WayneS

Ethanol: Amongst America's Most Misguided Public Policies

It allows people who don't care about green or forestry business or petroleum business to make a lot of money. Politicians, in concert with non-productive money makers have been convincing the general public that treating the symptoms rather than the cause is the way to go. Even the media shows billowing water vapor and say this is pollution to make a buck.
The forestry, petroleum and other industries in the US have been doing a lot (for 20-50 years) to reduce pollution, dependence on foreign oil, even reducing the amount of GHG's. They are doing this because it is good business sense. Weyerhaeuser is going to convert formerly waste products into bio-diesel. XOM has reduced GHGs with cogeneration drastically over the last few years.
What do we do? We drive as fast as we can at all times, maximizing foreign crude importation, maximize GHGs and blaming everyone else for pollution.

PS: Isn't a reduction in CO2 counterproductive to tree growth? What if the trees got together and claimed oxygen to be a pollutant? Down Time +2.


On Dec 08 09:59 PM Down Time wrote:

> Does this monkey wrench support or suppress the bio fuels industry?
>
>
> online.wsj.com/article...

Ethanol: Amongst America's Most Misguided Public Policies

Most of the "firestorm" is caused by ambiguity and relative terms. We all say things in a manner that will make us the most money in the end. Some call this "cherry picking."
cellulose wood - wood is made up of mostly cellulose.
Wood tends to make wood alcohol - methanol.
You can make ethanol from discarded marble tombstones. What would this be called?
Everyone is the US is subsidized one way or another, or in multiple ways. Some subsidies are evil? Some are good?
What does biomass mean? Made up of once-living biological plants and animals, etc? That describes petroleum products. That describes diamonds.
What is organic milk? What is non-organic milk?
What is green? In the oil field green means that everyone around someone wearing a green hardhat is responsible to keep this person safe.
For obese people on a diet, substituting lower fat for higher fat doesn't do any good for losing weight without cutting back. It just makes the people with the idea to put the word "Lite" on their packaging money.
The easy way to stop importing foreign crude is to first stop overindulging. Using homegrown ethanol, biodiesel, NG, solar, whatever is a good second step. Of course, people touting these homegrown alternatives don't want us to conserve and drive efficiently because they want to make money from us.
PS: DOWN TIME. I only picked on your comment because I could read it on the screen while writing. I cherry pick. You cherry pick. Everyone cherry picks.

Ethanol: Amongst America's Most Misguided Public Policies

The purpose for ethanol to be added to gasoline is to ensure that mostly CO2 is exhausted. The catalytic converter furthers this effort to produce only CO2 and H2O. If CO2 is produced, then the engine was inefficient in producing energy from the fuel, i.e., lost power and lower fuel mileage. So, more fuel is used to go the same distance producing more GHGs. Oil is a bio-fuel where the energy used to make it and resultant pollution happened a long time ago. Newly-made bio-fuel,ethanol, produces at least twice the pollution as already-made bio-fuel.

Ethanol: Amongst America's Most Misguided Public Policies

Gasoline has been getting cheaper every year for over a century. It is only the taxes that have been going up. Taxes need to continue to rise until we quit wasting gasoline. With cheaper bioethanol, we will keep wasting it until it too is a "crisis."


On Dec 07 05:52 AM Thomas Sørensen wrote:

> Bioethanol technology is getting cheaper every year unlike gasoline,
> it can also be made with waste products. You shouldn't put too much
> into an 2007 article, the technology is advancing a lot each year.
>
>
> www.poet.com/news/show...

Ethanol: Amongst America's Most Misguided Public Policies

Actually, High-Fructose Corn Syrup is used in the majority of foodstuffs. Use of this cheaper product is a large factor in obesity, diabetes and liver diseases. The body only realizes and regulates half of the sugars present in our body, the liver deals with the rest. I buy Dublin, TX Dr Pepper, made with Imperial Purecane Sugar when I pass through. Other than that I avoid all sodas. Diet sodas are worse. I avoid all other products with High-Fructose Corn Syrup. I use to buy gasohol in the 70's. Now the government makes me make the same stupid mistake again. Maybe if we go to E85, corn syrup will be so expensive, foodmakers will go back to using sugarcane and sugar beet products again.


On Dec 07 08:59 AM Rick Krementz wrote:

> Ethanol from some other biomass sources can work. Maybe we can cut
> down on the obesity plague by raising the price of sugar cane ethanol,
> i.e., stop the punitive duties on it from Brazil.

It's Now 'Official': Ethanol Is a Scam

I bought "gasohol" in the seventies on the promise it would free us from foreign oil. In college, we were converting carbon dioxide and hydrogen into methane. It was deemed uneconomical and besides carbon dioxide was crucial to earth's carbon cycle. Without CO2, the earth would go into another ice age.