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U.S. corn-based ethanol worse for the climate than gasoline

reuters.com

51–60 of 248 posts

Re: U.S. corn-based ethanol worse for the climate than gasoline

#51
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't the CO2 from corn be drawn from the atmosphere in the first place? Sure, if you grow corn and let it die, parts of its CO2 content would be bound in the soil. But does that calculation make sense when we look at our fossil fuel consumption? Sure, every bit helps...

Making ethanol involves more steps than just letting corn grow on its own, and those steps burn fossil fuels.

Sure, in that case it is just as bad. But I don't understand how it could ever be worse than gasoline since part of the CO2 in bio-ethanol should at least come from already unbound CO2.

Re: U.S. corn-based ethanol worse for the climate than gasoline

#52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nothing wrong with e.g. organically farmed corn. There is nothing wrong with “factory”, “industrially”, or “sustainably” farmed corn either. Farming at scale is the only thing that allows all 8 billion people to eat.

The romantic view people have of peasant farms is ruining all discourse about agriculture. I blame the books people read to toddlers. Peasant farms were labor intensive, disease ridden, high risk, low reward businesses that shortened lives and ruined families. But somehow for a lot of people this episode in the history of farming is seen as the optimal blueprint for sustainable farming. They ignore the fact that all…

Similar with the artificial battle front between organic vs conventional/industrial, where each side claims the solution to sustainable food production, but no common ground is allowed.

By the way, not all children's books are equally naive. We've recently found a nice one [1] (in German) which shows small- and large-scale farms side-by-side, in a brutally honest way (including butchering).

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Wo-kommt-unser-Essen-her/dp/340775816...

Re: U.S. corn-based ethanol worse for the climate than gasoline

#53
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't the CO2 from corn be drawn from the atmosphere in the first place? Sure, if you grow corn and let it die, parts of its CO2 content would be bound in the soil. But does that calculation make sense when we look at our fossil fuel consumption? Sure, every bit helps...

Making ethanol involves more steps than just letting corn grow on its own, and those steps burn fossil fuels.

It's true, and the article mentions land-use change as the main factor. That could be chopping down or burning a forest to make land for corn.

Re: U.S. corn-based ethanol worse for the climate than gasoline

#54
I hate to be that guy, but the only reliable way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to drastically reduce emissions. Switching to biofuel doesn't fix climate change because biofuel is still terrible. Switching to electric cars doesn't fix climate change because electric power is still terrible (not to mention all the damage from lithium mining, manufacturing and battery replacements).

The only solution is to make neighborhoods more walkable, reduce the need for frequent travel through mixed use zoning and invest in public transit (trains and trams, buses if you can't avoid road traffic completely) so more travel happens in high density vehicles rather than cars.

But that basically means public spending for public services rather than having companies sell more products to consumers and that's just too much like communism to be a legitimate answer because you don't want people to reconsider whether some aspects of socialism might actually be good.

EDIT: Since HN won't let me reply, I'll just pre-empt any further replies by pointing out that the problem with "solutions" like renewables, carbon capture and electric vehicles is that while they sound great in a spreadsheet they ignore externalities, overhead and scale: yes, if we could wave a magic wand and convert all existing cars into electric and backfill the increases energy demand by turning all the now unused infrastructure into wind mills and solar panels and somehow fix the energy storage problem, the situation would undeniably be better than it is now. But that's not how we get there and even that situation would be unsustainable as long as we follow a growth mindset and promote individual transportation as a consumer product rather than addressing infrastructure as a social issue.

I don't think HN is ready to acknowledge that the biggest carbon emission savings in the US don't come from carbon capture tech magic but from offloading the more emission heavy parts of the production chain behind the curtain into third world countries that don't end up on the spreadsheet. We're not going to solve climate change by stuffing all our toys into the broom closet with hopes that the regulators can't see the mess we made. We need to actually clean up the mess and stop adding to it. We can't fix a resource problem by continuing to expend an increasing amount of resources. It's called "reduce, reuse, recycle" because those are the things you can do in decreasing order of effectiveness. Carbon capture is just recycling. Going electric is not even that.

Re: U.S. corn-based ethanol worse for the climate than gasoline

#55

Corn in the US is mostly used for harmful purposes. It's used for producing fodder for intensive cattle farming (which of course produces lots of CO2). It's used for biofuel production, which as the article observes releases more CO2 than that it saves. And it's used for producing corn syrup which is an ingredient that nobody needs in their diet. The rest, which would be usage for e.g. corn bread or other staples of…

Whoa there chief. The whole 'that would be a good thing' is an overreach. There are 'better' ways to spend that subsidy but having a steady surplus of food subsidy or not is a way better position for a country to be in than implementing some JIT mechanism with supply/demand set purely by market prices. Just because agriculture makes up a small % of GDP compared to tech we can more easily get rid of Google than we can…

You are arguing with a straw man. They said nothing of getting rid of food surplus or grain. They said to reallocate corn subsidies elsewhere. Presumably one destination could be other foods with greater nutritional value.

Re: U.S. corn-based ethanol worse for the climate than gasoline

#56
post #54

I hate to be that guy, but the only reliable way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to drastically reduce emissions. Switching to biofuel doesn't fix climate change because biofuel is still terrible. Switching to electric cars doesn't fix climate change because electric power is still terrible (not to mention all the damage from lithium mining, manufacturing and battery replacements). The only solution is to make…

This doesn't make sense. More and more electric is being generated renewably. It's not some far fetched pie in the sky thing either - I fully charge my car using solar cells on the top of my roof. My daily driving is carbon neutral.

Lithium mining isn't great for the environment, but it's certainly much less of a problem than co2 emmisions.

Re: U.S. corn-based ethanol worse for the climate than gasoline

#57
post #19

Corn in the US is mostly used for harmful purposes. It's used for producing fodder for intensive cattle farming (which of course produces lots of CO2). It's used for biofuel production, which as the article observes releases more CO2 than that it saves. And it's used for producing corn syrup which is an ingredient that nobody needs in their diet. The rest, which would be usage for e.g. corn bread or other staples of…

Iowa has the first primary every year in the US[1]. Iowa produces more corn than any state[2] while being 32nd in population. Corn is very important to people in Iowa and as long as the first two facts remain the same, corn will continue to be highly subsidized and supported in other ways by the US government. [1] https://www.uspresidentialelectionnews.com/2024-primary-sche... [2] https://www.cropprophet.com/us-corn-…

So, rather than a banana republic, it's a corn state?

Re: U.S. corn-based ethanol worse for the climate than gasoline

#58
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nothing wrong with e.g. organically farmed corn. There is nothing wrong with “factory”, “industrially”, or “sustainably” farmed corn either. Farming at scale is the only thing that allows all 8 billion people to eat.

Farming at this scale allows people to eat meat for every meal.

Which they should stop doing.

Re: U.S. corn-based ethanol worse for the climate than gasoline

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whoa there chief. The whole 'that would be a good thing' is an overreach. There are 'better' ways to spend that subsidy but having a steady surplus of food subsidy or not is a way better position for a country to be in than implementing some JIT mechanism with supply/demand set purely by market prices. Just because agriculture makes up a small % of GDP compared to tech we can more easily get rid of Google than we can…

You are arguing with a straw man. They said nothing of getting rid of food surplus or grain. They said to reallocate corn subsidies elsewhere. Presumably one destination could be other foods with greater nutritional value.

fair point. I was focusing on the 'removing subsidies' part and not the 'reallocate' part. Accept the correction
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