The best ethanol solution I've heard of is algae farms.

Soil grown ethanol will deplete soil, cause erosion and requires large scale use of fertilizer herbicides and insecticides all of which require oil to make.

But farmers see this as their shot at becoming mega rich so they won't be letting this go.

there are many facts that this article ignores to make a sour point.

such as the fact that only flex-fuel cars get worse mileage on ethanol, cars geared for ethanol get better mileage than gas and do it at a lower temperature. most of the energy in gasoline cant be captured do to the burn temperature.

Ethanol can be made from sugar beat here in America and it will have an energy ratio of 5.2 to 1, slightly better than gasoline.

All carbon produced by ethanol was captured from the atmosphere during the growth of the plant making it carbon neutral.

/Science and math are hard
//Stay on the porch
///rock critics aren't expected to be smart.

Usually, I end up wishing that Rolling Stone wasn't printed on glossy paper so I can wipe my ass with it. This was a well thought out explanation of why corn ethanol is just so much bullshiat. I'll even excuse the obligatory Republican bashing.

netizencain 2007-07-30 04:46:24 PM
" I haven't looked at an issue of Rolling Stone in about 17 years, but is this where kids go nowadays for their hard-hitting environmental and economic news?


I agree that Rolling Stone is a useless source for ANYTHING serious but in this case their right, albeit years behind. The truth about Ethanol has been known for a long time but that hasn't stopped the " Biiiiiiiiiiig Oil " haters and clueless conspiracy theorists from gloming onto it. In their unadulterated ignorance, libs and Dems ( mostly ) have decided that ANYTHING is better than crude oil, even food stuff. Nevermind that crude can't be eaten or drank and is good for only one thing. ENERGY......ok, two things....plastics as well....NOT TO MENTION, that even with the prices, crude oil is STILL the cheapest and most plentiful form of energy. Ethanol on the other had not only uses more energy to produce than it's worth, but it also costs more to purchase than regular gasoline. Not to mention, mass ethanol production will indeed drive up the cost of most of the food we eat. Think about these and other unintended consequences the next time some leftist and/or environmentalist comes at you with some polyana, pie-in-the-sky " alternative energy source. "

these people are not only ignorant, they're flat out stupid

Ausubel was one of the main organizers of the first UN World Climate Conference (Geneva, 1979), which substantially elevated the global warming issue on scientific and political agendas. During 1979-1981 he led the Climate Task of the Resources and Environment Program of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, near Vienna, Austria, an East-West think-tank created by the U.S. and Soviet academies of sciences.
He's as green as it gets. And he says the focus on renewable energy is all wrong.

Link

I wonder; how did the human race survive before we used oil and electricity? Once we run out, it will be a economic disaster but we will go back to the old days of sail, candles, small farming hamlets, etc--only with new technology such as solar/wind generators to be used in these small communities for power needs. It will be the end of large urban centers.

Moray: Also why don't we have 100 nuclear power plants sitting in the Nevada test sites?

This.

Any new nuclear power plants should be of the helium cooled pebble bed variety. Inherently, passively safe without tricky control systems subject to failure. Helium doesn't carry radioactivity like water does - if there's a coolant leak, the worst that can happen is the workers in the containment building talk funny then die if they don't get oxygen, then the fuel pebbles have to be reformed since they expanded too much to be useful for generating power. Water cooled reactors are stoopid. Damn that Rickover!!

and That.

PS: Any of you farkers know of other inherently safe reactor designs?

jonasborg: Hemp Sugar-based SUGARCANE ethanol would work better than corn ...

I take no stock in rolling stones oppinion of things that have to do with the rainforest after I saw a full page mcdonalds ad in one of their issues.

netizencain I haven't looked at an issue of Rolling Stone in about 17 years, but is this where kids go nowadays for their hard-hitting environmental and economic news?

Don't forget election "scandals". They are the Loose Change of the 2004 elections.

defects 2007-07-30 08:55:17 PM
" SUGARCANE ethanol would work better than corn ..."
alright....corn or sugarcane, how the hell are we going to produce enough of either or both to satisfy this countries' energy needs EINSTEIN?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

THIS SUBJECT IS WAT TOO IMPORTANT FOR IGNORANCE.....USE YOUR FREAKING HEAD

So instead of writing that corn-based ethanol sux, he writes an an article bashing ethanol as a whole...yeah, I'm sure he didn't get any help from the oil industry on this article. Switchgrass can produce up to 1,000 gallons of fuel per acre as opposed to 400 gallons using corn. Whatever, we just need to get off the Saudi-tit and become self sufficient like Brazil.

nick4753
This is why

YOU DO NOT MAKE YOUR ETHANOL OUT OF CORN

Thank you, I'll be here all week


Can we get an exception for bourbon?

ohohoho, can we stop other environmentalisms while we're at it?

compact fluorescents ARE NOT better than regular bulbs. They're farking TOXIC. Switch to LED bulbs instead, you'll save more money, way more energy, and never have to change a bulb (until you have a nasty earthquake or something) again.

nuclear isn't bad

diesel isn't bad, biodiesel is better, algae based biodiesel is the best

Alyna_jf 2007-07-30 08:51:19 PM
" Until someone makes a reliable car that runs on water, any source of fuel is going to be expensive, and its going to hurt the environment."


I see, so you see no problem using the ONE AND ONLY comodity that humans absolutly need every day for survival to put in your cars tank???

Not only will we die without water to drink, but it's needed for all of the animals and plants on earth, most if which we need to EAT

Water as an energy source?????

Gee....what could possibly go wrong there?

On the other hand, crude oil has only ONE useful purpose.

Hint: you can't eat it, OR drink it but it sure makes planes fly, boats sail, trains run and cars and trucks motor down the highway.

Change just for the sake of change is stupid and in this case, the consequences of the changes being suggested are far worse than the status quo.

We need to think this through, this is too important long term to be stuck on stupid.

Pebble bed reactors have some nice features, but it's way too soon to call them "inherently safe". Remember that the pellets are covered in graphite, and graphite fires have been at the bottom of the worstnooclear disasters. You get some oxygen in your pebble bed reactor, you've got a very bad situation.

We use water as a coolant for a reason.

Dogb: hnlzero: How about concentrating on making solar panels cheap?


Solar panels only convert 10% of the energy hitting them into power, less when they get hot. To fill the current demand for electricity in the US, you would have to carpet an area larger than California plus another area to hold the batteries for power at night.

All the solar panels ever made are a drop in the ocean.

Except for...

Each individual home could solar pannel the roofs, providing enough power for themselves plus some (IT allready happens, look at others who have solar panneled roofs)

The excess energy from the homes in the US could be used to power our commerice and industry, thrus we all would become the power company and commerice and industry would pay us untility.

IF that isnt enough to cover it, we could also solar pannel the business' and industrial areas. Stop thinking "GIANT POWER PLANT" and start thinking "millions of small ones"

I think ethanol will hurt Big Oil more than it will hurt the environment.

NikolaiFarkoff: Milk went from $3.29 to $3.99 almost overnight,

Obvious solution: drink more beer. I don't think it's gone up much.

namatad: ethanol, at BEST is SLIGHTLY net more energy


I said ethanol, not just "corn" ethanol. there are other ethanol options than the ADM-kickback of corn.

you don't read very carefully.

There's 32 billion barrels of oil in tar sand in Utah, in case anyone is looking for some oil. Also there's a bunch under the Gulf of Mexico, so if you happen to fancy some rather cutting edge engineering and working out how to secure an oil rig in several thousand feet of water, there you go. And you can also do stuff with coal. Which would be a lot easier if we weren't burning so much to produce electricity.

atomicmask

What is it about " SOLAR ENERGY IS NOT NOT NOT PRACTICAL OR AFORDABLE " do you not understand?????

People have been trying for 50 years to make it work and yet it isn't now, nor has it EVER BEEN an efficient form of energy.

If all of the smartest people who have tried don't know what you know then I suggest you save the planet by gracing us with your brilliance.

Otherwise please don't just make up stuff as you go along. This debate is too important for juvenile debates

About solar panels, what I don't understand is why every Prius and other hybrid vehicles don't have a thin-sheet solar panel on their roof. Park it outside and it's like finding money in the streets.

Simple: ADM had tons of corn.

They bought the right U.S.Congressmen.
Presto: Legislation to require corn-based ethanol be added to America's gasoline in gigantic amounts.
Result: Billions in profits for ADM.

The United States -- the best Congress money can buy.

Roman Fyseek: Lemme know when I can run my car on protesters. Then, I'll be excited.

QFT. Of course if you could run it on FarkSnark then you'd have yourself quite the inexhaustible supply of fuel. And Drew would be a gazillionaire.

/not sure if it's what ya'd call a "clean" fuel though.

I think we all need one of these:



Can't wait to get mine and strap it onto my car.

From a couple of hundred posts ago:

Milk went from $3.29 to $3.99 almost overnight, and chicken and beef are getting pretty steep, too. It's going to trickle down to the rest of the economy and be a nasty wake-up call.

Wanna help global warming and save money in one fell swoop? Try eating lower on the food chain. The amount of energy wasted by cycling corn and other stuff through animals on the way to carnivores' greasy jowls is insane.

As far as our energy woes go: NOTHING is going to completely take the place of fossil fuels exceptnooclear energy in some form. All other forms of energy are nuclear energy that's either used directly (geothermal; solar and solar derivatives like wind power, wave power, etc.) or stored (fossil fuels, biomass, hydropower.)

Using solar energy as it's produced won't meet but a small fraction of our needs. Plant (biomass)-based fuels aren't much of a solution either, for the reasons given in the article plus the fact that our infrastructure uses energy far faster than whatever plants can absorb from the sun in the same time period.

And, we all know what's happening with the fossil fuel problem. Vast amounts of energy that was stored over millions of years is being used in a matter of decades!

So... the only real option left for our energy-hungry society is to produce our own nuclear energy. Practical nuclear energy has two major sources, fission (not known in nature except for a few places in west Africa) and fusion (the reaction that has powered the stars since the dawn of the Universe.)

Fission: a great source of energy, but we all know the horrible effects of nuclear accidents (an often-irrational fear that has put a moratorium on new construction in the US) and we still don't know what to do with the large quantities of deadly transuranic waste left over after the fuel is spent. The fuel can be reprocessed, but that's extremely dangerous and creates even more waste.

Fusion: potential for limitless energy from seawater with a minimum of pollution, but technologically is still 20-50 years into the future.

My advice to the world, then: Figure out how to make the oil that's left last another 50 years, then pour as much money as feasible into fusion research. We don't need to get to a Mr. Fusion level, but as long as we can use fusion in large-scale plants to produce hydrogen and other energy storage media in large quantities with extremely cheap electricity, we will have beat the energy problem for the foreseeable future.

I'm telling ya, Argon oil has the solution!!!

Link (new window)

wowzer97pooh 2007-07-30 09:17:58 PM
" I think ethanol will hurt Big Oil more than it will hurt the environment. "

First thing, no one should be intereted in what you " think " but rather what you KNOW......which is clearly NOTHING about Ethanol

If Ethanol could completely replace crude ( which it never will btw )

you'd just swap out your ridiculous hatred and paranoia about " BIIIIIIIIG OIL " for " BIIIIIIG FARMER "

In addition EINSTEIN...BIIIG OIL provides more jobs than ANY industry in America. What do you propose to do with all of those people who work oil rigs, refineries, etc if their jobs go away??????????????

You have MUCH to learn and until you think ALL of this through, you should keep your mouth shut

twfeline 2007-07-30 09:24:55 PM
" Simple: ADM had tons of corn.

They bought the right U.S.Congressmen.
Presto: Legislation to require corn-based ethanol be added to America's gasoline in gigantic amounts.
Result: Billions in profits for ADM.

The United States -- the best Congress money can buy. "


SEE, I TOLD YOU PEOPLE SO......

ADM- The NEW evil boogie man that will replaced Exxon Mobil as the paranoid conspiracy theorists best friend.......

These leftists will hate the provider of energy no matter who it is or where it comes from so why spend billions and destroy live trying to change it??

twfeline, you need to give up your car, disconnect your computer and air conditioning and live like a cave man. That is unless you're a total hypocrite.

Vosh
Wouldn't it save gas to let Mexican immigrants push our cars around? Just putting it on the table.

Don't laugh. Something like that was proposed to Congress, though the bill never dropped.

An Energy LA, who was changing jobs so it didn't matter what he did anyway, proposed that we should line the border with treadmills and Mexicans that wanted to come in would run on them producing energy for Americans. When they reached the quota, the treadmill would stop and vault them over the wall, no questions asked.

Two birds, one stone.

/seriously

Sad but true. Also it takes 4 gals of clean water to make 1 gal. of ethanol.
If used in 85% form it creates 22 percent more CO2 gasses because it takes 22 to 28 percent more of it to generate the same energy generated by regular gasoline.

larry00

THANK YOU!

Finally someone who actrually get's this. I feel better now...

E85 is a fantastic fuel for high compression and forced induction engines. It's got about a 105 octane rating and about 4 times the latent heat of vaporization as gasoline (cools your air charge and cylinder temperatures much better) - and although it takes more fuel than gasoline, for an equivalent amount of air it can produce more power. And air is the big bottleneck for internal combustion engines.

As a real world example, on 92 octane gasoline I made 290hp to the wheels. On E85 I make 340 to the wheels.

...and on a more serious note...

The Olduvai Theory:

Link (new window)

amazing_live_seamonkeys

Here's an article on recycling that may interest you:

The Economist: The Truth About Recycling (new window)

"The Technical University of Denmark... found that in 83% of all scenarios that included recycling, it was indeed better for the environment."

"America's Environmental Protection Agency estimates that recycling reduced the country's carbon emissions by 49m tonnes in 2005."

"It conserves natural resources. It also reduces the amount of waste that is buried or burnt, hardly ideal ways to get rid of the stuff."

"Recycling aluminium, for example, can reduce energy consumption by as much as 95%. Savings for other materials are lower but still substantial: about 70% for plastics, 60% for steel, 40% for paper and 30% for glass. Recycling also reduces emissions of pollutants that can cause smog, acid rain and the contamination of waterways."

"[However] most kerbside recycling programmes are not financially self-sustaining. The cost of collecting, transporting and sorting materials generally exceeds the revenues generated by selling the recyclables, and is also greater than the disposal costs."

doodler: They're farking TOXIC

the amount of mercury in a compact buld doesn't pose any toxicity risk. If you dump that amount of mercury into the soil, you wouldn't be able to tell. Granted if someone buried a million such bulbs together you'd have a problem. But normal disposal, isn't a problem.

studebaker hoch 2007-07-30 09:51:29 PM
Electric cars.
OK studebaker hoch, where does the electricity come from? Electricity trees?

What about the batteries? What is the environmental damage caused by the manufacturing?

How about their disposal when they wear out ?

You're not thinking man

I don't understand how so many of you are missing AuCinaoaMie's point: we have a ridiculous farming capacity that is unrivaled in the world and in history. There's a great book called "the Omnivores Dilemma" that traces corn and its impact in American and world culture.

We ARE corn... almost everything we eat is derived from it in some fashion directly or indirectly. However, the amount of corn used for actually eating is tiny. Corn has been used as a building block for the food industry for a very long time. That is probably why they jumped the gun and suggested it as the first ethanol production plant.

We're not starving 3rd world countries by using corn for something else. We make enough to feed the world many times over, whether or not it gets there is a political issue, not a production issue.

The most important thing to take from these changes is this: We can make our own fuel. This is going to be more expensive than getting out of the ground. This is no different from stealing a piece of bread instead of baking it. It has to be done, there is no option. Non-renewable resources work that way.

Of course corn is not the best crop, its just what's currently grown. The process will switch to something more efficient with time. Its a step towards making our own fuel, and its a good step. Efficiency is not a bureaucracy's strong point... you just have to do you best to point it in the right direction with time. Celebrate the first spitting in the eye of Oil conglomerates. Raise your voices about the inefficiencies of corn, and demand subsidies for better crops instead. Corn does not equal ethanol. Ethanol is a great fuel that would serve as a greatlong term supplement as we slowly switch to electricity or whatever is next.

Massive changes need small deliberate steps. Make sure we start those steps now. I think we have.

16.oct.06
Reuters
Aya Takada
IE ISLAND, Japan -- Monster Cane, a new variety of sugarcane, named for its size as much as its vigor, is grown on a test field on the tiny island of Ie in Japan's southernmost prefecture of Okinawa.
The story says that when a powerful typhoon swept through the region last month, knocking down trees and houses, the cane was unharmed.
Researchers at major Japanese beer maker Asahi Breweries Ltd. are hoping that someday farmers across Okinawa will be growing Monster Cane not only for sugar but also to fuel cars, raise cattle and fertilize farmland.
Formally known as "high-biomass sugarcane," Monster Cane is Japan's first variety designed to produce ethanol without sacrificing sugar output. It was jointly developed by Asahi and the National Agricultural Research Center for Kyushu Okinawa Region, an administrative agency.
In a few months, the cane grown on Ie will be harvested to feed a pilot plant run by Asahi Breweries, which aims to test its technology for producing ethanol from cane at a cost of just 30 yen (25 cents) per liter, making it competitive with gasoline.

But it's a big pork giveaway to the corn lobby and the rest of the Agricorporations like Archer Midland Daniels.

Would somebody please think of these megacorporations? We can't just cut off their billions in federal pork dollars simply because ethanol is a scam. Their CEO's will starve!

Oregon stats, ethanol 30 cents cheaper than regular gas. But you lose 30+ percent of your mileage. Kinda sucks to say nothing of the increase of milk cheese and so many other farm product that are using the shortage of corn to jack things up. Want to save gas... deport 12 plus million illegals that burn their share..oh well, nuff said.

modix: I don't understand how so many of you are missing AuCinaoaMie's point: we have a ridiculous farming capacity that is unrivaled in the world and in history. There's a great book called "the Omnivores Dilemma" that traces corn and its impact in American and world culture.

We ARE corn... almost everything we eat is derived from it in some fashion directly or indirectly. However, the amount of corn used for actually eating is tiny. Corn has been used as a building block for the food industry for a very long time. That is probably why they jumped the gun and suggested it as the first ethanol production plant.

We're not starving 3rd world countries by using corn for something else. We make enough to feed the world many times over, whether or not it gets there is a political issue, not a production issue.

The most important thing to take from these changes is this: We can make our own fuel. This is going to be more expensive than getting out of the ground. This is no different from stealing a piece of bread instead of baking it. It has to be done, there is no option. Non-renewable resources work that way.

Of course corn is not the best crop, its just what's currently grown. The process will switch to something more efficient with time. Its a step towards making our own fuel, and its a good step. Efficiency is not a bureaucracy's strong point... you just have to do you best to point it in the right direction with time. Celebrate the first spitting in the eye of Oil conglomerates. Raise your voices about the inefficiencies of corn, and demand subsidies for better crops instead. Corn does not equal ethanol. Ethanol is a great fuel that would serve as a greatlong term supplement as we slowly switch to electricity or whatever is next.

Massive changes need small deliberate steps. Make sure we start those steps now. I think we have.



It would take 100% of all the corn produced in the USA to provide only around 15% of the fuel we need. Ethanol is just not efficient enough. It's already been projected that millions of people around the world will starve if we were to do this.

It's just pork dressed up as a quick solution to our energy crisis. You ever wonder why the biggest advocates of ethanol are the congress critters from the midwest where the stuff is grown?

Cellulosic ethanol would kick ass. Corn ethanol is not a good idea. Market forces dictate that cellulosic ethanol will take over once plants get built and rolling (they are underway presently w/ the largest one either just opened or opening soon in Georgia).

Ethanol has an advantage over other biofuels b/c all of the existing gasoline cars can be converted to run on it for very little cost (couple hundred bucks).

Ethanol gets a bad name b/c of corn. Forget about corn-based ethanol. We *need* cellulosic ethanol b/c everyone in the world isn't going to throw away their gasoline car anytime soon, even if practical and affordable electric cars go on sale tomorrow.

Contrabulous Flabtraption: Mohammad on a f*cking moped, is EVERYTHING bad for the earth?

Just humans and everything they do.

/I am sitting a room with too many things turned on and find this whole thread amusing.
//I don't have children and I more than half-way through life
///I really hope some bacteria on my rotting corpse mutates into the plague that wipes out all of the primates
////I don't really hate monkeys, I just don't want any of them to evolve into us
//Dolphins smile all the time, they're up to something
//I'm feeling kind of biatchy and PMS'y tonight, do you think anyone will notice?

I had made every argument mentioned in this article before. No one is interested in facts, they want simple feel good solutions, they want a bad guy. The reality is always different. We use what we use because it works. That is the only reason. To mandate anything is to invite trouble on a massive scale. All alternative energy sources at present are only good in small applications. No one thinks in terms of the proper scale. Eventually we will probably switch to a hydrogen based energy system, unless something better comes along. If you want to make a switch faster then do not have mandates, that has only retarded inovation in the past.


Just remeber ethanol and all bio-type fuels are at thier core:

FOOD FOR FUEL

That has never and will never make sense.