The ethanol conspiracy

[Billdave2]

Actually down Here I have plenty of oil, hope the price rises, although I am working on a bio fuel, using waste to grow earth worms and turning them into bio gas and bio diesel.
I am thinking about Huff and Puffing my oil soon, so that it will produce a good source of income, tons of Oil leases in Kentucky with 70 percent of he oil still in the ground.

Only 30 percent of an oil resource can be produced at the present time, Huff and Puff raises that to 60 percent total production, still leaving 40% that is unreachable.

Corn will never work sorghum cane is however a very efficient fuel, high sugar content.

PS. the reason I am experimenting with earth worms is they eat waste, do not need sunlight of fertilizers, and the resulting castings make good fertilizers. It is a win win situation.

My grandfather in Kentucky used to make some really efficient "fuel" from sorghum (if you know what I mean).

 

[Crazy Chainsaw]

Answered already above; I'd make it economically difficult to have more than two and economically beneficial to get sterilized.

Do you have a better plan to avery global famine?

Yes remove 2/3ths of the population of the planet. Global Famine averted.

Remember you did not ask for a Better Humane plan, you asked for a better plan to avert famine.

Eventually it is going to come down to population control, or farming of space using robot farmers to both build farms and raise the food.

 

[Crazy Chainsaw]

My grandfather in Kentucky used to make some really efficient "fuel" from sorghum (if you know what I mean).

My uncle made several different fuels from corn, sorghum and other grains, so yes I do know what you mean.

 

[BenBurch]

Who would levy the economic sanctions against those who did not follow and how would it be collected?

Who would pay for the economic benefits?

China has a similar sounding policy but I do not know if it has worked out very well. I would think Catholics would take issue with any plan that encouraged sterilization and punished procreation.

As I already said. Taxation. Specifically income taxation. Proceeds of which (Catholics are welcome to have has many as they like if they pay) pays for the Sterilization program.

Again, if you don't like it, propose a better way to avoid global famine?

 

[Jimbo07]

No one with a smattering of chemical/physics knowledge is taken in by the claims for ethanol - ... Ethanol FROM CORN is a very bad idea both chemically/physically

No. It may not be great, but it's not very bad.

and economically.

These arguments I've seen be a little more subtle, so I'm willing to give a little on this.

In the case of corn ethanol, though, it takes about 20% MORE oil energy than it produces in fuel ethanol.

Oh come on! How many threads have we been running around on this? Ethanol is not a net-energy-negative. There has to be a lot of numbers-cooking to show it to be so. One Pimentel paper included the construction numbers for an ethanol plant, but that's never accounted for in any other study, nor is it in refineries and upgraders!

Moreover, it appears that the byproduct feed is actually really toxic to the animals!

Now, that's interesting, and a new one on me... I'll have to google it... ah... just did.

DDGS

It seems there was a problem with sulfur content in 50DDGS, but the conclusion was, "Results showed DDGS can be fed in finishing diets to improve ADG and F:G with optimum level at 20% dietary inclusion."

I must admit, I haven't followed the DDGS story fully...
So, we;

1. Lose energy

False

(oil companies have a win-win as they sell both the oil and the ethanol)

True in Canada. I thought it was ADM making out like a bandit in the States? Or is ADM owned by the oil companies?

2. Poison cattle.

Provisionally false.

3. Starve the third world.

To a much greater extent than current fuel prices...

...

In Canada, there is no conspiracy. Whether or not any individual has made bad choices is a different matter... we're too disorganized!

 

[Max Photon]

Ethanol: Thinking at the Margarine

Remember, it's not nice to fool Yo' Mama Nature!

 

[applecorped]

As I already said. Taxation. Specifically income taxation. Proceeds of which (Catholics are welcome to have has many as they like if they pay) pays for the Sterilization program.

Again, if you don't like it, propose a better way to avoid global famine?

It's not a matter of liking it. Your proposal will most likely never happen in this country. This has as much chance of happening as Black Reparations. A better way might not involve any government.

 

[PhantomWolf]

Nope.

We are very near the carrying capacity of the planet.

Here is a ballpark calculation, might be too optimistic, might be too pessimistic, but not by much;

There are 148,940,000 km^2 of surface area on the planet.

Arable land is 13.13% is 19,809,020 km^2.

Permanent agriculture is 4.71% or 7,015,074 km^2

The amount of land required to feed an adult human is 2395 m^2 assuming average yields and vegetable or cereal crops.

7 million km^2 is about 7x10^12 m^2 divide by 2395 is 3,000,000,000.

Three billion.

We are at twice that now, ergo, many are malnourished. (This ignores fishing and hunting, though.)

Now, if we used 100% of all arable land at the same efficiency, the number is 8 billion.

We are almost there.

We are almost at the carrying capacity now.

And as any agronomist will tell you, you cannot farm a field continuously and still keep the yield up.

Well first off I have no way to check your figures, however since I was just talking to my grandmother about gardening two days ago and she was pointing out that my grandfather was able to provide all the fruit and vegetables for a family of six and that she hadn't had to buy any fruit or vegetables until quite late in their married life when he became too sick to work his garden, and I know that the area his gardens used to take up were nowhere near the size you claim is required to feed an adult, I'd take issue with your numbers. I'd also point out that meat farming does not require arable land, but can be done in areas where crop production is not possible, this adds to the overall amount of food, as does fishing which you noted you missed, but is often the major source of food in some areas. With those added to home gardening, which as proven by my grandfather certainly helps to provide vast amounts of food for people, again on land that would be considered as non-arable as far as farming is concerned, and further adding in things such as hydroponics and green house produce which again can be done on non-farmable land and at higher production rates, and your figures start looking extremely shaky to me.

Looking about the world, the issues of malnourishment are not through the lack of available food. The food is there to be consumed, the issues are poverty and political. There is plenty of food aid going to countries with food shortages (often created by their political environments, but some are through natural disaster) to feed their people; the issue is getting the food to them. In places like Zimbabwe, Somalia and Burma the politicians are blocking food shipments to those that don't support them. In other parts of the world, poverty means that though there is plenty of food available, high prices being charged due to international pricing, the people simply can't afford to buy it in some cases (such as the Caribbean) this means that the food rots in the markets while the people starve.

According to the UN the main issues today are "increased energy costs, rising demand from economic growth in emerging economies, the growth of biofuels, and increasing climatic shocks such as droughts and flood." Combine this with "a weak US dollar, and speculation in the commodity markets" and prices have gone up a staggering 52% in the last 12 months, 92% for cereals. These factors are what are pushing the price of food up causing some producer nations to stop or restrict export of food in an attempt to try and keep their own internal food prices down (which ironically pushes up the international prices and forces more people towards starvation.) There is plenty of food out there, but people are struggling to afford it. Add to that the political instability of some countries, and a disproportionate distribution of food across the world, and these are the reasons for malnourishment, not an overall shortage of food itself. This is coming right from the UNWFP.

 

[MIKILLINI]

Here in Illinois, a reporter asked an expert of the fuel industry why the ethanol prices were similar to gasoline. His response was "The delivery system is the problem'. Oil has a pipeline, ethanol has limited rail and truck capacity transport".
Another much needed resource for the production of ethanol is water. There are drawbacks to ethanol, but technology will eventually alleviate the current problems. How long it takes for the new measures to become efficient in producing this fuel is certainly the key.

 

[defaultdotxbe]

Nope.

We are very near the carrying capacity of the planet.

Here is a ballpark calculation, might be too optimistic, might be too pessimistic, but not by much;

There are 148,940,000 km^2 of surface area on the planet.

Arable land is 13.13% is 19,809,020 km^2.

Permanent agriculture is 4.71% or 7,015,074 km^2

The amount of land required to feed an adult human is 2395 m^2 assuming average yields and vegetable or cereal crops.

7 million km^2 is about 7x10^12 m^2 divide by 2395 is 3,000,000,000.

Three billion.

We are at twice that now, ergo, many are malnourished. (This ignores fishing and hunting, though.)

Now, if we used 100% of all arable land at the same efficiency, the number is 8 billion.

We are almost there.

We are almost at the carrying capacity now.

And as any agronomist will tell you, you cannot farm a field continuously and still keep the yield up.

do you have a source for those figures? according to wikipedia arable land makes up 21% of the land area on earth

 

[BenBurch]

do you have a source for those figures? according to wikipedia arable land makes up 21% of the land area on earth

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth

Natural resources and land use
Main article: Natural resource
The Earth provides resources that are exploitable by humans for useful purposes. Some of these are non-renewable resources, such as mineral fuels, that are difficult to replenish on a short time scale.
Large deposits of fossil fuels are obtained from the Earth's crust, consisting of coal, petroleum, natural gas and methane clathrate. These deposits are used by humans both for energy production and as feedstock for chemical production. Mineral ore bodies have also been formed in Earth's crust through a process of Ore genesis, resulting from actions of erosion and plate tectonics.[100] These bodies form concentrated sources for many metals and other useful elements.
The Earth's biosphere produces many useful biological products for humans, including (but far from limited to) food, wood, pharmaceuticals, oxygen, and the recycling of many organic wastes. The land-based ecosystem depends upon topsoil and fresh water, and the oceanic ecosystem depends upon dissolved nutrients washed down from the land.[101] Humans also live on the land by using building materials to construct shelters. In 1993, human use of land is approximately:
Land use Percentage
Arable land: 13.13%[58]
Permanent crops: 4.71%[58]
Permanent pastures: 26%
Forests and woodland: 32%
Urban areas: 1.5%
Other: 30%
The estimated amount of irrigated land in 1993 was 2,481,250 km².[58]

 

[AZCat]

Here in Illinois, a reporter asked an expert of the fuel industry why the ethanol prices were similar to gasoline. His response was "The delivery system is the problem'. Oil has a pipeline, ethanol has limited rail and truck capacity transport".
Another much needed resource for the production of ethanol is water. There are drawbacks to ethanol, but technology will eventually alleviate the current problems. How long it takes for the new measures to become efficient in producing this fuel is certainly the key.

I was back home in the midwest a month or so ago. My parents and I talked about this, since it is a topic of interest to us all. The drive to produce ethanol has apparently brought a lot of acreage back into production that had been laying fallow. Every farmer in Western Kansas is using his water rights to their maximum in order to produce corn, since the price per bushel has skyrocketed (corn is approximately $6 per bushel, and was ~$2 per bushel a few years ago). Unfortunately this is not a sustainable practice, as they are drawing down the aquifers (like the Ogallala, which provides something like 30% of the water used for irrigation in the U.S.) quite quickly (or at least more quickly than they were).

 

[Max Photon]

You tubed?

BenBurch, you are a marvel.

You see the distortion around ethanol.

You see the marketing deception.

You see that it represents a special interest being subsidized by the general interest.

You see the welfare.

You even go so far as to call it a conspiracy - (a possibly vast conspiracy).

Yet...somehow...you can't see that deficit spending - which is nothing more that a scheme for the confiscation of wealth - feeds this abominable wealth transfer.

You can't see that deficit spending is facilitated by irredeemable currency.

You can't see that irredeemable currency is engineered by an unconstitutional check-kiting scheme between the Treasury and the Fed.

And you can't see that this check-kiting scheme is a conspiracy.

How Ben? How?


(Are you looking through two toilet-paper tubes again?)


Max

P.S. Do I have poppy seeds in my teeth?

 

[defaultdotxbe]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth

the wording there is land use, so its possible more could be used as farmland that isnt

also note 26% are permanent pastures, you suppose any of that land might be supporting livestock that is used for food?

 

[BenBurch]

I'll compute for you the contribution of range land to the food supply in the next day or so. Not as large as you might imagine as such a huge amount of it is very, very marginal range.

This from Reuters; http://biz.yahoo.com/rb/080613/ethanol_profits_closures.html

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Record corn prices pushed up by flooding in the Midwest have forced five small to mid-sized U.S. ethanol plants to shut and output of the biofuel could be slowed for months, a Citi research note said on Friday.

<SNIP>

 

[BenBurch]

Rough numbers;

1 kg of meat feeds one person for one day.

Most range land is very poor, so we will assume a global average yield of 100 kg/acre/year. (Optimal range land, fertilized and irrigated is about 450 kg/acre/year, but I think you'll agree that cannot be applied globally.)

So, one acre feeds one person for 100 days.

Total range land is 8,096,852,610 acres.

That is 800,096,852,610 person-days or 2,1920,461,700 person years.

All range land does is add 2.1 billion to the numbers previously computed.

 

[defaultdotxbe]

Rough numbers;

1 kg of meat feeds one person for one day.

Most range land is very poor, so we will assume a global average yield of 100 kg/acre/year. (Optimal range land, fertilized and irrigated is about 450 kg/acre/year, but I think you'll agree that cannot be applied globally.)

So, one acre feeds one person for 100 days.

Total range land is 8,096,852,610 acres.

That is 800,096,852,610 person-days or 2,1920,461,700 person years.

All range land does is add 2.1 billion to the numbers previously computed.

so all it does is nearly double what you claimed before?

yeah, thats not significant at all...

 

[BenBurch]

No, goes from 8 billion to 10 billion.

 

[defaultdotxbe]

No, goes from 8 billion to 10 billion.

i was going with your 3 billion figure as thats what you calculated as actual utilization, not potential utilization

im sure there is more land that could be used as pasture that isnt, so the 8 billion would likely go higher than 10 billion

 

[BenBurch]

i was going with your 3 billion figure as thats what you calculated as actual utilization, not potential utilization

im sure there is more land that could be used as pasture that isnt, so the 8 billion would likely go higher than 10 billion

No, the range land just makes up the deficit between my calculated yield at present acreage and the current population, which I mistakenly attributed to hunting and fishing - though range land is a sort of systematized hunting...

We can add 4-5 billion more total to the system.

The effect I am referring to is why this projection levels off...

"This is all the time you have. And it isn't long."

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