Didnt the Model T get 25mpg on ethanol?

/could be an urban legend I bit on

I drink your corn-based milkshake.

In other news. Flying, steam-powered cars should be on the market in three years!

A billion people go to bed hungry every night and we burn food crops to move Suburbans.

This is not the alternative energy source you're looking for.

pandabear: A billion people go to bed hungry every night and we burn food crops to move Suburbans.

Pffff.

The amount of corn we make into ethanol is nothing compared to the amount we use to make tasty steaks.

Besides, the fact people go hungry isn't from the lack of existence of food, it's warlords controlling the supply chain.

Knew this already...in 1989

It will only be competitive if the price of oil goes through the roof again.

Meanwhile, down here in Brazil we're making BUSES that use sugarcane ethanol.

impaler: The amount of corn we make into ethanol is nothing compared to the amount we use to make tasty steaks.

Department of agriculture disagrees.



Note that ethanol is nearly as much as feed, and much more than export, trend rising. Also bear in mind that much of the feed category is used to make pork chops and bacon. Don't forget corn sweeteners, either.

Hmm, corn trifecta complete

pandabear: A billion people go to bed hungry every night and we burn food crops to move Suburbans.

Considering people went hungry back when we were only burning dead dinosaurs, I think the problem isn't corn ethanol.

The Icelander: pandabear: A billion people go to bed hungry every night and we burn food crops to move Suburbans.

Considering people went hungry back when we were only burning dead dinosaurs, I think the problem isn't corn ethanol.

The problem may not strictly be corn ethanol, but about 90% of the reason that ethanol has gotten the press and the lobbying that it has can be summed up in three letters: ADM. Those farkers are also the reason your Coca-Cola continues to be sweetened with HFCS. Add that bunch to the sugar lobby that insists on price supports on a crop singularly unsuited to growing in the US, and we've got a whole crapload of corporate welfare that's entirely based on greed, yet couched in "green". It's sickening.

dahmers love zombie: The problem may not strictly be corn ethanol, but about 90% of the reason that ethanol has gotten the press and the lobbying that it has can be summed up in three letters: ADM. Those farkers are also the reason your Coca-Cola continues to be sweetened with HFCS. Add that bunch to the sugar lobby that insists on price supports on a crop singularly unsuited to growing in the US, and we've got a whole crapload of corporate welfare that's entirely based on greed, yet couched in "green". It's sickening.

this.

Oh no... no one made Fark Y2K compliant? The headline's rolled over to 1900.

Steampunk Fark?

It's better, I'd argue, than just paying farmers to leave fields fallow to help reduce surplus/raise prices. The real problem, from my understanding, is that it's not energy-efficient to transport it elsewhere: I'll gladly use ethanol out here in the Midwest, but trying to promote its use nationally is farking dumb.

Mentat: It will only be competitive if the price of oil goes through the roof again.

Except that will send the price of corn through the roof too. Those tractors and trucks don't run on rainbows and the fertilizers and pesticides aren't made with unicorn farts.

If Presidential candidates haunted Idaho instead of Iowa every four years, we'd have potato-powered cars.

The Icelander: I think the problem isn't corn ethanol.

The problem is exacerbated by biofuels. Whether in Latin America because cheap US export corn is a thing of the past due to ethanol, or in Asia where former rice farmers are turning to biodiesel oils, because there is more profit in it.

Burning food when people are hungry is stupid, IMHO.

It is an oft-overlooked fact that corn-based ethanol played a far larger role in American History than, say, the Ten Commandments.

Most of the land West of the Cumberland Gap was settled by roaring drunks.

oldebayer: Most of the land West of the Cumberland Gap was settled by roaring drunks.

They sold their crops in gallon jugs.

dahmers love zombie: The problem may not strictly be corn ethanol, but about 90% of the reason that ethanol has gotten the press and the lobbying that it has can be summed up in three letters: ADM. Those farkers are also the reason your Coca-Cola continues to be sweetened with HFCS. Add that bunch to the sugar lobby that insists on price supports on a crop singularly unsuited to growing in the US, and we've got a whole crapload of corporate welfare that's entirely based on greed, yet couched in "green". It's sickening.

I agree with everything you said. I was responding to the moron who thinks that the reason people are hungry is because we're greedy, stupid Americans.

pandabear: A billion people go to bed hungry every night and we burn food crops to move Suburbans.

Good point, we really need to make more high fructose corn syrup instead.

Ethanol is quite possibly the stupidest thing ever invented by rational people. The ultimate social safety net -- which is a very good idea, by the way -- is cheap food, and ethanol production is destroying this. It was a monstrously stupid idea like I haven't seen before.

-Charlie Munger


Not that I'm a big Charlie Munger fan but I couldn't say it any better than him.

To honestly use the word compete the massive corn and massive ethanol subsidies would have to be lifted. Right now ethanol is just the rich kid on the block with the moped claiming he can ride his bike faster than anyone else.

I was in charge of a sub-contract job for several modules for one of their plants (think giant inter-locking skids). In any case they only go with the absolute lowest bidder to ensure that the job the job is done poorly enough that they can sue for breach of contract (also useful for killing small vermin like terriers and alligators). My company disappointed them by doing everything right within the short time lines (because we lied on the quote to break into the industry, our welders cost more than we said they did). This was about 2 years ago shortly before they changed their name from Broin to Poet and the reason for the switch: people in the industry were starting to contact eachother to deny quoting to their firm in general. We're mostly friends and see each other at construction sites all the time. We sub-contract to each other when times are good and take sub-contracts from each other when times are bad. Their strategy is reliant on us never talking to each other and our construction manager spends most of his day on the phone with his peers... So, when they say "cutting capital costs" they're really talking about using lawsuits to siphon money out of their sub-contractors thereby leaving a wake of industry destruction which forces them to cut jobs.

They're pretty much an embodiment of a cold and uncaring business mentality. They can rot in hell. We've turned down everything they've sent us to quote since despite their "happiness with our past work."

I'll believe when I see it.

/from the window of my flying car


Link (new window)

pandabear: A billion people go to bed hungry every night and we burn food crops to move Suburbans.

This is not the alternative energy source you're looking for.

The price of corn flour went up dramatically because of the government price guarantees for corn used to make fuel. This is causing hardship for the poorest people in Mexico. At the same time we are preventing other countries from selling their sugar crops in the US.

We take a food crop and turn it into fuel and we refuse to use sugar from another country to make the fuel just to guarantee a profit for private businesses. This is not how the free market works. Government meddling is causing people to go hungry. That is evil.

weewoot: To honestly use the word compete the massive corn and massive ethanol subsidies would have to be lifted. Right now ethanol is just the rich kid on the block with the moped claiming he can ride his bike faster than anyone else.

THIS.

In fact, these are the same subsidies the brazilian sugarcane ethanol producers are complaining about, too.

End the Ethanol subsidy.

It was fine when they sell leftover as fuel, it went to hell when governments subsidized it.

Well, to be sure, at least now they're making FlexFuel engines that can actually survive ethanol-based fuel for the life of the car.

farkMcFark: The ultimate social safety net -- which is a very good idea, by the way -- is cheap food, and ethanol production is destroying this.

Last I checked, bread still cost about $1 a loaf generic.

blazemongr: farkMcFark: The ultimate social safety net -- which is a very good idea, by the way -- is cheap food, and ethanol production is destroying this.

Last I checked, bread still cost about $1 a loaf generic.

A days wages in some parts of the world.

I do agree with the point that starvation is induced by man being a dick to his fellow man. We cant distribute food to the right places for the right prices... oddly enough, cheaper fuel would help greatly here.
If you could tank up a jet for a few bucks in farm grown oil then you can export the rest of the crop for less to places that could well use the goods.

Personally I'd still prefer we made fuel out of plants that could be farmed under less ideal conditions, so we could maximize both our fuel output and food production at the same time.

You're still going to get a third less MPG on ethanol then you would on gasoline, and it will dissolve any rubber or aluminum components in your engine.

at 2.35 a gallon I don't think it's going to break even considering the loss of MPG.

blazemongr: farkMcFark: The ultimate social safety net -- which is a very good idea, by the way -- is cheap food, and ethanol production is destroying this.

Last I checked, bread still cost about $1 a loaf generic.


The problem will be in 10 years or so when China and India continue to consume more goods through economic and/or population growth. The price of every food commodity is likely going up and we will need all the arable land we can get our hands on to produce food, not fuel. Corn-based ethanol is a red herring.

The article said they're using celluose-derived ethanol from the cobs, not the corn itself.

Using the edible part of the plant to make fuel is asinine, which seems to be the general consensus here. Eating the edible part and then turning the inedible bit into ethanol is better, but not perfect because ethanol is a shiatty fuel because of its low energy density and the fact that a third of the carbon in the glucose molecule gets farted away by the fermenting microbes.

Dehydration of the polyols to produce alkanes will result in a fuel that's identical to the diesel fuels we use now but isn't made from dinosaurs. It will be compatible with existing engines and distribution infrastructure.

Pity it won't farking work. Stupid unreactive glycerol.

"The most recent information suggests that ethanol, when mixed with gasoline, has higher emissions of VOCs than does gasoline blended with MTBE, and the use of ethanol could increase the release of nitric oxide and other pollutants such as carcinogenic aldehydes into the atmosphere. (new window) A 1999 National Academy of Sciences study found no significant pollution reduction from ethanol's use and instead possible increases in pollutants that cause smog (National Research Council 1999).

Nor is it likely to contribute to energy independence. A critical study of ethanol's energy and environmental effects published in the Encyclopedia of Physical Science and Technology (Pimentel 2002) concluded that conversion of corn and other food/feed crops into ethanol by fermentation is a net energy user."



"[Mark Z. Jacobson, an atmospheric scientist at Stanford University] Jacobson's calculations predicted health effects in response to ozone and carcinogens attributable to an all-gasoline fleet or an all-E85 fleet. He found that E85 use may increase asthma, hospitalizations, and death caused by ozone exposure by about 9 percent in Los Angeles and by 4 percent, on average, across the nation. (new window) The rise in ozone-related problems partially stemmed from larger releases of two ozone precursors--acetaldehyde and formaldehyde--from E85 as compared with gasoline.

Acetaldehyde and formaldehyde are also two of the four major human carcinogens in E85 and gasoline exhaust. E85 use lowered atmospheric concentrations of the other two major carcinogens--1,3-butadiene and benzene--as compared with gasoline use. The results regarding cancer "somewhat cancel each other out," notes Jacobson, "so there's not much difference between E85 and gasoline.

"The bottom line is, you aren't getting an improvement in air quality," Jacobson says. Although the ozone effects suggest that E85 could pose a larger health risk to the public than gasoline, he hesitates to emphasize that result because of the uncertainty inherent in some of his projections. His study appears online and in an upcoming Environmental Science & Technology."

Kraftewrk Orange: I would guess that these emissions can be near-eliminated with an I.C.E. that is engineered specifically to burn ethanol. Here is some interesting viewing on the agriculture and economics of it all from a while back (2006): Link (new window)

Hey, an updated version: Link (new window)

Crosshair: Mentat: It will only be competitive if the price of oil goes through the roof again.

Except that will send the price of corn through the roof too. Those tractors and trucks don't run on rainbows and the fertilizers and pesticides aren't made with unicorn farts.

True, but historically, biofuels are only competitive when oil prices are high. The Saudis destroyed the biofuels industry in the 80's by flooding the market with cheap oil.

Ethanol is pointless. Why use corn, which is expensive to farm, when we can make bio-diesel out of switch grass, flax, or soybeans, all of which are easy to grow in the midwest, exceptionally cheap, and easy to harvest?

Corn producers are assholes. They ruined American food by pushing natural sugar out of every product in lieu of chemical-laden HFCS, and they want to dominate the fuel industry too... Screw them.

Bondith: ethanol is a shiatty fuel because of its low energy density

It's energy density is 75% that of gasoline. Not too shabby really, especially if you compare it to batteries.

OgreMagi: This is not how the free market works. Government meddling is causing people to go hungry. That is evil.

And of course such companies as Archer Daniels Midland are up in arms about this and trying desperately to get big evil government off their backs.

Lets yank those billions of taxpayer dollars of subsidies for this white elephant and see how competitive it really is.

This debacle has been the biggest handout to the corn industry in history. Drive up the price of corn and food at the same time, while putting a fuel in your car/bike/lawnmower/boat that ruins the engine and gives you less mpg. An awesome unadvertised gas price increase.

On the positive side, even though ethanol gas is bad for all engines, because of how disproportionately it harms smaller engines, lawnmower repairmen are making a killing these days.