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Cellulosic Biofuel Finally Ready For the Road
wdebruij writes "After years of research, promises, and plenty of discussion here, biofuel from inedible greens such as switchgrass — and even from corn cobs — may finally be getting economically viable. Two enzyme producers, Novozyme and Genencor, have both announced that they can now produce fuel at prices competitive with current corn and petrol-based methods. This is particularly good news in the wake of another report that food-based biofuels could cause hunger."
First post! And since this stuff is finally going to be hitting the road, when will my gas prices become reasonable (for the US) again? I'm tired of $2.96 a gallon and only getting 300 miles out of it.
This is particularly good news in the wake of another report that food-based biofuels could cause hunger."
They JUST figured this out!!!????
This is the problem with the green lords... they don't think ahead of the unintended consequences!
I've HATED Corn based ethanol for YEARS... Everyone would point to some country in South America (Brazil?) about how good Ethanol was and the amount of fuel created etc... But that was end of process SUGAR CANE! NOT a major food source!
Glad someone is finally waking up.
--- Relax, that mass muderer is just trying to reduce our carbon footprint, one fetus at a time...
Has anyone done anything about the huge water requirements of ethanol production? In Chester, South Carolina there have been voices screaming about the proposed ethanol plant. One side is desperate for the jobs, the other side is desperate to protect the Catawba River.
Maybe now I'll have a way to make money off all the weeds in my front yard. I'll finally be able to prove to the neighbors that an unkempt yard is actually worth something.
The main issue with biofuels isn't really food or cost. It's about land use, energy efficiency and sustainability. Brazil is usually given as a great example, but they have only 8 million cars, which use a maximum of 25 percent biofuel, the rest is still gasoline or diesel. And Brazil is one of the countries that is deforesting the fastest in the world. The US has 250 million cars. There's not enough land left in the world to clear to make enough biofuels for that.
http://www.selfdestructivebastards.com/2010/01/biofuels.html
Poor market management, lack of planning or agricultural investment and war cause famine, not biofuels. Zimbabwe is host to some of Africa's best ariable land and yet there are thousands who are starving. If the people hadn't let all the farms fall into disrepair after the revolution they would have so much food they could be exporting to other regions.
There is enough farmland available to grow enough food for all the world. Better prices for biofuel stock might drive up prices short term, but will lead to greater investment and supply long term.
this is the side effect of being CO2 obessed. you can't turn off the energy tap, so you have to source it some other way then fossil fuels. i've been saying the cure will be worse then the desease for a long time now...
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I see speculation on the cost of the fuel, but nothing whatsoever on the performance of it. This makes my suspicion meter go into alarm mode...
Though, to be fair, ethanol suffers from the same issue.
Looking at the 2010 Town and Country (a similar vehicle to my own Flex-Fuel van), I see these ratings:
E85 - 17mpg
Gas - 24mpg
Adjusted into dollars-per-hundred-miles, using these prices, that's something like:
E85 - $14.13 ($2.403/g)
Gas - $10.87 ($2.610/g)
So even though the price at the pump is less, I'd be a fool to run E85 in even a new vehicle of this class.
Unless this new fuel is better than E85, I can't see how getting it down to a comparable price at the pump is doing us any favors. Now if it is somehow better than E85, then that would be some good news. Alas, the story is mute on this topic.
Well, it's certain that filling their tanks with Arabs hasn't upset them at all in the last hundred years.
Maybe the solution is to reduce the number of cars instead of trying to figure out a way to power them (in an unsustainable manner)
I think the problem is that people expect a single decisive solution to a complex planet-wide problem.
Let me save everyone time and effort: unless we develop fusion-based power production, there isn't going to be one.
However, in the context of a world where squeezing the last bit of energy from dwindling resources is important, biofuels do have a role... as yet another technology that allows us to recycle what would otherwise be waste. Solar, geothermal, wind, and tide power... NONE of the above is THE solution to the world's energy problem. Neither is nuclear power, and neither are biofuels. A combination of ALL of the above on the other hand, could keep us going, without completely destroying what's left of our natural resources, long enough that we could develop new methods of power generation.
What about algae farms on the ocean? Seaweed farms? Who says the biomass has to come from corn or any other land based crop? The farms could be right next to the data centers.
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
this is the side effect of being CO2 obessed. you can't turn off the energy tap, so you have to source it some other way then fossil fuels.
Turning corn into ethanol doesn't solve the fossil fuel dependency problem because corn is fertilized with (wait for it...) fossil fuels.
Now if non-food crops are grown on areas that aren't useful for growing food crops, all without using petroleum-based fertilizers, it might make some sense.
Also if they don't use industrial fertilizers, which rely upon fossil fuels for nitrogen fixation. Our most efficient method of doing that is the Haber-Bosch process, and the most economically viable form of it happens to use a shitload of natural gas. Until we move away from that crutch we're still burning fossil fuels, albeit disguised by a few more layers of transformation.
Why euthanize them when you can put them to work pushing your SUV until they drop dead?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Even in the 10% mixture we are currently seeing, ethanol in engines meant for gasoline is bad! It causes all manner of problems in the long term.
Running pure ethanol will simply require a complete change in the engine to work well. Has there been much discussion of that? I fear there hasn't been any.
Citation? Every report in the last 15-20 years has said the exact opposite. In fact, all current production vehicles are designed specifically for 10% mixtures, and many new vehicles are designed for E85 right out of the factory. What sort of engine re-design do you contemplate that hasn't already been done? The problems reported years ago were due to material incompatibility (no longer an issue at all) and lack of lubricity (also no longer a problem).
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
This a positive step in the right direction. I always felt that by George W. Bush touting bio fuels through corn was exceedingly stupid and shortsighted - even for him. This drove the price of cereal up as we should all recall in and around 2007 when cereal suddenly sky rocketed. A cellulose process makes far more sense, from an economic and an environmental standpoint because waste products can be used. After all, who eats the corn cob? This is a step towards energy independence but still does not fully address the environmental concerns. We need to move away from internal combustion, carbon emissions and look towards fuel cells.
+1 Indeed. No mod points though. :)
Akvo.org - the open source for water and sanitation
I've been following the biofuels industry pretty closely. How about Duckweed? Like algae it does not compete with cropland, it grows fast and unlike algae, it is easy to harvest (just skim off the top rather than concentrating water). Also easier to deal with "weeds" (algae ponds get contaminated by other species and this is hard to control). Duckweed is mostly cellulose and so fits into a feedstream amenable to the fermentation described by the article.
Let me know when they can make fuel from cellulite, that should solve America's dependence on foreign fuel supplies for quite some time.... I'll do my part, converting potatoes into fuel one delicious french fry at a time
Try New Texaco Green, It's People!
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
I bet if you took any field currently used to grow corn for ethanol, you could find another crop to grow on that field for ethanol use such that it produced more energy at the other end (i.e. after you subtract the amount of energy required in the production process).
Switchgrass and other types of biofuel are being suppressed because the big bio-tech firms like Monsanto dont profit from those (seed sales, chemical sales etc)
Although to be fair I have no idea how hard it is to take factories that turn corn into biofuel and make them able to turn other things into biofuel as well.
The market cannot answer your question.
Did you ask, "How can I increase short term profit for my shareholder?"
If you asked a different question, please try again.
Stock ticker DBA is smiling and will keep on smiling
INSANITY!!! You fool! You'll kill us all!
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
"When it's unreasonable, you DON'T pay for gas."
I guess that same argument works for kidney dialysis, too, right? The people who aren't paying for it because they can't afford the prices are doing it out of choice... not because they live where they can afford to live, and work where there's a job available.
-- Terry
http://www.businessweek.com/lifestyle/content/may2009/bw20090514_058678.htm
I've got too many friends in the auto repair field who tell me that adding ethanol to fuel has made their financial positions better. Iron and alcohol like to do things together. I thought that was pretty well known. Also, alcohol and a number of plastics get along swimmingly.... and by swimmingly, I mean little pieces breaking off, moving about in the fuel and other systems... thinks leaking and all that. Did they completely stop using iron in the parts that make up an engine?
People are accustomed to their cars breaking and needing repairs. Trouble is, general reliability in cars has improved amazingly in the past 20 years. But that all started to get reversed when ethanol was added to our fuel.
And let's not forget that alcohol as a fuel doesn't fix the problems of greenhouse emissions and decreases efficiency. Adding water to gasoline might actually be a little better for your car and the environment than alcohol.
What he said is true. Engines have to be designed to function well with ethanol fuels. It's not *terribly* different from pure gasoline, but enough it has to be taken into consideration. The octane is higher, gallon for gallon, so you have to deal with that, and the gaskets and seals and fuel lines, etc have to be able to withstand the more-corrosive effects of alcohol. Regular car engines today can handle up to a ten percent blend, after that you can have problems if they haven't been engineered for alcohol fuels in the first place.
Most modern cars today can handle it better, and a lot of flex fuel cars are out there now that can handle up to e-85 blend. Small engines are lagging, and just tons of people with boats that have fiberglass fuel tanks have had serious problems with their carbs getting gunked up with fiberglass gunk that got dissolved because of ethanol in the fuel. A lot of small engines like mowers and weedeaters, etc are also having problems now that the normal ethanol blend is ten percent, and soon to be higher in some places. I've had to fix several, the gas lines just rot, turn to mush. Fast, too, within one season for some I have seen. Freaking dangerous as well, I had one on a gravity fuel feed portable generator that rotted on me and I didn't pick up on it until *I was running the thing and the fuel line just glopped off* and dumped raw gas on the running generator.
Tell ya whut, that was a pucker factor 10 for a few seconds there. I mashed that off button and ran like crazy the other way. Lucked out, it didn't catch, but it could have.
I have since gone around and replaced in advance every single small engine fuel line I have, which is quite a few little engines.
Here, take yer pick...
http://www.google.com/search?q=ethanol+rots+fuel+lines
With that said, I am in favor of biofuels, and see corn ethanol and soybean biodiesel as just a transition step. It's needed to get the ball rolling and that is what opur farmers are setup to grow in mass quantities anyway, so it is natural they went that way. It ain't permanent, so I wish folks would stop worrying so much about it. It's an agricultural evolutionary process, that's all. Brazil uses cane, we have way more corn, etc. We'll get there with different crops eventually, and the work needs to be done now and the nation's fleet gradually converted over so they can run on these alternative fuels.
I am way in favor of getting rid of the *stupid beyond belief* ban we have on industrial hemp production. that would be a spiffy cross product alternative crop. You can get fuels, food, fiber, cellulose for paper, plastics, all sorts of stuff from it. Yields per acre are rather impressive as well, and it is easy to grow.
I'm also in favor or legalizing the "other" hemp like plant as well, for medicinal or alternate reality uses. I see no sense in not learning from prohibition history.
Naw, filling your tank with arabs doesn't work at all. The amount of electricity needed to run the blender/juicer is pretty close to what you get by burning the resultant fuel. It's not a long-term sustainable solution.
Industrial Hemp.
4 times the yield per acre than trees, only takes one season while trees take years, needs no fertilizers or insecticides, very low THC levels.
I leave the Googling to those interested in knowing more, those not interested wouldn't follow the link anyway having bought into the fear mongering media hype about it.
cue lame jokes about getting high smoking it, tho industrial hemp will only give you a head ache if you do.
I had a good friend who happened to also be an exiled member of Liberia's parliament. He said the major problem they were having were as follows:
Due to the currency trade, it costs about 1 million dollars (adjusted) for them to buy a tractor to farm their lands. Is that unreachable? No. Is it ridiculously overpriced? Yes. Do multiple families have to pull together in order to purchase a single tractor? Obviously.
Once the people have a tractor, and something breaks on it, they have to hire help, and that help has to purchase parts from out of the country -- which screws them again on their currency trade. This maladjusted currency business affects them on their importans and it affects them on their exports.
"Well, what if a kind, European business decided to dump a bunch of tractors on the people and buy up their farmland and run a business from it?" you may ask. That sounds like a good idea, until the business sees that every Euro they make doing business with the Liberians could be 10 Euros if they turned around and sold their produce to their own countries!
In this case, the tyrant is the European Union and their currency exchange rates with the African nations, moreso than dictators who can afford to feed themselves, but stare at a steep wall when it comes to the international commerce they would need in order to supply their own agricultural revolutions.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
"Hard to distribute" and "irregular supply" come to mind.
Instead, we should leverage our domestic fat supply by pyrolizing the liposuction from our motoring population into bio-diesel. A suction tube integrated with the seat belt could clip into driver and passenger stoma to harvest while driving. The corn syrup in many foods would support farmers, lipo would keep us thin, and the product would power our SUVs.
It ain't perpetual motion, but it's close.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Higher concentrations of ethanol have bad effects on fiberglass, aluminum, and rubber. cite
It's perfectly possible to make an engine that works great on ethanol (It is wonderful (both in efficiency and power) with forced induction and high compression ratios thanks to the incredible octane rating.), but you need to design for it and that's not cheap.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
I'm not going to argue that ethanol is bad for engines, but you do realize that an Indy car engine is only good for about 1500 miles?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Yes, engines that are rebuilt every 1200 miles are a great testament to how friendly ethanol is on engines.
Engines can be designed to run great on ethanol, but you need to design them for it. That means no rubber hoses or plastic components anywhere in the fuel system (ethanol will turn these to jelly), no steel/iron engine blocks (ethanol will corrode these like nothing), no brass fittings (you'll get galvanic corrosion of anything aluminum in the fuel system, and since steel/iron is out, you pretty much have to use an aluminum block), use high compression and forced induction (ethanol has an incredible octane rating), etc. It's perfectly doable, but it is not cheap.
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
True, the corn syrup issue is caused by too much corn, NOT too little sugar.
The problem is we (like every other industrial nation) makes far more food than we need. This leads to a problem of excess supply, which means farmers go bankrupt as the cost of the good is below what it costs to make the good.
Also, this doesn't solve "world hunger" because shipping the food someplace else is prohibitively expensive.
So, to keep farmers from massive bankruptcy and to slow (not stop, which they would have if they could have) the absorption of small family farms into corporate mega-farms, high tariffs on sugar were imposed AND (2 prong attack) corn was marketed as the answer to any God Damn problem corn could possibly solve (corn syrup, corn gasoline, etc. etc.)
Also adding to this problem is that corn is high in energy and easy to grow. This is compared to other regional crops such as rice, which is high in energy but hard to grow, or wheat which is low in energy but easy to grow.
Sure, "All studies point to a maximum sustainable population being passed in the early 80s" if all you read are studies written and published by people who want to control others. There's no rational reason to believe that we can't support many times the number of people now alive, if you just stop falling into the trap that we've got to continue using today's technology. The fact that the earth is now EASILY supporting about 6 billion people and population is increasing, strongly suggests that it is possible to continue supporting >6e9 for as long as the sun is fairly stable.
It is well established that above a certain level of wealth, most civilizations do not produce enough babies to replace the people who die.
The "rare earth" argument is completely bogus. Nowhere near the whole surface of the earth has been searched for rare earths, not to mention the great volume of earth far below the surface. Furthermore, there are always other materials that can be used (even if the results aren't as good), and new technologies that will come along to make what is now thought of as essential, irrelevant. Think about the history of technology, particularly about past "needs" that are now obsolete.
What is scarce that is essential for a cell phone? Silicon? Dopants like boron, phosphorus, aluminum and arsenic? Copper for conductors? Carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen and oxygen for plastics? Crappy batteries can be made with zinc, carbon, ammonium chloride, and magnesium dioxide; better batteries require more expensive materials but we're still nowhere near exhaustion. Barium titanate is used for some ceramic capacitors, but there are quite a few acceptable ceramic dielectrics and of course there are plastics and mica that are acceptable substitutes in various circuit positions. And so forth and so on, down to the last detail.
Panic mongers and doomsayers are not the source of human advancement.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
The cars may have engines that are build to run on E85, but to run both the E10 and E85, engine needs a compression ration that is suboptimal for E85; being able to do something and doing it well are two different things.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
I've been saying something along those lines for years.
(unchecked immigration + american diet) + liposuction = cheep bio-diesel
"You can see I know very little about pimp policy." George McGovern.
I'm happy about the progress, but I have a few questions.
The feedstock ({corn cobs|sawdust|whatever}) will have to be transported from {the farm|the sawmill|wherever} where currently it just collects or is burned. The feedstock is bulky and if it has high moisture content it is heavy. They are talking about large facilities, so the transport distance will be appreciable. How much effect will this have on the energy efficiency budget?
There will be a distillation stage in production, which requires a heat source. Where will they get this heat? (Hopefully, by burning some fraction of the ethanol they've just produced, or some of the feedstock. If it turns out to be cheaper to burn natural gas for the distillation rather than ethanol which needs no transportation and is available in bulk at wholesale price, this will say something very bad about the economics of the production.) An additional thought: if wind energy really picks up, we'll have a situation where electricity prices for bulk consumers will be highly variable, depending on the wind. It would cost little to put electric heaters into the distillers, which you could then use only when electricity is cheap. You do, however, have to pay for a high capacity connection to the grid which you will only use intermittently.
There must be some waste from this process. What is the nature of this waste, and will it be difficult to dispose of safely?
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
Here we go again, biofuels and all. First off, lets talk about enzymes. People say that cellulose is hard to break down. Here's how to break it down, much more efficiently and cheaply than enzymes: 500 degrees C. The fact is that gasification and thermochemical processing will be more efficient. Many coal and biomass to liquids processes are 85% percent plus energy efficient. Ethanol fermentation is less (appears 75% biomass to ethanol). Instead, let's go for gasification and produce biogasoline, a real fuel with a proven track record. Where does the heat from gasification come from? The sun. We will use big, cheap arrays of mirrors to heat up containers (made of iron?) of the biomass, what ever it may be. Then we remove crud like sulfur and nitrogen, and pass it over a series of catalysts the make gasoline. This happens in one huge desert solar power plant. Of course, as Elon Musk said, it would be better just to burn all that biomass in a big combined cycle power plant and charge up our electric cars. The thing about biofuels is that they are ridiculously inefficient. Even algae, the most efficient biofuel, is only %6-7 efficient solar to fuel conversion, and most are less than %1. A much better way to convert solar energy to fuel is with Sandia's sunshine to petrol program. We could be looking at much higher efficiency (%40+). They react a metal with water to create metal oxide and hydrogen, and then heat up the metal oxide to regenerate the metal. The hydrogen then is reacted with CO2 to produce gasoline. About 1 gallon of water is consumed per gallon of gasoline, and they could operate on waste water anyway. This is real, drop in replacement gasoline.
Responsibility is an addiction
Virtue is a temptation
Community is a cartel
You're very right. Keep in mind that as far as I know, humans have never run out of anything. People were predicting in 1980 that the united states would be starving in 2000 because of population growth. Did it??????? No. Read about the Simon-Ehrlich wager. An environmentalist, Paul Ehrlich, bet that prices of metals he picked would go up. An economist, Julian Simon, bet that prices would go down (remember, the environmentalist picked the metals). Guess who won. The economist. The prices went down, despite massive consumption. We have never really run out of anything. If we stopping being creative and inventive, then we will be in trouble.
Responsibility is an addiction
Virtue is a temptation
Community is a cartel
This is encouraging, because there's plenty of cellulose available as agricultural waste. Corncobs, corn husks, straw, bagasse (sugar cane after sugar extraction), and similar trash are all mostly cellulose.
If they could use kudzu it would save the South!
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
hey, home ownership is not a requirement for life. choosing to do so is indeed a choice. choosing not to live near your job is a choice. for thousands of years people had to work close to home. now we have cars, so you can CHOOSE to live differently, but that is still a choice.
let's not pretend that there is a gun to any commuter's head. before any holier than thou comments are made, I will note I am in the same boat, stuck with what I now consider to be an unwise house decision and no way to sell, and a 30 minute commute by car with no public transit option. all I can do is carpool. I just don't pretend I was forced to buy the house where I did, or to buy a house at all.
Depends entirely on what you decide is your baseline. I got my drivers license about a month before gas hit 99 cents in MA for the first time. I had a solid 4 years of gas hovering around a dollar per gallon, occationally dropping down to around 79 cents at a handful of stations in my home town. Like most of us, what I paid for something the first time I bought it is what seems normal to me. I'm not saying that gas should be 99 cents. I realized even then that it was an untennable price and that it could only go up in the long run. However, you can't honestly believe that the price of gasoline has trippled in the 14 years since I got my license simply because of inflation. Contributing factor, sure, but not even the primary cause.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
Actually, there are a significant number of issues.
ENGINES may be handling it fine, whoever, fuel lines and gas tanks are corroding from the inside out due the the ethanol in the gas. Multiple car companies, including Lexus, Toyota, GM and more) have had recalls to replace damaged fuel systems, and there have been fuel leaks, car fires, and deaths associated with the change to ethanol vs MTBE. Ethanol also eats through fiberglass fuel cannisters and tanks in other vehicles. If you car, lawnmower, or other vehicle has a Fiberglas fuel tank DO NOT use an ethanol blend of gas, it will destroy your fuel system, cause build-up in your engine, and could be a serious fire hazzard.
In older cars, Ethanol is also corrosive to engine seals (rubber vs more modern carbon composite seals). Over time this dramatically drops the efficiency of the engine further, and can cause engine failure after long term exposure.
Further, the core reason for replacing MTBE with ethanol was the prevention of pollutants in runoff, however we've learned since then it was actually the fuel oxygenates, not the MTBE, causing this pollution, and with ethanol being less fuel efficient (fewer joules per litre) than MTBE, there's now a push to replace it again.
If you car is not a "flex-fuel" vehicle, you should NEVER put anything over 10% ethanol in your car, and if possible, but ethanol-free fuel. Flex fuel vehicles have both custom fuel systems, and are designed to run alcohol fuels without risk of corrosion of critical components. They also have computers programmed to adjust to the changing oxygen and compression requirements of different fuels. 10% won't cause serious power issues with your car, but over several years of use, especially in humid environments of if moisture gets in your fuel tank, the damage is very real. 2 cycle engines like lawn equipment are extremely susceptible as well. What makes matters worse, there's no good system for guaranteeing the ethanol content in gasoline. The pump says it's "up to 10%" however field testing of tanker trucks hauling fresh fuel have found as high as 30% content. The local blending done at distribution centers varies, and they'll make whatever blend is cheapest to make based on the current price of the components of the fuel. In some cases, ethanol is actually cheaper than regular gas, and they'll overuse ethanol. If your engine has trouble, and you bring it in for service, and it;s not a flex-fuel car but your ethanol content is over 10%, they'll assume you used e85 at some point, and void your warranty. This has happened a LOT (check various forums).
There is no contest in life for which the unprepared have the advantage.
With sun-powered desalination of sea water we can make the deserts bloom.
Thus destroying the ecosystem of the desert and the culture of any indigenous people.
With making the UN admit that they have lost the war on drugs we could make the deserts bloom with few pesticide AND cover it with a fibrous carpet to slow down erosion, by growing hemp.
What makes you think that the blooming desert won't attact pests?? It's not like the pests happen to be endemic to the regions we just happened to be growing corn in. The pests follow their prefered food. Biosecurity can be useful in delaying the appearance or spread of pests, but they'll show up eventually (Sooner rather than later unfortunately) and then you'll be in the same situation. Furthermore, errosion is not a problem in the desert so I don't know what problem is being solved here.
The fertilizer is easily provided by the world's industry lobbyists, put their bullshit to good use.
Sooo, you're against pesticides, but in favor of widespread use of fertilizers?? Normally being against one means you are against the other. Either this means you are very uniquely open minded or you are unaware of the very real benefits of the former and the very real negatives of the later. Eutrophication of freshwater is caused in large part by runnoff of phosphorus from fertilizers, whereas eutrophication of saltwater ecosystems is caused by runnoff of nitrogen from fertilziers. Admitedly, not a whole lot of water in the dessert, but if we are going to be undertaking a massive irrigation effort in the dessert, we'll be creating an ecosystem of sorts, and at least some of the irrigation water is going to get back to natural aquifers and bodies of water. Also, I would assume that most lobbyist don't have access to large quantities of fertilziers themselves. Some might be able to acquire it from the industries that they represent, but it's not like the guy wispering in your senetors ear has a half acre lot piled 20 feet high with generic fertilizer somewhere.
Ultimately your post strikes me as a collection of half-thought out pipe dreams (emphasis on the pipe) and liberal prejudices (ie the nonsense about lobbyists) I'm not nocking hemp itself, just your belief that it is a panacea instead of just an alternate crop that got a bad rap due to it's kinship with marijuana.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
home ownership is not a requirement for life
Nobody said anything about ownership. Perhaps you live in your mum's basement and she doens't charge you rent, but most grown-ups have to pay for their accomodations, whether it be in the form of rent or some combination of mortgage payment, property taxes and association fees. Those costs are all directly associated with the market value of the property where you live, and as cruel as it seems, those places that are closest to the most places of employment, public transit choices and other amenities are often the most valuable/in-demand/expensive. Living in the most convenient location is indeed NOT the choice for many people.
choosing not to live near your job is a choice
Everyone has choices, but often there is only one reasonable choice. These days, many people don't even have the choice to have a job at all, and those that do have a job aren't going to be picky about where they work...and if that happens to require a lengthy commute so be it, because paying for it a tank at a time is the only affordable option to sizeable relocation costs. Furthermore, not all choices line up. You cannot undo choosing to raise a family, and what if you cannot find a home, a workplace AND a school all within one area? Very few people are that lucky.
let's not pretend that there is a gun to any commuter's head
in some urban centres that is a distinct possibility ;-)
I will note I am in the same boat, stuck with what I now consider to be an unwise house decision and no way to sell, and a 30 minute commute by car with no public transit option. all I can do is carpool
Well, then you DO have the "right to bitch". I don't like it when people complain about their situation when they have no real reason to do so, but regardless of your past "bad choices" you are in a situation now where your choices are restricted, and if something is intolerable you SHOULD complain, and you SHOULD get involved in solutions (like, as you mentioned, carpooling, should it work for you). People who just sit and suffer in silence do nothing to make the world better for themselves OR for anyone else.
Biofuels need not be made of corn, and no environmentalist has suggested this is the best alternative. The choice is chiefly a political one, meant to prop up corn demand because the US produces an INCREDIBLY MASSIVE GLUT of corn FAR exceeding practical demand. It is a market so distorted by political interference it bears no resemblance to a free market and as such decisions are made in absence of economic soundness. These studies making out biofuel to be dangerous to our food supply make assumptions that would never happen in a free market--that biofuels would continue to make use of human-grade foodstock like corn, that such fuels would replace a sizeable amount of conventional fuel demand, that harvesting biofuel feedstock would not become more efficient, ignores the possibility of using waste food prodcuts and so on.
Americans scarcely eat HALF of the edible food crops grown for their consumption. That INCLUDES crops fed to animals that are subsequently turned into meat. The rest goes to waste--often not even into compost to recycle into fields. It would break your heart to see how much food goes into landfills--buried in anaerobic conditions where it not only doesn't nourish fields for future crops it doesn't even properly decompose for a decade or two!
Make no mistake, there is an AMPLE supply of feedstock for biofuels, and it is well worth the investment in research like making cellulosic ethanol and biodiesels made from waste oils cost-effective as a means of recovering this massive waste.
My engine has 200000 miles on it with 10% ethanol.
No problem! We can grow it in the urban prairie.
How "suboptimal" are you talking? Hopefully you're not simply trying to make the claim that an engine can't be optimized for two things at once. That's sort of how optimization goes.
US Corn exports, even in this time that ethanol is supposedly starving people to death, has INCREASED!
In 2007-2008 the US's Corn exports rose 6% to the highest export volume that we've seen in 18 years! If you compare the export rates over the last 8 years, we are up across the board. At no point in the ethanol push have we returned to our corn export levels of 2002.
All of this crap about ethanol causing food shortages is complete BS. Prices are increasing, but the majority of those costs are due to TRANSPORTATION cost increases. Fuel costs have almost doubled in the last 8 years in the US. And seeing as how the US is the top corn exporter in the world, those costs are going to be passed along to all purchasers.
What is up with your links? Did you read them? The CBS story is about increased protein demands, it talks about increases in prices across the board. The only citation they have attributing the raise in cost being due (in part) to Ethanol is from attributed to "Grocers". I don't know about you, but asking random people that work at grocery stores about supply and demand issues completely out side of the scope of grocery stock seems exceptionally suspect.
The G&M site lists a slew of other likely causes and contains only one reference to ethanol prices being a major factor, and that is attributed to an investor analyst at Goldman Sachs. And we know just how much credibility those folks have. ;)
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
This is off topic, but I hear this a lot and it frustrates me.
"In a week in Chicago, I was able to get almost everywhere except for the Navy Pier and the Museum of Science & Technology via mass transit..."
You can get everywhere that rich white people want to go, except the suburbs. You can get to some areas with blacks and hispanics, but not most. The trains are on a hub and spoke model -- as you get further from the hub, property values go down, and residents happen to be poorer, and perfectly coinciding with this, the areas between the hubs get wider and wider.
You can get to everywhere if you're willing to put up with very long, irritating bus rides, including Navy Pier and the Museum of Science and Technology. But if you want to hop on a train and get somewhere with good soul food, forget it. If you want a reliable way to take a train to your job with a short commute time, you have to be pretty lucky, geographically speaking, unless you live in the white yuppie corridor, in which case your convenience is relatively assured.
If gas prices go up, yes, public transport gets better -- for the people who "matter". The poor and less powerful don't get better transport.
I don't say this to demand cheap gas. I want VERY, VERY expensive gas and an end to bad fuel economy vehicles, polluted air, high medical costs due to asthma, etc. But let's not delude ourselves in the process. Supply and demand is only half the battle.
Hmm...the manual for my wife's new diesel Jetta says we shouldn't use any diesel mixture that contains more than 5% biodiesel but doesn't explain why. Is that the explanation?
How difficult is it to add a fuel line heater should we ever decide we want to be able to consume higher concentrations of biodiesel?
*sigh* back to work...
Doesn't that require a source of hydrogen?
Cracking water or natural gas to get the required hydrogen will reduce the end-to-end efficiency.
*sigh* back to work...
Yes, to get the best fuel efficiency from E85, the compression ratio has to be high enough that the engine would be destroyed if ran on gasoline for long. Ethanol is like about 104 octane rating so it would want around a 12-14 to 1 compression ratio (Diesel range), unleaded likes around 8-8.5 to 1. Small engines around 6 to 1 can have reduced power on E10.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Whereas every other country has always taxed it to compensate for the huge amount of damage cars/vehicles make to infrastructure and environment.
Actually, it's worse than that, and it isn't just damage, it's economics. Oil is paid for in dollars. US dollars. You want oil? You buy US dollars first.
See the trick? America gets paid for Saudi oil before the Saudis do. It gives the US a huge advantage economically. The US gets to export a significant proportion of it's inflation to the rest of the world and gets real value for it. Print a trillion dollars here, the price of oil goes up, everybody buys those fresh new bills cos they still need oil. Oil purchases for the rest of the world export value to the US.
Deleted
Yes, it does require hydrogen. However, you have a great source right there: the biomass. Biomass contains carbon and hydrogen in a different ratio than gasoline. It is rather easy to go back and forth between the two via the reaction:
H2O + CO <-> CO2 + H2
So, to get hydrogen, just add water. Don't worry, when you produce the biogasoline, you get at least some of the water back. Gasifiers are quite efficient.
Responsibility is an addiction
Virtue is a temptation
Community is a cartel
Why don't you try to create services to reduce the number of cars in the world? Like carpool services, buses, trains, etc.? You can make money and save the environment. Try it - you'll like it.
The problem is that the market is a form of democracy, albeit a little bit hacky one. The market tells us that most people want to drive cars, not sit around in trains and buses, riding bicycles all day.
So here is your business plan:
1. offer services such as bicycle repair, carpool services, buses, etc, etc.
2. create advertising, books, TV shows, get celebrities to go car-free.
3. use this to create an image that car-freeness is cool.
4. create mass transit, trains, etc.
There is a possible set of investments here if you think through the process. Notice the huge potential for profits here. Think about city car share and zipcar - they are a start for what you want. While you are doing this, I will try to make (indirectly) solar powered SUV's and cars. We will let the market, and by extension the people, decide.
Your sig:
"The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky"
You could rule the corps if you start your business today.
Responsibility is an addiction
Virtue is a temptation
Community is a cartel
Citation? Seriously I would like to know one way or another. I've heard both stories. Never with a citation.