The Ehthanol Hoax: Still Going Strong

I posted last year about how ethanol was one big hoax. You can read that blog entry here:

Big Corn And Ethanol Hoax
84rules
March 13, 2008

And you can get information about the side effects here:

Ethanol: The Side Effects
84rules
April 29, 2008

Well, ethanol is still a big hoax and the Obama adminstration thinks that you and I are still dumb enough to fall for it. From the Wall Street Journal:

The biofuels industry already receives a 45 cent tax credit for every gallon of ethanol produced, or about $3 billion a year. Meanwhile, import tariffs of 54 cents a gallon and an ad valorem tariff of four to seven cents a gallon keep out sugar-based ethanol from Brazil and the Caribbean. The federal 10% blending requirement insures a market for ethanol whether consumers want it or not -- a market Congress has mandated will double to 20.5 billion gallons in 2015.

What has happened here is that the Big Corn/Ethanol lobby has successfully conned Congress into giving them a monopoly over the ethanol industry and forced Americans to buy only from this monopoly. (Where are the trust-busters now?)

And then there are the side effects:

The Congressional Budget Office reported last month that Americans pay another surcharge for ethanol in higher food prices. CBO estimates that from April 2007 to April 2008 "the increased use of ethanol accounted for about 10 percent to 15 percent of the rise in food prices." Ethanol raises food prices because millions of acres of farmland and three billion bushels of corn were diverted to ethanol from food production. Americans spend about $1.1 trillion a year on food, so in 2007 the ethanol subsidy cost families between $5.5 billion and $8.8 billion in higher grocery bills.

So, not only are you paying higher gas prices, but you are paying higher food prices as well.

But, many of you out there will say, "We're helping the environment, though!" Not so. Ethanol is having negligible effects, and in many instances, negative effects.

A second study -- by the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Transportation and Air Quality -- explains that the reduction in CO2 emissions from burning ethanol are minimal and maybe negative. Making ethanol requires new land from clearing forest and grasslands that would otherwise sequester carbon emissions. "As with petroleum based fuels," the report concludes: "GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions are associated with the conversion and combustion of bio-fuels and every year they are produced GHG emissions could be released through time if new acres are needed to produce corn or other crops for biofuels." The EPA study also explores a series of alternative scenarios over 30 to 100 years. In some cases ethanol leads to a net reduction in carbon relative to using gasoline. But many other long-term scenarios observe a net increase in CO2 relative to burning fossil fuels. Ethanol produced in a "basic natural gas fired dry mill" will over a 30-year horizon produce "a 5% increase in GHG emissions compared to petroleum gasoline." When ethanol is produced with coal burning mills, the process "significantly worsens the lifecycle GHG impact of ethanol" creating 34% more greenhouse gases than gasoline does over 30 years.

And the parting shot:

As public policy, ethanol is like the joke about the baseball prospect who is a poor hitter but a bad fielder. It doesn't reduce CO2 but it does cost more. Imagine how many subsidies the Beltway would throw at ethanol if the fuel actually had any benefits.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Ethanol's Grocery Bill
Review & Outlook
Wall Street Journal
June 2, 2009

How Ethanol Helps Al Gore Get Rich Off Of Starving People

I remember back only a few years ago when the left-wing liberals were all about helping those in need, especially those who did not have enough to eat. Well, the tables have turned these days. Today, the libs are causing starvation, not aiding those who are afflicted by it.

How did this happen? One word: ethanol. Ethanol has been driving up food prices here at home and around the world. Additionally, it has also driven up the price of gasoline and in a year or two, we will see ethanol drive up the cost of maintaining an automobile. But let's look at the food angle right now.

Jerry Bowyer gives some excellent insights about how food prices are going up and people like Al Gore are getting rich off of seeing other people starve. From TownHall.com:

Foods seem to be rising in price in direct proportion to their proximity to ethanol subsidies. Feed grain is up an amazing 41% in the past year. Fruit and nuts are down 3% over the same period. Why? Because we turn corn into ethanol, but we don’t do the same with walnuts or bananas.

And of course, their are certain politicians who, in order to cover their own rear-ends, come up with some interesting spin as to why this is happening. Actually, "spin" is not the correct word. Upon viewing the data and evidence, "lies" would be a more appropriate word:

They say that very little of the jump in food prices comes from ethanol, that it’s mostly energy prices, or a weak dollar, or general inflation. ... Why would general inflation cause corn to a rate of doubling every two years, and yet leave meat, fruit, nut and some vegetable prices dropping? How could high energy prices do that? Don’t vegetable farmers use tractors? Don’t sugar farmers fuel their tractors with the same diesel? Don’t the trucks and trains which deliver almonds run on the same kinds of fuel as the ones which deliver grains?

Does anyone really believe that energy prices could affect one agricultural commodity while at the same time having no effect at all on other agricultural commodities in the same exact market? I don't. I suspect that the politicians making these arguments don't believe it either. They are merely trying to deflect attention away from the true culprit here: ethanol subsidies.

Read on:

It’s not a general inflation problem; it’s a problem of political corruption. America’s first presidential primary happens to be in Iowa. That gives ethanol first dibs at the pork barrel. Add Republican farm voters to Democratic environmentalists, shake vigorously and you get a brew called ethanol. The farmers get rich on taxpayer subsidies, the venture capitalists who focus on alternative fuels (I’m looking in your direction, Mr. Gore) get fat on profits.

We need to end this ethanol hoax now, before people here in the U.S. begin to starve as a result.

Jerry's parting shot:

Foreigners are not starving because the dollar lost value. In fact, the drop in the dollar helps them. ... The problem isn’t the dollar – the problem is that we’re burning food. We’re taking carbohydrates which would have gone into someone’s stomach, chemically altering them and putting them into our gas tanks instead. One SUV fill-up is roughly the same amount of calories as it takes to sustain a man, woman or a child – for a year. I believe that future generations will look back in history at the hungry of this world, and the preening self-satisfaction of the ethanol lobby and call it what it is, a crime against humanity.

You can access the complete column on-line here:

How Al Gore Is Getting Fat Off Of A Starving World
Jerry Bowyer
TownHall.com
May 31, 2008

Petronomics 101

I am almost amazed that there has been no major outcry from the American consumer about the price of gasoline. After all, it is the life blood of our economy.

But the price keeps going up and up and up. Not because of any "greedy" oil companies (their profit margin is a lowly 6%) but because of two reasons:

1) Increasing Global Demand
2) Decreasing Supply

Either one of these by themselves will drive prices up, but a combination of both will be like launching prices with JATO packs. What we have is a combination of both. The global demand is something that is out of our control. We simply cannot tell India and China that they have to stop using so much oil as it is the life-blood of their economies too.

The decreasing supply on the other hand, is something we could do something about, if only the leftist Dems (and a few Republicans) in Congress would get off of their high horses and join the rest of us in reality.

Lt. Col. Oliver North's most recnt column deals with these topics. From TownHall.com:

While Washington's political elites in both parties have debated and dithered, the price of crude oil has risen to $123 per barrel -- nearly double what it was at this time last year. The average cost of a gallon of gas at the pump is approaching $4 per gallon. Some analysts now are predicting that the price of a barrel of oil could approach $200 in the next two years -- and that gasoline could be $6 a gallon. An equal amount of diesel may cost truckers as much as $7.50.

But, when Congress tried to do something about it, this happened:

Ethanol: The Side Effects
84rules
April 29, 2008

And this:

Big Corn And Ethanol Hoax
84rules
March 13, 2008

And Lt. Col. North continues:

The cost of crude oil is out of sight and climbing. Petrodollars are funding a radical Islamic jihad being waged against us. Here at home, the cost of everything from fuel to food is going up, and we're sending out of the country capital needed to resuscitate an economy that is, at best, sluggish and, at worst, foundering. The majority in Congress has responded by proposing tax increases for domestic energy production, suggesting new mandates on producers, demanding that coal-fired electric plants be shut down, and whining that foreign governments need to increase oil production -- while opposing exploitation of reserves here at home. In a news conference two weeks ago, President Bush criticized Congress for blocking efforts to expand domestic oil production in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And this week, in a noteworthy understatement, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel observed, "We have here, in this nation, resources that we are not utilizing." No, really? The newest oil refinery in the United States was built by Marathon in Garyville, La., in 1976. Since then, every effort to construct new facilities has been thwarted by protests and lawsuits from "environmental" groups and government red tape. It has been 12 years since the last nuclear reactor came on line to generate electrical power in the United States.

But not all in Congress are so blinded by PC idiocy:

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas has proposed a realistic solution: the Domestic Energy Production Act of 2008. Her bill would permit exploitation of more than a trillion barrels of U.S. territorial oil and nearly 600 trillion cubic feet of natural gas -- more than the combined hydrocarbon reserves of Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Nigeria, Venezuela, Libya and Iran. The measure also would streamline the process for building new refineries and clean, safe nuclear power plants, as well as funding to develop alternative fuels. But none of that -- and the consequent reduction in energy costs -- ever will benefit American consumers, unless Congress acts.

The longer we wait to get a comprehensive energy plan, the higher gas prices will go and the less money we will have to research and convert to alternative sources later on.

Please write to Congress and ask them to stop being so short-sighted and to support the Domestic Energy Production Act of 2008.

You can access the complete column on-line here:

Petronomics 101
Lt. Col. Oliver North
TownHall.com
May 9, 2008