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

reuters.com

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

#211

Post by kraussvonespy »

randomdata wrote: post #82
thrill wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying "the corn will be grown anyway" is not done in good faith. The corn is grown because it is profitable to do so. Remove subsidies and the corn will not be grown - something else that is profitable will be grown.

Of course it is profitable to do so. There is a large market for it, from animal feed, to sugar, to tortillas, to many things in between. The trouble is that it's unpredictable how big the crop will be before planting. As mentioned before, yields can vary quite significantly from year to year. As such, you will have periods of excess where we don't have enough storage for it all. Ethanol was promoted as a way to clea…

When ~45% of US corn is used for ethanol production[1], I'd say we can stop considering that "periods of excess" and call it what it really is: grift.

[1] - https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn-and-other-feed-gr...

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

#212

Post by photochemsyn »

fetus8 wrote: post #6

And it generally gets much worse MPG compared to regular gasoline!

This is probably a fudged statistic, because you have to add oxygenates to what's called 'pure gasoline' to get it to burn cleanly and efficiently, which bulks out the volume considerably. (These kinds of arguments were also trotted out in favor of tetra-ethyl-lead to provide the 'oxygenate' which only needs to be added at 1% or IIRC, compared to 10% ethanol blend or similar usually).

Fuel blending for optimal combustion characteristics is a complicated business, most of what people claim about this issue is not very reliable.

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

#213

Post by bluGill »

RosanaAnaDana wrote: post #116
bluGill wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plowing the soil is a terrible thing to do. Which is why no farmer has done it since around 1980. Modern tilling is much better for the soil, and doesn't release as much carbon form the soil (it needs more power from the tractor, and thus more CO2 from fuel, but still a lot less carbon total because the soil is saved. The above is also why GMO crops are so great for the environment: by using a little roundup (just a…

>Plowing the soil is a terrible thing to do. Which is why no farmer has done it since around 1980. Thats just not true. Plenty of farmers still plough. There has been some movement to lower disturbance low-till/ minimum-till systems for commodity crops, but we're still seeing soil carbon losses in agricultural soils in general. Number isn't going up and to the right, its still going down and to the left. I appreciate…

Plouging is a specific subset of tilling. Many farmers till, but it is a very different type of tool that is a lot better for the soil. No-till and limited till are very common as well, and there are government programs encouraging them.

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

#214

Post by UncleEntity »

mywittyname wrote: post #111
2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As soon as octane is high enough for your engine tuning, there's no mileage benefit. That's exactly my point. Would it be possible to design an engine from the ground up for very high octane fuels?

Yeah, this is how most E85 engines generally work. They have a E15 engine map, and an E85 and map. And use sensors to figure out which fuel is in the tank and which map to use. Stock cars generally don't take full advantage of the octane benefits of E85 because they will blow up if someone fills the tank with E15. But in the aftermarket world, "corn powered" cars make substantially more power, especially turbocharged…

They don’t have to manually switch maps, modern ECUs can figure out the blend and compensate.

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

#215

Post by UncleEntity »

xen2xen1 wrote: post #101

So "oil and water don't mix", as is often said. Oil/ gas with corn based additives DO mix with water, so it cannot be piped through a pipeline, thus making it be carried totally by truck, and making it's carbon footprint even worse.

I kind of doubt any of it is transported by truck but most likely by train.

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

#216

Post by Scoundreller »

rootusrootus wrote: post #119
retrac wrote: post #76

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

There are several factors in addition to ethanol, right? US livestock feed is primarily maize, but is that true in Canada? And the US has nearly 10x as many cattle. It seems like regulations are the primary driver in the border split, but not all of the regulations are about ethanol (also, Canada uses corn to make ethanol, too, in some areas).

The prime Canadian corn growing regions are also oil producing jurisdictions, so I could see their lack of interest in oil alternatives.

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

#217

Post by dragonwriter »

Name_Chawps wrote: post #183
dragonwriter wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 2024 changes, inasmuch as they are about specific elections and not the general long-term arc of the party, are about 2028 more than 2024. No one is expecting a significantly contested nominating contest when the party has an incumbent President seeking reelection.

The prediction markets on PredictIt have the Democrats winning at 52 cents, and the Republicans at 50 cents. You should expect the election to be quite close.

I’m talking about the Demcoratic nomination contest, not the general election, but even in the latter case I would expect prediction markets odds of victory more than a year out to have very weak, if any correlation, to margin of victory. Heck, I don’t know of any research showing that prediction markets far from elections are even good at predicting odds.

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

#219

Post by lesuorac »

Name_Chawps wrote: post #183
dragonwriter wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 2024 changes, inasmuch as they are about specific elections and not the general long-term arc of the party, are about 2028 more than 2024. No one is expecting a significantly contested nominating contest when the party has an incumbent President seeking reelection.

The prediction markets on PredictIt have the Democrats winning at 52 cents, and the Republicans at 50 cents. You should expect the election to be quite close.

Meh, if you look at the Candle for 90d you can see the high/low for Nov3,4th of the 2020 election [1]. There's so much volatility in that data its hard it's hard to consider this an accurate predicator for 2024.

The volume for 2024 is also so low compared to 2020 so I don't think you can use the current 2024 predictions as evidence.

[1]: https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/3698/Who-will-win-t...

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