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The Strange Energy Budget of Ethanol Production
joeflies writes "The San Francisco Chronicle published an article regarding research on how much fuel is required to make Ethanol. The results indicate that it make take 6 times more energy than the end product delivers."
It typically takes 6 tries before you actually succeed at getting first post!
Compare this to gasoline and hydrogen and you've got yourself a real article.
as opposed to taking 6 times less energy to produce fossil fuels?
Oh hmm.. fossil fuels aren't renewable you say?
It's for you, not for car.
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I read that as, it will cost you more in the end; if you think prices are high now, just wait..!
"I cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father's protection." -- Sigmund Freud
Ethanol has long been a problem. The real insteresting prospect is the company up in Canada that is creating ethanol from the woddy portions of plants with a genetically modified bacteria see this slash dot story http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/0 7/1846247&tid=14
Madre de Dios! Es El Pollo Diablo! -- Captain Blondebeard
WTF is up with Slashdot lately? (Well, the past 3-4 months.)
... the sooner we get off of our reliance of fossil fuels, the better off we'll be.... we need to focus more research efforts on improving our superconductor technology!
... but the higher this goes, the more uses it has.
Currently we're far too low to be useful in an every day sort of way (around -211 deg. F I think)
[Lower energy loss means longer energy storage and more effective energy generation]
===
Fossil fuels are fossils, its time to move on up!
MoM++ - A Classic Expanded - [Master of Magic 1.5]
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sure, as long as there's oil, ethanol doesn't really look efficient or affordable except as a fuel oxygenator. but if the oil reserves were to run out sometime soon, ethanol could be poured into most of our existing infrastructure and ease the transition. that's why it's important -- not because it's inherently superior to petroleum, but because it can be manufactured (from scratch) much more quickly.
"Taking grain apart, fermenting it, distilling it and extruding it uses a lot of fossil energy," he said. "We are grasping at the solution that is by far the least efficient.".
He ignores the fact that, if we wanted to, we *could* arrange the production chain so that it was not dependent on fossil fuel. You could build your farming and fermentation facilities to use solar or hydro power, for example.
Sure, it's fossil-intensive *now*. But it's also not a major energy source yet. If we needed to we could clean up the energy chain - there's no part of the process that requires fossil fuel sources.
-EvilMagnus
"If government funds become short, subsidies for fuels will be looked at very carefully," he said. "When they are, there's no way ethanol production can survive."
Right there the article ignores the politics surrounding ethanol. The politics surrounding other energy sources/storage mechanisms don't have the power that ethanol backers do.
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The study referred to in the story was published last year in Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences. Abstract free, the article, like most journal articles, is probably very expensive.
Also, they've been making ethanol for vehicle fuel in Brazil for years... if it was so very uneconomic I wouldn't expect them to do that.
As in, what gives? I smell politics.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Don't drive gas guzzlers. Don't drive unless you need to. Maybe while you're at it you might as well bike or walk some places and lose some weight reducing the burden on health care.
----
Go canucks, habs, and sens!
http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_svo.html
It's really hard to figure out who to believe in these things. One side says it's net loss, one side says it's net gain. One side says that the other isn't accounting for all the energy spent, one side says the other is using old efficiency data. Reading the article, I doubt the two sides care much to debate each other on the points of actual contention.
Where you end up on efficiency numbers depends heavily on what assumptions you make about the process - like what source are you using: corn grain, or waste wood/straw? How much fertilizer do you count? If you use cow manure, do you count the energy used to raise & feed the cows? What process for fermenting the feedstock? How pure do you need the ethanol. (It's easy to get 20% ethanol, a bit harder to get 95%, and much harder to get 100%, dry ethanol, like what's needed to mix with gasoline.) Where do you get the energy for the process? From the final, refined ethanol, from a raw intermediate, or from waste? All have an influence on how much energy you get out.
From my perspective, it's rather telling that the article is being published in "Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences", versus a more estemed journal like Science, Nature, PNAS or even a top tear energy journal (but Plant Sciences?). I haven't read it, but my guess is that the analysis isn't high enough quality to cut it somewhere better.
I rather like the idea of an "ethanol economy." Granted, I don't think the current production system is going to work, rather we'll need to switch over to using cellulosic (waste) feedstuffs, powering the process with waste/intermediates, and running fuel cells off of highly aqueous (~20-50%) ethanol. All will cut the energy needed for ethanol production dramatically.
There was a reason, back in the day, that gasoline was chosen to power vehicles. That is, its energy-density is very high. In fact, in terms of fuels that are stable enough to be in a vehicle, I am sure that gasoline is very very close to the top. That is why it became (and remains) the dominant fuel for automobiles. Alternative fuels (hydrogen fuel cells, ethanol) are simply to inefficient and expensive. Though gas is such a nasty pollutant, is the economically (think micro and short-term) smartest choice at the moment.
It's because of our primary and electoral system. Nobody should give a shit about the corn growing states, but since they're sparsely populated, their votes are worth 3 of mine (in Georgia). And of course, the Iowa caucus has a ridiculously large voice in the selection of the President. All of this clout for corn farmers means everybody has to kiss their ass and promise to buy all the corn they can grow for ethanol. Add to that the benefit that you can pretend you care about the environment instead of just corn farmer votes, and you can be pretty sure ethanol has a secure future.
corn is used to produce ethanol, ethanol is burned and gives off carbon dioxide, and corn uses the carbon dioxide as it grows
Ixnay. Politicians know ethanol is crap. It just gives them a better story when pushing for farm subsidies. For more information, see Homeland Defense Funding
The author is using data from thirty-year-old production techniques to shoot down the new "buzz" about tomorrow's efficient ethanol production. At the same time, he is ignoring the current research that is generating the buzz: researchers are just now coming up with efficient ways to produce enzymes that can turn raw agricultural waste into ethanol. That means stuff like sawdust, wood pulp, cardboard, corn stems, yard waste etc can be turned into ethanol instead of going into landfills.
Data about how much energy it takes to grow corn is irrelevant, because we won't be using corn. We'll be using lawn clippings, or pulverized construction waste, or re-re-recycled paper, or whatever.
include $sig;
1;
It might be illegal to read this article if you are currently in Illinois or Iowa.
did you forget that ethanol production is subsidized by the feds?
Clear, Dark Skies
the energy required to produce gasoline?
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
From Article:
"People tend to think of ethanol and see an endless cycle: corn is used to produce ethanol, ethanol is burned and gives off carbon dioxide, and corn uses the carbon dioxide as it grows," he said. "But that isn't the case. Fossil fuel actually drives the whole cycle.
I think he is failing to see that the problem lies with Fossil Fuels being electricity producers. It might not be as feasible as one thinks, but we might as well switch to as much nuclear power or some other alternative or spend billions (trillion if needed ) of dollars to actually get Fusion up and running.
Seriously, the oil gravy train at best can only last 100 years given the rate of expansion from US and China. (pessimists would say by 2020)
I don't know about global warming, but eventually if we rely on natural oil we'll be walking more.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
For processing, since this corn is not for consumption I would imagine you could let it dry on the cobs, soak it down to sprout it, and then toss it into some kind of grinder to pulverise it into a very coarse mash. By sprouting it you allow the natural process to create mashing enzymes and sugar similar to barley malt. I can't imagine grinding up corncobs would require that much energy.
Then you heat up your mash to the conversion temperature of around 160F and convert all remaining starches to fermentable sugars. There's no point in straining the mixture really so once it cools down some you toss in a cake of distiller's yeast and let it ferment out.
Finally, you draw off your liquid which will contain some portion of ethanol. If you stored it until winter, you could use partial crystalization to refine your alcohol. No energy required here.
And the final distillation. Again, if you wait until the winter, you can utilize process heat from the distillation to heat your building. Some energy required here but you could probably use some of the ethanol you are producing to run your process and/or burn left over stalks, corncobs, and organic materials.
Really with some clever use of waste streams, the whole process could run with zero net outside energy input other than human labor and sunlight.
Overall the energy input probably does exceed the content of the finished product, but you are essentially concentrating your energy into a much more useful form (read: you can sell it for cash).
This is nothing new, all industry involves taking large amounts of relatively worthless raw materials and condensing them down into some form which is more useful and valuable.
A million joules of sunlight is essentially worthless, but a hundred thousand joules worth of ethanol is something you can sell!
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In other news, researchers have discovered that it takes six top stories being posted to Slashdot to get one piece of real news.
Moderator hint: a comment is neither "Flamebait" nor "Troll" if it is true.
Yes, it costs lots of power to make.
The point is, you can make ethanol anywhere you want, say from the leftover electricity that is not needed at the time by the power plants (this happens a lot when your locals don't need heating or air conditioning).
Use the leftover power to make ethanol. Sell ethanol as gas, usable anywhere.
Of course there are those who'd prever we waste leftover electricity and buy regular gas, and unfortunately they can afford to bribe a politician or two (or even get elected themselves - think Bush family).
My question would be, is it better than other ways to use/store leftover power from power plants?
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First Falcon-1 to orbit, then Falcon-9. Then I can die a happy man.
Six times more energy than end product delivers, not six times more energy than gasoline; there's a big difference.
If you look at the site a previous poster mentioned ( here ), you'll see that ethanol's energy yield is 1.34, while gasoline's is 0.805. Obviously, that is nowhere near a 6x difference.
Also, the thing about portable fuel sources vs how much energy it takes to make them gets people thinking the wrong way. I'll put it in terms nerds can understand. It's like a desktop machine vs a laptop. A desktop machine is more powerful and a lot cheaper. So why would anyone ever buy a laptop? Because it's portable. Same thing with liquid fuels - it's not as efficient as plugging directly into the power grid, but guess what, extension cords don't run very far. You're giving up efficiency for an ability that you completely lack otherwise. The energy going into gasoline isn't 1:1, either. Think about all the energy that goes into drilling for oil, transporting said oil, refining said oil into gasoline, then transporting _again_ to the final destination.
Is the higher cost of ethanol & biodiesel directly attributable to its pump price? No, it's value to consumers reflects mainly two things: 1) much less production means economies of scale don't apply as well, and 2) better environmental impact. Much like the 'eco-friendly' brands of various products cost more. You pay for what you value.
Also to note about biodiesel: you get more power, better milage, and longer engine life than with diesel, so there is a long-term monetary benefit to using it.
I agree, this did smell funny. So I went out and did some research.
It seems that the "scientist" in this story, Tad Patzek (a geologist), has been working for the oil industry quite a bit over the last few years. Odd that he should suddenly be switching his interest to agriculture and begin attacking Ethanol.
Or perhaps it all makes sense if you look at it from the correct prospective.
Minne-snow-da: Winter is comming...
It didn't take long to find two things:
(1) Making this case seems to be all Patzek ever does
(2) He may not be wholly unbiased.
Here's the Google search and here's one of many interesting results...
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The only change you could make in our electoral system that would make a difference is to stop allowing people that receive federal money from voting for their state representatives.
Until then, people will continue to elect candidates that will give them money for their votes.
Summary - Energy Balance/Energy Life Cycle Inventory
Fuel Energy yield* Net Energy (loss) or gain
Gasoline 0.805 (19.5 percent)
Diesel 0.843 (15.7 percent)
Ethanol 1.34 34 percent
Biodiesel 3.20 220 percent
* Life cycle yield in liquid fuel Btus for each Btu of fossil fuel energy consumed.
Excellent point, it's the first thing that crossed my mind when I read the article. At 6x the energy to produce it than you get back, government subsidies would have to be huge. As a matter of logic, divide all government subsidies by the number of gallons of ethanol produced. Examine the subsidy-per-gallon (SPG) in comparison to the cost-of-gas (COG). Unless SPG is more than 5x greater than COG, there's no way it takes 6x as much energy to produce a gallon of ethanol than it creates. Otherwise, the makers of ethanol would lose money hand over fist. Anyone have the numbers?
/.ers, before railing against government subsidies, try to examine the facts first, do some light math and see if the numbers make sense. This whole article looks like a big troll to me.
Another respondent pointed that the study was conducted by a big-oil schill. With no facts presented in the article, I can only conclude it's a steaming pile of s***. So
1) Let's factor out those credits. Say someone wants to make 90/10 gas/ethanol to take advantage of the tax credit. How much will they actually pay for each gallon of ethanol, before taking into account the credit?
2) Ethanol is not as efficient as gasoline. I saw one figure that said 3% less efficient, but that was probably from an ethanol propaganda site. Wikipedia says gasoline is more like a 48% gain in BTU over ethanol (104k BTU/gal versus 70.3k BTU/gal).
If we say that gasoline costs $2.00 per gallon, that's $1.92 for 100,000 BTU of energy ($2/1.04). To be competitive, the price of ethanol must be about $1.35 per gallon ($1.92 * 0.703). If we can get the price of ethanol below that, there would be no reason to buy gasoline.
Well, what is wrong with this picture then? This site says the cost of producing ethanol has dropped from $1.40 in 1980 to under $1.00 in 2001, with the average being $1.09 (since some plants use old equipment still). If ethanol costs less per unit work, why don't more cars run on it, or at least higher blends of it?
Can someone comment on these points? I don't have time to research them all...
54 cents per gallon of ethanol, 5.4 cents per gallon of 90/10 blended gasoline. Did you forget that the oil industry is also subsidized by the feds?
The Harvesting engine could be run using steam power generated by buring stalks, cobs and other 'waste' materials. Wood shoud be avoided as it typically takes a long time to renew. I remember seeing that white long grain rice is cleaned and polished using power from buring its' bran coat.
First, try thinking about it in the terms Bucky Fuller suggested: energy is the real value, and money is just an abstraction of it. They are interchangeable because they're inseperable.
Of course it's ineffecient. If it were efficient, it'd be cheap, and nobody could make money doing it, and so wouldn't do it on a scale useful to a population which is incapable of doing it for themselves.
Unaddressed is the complete cost of its use in terms of cleaning up the biosphere mess after. It's unaddressed because it's the same for both ethanol and petroleum, and so wouldn't serve his purpose. It'd make everything look equally bad. It's these after-costs that are the big hit against nuclear power, and the manufacturing costs (direct and long-term indirect) are frequently ignored by clean/green energy. What's it take to produce an acre of solar panels? A hundred windmills?
Why is it so surpising to people that thermodyamics works, and insists on the entire system be included?
Ginsberg's Theorem (The modern statement of the three laws of thermodynamics)
1. You can't win.
2. You can't even break even.
3. You can't get out of the game.
Well, you personally can get out of the game. But your organic molecules can't. They have to stay and get recycled in the constant fight against entropy. And here is where such biased reporting and reporters could be of use. Recycle all that paper they marked up, and their organic molecules. I mean, they DO want to make a difference, right?
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
As I pointed above, a version of the printed article is available on the web http://petroleum.berkeley.edu/papers/patzek/CRPS41 6-Patzek-Web.pdf
Do keep in mind though that not all energy is created equal. If it takes some number of units of heat and electricity, we needn't assume they come from oil. Really, studies like this need to break things out into "portable" and "non-portable" energy forms. If it uses more portable energy than it produces, then it's a loser. If it uses less portable energy, but some additional amount of non-portable energy then it could still work out OK.
At the end of the day, we don't make electricity out of oil, so a process that uses electricity and produces oil/ethanol might be useful if we need oil, and have electricity to burn.
This is one of the primary justifications for things like widespread solar and nuclear power sources. Though they don't help our dependence on oil directly, by giving us a limitless/very large source of electricity, we are more able to undertake processes that consume electricity but produce oil/ethanol, helping to reduce the constraints on oil supplies.
Another good example of this is Hydrogen. Hydrogen production is important, but not because you'll run your car on it. It is used in all sorts of industry (including oil refining), and can easily be used with Thermal Depolymerization (TDP) to produce oil from all sorts of useless trash, literally. We currently make hydrogen from natural gas, so it's not worth it to use that hydrogen to make oil, but if we could make it from something else, then the whole equation changes. Lots of industry that burns natural gas or coal, or uses it chemically, could use the produced hydrogen instead, and the natural gas could be used to power vehicles, or even be directly converted into oil.
It's very much interconnected. Saving electricity doesn't really help here, as we would still be converting coal to oil, which isn't really so helpful from an environmental standpoint. Dramatic new sources of power, however, like widespread solar or nuclear allows us to convert effectively limitless energy to an oil like form, and would change things dramatically.
Once again, life is more complicated than what passes for journalism these days.
Don't forget that biodiesel and ethanol come from different parts of the corn plant. (Substitute your favorite plant) Ethanol is made from sugar/starch. Biodiesel is made from oil. You can extract the oil, without affecting how much sugar/starch is in the product. Then turn the sugar/starch to ethanol.
Don't only is this study heavily biased against ethanol by using outdated data, it ignores the biodiesel production (which is somewhat rare), and that the by products are useful in their own right.
Ethanol alone doesn't need to be energy positive (though it is - if you farm with modern methods), so long as you account for the energy left after producing ethanol.
In Wisconsin, the DNR (Department of Natural Resources) will come down on you like a ton of bricks if you let this happen. And even in the absence of a regulatory agency, such a waste of resources puts you at an economic disadvantage compared to more careful farmers.
some researchers have found that ethanol releases high levels of nitrogen oxide, one of the principal ingredients of smog, when burned.
All high-temperature combustion processes that take place in air produce nitrogen oxide. This is true for ethanol, methanol, diesel, biodiesel, gasoline, propane, natural gas, coal, and oh yes: hydrogen.
Optimistic that the process will become even more efficient in the future, [Hosein Shapouri] pointed out that scientists are experimenting with using alternative sources like solid waste, grass and wood to make ethanol.
He is most certainly talking about cellulosic ethanol here. This technology (it already exists!) lets us convert things like wood, scrap paper, and stover (straw and corn stalks) into ethanol, which will make fuel ethanol even more economical than it is now.
"The USDA isn't looking at factors like the energy it takes to maintain farm machinery and irrigate fields in their analysis,"
Irrigating corn or wheat is a stupid thing to do, anyway. If only we'd grow the stuff where there's enough rain to water it, instead of turning farmer's fields into subdivisions...
the agency's ethanol report contains overly optimistic assumptions about the efficiency of farming practices.
Increased demand for ethanol will attract new players to the field. The smart and efficient will prosper. The stupid and wasteful will go bankrupt.
Patzek thinks lawmakers and environmental activists need to push ethanol aside and concentrate on more sustainable solutions like improving the efficiency of fuel cells
And what will we use to fuel these efficient fuel cells?
or harnessing solar energy for use in transport.
What a dork. Solar power is diffuse and feeble. Transportation is energy-intensive. Here's a word problem he should try:
If they don't, he predicts economics will eventually force the issue.A dork, and a hypocrite. These same economics will also wring the inefficiencies out of ethanol production.
"If government funds become short, subsidies for fuels will be looked at very carefully," he said. "When they are, there's no way ethanol production can survive."
Yeah, no subsidies for ethanol! We'd rather send our children, grandchildren, nieces, and nephews off to fight a war in the Mideast every 10 years or so, to keep the oil flowing.
The current math the guy uses (in other publications) implies that ethanol can only be produced economically in vast quantities in distilleries powered by commercial electricity produced primarily via fossil fuels. In actuality a single standard wind turbine can produce enough electricity to power a household scale still sufficient to provide the mobile fuel requirements of a family, with power left over to buy down the family's electric bill. There's a page at the Iowa State University website that shows the break down. Once you do the math on energy budgets without the handicap of having to use the fuel you're compared against for your target production the numbers start to look real nice. Oh, and don't forget the environmental externalities of petroleum fuels that don't get added into this psuedo-economic analysis.
"Secrecy is the Beginning of Tyranny" "No intelligent man has any respect for an unjust law" -Robert Heinlein
Here's a Cellulosic Ethanol Fact Sheet that claims cellulosic ethanol can be created for an oil-equivalent-cost of $13/barrel.
IN THE ARTICLE, they state that this research is based on 35 year old production techniques! The submitter conveniently overlooked that bit of information though, because, if it's not hydrogen and fuel cells it must not be good enough. TFA goes on to say that based on the latest information released from the USDA, Ethanol produces 67% more energy than is needed to create it. I pass this along, only so the common /.er who doesn't have time (doesn't care) to read the article will be better informed.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
There is a similar situation with nuclear power. As Dr. Helen Caldicot has pointed out, a net loss of energy actually results from the operation of nuclear plants if you factor in the amount of energy consumed in the later decommisioning of the facility, and the transport and storage of nuclear waste products.
IT IS BETTER TO BE A YOUNG JUNEBUG THAN AN OLD PEACOCK - Mark Twain
If god didn't want us to eat animals, why did he make them so tasty?
On a more serious note, it would make a lot of sense to seriously cut down on the amount of meat we eat for more reasons than just the amount of energy it takes to grow it.
I was doing some research for a "Green Diesel" company, O2 Diesel and examine their competitors: Diesel+water, Diesel+ethanol, FT Diesel (from coal), Natural Gas (converted to diesel), Vegetable Oil. Every single time I looked at the figures, vegetable oil seemed to make the most sense. It is totally renewable, there is capacity (just about) and it has lower emissions at source(not as good as pure ethanol, but better than fossil oil) and, because your growing more foods, the total emmission cycle was significantly better. The real problem was that it took more diesel to farm the land than you got out of it, and that was before processing and refining. It turns out this is well known and widely accepted.
So what can we do? Hybrid Tractors with solar panels? Actually thats probably not such a bad idea... i'm off to the patent office.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
If you think nuke power is a loss you are an idiot. How on earth can decommisionning and waste transport can amount to the thousands of TeraWatthours produced by nuclear energy ?
dunno whether to laugh or cry when I see these idiotic analysis
granddaddy used to grow a few acres of corn 'n such just to keep busy. grandma boiled the ears, removed the edible with a butter knife & the cobs went in with the other vegtable waste.
with a homebuilt still and VERY LITTLE extra work granddaddy produced a couple hundred gallons of ethanol a year. he mixed it about 1:1 with regular leaded gas & ran the tractor, his pickup, grandma's sedan and the school bus he drove
it's nice to know the eggheads are thinking about this stuff, but if want to know whether something is practical ask somebody that lives in the real world
--
Riley
The point of the energy deficite is that it takes 6 joules of energy to grow and refine 1 joule worth of ethanol.
It doesn't matter if the energy comes from oil, atomic power, hydro, wind or plain old muscle power. Which means that unless you have like 100 million serfs tilling the grain fields by hand, it costs you more fuel and/or electricity to make than you get from burning what you made.
Bottom line, it AIN'T a renewable energy source, its a political tool for getting votes from the Midwest.
It also means that ethanol cannot possibly be manufactured in the volumes required to replace oil, not even for a little while.
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
There is a research program within the USDA that is all about biofuels and development of improved efficiency of conversion: Crop Conversion Science and Engineering Research Unit . It has projects titled:
Aqueous Enzymatic Extraction of Corn Oil and Value-Added Products from Corn Germ Produced in New Generation Dry-Grind Ethanol Processes
Economic Competitiveness of Renewable Fuels Derived from Grains and Related Biomass
Enzyme-Based Technologies for Milling Grains and Producing Biobased Products and Fuels
Valuable Polysaccharide-Based Products from Sugar Beet Pulp and Citrus Peel
Engineering Scale-Up, Process and Economics Research Support Group
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
if god didn't want priests to fuck choirboys He wouldn't have made them so darn sexy
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Your penchant for priests is your own business.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
And you ignore the fact that regardless of the energy source, ethanol is *still* a net sink of energy. *Regardless of the energy source*.
Of course it is. It is called "entropy". All conversion of energe from one form to another results in a net "loss", as some of the energy is lost.
The real question is not whether or not there is a net energy loss, it is wether that energy that was lost is renewable or not. Solar and Wind power is renewable. The sun will continue to shine just as brightly tomorrow, the next week, and 5000 years from now (until it goes nova), regardless of how much of it's rays we harness.
This is all good information, but I would add that it's not clear which resource is in worse shape from the U.S. POV: oil or gas.
The entire North American continent is in decline now despite manic drilling, and the tiny amount of gas that is transported as LNG suffers from an absurdly low energy profit ratio. The declines for gas wells are also far more sudden and drastic than the Hubbert curves of oil fields. Depending on how geopolitics plays out, we might actually see nation-wide rolling blackouts and/or impossibly high electricity and heating bills before the gasoline lines.
Ethanol, even if produced with net energy profit, is not a substitute for natural gas within our extensive existing infrastructure.
/. peeve #274: The word is neither "walla" nor "whala", it's voila. Phonics is a tool of the devil.
"Animals feel pain, isn't that enough reason ?"
No.
Lions and Tigers eat meat, and thus they kill herbivores. This means they cause pain to their prey as well. Are their acts then immoral? No, they are designed to eat meat, that is their role in the "circle of life" if you will.
WE are omnivores. We are designed to eat both plants and animals. Thus IMO it is not wrong to eat meat.
On another note, if we did not use animal products there would be far fewer cows, pigs chickens etc, as we would have no incentive to raise and feed them. Way back when, man and a certain subset of animals came to an arrangement. We domesticated them, protect them from other predators and provide them food. Eventually we call in the marker. Compared to non-domesticated species, the bargain seems to be worthwhile for domestic ones. We are crowding the wild animals out, yet even as they lose habitat, domesticated animals gain habitat.
The only issue I have is with animal overcrowding. I.E. our livestock should have some quality of life. Thus I don't eat things like veal.
Service guarantees Citizenship! Questions Guarantee GITMO.... Amerika Uber Alles!
It can't and it doesn't. Helen Caldecott is a stupid fucking cunt who parlayed a talent for self promotion and an M.D into a career as an international anti-nuclear activist. She uses her medical credentials to blather about the hazards of nuclear power about as credibly as Bill Frist used his when he remotely diagnosed Terri Schiavo as not being in a persistent vegetative state.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
If we can't figure out how much energy it takes to make ethanol, whether that's more than we get from the ethanol, then we're doomed. This country's inability to produce basic science for energy decisions is a joke, but it's not funny.
--
make install -not war
Considering Georgia is 21st nationally in corn production, and that agriculture makes up 18-percent of its GDP, I'd say Georgia is a corn growing state and that your fellow Georgians, at least, do give a shit about corn.
This link is kind of old, but several years ago Georgia was looking into building an ethanol production plant, so your state by now might be part of the problem corn growing states after all.
Might it not be a better use of the corn to take almost the entire plant and convert it into something usable, rather than just the corn oil ?
antipaucity
yet I have a few questions.
:
according to the utilitarian ethical view, intelligence is not the defining point of ethical judgement. Thus according to this view, animals
should have rights as living beings. From the link
"If a being suffers, there can be no moral justification for refusing to take that suffering into consideration."
Yet if we assume the above, then animals not only have rights, but responsibilities to OTHER animals. Thus you have a problem. By subscribing to this view you can and MUST judge the tiger's acts as immoral for he infringes upon the right to life of his prey.
Contractarianism makes for a poor ethical system, since it cannot cover children or the mentally infirm (except as indirect recipients of the sentiments of contractors). And it means that numbers determine morality - if enough of us agree that persons of a certain skin tone, or gender, or religious belief, aren't worth, we just agree to a contract that excludes them. Might makes right.
There is the way the world is and the utopia we may wish it to be. As sad as it is, I would have to say that might does indeed make right. Your rights, my rights anyone's or anything's rights are solely determined by our singular or collective ability to defend them.
The very fact that our history is replete with what we would NOW consider unethical behaviour, seems to indicate that the social contract is indeed the basis of or moral foundation. Otherwise one would assume that our sense of morality is an inate in-born function, and thus our history would not show cruelty towards humans, nor animals.
Finally, let us assume that your belief in preventing pain towards animals comes true, how would it come into being? By Majority opinion! When enough people are convinced that killing animals for meat is wrong, they would have to pass laws and punish those people who do not agree with them in order to stop the practice.
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Uh, sorry, but we already use that. It's called Iron and steel plants. Most ductile grey iron and steel mini-mills in the U.S. now run on third shift so they can take advantage of this period during the day. The electricity is cheaper due to the decreased demand but it still gets used even at night. Lots of other manufacturers use this model also. The U.S. manufacturing sector may be down significantly but taking steps like this is why we still have a basic manufacturing sector.
What would Richard Feynman do, if he were here right now? He'd do some math and he'd follow through!
And no, growing legal products doesn't compete economically with growing illegal drugs for export to the US, as long as the costs of paying off the police and army are managable, which they normally are, and as long as the major product processing/distribution companies aren't having turf wars with each other, which sometimes happens. Very little of the cost or price is actually related to production - it's all about the Black Market that's caused by US domestic and exported Prohibition. The farmers are the inexpensive part of the business, and the violence, bribery, and losses to seizure are the expensive parts, and the sellers can afford to pay the farmers whatever they need to supply current demands.
If the US were to legalize drugs, the prices drop radically - the estimates I've seen from the US government anti-drug propagandists are that a non-black-market price would be about $3/gram for powder cocaine, and about $1/day for typical heroin-addict quantities of opiates, which grow easily almost anywhere, and they estimated that the black market and associated violence and corruption wouldn't be sustainable competing with legal products at less than ~$10/gram. (That particular document didn't give a price estimate for legal marijuana, but since you can grow it anywhere you can grow tomatoes, it'd be about $1/pound in the summer... .) This was before the current emphasis on methamphetamines as a popular drug, but they're an easily-synthesized industrial product that could be made for about the cost of Sudafed if they were legal.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks