Guest essay by Eric Worrall
US investment in biofuels are to be expanded under proposals advanced by the US EPA.
Under the proposed rule announced Friday, the amount of ethanol in the gasoline supply would increase in coming years, just not as much as set out under federal law. That approach drew criticism from ethanol and farm groups that have pushed to keep high volumes of ethanol in gasoline.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton has called for a robust renewable fuels standard while campaigning in Iowa, host of the leadoff presidential caucuses next year.
…
In a bid to ethanol producers, the administration also announced Friday that the Agriculture Department will invest up to $100 million to help improve infrastructure for delivering ethanol to cars, such as fuel pumps capable of supplying higher blends of renewable fuel.
Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/epa-proposes-lowering-amount-ethanol-gas-143928039–finance.html
When will this madness to stop? Even green journalists like George Monbiot, and former members of the UN like Jean Ziegler, people who believe wholeheartedly in the alleged dangers of anthropogenic climate change, think biofuels are a crime against humanity.
Burning hundreds of millions of tonnes of staple foods to produce biofuels is a crime against humanity. Since 2007, the EU and US governments have given lavish support to agribusinesses to fill car fuel tanks with food – compulsory targets, and tax breaks and subsidies(pdf) worth billions annually. The result? Increased hunger, land grabbing, environmental damage and, ultimately, hundreds of thousands of lives lost.
…
EU policies promoting biofuels have, since 2008, diverted crops out of food markets at the bidding of powerful agribusinesses, in their pursuit of private profit. This use of large quantities of food and commodity crops for relatively small amounts of transport fuel has had three disastrous consequences.
First is an increase in world hunger. Almost all biofuels used in Europe are made from crops, such as wheat, soy, palm oil, rapeseed and maize, that are essential food sources for a rapidly expanding global population. Europe now burns enough food calories in fuel tanks every year to feed 100 million people.
If there is ever a reckoning, a demand by victims of green policies for redress for the injustice and brutality they have suffered, at the hands of well meaning fools, the biofuel lunacy will surely top the list of wrongs to be righted.
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How do the EPA or other proponents of biofuels respond to these charges and justify their continued support for this seemingly absurd program? My understanding was they were going to try to switch to non-food sources of biomass for the fuels.
Undesirable unintended consequences caused by EPA regulations are not EPA’s domain.
they should be.
The EPA is stuck with a congressional mandate. As many problems with the EPA and environmentally damaging regs – this one is not the epa’s fault.
Nor their concern or worry.
Biomass doesn’t have the needed density to support the shipping costs unless the distance to the converter is very short. Same equation as with corn, just a lower threshold.
And it probably uses up land that could grow food.
Often that’s true. However, sometimes it’s land that was used for growing food (eg corn stalks). Either way, density is an issue
After losing the space race to Russia, the “little o” is destined to achieve the same result with the “Euro Energy” War. After all the US citizens will follow (or at least their taxes will) anywhere the CiC “leads”.
Greed and stupidity
Consider this: There is a surplus of food crop capacity in the US, i.e. more food can be grown than $ available to pay for that food. Ethanol provides an additional revenue source for crops. If the ethanol program ended, what would become of the capacity currently used for it? There is currently no global food shortage for those who have currency to trade for it. There is only a shortage of capacity to pay. Third world hungry people have nothing of value to trade for our crops. If they did they wouldn’t be hungry. There is no market to replace ethanol consumption. Without it farmers would be bankrupted from the surplus, resulting in less production. Do we give the surplus away for free, along with paying huge shipping costs, to send it to hungry countries overseas? That doesn’t work unless someone foots the bill. Don’t ask me to. Just as with welfare recipients, they need to help themselves first or it won’t work. First thing they need to do is not have children without means to support them. If they ignore this and their children die, that’s not my fault. Nature is a heartless mother and that’s just how it is. The ethanol program does have some usefulness. It provides a market for crops which otherwise would not be produced. It does help us import less oil, although it is arguable how much if any. But perhaps the real benefit is that it keeps our food production capacity above our demand for food. That is a buffer, call it a national insurance policy, that will be of great benefit in the event of temporary famine conditions, at which point ethanol would be temporarily suspended until the famine subsides. I like knowing that there is a large buffer that can be diverted to food should the need arise.
Yeah, the number of people who have died from lack of a tortilla directly due to this industry is probably about the same as the number of climate refugees – both round numbers.
You don’t want to foot the bill to feed hungry nations, then why are you willing to foot the bill (subsidize) the ethanol fuel program?
There is also such a thing as exhausting the available nutrients in soil… let’s wear out our farmland making fuel, for little apparent gain in reduced fuel imports, while engaging in yet another transfer of wealth from the masses, to a handful of beneficiaries.
Alan, corn ethanol subsidies ended at the end of 2011:
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/04/06/the-motley-fool-criticizes-ethanol-subsidies-th/203183
In a previous article of this type, there were some very instructional comments from an actual farmer (in Iowa I think), on the land use aspects of this and their long term views.
The “handful” of beneficiaries, eh ? We’re talking entire US States, and several of them !
A mandate forcing the use of something is not a subsidy?
As I know leftover after distilling ethanol are very nutritient and used as animal food. Ethanol alone is CH3CH2OOH chemical formula so absolutely no nutritients are taken from ground this is pure result of photosynthesis CO2 + H2O + energy. Leftovers after using as food can be easily distributed back to soil.
“You don’t want to foot the bill to feed hungry nations, then why are you willing to foot the bill (subsidize) the ethanol fuel program?”
The ethanol program provides some value for me, as pointed out above. I would prefer to not subsidize it, I think it can stand on it’s own with oil above $60/gal. I would prefer subsidies be used only to support a minimal market price that is normally supported by the market to smooth out temporary fluctuations, and in return collect windfall taxes in the good years. As for feeding hungry nations, just as for welfare recipients, they need to first help themselves before I’m willing to help them one iota. If they can’t feed themselves they have no business creating offspring that they can’t feed either. I support letting nature take it’s course on weak gene pools just as it has done for a billion years.
The nutrients that get “exhausted” are replenished with fertilizer, primarily nitrogen. With proper management farmland doesn’t “wear out”.
Peter, minor correction. You have one too many oxygens in there. Yes though, all the nitrogen, sulfur etc atoms and nutrients stay with the dry distillers grain, they are transported to be used as cattle feed etc. – a huge part of the bioethanol economy (both atoms and dollars). I put some links further down, but my comment was stuck in moderation for a while.
I’m hoping the corn farmer who posted quite extensively on this topic a while ago will come by and post on the way the fields are handled responsibly. I think, from memory, her comments started with something like “No, we don’t shoot ourselves in the foot.
@ur momisugly averagejoe
Nonsensical ‘argument’ – the subsidies to produce ethanol would more than cover the cost of providing and shipping free of cost.
But that is not the real answer – the third world must be Allowed to Develop.
If US, EU, UN and world bank policies were not denying the third world the energy resources (hydrocarbon fuels) they need to develop their economies they would be able to afford to buy food as well as to produce their own effectively and efficiently.
There are famine conditions somewhere in the world all the time. Food crops for biofuels is a stupid, selfish, and cruel thing to do to when people are hungry and suffering so much. It is also a waste of our precious topsoil and a source of groundwater pollution when marginal lands are brought into production.
That ” It does help us import less oil, although it is arguable how much if any. ” is an interesting point. In Florida, there were frequent gas stations selling “Ethanol Free” gasoline for about $1 / gallon more as specialty boat fuel (seems having water condense into the fuel causing separation of the alcohol layer on long standing in a marine environment is a Very Bad Idea when the discovery that ‘the motor will not start’ happens just as the Gator is climbing aboard for lunch…).
I took the opportunity to try A / B testing with my car. The mile / gallon improvement was almost the same as the ethanol percent removed. I.e. the ethanol did “nearly nothing” of value. I settled on a 50% blend with regular gasoline as the “ideal”, as that gave almost the same MPG as ethanol free, but was significantly cheap.
Had there not been a huge premium for “boat fuel”, I’d have swapped to 100% gasoline and never looked back.
Functionally, it is entirely a waste.
Ethanol CAN be a very good motor fuel (the first Fords were made to run on it, and many had a dual fuel carb). But it only really pays off if you have a very high compression engine that benefits from it. 11 : 1 or more. In modern 8 :1 or so engines, it’s just wasted. BTW, I was using a Mercedes that relatively high compression and wanted Super. It had less issues with the 100% gasoline than it did with the ethanol from the pump… Ideal performance was at about 2/3 “boat” gas and 1/3 with ethanol, that ought to be about a 3% to 4% ethanol blend. Likely at that point it is an effective octane improvement and doesn’t have other problems yet. Oddly, or maybe not so oddly, this worked best with “mid-grade” gasoline than with “super”; probably because the “super” had more ethanol in it, IMHO.
So while I’d be happy to drive a 100% alcohol car with a 12:1 or even 15:1 engine, putting retrofit blends into cars never designed for it is just stupid and wasteful.
BTW, we can make alcohols much more cheaply using coal. In the ’70s VW did a study of using process heat from nuclear reactors to make gasoline from coal and got a price that would be about the same as gasoline today. IIRC it was about 50 ¢/gallon-of-gasoline-equivalent. Then uplift that by about x5 for our money having been buggered and you get $2.50 / gallon.
Would work best with gas cooled reactors (queue the Thorium folks… though a U reactor is just as good…)
So it isn’t alcohol that is the problem. It is how we make it, and what kind of cars we put it into. Cars made for gasoline want gasoline, and food ought to be on a plate.
OK but that is not my problem. If the farmers can’t run their business without going bankrupt then they go bankrupt.
So you like knowing there is a large buffer that can be diverted to food should the need arise. Fine, but
Congress must pass new legislation. The program has no merit for energy savings (we have plenty of supply these days vs. when the program was passed in the mid ’70s); no merit for emissions reduction; no merit for energy efficiency; no merit for food prices; only has merit for the grain ethanol producers especially farmers in Iowa, Nebraska etc. and the big corporate lobbyers / producers Arthur Daniels Midland (ADM), POET, Valero, … EPA has not updated / developed new RFS standards for years 2014+ for six years because the program has shown it is unworkable aside from not providing any benefits.
the Obama administration want to update it now because it is pushing every possible lever in EPA regulation in the presidents fourth quarter clock running out swan song. It is purely political. If the president can push his political agenda he will try to do it even if the item is worthless / meritless.
Of course, ALL of these people were 100% FOR biofuels, before they were against them. ‘WE’RE SAVING THE WORLD!’ and all that.
I for one was never a believer in this malarkey.
Otter< I think that is the point the whole bio fuels deal is one that only the most wild eyed environmentalists thought a "great" idea back in the sixties. Can it be done? Of course, but does it have any economic viability compared to other ways of powering engines? Not at all. Is it a stepping stone technology helping us develop infrastructure for a successor technology? Not at all. The Genius of the brand of Greenies we have in this country is to usurp the political support of died in the wool conservatives who hate the EPA as much as anyone and convert them to supporting a dead end technology so they can benefit from the business activity. Sort of like the leases for windmills in wheat country.
In the diagram there is missing the agriculture cycle, land preparation, fertiliser, CO2, seed cycle, allocated costs, herbicides, fungicides, etc.
and repair to damaged engines…
And the fact that all of this biodegradable material is not going back into the ground.
The fact that a good farm field is dark brown to black is because of the large amounts of carbon in the soil. If the scrap wood, low grade/inedible corn, corn/wheat stalks are converted to ethanol and burnt it is not carbon neutral, it is now in the air. If it had been turned under or even eaten by live stock (our hogs/chickens never had a problem eating moldy corn, the runts or the corn/grain turned away from the co-op), it would be in the ground and left there for hundreds if not thousands of years. The same for all of the trees they now call “renewable” and burn. It is far better to make mulch and spread it on your garden, lawn, or forest trails. Further, the presence of this mulch helps water evaporation and saves water. Where are thes whacko environmentalists getting their advice from?
http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/PA_NRCSConsumption/download?cid=nrcs142p2_052823&ext=pdf
Algenol has solved the ethanol vs food problem and is commercializing their technology. They take CO2 from power plants, bubble it through GMO cyanobacteria grow chambers and they directly produce ethanol.
Lots of people have been trying the algae ethanol thing for about 20 years, so pessimism is appropriate. But Algenol appears to be making it actually work.
That still doesn’t address how ethanol ruins engine parts. Perhaps big auto is secretly involved.
What auto part? I have flexfuel engine and it is happily running gasoline or E85 without problems. it is just matter of compatible materials.
The biggy with ethanol is the production of formic acid. Flex fuel engines are specifically coated to prevent corrosion. Everything else is not. That effects everything in the fuel system and the engine interior — oil pan and everything.
And this whole exercise produces roughly the same equivalent carbon output per mile for a 20-30% reduction in gas mileage. But hey, that’s pretty swell for excise tax revenue per gallon at the pump.
Do you think they can do it without subsidies and mandates? If there is an alternate available, I doubt anyone would pay for this.
They claim $1.70/gallon today, $1.30 once the tech is optimized.
That’s with free CO2 from gas and coal plants. If they have to pay for the CO2, it’ll cost a little more.
Who pays for CO2 separation, collection, compression, storage and transport?
Keep dreaming…..
They will be still commercializing this hopeless technology 20 years from now…
And water pollution due to run off
Maybe. But they have a working plant today, 200 employees, and contracts in place for commercial scale plants that will be several thousand acres.
Algeniol is not scalable, it will remain a curiosity looking for subsidy handouts.
More trouble for 2-stroke engine users . Is that part of the plan ?
Or just “an unexpected benefit ” ???
Why do you think it’s trouble for 2-stroke engine users?
My faithful old tiller has parts in the corroborator that the ethanol dissolved. I’m searching for ethanol resistant parts to no avail so far.
same reason too much ethanol is bad for people. neither was designed to burn ethanol in large quantities.
Because lubrication ( think OIL ) is difficult when using alcohol (think HYDROscopic ) containing fuel .
Oil and water don’t readily mix . Ethanol absorbs water . Then it tends to stratify . Then the engine suffers lubrication failure .
Go to the nearest small engine service shop and ask their opinion of ethanol .
It frequently causes early failure of 2-stroke engines .
Broken window economic theory in action ?
It’s also troublesome in small engines that are stored for long periods as it attracts moisture. Intake valves especially tend to stick.
You can buy fuel in cans that has no ethanol, though.
Ethanol has some rather problematic characteristics.
http://www.popularmechanics.com/home/tools/reviews/a6640/can-boutique-fuel-save-small-engines-from-the-wear-and-tear-of-e10/
Big two stroke “oil burners” were banned years ago. Think deltic.
Its a pity someone hasn’t worked out how to power stuff on political bullshit by now, there being an abundant supply worldwide!
Political bullshit has as much substance as, well…. political bullshit. That’s the problem.
Total and utter insanity!
If converting food into fuel in the name of stopping the mythical AGW at the risk of creating a likely food shortage and an economic crisis isn’t a perfect definition for insanity, show me a better one.
No need to burn people directly in ovens, just starve them by burning their food indirectly in automobiles.
It’s on a par with subsidising growing trees in the USA, chopping them down, pelletising them, shipping them to the the UK and then burning them in a power station in the name of CO2 reduction.
You really couldn’t make it up, but it’s actually happening!
But most people don’t eat trees.
Yeah, but the trees are probably growing on land that could provide food. A lot of these ‘trees’ are actually coppicing, and they are planted on good agricultural land.
After our free trade agreement with Mexico, their small corn farmers couldn’t compete with our low grain prices, so they went out of business. Now we’re diverting all that corn into biofuels, which cuts the supply available for food and thus raises prices. Without its own producers, Mexico and its poor are hurting. You can imagine what it’s doing to truly poor countries like Haiti.
http://www.rockyhigh66.org/stuff/biofuels-cartoon.jpg
So the grain prices rose and now their small farmers can afford to grow corn locally.
When you look around at all the diversity of life, there is an overriding principle that has stood out since the beginning. Strong genes thrive and weak ones perish (usually they get eaten). That is the natural order of the world. Many humans are now interfering with this natural order by trying to prevent weak genes from perishing. This is contrary to nature and is itself a weakness in the human genome. Nature will prevail, as always. The eco-zealot welfare-for-all gene is yet one more that will soon vanish in this tiny blip of geologic time. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying compassion is weakness, actually quite the contrary. The allies strength was compassion in their war with the nazi’s. But indiscriminate compassion trying to save those who will not save themselves is weakness. The genes that will prevail are those that have compassion where compassion is warranted, and allow nature to take it’s course for the rest.
Yes, those who haven’t given up and moved to the city in search of income.
The high prices still burden the poor, and those artificially high prices are due to our government’s policies.
Wrong – those artificially LOW prices are due to ag innovation over the last century, without which prices would be much higher. If countries are poor they need to get off their asses and innovate. If they don’t, or can’t, that’s not my fault. In nature only the strong survive – always has been and always will be.
@ur momisugly average joe, the innovations are already there, these countries need cheap energy that is being denied to them, as long as they are burning wood and dung just for their meals on a daily basis instead of using those products to build (wood for housing, dung as fertiliser and farming), they are forever having to have their hands out. Give them the opportunity as we as only we can give them to go ahead. They will then innovate These people need cheap energy so they can actually go to work without scratching 24/7 for a meal.
The US can be the shining light on the hill, but it can’t give away food or energy for free to help the starving nations, that are starving because they are run by commies and tyrants. Venezuela is a mess even though they have oil. Obama’s friend Chavez drove them to this “socialist” hell they are in now, and confiscated private enterprises.
Muslims are butchering their way across Africa now, and who wants to invest there when there is such corruption? Whites elected Mandela in S Africa but are now living behind barbed wire or fleeing the country, and Russia has become their best friend. Gaddafi was not a nice guy but he got rid of nukes, now we ISIS runs Libya and who knows where thousands of SAMs went (thanks Hillary).
We are seeing what happens when the US is not the world’s policeman. But it’s not our responsibility to cheaply feed and fuel the world that wants to kill US. There are too many utopian beliefs overruling on the ground evil realities. Most of the world governments want to control and milk their citizenry, not help them all live wonderful lives. And our government has largely become the same. But we do need producers to supply food and energy, so the producer of real stuff (farmers, frackers, industry) is not our enemy. They are supplying us with cheap fuel, and the world’s best food supply.
The people that vote for politicians that support food for fuel and their subsidies. Stop the subsidies and the problem is solved. That’s a pretty good insanity too.
The real problem with ethanol, beyond the obvious use of arable land for growing the necessary corn, is that ethanol has been implicated as a source of air pollution. This was known back in 2007 http://www.nbcnews.com/id/18162493/ns/us_news-environment/t/ethanol-may-cause-more-smog-more-deaths/ and again last year http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-ethanol-ozone-levels-brazil-20140501-story.html#page=1.
The government, of course, focuses on the petroleum savings https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/ethanol.shtml which has recently become a moot point with the success of fracking and the glut of oil globally. So, in order to slightly reduce petroleum usage, the government mandates the use of a lower energy fuel source that creates more air pollution… thereby saving us from the evil oil companies.
Poorer mileage, use more, and a hidden tax.
yup mixing something with gallon of gas may make it seem like less gas used however the mileage difference in many cases means over the month more gallons of fuel actually bought.
Sure, higher temps in the chamber mean more NOx and thus more ozone. It’ll be interesting to see how NOx production will square long term with the EPA and how the reduced mileage will square long term with CAFE requirements.
Why in the world would the US want to increase Ethanol production let alone increase it from non-existing production of cellulose ethanol. The US Renewable Fuel Standard targets below.
I first ran into the cellulose ethanol scam more than 25 years ago ($billions have been invested in this business over the years and it is just government grant harvesting and the technology just does not work).
Not to mention palm oil development via rainforest destruction in undeveloped countries due to increased cost of producing in 1st world countries because of bio fuels.
And the extinction of the orangutan, what an awful policy.
Algae can be grown in your bathtub and kitchen sink, then do a spin-dry in the washer, and extract oil and nutrients in you food processor. There is tremendous up-side to all the products, not to mention the family bonding that happens. Blocks parties on Saturday afternoons could be useful and also add to community well being. Then the EPA could get involved – if they did not shut it all down because everyone was having too much fun.
Algae can indeed be grown in your kitchen sink, along with mold and various fungi. Back in my younger days, I was informed on more than one occasion, by persons of the female persuasion, that this was no way to run a houeshold. I was further informed that the experimental colonies in the bathroom needed to tended to, before they evolved any further and started demanding voting rights, and such.
To The Good Old Days.
That’s good, TonyL !
Algae can grow in my swimming pool, if I let it. If it does grow in my swimming pool I’ll let you come out harvest it and take it home spin dry it, have block party, whatever you want to do with it, but keep it out of my pool.
Can I have a pool, for it to keep out of?
In fact, can I have a garden for the pool for it to keep out of?
In fact………..
R
Apply for a grant Silver, after all it is to save the planet
Such a tremendous macroeconomic use of human capital: spend your weekends creating the fuel you need. Instead of using available oil, and spending the party time to study for real solutions, and other advancements of society. Why didn’t the geniuses we had after WWII that created the middle class come up with that solution?
The REDD program has been grabbing land all over the world from indigenous peoples. Strong and Clinton feature prominently in the program. Basically it is a program whereby money is paid to not cut down trees.
This is a great scheme for tree farms. You get paid for 50 years not to cut down the trees, then when they are mature you cut them down and replant, and start getting paid again for not cutting down the new trees.
Needless to say, the typical slash and burn small farmer in the tropics pays the price for this program. Tropical soils are nutrient poor. Burning the jungle provides the nutrients required for this years crop. Next year they will move on to another patch of jungle, while last years burn is reclaimed by the jungle.
Under REDD this sort of farming is no longer possible. Instead the jungle is now “owned” by REDD. The farmers now have no means to grow their crops. They don’t have money to buy land, they don’t have money to buy chemical fertilizers, so they either starve or move, leaving the REDD land to the bankers and politicians.
In this fashion REDD drives indigenous people’s from their land in the name of saving the planet.
A long time ago I decided that there was no logic in CAGW or the pronouncements of its followers. I am sorry to report that this situation is unchanged.
Alcohol does not even come close to having the same chemical energy as petrol, therefore propelling a vehicle with ethanol and petrol must have less performance than a petrol engine and a higher fuel consumption.
As an aside, why do multi-storey car parks in the UK have charging facilities for electric vehicles on the ground floor and not the top floor?
charging facilities for electric vehicles on the ground floor and not the top floor?
==========
ever tried to jump start an electric car? no matter how many floors you roll down to get up to speed, once the battery is flat she isn’t going to start.
ferd/dmacleo
Agree with you about a rolling start for an electric car, same problem with automatics.
Doesn’t seem sensible though to make CO2 “producing” cars drive further than they have to, unless the sight of three passengers pushing an out of power electric car up 10 -12 ramps is not good propaganda for our wonderful carbon free world. Having said that, a charging. burning electric car visible to more people because it is on the ground floor is even less so!
@Andrew Harding
A bit of trivia:
Actually you could push start an automatic pre 1964. The manual for my ’57 Olds actually had “push start” instructions in it. Now, if you carried jumpers, not an issue unless the starter died (yup, been there done that), or if you had someone with tools to switch batteries with … But I have push started my ’57 Olds and a ’60 Chevy – well pull started actually – to avoid bumper contact and dents.
Can’t do it anymore:
“The reason you can’t push start an automatic is that you need oil pressure in the transmission to engage the clutches. Before about 1964, manufacturers put rear oil pumps in trannys (driven by the rotating drive shaft). These cars could be push started, because the movement of the car turned the pump and created enough pressure to engage the clutches and start the engine.
After 1964 they stopped putting the rear oil pump in the tranny.”
“The reason you can’t push start an automatic is that you need oil pressure…”
You’d also need to power up the engine management computer to be able to fire the injectors, and to provide properly placed spark.
easier to put fires out on first/ground floor.
also if battery really low you want to start climbing up floors with it? LOL 🙂
We paid a few million for a biomass to biofuel project in Tennessee. The chief beneficiary was one of our states most politically connected land developers. Farmers receiving the public pay outs controlled a co–op agra bank that lent him millions on land purchases. Naturally our states enviromental lobby went full throat to defend the program when we started asking questions.
controlled a co–op agra bank that lent him millions
===============
folks in Minnesota report the same. co–op agra banks making millions from ethanol subsidies, controlled and directed from the top to benefit those at the top. make a noise, you are kicked out of the co-op, your shares divided up.
Sounds pretty carbon (in production and in combustion) and particulate matter intensive. Way, way more than fracking anyway. I thought these carbon and particulate matter things were the biggest threat to the world in the EPA’s bosses’ eyes.. Also, why make all this pre-coal when you’ve got plenty of the real thing?
Bio-fuels are a scourge upon humanity. It’s one HUGE Agri-Biz scam designed to generate $billions in subsidies, $millions in political donations and millions of loyal farm voters…
It stinks. In the meantime, many abject poor around the world starve to death from higher food prices, water and soil pollution increases, living standards fall, fuel prices increase, and a cascading Butterfly Effect of negative unintended consequences ensue.
Politicians are very reluctant to end this farce out of fear of political blowback from the beneficiaries of this scam; especially with Iowa being the first presidential primary caucus….
I don’t expect Scam-onol to end anytime soon…
“When will this madness to stop?”
When and only when Iowa is the not the first presidential primary caucus.
People are crazy and times have changed. The automobile trumps starving people – insufficient affordable power freezes the elderly and the lives of obscure wildlife species saved at the expense of critical human infrastructure.
Tim
Yes, the claim that the behavior of an artificially-introduced small fresh-water fish into the naturally dry and brackish/salty/low-flowing California estuaries predicts the death of millions of other fish that naturally lived there for millions of drought-ridden years is totally artificial and a lie used by the enviro-lobby to harm innocents and starve millions by artificially high food prices.
The claim that ethyl alcohol in gasoline saves fuel, saves lives, and saves energy is deliberately a lie that kills millions worldwide through artificially high food and grain prices – is also a lie.
Yes, your whole statement is a lie – a lie that, somehow, you enjoy promoting in public. Why?
RA, We are on the same page, bro. I agree that important species need to be saved, but not to the detriment of building dams, or preventing sustainable logging to keep humans surviving. It’s all about the survival of our species. Please re-read my blog.
Another policy initiative, they have been a busy little agency lately, haven’t they? Now, who would be driving this initiative, I wonder?
I just spent a few minutes surfing around the Greenpeace site, looking for their current official policy on biofuels. I could not find anything. In fact, it seems like total silence on the issue. Looks to me like they are trying very hard to pretend that the whole biofuels disaster never happened.
I did find on short article taking a (mild) stance against biofuels, but it is dated October 18, [2012].
http://greenpeaceblogs.org/2012/10/18/food-fuel-forests-and-climate-the-biofuels-conundrum/
From the article:
It looks like they are attempting to walk back their prior involvement.
So it is not Greenpeace, any other support from the environmental movement seems like it would be muted, at best. We know EPA is in bed to an incredible extent with the US environmental movement, so it seems they would have has to overcome considerable misgivings within EPA, internally.
So again, why this and why now?
Ok, let’s try “Follow The Money”
Mandates + Subsidies –> Iowa corn farmers –> Iowa famous “First In The Nation” presidential caucus –> Democratic Presidential Candidate.
EPA takes a break from saving the world long enough to play a little politics.
theres also a btu price to be paid and when its 20 below 0 F you really notice the differences in warm up times.
That is easily solved by global warming.
I’ve got some horse manure they can burn to make up the difference.
I’ve never noticed any problem warming my car when it’s 20 below.
E10 has 97 percent of the BTU per gallon that E0 does. That you are noticing a difference in warm up times is due to your overactive imagination.
bull
you lie
on average there is (depending on mix purity/etc) almost 6K btu difference between E10 and straight gas.
tkaes almost 1.5 gal of ethanol to equal the same btu in one gal of gas.
and many people here notice slower warm up times in cars.
in the tractors I use here (22 to 26 hp twins) to clear snow I have to run hotter plugs to warm it where its needed and get the power needed.
our 4 stroke snowmobiles lost almost 2mpg on average too.
so stop your lies.
“in the tractors I use…to clear snow…snowmobiles lost almost 2mpg…”
Ha, Just wait! Both problems are solved when the oceans boil and there is no more snow. .
Alcohol 80,000 BTU/gallon
Unleaded gasoline 120,000 BTU/gallon
So 10 percent ethanol mix with gasoline =0.1×80,000 + 0.9×120,000 = 116,000 BTU/gallon
116/120 = 0.967 = 96.7 %
ethanol closer to 67K btu
Use 67,000 for ethanol and it’s 95.6%.
Thanks, Eric. This is a very good article. The responses have been very good too.
If its all so obvious why do these scams continue and even grow? I suggest that the root cause is our lack of an army. We have lots of money, brilliant generals, and no foot soldiers. To turn the tide we need to escape our insular world and build the army.
What do you think
Just about 1/2 of all car emission failures are now a consequence of failures in the OBD diagnostic system (oxygen sensors and evap leaks) The average repair cost is about $400. Mind you, the vast majority of these cars are not actually over emission levels by tailpipe test especially if the car is under 10-12 years old. Any increase in ethanol content will drive up these OBD failures as the sensors aren’t stable in anything higher than E10. Of course the majority of states in the corn belt don’t require emission testing.
Here in Florida we don’t have safety inspections let alone emission testing, one thing I love about Florida.
Except your check engine light will throw a code
They dont mean a thing. If changing fuel, disconnect the bettery for a few hours, reconnect and the ECU will “re-learn” what it burns after about 500km.
It is exceedingly generous to call biofuel supporters “well meaning fools.” Proponents of the biofuels industry KNOW that people will starve, suffer, and die as a result of driving up food prices around the world. Remember that the anti-human environmentalists think that dying from starvation or disease is “natural” and completely acceptable. These people are evil and any supporters of biofuels that have not thought this out and seen the evil results is still complicit and guilty of mass murder, acts against mankind.
Also, we cannot forget that there is indeed a maximum ethanol content that will destroy engines, decreasing their longevity enormously. They know about this as well and do not care as they WANT to make what we do more expensive in every way.
For 40 years now, we’ve had the means for people to control the growth of populations so they don’t sprawl beyond what the region will support. Past time they DID it, because these famines can be a thing of the past any time we stop shovelling “foreign aid” to wackjob warlords and do some serious investing in developing countries to bring them into the modern world. Nobody WANTS to have 10 kids and watch 8 of ’em starve to death, and no one should have to.
The correct solution is BOTH population parity AND calling a halt to biofuel production.
Every environmental group’s stated goal is to reduce global population to a manageable level, and let like minded groups act as mangers. Why do we believe them when they say their goal is to save lives? They can’t try to save lives to reduce population, that is like fighting for peace or screwing for virginity.
WTF? Last I checked dying from starvation or disease IS natural, and has been for about a billion years. That is nature’s way of weeding out weak gene pools and preserving strong ones. You think nature is evil? Perhaps you’re right. But nature sets the rules, always has, always will. Nature is a mass murderer. Rail against that all you want. Whatever.
Last I checked, initiating policies which have a purposeful, built- in feature of reducing human populations through starvation is reprehensible.
Mao?
I get it – you think that humans are not just another animal species, that there is something special or different about them. Empirical evidence says you are wrong. It says we are highly intelligent animals, nothing more.
Hey average joe, under your rules you will be feeling pretty damn lucky you are not hungry or suffer from disease eh?
Lay aside the fat that mass starvations of human populations have historically had not a damn thing to do with genetic makeup, but are most often the result of political, or natural catastrophe, which can befall anyone at any time.
Empirical evidence says that humans are merely animals and nothing else? Use whatever meaningless blather you wish to support your position, as you seem to fit your own profile. You’ve already told us that a level of comfort added to your existence at the cost of the lives of others is fine with you. That’s certainly anima/law of the jungle. What a world you inhabit!
FYI, the word “human” means half man/half animal and how very few there are who become fully realized man.
Well James, I wasn’t born into any wealth, sometimes I feel unlucky about that. I have been hungry, I feel lucky to have been born with capacity to remedy that problem without any handouts. I am disciplined enough to avoid things that could make me sick, and to abstain from bringing children into this world prior to my being able to provide for them (I now have 5 grown children). I’m not sure what rules you mean, I only mentioned nature’s rules, none of my own. For organisms born without capacity to flourish on their own, that is not my doing, it is nature’s, and I leave it to nature to run it’s course. Whether we live a comfortable happy life or a sick miserable one, in the end it doesn’t matter, we all end up in the same place. Gone.
Alan, I am a man of science, one of the few humans who is disciplined enough not to make stuff up in the absence of evidence to complete my predisposed world view. Whether it’s Gaia, Allah, Odin, Buda, Elohim, Jesus, Ozone, Yahwah, or whatever, people who claim to KNOW something is true when there is insufficient evidence to use the word “know”, really get under my skin. My word for them is Putz. I come to this site to get away from beliefs without evidence, i.e. putzes. Can we still be friends?
average joe-
What inspired your rant against practitioners of religious belief systems, other than reinforcement of your own belief system (and to slip in some left- handed insults?) That’s ok, ideas or truths which are known by an individual(s), become for others who do not have the same experiential knowledge, a matter of belief, or doubt. That’s the way it works.
Civilization seems to be forever plagued by those who operate more from the law of the jungle than from any sort of higher motivation. We all have it within us to- get it if we can get by with it- and societal rules exist to protect the population at large from excesses of that aspect of human consciousness.
I was once face- to- face with a looter exiting a building with an armload of booty who said; “if they didn’t want me to steal it, they should have guarded it better”, a statement which I called “the thief’s excuse”. That excuse is found in many forms, woven throughout the worst aspects of human interaction. There is no lack of those who justify that line of thinking, while vilifying those who would point out the error of their ways, or that alternative schools of thought exist, which proclaim that truths, or laws of consciousness exist under which we all operate, such as the idea of karma, or “sow and reap”.
We are all free to make our own world, but freedom really means that- we are free to live up to the consequences of our own thoughts and actions.
What inspired my rant? I’ll tell you. I used to believe people when they said that they “knew”. I grew up in a christian faith where all around me people would say things that they “knew”. I used to believe greenies when they said we were going to fry the planet. Growing older I met many others who “knew” truths, some of which were mutually exclusive of what I thought I knew. I have watched how doggedly both sides of a mutually exclusive belief will maintain that they know the truth and the other side is evil and going to hell. As I grew older and wiser I found that all of these belief systems came down to one thing: internal feelings. Their “evidence” is nothing more than internal feelings which they believe their “god”, whichever one it is, has inspired within them and confirmed to them the truth. OMG. Can they really be that stupid, I asked myself? Sadly the answer is yes, and I am dam pissed at all of the dishonesty. You see, I believe in personal integrity. If these people had integrity, they would say “I don’t know this , because there is no hard evidence for it, but I choose to believe it because inside I feel it is the truth.” All I ask for is honesty. The dam greenies in their belief we are frying the earth, and all of the other religious sects. Where is your personal integrity? Your smugness claiming that that you “know” without having hard evidence is just infuriating beyond belief. That is a trait that I want disappeared from the earth. Don’t ask me why. Why does a dog want to kill a cat? I don’t know. It just is. Over and out.
average joe-
I think it’s great that you are unwilling to “believe”, without evidence, or first hand knowledge.
Meanwhile, did anyone claim to “know without evidence”?
To reiterate, any statement of knowledge by one person, for all others who do not have the same experiential knowledge, is a matter of belief, or doubt.
As example: I just prepared and ate a variant of the Korean dish, si- gum- chi (시금치) using as substitute ingredients, pumpkin leaves and shallots from my garden. I could explain in great detail how it tasted, but until someone ate it themselves, they could only believe they knew what it tasted like.
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE / Hamlet Act 1. Scene V abt. 1601
If memory serves me, it takes more energy to produce and deliver ethanol that it provides. Do biofuels produce less CO2 than traditional fuels?
As mentioned above, E85 produces the same amount of carbon per mile as straight-up petrol. But due the performance detriments, a trip that took 100 gallons of gas will take 113 gallons of gas and 20 gallons of ethanol.
We now must produce the excess energy to drill, ship, cat crack, and prep 13 extra gallons of gas, the energy to produce the ethanol — and yes it is more to produce than is gained back — as well as increasing smog, (No que bueno for solar panels), as well as all the excess mining and manufacturing costs to produce the parts needed for the more frequent repairs.
Whether you’re a conservationist, a watermelon, or a tree hugger, the current alcohol fuels are an unquestionable disaster.
Jquip: Unless of course you are “farming” subsidies; and feeding the left over “waste” mash to your cattle – then it is unquestionably profitable. Not the ethanol, but the “farming”. I had the “good fortune” to work in the development of some cattle feed lots 25+ years ago so I knew a little bit about the economics of ethanol back then. [I still avoid gasoline from one of the companies I worked for. 😉 ]
Jquip
May 31, 2015 at 1:32 pm
As mentioned above, E85 produces the same amount of carbon per mile as straight-up petrol. But due the performance detriments, a trip that took 100 gallons of gas will take 113 gallons of gas and 20 gallons of ethanol.
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Jquip, while I think I have the same point of view as you, please, please don’t use the same language as the non scientists. E85 doesn’t produce any carbon (carbon is produced in stars).
To clarify, did you mean carbon dioxide or carbon particulates or carbon something else?
Thanks,
Steve T
And don’t forget that the UK has pledged to cut down all the trees in the USA, to feed our wood-burning power stations.
That’s a good thing, leaves room for biofuels.