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Hybrid Vehicles Ethanol - E85 FlexFuel The Inconvenient Truth About Ethanol
921 messages, Last post on Oct 07, 2009 at 10:53 AM
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There is no ethanol pump within a thousand miles of my home. I will not buy a car that is being advertised that way. As has been pointed out we are using as much oil to produce ethanol as we would to make the equivalent gas. It's a government giveaway to agricultural interests. If you allow corn to free market ethanol is dead. We did this thirty years ago and got the same result. You can spare us the DUH! and "use your brain" insults, please. We use our brains and can see the many subsidies used to prop this up. |
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Replying to: nascar57 (Jun 02, 2007 7:32 am) If you are getting that kind of mileage with your Silverado 5.3L engine that is good. I barely get that with unleaded regular driving like a grandpa that I am. If I drive like the rest of the folks around here I am lucky to get 13.5 MPG. If you consider robbing Peter to pay Paul legitimate, then ethanol is a good deal. It does not lessen the amount of oil we buy from the Middle East by ONE DROP. It is a massive case of corporate welfare. The dribble down affect happens to be helping a few people in the Midwest at the expense of the rest of the USA. If you are happy with that, so be it. Just don't try to convince those of us that are paying the bill that it is good for the country. |
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Replying to: nascar57 (Jun 02, 2007 7:32 am)  Give us diesels/bio diesel and we can eat the corn. A pricier T-bone this summer? Demand for corn edges hay production, meaning farmers pass on costs MARY HOPKIN; Tri-City Herald Published: May 31st, 2007 01:00 AM KENNEWICK, benton county – Corn is popping up in mid-Columbia fields where hay, beans and peas were harvested last year, and dairy farmers, ranchers and horse owners will likely pay more in an unexpected spinoff of the demand for ethanol. And that translates to higher costs for consumers, too. Prices of corn, milk and meat are expected to go up this summer. Washington farmers planned to seed an additional 50,000 acres of corn this year, according to a March survey by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Statistics Service. Dave Losh, a statistician in the service’s Olympia office, said farmers planned to plant 190,000 acres of corn this year – a 36 percent increase over last year. Blooming demand for corn to make ethanol pushed corn prices to $3.36 per bushel in March, compared with $2.06 a year ago. But the increase in corn acreage means cutbacks in other crops – mainly hay, which already was in tight supply. Chep Gauntt, owner of Gauntt Farms in Kennewick, replanted one of his hay fields into corn and expects as much as a 20 percent to 30 percent reduction in hay acreage overall. “Without a good corn market I wouldn’t have done it, and I expect there will be a tight supply for domestic and export hay,” he said. Shawn Clausen in Warden, Grant County, hasn’t cut the amount of hay he’s growing, but he has replaced some dry beans and peas to double his corn crop this year to 1,400 acres. “Corn prices were really good early this spring so you couldn’t contract on the futures market and the risk was low,” he said. His corn is already sold to a local feedlot. Feedlots and dairies need the corn, but they also want hay, which will be expensive and in short supply. “We have to have both,” said Cody Easterday, vice president of the Washington Cattle Feeders Association and owner of Easterday Ranches in Mesa. “Corn is energy and hay is fiber and protein.” The entire livestock industry will be hurt by a hay shortage, he said, noting hay already has been in short supply for the past two years and that alfalfa can cost up to $170 per ton. “We are going to be paying more and that will raise our production costs, which ultimately affects consumers,” Easterday said. “The consumer is going to have to pay for it one way or another.” Les Wentworth isn’t necessarily replacing hay for corn, but he has turned to corn for a rotation crop on five-year-old alfalfa fields. This year, he planted 150 acres of corn. Wentworth said the 500-acre farm his father first planted in the 1950s primarily produces alfalfa hay, but he also has grown green peas and dry peas, wheat, soybeans, watermelon and cantaloupe. “This is the first time I’ve planted corn,” he said. Nationwide, farmers are expected to grow the largest corn crop ever, planting 90.5 million acres – a 15 percent increase compared with last year, according to the USDA. The hay shortage also has companies offering premium prices to lease land for growing hay. “Normally, hay ground leases for $320 to $340 an acre,” Wentworth said. “But right now every time someone calls me they are increasing their offers. I got an offer of $400.” Wentworth said he’d take the $400 if he was retired and was looking for safe, reliable income off his property, but the income is better if he works the land himself. “I make the money on the gambling,” he said. |
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There is one country out there that will still function and won't be affected if suddenly, Middle East oil stops. Due to shortage of oil years ago, they decided to produce their own solution to the crisis...and boy...they did it well..they even sell it to their people cheap and have enough to export...We can talk forever but if we are really serious as a nation, we can learn from Brazil and with our latest technology, I bet we can do better if there's a real political will. Those so-called law to mandate 40-50 MPG that some politicians want to have for cars will really not solve our dependency..but having another alternative to oil is better. If we put our best minds together without political interferance, we can come up with many alternatives. By the way, let's not forget Denmark.
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Replying to: easym1 (Jun 03, 2007 8:09 pm) |
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Replying to: easym1 (Jun 03, 2007 8:09 pm) However, we are not in a period of gas rationing and to compound the issue we what, 10, 20, 30 times more cars on the road as we did in 1941. Maybe 50 times, I don’t know, but I do know ethanol by corn is only going to worsen our economic problems and do nothing to solve our dependence on oil. The cost of anything that has any corn products in it has gone up. I have been told by a person that works in a grocery store that food prices will be 20% higher by summer and possibly 30% higher by fall. Enjoy your $30 T-bone, Oh, and save the fat, we can use it to make bio-diesel. Ethanol is scam |
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Replying to: easym1 (Jun 03, 2007 8:09 pm) You are right that we need to come up with solutions. Big corporations are running the show and the result is boondoggles like our ethanol program. Ever wonder why the oil companies are not fighting ethanol? Is it because ethanol does not save us a drop of oil?
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Why is this Ethanol thread in the "Hybrids" discussion area? Are there any hybrids which can use E85?
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Replying to: larsb (Jun 04, 2007 7:49 am)  It also appears in news. I guess for those looking at alternatives.
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Replying to: gagrice (Jun 03, 2007 9:09 pm) Brazil has not abandoned ethanol. I think your information is incorrect. Try going to the site above.
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