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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

#161

Post by alistairSH »

refurb wrote: post #108
patch_collector wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few years back, I caught a ride with a cattle rancher while hitchhiking across South Dakota. We stopped by another rancher's property to give him an estimate of how his cows would sell at market. While we were there, we got to talking about how he'd pulled the cows off of one of his fields, and planted corn instead. Thanks to subsidies, it was more profitable to do that, even though herding cattle is really what he…

So your story is farmer stops doing activity A and does activity B because it makes more money?

I don't think the OP was faulting the rancher. He's agreeing that federal corn subsidies are warping the market.

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

#162

Post by s1artibartfast »

mrfusion wrote: post #95
_dark_matter_ wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Race to the bottom. The political parties won't let it happen.

We’ll the bottom would be everyone on the earliest possible day and then no one has an advantage. Seems like a good thing.

I'm not sure that there is any limit on the earliest day. In theory they could be any time after the last one.

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

#163

Post by ramesh31 »

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…

>Kill the subsidies and that whole industry slowly dies. That would be a good thing.

For you, maybe. Not for the millions of rural Americans whose livelihood depends on agriculture subsidies. There's a reason why we have the Senate, a place where Nebraska has the same power as California. It's exactly for situations like this. The US is a massive country full of competing interests, and our founders knew that eventually the urban population would massively outnumber the rural population, leading to a tyranny through rule of the majority. So states were put on equal footing in the Senate to give the rural populations a voice. And because of that, the Senate will never ever allow these subsidies to be cut. There's simply too much support for it among the rural states.

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

#164

Post by vlowther »

smoyer wrote: post #112
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…

Ethanol is not a terribly good fuel and causes lots of problems in engines which have seals that weren't designed for it. Engines are also prone to knocking as the energy profile of (enhanced) fuels is different.

Ethanol is awesome when it comes to knock resistance because it is much slower burning than gasoline is with all other parameters being equal. Where it bites is that it requires better seals than gasoline, and it has lower energy density, which means you need higher flow fuel pumps, tubing, filters, and injectors to make the same power.

Do that, though, and you can run a turbocharged engine at much higher levels of boost and create much more power than you would be able to do with anything short of race gas or even more exotic and dangerous fuels.

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

#165

Post by harpersealtako »

fredley wrote: post #65
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...

Isn't this either obviously false (yes, corn is in lots of processed foods and oils and most animal feed, but people eat things that don't involve veg. oil, meat, and processed foods all the time) or vacuously true (if we're counting the lining of paper bags, then we should also count plastic made from corn-based ethanol, and trucks that use ethanol in their fuel, and drivers who eat meat which is fed with corn, and we breath air with oxygen produced from corn fields, and...)?

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

#166

Post by [deleted] »

Retric wrote: post #68
lobocinza wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]

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

#167

Post by gruez »

zzzeek wrote: post #159
gruez wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As always, a party's political beliefs are more complicated than being pro-[thing] or anti-[thing]. To steelman the GOP, I'd say that they're against welfare for individuals because for the most part they're transfer payments that don't require any "work" to obtain (short of filling out some forms). They think that's bad because it encourages laziness. To my knowledge farm subsidies aren't implemented that way. They'…

you could argue those corn farmers are too lazy to figure out a crop that is actually beneficial to society and are comfortable resting in their subsidized bubble.

I mean, you could also come up with plenty of other uncharitable explanations for why democrats/republicans endorse certain policies, but that's not helpful if your objective is to understand the other side.

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

#168

Post by seiferteric »

That this is a story now is funny to me. I remember reading years ago that corn ethanol EROI was close to 1.0. Given this it is obviously pointless from an energy perspective. All that diesel/energy used growing, processing transporting etc just to make back that same energy...

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

#169

Post by s1artibartfast »

ModernMech wrote: post #119
mrfusion wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why doesn’t another state move its primary up? It seems like an easy way to get more influence?

I don't know about the Republicans, but as far as Democrats go it's actually a rule: Rule 12 Timing of the Delegate Selection Process No meetings, caucuses, conventions or primaries which constitute the first determining stage in the presidential nomination process (the date of the primary in primary states, and the date of the first tier caucus in caucus states) may be held prior to the first Tuesday in March or aft…

>also shows that 4 states were carved out probably as favors (does anyone know more here?).

Probably not favors but codifying the status quo to get their endorsement on the rule. That said, I agree that it gives some states more power, but isn't completely useless. It allows the party to test how good candidates are at getting out the vote And adds some option for course correction.

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

#170

Post by jimbob45 »

bradfa wrote: post #70

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…

The octane rating of your fuel does not in any way affect the emissions of your car[0]. You should use whatever octane-rated fuel that your manufacturer recommends. Using a higher-rated fuel will not confer any additional benefits whatsoever onto your car.

[0]https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/ask-mr-green/does-premium-...

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