When is the corn industry welfare for billionaires going to end?
Ethanol in gas in already causing damage to cars made before 2000 and 2-stroke engines. Not to mention it's causing a huge increase in corn based food prices and resource shortages while reducing exports.
> When is the corn industry welfare for billionaires going to end?
I'm generally not a fan of state-operated welfare programs, but labeling this welfare is unfair to welfare... this is just plain ol' fashioned corruption. State-run welfare programs can have some benefits if they're designed okay. Corruption... not so much.
I have an 07 Honda and the dealer (and I believe the owner's manual) specifically instructed against any ethanol. Unfortunately, I'm also supposed to avoid anything above 87 octane... Basically, I just have to go around Iowa.
I wish the government would shift focus away from corn subsidies for ethanol toward funding a buildout of electric vehicle charging infrastructure. If we could increase electric vehicle adoption by 5%, we could do a lot more toward the goal of transitioning away from foreign oil than ethanol will (oh the irony of harvesting corn with diesel-powered tractors). We can't do that until every shopping mall, office building, and grocery store has at least a few dozen charging stations.
So all you get (for now) is an extra level of indirection away from the burning of fossil fuels (and therefore a loss of efficiency through transmission).
You end up with what is (effectively) an oil powered car (in most states; certain states it would be nuclear, oil, hydro or natural gas).
Of course, I agree with you, we should expand electrical infrastructure and remove corn subsidies. But electric cars don't inherently save us from the detrimental aspects of burning fossil fuels. You have to change the source of the energy that we are putting on the grid as well.
But electric cars don't inherently save us from the detrimental aspects of burning fossil fuels. You have to change the source of the energy that we are putting on the grid as well.
You're right - in the short term an electric car is a coal/oil car. The advantage of abstracting out the energy source from the car by using electricity is that it can get cleaner over time. A car that gets 30 mpg today will get no more than that 10 years from now. An electric car that gets 300 miles on the equivalent of 20 gallons of gas/coal/oil can get more efficient over time as the grid gets upgraded to phase out fossil fuels. It is far easier to upgrade the 5000 or so power plants in the US than constantly upgrade the few hundred million cars on the road from gas to ethanol to hydrogen to mystery fuel.
I'm surprised (ok, not really, it's USA Today) that the article doesn't mention the hygroscopic nature of ethanol.
Gasoline, being composed of various hydrocarbons, doesn't mix with water, nor will it absorb water under normal circumstances.
Ethanol is miscible with water, meaning you can mix any quantity of ethanol with any quantity of water and they won't separate. (A good example is alcoholic drinks: 2% beer and 190 proof liquor both are stable solutions.)
A side-effect of being miscible with water is that ethanol is hygroscopic: it will absorb water from the air.
When you mix ethanol with gasoline, the ethanol retains its hygroscopic nature, and will absorb water. This is not good. Under the right circumstances (eg marine use) the ethanol will absorb enough water to come out of solution. This is not good for engines.
I drive a mid-1990's car and I accidentally discovered it performed much better and got significantly better mileage when I filled up at a remote gas station that didn't use ethanol. All the stations in the city use ethanol :-(
This is a 50% increased allowance which the fuel industry will definitely take advantage for the higher profits.
* Still using close to or over a gallon of fossile fuel to make a gallon of ethanol? Check!
* Still less efficient a fuel than straight petroleum products? Check!
* Still uses a FOOD SOURCE to create GAS? Check, double and tripple check.
* Oh and is still a massive source of government spending in subsidies that could easily be diverted to programs that help the populous instead of corn fat cats? Check.
There is literally nothing good about ethanol as a vehicle fuel source. It's disgusting and perverted how much this gets pushed as "the environmentally safe" fuel source.
America's very own corrupt and stupid central planning....actually central planning implies some greater purpose, American ethanol policy is a kind of petit fascism because it is designed to benefit a handful of insider corporations (ADM, etc) at the expense of society at large. If you buy food, drive a car, or raise livestock, your government is screwing you. The impact in the Third World is truly tragic, as American ethanol policy is a significant factor driving the current food crisis.
It's not a democrat or republican thing, I am very liberal and progressive and I think this ethanol use is a complete scam. So do many others on both sides.
Now if it was made from switchgrass, maybe as much as 5% would not hurt and E85 for specially designed cars would be fine. But ethanol from other sources is years away and the subsidies for corn seem to be as permanent as the lack of gun control in this country.
But they have laws designed for 2020 in effect now, which is asinine.
Oh and it's not just America, E85 is big in Europe too.
> Still uses a FOOD SOURCE to create GAS? Check, double and tripple (sic) check.
Since corn and soy-based foods are one of the leading causes of obesity, this arguement is moot.
Not to mention it actually costs less to buy a bushel of corn than it does to produce it: corn prices are already severely subsidized by the government. There's simply too much corn out there, and it's one of the main reasons why "junk food" is so junky. If ethanol was being produced from romaine lettuce and turnips, I'd be more alarmed.
For now, it's just one more little subsidy on top of an already massive agribusiness planned economy.
However, ethanol really has no place in fuel. The only benefit to E10 is that you don't need to use Heet in your gas tank in the winter.
> "Since corn and soy-based foods are one of the leading causes of obesity"
In the US, yes. There are many cultures that have been heavily soy-based, for example, for centuries without health issues.
Furthermore, there are even more developing countries on Earth that rely on corn as a staple food. The diversion of corn supplies to create fuel over food is widely regarded as a main cause of the last food price crisis, which impacted poor countries disastrously (compared to the rather mild price hikes seen in this country). There is also the issue of land being used to grow other non-corn food crops being diverted to corn-fuel farming, thus further reducing food production.
If the entire world was just the US, I'd be inclined to agree with you, but we don't exist in a vacuum.
There's a major difference between eating soy products and eating washed soy proteins that are combined with corn to create heavily processed foods. And while soy isn't directly correlated with obesity, it's usefulness as a protein has created additional venues for corn to be used.
Furthermore, corn is generally used on feedlots for beef, and disastrously: beef there contains whacked-out levels of fat types, and is much more fatty overall.
In terms of internationalism: the French, long held as bastions of good eating, are experiencing similar patterns of obesity as per the US in the early '90's as French diets change to fast foods and prepared meals.
Did anyone actually read the article? It's only approved for cars and trucks 2001 and newer, and will be specifically labeled. Just don't use it if your car is a pre-2001 make, right? What's the problem?
Once there is tolerance of 15%, the other regular pumps which are allowed 10% will certainly get that, forever. One day politicians will want something else to please the corn billionaires and throw them 15% across all pumps as long as there are "labels".
It's very difficult to find a pump these days without ethanol and pre-2001 cars are going to be around for awhile given today's car prices.
Basically the EPA should be cutting it down to 5%, but now they are going in the other direction regardless of the consequences.
In my area, gas stations must tell you if they have ethanol in their fuels. Those that do, do it with tiny stickers on the pumps. Those that don't, put big signs by the road advertising their 100% gasoline.
A lot of stations which sold E10 have had to switch since the labeling law went into effect. People just don't want ethanol.
I turned my friend on to this, Lawnmowers and chainsaws die if ethonal gas is kept in them over the winter. So he picks them up on craigslist free section and rebuilds the carbs to resell them for a profit.
26 comments
[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 70.1 ms ] threadEthanol in gas in already causing damage to cars made before 2000 and 2-stroke engines. Not to mention it's causing a huge increase in corn based food prices and resource shortages while reducing exports.
I'm generally not a fan of state-operated welfare programs, but labeling this welfare is unfair to welfare... this is just plain ol' fashioned corruption. State-run welfare programs can have some benefits if they're designed okay. Corruption... not so much.
"heavily subsidized" and "high import tariffs" don't quite paint the right picture of the obscenity that's going on, they soften it.
So all you get (for now) is an extra level of indirection away from the burning of fossil fuels (and therefore a loss of efficiency through transmission).
You end up with what is (effectively) an oil powered car (in most states; certain states it would be nuclear, oil, hydro or natural gas).
Of course, I agree with you, we should expand electrical infrastructure and remove corn subsidies. But electric cars don't inherently save us from the detrimental aspects of burning fossil fuels. You have to change the source of the energy that we are putting on the grid as well.
Here's a neat visualization I found of the energy grid: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1109973...
You're right - in the short term an electric car is a coal/oil car. The advantage of abstracting out the energy source from the car by using electricity is that it can get cleaner over time. A car that gets 30 mpg today will get no more than that 10 years from now. An electric car that gets 300 miles on the equivalent of 20 gallons of gas/coal/oil can get more efficient over time as the grid gets upgraded to phase out fossil fuels. It is far easier to upgrade the 5000 or so power plants in the US than constantly upgrade the few hundred million cars on the road from gas to ethanol to hydrogen to mystery fuel.
Gasoline, being composed of various hydrocarbons, doesn't mix with water, nor will it absorb water under normal circumstances.
Ethanol is miscible with water, meaning you can mix any quantity of ethanol with any quantity of water and they won't separate. (A good example is alcoholic drinks: 2% beer and 190 proof liquor both are stable solutions.)
A side-effect of being miscible with water is that ethanol is hygroscopic: it will absorb water from the air.
When you mix ethanol with gasoline, the ethanol retains its hygroscopic nature, and will absorb water. This is not good. Under the right circumstances (eg marine use) the ethanol will absorb enough water to come out of solution. This is not good for engines.
http://news.google.com/news/more?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&...
I drive a mid-1990's car and I accidentally discovered it performed much better and got significantly better mileage when I filled up at a remote gas station that didn't use ethanol. All the stations in the city use ethanol :-(
This is a 50% increased allowance which the fuel industry will definitely take advantage for the higher profits.
* Still using close to or over a gallon of fossile fuel to make a gallon of ethanol? Check!
* Still less efficient a fuel than straight petroleum products? Check!
* Still uses a FOOD SOURCE to create GAS? Check, double and tripple check.
* Oh and is still a massive source of government spending in subsidies that could easily be diverted to programs that help the populous instead of corn fat cats? Check.
There is literally nothing good about ethanol as a vehicle fuel source. It's disgusting and perverted how much this gets pushed as "the environmentally safe" fuel source.
Change we can believe in, indeed!
Now if it was made from switchgrass, maybe as much as 5% would not hurt and E85 for specially designed cars would be fine. But ethanol from other sources is years away and the subsidies for corn seem to be as permanent as the lack of gun control in this country.
But they have laws designed for 2020 in effect now, which is asinine.
Oh and it's not just America, E85 is big in Europe too.
Since corn and soy-based foods are one of the leading causes of obesity, this arguement is moot.
Not to mention it actually costs less to buy a bushel of corn than it does to produce it: corn prices are already severely subsidized by the government. There's simply too much corn out there, and it's one of the main reasons why "junk food" is so junky. If ethanol was being produced from romaine lettuce and turnips, I'd be more alarmed.
For now, it's just one more little subsidy on top of an already massive agribusiness planned economy.
However, ethanol really has no place in fuel. The only benefit to E10 is that you don't need to use Heet in your gas tank in the winter.
In the US, yes. There are many cultures that have been heavily soy-based, for example, for centuries without health issues.
Furthermore, there are even more developing countries on Earth that rely on corn as a staple food. The diversion of corn supplies to create fuel over food is widely regarded as a main cause of the last food price crisis, which impacted poor countries disastrously (compared to the rather mild price hikes seen in this country). There is also the issue of land being used to grow other non-corn food crops being diverted to corn-fuel farming, thus further reducing food production.
If the entire world was just the US, I'd be inclined to agree with you, but we don't exist in a vacuum.
Furthermore, corn is generally used on feedlots for beef, and disastrously: beef there contains whacked-out levels of fat types, and is much more fatty overall.
In terms of internationalism: the French, long held as bastions of good eating, are experiencing similar patterns of obesity as per the US in the early '90's as French diets change to fast foods and prepared meals.
!... but... but... but that's not a reason to use all that "surplus" cheap corn to make ethanol. It's a reason to stop subsidizing corn.
It's very difficult to find a pump these days without ethanol and pre-2001 cars are going to be around for awhile given today's car prices.
Basically the EPA should be cutting it down to 5%, but now they are going in the other direction regardless of the consequences.
A lot of stations which sold E10 have had to switch since the labeling law went into effect. People just don't want ethanol.