What a waste... - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

dlssmith · #1 01-26-2007, 05:27 PM

Consider this excerpted from Charles Krauthammer today:

"Is there anything more depressing than yet another promise of energy independence in yet another State of the Union address? By my count, 24 of the 34 State of the Union addresses since the oil embargo of 1973 have proposed solutions to our energy problem.

The result? In 1973 we imported 34.8 percent of our oil. Today we import 60.3 percent.And what does this president propose? Another great technological fix. For Jimmy Carter, it was the magic of synfuels. For George Bush, it's the wonders of ethanol. Our fuel will grow on trees. Well, stalks, with even fancier higher-tech variants to come from cellulose and other (literal) rubbish.

It is very American to believe that chemists are going to discover the cure for geopolitical weakness. It is even more American to imagine that it can be done painlessly. Ethanol for everyone. Farmers get a huge cash crop. Consumers get more supply. And the country ends up more secure.

This is nonsense. Biofuels will barely keep up with the increase in gasoline demand over time. They are a huge government bet with goals and mandates and subsidies that will not cure our oil dependence or even make a significant dent in it."

CK goes on to suggest three solutions:

1. Tax the heck out of gas (better to keep the revenue here than to send the money to our enemies and others)
2. Drill in the Arctic (it's there, why not?)
3. Go nuclear (whatever pollution it makes is much more containable than burning a lot of hydrocarbons)

Hatterasguy · #2 01-26-2007, 10:01 PM

I like the idea of taxing gas till it hurts, no wait till SUV sales die. But I think a high tax on gas needs to be introduced in conjuction with a solution to get off it. The market will eventually do this, its only a queston of when not if. I think the government should do it in a controlled manner at a time of our chosing. Insted of waiting say I don't know 40 years for the market to do it over a decade in a very expensive and painfull manner.

Ethanol is a BS waste that needs to go away. It solves nothing and just diverts money that could be used to actualy solve the problem.

t walgamuth · #3 01-26-2007, 10:36 PM

ethanol is probably thought of as a bribe to the red states for their loyalty to the repubs.

ethanol plants are springing up here in indiana.

tom w

aklim · #4 01-26-2007, 10:58 PM

Ethanol is a great idea. Just like taxing the hell out of gas. BTW, where is the ethanol coming from AND how will it impact other things that need ethanol? NP, just get more people to farm. None of these things will have bad fallout. Oh no. One magic pill and life is good. Gave the states huge settlements for tobacco so they could use it to stop people getting hooked on cigs. Can anyone tell me what happened to the bulk of the money?

dynalow · #5 01-27-2007, 10:01 AM

WSJ OP Ed Online

Very, Very Big Corn
Ethanol and its consequences.

Saturday, January 27, 2007 12:01 a.m. EST

President Bush made a big push for alternative fuels in his State of the Union speech Tuesday night, calling on Americans to reduce gasoline consumption by 20% over 10 years. And as soon as the sun rose on Wednesday, he set out to tour a DuPont facility in Delaware to tout the virtues of "cellulosic ethanol" and propose $2 billion in loans to promote the stuff. For a man who famously hasn't taken a drink for 20 years, that's a considerable intake of alcohol.

A bit of sobriety would go a long way in discussing this moonshine of the energy world, however. Cellulosic ethanol--which is derived from plants like switchgrass--will require a big technological breakthrough to have any impact on the fuel supply. That leaves corn- and sugar-based ethanol, which have been around long enough to understand their significant limitations. What we have here is a classic political stampede rooted more in hope and self-interest than science or logic.

Ostensibly, the great virtue of ethanol is that it represents a "sustainable," environmentally friendly source of energy--a source that is literally homegrown rather than imported from such unstable places as Nigeria or Iran.
That's one reason why, as Jerry Taylor and Peter Van Doren note in the Milken Institute Review, federal and state subsidies for ethanol ran to about $6 billion last year, equivalent to roughly half its wholesale market price. Ethanol gets a 51-cent a gallon domestic subsidy, and there's another 54-cent a gallon tariff applied at the border against imported ethanol. Without those subsidies, hardly anyone would make the stuff, much less buy it--despite recent high oil prices.

That's also why the percentage of the U.S. corn crop devoted to ethanol has risen to 20% from 3% in just five years, or about 8.6 million acres of farmland. Reaching the President's target of 35 billion gallons of renewable and alternative fuels by 2017 would, at present corn yields, require the entire U.S. corn harvest.

No wonder, then, that the price of corn rose nearly 80% in 2006 alone. (See the chart nearby.) Corn growers and their Congressmen love this, and naturally they are planting as much as they can. Look for a cornfield in your neighborhood soon. Yet for those of us who like our corn flakes in the morning, the higher price isn't such good news. It's even worse for cattle, poultry and hog farmers trying to adjust to suddenly exorbitant prices for feed corn--to pick just one industry example. The price of corn is making America's meat-packing industries, which are major exporters, less competitive.

In Mexico, the price of corn tortillas--the dietary staple of the country's poorest--has risen by about 30% in recent months, leading to widespread protests and price controls. In China, the government has put a halt to ethanol-plant construction for the threat it poses to the country's food security. Thus is a Beltway fad translated into Third World woes.

As for the environmental impact, well, where do we begin? As an oxygenate, ethanol increases the level of nitrous oxides in the atmosphere and thus causes smog. The scientific literature is also divided about whether the energy inputs required to produce ethanol actually exceed its energy output. It takes fertilizer to grow the corn, and fuel to ship and process it, and so forth. Even the most optimistic estimate says ethanol's net energy output is a marginal improvement of only 1.3 to one. For purposes of comparison, energy outputs from gasoline exceed inputs by an estimated 10 to one.

And because corn-based ethanol is less efficient than ordinary gasoline, using it to fuel cars means you need more gas to drive the same number of miles. This is not exactly a route to "independence" from Mideast, Venezuelan or any other tainted source of oil. Ethanol also cannot be shipped using existing pipelines (being alcohol, it eats the seals), so it must be trucked or sent by barge or train to its thousand-and-one destinations, at least until separate pipelines are built.

Even some environmentalists cry foul. Steve Sanderson, president of the Wildlife Conservation Society, tells us that intensive, subsidized sugar farming in Brazil--where the use of ethanol is most widespread--has displaced small tenant farmers, many of whom have taken to cutting down and farming land in the Amazon rain forest.

In the U.S., there is now talk of taking the roughly 40 million acres currently tied up in the Agriculture Department's conservation reserve and security programs and putting them into production for ethanol-related plants. "The land at risk under this ethanol program is land that's shown by the USDA to have had great results for the restoration of wildlife," Mr. Sanderson says, pointing especially to the grasslands of eastern Montana and the Dakotas. Hello ethanol, goodbye bison.

But what about global warming, where ethanol, as a non-fossil fuel, is supposed to make a positive contribution? Actually, it barely makes a dent. Australian researcher Robert Niven finds that the use of ethanol in gasoline--the standard way in which ethanol is currently used--reduces greenhouse gas emissions by no more than 5%. As Messrs. Taylor and Van Doren observe, "employing ethanol to reduce greenhouse gases is fantastically inefficient," costing as much as 16 times the optimal abatement cost for removing a ton of carbon from the atmosphere.

It's true that scientific advances will probably improve and perhaps even transform the utility of ethanol. Genetic modification will likely improve corn yields. And the President insists we are on the verge of breakthroughs in cellulosic technology, though experts tell us the technical hurdles are still huge. We'd be as happy as anyone if DuPont researchers finally discover the enzyme that can efficiently break down plants into starch, but betting billions of tax dollars and millions of acres of farmland on this hope strikes us as bad policy. If cellulose is going to be an energy miracle--an agricultural cold fusion--far better to let the market figure that out.
Not that any of these facts are likely to make much difference in the current Washington debate. The corn and sugar lobbies have their roots deep in both parties, and now they have the mantra of "energy independence" to invoke, however illusory it is. If anything, Congress may add to Mr. Bush's ethanol mandate requests.

So here comes Big Corn. Make that Very, Very Big Corn. Sooner or later, our experience with this huge public gamble may make us yearn for the efficiency, capacity, lower cost and--yes--superior environmental record of "Big Oil."

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You folks in Iowa all millionaires yet?

dlssmith · #6 01-27-2007, 10:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by t walgamuth

ethanol is probably thought of as a bribe to the red states for their loyalty to the repubs.

ethanol plants are springing up here in indiana.

tom w

It's not only red states that are building ethanol plants.

And, not too many Iowans are millionaires from ethanol. There are quite a few farmer owned ethanol plants being built, and the farmer's co-ops that own them are waiting for the big pay off. Namely, the giant agri corp like ADM or Cargill that comes in a buys the plant, making the owners a tidy profit. Some of this has occurred, but it's only just begun.

It's the giant agri businesses that will make out like bandits on this stuff.

Farmers are drunk with the prospect of making bigger money for corn. It's rather obscene, when you consider the input cost of ethanol production. The hidden costs of ethanol production dwarf the subsidy payments.

The amount of electricity alone that it takes will require the construction of many new power plants at a billion or so apiece.

And on top of it all, we will not be any more energy independent, than we were before - due to rising energy demand.

This is bulls**t of the highest order - that the taxpayer and energy consumer will pay for, for many, many years.

dynalow · #7 01-27-2007, 10:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dlssmith

Farmers are drunk with the prospect of making bigger money for corn. It's rather obscene, when you consider the input cost of ethanol production. The hidden costs of ethanol production dwarf the subsidy payments.

The amount of electricity alone that it takes will require the construction of many new power plants at a billion or so apiece.

And on top of it all, we will not be any more energy independent, than we were before - due to rising energy demand.

This is bulls**t of the highest order - that the taxpayer and energy consumer will pay for, for many, many years.

DS.

Are the numbers quoted for corn price increases correct AFAYK?

Here in NJ they used to require an ethanol blend inthe winter months. Now I think it's permanent. It sure seems to me that the mpg declined as the ethanol content rose.

If it's true that ethanol is not as efficient as gasoline (fewer MPG), where is the solution to pollution in burning ethanol?

If the fixed element here is the total miles actually driven (or needed to be driven) and ethanol content reduces fuel economy, does it follow that by burning more blended fuel, including gasoline, to travel the same miles, little if any reduction in consumption of gasoline occurs?

I don't see this solving either dependence on foreign oil or HC emissions.
What am I missing?

t walgamuth · #8 01-27-2007, 11:45 AM

i dont know the exact ratio but i believe that ethanol puts out about 55% as much power per gallon as gasoline.

i do know that back in the sixties the indy cars that ran gas could go about twice as far on a tank as the ethanol powered cars.

the ethonal requires about twice as big of fuel lines as well if you convert a race car to run on it. in a race car though, the cooling effect of the ethanol is a benefit. an offanhouser engine for example cannot be successfully converted to run on gasoline. it was tried and they would always overheat. the cooling passages werent big enough to run gas. it also allows higher boost if forced induction is used because of the cooling effect.

so yes, more ethanol means lower mpg when run in our cars.

it is a reallly false solution.

like many things this is an issue that has become a political one more than anything else.

tom w

dlssmith · #9 01-27-2007, 03:14 PM

Corn prices have risen substantially. For those involved in futures and commodity markets a lot of money has changed hands with increases. As the supply decreases, the price will increase. And very suddenly a new consumer of corn has been developed, automobiles, so we're in for an interesting ride - since corn is used in so many products these days.

The only advantage to burning 10% ethanol in gasoline is that as an oxygenator, ethanol is better than the petroleum alternative, MTBE. MTBE has caused a lot of problems getting into ground water. It is also a carcinogen.

Ethanol isn't perfect as a fuel, but as an additive it isn't the worst thing.

The problem with using ethanol is that there are a bunch of people than think they'll be burning E85 which has only 15% gasoline, in their cars. Oh boy no more middle eastern oil!!! Don't be daft, we cannot divorce ourselves from oil - period. There isn't enough corn, or wind, or biomass, or cow dung, or wishful thinking, to make it possible. And practical hydrogen technology has the same problems as ethanol, it takes too much energy to produce.

This idea isn't new here on the forum, but switching to majority diesel burning autos on the road would do much more for energy independence than stupid ethanol.

aklim · #10 01-27-2007, 04:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by t walgamuth

i dont know the exact ratio but i believe that ethanol puts out about 55% as much power per gallon as gasoline.

i do know that back in the sixties the indy cars that ran gas could go about twice as far on a tank as the ethanol powered cars.

the ethonal requires about twice as big of fuel lines as well if you convert a race car to run on it. in a race car though, the cooling effect of the ethanol is a benefit. an offanhouser engine for example cannot be successfully converted to run on gasoline. it was tried and they would always overheat. the cooling passages werent big enough to run gas. it also allows higher boost if forced induction is used because of the cooling effect.

so yes, more ethanol means lower mpg when run in our cars.

it is a reallly false solution.

like many things this is an issue that has become a political one more than anything else.

tom w

In my GMC Yukon XL, I found out that it was capable of running E85. When I looked at getting a supercharger kit, I was told that for the NON-E85 units, the kit comes with a larger fuel pump and larger injectors. For the E85 kits, it was not necessary because the vehicle already had larger injectors and pump. HOWEVER, that also means I probably won't be able to run E85 after the supercharger kit since there would be no ways to increase the already larger output of the pump and injectors.

So, ethanol is a political solution that makes farmers happy, makes people happy that the govt is doing something about it and gets votes. Plain and simple.

aklim · #11 01-27-2007, 04:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dlssmith

The problem with using ethanol is that there are a bunch of people than think they'll be burning E85 which has only 15% gasoline, in their cars. Oh boy no more middle eastern oil!!! Don't be daft, we cannot divorce ourselves from oil - period. There isn't enough corn, or wind, or biomass, or cow dung, or wishful thinking, to make it possible.

This idea isn't new here on the forum, but switching to majority diesel burning autos on the road would do much more for energy independence than stupid ethanol.

Don't forget that we still cannot divorce ourselves from the oil byproducts. people do it just so they can say "I care" and feel good about it. Businesses quite often are perfectly willing to take advantage of your feelings and rape you on the price of the product. You care, therefore you would pay more to sleep better.

Not sure how but you do get better mileage. How much better is hard to say. It is not that much more energy per unit of fuel than gasoline, is it?

t walgamuth · #12 01-27-2007, 05:13 PM

you have not been reading the above posts.

less energy by far. less power and less miles per gallon with any ethonal added.

tom w

aklim · #13 01-27-2007, 05:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by t walgamuth

you have not been reading the above posts.

less energy by far. less power and less miles per gallon with any ethonal added.

tom w

I know that. What I was comparing was diesel vs gasoline. Personally, when I look for gas, if there is a choice between gas and 10% or whatever ethanol, I buy gas and not a mix.

dlssmith · #14 01-27-2007, 05:27 PM

If there was a pure market for ethanol, unencumbered by subsidies, you'd never buy it to burn in a car. It would be far more expensive than gasoline.

aklim · #15 01-27-2007, 05:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dlssmith

If there was a pure market for ethanol, unencumbered by subsidies, you'd never buy it to burn in a car. It would be far more expensive than gasoline.

Currently I see that E85 is about $0.25 cheaper than regular gas. Last time I ran it the mileage and power sucked so if I were not towing something, I might look into it depending on how much mileage I lost. For a tow vehicle, not now, not ever, Never, that's when.