Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Buoyed by the equal parts of derision and support I received for writing in “I am So Tired Of Malthus” about how humans are better fed than at any time in history, I am foolishly but bravely venturing once again into the question of how we feed ourselves.
In a book excerpt in the February 2002 Scientific American entitled “The Bottleneck”, the noted ant entomologist Professor Edward O. Wilson put forward the familiar Malthusian argument that humans are about to run out of food. He said that we are currently getting wedged into a “bottleneck” of population versus resources. He warned of the dangers of “exponential growth” in population, and he averred that we will be squeezed mightily before the population levels off.
His solution? In part his solution was that everyone should become a vegivore.
Wilson: “If everyone agreed to become vegetarian, the present 1.4 billion hectares of arable land would support about 10 billion people.
Figure 1. Vegans are not aliens from the star Vega. They are humans who are strict vegivores, as the food chart above shows. They are known for their barbaric habit of boiling and eating the unborn fetuses of rice and wheat. And don’t get me started on what they do to the poor baby carrots, with their so-called … but I digress …
Is this correct? Would we have a net gain in carrying capacity if all the human carnetarians agreed to become vegivores?
Wilson gets his figure of 10 billion people by taking the total amount of the grain that is being fed to animals, and then figuring how many people that grain would feed. In 1999, about 655 billion tons of grain were fed to animals. That’s a lot of grain. At the world average of about 150 kg of grain per person per year, he’s right, that’s an increase of 4 billion more people who would have enough grain. There were 6 billion on the planet in the year 2000, so that makes a total of about 10 billion people.
So up to there, he is correct. But wait. Although he stops the calculation at that point, there’s a few things he is leaving out of the calculation.
First, that’s just grain, which is not enough to keep a person alive. The extra 4 billion people would need additional nuts, seafood, fruits, vegetables, cotton, root crops, and all the other varieties of food and fiber. So the increase would have to be less than 4 billion people.
Second, people have a number of misunderstandings about where animals fit in on the farm. They believe that animals eat lots and lots of food that could be eaten by humans. Their claim is that if we just ate what the animals eat, we could eliminate the inefficiency, and feed many more people than we are feeding now. In other words, their claim is that having animals on the farms reduces the amount of food coming from the farm.
This is what Wilson is repeating here (although he has gone further than others by claiming that this would increase the carrying capacity of the earth by 2/3 again as much as the current population).
I grew up on a ranch where we had both animals (cattle, pigs, chickens) and field crops (hay, alfalfa). I can assure you that anyone who thinks animals reduce available food on the farm is what in my youth we would call a “city slicker”. Farmers around the planet keep animals for meat and milk. What, are farmers all stupid around the planet and only E. O. Wilson and his fellow vegetactivists are smart? Farmers would not keep animals if it were not a net gain.
While in some industrialized countries the cattle get up to 15% of their lifetime nutrition from grain, the vast majority of animals on farms worldwide live on a variety of things that will not or cannot be eaten by humans. Pigs eat garbage, hens eat bugs and grass and kitchen scraps, goats eat leaves, and cows have four stomachs, so they can turn cellulose, which humans cannot eat, into nutritious milk and meat.
If we got rid of all of our chickens worldwide, would we have more food available for humans? Not unless you like bugs and kitchen scraps better than you like eggs. Chickens are the poor woman’s Rumplestiltskin, spinning insects and weeds and melon rinds into golden eggs and tasty meat … I’ll let E. O. Wilson tell her she’s ruining the planet, not me.
If we call the goats down off the steep hillsides where they are grazing around the world, will we be able to put vegetable farms up there? Not unless you can farm sideways without water.
Cattle in the US eat thousands and thousands of tons of cottonseed meal annually, turning it into meat and milk. Would you prefer to eat the cottonseed meal yourself? Sorry, you can’t, it’s mostly cellulose.
The presence of livestock in a mixed farming economy does not decrease the amount of food that a farm can produce. That is a city slicker’s professorial fantasy. Animals increase the amount of food the farm can produce, otherwise farmers wouldn’t have them. Millions of tons of agricultural and processing leftovers, which would otherwise be wasted, are fed to animals. The animals in turn produce milk and eggs and meat, and then go on to enrich the soil through their urine and manure, just like they were perfected to do on the plains of Africa so long ago … what an amazing planet.
Which is why farmers everywhere around the world keep animals — farmers are not dumb, and they haven’t had the benefit of a college education, so they haven’t forgotten that goats eat leaves, pigs eat garbage, cows eat cellulose, and chickens eat bugs. They know the value of chicken manure and pig manure.
With that introduction, let’s see how we might best estimate the change if everyone became vegetarian. We can do it by looking at the land involved. Here’s the numbers: according to the FAO, out of all the land cultivated by humans, about a quarter of the land is used to grow food for animal consumption. This can be further broken down by the type of animal feed grown:
Figure 2. Area of arable land used for human crops, and for animal crops. Image is Van Gogh, “Ploughed Fields”.
Now if we all became vegivores tomorrow, and we converted all that quarter of the cultivated land to growing food and fiber for human use, what is the possible increase in the number of humans?
Looking at the chart, you would think that humans could increase by about a third of the current number. The land used for animals is about a third of the land used for humans. That would be about two billion more people, not the increase of four billion claimed by Wilson. However, the number cannot even be that large, because we have only looked at one side of the equation. We also have to consider the losses involved. By becoming vegivores, we have freed up the 23% of our cropland used to produce animal food, but we have lost the food coming from the animals. Now how much do we have to give back just to maintain the status quo, to make up for our dietary and other losses? These losses include:
• We would have to replace the loss of the dietary protein provided by the 200 million tons of meat we eat each year, along with 275 million tons of milk, 7 million tons of butter and 47 million tons of eggs. Vegetarians say, “You don’t need animals, you can get enough protein from a vegetarian diet”, which is certainly true.
However, to do it, you need to eat more grains to get this protein, and in a twist of fate, to replace the total amount of meat protein in our diet with protein from grains would require about 50% more grain than we are currently feeding to animals. This is because animals eat many things other than grain, and we need to replace all that lost other-source protein with grain-source protein as well.
So immediately we have to devote about 18% of the total land to replacing lost protein for the existing world population. Subtracting this 18% from our original 23% of freed up land leaves us with only a 5% possible gain. Remember, this is all just to keep the world even, to maintain the world food status quo. We’re not talking at this point of feeding anyone extra. We’re just maintaining the current nutritional supplies of protein for the current population.
• We would also need to replace the amount of fat provided by the aforementioned animal products. While too much fat is a bad thing, dietary fat is an essential necessity of human nutrition.
The weight of dietary fat provided by animals is about a third of the weight of protein provided by animals. In addition, it takes much less land to produce vegetable replacements for the animal fat than for the animal protein. This is because there are vegetable products (oils) which are pure fat, while vegetable products are generally low in protein.
In the event, in order grow the oils to replace animal fat in our diet, we’d have to plant about 3% more of our arable land to sunflowers or the equivalent. Deducting that from our 5% gain in available land, we are down to a 2% gain.
• Next, the land worldwide would be less productive because in many areas, animal manure and urine is the only fertilizer. We could easily lose more than a couple of percent that way, especially in developing nations. And once we do so, we are at zero gain, meaning we couldn’t add one single person to the world by voluntarily becoming vegivores. But there are several further losses yet.
• There is also a giant hidden loss of food in the change to vegevorianism, as tens of millions of tons of agricultural waste would have to be disposed of, instead of being converted by animals into millions of tons of human food. In many cases (e.g. oilseed residue meal) these wastes are not directly consumable by humans.
• In addition to losing the food animals make from waste, without animals to eat the waste we add the resulting problem of disposal of the agricultural waste, which is expensive in terms of time, energy, and money.
• We’d have to do without leather, hide, hair, horn, wool, and feathers. Especially in the developing world, these products are often extremely important to the health, warmth, clothing, and well-being of the local people, and there often are no local substitutes. This would be a huge cost of foregoing animals. In places where jackets are made of local sheepskins to keep out the frozen wind, explaining to some poor shepherd why he should go vegivore and trade his sheep for soybeans could be a tough sell …
• Finally, about half the land currently used for growing animal food is being used to grow grasses for animals. In practice, this land will mainly be the poorest and steepest of each country’s croplands (or else it would be planted to a field crop), and thus is not likely to be suitable for growing much more than grasses.
All up?
You’d lose by not having animals in the world’s farmyards. I don’t think you’d even come near breaking even — and neither do the farmers all around the world. They know what the numbers have just shown — we can support more people in a planet, a region, a country, or a farm if animals are part of our agricultural and dietary mix.
[UPDATE] Twelve years after I wrote this, science is finally catching up with what every kid on a cattle ranch knows … see “Going Vegan Isn’t the Most Sustainable Option for Humanity“.
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There is no disease or condition caused by a lack of protein in one’s diet. Unless you are a bodybuilder, you can get by on just a tiny bit of protein. Notice the USDA does not have a recommended daily intake of protein…because it’s not needed.
Well we started out as vegivores as I recall; well actually fruitivores. We spent about every waking minute that wasn’t used for sex, on climbing around in fig trees gathering our daily food. But we wre too big and heavy to get out to the thinner branches where the best figs grew in more sunshine; so we had to just watch while the smaller monkeys, and other primates got those prime figs. So fruitivores were kind of stuck sizewise, as you can see. And while were up in the trees we noticed that there were huge herds of much bigger things down on the ground that were neither fruitivores nore vegivores; more grassivores. And we had truied eating that grass ourselves and it tasted like; well you know what it tasted like.
Then we go the bright idea that we should let those little monkeys gather the figs for us, since they were so much better at it. Well of course they ate the figs, instead of giving them to us.
So we bashed their brains in with a stick, and then we at them instead. And we found they were a lot more nutritious overall than just living on figs.
Then one day, a big lightning storm set a big grass fire, and it trapped a bunch of zebras and gnus and roasted them to medium well. As good as those raw monkeys tasted; they weren’t a patch on roasted zebra; which came in alternate layers of white meat and dark meat; so we could choose which we liked. So we figured out how to keep lighning in a pot so we could roast zebras any time we wanted to; so we became omnivores, so we could eat anything even grass’by letting it pass once through the zebra and then eating the zebra.
But it was the stored chemical energy and the means of releasing it through fire; which really solved our food shortage problems and let us grow in numbers beyond our wildest dreams.
So how can you grow vegies to make ethanol; when you need the energy input to grow and process the food. Total world food production is linearly related to total agricultural energy input; and it has always been thatway. The world will get just so much food for so much (other) energy; so these vegie pyramid worshipers are living in a dream world. Their food pyramid depends for its existence on the reay availability of energy; most of it coming from fossil fuels in one form or another; besides of course the very slow collection rate of free clean green renewable solar energy; that requires too much land area to collect efficiently.
Exactly why would anyone believe I should stop eating burgers so that a couple in India can go ahead and have 4 children instead of two?
We have two children and then we stopped. I really have trouble seeing myself as part of the problem. I’ll eat all the beef I want thank you.
Mr. Eschenbach, here’s the argument I’ve always made as to why meat-eating – especially by Americans – is not the cause of world hunger as many claim; it’s a little different than your take and I’m curious if you think it is valid. Thanks!
1. Americans eat a lot of meat because it’s cheap compared to our incomes.
2. Meat is cheap in America because the corn used to feed most cattle is cheap. This is a direct result of American farmers having access to inexpensive and highly efficient technologies like artificial fertilizers, hybrid seeds, harvest machinery, inexpensive fuel, effective and (when used properly) safe insecticides, and good infrastructure (roads, transportation, warehouses, etc.).
3. If Americans decided to eat less meat, American farmers would grow less livestock feed (corn). They might grow some other grain for human consumption, but we already export tons of grain. Countries that can’t produce enough food for themselves can’t afford to buy our current excess grain production, so they wouldn’t be helped by a farmer switching from livestock feed to something humans could eat.
4. The U.S. government already buys tons of grain every year and gives it away. However, such aid does not help a country to develop their own agriculture. In fact, it may very well be harming countries when we giving them long-term food aide (which is very different from immediate assistance in response to dire food emergencies). When a country is flooded with free food for an extended period of time, it undermines the local agricultural economy.
5. American consumption of beef is just Americans eating excess (cheap) corn in another form. Not eating meat in America will just remove the economic incentive for American farmers to grow that crop, so they’ll switch to something else. Regardless, it will do nothing to help the malnourished of the world.
6. Meat consumption always increases in countries as they grow economically. People like meat. And we know that it is harmful for young children to live on a vegan diet, so increasing meat consumption — from a third-world level — should correlate with increased health. And that appears to be the case: more wealthy countries, which eat more meat than poorer countries, have much longer life spans.
7. In third-world countries, domestic livestock is not normally fed grain that could feed humans. This is for a very good reason: it is too expensive. Most livestock in developing countries eat plant fibre humans cannot consume, like grass and woody plants. In fact, worldwide, goats provide more meat for human consumption than any other type of livestock.
8. Livestock perform important functions in third-world agriculture: they produce the highest quality protein from marginal land — that is, land that is not suitable for growing human consumable crops — and they provide valuable fertilizers for crops.
Maybe this has already been mentioned, but much of the food stuffs given to impoverished countries is lost in distribution. Rations are either taken by government bureaucracies and little makes it’s way down to the needy, or warlords steal it for political purposes.
Doug says:
September 13, 2010 at 9:02 am
“There is no disease or condition caused by a lack of protein in one’s diet. Unless you are a bodybuilder, you can get by on just a tiny bit of protein. Notice the USDA does not have a recommended daily intake of protein…because it’s not needed.”
Actually, there is an RDA for protein. See page 6 of this PDF: http://iom.edu/en/Global/News%20Announcements/~/media/Files/Activity%20Files/Nutrition/DRIs/DRISummaryListing2.ashx
There are ten essential amino acids that cannot be synthesized, and must be consumed as protein. http://www.uic.edu/classes/phar/phar332/Clinical_Cases/aa%20metab%20cases/PKU%20Cases/essential-nonessential.htm
Apart from muscle development, they are needed for healing, forming connective tissue, and generation of key hormones and enzymes.
Vegetable sources of protein do not contain all ten essential amino acids in one source, and must be eaten in the right combination. Meat protein does contain all ten.
Doug says:
September 13, 2010 at 9:02 am
There is no disease or condition caused by a lack of protein in one’s diet. Unless you are a bodybuilder, you can get by on just a tiny bit of protein. Notice the USDA does not have a recommended daily intake of protein…because it’s not needed.
Unfortunately, Doug, the condition you are experiencing causing you to write foolishness is apparently caused by a lack of protein, aka, amino acids.
Vegans might not meet their protein needs, resulting in a loss of muscle mass and/or reduced immunity, if:
Food intake does not meet energy needs such as in cases of anorexia nervosa, depression, poverty, lack of appetite due to illness, or dieting.
Higher-protein plant foods are not included in sufficient amounts. This can happen when:
Most foods eaten are low-protein, junk food such as French fries, potato chips, and soda.
Protein is believed to be unimportant and/or higher protein foods are avoided (such as in some fruitarian or raw food diets).
Legumes are avoided. (Other high-protein foods should be used.)
High Quality Protein
Proteins are made out of chains of amino acids. Some amino acids can be made by the body (generally from other amino acids), but some cannot. The ones that cannot are known as “essential” or “indispensable.”
Twenty amino acids are used to build protein, but they are not the only amino acids. Carnitine and taurine are amino acids that our bodies make and use, but which are not building blocks of protein. The discussion below is limited to the amino acids needed to build proteins.
Because some amino acids are essential, the RDA for amino acids should be as important as the RDA for protein. But because the RDA for protein takes into account the RDA for amino acids, the RDA for amino acids is rarely mentioned. As it turns out, essential amino acids are found in fairly consistent amounts in various foods and, thus, the RDA for protein is calculated with typical diets in mind.
Willis, I certainly hope you know more about “climate science” than you do about ethanol.
You said: 1. Alcohol is a very poor fuel.
The Truth: It was an ethanol-fueled car that won the X-Prize Competition (over 100 mpg normal driving in a “producible” car.) Ethanol has an Octane Rating of 114 -compared to 84 for the RBOB that it’s mixed with. The new Buick Regal gets within 5% the mileage on E85 as it gets on gasoline, and produces Much More Power on the high ethanol blend.
You said: 2. You say you only use the starch so there’s no problem. So perhaps you could tell us how we can make a tortilla out of what’s left over?
The Truth: Mexicans don’t make their tortillas out of yellow field corn; they make their tortillas out of white sweet corn. A totally different product, grown in totally different fields, by totally different farming methods.
But, in case they wanted to we have about 1.3 Billion Bushels in storage, and a new harvest (that will yield 13.2 Billion Bushels) underway.
3) I don’t know what to say. Silly, emotional, non-scientific babbling, perhaps?
The Truth: You can buy all the corn you want at the farmgate in any midwestern state for approx. $0.07/lb. That is Not “Paternalistic,” nor will I put it where “the sun don’t shine.” It’s simply a Fact.
I don’t believe you can give me an example of anyone who has ever starved to death because corn went up $0.03/lb.
You said: It is not economical. It has to be supported by the taxpayer. Why should I pay for your fuel, as I am forced to do today? Seriously, where do you get the … … the nerve to force me to pay for your freakin’ fuel? I should send you a bill.
The Truth: Maybe I should send you a bill for Iraq, and all other military operations in the Persian Gulf.
You can produce ethanol, today, w/o subsidies, for about $1.80 gal. After transport, blending, and taxes you can drive your Buick Regal for less money, with More performance, on unsubsidized ethanol than on gasoline.
5) I could care less about CO2
You said: 6. The artificial demand for ethanol has led a number of countries to chop down tropical forest and plant ethanol plants. The birds and the animals of the forest thank all of you “ethanol-lovers” for that, I’m sure.
The Truth: You’re confusing ethanol with something else. There is no case of a sq. foot of forest ever being cleared to plant crops for ethanol.
I’m just a reasonable guy that understands that oil is going to be getting in shorter supply one of these days, and that people are more apt to starved from the inability to “make a living” than they are from in increase of $0.03/lb in the cost of corn in Iowa.
Doug says:
September 13, 2010 at 9:02 am
“There is no disease or condition caused by a lack of protein in one’s diet. Unless you are a bodybuilder, you can get by on just a tiny bit of protein. Notice the USDA does not have a recommended daily intake of protein…because it’s not needed.”
I hope you don’t reproduce. You’re setting yourself up for a failure in that respect.
“”” Kum Dollison says:
September 13, 2010 at 1:31 pm
Willis, I certainly hope you know more about “climate science” than you do about ethanol.
You said: 1. Alcohol is a very poor fuel.
The Truth: It was an ethanol-fueled car that won the X-Prize Competition (over 100 mpg normal driving in a “producible” car.) Ethanol has an Octane Rating of 114 -compared to 84 for the RBOB that it’s mixed with. The new Buick Regal gets within 5% the mileage on E85 as it gets on gasoline, and produces Much More Power on the high ethanol blend. “””
So why is it that the heat of combustion of virtually any alcohol is less than the heat of combustion for the alkane precurseor of that same alcohol; and less by just about the heat of combustion of H2 to make H2O.
http://www.webmo.net/curriculum/heat_of_combustion/heat_of_combustion_key.html
Methane has one of the highest heats of combustion of any hydrocarbon; yet it also has one of the lowest Octane ratings. And Octane rating doesn’t have anything to do with power output anyway. Premium gasoline typically has less energy (heat of combustion) than does regular fuel.
So Octane rating is no measure of fuel efficiency. Yes it is true that for an ordinary internal combustion engine of the Otto cycle kind; a higher Octane rating permits using a higher compression ratio for an engine; and that higher compression ration engine can produce more power because it runs at a higher thermal efficiency by operating at higher peak Temperatures and pressures. And those higher peak Temperatures and pressures are what results in the engine burning “air” to make NOx; which is why US Octane ratings are restricted to reduce the NOx formation. Those saem high P&T peaks is also what causes the engine to run out of crankshaft bearings; because the peak loads skyrocket with compression ratio.
Superchargers; and Turbochargers Reduce the formation of NOx and also reduce bearing loads but they do so at the expense of thermal efficiency; which means that an automobile runs out of radiator cooling capacity. Well the turbo of course recoups some of the wased energy; but at the expense of increased complexity.
But I’m all for progress; so I look forward to a day without fossil fuels; so we can all live clean and energetic on cheap clean green renewable alcohol fuels that simply grow themselves; without much help from us.
How many gallons of water does it take per gallon of ethanol production?
California has a big surplus of water and electricity that we can use to make ethanol, and electric cars.
Steve Keohane says:
September 13, 2010 at 7:34 am
“According to your wiki source, ethanol has 35-40% less energy than Diesel or Gasoline, or conversely the latter two have 50% more energy than ethanol. That seems significant energy-wise.”
Significant, yes. But it’s not like an order of magnitude; so it would be less of a problem than battery- or supercap-powered cars. I know, nobody talks about supercap powered cars, but in fact supercaps are used in certain electric vehicles – they have the advantage of a very fast recharge. Good enough for going up and down factory floors, for instance. If you would have the choice of running an alcohol-powered fuel cell car with an electric motor or a gasoline-powered ignition engine car, you would probably even gain power as the electric motor is about 3 times as efficient.
Please mind, i’m not recommending anything. I just want to point out that “30% less” would not be a killer criterion for such a technology. “90% less” would kill it outright, IMHO.
The fact is, E.M. the new Buick Regal (with the 2.0L TDI Engine) will get within 5% the same mileage on ethanol (E85) as on gasoline (and, with a 15% increase in Horsepower.)
That is a Fact.
GM says the next iteration will get the Same mileage (will probably have heated injectors.)
Ethanol burns “Cooler” than gasoline, not hotter.
Octane is everything. It allows higher compression. Higher Compression means more power. Ethanol allows much higher EGR (exhaust gas recirculation.) That means when the little turbo DI engine is loafing around in town it is utilizing more EGR, and using less fuel. Under load the turbo kicks in, and increases the Compression using max fuel (DI,) and air.
An ethanol biorefinery uses less water than an oil refinery, and 96% of the corn that is turned into ethanol is Not irrigated. There are a few corn ethanol refineries still under construction. When they are online that does it for “corn” ethanol. From here on out it is all “cellulosic” ethanol. ‘s all good. 🙂
“”” Kum Dollison says:
September 13, 2010 at 4:24 pm
The fact is, E.M. the new Buick Regal (with the 2.0L TDI Engine) will get within 5% the same mileage on ethanol (E85) as on gasoline (and, with a 15% increase in Horsepower.)
That is a Fact.
GM says the next iteration will get the Same mileage (will probably have heated injectors.)
Ethanol burns “Cooler” than gasoline, not hotter. “””
BINGO ! read up on Carnot efficiency and then explain to us how burning cooler gives better efficiency; I already explained why it burns cooler one of the H2 in the CnH2n+2 has already been burned up in the factory that makes the alcohol out of it.
California farmers would be very interested in your waterless crop growing technology; they have thopusands of acres of fallowed ground because of the lack or irrigation water for their crops (including corn; whcih we grow a lot of in California.
But I am all in favor of the entrepeneurial spirit; so sell your house and invest all the money in Ethanol and enjoy the fruits of your new found wealth. Just don’t ask me to go in with you though; either voluntarily or involuntarily.
As to the Buick Regal; why not just settle for the same horsepower rather than the 15% excess which we don’t need; and then you would (presumably) get 10% better fuel mileage than gasoline.
And I didn’t see your solution for the Higher NOx that your higher compression engine will generate.
“It depends on the size of the humans.”
first lets assume a spherical human………….
“Ethanol is worse than Diesel or Gasoline, but not that much worse.”
About 30% less.
If you all of a sudden started getting 30% less gas mileage (say from 30 mpg to 21 mpg) would you say it wasn’t that much worse.
Me I’m annoyed that I’m down 2.5 mpg or about 10% from my previous car (same make and model)
Here’s a video I made based on content from this post (I know, it’s somewhat sophomoric – please accept my apologies – but it’s my first attempt to create an animated video like this):
http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/7128963/
George, the fact that you live in a goofy state that would rather flush fresh water out into the Ocean than use it to grow crops isn’t my problem.
I don’t like our government wasting almost a Trillion Dollars, and 4,000 Young Americans’ lives in Iraq, or the money we spend protecting the Persian Gulf, and the Gulf States, and their Royalty, or the $300 Billion, annually, we spend on imported oil, or oil spills destroying hundreds of miles of beaches, and thousands of business,
but, That is not your problem.
But, the economic damage that will be done to our Country by declining oil flow, multiplied by increased demand from China, India, and the rest of the developing world is My problem, and Your problem. I’ll try not to inconvenience you any more than is absolutely necessary while I’m keeping your economy running.
Oh, and the fact is that 2.0L engine in the Buick Regal easily gets 220 HP when using E85. That’s just the way it is. It gets a little less than 190 HP on gasoline. That, also, is the way it is. That is because when running ethanol the turbo cranks up higher which raises the effective Compression, producing more power. If you cranked the turbo up that high on gasoline it would cause pre-detonation, and if the knock sensor didn’t kick in in time it would blow up the engine. If you made the engine smaller gasoline wouldn’t produce enough power to satisfactorily push the 3,600 car around.
Anthony, great subject matter. Willis, great post on it.
Malthus, Ehrlich, Holdren, Club of Rome. They never learn.
Simon had it about right. The only thing of value likely to be scarce in the future is human ingenuity. I’d add common sense, property rights, and the rule of law given present trends since Simon passed.
Any of you ever wonder what good could’ve been done for humanity with the $100 billion western governments have spent on “climate change” since in the last decade?
Willis says:
“Do you realize how your post makes you sound? Arrogant, full of contempt for “primitive” people, and with a host of cheap advice. You sure you’re not a college professor yourself? I spent years working in the third world with those “primitive” women farmers. I can assure you that they are not stupid (although many are uneducated), and I’ll take their knowledge and experience on farming over E. O. Wilson’s good intentions and fatuous advice any day.”
———–
You’re right that I had no idea that my comments made me sound like that, but I’m always interested to hear what facile inferences people can make on the basis of their own pre-conceptions.
In a subsequent comment you reveal a certain admiration for the authority of “the dictionary”. It’s a shame that you didn’t resort to it before taking umbrage at the words ‘primitive’ and ‘simplistic’, which obviously push your buttons and launch you into paroxysms of indignation.
If you can hold your self-righteousness in check long enough, you will discover that ‘primitive’ means “belonging to an early stage of technical development; characterized by simplicity and (often) crudeness;”.
You will also learn that ‘simplistic’ means ”
The tendency to oversimplify an issue or a problem by ignoring complexities or complications.”
Your bilious response to my comments reveals to me that you have no interest in discussion.
I will deign to add one more word to those that you should look up in your cherished dictionary and try to understand; ‘morpheme’. Its meaning might help you to see that a dictionary is a rather ‘primitive’ tool in the understanding of linguistics and that sole reliance on such a crude implement will lead you to ‘simplistic’ conclusions.
“Kum Dollison says:
September 13, 2010 at 7:30 pm
George, the fact that you live in a goofy state that would rather flush fresh water out into the Ocean than use it to grow crops isn’t my problem.
I don’t like our government wasting almost a Trillion Dollars, and 4,000 Young Americans’ lives in Iraq, or the money we spend protecting the Persian Gulf, and the Gulf States, and their Royalty, or the $300 Billion, annually, we spend on imported oil, or oil spills destroying hundreds of miles of beaches, and thousands of business, But, the economic damage that will be done to our Country by declining oil flow, multiplied by increased demand from China, India, and the rest of the developing world is My problem, and Your problem. I’ll try not to inconvenience you any more than is absolutely necessary while I’m keeping your economy running.”
You aren’t keeping the economy running. E10 is a tiny percentage of the hydrocarbon fuel used to power our vehicles, heat our homes, and cook our food. The government is taking my money to support certain technologies in the energy marketplace like wind, solar, and ethanol. The government is supposed to wage wars, etc. not pick winners in any market – and none of the technologies they’ve picked will be winners for long. We don’t have any money to subsidize anything and soon China will start demanding more interest for buying our treasuries because of the declining value of the dollar and the increasing risk profile of our skyrocketing debt (true debt, btw, not what’s on the books) vs our ever-more fragile tax base.
If ethanol can succeed as a fuel, it should do so on its own merits and risk the capital of individuals, not on money stolen from tax payers such as myself.
Oh, and we’re not running out of oil, btw:
‘…we could see persistent surpluses and an oil price drifting toward $50 a barrel or even lower.’
‘New oil supplies are coming primarily from Central Asia and Iraq, where nearly a dozen major contracts have been finalized with foreign producers in 2010. The largest prize is the Rumaila Field, in southeast Iraq near the head of the Persian Gulf, with proven reserves 18 billion barrels. BP and China National Petroleum have signed a contract to jointly develop Rumaila. A report from the U.S. Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, issued in July, said that Iraqi production, currently around 2.4 million barrels per day (bpd), could reach 12 million bpd by 2017. Saudi Arabia currently produces around 8 million barrels a day.
In Central Asia, the grandiose predictions for the Caspian Sea basin heard in the late 1990s – “another Saudi Arabia” – are finally approaching reality. Kazakhstan, home of the two largest oil finds in recent decades — the super-giant Tengiz and Kashagan fields – is building more pipeline capacity heading east, to the vibrant markets of East Asia, rather than west, through the tangled pipeline politics of the Caucasus.
Even Israel, long one of the biggest oil importers in the Middle East, is getting into the act. Last year the U.S. Geological Survey reported that Israeli waters in the Eastern Mediterranean contain more than 120 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas reserves — and new discoveries have added another potential 24 trillion or so since that report came out.’
‘…the looming oil surplus calls into question the concept of peak oil, at least in the near future, along with the whole science of forecasting future oil supplies. Adam Brandt, a professor at Stanford’s Department of Energy Resources Engineering, released a study last month examining the various models that have been used to predict the future of world oil supplies. “Data do not support assertions that any one model type is most useful for forecasting future oil production,” Brandt concludes. “In fact, evidence suggests that existing models have fared poorly in predicting global oil production.”‘
http://money.cnn.com/2010/09/07/news/economy/coming_oil_glut.fortune/index.htm
Kum Dollison says:
September 13, 2010 at 1:31 pm
Near as I can tell, the X-Prize has not been won yet. There is a car in the running using a mix of ethanol and gasoline. You have not said anything about the corrosive effects of alcohol, the fact that a litre of alcohol only contains about 60% of the energy in a litre of fuel, or the fact that it picks up water and generally gums up an engine. Sure, as you point out, you can mix up to 15% alcohol with gasoline and your car will run almost as well as on pure gasoline …
So?
You seemed to be claiming that because you only removed the starch from the corn, it could still be used as food. Perhaps I misunderstood you.
And you seem to be impressed that we have about 1.3 billion bushels in storage. You seem to think that makes a difference. The reality is that every hectare that is used to grow fuel reduces the amount of food produced.
The price for corn when I wrote the post (yesterday) was $0.08 in carload lots. But let’s use your numbers. If the price of corn was $0.07 and it goes up by $0.03, it has gone up by 43%.
This 43% rise, of course, gets passed on to the consumer. If you think a 43% rise in a staple foodstuff does not lead to hunger in the third world, you’re not following the story.
A buck eighty a gallon without subsidies? Plus blending, transport and taxes? And it is cheaper than gasoline? I’d have to see some citations for those claims. Corn ethanol subsidies totaled $7.0 billion in 2006 for 4.9 billion gallons of ethanol. That’s $1.45 per gallon of ethanol (and $2.21 per gal of gas replaced).
So I greatly doubt your figures.
…
Oh, right, all of those sugar plantations for ethanol in the Amazon, there was never any forest where sugar is growing now …
I agree that oil will be in short supply. However, I’m not foolish enough to want to subsidize a replacement until it is marketable. When oil gets short enough, ethanol will become economically viable, and at that point, hundreds of production plants will arise. Until then, based solely on your fears that oil will be in shorter supply “one of these days”, you are just robbing my pocket to pour money down a hole. Not appreciated.
Willis, E85 is 85% Ethanol, 15% gasoline.
You Must understand that btus are only Half of the equation. Just as important is “how efficiently” a fuel “gives up” its energy. Due to ethanol’s extremely High Octane, it can be compressed to a huge degree, thus giving off a much stronger “explosion.” Btus are the end-all, be-all for boiling water; Octane is equally, or more, important if you’re in the business of creating power utilizing an internal combustion engine.
Of course, the remaining DDGS are used for food. In fact, they are much superior food than the original corn. Look, field corn is, primarily, “cattle feed.” The DDGS remaining from alcohol production replace, not only a greater weight than their own in corn , but also a significant amount of soy meal in cattle diets. We, also, remove the corn oil for human consumption. Figure it this way: you get about half of the “food value” back when you remove the starch for alcohol.
Car manufacturers have not used any ethanol-corrosive parts in their automobiles since the late seventies, and ethanol Does Not “gum up” any engines. In fact, it does just the opposite.
I don’t think we produced 4.9 Billion Gallons of ethanol in 2006, But, if we did the the subsidy would have been $0.51 X 4.9B or about $2.5 Billion. How much did the War in Iraq, and the Defense of the Persian Gulf cost?
As for Brazil: The Sugar Cane area is 1,000 km South of the Amazon. Willis, that is a Very Large country. Almost the size of the United States.
Willis, you have an obligation, as one who speaks from a position of “authority,” to be better informed on such things before you pontificate. These are important subjects, and the future of our country, and the world, rests on not making too many Very Large mistakes. You are taking your responsibility much too lightly.
Larry Fields says:
September 11, 2010 at 8:00 pm
DirkH says:
September 12, 2010 at 6:41 am
Several people touched on, but no one has written a couple of needed clarifications.
Larry clarified the issue of Vitamin B-12. You cannot get enough B-12 via a strict Vegan diet reqardless of your intent (you can with a vegetarian diet).
Which brings up point 2 that DirkH touched on that needs clarifying.
The terms “Vegan” and “Vegetarian” have been used interchangeably. They are not. For the record:
Vegan: No meat, dairy, egg or fish can be consumed (or any product made with any of the former).
Vegetarian: No meat (some include fish).
In other words, Vegans have to get their B-12 supplements from basically an animal derivative (far enough derived that they ignore that aspect). Vegetarians can get adequate protein and all vitamins from their diet.
The shortcomings of the Vegan diet is due to the simple biological fact that homosapiens evolved as an omnivore. Perhaps another type of animal can live a healthy and happy life as a Vegan, but not man.
As for the article, an excellent mental exercise! Thanks for the contribution Willis!
“””” Kum Dollison says:
September 13, 2010 at 7:30 pm
George, the fact that you live in a goofy state that would rather flush fresh water out into the Ocean than use it to grow crops isn’t my problem.
I don’t like our government wasting almost a Trillion Dollars, and 4,000 Young Americans’ lives in Iraq, “”””
Well Kum, you are so good with numbers; so how come you missed on that one.
The Congressional Budget Office says that we spent precisely $709B on the seven odd years of the Iraq war(which is now over); and they should know since the Congress approves every penny of it.
Only in Climate Science would 709 billion be almost a trillion. In contrast the Congress spent something like $757B in an instant for the TARP program; and even agreed to not ask where it went or who got what; so nobody knows where all that money went to. In less than two years of the Present “Yes we Can” government the deficit has grown to something in the 1.3 to 1.6 Trillion range.
There is one thing though; the US Constitution; in Article 1 Section 8 clause 1 tells the Congress that they are allowed to raise taxes to pay for defense; and of course to pay the debts of the USA. Doesn’t say one word about collecting taxes to run up the debts of the USA. Nor does it authorize spending money on growing ethanol; which is the domain of private businesses.
As for your ethanol becoming much more competitive as fossil fuel shortages run up the cost of gasoline; I can remember when a barrel of oil cost $2, and the oil shale barons said if oil ever went to $6 , they would be making money hand over fist off their shale oil. Well oil did go to $6 a barrel, and the shale barons said if oil ever went to $11 a barrel they would be making money hand over fist off their shale oil. Well oil did go to $1 a barrel, and they still aren’t making a ton of money off oil from shale.
So stand by to watch the exact same sequence happen with your ethanol.
Why wait for Arabian Crude to become expensive; simply stop using it; how easy is that ? Use your ethanol output to fuel your entire process from bare ground to fuel at the pump, then it doesn’t matter what the price of Arabian Crude is; so then you can sell your remaining ethanol for whatever the market will bear. So nobody is stopping you from getting rich off ethanol; so have at it.
But stop with the lame claims that we “waste” money and defense personnel protecting our national interests. And our national interests DO include an orderly environment, for world commerce among ourselves, and the other civilized nations of the world; who just want to live their lives peacefully and not harassed by international trouble makers.[spelling corrected . . mod]
So work on your ethanol project and make a lot of money at it; but don’t ask me to assume the risks of your idea. If it works and you succeed; I’ll be happy to become one of your customers; that’s what free enterprise is all about.
For $1 read $11