My stepdad has been very political lately and he sent me a copy of a letter he sent to his representatives regarding the ethanol industry and the scam that is global warming. I thought it was dead on and figured it needed to be shared with those that read my blog.
Representatives McCollum and Dean, Senators Colemen, Klobuchar and Vendeveer,
I'm writing this letter to express my concern with the consequences of corn-based ethanol production (see supporting documents below). I'm not against alternate energy sources per-se, but it certainly seems that corn-based ethanol offers little advantage to environmental concerns, however has many disadvantages to both the environment and the public good in general – including high consumer costs and increased taxes. I have found that corn-based ethanol has the following issues.
- It competes with the food and water needs of human beings helping to create food and water shortages as well as increased prices. We have local governments taxing and rationing water – e.g. watering bans and consumption based pricing – and yet the production of corn-based ethanol consumes copious amounts of water. We are seeing food prices sky rocket and food shortages. Even though all of the data is not in or conclusive, common sense should tell us that cars and power generation facilities that run on food and water are a bad idea.
- The energy consumed in the production of corn-based ethanol is large. I have seen conflicting data on this point but it varies from consuming more than it produces to consuming slightly less than it produces. In either scenario it's not an efficient energy source.
- Corn crops are large consumers of fertilizers that a) require natural gas to produce and b) pollute ground water as well as rivers, streams and oceans. Nitrogen flow from the Mississippi river has created a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico where aquatic species cannot live. This dead zone will grow as corn production increases.
- It does little to reduce C02 concentrations – which are not pollutants in the first place (we all exhale it) and do NOT significantly contribute to global warming. However, the activity of the sun has been shown to correlate to global temperature fluctuations and I hope you agree that the government can't do anything about that.
In my opinion, the government should not only NOT subsidize corn-based ethanol production, it should ban it. It's not the path this country should be going down and it needs to stop. I am writing to ask for your support on this issue and also to stop the whole global warming insanity. Through laws and subsidies this government – on all levels – is out of control making long term decisions based on limited facts and questionable models. Contrary to the general political buzz, the debate is not over. There are an ever increasing number of scientists that do not agree with the gross exaggerations portrayed in the media and films such as "An Inconvenient Truth". When the government enacts legislation that, for example, encourages or even forces consumers to purchase CFL bulbs, it has overstepped its bounds by a mile. I think I should be able to choose what type of lighting I prefer and whether or not I want to subject the residents of my home to the negative health effects of mercury. I ask that you work to stop the madness that is currently going on in society and the government.
I have not been very vocal about things like this and have written very few letters to my representatives over my 50+ years, but that is changing. Some of you have received letters from me recently where I have voiced my opinion on a variety of subjects from over taxation to foolish spending of my tax dollars and now global warming - and all that goes with it. You can expect to see more from me and my friends in the future because I've had enough and I can't stay silent any longer. I want my children and grandchildren to grow up in a free society where the government does not run their lives and does not redistribute wealth by squeezing every last tax dollar it can from them.
Dan Loveridge
(I removed his personal information being as I doubt he wanted it shared on myspace)
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Food Crisis Starts Eclipsing Climate Change Worries
Gore Ducks, as a Backlash Builds Against Biofuels
The campaign against climate change could be set back by the global food crisis, as foreign populations turn against measures to use foodstuffs as substitutes for fossil fuels.
With prices for rice, wheat, and corn soaring, food-related unrest has broken out in places such as Haiti, Indonesia, and Afghanistan. Several countries have blocked the export of grain. There is even talk that governments could fall if they cannot bring food costs down. One factor being blamed for the price hikes is the use of government subsidies to promote the use of corn for ethanol production. An estimated 30% of America 's corn crop now goes to fuel, not food.
"I don't think anybody knows precisely how much ethanol contributes to the run-up in food prices, but the contribution is clearly substantial," a professor of applied economics and law at the University of Minnesota, C. Ford Runge, said. A study by a Washington think tank, the International Food Policy Research Institute, indicated that between a quarter and a third of the recent hike in commodities prices is attributable to biofuels. Last year, Mr. Runge and a colleague, Benjamin Senauer, wrote an article in Foreign Affairs, "How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor." "We were criticized for being alarmist at the time," Mr. Runge said. "I think our views, looking back a year, were probably too conservative."
Ethanol was initially promoted as a vehicle for America to cut back on foreign oil. In recent years, biofuels have also been touted as a way to fight climate change, but the food crisis does not augur well for ethanol's prospects.
"It takes around 400 pounds of corn to make 25 gallons of ethanol," Mr. Senauer, also an applied economics professor at Minnesota, said. "It's not going to be a very good diet but that's roughly enough to keep an adult person alive for a year." Mr. Senauer said climate change advocates, such as Vice President Gore, need to distance themselves from ethanol to avoid tarnishing the effort against global warming. "Crop-based biofuels are not part of the solution. They, in fact, add to the problem. Whether Al Gore has caught up with that, somebody ought to ask him," the professor said. "There are lots of solutions, real solutions to climate change. We need to get to those." Mr. Gore was not available for an interview yesterday on the food crisis, according to his spokeswoman. A spokesman for Mr. Gore's public campaign to address climate change, the Alliance for Climate Protection, declined to comment for this article. However, the scientist who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Mr. Gore, Rajendra Pachauri of the United Nations's Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change, has warned that climate campaigners are unwise to promote biofuels in a way that risks food supplies. "We should be very, very careful about coming up with biofuel solutions that have major impact on production of food grains and may have an implication for overall food security," Mr. Pachauri told reporters last month, according to Reuters. "Questions do arise about what is being done in North America, for instance, to convert corn into sugar then into biofuels, into ethanol." In an interview last year, Mr. Gore expressed his support for corn-based ethanol, but endorsed moving to what he called a "third generation" of so-called cellulosic ethanol production, which is still in laboratory research. "It doesn't compete with food crops, so it doesn't put pressure on food prices," the former vice president told Popular Mechanics magazine. A Harvard professor of environmental studies who has advised Mr. Gore, Michael McElroy, warned in a November-December 2006 article in Harvard Magazine that "the production of ethanol from either corn or sugar cane presents a new dilemma: whether the feedstock should be devoted to food or fuel. With increasing use of corn and sugar cane for fuel, a rise in related food prices would seem inevitable." The article, "The Ethanol Illusion" went so far as to praise Senator McCain for summing up the corn-ethanol energy initiative launched in the United States in 2003 as "highway robbery perpetrated on the American public by Congress." In Britain, some hunger-relief and environmental groups have turned sharply against biofuels. "Setting mandatory targets for biofuels before we are aware of their full impact is madness," Philip Bloomer of Oxfam told the BBC. Biofuel advocates say they are being made a bogeyman for a food crisis that has much more to do with record oil prices, surging demand in the developing world, and unusual weather patterns. "The people who seek to solely blame ethanol for the food crisis and the rising price of food that we see across the globe are taking a terribly simplistic look at this very complex issue," Matthew Hartwig of the Renewable Fuels Association said. Mr. Hartwig said oil companies and food manufacturers are behind the attempt to undercut ethanol. "There is a concerted misinformation campaign being put out there by those people who are threatened by ethanol's growing prominence in the marketplace," he said.
The most obvious impact the food crisis has had in America , aside from higher prices, is the imposition of rationing at some warehouse stores to deal with a spike in demand for large quantities of rice, oil, and flour. The CEO of Costco Wholesale Corp., James Sinegal, is blaming press hype for the buying limits, which were first reported Monday in The New York Sun. "If it hadn't been picked up and become so prominent in the news, I doubt that we would have had the problems that we're having in trying to limit it at this point," Mr. Sinegal told Fox News Thursday. "I mean, I can't believe the amount of attention that is being paid to this." The Sun's article, which came as food riots were reported abroad, circulated quickly on the Internet, was republished in newspapers as far away as India, and prompted local and network television stories. Speaking in Kansas City, Mo. , yesterday, the federal agriculture secretary, Edward Schafer, blamed emotion for the spurt of rice buying at warehouse stores. "We don't see any evidence of the lack of availability of rice. There are no supply issues," he told reporters, according to Reuters. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Corn ethanol: 2/10 of 1%, max GHG reduction
The limits of corn
UC Berkeley's Renewable and Appropriate Energy Lab, is pro-ethanol, and they do good work. They have reviewed about 10 of the best ethanol studies, corrected them, and produced the best compromise estimate. Their value for GHG reduction is even lower than the one used by zFacts. It would put the GHG savings at less than 0.1% in 2017 when corn ethanol has pretty much maxed out.
Berkeley put the GHG savings at 13% in their Science article, then corrected it to 8% Berkeley pdf . Then the Academy of Sciences published a new study in July 2006 Academy pdf , and came in at 12%. zFacts used the more optimistic 12%. Using this value, the energy in ethanol, the amount of ethanol that USDA says can be produced in 2017, and DOE's total GHG emissions for the US , you will find a reduction of 0.13%. zFacts rounded that up to 2/10 of 1% to be generous in our headline. The bottom line for climate change and corn ethanol:
Besides failing to help with GHGs and having serious environmental problems, corn ethanol subsidies are very expensive, and the political backlash in the next few years, as production and subsidies double, will damage the effort to curb global warming.
Why doesn't ethanol work better?
? Corn uses more nitrogen fertilizer than almost any crop.
? Making nitrogen fertilizer requires a lot of natural gas (fossil fuel).
? Tractors, trucks and harvesters take gasoline.
? Distilling ethanol takes a lot of heat--more fossil fuel.
? Nitrogen fertilizer and soil bacteria make N2O.
? N2O is a much worse green-house gas than CO2.
While current ethanol production is probably saving 1.1% of imported energy, it plays a much less significant role in reducing total GHGs. First because a 12% reduction is much less than the roughly 90% effectiveness on imports of replacing a gallon of gasoline. Second because imported energy accounts for only about 1/4 of total GHGs. The result is that ethanol is just too small to matter in the GHG picture.
The negative impacts on GHG policy
The main effect of corn ethanol on GHG's is to divert $2.5 billion a year now, and very shortly $5 billion a year, of tax dollars away from significant GHG reduction efforts. The second effect is to construct 12 billion gallons per year of non-cellulose capacity that will compete with cellulose ethanol for the next 20 years and slow its introduction. The third effect is to let car companies off the hook. They get credit for building ethanol-ready cars that are never used for ethanol and that wouldn't help if they were.
Not all ethanol is created equal. In Brazil, ethanol made from sugar cane has an energy balance of 8-to-1 -- that is, when you add up the fossil fuels used to irrigate, fertilize, grow, transport and refine sugar cane into ethanol, the energy output is eight times higher than the energy inputs. That's a better deal than gasoline, which has an energy balance of 5-to-1. In contrast, the energy balance of corn ethanol is only 1.3-to-1 - making it practically worthless as an energy source. "Corn ethanol is essentially a way of recycling natural gas," says Robert Rapier, an oil-industry engineer who runs the R-Squared Energy Blog.
Ethanol Production: The Rest Of The Story
Laverne Chadderdon
Published: April 9, 2008
The March 18 article "Soberly Weighing Advantages of Higher Ethanol Consumption" glosses over the point. "The retail bakers of America complain that ethanol makers burn up our food supply and jack up the price of bread. The price of wheat has more than tripled during the past 10 months, but bakery goods haven't gone up as sharply; giving all farmers a potential new source of income." He continues, "Environmentalists who have long argued for renewable fuel are now saying that turning food into fuel is wrong." But the writer's conclusion, in favor of corn ethanol — judge for yourself. The New York Times Sept. 24, 2007 article "Corn Ethanol: Biofuel or Bio-fraud?" details a scientific research report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (O.E.C.D.,) a Paris-based economic think tank. It reported on the difference in greenhouse gas emission reductions from cars burning gasoline and various forms of ethanol. Results: Corn ethanol 0-3 percent reduction in emissions, sugar cane ethanol 50-70 percent reduction, cellulose ethanol 90-plus percent reduction in emissions.
But wait, there's more: which form of ethanol production is the U.S. government and its taxpayers subsidizing? Corn, of course.
On which form of ethanol production does the United States levy a 53 cents a gallon import? Sugar cane, naturally. And which form of ethanol production is under-funded, under-researched and furthest from commercial productivity? The cleanest choice, obviously. Do you see a pattern here? Could Florida State University do better? Believe it.
Corn ethanol is also the culprit that raises the cost of corn-based food crops, because food products are being diverted to ethanol production.
Corn ethanol production also affects the price of other food crops such as wheat, barley and soybeans because it is economically more attractive for farmers to switch from these crops to subsidized corn. And producing corn ethanol is also only marginally less costly than manufacturing a gallon of gas. If this were not so, the price of gas with 10 percent ethanol would be going down instead of up. Could it be greed?
As we speak, the cheapest, easiest, most reliably available form of ethanol is sugar cane from Brazil , which has already developed fuel with a reduced greenhouse gas emission 50-70 percent less than corn. Brazil is also positively stable and friendly to both the European Union and the United States . And Brazil has a surplus of it ready to export. What Brazil is doing, Florida could do too.
Cellulose ethanol, which is made of inedible switchgrass, may be even better than sliced bread. If only we had entrepreneurs instead of politicians, Florida would be self-sufficient.
The point missed is that better biofuels than corn clearly exist as we speak and we even have an updated taxpayer-funded railroad to transport the refined products. What we are sadly missing here in Florida are enough people who care more about the state and its people and less about no-risk profits. But then again, that's also our federal affliction today.
Laverne Chadderdon lives in Sebring.
Ethanol pollution in Gulf of Mexico
While the search for alternative fuels is in full swing in many countries in order to reduce dependency on pollution causing conventional fuels an ironic situation is emerging where the rush in the United States to produce corn-based ethanol as an alternative fuel will likely worsen pollution in the Gulf of Mexico and expand the annual 'dead zone.'
The U.S. Senate recently announced a production target of 36 billion gallons annually by the year 2022, which is more than three times the amount of ethanol produced in 2006.
Nitrogen loading
If the United States were to meet this target, nitrogen loading from the Mississippi River into the Gulf of Mexico would increase by 10 to 19 percent.
In the first study of its kind, lead author Simon Donner of the University of British Columbia and Chris Kucharik of the University of Wisconsin-Madison modelled the effects of biofuel production on nutrient pollution in an aquatic system.
Their findings are published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The researchers looked at the estimated amounts of land and fertilizer needed to meet future production goals for corn-based ethanol.
As a result of nitrogen loading, they predict nitrogen levels would rise to twice their recommended levels, leading to an expansion of the Gulf's dead zone, a region of oxygen-starved waters that is unable to support aquatic life.
Suspicion confirmed
"This result confirms our suspicion that there's a significant trade-off to the expanded production of ethanol from corn grain," says Kucharik, a scientist with the UW-Madison Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.
"It also shows that we need to continue considering our options for other biofuel feedstocks.
And when we do, we need to keep the greater impacts on ecosystems in mind." Their results call into question the assumption that enough land exists to fulfil the current demand for feed crops, while at the same time allowing an expansion of corn production for fuel, a &l
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