tagged w/ Ethanol
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Humans are consuming more oil, more food ... more of everything than ever before. And as modern societies become more dependent on the resources they exploit, we're beginning to see signs that we may be pushing the planet to its limits. Vanguard and Collective Journalists explore the far-reaching consequences of this global fight for resources.Humans are consuming more oil, more food ... more of everything than ever before. And... more
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A preview of this week's Vanguard show on ethanol and the global food crisis. Airs Wednesday, July 16 at 7pm PST/10PM EST.A preview of this week's Vanguard show on ethanol and the global food crisis.... more
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Biofuel production is certainly one of the culprits in the current global food crisis. But while the diversion of corn from food to biofuel feedstock has been a factor in food prices shooting up, the more primordial problem has been the conversion of economies that are largely food-self-sufficient into chronic food importers. Here the World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Trade Organization (WTO) figure as much more important villains.
Whether in Latin America, Asia, or Africa, the story has been the same: the destabilization of peasant producers by a one-two punch of IMF-World Bank structural adjustment programs that gutted government investment in the countryside followed by the massive influx of subsidized U.S. and European Union agricultural imports after the WTO’s Agreement on Agriculture pried open markets. .
African agriculture is a case study of how doctrinaire economics serving corporate interests can destroy a whole continent’s productive base.
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So this so called "secret" report by the World bank stating that "biofuels" are to blame for the world food shortage is in part propaganda to cover up their own participation in it. It is not 'biofuel' production in total that has caused it, but 'ethanol' production and mostly subsidized imports brought about by the destabilization of local economies in Africa, Asia, and Latin America that are raising prices. Biofuel production is certainly one of the culprits in the current global food crisis.... more
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Obama has been making the rounds, extolling the virtues of corn-based ethanol, an incredibly energy-inefficient bio-fuel. It angers me that he does not acknowledge that sugar-cane ethanol is a much more environmentally-friendly and, in the long-term, cost-efficient bio-fuel. The only reason I can fathom he's pushing for corn ethanol is because it's produceable in the U.S., and therefore will garner him votes and support from Great Plains farmers and the American agricultural industry at-large.Obama has been making the rounds, extolling the virtues of corn-based ethanol, an... more
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Obama's support for the environment seems contradictory to ethanol policy. Despite the fact that ethanol doesn’t seem to be the answer to our energy problems Obama is in favor, could this have to do with his grass roots being heavily influenced by Corn.
"Mr. Obama is running as a reformer who is seeking to reduce the influence of special interests. But like any other politician, he has powerful constituencies that help shape his views. And when it comes to domestic ethanol, almost all of which is made from corn, he also has advisers and prominent supporters with close ties to the industry at a time when energy policy is a point of sharp contrast between the parties and their presidential candidates."
What are your thoughts?
Obama's support for the environment seems contradictory to ethanol policy.... more
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"Yesterday Louisiana state governor Bobby Jindal signed into law revolutionary ethanol legislation that embarks in a totally new direction that could save the US economy while actually making us less dependant on foreign oil ...""Yesterday Louisiana state governor Bobby Jindal signed into law revolutionary... more
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E-10 ruins fuel economy for vehicles.
With gas prices soaring, people are concerned about how their cars are faring on the road. Of course, gas guzzlers are suffering the worst during this $4+ gas world, but so is the common person. You see, some stations are mixing Ethanol with regular gasoline in small amounts (known as E-10). And there have been reports that this is effecting fuel economy in a negative way.
This is just one recent story where people note the drop in fuel economy of vehicles because fo the E-10 mix. There are others that can be found doing a Google search. The earliest report I found was from 2006. E-10 ruins fuel economy for vehicles.
With gas prices soaring, people are concerned... more
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Great analysis of how McCain showed he's a lightweight on economic policy and not such a straight talker at his recent NYC town hall meeting.Great analysis of how McCain showed he's a lightweight on economic policy and not... more
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"Hemp is the term commonly employed for the industrial (non-drug) usage of the cannabis plant, otherwise known as marijuana. The stalk of the cannabis or marijuana plant has no THC content whatsoever, that is, it has no mind-altering properties.
The use of cannabis for hemp products goes back thousands of years. Today, hemp can be used in thousands of commercial products. The hemp tops and seeds can go to food, and the stalks can go for fuel, fiber and building materials, so it is like growing two crops in one field..." "Hemp is the term commonly employed for the industrial (non-drug) usage of the... more
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GENEVA - The Red Cross warned Tuesday of a possible surge in "food-related violence" because of soaring prices that are increasing hunger around the world.
Most of the debate surrounding the global food crisis has focused on boosting aid to poorer countries, but there is also concern about the potential for violence as people become desperate for food, said Jakob Kellenberger, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Follow the link to entire complete text.GENEVA - The Red Cross warned Tuesday of a possible surge in "food-related... more
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jimmyp
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added this
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4 years ago
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"The flex-fuel vehicles at this summer's Democratic National Convention will be running on waste beer, thanks to the Molson Coors Brewing Company.
Molson Coors, along with its U.S. subsidiary, Coors Brewing Company, will be the Official E85 Ethanol Producer for the convention, which is set for August 25 through 28 in Denver"."The flex-fuel vehicles at this summer's Democratic National Convention will... more
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Molson (Coors) is going to supply waste beer to power the DNC's ethanol powered cars this Summer in DenverMolson (Coors) is going to supply waste beer to power the DNC's ethanol powered... more
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bstein
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4 years ago
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This guy is great - read the entire article at the link above - it gets even worse. Bush has put his cronies in charge of every regulatory agency and this is the result.
by Tam Hunt, Community Environmental Council
I've made my punch line the title of this piece. I was never good at telling jokes. This joke, however, isn't really funny anyway because it is a boondoggle being played on the American people.
The Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards were created by Congress in 1975 as part of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act. Over the first nine years of its existence the CAFE standard — and powerful market forces — led to 62% improved vehicle fuel economy. Over the next twenty years or so, better vehicle technologies were used to increase power instead of to increase fuel economy. The end result: average fuel economy for cars in the U.S. is only about 26 miles per gallon in 2008.
In the era of skyrocketing oil, gas and diesel prices, however, Congress took bold action, passing the Energy Independence and Security Act in December of 2007. The key feature of this law was a re-vamping of the CAFE standard for the first time in a generation, setting a new standard of 35 mpg by 2020.
Or so the story goes.
Upon examination, the CAFE standard "improvements" are revealed as little more than a loophole-ridden shell game.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued the proposed CAFE regulations in March of this year. The regulations cover model years 2011-2015 and "require" all cars and trucks to achieve 31.8 mpg by 2015.
The major changes in the new regulations are a new tradable credit system and a new way of calculating required vehicle improvements based on the size of each vehicle model sold instead of a fleet-wide requirement.
The tradable credit system makes the CAFE "standard" a cap-and-trade system instead of an actual standard. Standards are the prototypical example of a command and control regulatory approach, which, while generally effective in achieving outcomes also generate strong resistance from the regulated businesses. Cap and trade is more market friendly because it sets a limit on the activity at issue but also gives some choices to the regulated businesses as to how they meet that limit. In this case, each size class is "limited" in terms of the gas mileage it must achieve. The "trade" part of this cap and trade allows each manufacturer to trade credits with other manufacturers who are exceeding their requirements, and to trade between size classes within each fleet — and to buy credits from the U.S. government at a set price ceiling.
It is this last part that is most disturbing. By allowing manufacturers to avoid actually improving gas mileage by simply buying credits from the government at a set price, the cap itself may be completely destroyed because there is no limit on how many credits the government may sell. So it's not really a cap and trade system either. It's just a trade system with huge potential to be gamed without any guaranteed benefits for consumers or the environment.
This guy is great - read the entire article at the link above - it gets even worse.... more
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A new company hopes drivers will kick the oil habit by brewing ethanol at home that won't spike food prices. E-Fuel Corp unveiled on Thursday the "MicroFueler" touting it as the world's first machine that allows homeowners to make their own ethanol and pump the brew directly into their cars.A new company hopes drivers will kick the oil habit by brewing ethanol at home that... more
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by Scott Sklar, The Stella Group, Ltd.
Ethanol seems to be taking the wrap for everything wrong in the world. In the April 24th New York Times Op Ed "Bring on the Right Biofuels" by Roger Cohen, he states, "The supposed crimes of biofuels are manifold. They're behind soaring global commodity prices, the destruction of the Amazon rain forest, increased rather than diminished greenhouse gases, food riots in Haiti, Indonesian deforestation and, no doubt, your mother-in-law's toothache. Most of this, to borrow a farm image, is "hogwash and bilge."
Cohen continues that, "Much larger trends are at work." The Washington Post had a great review on world food prices in it's April 27th edition, and attributes the global food prices to the following reasons:
1. Major countries have introduced or increased export taxes or actual bans on certain agricultural products (rice and grains) to keep down their own domestic prices.
2. Global economic growth and growth in emerging countries (especially China and India) are changing diets (for instance Chinese per capita meat consumption has grown from 44 pounds in 1980 to 100 lbs in 2008) and it takes 7-8.5 pounds of grain to produce a pound of beef and 5-7 pounds of grain to produce a pound of pork.
3. Global weather patterns — heat waves, drought and excessive rain in grain-producing countries have taken a toll on output in the past few years — in millions of tons: Australia 13.6 in 2006 to 5.7 in 2008* (predicted*), European Union 45.1 in 2006 to 30 in 2008*, United States 71.7 in 2006 to 48.1 in 2008.*
4. Fuel price increases have made it costlier to grow (irrigation, pesticides, fertilizers) and transport rice and grains — in 2007, US $60 per ton from U.S. gulf coast to Japan or US $38 per ton from gulf coast to Europe, and in April 2008, US $110/ton and US $75 per ton, respectively.
5. Biofuels have contributed (along with weather and increases in energy prices) to drive U.S. corn prices up by 50%, so Europe has imported cheaper sorghum for livestock feed, raising sorghum (a grain consumed widely by the world's poorest people) from US $98 in 2005 per metric ton to US $191 per metric ton in 2008. Over 85% of the U.S. corn crop is used for animal feed.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, "Field corn is the predominant corn type grown in the U.S., and it is primarily used for animal feed. Currently, less than 10 percent of the U.S. field corn crop is used for direct domestic human consumption in corn-based foods such as corn meal, corn starch and corn flakes, while the remainder is used for animal feed, exports, ethanol production, seed and industrial uses. Sweet corn, both white and yellow, is usually consumed as immature whole-kernel corn by humans and also as an ingredient in other corn-based foods, but makes up only about 1 percent of total U.S. corn production."
Again, I want to make perfectly clear that cellulosic conversion is the "end game" for biofuels. Waste products including sewage, wood waste, contaminated agricultural and food-processing wastes, and forest thinnings and lawn wastes are the first tier biofuels resources, followed by low-water, low-energy input crops including switchgrass, jahoba, wild maize, honey locust and eucalyptus trees, among many others. And while biofuels have positive energy balances now, these balances will further increase using these new resources and these new cellulosic processes.
Both private investment and government policy are clearly driving technology, project development and intermediate investment into cellulosic conversion with actual grants from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) along with federal loan guarantees towards cellulosic conversion. This allows the gains in biofuels from the days of large corn surpluses that rotted in farm silos, to the next era of waste-based and non-food-based sustainable biofuels.
by Scott Sklar, The Stella Group, Ltd.
Ethanol seems to be taking the wrap for... more
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Indian politicians from all parties have joined in criticizing US President George W. Bush’s remarks that blamed India for the global food crisis. Although the ruling Congress party has joined the chorus, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has questioned Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s silence on Bush’s remarks. The BJP plans to raise the issue in Parliament today.
At a seminar on global economy in Missouri, Bush was quoted by the media as saying: “There are 350 million people in India who are classified as middle class. That’s bigger than America. Their middle class is larger than our entire population. And when you start getting wealth, you start demanding better nutrition and better food, and so demand is high, and that causes the price to go up.”
Follow the link for the complete text. President Bush's statements blaming India for food shortage irk Indians. India is a net exporter of food. Bush may have a less than perfect understanding of cause and effect with regard to the food crisis.
Indian politicians from all parties have joined in criticizing US President George W.... more
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jimmyp
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added this
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4 years ago
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The Amazon was the chic eco-cause of the 1990s, revered as an incomparable storehouse of biodiversity. It's been overshadowed lately by global warming, but the Amazon rain forest happens also to be an incomparable storehouse of carbon, the very carbon that heats up the planet when it's released into the atmosphere. Brazil now ranks fourth in the world in carbon emissions, and most of its emissions come from deforestation.
This land rush is being accelerated by an unlikely source: biofuels. An explosion in demand for farm-grown fuels has raised global crop prices to record highs, which is spurring a dramatic expansion of Brazilian agriculture, which is invading the Amazon at an increasingly alarming rate.
The U.S. quintupled its production of ethanol--ethyl alcohol, a fuel distilled from plant matter--in the past decade, and Washington has just mandated another fivefold increase in renewable fuels over the next decade. Europe has similarly aggressive biofuel mandates and subsidies, and Brazil's filling stations no longer even offer plain gasoline. Worldwide investment in biofuels rose from $5 billion in 1995 to $38 billion in 2005 and is expected to top $100 billion by 2010, thanks to investors like Richard Branson and George Soros, GE and BP, Ford and Shell, Cargill and the Carlyle Group.
But several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it's dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it. Corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous. Even cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass, which has been promoted by eco-activists and eco-investors as well as by President Bush as the fuel of the future, looks less green than oil-derived gasoline.
Meanwhile, by diverting grain and oilseed crops from dinner plates to fuel tanks, biofuels are jacking up world food prices and endangering the hungry. The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year. Harvests are being plucked to fuel our cars instead of ourselves. The U.N.'s World Food Program says it needs $500 million in additional funding and supplies, calling the rising costs for food nothing less than a global emergency.
Biofuels do slightly reduce dependence on imported oil, and the ethanol boom has created rural jobs while enriching some farmers and agribusinesses. But the basic problem with most biofuels is amazingly simple, given that researchers have ignored it until now: using land to grow fuel leads to the destruction of forests, wetlands and grasslands that store enormous amounts of carbon.
Deforestation accounts for 20% of all current carbon emissions. So unless the world can eliminate emissions from all other sources--cars, power plants, factories, even flatulent cows--it needs to reduce deforestation or risk an environmental catastrophe. That means limiting the expansion of agriculture, a daunting task as the world's population keeps expanding. And saving forests is probably an impossibility so long as vast expanses of cropland are used to grow modest amounts of fuel. The biofuels boom, in short, is one that could haunt the planet for generations--and it's only getting started.
The Amazon was the chic eco-cause of the 1990s, revered as an incomparable storehouse... more
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It's an amalgamation of Star Wars, Apple ads, and Ethanol...with light sabers. Cool spot.
It's an amalgamation of Star Wars, Apple ads, and Ethanol...with light sabers.... more
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We've gotten excited here about the startup that claims it can make $1/gallon ethanol out of anything from trash to tires. But we've also seen how cellulosic ethanol is a better option, and how ethanol demand in general is only adding to the worldwide food crisis. So what about $1/gallon gasoline? NSF-funded researchers at UMass Amherst just completed the first direct conversion from cellulose using a new method of hydrocarbon refining, which they claim can be commercialized within 5-10 years and essentially make fuel out of anything that grows. Quoting: 'We already have the infrastructure in place to distribute liquid fuels. We're using them to power transportation vehicles today, and I think that's what we'll be using in 10 years and in 50 years,' Huber says. 'And if you want a sustainable liquid transportation fuel, biomass is the only way to go.We've gotten excited here about the startup that claims it can make $1/gallon... more
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