corn Ethanol is a bad solution

[actsnoblemartin]

its causing the prices to shoot up, its hurting americans, its not the solution to our problems

[manu1959]

it takes more energy to make ethanol than it does to just use gasoline....

[hjmick]

Have you guys been watching Glenn Beck again?

[manu1959]

Have you guys been watching Glenn Beck again?

nah just making shit up like most of the rest of the loons here.....:poke:

[hjmick]

nah just making shit up like most of the rest of the loons here.....:poke:

That's funny because Beck hit this topic tonight on his show. He started with the price of wheat, it has risen 50% since January 1st. One reason is, fewer farmers are growing wheat, instead they have turned to growing corn. With the subsidies, the corn ethanol market, and the need for feed for livestaock, they are bound to sell their crops to someone.

He then went on to point out that it takes slightly more than nine gallons of gasoline to make one gallon of corn ethanol.

[actsnoblemartin]

how did you know :cheers2:


Have you guys been watching Glenn Beck again?

[diuretic]

Someone mention corn liquor? :cheers2:

[manu1959]

That's funny because Beck hit this topic tonight on his show. He started with the price of wheat, it has risen 50% since January 1st. One reason is, fewer farmers are growing wheat, instead they have turned to growing corn. With the subsidies, the corn ethanol market, and the need for feed for livestaock, they are bound to sell their crops to someone.

He then went on to point out that it takes slightly more than nine gallons of gasoline to make one gallon of corn ethanol.

i was having this same discussion at lunch with a tree hugger.....

[Mr. P]

Someone mention corn liquor? :cheers2:

Wanna really GOOD Southern recipe?

Wait I can't, that's stuff is ILLEGAL. Damn!

[JohnDoe]

I have heard some people discuss how important it was to stimulate our own economy by keeping our "green fuel" efforts on the mainland, in the usa.

that using corn ethanol would add a kazillion jobs to the plains region and some other areas too, with all the new ethanol plants showing up on every corner and crossroad...mostly all usa citizen jobs!

Ethanol made from sugar is a proven winner by Brazil....it is ashame that we did not go that route....but then we would have had to open sugar imports from Cuba, and that was just a no no, to the florida sugar growers, and our politicians from what i have read about it.

I even think that Congress added some import tax on corn from other countries or tarrif of some sort restricting imports or something like that....(of course in the name of keeping the jobs and money here that was subsidizing it, our tax monies so in all honesty, that has to be considered in to the equation imo) and this is why corn has skyrocketed in the usa, once ours all started to go towards ethanol!

Anyway...three cheers for the supposed free market! :eek:

jd

[diuretic]

Wanna really GOOD Southern recipe?

Wait I can't, that's stuff is ILLEGAL. Damn!

lol - can you imagine my consternation when I stopped for the night in a small town in Kentucky that was in a dry county!!! I was horrified! I had to make a liquor run across the county line, on my way back I was looking out for the Sheriff, I had a car trunk full of liquor from one of the six or seven liquor stores that were lined up, one alongside each other, over the county line.

And wouldn't ya know it, I went in for breakfast in the motel dining room the next morning and guess who's sitting at the next table having breakfast...yep, none other than the Sheriff himself. I felt guilty all the way through breakfast.

Sadly I understand the poor man was killed in a vehicle accident a few years later.

Okay, I'm rambling.

[PostmodernProphet]

He then went on to point out that it takes slightly more than nine gallons of gasoline to make one gallon of corn ethanol.

got that data from the oil industry, I expect......simple truth is this.....since you can operate farm machinery with biodiesel, it is also possible to make a gallon of corn ethanol without using ANY gasoline....

and, if there was even a shred of truth to his claim there wouldn't be any ethanol refineries, because the government subsidy isn't big enough to offset the losses that would be incurred by spending nine times $3 to produce one gallon that sells for less.......

if you are interested in a more scientific look at what it costs to produce ethanol, you might review this....

http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:lPqqYWVXV8UJ:www.ethanol-gec.org/information/briefing/16.pdf+cost+of+producing+ethanol&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=2&gl=us

[PostmodernProphet]

Ethanol made from sugar is a proven winner by Brazil....it is ashame that we did not go that route....

?????....the whole point of ethanol production is to use what you have in surplus......Brazil had surplus sugar, we have surplus corn.....

[PostmodernProphet]

its causing the prices to shoot up

your food prices have gone up because it costs twice as much in fuel costs to transport that gallon of milk to your grocery store or fly those grapes from Argentina to your grocery store.....not because of ethanol production....

corn is going to be a factor in things sweetened by corn syrup (sodas, which contain approximately 2 cents worth of corn sweetener and may double to 4 cents)....or things made from corn meal...(corn flakes, which contain approximately 13 cents worth of corn meal per box)....or corn oil (which contains approximately 21 cents worth of corn per liter)....

as you can see, doubling the price of corn isn't going to have that big an impact on those items.....

the other area that claim is made is in animal products....the argument goes that it is affecting feed stocks.....the fact however, is that the byproduct of ethanol (brewer's mash) is just as effective a cattle feed as the corn that is fed into the ethanol plant.....thus, it should have no impact on the cattle feed industry at all......

[remie]

All the farmers switching to corn is going to be a problem for everyone. The oats we feed our horses went up 30% last year. Wheat is through the roof. How is everyone going to like it when your cheerios cost $8 per box. Ethanol made from corn is a solution, but a bad one.

[Nukeman]

lol - can you imagine my consternation when I stopped for the night in a small town in Kentucky that was in a dry county!!! I was horrified! I had to make a liquor run across the county line, on my way back I was looking out for the Sheriff, I had a car trunk full of liquor from one of the six or seven liquor stores that were lined up, one alongside each other, over the county line.

And wouldn't ya know it, I went in for breakfast in the motel dining room the next morning and guess who's sitting at the next table having breakfast...yep, none other than the Sheriff himself. I felt guilty all the way through breakfast.

Sadly I understand the poor man was killed in a vehicle accident a few years later.

Okay, I'm rambling.I know this is off topic but I wanted to point out to you that it is ONLY illegal to SELL in a dry county it is not illegal to CONSUME or MANUFACTURE in said county.... So you wouldn't have been arrested for having a "trunk full" of liquor... Just a little information for yaa for the future....
:cheers2:

[PostmodernProphet]

How is everyone going to like it when your cheerios cost $8 per box

?????....good lord, this is ridiculous......do you know what the farmer's share of a box of Cheerios actually is?.......there is about ten cents worth of grain in a box of Cheerios......why would a box of Cheerios go up to $8?.....if wheat quadrupled in price it would go up 40 cents.......

[Classact]

Someone mention corn liquor? :cheers2:I've considered making my own ethanol and found several plans for home ethanol production... here is one http://www.mikebrownsolutions.com/aenergy.htm#junkyard I saw one plan that is a vertical copper tube system that would fit in the space of a closet and can be built from common copper tubing for about $450.00. Most states offer licenses for home production if anyone is interested.

I used to make home brew beer and the process for making ethanol isn't that much harder than beer.

The most energy is used cooking the mash and maintaining a constant temperature for the still.

The reason ethanol can be produced from sugar cane less expensive than corn is because the cane residue can be used to fire a steam boiler that supplies the necessary cooking and temperature control and the excess burning of cane residue can be used to power steam electric turbines.

Corn, on the other hand has no residue to burn, the byproduct is a animal food product that has very little value. Corn devastates the land using much nitrogen, phosphorus and potash fertilizer... especially nitrogen because the plant is large. If natural gas were $2.00 verses $8.50 corn ethanol would be very good alternative to oil since the cooking and temp control would be inexpensive, likewise the fertilizer would be much less expensive if produced by cheap Natural Gas. If corn is produced on the same land year after year man made fertilizer will turn the land into almost concrete hard unusable land. Usually farmers plant corn after plowing under a legume that produces it's own nitrogen reducing the requirements to buy additional nitrogen. These crop rotations allow the land to recover from the corn depleting the soil... It is usually a trend of corn followed by legume planted together with winter wheat. The winter wheat is harvested and the legume hay is then harvested in the fall and the next two to three years to allow the land to recover from the corns depleting of the soil.

I think a grass or sugar type crop would be more economical crop than corn since the residue could be burned for steam to make economic production.

[JohnDoe]

?????....the whole point of ethanol production is to use what you have in surplus......Brazil had surplus sugar, we have surplus corn........ummmmm....so WE THOUGHT we had excess/surplus corn, but if that were REALLY true then we wouldn't have a run on it and we wouldn't have to pay more for it at the grocery store, or for our cow feed/ultimately our beef and milk products...the ethanol mandate would just be allowing farmers to not throw out their "surplus" of corn, no?

Here is a little information about Brazil, and Ethanol and using sugar bu products, the waste of the cane, to produce a much higher level of efficiency, ethanol....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_Brazil

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2002339093_brazilfuel17.html

Maybe it should be the corn WASTE like the stalks that produces the ethanol instead of the corn itself or produces the energy to make the ethanol instead of using oil, giving us an abundance of corn for us and for animal feed? (maybe it is corn waste already???? lol)

I admit i don't know enough about it but it seems that we can do better than what we are doing and proposing with ethanol made from corn.

And on another NOTE:

my main focus on the post you quoted was suppose to be about the "free market" and how it REALLY is NOT free....how much our gvt really manipulates it in one way or another, in almost every single business out there in America with regulation and a few "chosen businesses/industries" with subsidies, that don't really allow the free market to "work" on its own.

And i am not saying that there is not some good intentions behind it, just that i am becoming more and more awakened to the possibility that we may be moving more towards fascism than i had thought....with our gvt in cahoots with preferred businesses and industries and making it "all good" for them, as long as they stick within the rules our gvt puts on them, so a partnership of sorts, a wink and a nod, between our gvt and big business...oooops, that went in to a little rambling and "thinking out loud"....sorry! :)

We don't operate in a free market.

If we did, then if subsidies NEEDED to be given out to stimulate the direction towards ethanol or any invention or industry that would reduce the use of oil, then the subsidies should have been left open...for whoever could create a green method of fuel consumption that reduced the use of oil energy dramatically.... and if it were sugar ethanol over corn ethanol, or hydrogen fuel cells or biofuel vehicles or WHAT EVER! Then the "market" would be competing with eachother FREELY, and let the best man win!!! or a couple of best men/ women win!!! There could be a couple of ingenius ideas that could save our fossil oil consumption drastically that emerge!

But having our gvt choosing the source, and a fairly inefficient source of reducing our oil consumption for us, the competition ceases...the ingenuity stiffled, and things like corn and wheat and their biproducts, get too expensive in our own daily lives imo.

jd

[diuretic]

I know this is off topic but I wanted to point out to you that it is ONLY illegal to SELL in a dry county it is not illegal to CONSUME or MANUFACTURE in said county.... So you wouldn't have been arrested for having a "trunk full" of liquor... Just a little information for yaa for the future....
:cheers2:

I feel better :D I can feel the guilt sliding off me now - thank you for that information :salute:

[PostmodernProphet]

..ummmmm....so WE THOUGHT we had excess/surplus corn

dude, we were using taxpayer money to pay farmers not to sell it because there was too much of it.....the money we have saved in farm subsidies alone is worth it.......


then the subsidies should have been left open...for whoever could create a green method of fuel consumption that reduced the use of oil energy dramatically....

???....they are......

[JohnDoe]

dude, we were using taxpayer money to pay farmers not to sell it because there was too much of it.....the money we have saved in farm subsidies alone is worth it.......



???....they are......
FIRST and foremost: I am a FEMALE, not a DUDE! :)

if we were paying them not to grow it, and now they are growing it, why have prices for corn and corn products or corn feed gone up in price?


Them growing the extra stuff should have compensated, should have still been excess over what humans consume or used previous to the increase in ethanol uses...? Why is it more profitable to grow corn now than wheat? prices should not have changed if we really had an excess of corn, and if we really did have it and do have it, then we are being ripped off...majorly.

yes, the subsidies for green fuel via corn ethanol, are restrictive.

jd