In an earlier comment, Dagon called for mass conversion to ethanol as a way of ending our dependence on oil. I mentioned that he hadn't said where all that ethanol would come from. Little did I know that it turns out we are barely started on using ethanol in this country and there is already an ethanol shortage! Sure we can grow more corn, but at the expense of what? Wheat? Soy beans? Do we really want to be forced to choose between energy and . . . food? Somehow I doubt that this is the long term solution we've been looking for.
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It’s worse. In one of my ecology courses, we learned that U.S. agriculture is a mechanism for turning hydrocarbon energy into food molecules…… The contrast was with China (if I remember correctly), where human-powered paddy agriculture returned (I’m making these numbers up) 10 calories of rice for every calorie of energy input. In the U.S. a calorie of food output cost 1.5 or 2.3 or some such number of calories of input, mostly from hydrocarbons – the tractor, the artificial fertilizer, etc. etc.
One of the criticisms of an “alcohol economy” using corn is precisely this — we don’t gain very much (even if we end up ahead with corn) because we farm with machinery and other modern conveniences……
In the short run, relaxing the duties on imported alcohol would help — Brazil would be happy to send us some of their alcohol, but the politicians can’t convince Archer-Daniells Midland that it would be a good idea!
In other words, we expend more energy in producing the ethanol than we can get out of it. Gee, is that the very definition of an unworkable solution?
Deriving ethanol from American grown corn is not the answer, but Fortune magazine had a great article on the promise of ethanol derived from other sources in their February 4, 2006 issue, entitled “How to beat the high cost of Gasoline”.
One of the things we do need to consider is more use of sugar cane, either through domestic sources which might reduce the market rigging we go through to sell sugar or by importing from Brazil which apparently has the perfect climate for growing sugar cane. Finally, the article explores wasy of deriving ethanol directly from cellulose which would avoid pressing on the food supply. The latter approach, however, is much earlier on the technology curve and thus is more iffy.
I may be wrong on this, but I don’t think that ethanol burns as clean. If I’m right, this is another problem and something that the enviromentalist left should be thinking about.
A friend informs me that current production costs are about 1.35 gallons of hydrocarbon fuel to produce a gallon of ethanol from corn, making its use rather regressive, except for Archer Daniels Midlands and other agribusiness concerns which are the recipients of government subsidies. Imported ethanol is made from lower grade materials at a reduced energy cost.
The caloric conversion ratio doesn’t tell the whole story, Don Q. China has to use human manpower, to farm, and that is why they had a shortage of food back 20 years ago. If you use machineries, then yes the machines need energy, but the freed time slots that humans can use to produce, produces far more energy than the machines themselves consume.
THat is why an agricultural society will never have as high a GDP as a fully industrialized economy, like Japan or the US. But we’re not talking about converting man power to machine power of course, we’re talking about converting oil machine power to ethanol machine power. And that is a ratio, that no one has really researched because it has only been a recent idea. Well, recent serious idea.
I favor shale oil, cause that requires less retooling and therefore less initial investment and maintenance drains.
Sure we can grow more corn, but at the expense of what? Wheat? Soy beans? Do we really want to be forced to choose between energy and . . . food? Somehow I doubt that this is the long term solution we’ve been looking for.
Come on, this is why the Supreme Court authorized Eminent Domain. Just confiscate some dude’s land and house, bulldoze it over, and start planting corn. In a few short years, we’ll have things running as smoothly as Dagon envisions.