Guest opinion: Dr. Tim Ball
There are many deadly and disastrous stories associated with the deception that human CO2 is causing global warming. Some are more obscure than others, but no less deadly in the unnecessary damage and destruction they caused. One was the myth of what was called “Arab Spring.” It never occurred, but what happened was a result of ‘green’ policies based on non-existence science. Unintended consequences are the inevitable result of actions and must not be used to inhibit action and progress. However, there is a difference if the objective was based on evidence and provides benefits or was based on concocted evidence and was mostly detrimental.
I was on a radio program recently, when a listener called to ask who was responsible for more deaths than anyone in history. The word responsible is important because probably none of those most people identify, including Hitler, Stalin, and Mao Zedong, ever actually killed anyone themselves. Many people now realize that the list includes people society tend to glorify, such as Alfred Nobel, who was so mortified by the death and destruction of his invention that he created prizes for advancing knowledge, understanding, and peace. Of course, as is the want of some people, that too has been misused and corrupted with increasing frequency. In the week before Al Gore received his inappropriate Peace Prize, a UK court found his documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” guilty of political bias and containing nine significant science errors. It is hard to understand the blindness that leads people to push causes that become tragic, often in their lifetime. Perhaps Alexander Solzhenitsyn explained it best when he wrote,
“To do evil, a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good.”
The radio caller identified the person he considered responsible for a very large number of deaths as Rachel Carson. In the blind belief that DDT caused the cancer that killed her husband, she published a book that became the bible of the environmental movement.
The myth of the impact of DDT was enhanced and supposedly legitimized by a false story about egg shells thinning. Paul Driessen addressed this and other impositions by the developed world on the developing world in what he called EcoImperialism. Some estimate the number of people who died unnecessarily from Malaria to more than 100 million. Several African leaders made a bold decision to save their people by ignoring the ban. Prime Minister Modi of India made a similar bold decision when he pointed out starvation and one-quarter of his population without electricity overrides the slim possibility of global warming based on very poor science. These are just some of the stories emerging as reason and sensible priorities override the eco-bullying of environmentalists.
Another story that requires exposing is the damage, chaos, and death caused by the push for ethanol as an alternative fuel to replace the evil CO2-producing fossil fuels.
The idea was to convert crops to ethanol, and in the US the subsidies went mainly to corn conversion. According to the Agricultural Marketing Resource Center,
In 2000, over 90% of the U.S. corn crop went to feed people and livestock, many in undeveloped countries, with less than 5% used to produce ethanol. In 2013, however, 40% went to produce ethanol, 45% was used to feed livestock, and only 15% was used for food and beverage.
This had a rapid direct effect.
In 2007, the global price of corn doubled as a result of an explosion in ethanol production in the U.S. Because corn is the most common animal feed and has many other uses in the food industry, the price of milk, cheese, eggs, meat, corn-based sweeteners and cereals increased as well. World grain reserves dwindled to less than two months, the lowest level in over 30 years.
The impact was potentially deadly and noted by several commentators in the food production industry. In 2006, Graham Young noted the threat and the immorality,
The biofuel madness is gathering steam, and it’s not good news for the world’s poor and hungry. Putting one man’s dinner into another man’s car hardly seems like a sensible or ethical way of solving any of the world’s problems.
In March of 2008, The Times also issued a warning,
The rush towards biofuels is threatening world food production and the lives of billions of people, the Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser said yesterday. Professor John Beddington put himself at odds with ministers who have committed Britain to large increases in the use of biofuels over the coming decades. In his first important public speech since he was appointed, he described the potential impacts of food shortages as the “elephant in the room” and a problem which rivalled that of climate change.
Beddington was correct. By April of 2008, the President of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, wrote,
The World Bank Group estimates that 33 countries around the world face potential social unrest because of the acute hike in food and energy prices. For these countries, where food comprises from half to three quarters of consumption, there is no margin for survival.
Remember, all this occurred under the Bush and Blair regimes. The San Francisco Chronicle reported in April 2008,
In the pantheon of well-intentioned governmental policies gone awry, massive ethanol biofuel production may go down as one of the biggest blunders in history. An unholy alliance of environmentalists, agribusiness, biofuel corporations and politicians has been touting ethanol as the cure to all our environmental ills, when in fact it may be doing more harm than good. An array of unintended consequences is wreaking havoc on the economy, food production and, perhaps most ironically, the environment.
The reaction was what it always is when the food supply fails, riots and an overthrow of a government. It is one of the two major reasons throughout history why people will override the prevailing sentiment expressed in 2000-year-old graffiti in Pompeii: If we get rid of this bunch of scoundrels, we just get another bunch of scoundrels. CNN reported in April 2008,
Riots from Haiti to Bangladesh to Egypt over the soaring costs of basic foods have brought the issue to a boiling point and catapulted it to the forefront of the world’s attention, the head of an agency focused on global development said Monday.
The UK Telegraph was more specific
Egyptian families are having to get up at dawn each day to queue up for bread rations, as the country struggles to cope with grain shortages that threaten a major political crisis.
Egypt is in the grip of a serious bread crisis brought on by a combination of the rising cost of wheat on world markets and sky-rocketing inflation.
Barack Obama was elected President in 2008 so inherited the fallout from the failed ethanol policy. The problem was he was more committed to it and the false global warming agenda than Bush. For example, he promised a reduction in the rate of sea level rise in June of 2008 and made global warming and climate change central to his political platform.
The origin of the term “Arab Spring” is unclear but it very quickly became attached to President Obama and certainly solved his political dilemma. He took a failed green agenda policy issue and turned it into a political progress that justified his Middle East policies. He also benefitted from the riots because the people overthrew Hosni Mubarak, who stood in the way of his plans to install a Muslim Brotherhood government in Cairo. Meanwhile, the people suffered hardships, starvation, and death, as the military struggle and riots continued.
However, as Aldous Huxley said,
“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”
To their credit, even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were restrained but clear in identifying the problems with ethanol, in Chapter 8 of the 2014 Working Group III: Mitigation of Climate Change Report they wrote,
“Biofuels have direct, fuel‐cycle GHG emissions that are typically 30–90% lower than those for gasoline or diesel fuels. However, since for some biofuels indirect emissions—including from land use change—can lead to greater total emissions than when using petroleum products, policy support needs to be considered on a case by case basis”
In fact, using ethanol produces more CO2 than fossil fuels,
The University of Edinburgh study concludes that ethanol made from corn produces up to 50 percent more greenhouse gases than fossil fuels. And ethanol made from rapeseed produces up to 70 percent more greenhouse gases than fossil fuels. (Rapeseed is also the source from which canola oil is made.) Both corn-based and rapeseed-based ethanol produced high levels of nitrous oxide, twice as much as previously believed, which is 296 times more powerful as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide — a gas naturally “exhaled” by plants and produced in combustion of fossil fuels.
Fortunately, the process and production are collapsing. The real tragedy is none of it mattered because CO2 was not causing global warming or climate change. Unfortunately, no accountability will occur. No punishment or condemnation of those responsible for the damage, destruction, and deaths caused by this deliberate pursuit of a political agenda using falsified science will ensue. Somebody once chastised me for saying that these are tantamount to crimes against humanity. I will continue to repeat that claim as the ethanol, and all the other policies of death and destruction are unmasked.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Come on, events as complex as whatever started in the Arab countries in 2011 have dozens of causes, not one. Surely you know that really.
Next I am wondering what kind of doctor Timmy is and what cave he lives in.
Timmy is posting on the internet yet he seems ignorant of world events that do not fit his agenda. Yes there are some who are obsessed with CAGW. And some of you are obsessed with those that are obsessed.
There are lots of factors affecting food prices. A population in China the size of the US has reached incomes where they can afford what Americans take for granted. Like A/C and more meat. This increases demand for feed crops.
Weather also affects crop yields around the world. Since corn prices were cheaper than dirt, going up could reasonably expected.
Mostly playing with our grand daughter. I did comment but it did look like other posters were doing a good job of calling Nye an idiot.
I have a thing about ‘doctors’ not being idiots. I expect more.
I have great respect for my family doctor. I once asked about a new study. He told be to keep taking the medicine. On my next visit, he told me to stop taking it after he had review the study. Respect does not mean you can question experts.
Clearly Timmy is a BS artist on energy and the environment. How do I know. Because I am an expert.
Whilst talking about unintended consequences, it should be remembered that exports of cheap grain to the third world under-cut local production and put African farmers into absolute poverty. They became dependent on charity and were then seen as scroungers by many. It is probably not a coincidence that since food prices have risen, local farmers can now make a living and generally African economies are blooming.
Efforts to transform economies away from fossil fuels are underway but even proponents admit they are purely symbolic, i.e. the EPA Chief [in testimony to Congress] admits Obama Regulations Have No Measurable Climate Impact: ‘One one-hundredth of a degree!’ EPA Chief McCarthy defends regulations as ‘enormously beneficial’ i.e. Symbolic impact’ [showing US leadership].
Why does the reduction of carbon dioxide result in so little change? The US emissions reduction target is literally lost in “the round off” of the huge and growing global wide CO2 emissions increases by the developing nations which EIA forecasts will continue to grow from year 2020 by more than an additional 3 billion metric tons per year by 2030.
A new peer-reviewed paper by Dr. Bjorn Lomborg published in the Global Policy journal measures the actual impact of all significant climate promises made ahead of the Paris climate summit. Paris climate promises will reduce temperatures by just 0.05°C in 2100 (Press release).
And that’s using the ridiculously high climate sensitivity numbers of the alarmists.
Use a more reasonably sensitivity number and the impact is even less.
It has to be said that a great deal of Egypt’s problem is that it is one of a handful of countries where the persistence of, to a significant extent , unrestrained population growth is causing real problems so that it is very reliant on importing food from other countries. I don’t think anyone is saying any of these issues is reducible to one simple cause, but in the round Dr Ball’s point that using agricultural land to produce fuel not food is a not a great idea. And I still don’t think some of the more abusive comments directed at different contributors adds much, just say you think they are wrong and explain. That is always more interesting.
Most of Egypt’s problem, as with most areas of inadequate food supply, is due to their system of governance.
Chris4692 is most likely correct. Why do so many people seem to think that Central Planning is such an acceptable system? Let the market decide whether, according to the post above says, ethanol production is or is not economically feasible. A 10% blend of gas & ethanol is considerably cheaper than 100% gasoline, given the same octane. The only subsidy left in corn production is crop insurance, and it is a very small item in the cost of production.
Ethanol is economically viable.
“Dr Ball’s point that using agricultural land to produce fuel not food is a not a great idea.”
I am saying Ball is making up sh*t and being abusive while doing it. If you look at the tone of the essay I see no reason to be nice.
If you accuse productive Americans of killing people for profit that is a little different than saying it is ‘not a great idea’.
If you want to see a good example of unintended consequences, take a look a the oil pipeline “protester” camp in North Dakota. If we take them at their word, they were trying to protect the water supply from a potential future oil leak. Yet they left a huge pile of garbage behind, including human waste, cars, generators, and fuel. Now the taxpayers of ND will have to pay to have it cleaned up to prevent a real environmental disaster this spring. The camp is in a dry river bed which often floods in the spring with the melting snow and empties into the Missouri river. This is what happens when good intentions meet the real world and nobody planned ahead.
This is what liberals due.
Not saying conservatives are perfect, but cab’t recall a conservative protest that behaved like this (or burnt down pat of a university, smashed windows,…)
And all those oil tanker rail cars running along rivers.
Plants do not exhale CO2. Animals and people do. Plants “inhale”CO2 and “exhale” oxygen. That’s why we get along so well
Plants do both
You could say that humans “exhale” oxygen as well, since we don’t consume every bit of it in a breath. However, we are certainly not producers of O2, nor do I think plans produce CO2.
Yes they do. Basic biolgy.
Plants photosynthesise in the daytime when there is sunlight, and use the generated carbohydrates as food by respiration, just as we do. Animals just let the plants do the photosynthesis for us.
I vote for putting all cauiliflower, brussel sprouts, and kale into production of ethanol. Nobody eats them anyway.
I like cauliflower. Brussels sprouts I’d vote for, and also kale although I’ve no actual idea what it is (and less desire to find out).
I believe kale is the intermediate step between dirt and cardboard.
I had to ask my wife what it was. Sorry I did.
According to the USDA, if you account for corn everywhere it appears in their food price index it represents 2 cents on a dollar or 2%. If you do the same for labor it represents 38 cents on a dollar or 38%. If corn prices double, their food price index goes up 2%. If the index goes up more than that, then something else is the reason. In 2008 corn prices peaked at a little over $7.00 per bushel, tracking the rising price of oil as it peaked at around $145 per barrel. Agriculture is very energy intensive. Currently the price of corn is at around $3.70 per bushel. In 2014, so much corn was produced that after satisfying all their food and ethanol requirements, farmers had over 12 million bushels left over that they had to store or find a market for. If people are starving because of a lack of corn it’s not because of the american farmer
This article and comments are a perfect example of ‘alternative facts’ and proves it is a valid concept.
Reading the many pro and con arguments for ethanol leaves confused as to whether it has a nett good or bad effect.
Colour (sic – I’m an Aussie) me confused
Ethanol is great in its place, in beer, wine, whisky, brandy etc.
Putting it in my fuel tank is about as good an idea a putting petrol in my wine glass, however!
I have boxes full of 1 / 2 year old carburetors that have been turned to junk, pitted junk that keeps plugging the jets. Tillers, chainsaws, weed sprayers, snow blowers, lawn mowers, weed cutters, etc.. 1948 tractor I have to sandblast the cast iron carburetor every spring, 1974 dump truck I replace the gas system with propane since from the tank to the carburetor everything was pitted and producing rust, relining the fuel tank lasted 2 years.
All that so a corn farmer can live large.
I am thinking you not smart enough to run a chain saw.
Somebody threatened Kit’s subsidy, and now he’s going to take it out on everybody.
The merits of alternate fuels depends on where and when you live.
I used to follow a Aussie web site on gasification. During WWII, farmers around the world ran tractors on home made gasifiers.
I also used to be an advocate of biodiesel. I did not think about it much until I got an old motor home with a diesel engine. I am confused too now. I am not using biodiesel until I am not confused.
In America, many have lost the sense of personal responsibility. Maybe you have to learn about the products you are using.
Ethanol in your fuel reduces polluting emissions. There are other oxygenating agents that will do the same thing, but ethanol is simple, economical and essentially non-toxic. Like everything else, it seems to be that some think if enough is good, then too much is better.
The “Arab Spring” was as much political as environmental. Our leaders decided to cleanse the area of brutal dictators who were suppressing brutal religious and ethnic factions. There was no serious understanding of what was to replace the dictators. So we got rid of Gaddafi, Hussein, and Mubarak and we are trying to get rid of Assad. The results after years of effort is not a “Spring” but massive death and emigration flooding Europe and America with refugees.
There is in military doctrine a thing called the “Principle of the Objective” Objectives should be clear, concise, achievable, and result in a favorable situation. They should be accompanied with the resources to achieve the objective and the authority to use the resources effectively.
We who were engaged in military planning also used to talk about “Vital U.S. Interests” being a necessary condition for the use of military force. Our leaders sometimes substituted political interests.
We can hope the new team does better.
Re: Rachel Carson “Silent Spring”
When I was a child, one of my chores was to go to the hen house and pick
up the eggs. When I brought in a soft shelled egg, my mother would tell me
to scatter a few hands full of cracked sea shells on the chicken yard. The
soft shells would stop.
Mother also accumulated egg shells when were short of seashells. I would
then scatter them instead. The chickens would eat them, recycling the calcium.
It was farm boy’s job to kill any threat to the chickens. At school, they would
brag about killing raptors, mostly hawks.
Carson’s book and the Endangered Species Act called attention to these
beautiful birds and behavior changed. The populations recovered, and
now I get to watch a Bald Eagle fish for breakfast most mornings.
I now gather my eggs at the Public’s Supermarket.
DDT was outlawed. Large bird populations recovered. A fine of $10k per
protected bird killed and pier pressure was actually responsible.
An enormous number of people who are not aware of the facts give
Carson credit for saving the birds but are unaware of the enormous
health problems she caused.
Raptor populations started recovering after the hunting bans went into affect and well before the DDT ban went into affect.
Same thing that saved the polar bears.
I must say, I’d hate to be squashed by a pier…
We now need peer pressure to halt the bird deaths due to renewable energy systems
Scale up biofuels. Based on U.S. crop yield data and Btu content of crops, if 100% (ALL) of the arable land of the U.S. were converted to biofuel production, this would supply no more than 5-10% of the nation’s transportation fuel demand. No matter what the crop(s) – corn, sugar cane, soybeans, and/or switchgrass. This would leave no land for food, feed or fiber.
If all arable U.S. land were used for biofuels, and those crops could somehow spontaneously seed and sprout, self-fertilize, resist pests, self-harvest, sun dry, and burn in place with no human intervention, with 100% capture of their stored energy as useful energy, plants would at most supply half of our transportation fuel demand.
Do you still think biofuels are a good idea? (BTW, any reasonably intelligent high school student armed with the right questions and using basic arithmetic, Excel, and Google could figure this out in a day.)
Based on current production and consumption, ethanol provides approximately 8 percent of the energy content of gasoline motor fuels in the US. This uses approximately 40 percent of the corn, half of which is returned as distillers grain. So about 20 percent of 20 percent of the cropland (= 4 percent of cropland) in the US currently produces 8 percent of half of the nation’s transportation fuel demand (= 4 per cent of transportation fuel).
Your numbers are off by a wide margin.
You conveniently forget that the best lands are already in production. As production increases necessarily lands less well suited for growing corn will have to be switched to corn production.
Mark W: Doesn’t matter. If 40 percent of the corn crop produces 8 percent of the energy in gasoline fuel demand, 100 percent of the corn crop could produce 2.5 X 8 = 20 percent of the gasoline fuel demand. since gasoline is more than half of the motor fuel energy demand, the corn crop alone will produce more than your 5-10 percent and your numbers are shown to be false.
They are off by 10. From Wikipedia: “If the entire arable land area of the USA (470 million acres, or 1.9 million square kilometers) were devoted to biodiesel production from soy, this would just about provide the 160 million tonnes required (assuming an optimistic 98 US gal/acre of biodiesel).”
I don’t trust Wikipedia implicitly, but I have checked this figure and I is about right.
For algae the numbers are:
” The US DOE estimates that if algae fuel replaced all the petroleum fuel in the United States, it would require 15,000 square miles (39,000 square kilometers), which is a few thousand square miles larger than Maryland, or 30% greater than the area of Belgium,[96][97] assuming a yield of 140 tonnes/hectare (15,000 US gal/acre). Given a more realistic yield of 36 tonnes/hectare (3834 US gal/acre) the area required is about 152,000 square kilometers, or roughly equal to that of the state of Georgia or of England and Wales.”
The first figure for production from algae is very optimistic. As pointed out above, currently this is uneconomic.
If i were to grow algae, I wouldn’t do it on land, but rather at sea, making area rather irrelevant.
Doing it for energy still seems nonsensical to me, nature-ready-made fossil energy obviously requiring less capital and work than man-made energy.
But, who knows, maybe some day “algae mining” may turn cheaper than coal mining?
I had occasion to drive through a portion of the Mississippi valley in the summer
of 2015. Parcels of land which I would have believed were too small to be served
by the massive tractors and cultivators I saw were planted with corn.
Soy beans were growing in the stubble of cereal fields.
The American farmer is awesome.
Burning food in our cars is unconscionable.
In 2014, so much corn was produced that after satisfying all their food and ethanol requirements, farmers had over 12 million bushels left over that they had to store or find a market for.
Mods,
The following posting is fake, please delete it as well as the next two that follow it. One of the trolls I’ve recently made look bad is obviously trying to discredit me. Please email me if you need proof I am the real Paul Penrose.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/02/28/biofuel-madness-another-disastrous-impact-of-global-warming-deception/#comment-2438938
“In 2007, the global price of corn doubled as a result of an explosion in ethanol production in the U.S. Because corn is the most common animal feed and has many other uses in the food industry, the price of milk, cheese, eggs, meat, corn-based sweeteners and cereals increased as well. World grain reserves dwindled to less than two months, the lowest level in over 30 years.
The impact was potentially deadly and noted by several commentators in the food production industry.”
Great article by Tim Ball. The biofuels are a destructive policy and even if the subsidies are canceled, the mandates which force buyers to put biofuels in their tanks still exist. We had a big huge talk about that here on WUWT. At the time, the subsidies were going to expire but the fines for not using biofuel additives were still in place. We paid either way.
My latest concern is that supermarkets will be forced to give their distressed bread and expiring food to biofuel programs instead of to food pantries and livestock.
According to the USDA, if you account for corn everywhere it appears in their food price index it represents 2 cents on a dollar or 2%. If you do the same for labor it represents 38 cents on a dollar or 38%. If corn prices double, their food price index goes up 2%. If the index goes up more than that, then something else is the reason. In 2014, so much corn was produced that after satisfying all their food and ethanol requirements, farmers had over 12 million bushels left over that they had to store or find a market for.
Or, put that another way, filling a tank of an average car with biofuel, amounts to as much maize (Africa’s principal food staple) as an African person consumes in an entire year.
Perhaps we need a new Sec of Agriculture. One from the south where they grow rice and cotton. Ha!
Drax and the Carolinas, The destruction of the Amazon rain forest for palm oil for the EU, corn for ethanol, sugar cane for ethanol.
If we used ALL the vegetation cut on the earth for energy, we would meet the energy needs of the USA. No food for anyone on the planet, no energy for anyone not in the US, etc. In other words the math is simple. It will not work.
It’s worse than that. Estonian forests are also being used for biofuel, to meet EU mandates. Also, we have seen Academics hawking the advantages of selling our own forests for biofuel. The EU created the demand and the perverse incentive is to meet it.
That is another reason we need a new USDA structure. Forests have been being destroyed by beetles and burning down. They need to be returned to the states and we need to pressure our state gov’ts not to participate in the wood biofuel false market.
I’m amazed at the total lack of knowledge about this subject. I wish the author had spent just a little time doing some research before writing this article.
Ethanol is cheap to make, and the by-product has value as a protein source in animal feed. How can we know that it is cheap? Ethanol blended fuel is cheaper, given the same octane, than pure gasoline at the pumps. Why is there a renewable fuels mandate? Because ethanol replaced methanol, which turned out to be a disaster when used to oxygenate fuel.
Does ethanol raise prices for food? Possibly, but only marginally, as corn is an animal feed mostly. Why was the price of corn so high for a short time? There is a cycle of corn prices that runs about thirty years. It was high in 1917-20, 1946-48, and 1973-74 – and once again into 2012. The current price of corn is less than half of what it was at that time. We always seem to be able to produce more corn than we need, even with ethanol production. In this cycle, we should not even see the low in cash corn prices for another 7-8 years.
Is there a replacement for oxygenating fuel with ethanol that is not harmful to the air or water? There is obviously no problem producing adequate supplies of corn for both human fool, animal food, and ethanol to oxygenate our fuel.
Excellent!!!
1. If you eat animals or animal products (eg dairy), then this alsi increases food costs!
2. Tell that to tge billions that can’t afford to eat meat regularly.
According to the USDA, if you account for corn everywhere it appears in their food price index it represents 2 cents on a dollar or 2%. If you do the same for labor it represents 38 cents on a dollar or 38%. If corn prices double, their food price index goes up 2%. If the index goes up more than that, then something else is the reason.
So, you think that by restricting corn production to exclusively provide food for humans and animals, corn prices would drop enough that meat prices would be significantly reduced so that “billions” can then afford to eat meat.
By far, most farmers this past year have been producing corn at a loss. How much cheaper do you think it can get?? If we get a high protein by-product after the ethanol is extracted from the corn – a high protein product that is in big demand, what does it really cost us to produce a product that oxygenates our fuel and raises octane so that refining costs are lower?
Food prices are cheap – by any measure. While Central Planning seems advisable in the case of oxygenating our fuel, why don’t we allow the markets to decide how much corn to produce. After all, we have very recent memories of the former USSR and of China’s efforts to “manage” food production.
The people behind these eco-boondoggles are the same ones waging a war on Trump. They also provided the philosophies of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot.
Nonsense!
Reds under the bed? So 1950s
Oh the irony. Putin under the bed, so 50s 😉
Nontheless truth is, West Germany had a law forbidding both communists and nazis, while communists couldn’t make a living in USA and England. So KGB just found another political movement to back, and that had been “die grünen” and all sort of greenpeaces. Who did their best, marching against american imperialism, against nuke, and against mother-earth-goddess-destroying capitalism (well, USSR was even more earth-destroying, but, who cares?). Where communists were strong, like Italy, France, Latin America, greens didn’t prosper, but they began just as communists went down.
Bottom line: tabnumlock is wrong. These people didn’t provided the philosophies of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. They turned green because red was revealed so bloody they couldn’t stand it. But they remained red inside, that’s why they are called “watermelons”. They still dream of some human Eden to be build through dictatorial central planing. It may be a slightly different Eden than that of communists, but the ways and means are still the same.
Since roman times the Arabs were intermediaries between Silk Road and North Africa, and between Silk Road and Europe.
While green vegetation in North Africa only occurred in the widely dispersed oases, the Arabs knew from the long distance trade of the Green Pastures in Europe. Since then, Arabian longing has been embodied in the green flag of the Prophet, in expressions like Arab Spring and Jasmine Revolution.
Whatever the economic situation, Europe will be the green yearning of the Arabs.
All of the above is mired into confusion.
What does an innocent reader learn?
Kermit says corn ethanol s fine, the GAO says cellulosic will not be viable. Some figures on required agricultural land area conflict with others, badly.
Will some white knight please ride through here with a credible summation?
Geoff.
Is there a substitute for ethanol as a fuel oxygenator? A substitute that is not toxic and that will compete in the marketplace?
Consider, when ethanol is blended with regular gasoline, the octane goes up and the cost of the blend with pure regular gasoline goes down. This is not because there is less energy in the blend. It is because the cost of refining is brought down due to the increase in octane when ethanol is blended with the gasoline – along with ethanol being cheap to produce.
Petrochemical guys turn oil into ethanol on a regular basis. Well, they did, until corn ethanol was subsided. And ethanol, pure or in blend with things such that oil (but not only oil), has been considered as fuel for engine all along history of engine, with no break.
If ethanol was a good fuel or fuel additive to gasoline, no subsidies would be necessary. Petrochemical guys would had been doing this of their own.
paqyfelyc – Yes, it’s called methanol. And it was discontinued because it has very serious environmental problems.
And, once again – other than crop insurance, which is a very small part of corn production costs, there are no remaining subsidies.
S**t, I expected more from this group who are so (rightfully) skeptical of CAGW!
Humanity has progressively moved from lower to higher energy sources over time (e.g. dung -> wood -> whale oil).
If humans had discovered the use of biofuels and ‘renewable’ energy BEFORE discovering fossil fuels, would society have moved from the biofuels to fossil fuels for its advantage of higher energy content, regardless of the down sides of its use (as all sources have pros and cons)?
but that’s exactly what human did: turned from biofuel (oats and grass for horses and ox) to fossil fuel (coal for early threshing machines, gasoline for tractors that were not stronger than horses).
Same for grinding mills, that turned away from wind to fossil energy.
“The EISA07 Act under Bush ….”
Under speaker speaker Pelosi. Also read that bill, it was very poorly written. I am not sure why Bush signed it.
“Corn ethanol was more about fuel security than reducing CO2.”
I have an off the wall opinion in the context of 10 years ago that we were sending a message to OPEC. You need out food more than we need your oil.
“To do evil, a human being must first of all believe that what he’s doing is good.”
You mean like leftys throughout history and now their offshoot watermelons?
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/venezuela/article131778819.html
One thing not mentioned in this article is that burning ethanol in cars reduces the fuel mileage by 12% to 15%. So we now burn more fuel for the same distance driven. This alone should raise red flags. A study was done by a chemist in the states a few years ago on the negative effects of using ethanol as a fuel addative. The emissions given off by a vehicle using 10% ethanol were shown to have a number of undesirable compounds. NOX, NO2, acetylene and formaldehyde were measured in the exhaust of these vehicles. The claim that CO2 is lower was found to be insignificant from a vehicle burning straight gasoline. Ethanol is transported separately from gasoline after it is distilled. It is mixed at the truck loading station before it is delivered to the gas stations. This all adds to the CO2 bill for ethanol and it is not as “Green” as the ethanol lobby wants you to believe.The formation of NOX and NO2 is quite noticeable on a warm day where you are going up a hill in traffic. The burning sensation in my nose from the NOX and NO2 is nothing compared to the acid rain that forms from these compounds. We really need to get this folly stopped and out of our fuel.