From the department of “told you so” comes this about-face on what was supposed to be an environmental solution. It seems the cure is worse than the disease:
“CORYDON, Iowa — The hills of southern Iowa bear the scars of America’s push for green energy: The brown gashes where rain has washed away the soil. The polluted streams that dump fertilizer into the water supply.”
“Even the cemetery that disappeared like an apparition into a cornfield.
It wasn’t supposed to be this way.
With the Iowa political caucuses on the horizon in 2007, presidential candidate Barack Obama made homegrown corn a centerpiece of his plan to slow global warming. And when President George W. Bush signed a law that year requiring oil companies to add billions of gallons of ethanol to their gasoline each year, Bush predicted it would make the country “stronger, cleaner and more secure.”
But the ethanol era has proven far more damaging to the environment than politicians promised and much worse than the government admits today.
As farmers rushed to find new places to plant corn, they wiped out millions of acres of conservation land, destroyed habitat and polluted water supplies, an Associated Press investigation found.”
Dina Cappiello and Matt Apuzzo report for the Associated Press November 12, 2013.
h/t to reader Michael J. Bentley
============================================================
Here’s the surprising headline and money quote:
The consequences are so severe that environmentalists and many scientists have now rejected corn-based ethanol as bad environmental policy. But the Obama administration stands by it, highlighting its benefits to the farming industry rather than any negative impact.
Farmers planted 15 million more acres of corn last year than before the ethanol boom, and the effects are visible in places like south central Iowa.
The hilly, once-grassy landscape is made up of fragile soil that, unlike the earth in the rest of the state, is poorly suited for corn. Nevertheless, it has yielded to America’s demand for it.
“They’re raping the land,” said Bill Alley, a member of the board of supervisors in Wayne County, which now bears little resemblance to the rolling cow pastures shown in postcards sold at a Corydon pharmacy.
UPDATE: here is the video report from AP (h/t _Jim)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tX2f4JnfS74
In related news:
EPA orders cut in ethanol in gasoline next year, citing risk of engine damage
November 15
By Sean Cockerham
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration Friday proposed the first-ever reduction in the amount of ethanol in the gasoline supply, signaling retreat from the Renewable Fuel Standard passed by Congress in 2007.
The Environmental Protection Agency wants 15.21 billion gallons of renewable fuels blended into gasoline and diesel next year, down from 16.55 billion gallons this year. Most of it is corn-based ethanol.
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/11/15/4624584/epa-orders-cut-in-ethanol-in-gasoline.html#storylink=cpy
Related articles
- Making corn-based ethanol badly hurting environment: AP (cbsnews.com)
- Ethanol criticized as ‘ecological disaster’ (utsandiego.com)
- Obama’s Green Power … Raping The Land (cryandhowl.com)
- EPA orders cut in ethanol in gasoline next year, citing risk of engine damage (kansascity.com)
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“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” ~ H. L. Mencken
I guess this Mencken quote fits, although the alarmist liars have not always been “clear” with their solution; after all, they always need more grant money to study the matter. What amazes one is how damn often the alarmists are totally wrong in their predictions. One can almost read the future by just taking the opposite side of anything the team says.
markstoval: “One can almost read the future by just taking the opposite side of anything the team says.”
True of about anyone that claims to be an expert of a chaotic system. Works great in investments, too.
Is there anything done on Capital Hill, including White House that you can’t append “Stupid” too?
_Jim says:
November 16, 2013 at 11:16 am
“” DirkH says November 16, 2013 at 11:05 am
The ethanol program has been invented and promoted by GLOBE international, …
”
In your country, perhaps?”
GLOBE international operates all across trilateral commission territory at least since 1988. It’s structure parallels the structure of the Fabians and they are headquartered in the same building in London.
“Senators Gore, Kerry and Heinz were all founding members of GLOBE International.
In recent years GLOBE has held a major Legislators Forum for G8 and major emerging economy legislators in the historic Senate Caucus Room, during which Senators Kerry, McCain, Lieberman, Snowe and Biden participated. The resulting GLOBE Washington Forum declaration of the participating legislators generated headlines around the world as one of the first political agreements on the core principles for a Post 2012 Climate Change Agreement.
Members of the US Congress have been active in all GLOBE policy dialogues and during the GLOBE Tokyo Legislators Forum both Presidential candidates, Senaors Obama and McCain, delivered addresses to the GLOBE Forum. In 2009, then Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Global Warming, Rep Ed Markey, hosted the launch and first meeting of GLOBE’s International Commission on Climate & Energy Security.
GLOBE is currently partnering with the second largest bi-partisan caucus on the hill, the US Conservation Caucus, for the World Summit of Legislators in Rio.”
http://www.globeinternational.org/index.php/countries/americas/united-states-of-america
Maybe someone needs to defend Zeke a bit here.
As a former Iowa resident, farmers there, typically, take very good care of their land. Practices are constantly changing in attempts to reduce erosion and run-off, decrease chemical use, reduce the amount of energy put into planting and harvesting crops. It was, and still largely is, a good place to live and raise a family.
However, the economics of the last few years have thrown many practices out the window. Farmers are people, too. Dangle a way to double or triple returns in a single year in front of someone and they’ll often change their ways, maybe without really thinking what these changes will do in the long run.
This is just really typical of the things that happen when you alter economic calculations. The government made corn a pretty straight-forward way to make a ton of money. Land prices in Iowa have inflated past any reason. And now people are finally figuring out that maybe this isn’t an all-around good thing.
As has been mentioned previously, apply the same logic to any other green endeavor. None of it makes a lick of sense, put it’s an amazing ride for those at the front of the pack. Soon, though, the rest of us will be picking up pieces and wondering who let the loonies loose.
Are you saying the farmers haven’t figured that out over the last two centuries _Jim?
You can find all the anti-agricultural activist rants you want on Youtube. I know some of those swampy cyberghettos and the comments they make. They say they will dismantle industrial agriculture and “then Americans will find out what their hands are for.”
But don’t expect that I am going to blame farmers for growing corn in Iowa and creating an environmmental disaster.
Has anyone here ever driven across Iowa? “There are about 90 million acres of land planted to corn in the U.S. The top corn producing states, Iowa and Illinois, account for over one-third of the U.S. crop.” It is just one long cornfield. It is not an “environmental disaster.” My own family settled those lands in the 1830’s. America relies on the corn for feed stock and dozens of other products.
I’m skeptical of the soil degradation claims in the story (my family’s ancestral Iowa farm is more productive than ever after a hundred years of growing crops), but there’s no doubt the ethanol fuel program is a disaster of benefit only to an unholy alliance of big government and big business. If it were actually a good idea, no laws would be needed to make it happen.
Come to think of it, the ethanol fuel program is a lot like Obamacare…
milodonharlani says:
November 16, 2013 at 11:12 am
Quite right. Burn methanol and save ethanol for drinking.
Your ‘farmers’ in Iowa OBVIOUSLY haven’t figured it out, Zeke. It’s as plain as the nose on your face. Go look in a mirror then go look at the ruts due to erosion in this video:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/11/16/schadenfreude-and-a-they-told-you-so-moment-ap-investigation-corn-based-ethanol-causes-environment-damage/#comment-1477009
We also had a dust bowl ‘event’/situation due to large part to farming-practice ‘problems’ in the last century, Zeke. I hope this is not news to you, but, I fear it is …
.
America relies on the corn for feed stock and dozens of other products.
====
the simplest solution is to regulate all corn as either feed or food…ethanol corn is not
…then drop the subsides for ethanol corn, and sell it at a lower price
bang, no more incentive
milodonharlani says (November 16, 2013 at 11:12 am): “Methanol is better than ethanol, BTW, & was used by Germany in WWII up to 20% concentration with no need to adapt gasoline engines.”
I’m very interested in Nazi Germany’s synthetic fuel program. Do you have a reference for the methanol figure?
re: DirkH says November 16, 2013 at 11:58 am
Looks like con-spiracy talk, Dirk.
… and the dollar rules.
Next.
.
Did you review the video or the pictures accompanying the article at the AP.org website?
I make the assumption here in correspondence that the other party a) possesses all their sensory organs (in particular sight), b) is rational and c) not purposely dissembling. Sometimes only two out of three are operative, sometimes only one of three, and in the case of Zeke, perhaps none.
.
I live in rural Iowa. May I suggest you come tour Iowa and see for yourself? Talk to a few farmers. Learn the truths of the farm economy. The frustrations farmers have with government interference that has twisted the marketplace for farmers. Maybe take a multiple county tour with our Senator Grassley who comes from a farm family – he visits all the counties on a regular basis. There’s a lot of misinformation out there. Those articles are sadly biased. Farmers don’t destroy their own ground, that’s the equivalent of shooting yourself in both feet. Those articles are hugely insulting and misleading as all get out. Do some research of your own. Read some farm publications for a while to see where the farmers are coming from. I’d address all the issues but it would take a pretty fat book about history, environmentalism, economics, politics, and farming practices to put it all in perspective. Believe me, farmers just want to farm, make a living, a pass their farm on in good shape to their heirs and you can’t do that if you destroy your land, you just cannot.
Bio-fuel is evil and should be permanently BANNED NOW for two reasons. First of all, ‘someday’, who knows 50 years from now or 200 years from now, fossil fuel will actually start to become more scarce, driving up its price and thus making bio-fuels more and more economically attractive . But bio-fuel allows rich countries to buy food right out of the mouths of starving third world children, (already what the EU is doing to Africa), and feed it to their machines. I consider it genocide.
The other thing is the eco-lunacy factor of cutting down rainforests and planting otherwise unsuitable land – not banning bio-fuel will simply put evermore pressure to destroy such regions. This scenario will simply never get ‘better’, there is only so much land – that’s it!
Next to the E10 placard on gas pumps we should be sticking pictures of a dead orangutans and starving children. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/20478277/#.UofZaazpq40 http://www.oxfam.org/en/grow/pressroom/pressrelease/2012-09-17/europes-thirst-biofuels-spells-hunger-millions-food-prices-shoot-up
If only we had an actual independent thinking leader in the White House with critical reasoning skills who would tell it like it is and lead the world to stop this madness.
S. King was on to something when he wrote Children of the Corn.
But the ethanol era has proven far more damaging to the environment than politicians promised and much worse than the government admits today.
It’s also damaging to many gasoline driven engines but, hey, that’s what it’s all about.
Gary Hladik says:
November 16, 2013 at 12:12 pm
I read it a long time ago, so no. There is a lot on the Net about German use of methanol in rocket fuel & in supercharging aircraft, but I didn’t immediately find details of its application in ground vehicle gasoline engines. However, there’s this about Sweden in the ’80s. Note what stopped this progress:
http://www.varmlandsmetanol.se/Technical%20Methanol%20memo%20.pdf
“In the 1980s the Swedish Nynäs Petroleum corporation was successfully
marketing M15, a blend of 15 per cent methanol and 85 per cent petrol. The
methanol was produced from natural gas, but Nynäs planned to build a big
methanol plant using coal. After some years, however, the projects were halted
by the already ongoing debate about greenhouse gas emissions.”
_Jim says:
November 16, 2013 at 12:12 pm
“re: DirkH says November 16, 2013 at 11:58 am
Looks like con-spiracy talk, Dirk.”
I point you to the official GLOBE website and cite them and you call it conspiracy talk stuff.
The youtube video is of a PolSci PhD, Jacob Nordangard, explaining his thesis.
Next you’ll tell me I made up the trilateral commission, or invented the person of Zbigny Brzezinski whose daughter is on MSNBC. Well I couldn’t even invent that name! Or write it correctly.
I mean what do you expect? That your politicians explain to you that they plan to buy farmer’s votes with a new lavish subsidy program? That’s not how you sell your party’s position to the taxpayers who are gonna pay for it.
MBorch … no point wasting your breath trying to provide real facts about ethanol here. The willingness to accept garbage like presented in this AP hatchet piece without any semblance of critical review is simply astounding. These people will attack AP when they write similarly inaccurate and highly biased climate stories, but accept as fact a similarly biased attack on ethanol.
The saddest part is it doesn’t take that much effort to do a little research and disprove just about every claim in the story. Funnier yet are the comments in this thread – all from ethanol haters – that disprove much of the the story on their own.
Sorry Anthony – you know I’m a strong supporter of WUWT – but this posting, and seemingly strong support of, a highly biased attack piece – by the AP no less – without any effort at critical review of the largely easily disproven claims is, in my opinion, wrong. This story and the repeated attacks on ethanol here, show us doing exactly here, what the warmists do with regards to climate science.
This hit piece on farming is a piece of garbage. Farming in Iowa is not harmful to the environment. What is the real harm caused by the subsidies and mandates for ethanol?
I have read and understood the article. As a commenter, I have provided further items effecting and informing the answer to determine the real harm of ethanol.
1. Lands seized by the Federal Government in 2009 under the Omnibus Act are the lands very likely or at least potentially in play here.
2. Political supporters of the Admin are taking farm subsidies, including Larry Flint and Ted Turner, who holds enormous solar interests in New Mexico as well.
3. Subsidies for the ethanol have ended, but the mandates have not. This means the fines are still in place for not meeting federally mandated ethanol use (+-9 million gallons?).
4. The disaster is indeed environmental in other countries, as farmland is diverted to selling ethanol in the US.
5. Rising food prices are approaching levels reached in 2008. This is in part because of ethanol subsidies according to most analysts.
6. The UN has issued a call for a “paradigm shift” in science to end modern agricultural practices. Look up Dr. Mae Wan Ho. 5 year plans have been signed with the EU and China to bring so-called sustainable farming practices to the US.
I have provided these contributing factors to the discussion of the abuses and mistakes regarding ethanol use. It is by no means exhaustive. I feel that drawing the wrong conclusions about the genuine harm done to the world by ethanol subsidies and mandates should be avoided. Farming in Iowa is safe and reliable and provides the grain for pigs, cows, and chickens, besides many other products. The carpet baggers on federal reserves may be worthy of investigation. But I do not accept the premise that farming in Iowa is an environmental disaster.
Obama, Starving Africans and the Israel Lobby
http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2010/09/26/obama-starving-africans-and-the-israel-lobby/
The way I heard it, a field of corn sucks up co2 like Hannibal Lecter on a plate of fava beans.
So that’s one instance of the AP article exaggerating.
If you have a plume of algae growing in the gulf because of fertilyzer runoff, then it’s not a dead zone. The algae is growing. Something eats the algae. You can harvest the algae just like any crop. Rince off the salt. Dry it up. Then ship it up to Iowa to sell as fertilyzer.
It’s the circle of life. Oom.
The great Law of Unintended Consequences at work again. This the the problem with Greens. They can’t see beyond their sandals.
Also see Indonesia and the rush for palm oil and biofuel. The result was a massive loss of wildlife habitat, a massive release of ozone from the oil palms, a loss of biodiversity due to monoculture etc. Sometimes I wonder whether Greens aren’t in fact fossil fuel funded agents.