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

reuters.com

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

#61

Post by jillesvangurp »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #21
jillesvangurp wrote: post #12

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…

It's kinda hard to kill those subsidies when farmers have been used to them for 50 years, and it's a big political sticking point. The USDA exists to create more export crops. For the US, this might challenge that. That's also why the FDA can never rule that sugar or HFCS is harmful, it's a major American product, and that would be admitting that it's faulty.

Reminds me of an old despair.com demotivator: https://despair.com/products/tradition?variant=2457305795

"Just because you've always done things this way does not mean it is not incredibly stupid."

So, yes change is hard. But we need to change and this is kind of an obvious change to make. If we wait for the FDA to conclude that corn syrup is bad for you, we can indeed wait a long time.

So, don't wait for them and adjust their priorities at the federal level. That's what governments are for. You can't expect these agencies to do reasonable things by themselves when they are obviously stuck protecting the very unreasonable status quo. Bloat is the problem both in these agencies and the obese citizens whose interests they are supposed to protect.

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

#62

Post by eloisius »

raxxorrax wrote: post #51
adrianN wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Because the process from growing corn to distilling ethanol requires more energy than it produces. That energy has to come from somewhere, i.e. fossil fuels. It would be cleaner to just burn the fossil fuels than to run the energy through the Rube Goldberg machine of farm subsidies and ethanol.

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

#63

Post by lobocinza »

imtringued wrote: post #45
spiderfarmer wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well a lot of conventional farms that are hyperoptimized barely make enough money to get by. It is quite weird how we can't maintain something as basic as food security with a market based economy.

Farming is an efficient market due to the sheer number of competing agents, that drives the price to be close to the cost.

Markets are cyclic. When demand is higher than supply, prices go up, companies profit more and there's incentive for investment. Within time supply exceeds demand and prices go down, so companies barely make enough to pay off and those which are inefficient go broken and are sold, hopefully, to better managers.

This is generally a good thing but, of course, food/farming is of public interest. If prices go up those with lower income might struggle to feed themselves. And if prices go down poor farmers might struggle to survive and be forced into selling their land. Thus government intervenes.

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

#64

Post by speeder »

raxxorrax wrote: post #51
adrianN wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Corn in particular is inefficient, burning corn produces less energy than the energy required to grow corn.

Sugarcane is the opposite, it grows easily (too easy in fact, it has tendency to spread in an unwanted way), doesn't require too much diesel to produce, and it makes a fantastic amount of ethanol when pressed.

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

#65

Post by fredley »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #12

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…

> You are slowly realizing it has literally been years, maybe decades, since you ate any meal made without corn.

https://twitter.com/swiftonsecurity/status/10748100434957967...

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

#66

Post by lobocinza »

colordrops wrote: post #56
hnbad wrote: 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.

> Lithium mining isn't great for the environment, but it's certainly much less of a problem than CO2 emissions.

Was it measured?

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

#67

Post by NikolaNovak »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #12

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…

>>Nothing wrong with e.g. organically farmed corn.

Curious, what is the signifier of "organically farmed" here - what benefits does it provide, how does its usage significantly differ of "non-organically farmed" corn?

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

#68

Post by Retric »

lobocinza wrote: post #63
imtringued wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well a lot of conventional farms that are hyperoptimized barely make enough money to get by. It is quite weird how we can't maintain something as basic as food security with a market based economy.

Farming is an efficient market due to the sheer number of competing agents, that drives the price to be close to the cost. Markets are cyclic. When demand is higher than supply, prices go up, companies profit more and there's incentive for investment. Within time supply exceeds demand and prices go down, so companies barely make enough to pay off and those which are inefficient go broken and are sold, hopefully, to b…

What separates poor farmers from say poor food truck owners?

The issue with farm subsidies is they don’t actually change profitability long term, they simply result in over production. It’s vastly more efficient to build up a long term storage of surplus say 2 years of corn per American stored at -40C which should last ~100 years. Then let huge swaths of American farmers go bankrupt as you scale back production. This was the basic model hundreds of years ago, they still had famines.

Alternatively you can push productivity while paying pay farmers not to produce anything on their land. This keeps them from going bankrupt and requires fewer resources than excess production. We used to do this, it reduces the risk of famine because productivity can be scaled up quickly.

Finally you can just massively subsidize production and dump the excess on foreign markets, this is really bad for other countries and costs insane amounts of money and still results in excess production even as everyone gets fat. This is where bio fuels come in.

PS: There are also secondary effects as subsidizing farm insurance etc, keeps incompetent farmers in business.

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

#69

Post by giantg2 »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #12

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…

"Maybe repurpose the subsidies to have those farmers do something that actually is more productive and less harmful."

Like what? The article says that the land would otherwise be conserved, ie not productive. Some of it might even be developed.

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

#70

Post by bradfa »

The octane rating of fuels in the USA is fairly standardized, a majority of gasoline cars require a minimum of 87 octane (on the US measurement system) and some even require or recommend a minimum of 91 octane. These requirements are usually for emissions and warranty/reliability reasons, but in some higher performance vehicles (which are a small subset) it's also for performance reasons. Using ethanol in a gasoline blend boosts the octane, so if ethanol is removed then something else will need to be used in its place. You can't just substitute gasoline in place of the ethanol with no other changes.

Ethanol has many downsides, especially with attracting water into the fuel, but it does have its benefits, too.

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