"Malcom \"Mal\" Reynolds" wrote in news:atlas-bugged-
:

In article ,
Doug Miller wrote:


Won't work in the U.S., though, because the climate here won't support
production of sugar cane on the scale required.

that would probably be news to florida

So you think that Florida is capable of producing sugar cane on the scale
required to supply the motor vehicle fuel needs of the U.S., or even a
significant fraction thereof?

Dream on.

I'll let the post from CRNG address that issue, but there's no reason sugar
cane couldn't be expanded to other areas and I'll bet it would grow nicely
in parts of Mexico...and we do have the ability to use Mexican ethanol

Last I checked, Mexico wasn't part of the US, so whether cane will grow in
Mexico is irrelevant to the question of whether it can be grown in the US.

but we do trade with Mexico. In fact some of that corn that is turned into
ethanol and not tortillas could have been being shipped to Mexico

We weren't talking about growing sugar cane in Mexico. You disagreed with me when I said
that it wouldn't work to try to grow it in the US.



I repeat: the climate in the US is inhospitable to growing sugar cane on the
scale required to produce sufficient ethanol fuel.

why be a piker: the climate in the US is inhospitable to growing many foods on
the scale to support Americans year round

Fortunately for the US, that isn't true. We're able to supply our own needs well enough that
the Federal government pays farmers to *not* grow food...



Then again, there is the sugar beet, sunchoke and hemp for ethanol, all of
which I believe are also energy positive

Certainly much of the arable land in the US is hospitable to growing sugar
beets -- but we were talking about cane, remember?

actually we were talking about ethanol, remember. if not just look at the
subject line

Not correct. You and I were talking about producing ethanol specifically from sugar cane --
starting when I said that it wasn't feasible for the US to do as Brazil is doing, because our
climate won't support sugar cane growth on the necessary scale.