HeyBub wrote:
aspasia wrote:
Or rather corn ethanol demand was craftily engineered by influential
agribusinessmen in certain "heartland" states, shoveling out their
contributions to our beloved Congress-whores. They did not care what
ripple effects this would create in the Third World, where people are
now starving. Effects even felt in our neighbor to the South, where
the price of corn went through the ceiling, affecting tortillas -- a
standard food, like wheat bread in the States.

There has never been a famine in a democracy.

Nobody bothered to check with knowledgeable scientists as to the state
of ethanol fuel technology . Not that it would have deterred the
cynical profiteers if they *had* run the science. (Incidentally, there
are so many crops that would be far better, with less downside, for
fuel technology, leading off with marijuana's little cousin, hemp. It
grows on any soil, reseeds itself, costs virtually nothing to produce.
Even Brazil, that was using sugar cane waste, is reconsidering the
technology.)

Many do not check with reputable scientists.

Current technology does not favor "grass" type crops, including hemp,
'switch-grass' and others. The problem is the enormous cost of transporting
the raw materials to the processing plant. Corn is easy: high density
material in little kernals. Note they don't try to make ethanol out of the
corn STALKS.

The sugar cane conversion in Brazil works because the cane stalks are waste
from the sugar extraction; the raw material is already concentrated in one
place.

The basic problem is not ethanol, the problem is enviornmentalism. Consider:
most of our electric power and all of our transportation energy derives from
oil and gas. Yet the air is cleaner today than it's ever been - even cleaner
than before electricity (when people burned wood for heating). But we've got
this aversion to oil exploration, production, and refining.

Go figure.



Don't underestimate the NIMBYs. Some private investors wanted to build a
modest wind farm locally. My buddies firm did the design work so I am
familiar with the details. Unlike ethanol and other schemes the company
was not a welfare queen and didn't ask the government to pick everyone's
pocket to fund their idea. The site is in a rural area and the nearest
development was 7 miles away. All of the initial planning was approved
and when the people in the development found out about it they cried "it
will destroy our view of the sunset". Many influential people live there
so they quickly changed zoning requirements etc to block construction.
The interesting part is that if you go through there all you see are
massive "houses" with 5 ton fluffed up trucks in the driveways.