Ethanol a great idea...

I was having a discussion with some coworkers awhile ago and oil dependency came up.

Their solution: E85.....

I was confused and tried to explain why Ethanol isn't going to solve any problems, it's not even a good idea. I told them it was just going to make food prices go up. Just like I told them: www.cnn.com...

While it's not due entirely to Ethanol, it's not helping.

Ethanol isn't going to solve any problems, it's not even a good idea. I told them it was just going to make food prices go up. Just like I told them: www.cnn.com...

reply to post by Sovereign797

Hi Sovereign,
You're right, of course, but the belief in Ethanol as a solution is like the belief that liberalism will solve the world's problems. It's like a religion and and you aren't going to change people's religious beliefs easily!

Making ethanol using food sources is so foolish. It is sad that lobbyists have pushed for the use of corn (a food we all eat) just so farmers can continue to sell it. I bet the price of tortillas has skyrocketed down in South America/Mexico! Anyways, we could make ethanol with *ANYTHING* that was once alive. Why not just use cut grass? Or grass from prairie fields.

It is never wise to make something using something we already have a use for.

Food should not be a fuel

That also makes me think that water is a bad fuel as well. We all need water, including plants and animals too. Does water as a fuel require lots of processing, just like making it drinkable does?

We need to use compressed air or waste as a fuel...

I agree that we shouldn't be using food crops to make it. But honestly, I really don't see any benefit to using it. My co-worker's brother bought a brand new flex-fuel truck, and he's run straight gas, and E85. While the E85 is about a dollar per gallon cheaper, the mileage is much worse. He says that it's costing him about the same to run E85 as it does to run gasoline.

You're right about tortillas, there was a video clip on cnn also talking about the price of tortillas in mexico being way up.

I've also heard that with E85 vs. straight gas, it might be cheaper, but it's less efficient as well.

Duct tape for the problem.

www.carlyle.com...

Linda Moulton-Howe was discussing this last night on C2C... the Carlyle Group connection.

www.time.com...

The U.S. quintupled its production of ethanol--ethyl alcohol, a fuel distilled from plant matter--in the past decade, and Washington has just mandated another fivefold increase in renewable fuels over the next decade. Europe has similarly aggressive biofuel mandates and subsidies, and Brazil's filling stations no longer even offer plain gasoline. Worldwide investment in biofuels rose from $5 billion in 1995 to $38 billion in 2005 and is expected to top $100 billion by 2010, thanks to investors like Richard Branson and George Soros, GE and BP, Ford and Shell, Cargill and the Carlyle Group. Renewable fuels has become one of those motherhood-and-apple-pie catchphrases, as unobjectionable as the troops or the middle class.

You can read more on the above url about the deforestation and catastrophic environmental effects. Following the money trail helps to make more "sense" of it all. Sorta like they're killing two birds with one stone.

Originally posted by plumranch

Ethanol isn't going to solve any problems, it's not even a good idea. I told them it was just going to make food prices go up. Just like I told them: www.cnn.com...

reply to post by Sovereign797

 

Hi Sovereign,
You're right, of course, but the belief in Ethanol as a solution is like the belief that liberalism will solve the world's problems. It's like a religion and and you aren't going to change people's religious beliefs easily!

You mean social progression/socialism, because liberalism is being open minded...libertarians are the true "liberals", what we call "liberals" in America are really just anti-conservatives/socialists. Milton Friedman discusses this in great detail in one of his books "Freedom and Capitalism"

reply to post by yellowcard


Hi YC, And thanks for that clarification.
I refer to the those who take, for instance, Al Gore's theories about global warming as absolute fact. Today my city is digging out from a 20" major snowfall nearly unheard of so late in the year. "Liberals" are the only ones here that still believe in GW! So I'm using "liberals" loosely.

I predict that ethanol as fuel and E85 will be around another couple years then will fade away.

I have a link from a K-12 school program that shows a few energy conversions, ethonal being one of them. I think this link is from Wisconsin educational site.

It shows the btu equivilents for different fuel mixtures using ethanol, it also has some interesting information showing a lot of other energy conversion info. . For instance, remember to big stink raised about bad coal, (High sulpher) an good coal (Low sulpher), the percentage of difference between the two on average is really not that big. I was actually surprised. However science should never take precident over the political correctness of enviro-fanaticism. So we no longer mine and produce domestic "High Sulphur Content" coal, but now import vast amounts of foriegn coal to compensate for our "Unnecessarily Large Carbon Footprint". What a bunch of BS!

We are experiencing the "good intentions" of liberal policy makers and powerful agri-business lobbiest. For those of us who actually listened to lectures in Econ 110 and Econ 120, these are called "un-intended consequences". It all sounds so good when Congress is having hearings of panels of "experts" and it all comes crashing down when their good intentions actually become law. Policy makers and legislators should stay out of economics and markets, they screw them up every time. Subsidies are corporate welfare and worse than that skew markets and promote protectionism, but I think may be speaking to some folks who's good intentions are going to turn us into another 3rd world country. But I digress!


www.uwsp.edu...

[edit on 26-4-2008 by sharkman]

[edit on 26-4-2008 by sharkman]

[edit on 26-4-2008 by sharkman]

[edit on 27-4-2008 by sharkman]

[edit on 27-4-2008 by sharkman]

Originally posted by plumranch
You're right, of course, but the belief in Ethanol as a solution is like the belief that liberalism will solve the world's problems.

I gotta be honest, I'm not seeing the correlation. Is this just a way to bring bi-partisan politics into a thread? What's the point of that?

Heres the basic "smell test" for any "new technology" or 'breakthrough".

Does it need subsidies?
If yes, it aint.

I gotta be honest, I'm not seeing the correlation. Is this just a way to bring bi-partisan politics into a thread? What's the point of that?

reply to post by Sublime620

Hi Sub,
The belief that alcohol as fuel is a solution to XY or Z (problem with the environment) is based on bad science. You produce more CO2 producing and burning ethanol than you do burning oil. For some reason people think ethanol is the solution in spite of the evidence against it.

Unfortunately, liberals use the same sort of faulty reasoning for solving the problems of the world. It took me the first 35 or so years of my life to discover this so my advise is to be hang in there. You'll figure it out eventually.