Rod Speed wrote:

There has never been a famine in a democracy.

Wrong.

"Mr. Sen is famous for his assertion that famines do not occur in
democracies. "No famine has ever taken place in the history of the world in
a functioning democracy," he wrote in 'Democracy as Freedom'. " For this
sort of thinking, Amartya Kumar Sen was awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in
Economics.

If you have an alternative to the assertion, please share it with us. Until
then, we'll assume you don't know what you're talking about.


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.

Sugar cane is not a "grass" type crop - Duh!


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.

My mistake. You are correct in this one instance. They could probably do as
well with beets.


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.

There's a new measure of energy: the CMO (Cubic Mile of Oil). Right now, the
earth uses about 3 CMOs worth of energy per year. This is distributed as
follows:

Oil - 1.06 CMOs
Coal - 0.81 CMO
Gas - 0.61 CMO
Biomass (burning wood, ethanol, etc.) - 0.19 CMO
Hydroelectric - 0.17 CMO
Nuclear - 0.15 CMO

As you can see, hydrocarbons account for 2.48 CMOs, Nuclear for a tiny
fraction, probably even less than the use of charcoal.

You'd have to build one 900MW reactor per week for 50 years to generate the
energy contained in one CMO.

http://www.news.com/8301-11128_3-992...tag=ne.fd.mnbc


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.

Heh! Ronald Reagan said that those who say there are no simple solutions
have just not tried hard enough. Do you realize that over 40% of our
offshore potential can't even be explored or tested?


Go figure.

Not possible when you mangle the basics so comprehensively.

Please enlighten us. I spent a number of years working in geophysical
exploration and production* and, while my knowledge is admittedly not up to
date, it is based on some experience.

-------
* Lab years involving the origin and migration of petroleum at the largest
laboratory for the world's largest oil company. Then a number of years for
the nation's largest exploration company.