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Ethanol Demand Is Boosting Food Prices Worldwide
hereisnowhy writes "The rising demand for corn as a source of ethanol-blended fuel is largely to blame for increasing food costs around the world, the CBC reports. Increased prices for ethanol have already led to bigger grocery bills for the average American — an increase of $47 US compared to July 2006. In Mexico last year, corn tortillas, a crucial source of calories for 50 million poor people, doubled in price; the increase forced the government to introduce price controls. The move to ethanol-blended fuel is based in part on widespread belief that it produces cleaner emissions than regular gasoline. But a recent Environment Canada study found no statistical difference between the greenhouse gas emissions of regular unleaded fuel and 10 per cent ethanol-blended fuel. Environmental groups have argued that producing ethanol — whether from corn, beets, wheat, or other crops — requires more energy than can be derived from the product."
Any fucking idiot could have foreseen that. Well, except for the blind idiots.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
The same is true of virtually all other sources of biomass fuels.
Basically companies like ADM have, after clearing the people off their farm lands, decided that it is unnecessary to feed people so long as they can get government subsidies.
As far as I can see, the only potential biomass replacement for fossil fuels is oil from algae -- but even that has severe problems, as is pointed out by the head of the algae pond experiments for NREL.
Some sort of combined use system is necessary in order to pay for the infrastructure costs, but if the engineering challenges can be overcome the payoff can be enormous: a reduction of ecological footprint of a factor of 1000 for developed (and soon to be developed) nations.
Seastead this.
He can't be wrong. He has an MBA!
Monbiot is an idiot.
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are rejoicing because this could result in starvation for many, which fits into the ultimate goal of the rabid greens: the extinction of the human race.
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-- Will program for bandwidth
We are NOT using a gallon of petroleum to produce a gallon (of less then a gallon if you believe the FUD) of ethanol. Not all energy in the world comes from petroleum. Most of the fuel used to produce Ethanol comes from Coal or Natural Gas. http://rael.berkeley.edu/ebamm/summary.html Your other statement about fuel mileage is also inaccurate. Yes ethanol has less energy per unit then petroleum but it also has a higher octane. For those not understanding octane, this means the fuel can withstand higher pressures before being ignited giving it an efficiency boost(think turbo or super charger). My understanding is an ethanol engine can be toned to have the same gas mileage as as gasoline engine. The reason why flex fuel cars get the lower mpg is because they are toned for gasoline and not ethanol. I'll try to quickly address your other FUD. The production of ethanol involves growing plants which reduce smog and CO2 while the production of gasoline only produces smog while never contributing to the reduction of it, that is simple common knowledge that you don't need a PHD to understand. As many have said corn prices are influenced by other things and 60% of the bi product of ethanol production can be used as feed for livestock. We don't need to retrofit or replace engines to handle ethanol because gasoline is not going away in any near future. Gasoline engines will be replaced when they die of old age and then replaced by a new cars that can handle ethanol or other biofuels. Do you have anymore FUD that you've been swallowing from Big Oil without researching?