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.

Wrong.

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.

Have fun explaining how come sugar cane works fine.

Corn is easy: high density material in little kernals. Note they don't try to make ethanol out of the corn STALKS.

They dont with drinkable ethanol either.

The sugar cane conversion in Brazil works because the cane stalks are waste from the sugar extraction;

Wrong. The ethanol comes from the sugar, not the waste.

the raw material is already concentrated in one place.

Its still a grass type crop.

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.

Only in countrys that dont use nukes.

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.

Nope, thats been done so extensively for so long now that the
easiest to find oil has been found and quite a bit of it consumed.

Go figure.

Not possible when you mangle the basics so comprehensively.