Foolish fuel source
To put it simply, turning food into fuel is immoral!
When thousands are dying of starvation, when the poor struggle with rising food prices, when there are other more efficient ways to produce ethanol, when corn sucks up water at an alarming rate, when ... Well, you get the picture!
Let’s find other, more efficient ways to fuel our cars and trucks, and let’s use alternative means of transportation.
No food for fuel; it’s a fuelish way to solve our greed for oil!
John Pipe, Centennial
Big oil is counting on ethanol from corn being seen exactly as Mr. Pipe sees it - a foolish investment - and ethanol production being dropped altogether. However, other countries are looking into converting switch grass & and other biomass (for instance corn stalks, wood waste, etc ) into fuel. It does take more of that waste to produce ethanol, as that waste does not contain as much of the sugars needed to produced ethanol, but it can be done. Check it out here:
http://bioenergy.ornl.gov/papers/misc/switgrs.html
John - what about paying farmers not to grow crops? Or how about feeding cattle and poultry thousands of calories of grain to produce every dozen calories of meat? If maximizing food caloric value is your priority, you should be protesting meat, not ethanol.
Posted by Liam on July 25, 2007 05:11 AMok john your task is to find other ways of producing fule to make our cars and trucks run. and how do you get around town using 'alternative means of transportation.'?
it sure gets old hearing how we are responsible to feed the world and at the same time how mean and bad we are.
here is another idea john go buy a farm, and watch out for your water right as you many not be able to use your well because of a golf course needing the water or a new housing development, and raise corn just for food to feed the thousands and sell it very cheap so all of the poor will be able to afford it. when you do this you will be part of the solution and not just some bleeding heart liberal who wants and wants but never adds to the solution.
If you city people would manage the water you use better wells wouldn't be shut down. Why do you people need to use kentucky blue grass on your golf courses which is a non native grass that needs way more water. Why do you city people water your lawn during the middle of the day or after an quarete an inch of rain.
Posted by Corey on July 25, 2007 06:39 AMBush is "green". OOops! He tried to close NREL, Golden, CO. What's in this guy's PIPE? We need to try a multitude of fuel sources to get ourselves off foreign oil, in particular, oil from the Middle East Plantation. Nuclear power is a good cure. I served in nuclear powered submarines and I do a lot of things in the dark, "glow" isn't one of them.
Posted by 40acresandmymuleandvetbennies on July 25, 2007 07:05 AMWhen too many silos have corn and grains that sit and rot and are never used or sold, using them for fuel is a particularly sane alternative.
Posted by Tom on July 25, 2007 08:37 AMEthanol is just another example of how much influence the farming lobby has in this country. Making fuel from corn is not very efficient. Making fuel from sugar cane is efficient. However, the tariffs are so high on sugar cane at the moment it is economically impossible. These tariffs are at the behest of the farming lobby who wants to protect their corn.
And don't even get me started on hemp, which is probably the most useful plant there is. Reading the comments from another letter, there are still people who think pot causes homosexuality and turns people into zombies. Heck, the government in this state charged a licensed medical marijuana user who uses it to treat his injuries he incurred in the first Gulf War. As long as those attitudes persist, hemp is just another pipe dream.
do you people realize how devastating the environmental damage would be if we had to clear land to grow enough plants to fuel all of the cars and trucks in the US?
Posted by Bobby on July 25, 2007 09:18 AMJust think of all the corn we can grow if we plow under the Denver golf course. The ethanol produced could go to us citizens here in Denver. Making it more affordable to drive. Then all the water increases the water board puts on us could be justified as it goes to grow our fuel.
Posted by on July 25, 2007 10:02 AMI agree with John Pipe, and I agree with many of the things all of you have said.
If all of you will take one step back, and just listen to what you have said you will realize we are duscussing the undoing, downfall, and desintegration of life as we have known it. We are also facing a food crisis, because no one wants to do the work it takes to raise real food, and not gmo corn.
The only answer to this problem is in the price paid to the farmer for real food. That by the way is not inflation causing, when tariffs are in place for all imports not just some. What it does is fund the economy, based on the wealth of food produced to feed this nation. Sooner or later it would bring many parts of our economic system back into balance. It would give us back earned income instead of only debt. Parity Tariffs for all farm products not just some. I do not want subsidies, I want earned income. Just as many of my fellow americans want earned income not the overwhelming debt they have to incure just to live thier lives!!!!!
Farming, by far, is the most spoiled sector in the American economy They get subsidies, tariffs and cheap labor and they still want more. I just read that some farmers in Colorado are paying prisoners $4 a day to pick their crops because they cannot get any illegals to do it. $4 a day. No other industry in America could get away with that except the spoiled farmers.
No more subsidies, no more tariffs and no more cheap labor that would be considered illegal and slave wages in any other sector.
This whole ethanol boondoggle is the result of the farming lobby.
i bet there are many factory workers out there , and many more ex-factory workers, who wish they could be paid for producing nothing just like the farmers who are paid for growing nothing.
Methane. It worked during WW2.
Posted by CB on July 25, 2007 12:29 PMYea, those farmers have it so easy. GMAFB.
However Sean, you are right about one thing: hemp.
Posted by Tbone on July 25, 2007 03:28 PMSean how can you say farmers do nothing when they produce wheat that makes your bread, milk for ice cream, and need I go on. Sean get a life. I grew up on a farm. It was a family farm. I am actually for getting ride of subsides on the farms that make over 300,000 gross. But the subsides keep family and small farms in business. And it is these farmers that keep prices you city weanies pay at the store low, so shut it.
Posted by Corey on July 25, 2007 10:35 PMCorey:
Subsidies for family farms do not keep prices low. Competition does.
If a farm needs subsidies to stay in business, they deserve to go under. I know it's sad to see a small family farm go out of business, but the fact that you can't compete doesn't mean you should be handed free money.