Al Gore Duck as Biofuels Cause Food Shortages
I'm sure I predicted this more than a year ago. Al Gore will go down in history as a laughing stock and and a hypocrite. Meanwhile, the founder of GREENPEACE changes his tune to back Nuke power and even questions the link between industrial emissions and global warming.
This is why you liberal kooks should read this blog. You get the truth here before you'll get it from Sheryl Crow, Laurie David, Rob Reiner and the rest of the liberal elite.
This is why you liberal kooks should read this blog. You get the truth here before you'll get it from Sheryl Crow, Laurie David, Rob Reiner and the rest of the liberal elite.
posted by ironcross11 | 8:40 PM
2 Comments:
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Hello Ironcross,
I read with interest your comments and the link about the cost of food being effected by Biofuel production. And I would like to comment on this for your readers. The idea that biofuel production is causing unusual price hikes in food supplies is simply not true for a number of reasons, of which I will explain. Yes, using food crops to produce biofuels is a really dumb idea. But the effect on food costs is not real reason why.
There are a number of issues that go into play when deciding to produce biofuels for an energy source. Number one, is the NET gain. When the dust settles, have you produced more than you have spent. It’s the same old perpetual motion question. Can you produce motion from only the energy produced with that motion. And…do it indefinitely? And the answer has and always will be NO. Why not? Perhaps the question can best be answered this way. How long can a dog chase it’s own tail? And what does he gain when he finally catches it ..assuming he can even catch it to begin with. That is the dilemma of producing energy from food supplies. And why it is a stupid idea.
If people would do a little research, they would discover that most negative reports about biofuels have been created or funded by oil producing companies to convince the public that biofuels are inefficient and take more energy to produce than is returned. Which is just completely untrue. Maybe in the past it was true, but with new technologies and processes, that is no longer correct. One gallon of vegetable oil can and will produce one gallon of biofuel. But again that is not the problem.
Another key advantage of biofuels is the fact that the revenue stream stays here. There is no money leaving the countries borders to fund some low life middle government dictator that in turn uses it to finance, hide or train some terrorists group to try and blow us up. Not only is the fuel safe, but so is the money. But again that is not the main problem.
So what about the cost and how it effects prices. Well the truth of it is that it takes twice as much energy to create a gallon of gasoline than it does to create a gallon of ethanol. It also takes 8 to 10 times more water to refine gasoline than it does ethanol. And some would argue that does not include the 750+ gallons of water needed to produce enough corn to produce one gallon of ethanol. However, unless rainfall is used, irrigation is primarily produced by gasoline or diesel engines that drive the irrigation pumps.
In short, it takes a whopping 50% increase in corn prices to have less than a 1% effect on food prices. When you have 4 cents of corn in a $3 box of cornflakes, you can’t have much effect on the final price. Claims that ethanol are causing excessive food prices is just more political spinning by oil companies and is simply not true, especially when 80% of the cost of food is determined by the price of oil. And here again, this is not the reason producing biofuels from corn is not a good idea.
And I could go on and on. So what is the answer? The truth of the matter is that we simply do not have enough land to produce the amount of biofuel to feed our unending thirst…and maintain the lifestyle we have become accustomed to. Even if we divert all of our land to grow corn and attempt to live only on the ethanol process, we still would not have enough fuel to continue our quenchless consumption of energy.
Even if we could provide half the demand we would still have to reduce our energy consumption by about 80%. Ethanol and corn oil could provide enough fuel to till, plant, and harvest all the crops we grow, as long as we do not divert any to power a car fleet or military use. Another major impediment in growing more fuel is that we are not able to produce the fertilizer needed to grow the fuel. I mention this because it points out that using that much fertilizer to grow ethanol is going to leave a lot of land that should be producing other foods very short of fertilizer.
In essence, everything would be out of balance and thus sending our entire food supply chain into a chaotic tail spin that simply would destroy us.
There is no one solution. There has to be an integration of a lot of different cross technologies. The global warming questions is bogus. Yes, that is not the real issue. The real issue is that our demand is far out pacing our ability to sustain. It is like compounding interest. If you allow the debt to go unchecked. Before you know it, the interest accumulation will overtake your ability to control it. That is what we are fast approaching with our current energy technologies, unless we step up on research for new energy producing methods.
We are about to work ourselves into a corner. Producing fuel from corn is like trying to sweep dirt into the wind. You might think you are getting rid of the problem, but the wind just scatters it and blows it back. The net effect is a lot of work for almost no gain. Some would call it shifting dollars. We need higher output energy for less input type of technology. Corn simply does not work…at least for now.
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