NEWS: Jimmy Fucking Carter

We've been polishing a turd called the combustion engine for years. They keep enhancing said turd with higher horsepower, dual overhead cams, and many other options just to make the turd shinier and prettier so the consumer wants it.

We are in a day and age in which we can get a Cadillac with air conditioned seats, an in dash 40 gig hard drive with a computer that will respond to voice commands, back-up cameras, finger coded ignition switches and all these other technically advanced options, yet it still has that turd of a combustion engine in it.

We should be well past mileage requirements and into requirements for where we can legally plug in our electric cars. I dream of the day when my truck is looked at as an antique because of it's power source and people will pay big bucks to have "such an old technology like that".

I'd love to make a bet with you on that one, but making money off the stupidity of the human race* is what got us into this mess in the first place.

I mean, look at how things are today. Some people out there are still driving two Hummers or something. How painfully, cripplingly idiotic do you have to be to do that in this day and age?

WTF?

Hate Reagan all ya want, but that's just wrong.

Don't get me wrong - I want to see that happen. I just don't see America divesting itself of enough self-righteous mouth-breathers with disposable incomes and a complete lack of forward thinking practices to completely tank the market for SUVs with the acreage and efficiency of, say, the entire state of Texas.

Also, one of the biggest obstacles between us and creating and maintaining a true economically and ecologically sound energy policy is getting vehicles which meet or exceed the strictest regulations in the hands of people who can in this day and age only afford those heaping piles shit with crap mileage. That's another thread, though.

I've always thought that Carter was fucked in oh so many ways, by oh so many people. Never has a president gotten the raw end of the deal the way he did. I've posted several times in regards to the gas prices, how america fucked themselves by voting in raygun.

You almost want to just shout until your fucking larynx falls off that people get the president they deserve, but its just not comforting, because either way, you still have to convince a nation of goat-faced retards that these changes are going to save their life, and goat-faced retards tend not to listen to things like that.

Not just people, either. The man was attacked by a rabbit. Nasty, big, pointy teeth.

He's got . . .
He did . . .

LOOK AT THE BONES!!

Obama has continued to support corn ethanol which is the one fuel that's worse than oil. The best idea now is sugar cane ethanol which is far more energy efficient and clean. Fat chance of Obama supporting that since he's in the pocket of the big AG companies.

And you, of course, have proof that he's in the pocket of big AG companies.

Sure. This was in a little paper called the New York Times on 6/23/08. Maybe you've heard of it.

Mr. Obama is running as a reformer who is seeking to reduce the influence of special interests. But like any other politician, he has powerful constituencies that help shape his views. And when it comes to domestic ethanol, almost all of which is made from corn, he also has advisers and prominent supporters with close ties to the industry at a time when energy policy is a point of sharp contrast between the parties and their presidential candidates.

...

Nowadays, when Mr. Obama travels in farm country, he is sometimes accompanied by his friend Tom Daschle, the former Senate majority leader from South Dakota. Mr. Daschle now serves on the boards of three ethanol companies and works at a Washington law firm where, according to his online job description, "he spends a substantial amount of time providing strategic and policy advice to clients in renewable energy."

Mr. Obama's lead advisor on energy and environmental issues, Jason Grumet, came to the campaign from the National Commission on Energy Policy, a bipartisan initiative associated with Mr. Daschle and Bob Dole, the Kansas Republican who is also a former Senate majority leader and a big ethanol backer who had close ties to the agribusiness giant Archer Daniels Midland.



Obama/ethanol

First, there's no need to be an ass about this.

Second, are we supposed to swap our corn farms for sugar-cane?

Third, Obama is still a state senator from a major corn state. He is doing his current job to support corn farmers interests.

You made a snide remark doubting I had any proof to back up my statement. At the risk of sounding like a six year old, "he started it."

Keep growing the corn but sell it as food. Remove the tariff from sugar cane from Brazil. That's a temporary fix but longer term I think swiitchgrass might be a big part of the answer from what I've read.

Big picture I don't think they're helping anyone by continuing to prop up a industry that needs such huge subsidies and tariffs to survive. The subsidy money would be better spent finding better solutions and using more sugar cane ethanol in the meantime. I think much of the increased price is due to the weak dollar instead of demand but that's another can of worms.

Sugar cane production is incredibly water intensive, meaning that we grow sugar cane in only a few tropical locations in the US (Louisiana, Florida, Hawaii, Texas, etc.). Our annual sugar cane production is only 25 million tons, almost all of which we consume domestically. Harvesting sugar cane traditionally requires burning of fields, as is done in Brazil, and releases a large amount of greenhouse gases.

One ton of corn can yield 98 gallons of ethanol, while the same amount of sugar can can only yield 80 gallons of ethanol. This ratio means that even if all of our sugar cane production went for ethanol, then we could produce about 2 billion gallons of ethanol. The Senate currently calls for 36 billion gallons by 2022 in our Renewable Fuels Standards . To meet this goal, we would need to increase production by eighteen times the max capacity that we can now produce and shift all of our current production towards making ethanol (we could still use our sugar beets for sugar, though). Our corn production is over 11 times as much as our sugar cane production.

In terms of economics, ethanol from sugar cane is twice as expensive as ethanol from corn. Meanwhile, it is more profitable for sugar producers to turn sugar cane into food-quality sugar than to turn it into ethanol.

These shortcomings mean that ethanol production from sugar cane may be a good idea, but we cannot shift from petroleum to sugar cane ethanol for a very long time. Looking to corn-based ethanol is the more immediate answer.

Of course, you ignored all of the facts of the issue and offered the argument that Obama is promoting corn-based ethanol because of alleged corruption.

Sources:
SKIL
Wikipedia
CNN Money
USDA Rural Development
USDA - Corn Production in US
FAO UN Statistics - Sugar Production in the US

Cutting the tariff on sugar cane and its ethanol from Brazil would provide even greater incentive for American sugar producers to convert their sugar cane into food-quality sugar (which is already the more economical decision). In other words, we would produce less sugar-based ethanol here. As such, it would provide cheaper ethanol for consumers but hurt the development of an sugar cane ethanol industry in the US. This situation isn't one with an easy fix.

I just find it so funny that I can remember being a teenager arguing on the internet with people during the 2001 election. A big talking point was about how Al Gore wanted to kill the internal combustion engine. There was outrage. "He's going to ban SUVS! He said so in his book!" these kids were screaming. Everything that has happened since then just seemed so damn predictable.

My biggest hope is not the replacement of the ICE, nor corn fuel, nor even a better president than Bush. It's the production of fuel from waste. In case you guys don't read slashdot: "Vetrolium"

I imagine it'd be like that scene in Back to the Future where the doc runs to Marty's garbage can and pops everything into "Le Fusion Machine."

Disheartening, isn't it, that as a kid of seventeen with your narrow and limited life experience that you could see where all of this was going, and it turned out you were right?

switchgrass looks really, really good to me, but i'm certainly no expert. it's not the most efficient in terms of quantity of biomass per gallon of biofuel, but it grows where nothing else will and requires very little in the way of water or nutrients. am i missing something that makes it less awesome than it appears?

I think you're misinformed about the environmental effects and the efficiency of both fuels. Production of ethanol from corn is 5 TO 6 TIMES LESS EFFICIENT efficient than producing it from sugarcane. (from the last entry)
corn ethanol
#2
#3

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/amory_lovins_on_winning_the_oil_endgame.html

winning the oil endgame

The goal in the near term is to have the cheapest fuel because current fuel prices are destroying the economy and causing high inflation which is very difficult to stamp out once it's ingrained in the economy. In the 70's Paul Volcker had to raise rates into the high teens to stop high inflation. Raising rates anywhere near that level would cause irreparable damage to the already bad housing market where most people have most of their wealth.

The best decision now is to remove tariffs on sugar cane ethanol. If corn ethanol is more efficient like you claim, corn ethanol wouldn't be hurt.. The fact that Obama opposes removing the tariffs on sugar cane speaks volumes about which is better. It's naive to believe a politician wouldn't protect an interest group at the expense of the the US people but many Obama supporters can't accept that their Savior can do any wrong.

Producing ethanol from sugarcane might be more efficient than producing it from corn, but that doesn't matter unless we had to choose between the two sources. So long as sugarcane ethanol cannot meet our needs, we will need to rely on corn-based ethanol for a major portion of our ethanol. Your criticism of Obama was that he was still supporting corn-based ethanol - which is a necessity at this point. If sugarcane was a less water intensive product, we would be able to grow it in more places and it would be great. However, we are not in that position now and we won't be for quite a while. Moreover, all of the economic reasons suggest additional reasons why Obama (or anyone else for that matter) wouldn't want to ignore corn-based ethanol. He can have principled reasons for continuing to champion corn-based ethanol production (other than your accusation of corruption).

You are right that corn-based ethanol isn't as clean as sugar-cane ethanol. My point in mentioning the environmental effects of sugar cane (greenhouse gases) was to temper your presentation of sugar-cane ethanol as a miracle cure that only a corrupt politician could ignore. While corn has problems with the environment, sugar cane offers its own issues. In reality, we are not faced with a choice between a poor source of ethanol (corn) and an excellent source of ethanol (sugar cane). Such a picture is misleading because we are not faced with such a dichotomy and the contrast is not as stark as you suggested. Instead, we have a much more complex situation.

In other words, you are focusing only on the good things about sugar cane ethanol, missing the shortcomings, and completely ignoring the fact that ethanol from sugar cane cannot replace ethanol from corn for at least a number of years (if from nothing else because of the scale of our corn production). Equally importantly, the economic incentives for producing ethanol from sugar cane are not yet favorable.