121–130 of 264 posts
"Corn is not a _food_. Corn is a _platform_." https://twunroll.com/article/1074810043495796736
Corn has been the platform for civilization(s) in the Americas since agriculture was invented in Mesoamerica.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is surprising how much politics and law can affect what is grown where. The US-Canada border cuts right across the prairies. Conditions are pretty much identical in northern North Dakota and southern Manitoba. Yet the border is clearly visible on some maps of agricultural yield: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:OatsYield.png https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:RyeYield.png
Though lots of ethanol in Canadian gasoline too. Hard to find any without 10% ethanol, even in jurisdictions with limited corn growing. What caused that? Or do the US subsidies on corn make it cost effective for Canadians to burn ethanol? If so, where’s my cheap E85? I’d run it in my old Corolla and see what happens.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/taxpayers-ontario-can...
Go ahead: your old Corolla will become a dead Corolla.
https://blog.raleighclassic.com/is-it-safe-to-use-ethanol-in...
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I wonder if this doesn't need to be the case. With the higher octane rating couldn't you in theory run a much more efficient and higher compression engine?
That is the theory behind "flex fuel" vehicles. In practice, the optimizations don't materialize in real world usage. This is likely because of safety factors built into the ECM preventing the engine from running enough timing advance to take advantage of the octane of a blended fuel.
The more typical way to do this is have a turbocharger (supercharger... I can never remember the difference and which you want when). You and run more boost which increases the compression ratio. However this requires an expensive turbo and so isn't a popular option.
I'm not sure why turbo cars have not made these modifications though. There are probably other trade offs I'm not aware of.
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which is why the Democratic Party changed it under cover of starting with "a more diverse state" Iowa no longer first; Democrats reorder the presidential primary calendar for 2024 https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/politics/2022/1...
> which is why the Democratic Party changed it under cover of starting with "a more diverse state" It wasn’t because they care about offending farmers or removing ethanol subsidies, it was so that Biden can lock down some early primary wins in 2024 with States with a higher percentage of black voters.
Biden is unlikely to face a primary challenge if he runs. Bernie already said he won't. https://www.axios.com/2022/06/14/bernie-sanders-2024-primary...
Don't forget that the 2020 Iowa caucus was a complete mess, totally botched, and the chair of the Iowa Democratic Party had to resign soon afterward.
Is there other crops that can be turned into ethanol that would be beneficial for the environment? Can't seem to find information on that.
Sure. As far as I know, corn is only used in the US, for fairly obvious reasons. Where I'm from it's made from carb-rich waste and sidestreams from various sources. Of course, the yields do pale in comparison to the corn megaindustry of the US, which produces more fuel ethanol than the rest of the world combined. Sugar cane is good, and used quite successfully in Brazil, but of course only grows in sub/tropical clima…
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It will take time for the computer in the car to detect the ethanol and switch to a high ethanol fuel map. In the mean time, the engine is going to run pretty lean, since more ethanol is required than gasoline for the same volume of air. Running too lean usually causes the engine to buck and shake pretty badly. This, of course, assumes that the car is even capable of running higher ethanol blends. The performance ben…
Unless your car has a turbocharger or other means to run a higher compression ratio and thus take advantage of the higher octane of ethanol fuel. I've seen this done in lab and garage settings (they typically don't retain the ability to run regular gasoline), but I'm not aware of any commercially available engine that does. Race settings similar things as well, but they are trying to get power not fuel efficiency and…
You're not going to see the insane power gains possible on E85 from the factory though because the E85 map needs to be conservative enough to no blow up if someone suddenly fills up with regular.
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If absolute fairness were the reason for change ALL parties that primary would do so by some algorithm that's transparent. E.G. 5 Primary waves (Tuesdays/weeks/months) sorted by the 10 states with the least population to the most population. Why? It's a better rough approximation for a representative sample over an increasingly large window of voters than the current process, and still keeps any benefit of ramping up…
I don't understand. If you're going to change it, why don't do the primary on the same day like any other country?
It is not true that “every other country” has parties select their presidential (or nearest equivalent, whether as head of state or head of government, other countries frequently divorcing those roles) candidate by simultaneous national elections. Sometimes, they don’t even (in a legal sense) choose a candidate at all, though the party may have its own process of deciding and announcing who its members responsible for the leadership election (e.g., MPs in Westminster-style system) will vote for should they secure the necessary majority to decide the outcome on their own.
In fact, I couldn’t off the top of my head name even a single country that uses a national simultaneous primary to select party nominees for election head of government or head of state, can you?
As others mentioned, this is not a new finding. There is a lot of academic and industrial/economic analysis on this subject. Ethanol from corn was never a good idea economically for anyone other than corn farmers. It is also bad environmentally and places additional competitive demand on our food supply (choice and competition between corn going into food or fuel supply). Similar analysis has been done on other crop…
Corn farmers from Iowa. Where they hold the first caucus of the interminable election season. No American politician or political party can afford to offend corn farmers. We should count ourselves lucky that our gasoline is only 10% corn.
Because farming equipment runs on gasoline.
As others mentioned, this is not a new finding. There is a lot of academic and industrial/economic analysis on this subject. Ethanol from corn was never a good idea economically for anyone other than corn farmers. It is also bad environmentally and places additional competitive demand on our food supply (choice and competition between corn going into food or fuel supply). Similar analysis has been done on other crop…
Corn farmers from Iowa. Where they hold the first caucus of the interminable election season. No American politician or political party can afford to offend corn farmers. We should count ourselves lucky that our gasoline is only 10% corn.
Really fun to pull into a gas station and accidentally fill your tank with gas it can't handle.