Author Topic: The Insanity We Call Ethanol  (Read 14006 times)

Waitone

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The Insanity We Call Ethanol
« on: January 19, 2011, 05:47:23 PM »
I oppose ethanol mandates in gasoline as a matter of principle.  Besides that, it is just plain ol' stupid to burn food in a gas tank.

Here is an article that puts facts to stupidity.
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article25621.html

And the money quote:
Quote
This year, the US will harvest approximately 12.5 million bushels of corn. More than 42% will be used to feed livestock in the US, another 40% will be used to produce government mandated ethanol fuel, 2% will be used for food products, and 16% is exported to other countries.

Hey, Republicans!  You want to cut the budget?  Here's a place to start.
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AZRedhawk44

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Re: The Insanity We Call Ethanol
« Reply #1 on: January 19, 2011, 05:51:11 PM »
Quote
More than 42% will be used to feed livestock in the US,

All those cows and pigs do is fart and destroy the ozone, along with cars.  82% of our corn kills mother Erf!

If we weren't such meat-eating babycow and babypig and babychicken murderers we wouldn't need to grow that corn, either. :'(

Won't someone please think of the Erf-animals?
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Headless Thompson Gunner

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Re: The Insanity We Call Ethanol
« Reply #2 on: January 19, 2011, 06:04:45 PM »
Ethanol is welfare for farmers.

Don't expect much movement on ethanol so long as the Iowa caucuses play such a large role in presidential politics.

bedlamite

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Re: The Insanity We Call Ethanol
« Reply #3 on: January 19, 2011, 09:49:37 PM »
I'd like to see something like this work. Until then, I fill up at one of the few places that carries ethanol free fuel. Here's a list of them.
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Tallpine

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Re: The Insanity We Call Ethanol
« Reply #4 on: January 19, 2011, 11:44:00 PM »
I can't figure out the savings in putting 10% ethanol in gas so that you get 20% less gas mileage  ;/
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Monkeyleg

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Re: The Insanity We Call Ethanol
« Reply #5 on: January 19, 2011, 11:55:32 PM »
Quote
I can't figure out the savings in putting 10% ethanol in gas so that you get 20% less gas mileage

It's just like Biden saying we have to spend more money to keep from going bankrupt. Get it?

Brad Johnson

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Re: The Insanity We Call Ethanol
« Reply #6 on: January 20, 2011, 09:33:25 AM »
The corn used for ethanol is not the corn grown for human consumption.  The amount of land dedicated to food corn has not changed.

Brad
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RevDisk

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Re: The Insanity We Call Ethanol
« Reply #7 on: January 20, 2011, 09:35:03 AM »
The corn used for ethanol is not the corn grown for human consumption.  The amount of land dedicated to food corn has not changed.

Brad

Correct.  But that non-consumption corn is using farm land that could be used for something else.  There's no way that it is not influencing the cost of other food.
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Brad Johnson

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Re: The Insanity We Call Ethanol
« Reply #8 on: January 20, 2011, 09:43:29 AM »
Most of the added production of ethanol uses grain that would normally have been exported.  Again, no impact on the amount of grain available for the U.S. market.  Also, land laid fallow through CRP, and which has been brough back into production after the program ended, has been used to make up any shortfall.

Look, folks, the ethanol vs land vs "We're Gonna Die!!!" debate is old, tired, and dead.  The farmers and the commodities market is self-correcting for any potential shortfall.  The debate lives because people have no freakin clue about what's actually involved in grain production and how massive that market actually is.

Brad
It's all about the pancakes, people.
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JonnyB

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Re: The Insanity We Call Ethanol
« Reply #9 on: January 20, 2011, 10:22:05 AM »
I oppose ethanol mandates in gasoline as a matter of principle.  Besides that, it is just plain ol' stupid to burn food in a gas tank.

Here is an article that puts facts to stupidity.
http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article25621.html

And the money quote:
Hey, Republicans!  You want to cut the budget?  Here's a place to start.

Isn't their figure of the corn harvest off by several orders of magnitude? We have something like 90 million cultivated acres of corn in a typical year; last year's yield - in my part of Minnesota - averaged 200 bushels per acre. Doing the basic arithmetic delivers 18 Billion (or 18 thousand million for the Europeans here) bushels of corn.

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makattak

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Re: The Insanity We Call Ethanol
« Reply #10 on: January 20, 2011, 10:26:41 AM »
Most of the added production of ethanol uses grain that would normally have been exported.  Again, no impact on the amount of grain available for the U.S. market.  Also, land laid fallow through CRP, and which has been brough back into production after the program ended, has been used to make up any shortfall.

Look, folks, the ethanol vs land vs "We're Gonna Die!!!" debate is old, tired, and dead.  The farmers and the commodities market is self-correcting for any potential shortfall.  The debate lives because people have no freakin clue about what's actually involved in grain production and how massive that market actually is.

Brad

1) Corn is a fungible resource. "It is normally exported" doesn't mean it has no effect on prices.

2) Ethanol as a whole is stupid whether we use corn or not. We are devoting land for a product that cannot stand on its own- Ethanol is subsidized, mandated, and protected against foreign competition. The US usually does one of those three to help a product. Ethanol gets all three government supports.

3) The size of the market is rather unimportant when you talk about percentages. 40% is huge. That is land that could be used for other purposes. If it were mandated fallow otherwise, then that is yet another example of how the government needs to get out of farming.
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RevDisk

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Re: The Insanity We Call Ethanol
« Reply #11 on: January 20, 2011, 10:30:40 AM »
Most of the added production of ethanol uses grain that would normally have been exported.  Again, no impact on the amount of grain available for the U.S. market.  Also, land laid fallow through CRP, and which has been brough back into production after the program ended, has been used to make up any shortfall.

Look, folks, the ethanol vs land vs "We're Gonna Die!!!" debate is old, tired, and dead.  The farmers and the commodities market is self-correcting for any potential shortfall.  The debate lives because people have no freakin clue about what's actually involved in grain production and how massive that market actually is.

::scratches head::

So you're saying the feds did not mandate that specific and quite large amounts of renewable (ethanol) fuel to be sold within each state, and plenty of states did not make it virtually mandatory in order to comply with said federal rules?   

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roo_ster

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Re: The Insanity We Call Ethanol
« Reply #12 on: January 20, 2011, 10:46:37 AM »
The ethanol subsidy most definitely contributes to the rising cost of food and other commodities be influencing the demand curve for corn and moving the price higher in the PvsD curve.  Pretty basic.

1. Displacement of other crops.
Before the (relatively) recent switchover from MTBE to ethanol as an oxygenator mandated by fed.gov, I recall driving through south/gulf coast Texas with cotton fields as far as the eye could see.  No more.  Now it is "Corn, corn, corn...nothing but corn!" (to quote Secondhand Lions).  Corn also requires more water & fertilizer.  Corn has displaced cotton driving down the acreage devoted to cotton and driving up cotton's price.  I'll bet dollars to donuts this occurs with food crops, too.

Heck, they've even planted corn around DFW.  In-freaking-sanity in a market without subsidy & mandates.

Cotton is just one example of corn displacing other crops that are more suited to the land.  Growing corn on corn-unfriendly land requires greater inputs, but with subsidies and mandates, it makes sense for some landowners.

2. Increased fuel costs due to the ethanol requirement.
Ethanol is 10% of the fuel content at the gas pump, but provides less than 10% of the energy of the total volume.  It costs more to make ethanol and it costs much more to ship it to a gas station.

3. Ethanol subsidies & mandates drive up the price of corn and makes livestock products (meat, milk, etc.) rise in price. 
This is very easy to see in the grocery store, but not the usual inflation stats, because inflation stats do not include fuel & food for some insane reason.  A new computer I can live without.  Food & transport, not so much.
Regards,

roo_ster

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Headless Thompson Gunner

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Re: The Insanity We Call Ethanol
« Reply #13 on: January 20, 2011, 11:08:32 AM »
The corn used for ethanol is not the corn grown for human consumption.  The amount of land dedicated to food corn has not changed.

Brad
That's pretty misleading.  It's true that field corn isn't the type of corn we eat when we normally think of corn, but that doesn't mean that field corn is irrelevant in feeding people.  

The biggest use of field corn is livestock feed, which eventually feeds people.  If you ever eat meat or dairy products then you're in competition with ethanol for your food.  

There are also plenty of direct human uses for field corn, such as cornmeal, cereals, corn syrup, starch, and so on.
« Last Edit: January 20, 2011, 11:23:06 AM by Headless Thompson Gunner »

AJ Dual

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Re: The Insanity We Call Ethanol
« Reply #14 on: January 20, 2011, 11:19:09 AM »
This is also why you're seeing all the "throwback" cane sugar sodas. Ethanol production is raising prices on HFCS.

And of course, even if you concede to EVERY counter-claim by the farm/agribiz side of the debate, ethanol is still CRAP fuel for cars, and isn't even a 1:1 break-even net energy gain when you factor in refining, waste-water, and transport.

It needs to be killed.

And the whole rural ma & pa Kettle/farmer/middle-Americana aspects that get tied into the whole debate just help further the sham along.
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HankB

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Re: The Insanity We Call Ethanol
« Reply #15 on: January 20, 2011, 01:10:04 PM »
Ethanol is welfare for farmers ethanol producers.
FIFY.

When MN mandated gasoline be diluted with ethanol, investigators decided to look into whether or not legislators who pushed for the ban had gotten campaign contributions from Archer-Daniels Midland, one of the LARGEST producers of ethanol at that time.

The correlation between "mandate ethanol" legislators and ADM political contributions was nearly perfect . . .
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Headless Thompson Gunner

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Re: The Insanity We Call Ethanol
« Reply #16 on: January 20, 2011, 01:20:44 PM »
You can't leave the farmers out of this dynamic.  They bear a major share of the responsibility for the political disaster that is ethanol.  Farm politics is at the heart of it, and it's not just ADM and the other ag companies.

Northwoods

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Re: The Insanity We Call Ethanol
« Reply #17 on: January 21, 2011, 12:00:13 AM »
I'd like to see something like this work. Until then, I fill up at one of the few places that carries ethanol free fuel. Here's a list of them.

Heh.  Looked up gas stations in WA.  No wonder I'd noticed better gas milage in both my truck and my wife's Camry when I'd fill up at one particular station.
Formerly sumpnz

RoadKingLarry

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Re: The Insanity We Call Ethanol
« Reply #18 on: January 21, 2011, 01:51:59 AM »
The ethanol issue causes a number of consequences not directly visible.
The farmer wants to get the most $$ possible for his work. For a while now "nothing but corn" has been the most profitable. Not rotating crops require higher inputs of fertilizers, higher use of herbicides and pesticides due to both weeds and bugs developing resistance to common chemicals.
The mess is unsubstainable in the long run. How much of a problem it creates before it falls part remains to be seen.
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Re: The Insanity We Call Ethanol
« Reply #19 on: January 21, 2011, 02:25:41 AM »
The we don't eat field corn argument doesn't work. When gas and diesel went to $4 a gallon farmers had higher fuel costs to produce grain obviously. This means higher feed prices, higher meat prices, higher cost to ship meat,, all leading to higher food cost. Then the farmers make it worse by scrambling to put every acre of land into production for ethanol. Thereby holding the price of feed corn higher than it could be. It's the next bubble. Farmers bought way too much equipment to meet the ethanol rush. They have to keep us tied to it now or massive financial aid is going to be needed.
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Monkeyleg

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Re: The Insanity We Call Ethanol
« Reply #20 on: January 21, 2011, 10:41:08 AM »
I think we need Sally Fields' input.

roo_ster

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Re: The Insanity We Call Ethanol
« Reply #21 on: January 21, 2011, 11:05:24 AM »
I think we need Sally Fields' input.

Only after she's drowned in the river.
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TommyGunn

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Re: The Insanity We Call Ethanol
« Reply #22 on: January 21, 2011, 11:37:05 AM »
Only after she's drowned in the river.
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RoadKingLarry

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Re: The Insanity We Call Ethanol
« Reply #23 on: January 21, 2011, 08:05:34 PM »
----after she's flown over it in her nun costume .... [tinfoil]

She was hot! :P
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what happened in Russia when all the crops were diverted? ???







oh yeah. :-X