time:
"Hemp For Victory"
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=hemp+for+victory [youtube.com]
If only that "annoying" constitution hadn't used it ... :-) (I jest, I jest.)
--
Only cowards use censorship
Kill Corn Subsidies! (Score:5, Insightful)
The sooner these tax-payer-subsidized industries get the rug pulled from under them, the sooner things like cellulosic ethanol and other *real* technological innovations can come to fruition.
Re:Kill Corn Subsidies! (Score:4, Funny)
If you had your way then we'd all be reduced to using real sugar.
Re:Kill Corn Subsidies! (Score:5, Insightful)
My point exactly. Make the industry stand on its own two legs goddammit. The US Government has enough money leaks already. Sure HFCS prices will rise without subsidies, but that's capitalism for you. Once industries are faced with the *real* price of corn, sugar and ethanol alternatives will be sought out and maximized. A cheap or cheaper alternative will be found, that's innovation.
Corn subsidies breed stagnation, not innovation.
Re:Kill Corn Subsidies! (Score:4, Informative)
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Hell no. You might have to import it from those *shudder* socialist nations.
Re:Kill Corn Subsidies! (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Kill Corn Subsidies! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Under the guise of protecting jobs, the sugar lobby bribed congress and congress instituted a sugar import quota system. The result is sugar prices are twice what they are in Mexico or Canada. The result is also that candy manufacturing has now largely moved to Mexico and Canada. Net result: a loss of jobs. Good job.
Never should have happened (Score:5, Interesting)
It never should have happened in the first place. Ethanol uses absurd amounts of energy to produce because you have to boil water from it
(http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/03/050329132436.htm)
This is not something we can tech out of. It's always going to be wasteful and one of the worst possible fuel choices for vehicles.
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You're doing it wrong.
In Scotland and Ireland they boil the ethanol from the water.
You can't get pure alcohol that way (Score:4, Informative)
In the olden days, if you wanted nearly pure ethanol, you would first use simple distillation it to remove most of the water. Arguably, this is boiling the ethanol from the water. This gets you to about 96% purity, but it is impossible to remove the last 4% of the water with simple distillation. To get to nearly pure alcohol, you would add benzene or cyclohexane to the 96% pure mixture and continue boiling. The benzene from a three-way azeotrope and removes the last of the water by boiling. In this procedure, the pure alcohol is what is left over after the water, benzene and some of the alcohol is boiled away. You literally do "boil the water from it".
These days, molecular sieves are employed to remove the last of the water.
Not if you want to win votes in the farming states (Score:5, Insightful)
Corn ethanol is and probably always will be a handout to the farming states. It takes more oil to grow the corn for ethanol than we save from blending ethanol into our engines.
The rest of us are screwed over by this. It would be better for the economy and the environment to just calculate out how much profit the farmers are getting and just hand out yearly checks for that amount. But that would be socialism and we can't have any of that.
Re:Not if you want to win votes in the farming sta (Score:5, Interesting)
Corn cultivation is intensive agriculture, and destroys soil viability with continued, and persistent cultivation.
This problem is self-resolving, if you are willing to accept the ultimate outcome.
That being, the corn growing states will eventually not be able to grow corn anymore, period. (No, adding chemical fertilizers wont do dick.)
Shouldn't have had the mandate... (Score:4, Insightful)
If we are going to use ethanol, it makes sense to use sugar like Brazil. Unfortunately the US has a pretty terrible climate for growing sugar except in a few key areas, and those few key areas have lobbied for massive tariffs on the importation of sugar, making it cost-prohibitive to import sugar from the areas of the world where it makes sense to grow sugar.
The US farming industry is a mess. Honestly, unless you are a factory farm, you're almost better off to buy an unproductive piece of ground, make a half-assed effort of farming it, take out crop insurance and live off the proceeds of that.
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> Like 99.9% of government laws and regulations, we never should have had a mandate of ethanol in gas. Its bad for cars, makes no economic sense, and is actually less green (you've got to use more oil to make corn-based ethanol than it will save)
But it made us all feel good!
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The powers that be know damn well what they are doing.
Re:Shouldn't have had the mandate... (Score:5, Interesting)
1. Some ethanol (10% or so) makes a lot of sense. It cuts down NOX emissions. But adding more than that doesn't improve that effect.
2. Corn ethanol has pretty poor returns on input, but it is positive, about 1.2:1.
3. The USA has a fine climate for growing sugar. Just not in the form of sugar cane. Sugar beets will grow just fine.
corn no, hemp yes (Score:5, Interesting)
The cost to manufacture corn ethanol is approximately equal to that of gasoline, after all of the subsidies given to the growing of corn. Hemp ethanol is significantly cheaper and does not have subsidies. Hemp ethanol manufacture estimates a cost of $.50 per gallon. There are ethanols that are viable replacements for gasoline. Corn ethanol is not one of them.
Re:corn no, hemp yes (Score:4, Funny)
Smoke the hemp and people won't want to go anywhere or do anything. Think of all the fuel we will save.
Not good for vehicles! (Score:3)
Re:Not good for vehicles! (Score:5, Informative)
It doesn't "waste fuel". Ethanol is less energy-dense than gasoline. Your vehicle was extracting the same percentage of energy from the ethanol as it was from gasoline (more or less, and a piss poor fraction it is, too). There's just less energy to be had per gallon. So yes, you get better mileage from pure gasoline. It has better energy density.
Re:Not good for vehicles! (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, in my experiece (based on two trials in a 2000 honda element and two trials in a 2008 honda element), fuel with 10% ethanol does literally waste gasoline.
I need 102% to 103% as much gasoline to go the same distance when up to 10% ethanol is added to it.
A tankful of 10% ethanol gets me about 265 miles
A tankful of gasoline gets me about 300 miles.
35 miles difference.
I need to use 1.45 more gallons of 10% ethanol fuel to go 300 miles.
So that's 1.3 more gallons of gasoline to go the same distance when ethanol is added.
The government says it should be 3-7% worse. And they've tested it. But apparently the fuel does much worse in some cars than others. In theory, you should get some mileage out of the ethanol. In practice, a lot of people seem to report a 10% difference in mileage.
Perhaps the government driving wasn't normal driving. Maybe they
a) didn't start and stop as much.
b) started and stopped more.
c) didn't idle as much.
Not sure what the difference but something is off.
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There's one gas station in my area that also sells ethanol free gas and its price is basically the same as everywhere else (except for the really sketchy stations that sell gas super cheap, probably from rusty tanks). It's the only place I fill up. If I find myself running low and its inconvenient to go there, I'll pump one or two gallons at a different station, but I won't fill up. This could be a good means of marketing for gas stations to differentiate themselves. Never in my life before have I been
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The "cleaner air by using ethanol" claim is made with a particular assumption, no longer valid. That assumption is that cars are set to burn too rich, and are not adjusted when the type of fuel changes. When such a car runs, some unburnt fuel escapes. Thus by adding a fuel that contains its own oxygen (ethyl alcohol, essentially partially burned ethane) the extra oxygen in the fuel causes complete combustion: no unburnt fuel escaping. The fallacy in that is that all modern cars have oxygen sensors, and will
This has always been a bad idea. (Score:4, Insightful)
Not only that, but every acre of ethanol production corn is one less acre of food for human or animal consumption. So, veggies and starches go up as well. Not as much as livestock feed prices, but quite a bit.
Gets better. You need to grow the corn in advance of pouring it into a gas tank. Makes sense, right? Which means you'll have a minimum of one year of higher food prices across the board, as that is how far in advance (minimum) that corn production is locked in. It would be more intelligent to scale things back down slowly, but I doubt it'll happen. Worse, the EPA wants to move to 15% ethanol. Which is VERY bad for small engines not built for it. That's a couple billion dollars of motorcycles, lawn mowers, leaf blowers, generators, etc that may be damaged by higher ethanol rates. This sort of thing needs to be planned out a decade in advance, ideally.
Only the corn lobby, politicians accepting campaign donations and "environmentalists" made out on this one. Yes, some less bright environmentalists pushed for it as increasing "renewable" energy. Just because something is technically renewable doesn't mean we should do it. Burning food in our cars isn't the ideal solution. The environment and everyone in the US buying food took the hit for them. Thanks guys.
I'd rant about synthetic hydrocarbon fuels pulled from atmospheric carbon and cracked water (to provide hydrogen and oxygen), but I honestly don't feel like it at the moment. Back to programming the firewall.
Ethanol is useful (Score:2)
If we can't drink and drive (Score:5, Funny)
Other problem (Score:2)
Oh, so now it's a problem.
The fact that we the first world are plundering resources from poor countries.
Corn here. Palm oil instead of food there.
Time we start caring.
Misleading summary (Score:4, Insightful)
Should be 'A nationwide corn shortage brought on by ethanol mandates, as designed by the people who imposed them'.
Earie crisis stalks land. May pop soon.... (Score:2)
So, we make less net-energy negative fuel... And release less of this energy as heat into the atmosphere. Thanks for letting us know! Is there any downside?
No more corn juice in my fuel!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Corn was a bootstrap (Score:4, Insightful)
The concept was that by establishing a market for ethanol as a fuel, it would then justify investment in other technologies to generate ethanol. The bootstrap would significantly reduce the risk of developing those technologies. Now is the time to cut the subsidies for Corn based ethanol production and to push the alternatives.
shortage? what shortage? (Score:2)
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>The only shortage is in intelligence...
You mean wisdom and understanding of thermodynamics.
There's lots of intelligence, but it's usually misdirected.
Re:shortage? what shortage? (Score:4, Informative)
Corn is not the only producer of ethanol.
Yes, but we have significant tariffs [dartmouthb...ournal.com] on imported sugar into the US. Beyond a small quota, imported sugar has a tariff of 150% of the sugar's value. The artificially high sugar prices due to tariffs cost the American economy $1.9 billion of deadweight loss a year, to "protect" about 3600 US jobs.
Another place where the market should be allowed to work instead of anti-trade protectionist regulation backed by a small number of fat-cat agribusinesses.
Get rid of the subsidy (Score:3)
It was always a bad idea. Ethanol has a low energy density, binds with water (requiring energy to separate out), can only be blended in low amounts with gasoline without destroying existing engines and the corn variety is probably net energy negative given the energy inputs.
If you want to drive a bio- or alt-fuel industry, it would be much better to have an ever-rising stored-carbon tax (i.e., a tax on the amount of stored "fossil" carbon release per unit of energy). We could then import untaxed bio-ethanol from places where the economics and fuel cycle makes more sense (like Brazilian ethanol made from sugar cane and bagasse). You could even make the tax rebatable on the few carbon-negative alternatives out there - Cool Planet Fuels [coolplanet.com] supposedly has a carbon-negative fuel cycle that outputs high-octane gasoline and biochar at an unsubsidized $1.50 a gallon that is going into production this year.
End the boondoggle (Score:5, Interesting)
First problem – land prices. High production areas have reached the astounding prices of $15K per acre. That's 3 times higher than just a few years ago. Talk about a balloon waiting to bust.
Second problem – Game production. As a hunter, I can honestly say that wildlife has taken a dramatic turn for the worst. The farmers lust for corn wealth, former wetlands and game production areas have been slashed, burned and turned into field. There is very little cover or nesting area left.
Third problem – as more an more corn goes to produce ethanol, other products that rely on corn also compete for that commodity. Corn sweetener, corn feed, all have skyrocketed. So you and I pay huge prices for milk, cheese and meat... all courtesy of ethanol production.
Forth Problem – Wrecked vehicles. Cars require a minimum of 87 octane for both performance and running correctly. Ethanol is so corrosive, any vehicle not designed to run it will literally have it's internals melt out. The Governor of my state (South Dakota) has APPROVED 85 octane ethanol to increase ethanol consumption and benefit farmers. The problem is that 85 octane voids manufacturer warranties and is not compliant with federal standards. Again, you and I pay higher prices in automotive repair because of ethanol.
It's quite interesting to drive through corn country. New mansions have erupted from the prairies paid for courtesy of you and I. I have no problem with anyone making a living. I have a problem with subsidizing an occulant standard of living way beyond anything previously seen. Corn previously ran from 2-3 dollars per bushel. This year corn sold for $8 dollars per bushel with an average production of 130 bushels per acre. Considering a typical section 640 acres', that’s $600K + per acre in revenue. That explains all the new shiny vehicles and fancy motor homes beached along side these rural estates.
I thought the Republicans were against socialism. I can thing of no greater example of socialism than farm subsidies.
265 miles vs 300 miles (Score:2)
"Up to 10% ethanol" vs gasoline.
Do the math... that's about 12% difference in miles per tank.
I.e. it takes about 2% more gasoline to drive 300 miles.
I've run the test four times in two different Honda elements (2000 model and 2008 model).
The important question... (Score:3)
What does this mean for whiskey and alcoholics?
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http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/08/23/736941/warming-driven-drought-pushes-crop-prices-to-record-levels-as-we-burn-40-of-corn-crop-in-our-engines/ [thinkprogress.org]
Re:Prices of goods (Score:5, Interesting)
And that's a BAD thing?
One of the few facts I've seen with almost universal agreement on Slashdot is that HFCS soda tastes worse than sucrose soda. The only reason sucrose is more expensive in the USA is the trade blockade designed to favour the Florida sugar growers.
Other countries manage to survive on foods that are not packed full of HFCS. The corn lobby has given rise to an unnatural spiral of growth in its use in the USA.
What you will notice the most is the increased price of meat. 70% of corn grown in the USA goes to be feed for livestock, and you need 10 times the weight of corn for one weight of meat.
Ethanol is an *additive* replacing carcinogens (Score:5, Informative)
The article is ignorant or a troll, and most of the comments prove that democracy doesn't work. Most people are lazy and do not find out beyond the talking points what ethanol is even used for. So here, for the lazy masses,
1. ethanol (eg. from corn) as fuel is pretty stupid. E85 gas is stupid.
2. ethanol as gas additive replaces MTBE - a persistent carcinogenic pollutant. You need 5% ethanol to replace MTBE.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methyl_tert-butyl_ether [wikipedia.org]
So what do you want? MTBE? Leaded gasoline? Or ethanol which is clean burning??
So yes, I'll support 5% ethanol gasoline. It is the better of two evils. And if some greenies don't like that, then why don't they start protesting to ban fossil fuel cars and only allow electrics on the roads?
70% of corn grown in the USA goes to be feed for livestock
This *includes* the "waste" from ethanol plants, which is full of proteins. Feedlots (where most cheap meat comes from) rely on ethanol plants for their cheap feed.
And no, ethanol does NOT receive subsidies anymore, not for a few years. Ethanol plants use corn because they can sell fermented "waste" as feed. If they used other stuff, they would have to pay for disposal of waste.
So, if you have a problem with ethanol plants from corn, you certainly have a problem with meat in the first place. If you have a problem with ethanol and no problem with meat, then you are quite ignorant of the issues.
HFCS soda tastes worse than sucrose soda.
Well, duh! HFCS is thanks to corn production subsidies and because USA places large import duties on cane sugar. So USA gets shit HFCS while rest of the world gets cheaper cane sugar.
Re:Ethanol is an *additive* replacing carcinogens (Score:4, Informative)
Wish I had some mod points because this is spot on.
Subsidies are pretty much gone, but the issue is the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) has rules that can go wrong. It requires the refineries to consume a certain amount of alternative fuels. Each year they ratchet up the bio-mass, cellulosic and other "advanced" fuels. One would assume to wein the nation off petroleum. One of the problems you run into is what happens when there is a draught (like in 2012). You end up with a bunch of regulations created the year before that have unexpected effects on corn market. Such as having yields so low it forced 37% of the corn on the Chicago board was required to go to ethanol producers. Thus jacked prices that were already high. Even worse, the Ethanol producers don't want market corn. They want corn from inside their corn shadow they can attest the real quality of. They do not trust corn sold by the railcar on the open market.
All that being said, plenty of distillers would like to get out of corn. You can convert corn based to cellulose base with an added pre-stage. But the capital isn't there, and the way things are right now there's a lot of money to be made by keeping the system going as-is.
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MTBE is, at worst, no more toxic than many other fractions of gasoline.
The reason it isn't used is that people could taste it. The gasoline was already in their water. With MTBE they could taste it.
MTBE is a better alternative then ethanol.
Ethanol is for drinking.
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That is actually the only benefit of corn ethanol. It ensures an oversupply of corn compared to consumption for food in average years, and in drought years you can just stop producing ethanol.
It would admittedly be cheaper and less wasteful to mandate that the government buys 20% of the corn production in non-drought years and buries it in the ground...
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It seems to me that being a citizen of the US is largely irrelevant to the political system. Unless of course you're part of the 1% seeing as you can just buy the politicians with "campaign contributions"
Re:Question the Senate & electoral college sys (Score:4, Interesting)
I have no idea why this got down-voted, as it's completely true. Not only does my state fight hard to hold its caucuses before any other state, it also gets a disproportionate number of electoral votes, just like the other rural states. (Wyoming gets 2.5 times as many people in Washington per capita as California).
Adding to that, the winner-take-all system in most states means that unless you're a swing state, your vote simply isn't worth fighting for.
This geography-based voting system is simply a messy kluge from a pre-industrial age, and should be fixed. But since current political groups get their power from the current system, it's in their best interest to leave it alone.
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You jest, but black market alcohol distribution was the birth of NASCAR.
"Shine runners', AKA alcohol smugglers, putting their money where their mouth was and the racing evolved to what NASCAR is now...a multibillion dollar spectacle.