Rolling Stone has an excellent article on the ethanol boondoggle.
Ethanol doesn’t burn cleaner than gasoline, nor is it cheaper. Our current ethanol production represents only 3.5 percent of our gasoline consumption — yet it consumes twenty percent of the entire U.S. corn crop, causing the price of corn to double in the last two years and raising the threat of hunger in the Third World. And the increasing acreage devoted to corn for ethanol means less land for other staple crops, giving farmers in South America an incentive to carve fields out of tropical forests that help to cool the planet and stave off global warming.
So why bother? Because the whole point of corn ethanol is not to solve America’s energy crisis, but to generate one of the great political boondoggles of our time. Corn is already the most subsidized crop in America, raking in a total of $51 billion in federal handouts between 1995 and 2005 — twice as much as wheat subsidies and four times as much as soybeans. Ethanol itself is propped up by hefty subsidies, including a fifty-one-cent-per-gallon tax allowance for refiners. And a study by the International Institute for Sustainable Development found that ethanol subsidies amount to as much as $1.38 per gallon — about half of ethanol’s wholesale market price.
And that’s just the beginning … it starts getting savage after this point.
Corn is the Earth’s pal!
Ethanol only starts to make sense when (a) it is made from sugar (the article points out that corn is grossly inefficient and cellulose a pipe dream) AND (b) is not used as a 1 to 1 replacement for gasoline, but is instead combined with plug-in hybrid vehicles.
Gasoline, as used in cars, is less an energy source than an energy STORAGE source. If we reduce the need for STORAGE by making the average commute a storage-zero event, we can operate vehicles off the grid. Yes, it still requires energy, but there are far more options to make energy on the grid than in our cars.
Just one guy’s opinion.
dhonig: I presume you don’t mean completely storage-free since it’d reasonable to expect that a commute will need a method to direct ‘some form of energy’ from the grid to the vehicle, suffient for the commute. I also assume that you don’t imply the wholesale eradication of suburbs, etc.
Therefore, you will need some energy storage/transfer mechanism in the vehicle – unless you’re proposing beamed energy.
This article keeps missing the point: ethanol allows us to feel good about the environment without having to modify our consumption-crazy lifestyles in any way.
When you’ve got a solution like that, why quibble over whether or not it’s effective?
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve gotta drive my hummer down the block to pick up a Baconator and a refill of Orlistat before I go to my pole-dancing class.
Well, you’ve managed to find one of my pet peeves. There is plenty of information out there to suggest that this is one of the least efficient ways possible to “produce” energy.
This article came out last year.
The problem is that the typical dumb American still thinks perpetual motion machines are possible. If ethanol production made sense, there would be zero fossil-fuel input. They’d run the tractors, the plants, the wastewater treatment facilities, and produce the fertilizer from nothing but what’s growing in the field. But they can’t do that, because it is a net drain.
However, I don’t oppose trying. This needs to be researched. If, after a lot of trial and error, they can get to a point where the output is more than the input, then it was worth it (but not if it quadruples the price of corn; then it’s not worth it).
Until then, we gotta drive less. There’s really no need to drive 7 passenger SUVs to work (unless you really are carrying 7 people; that would be an appropriate use of such a vehicle).
I do see promise in Cellulosic Ethanol. Using an enzyme instead of heat from fossil fuel to produce the ethanol could change the equation. Still being researched, though.
I agree with MikeM. I consult, and can easily telecommute for almost everything, but my clients stil demand that I attend ‘face to face’ meetings. This at the cost of commutes to the airport, flights to their city, cab rides (where I’m the only passenger) and so on.
I would MUCH prefer to live where I’d like (rather than near a major airport), telecommute to clients, and spend some more ‘quality time’ with my wife & kids.
The more I learn about ethanol fuels, the more I think that it is a case of barking up the wrong tree. We don’t need an (expensively produced) liquid fuel as a “drop in replacement” for gasoline. That approach is like getting around a horse shortage by building robot horses to pull old-style carriages, instead of actually designing a car.
I think that what we really need is a convenient engine or fuel cell that runs on cellulose or other carbohydrates directly. Just shovel in the grass clippings, and away you go.
Tony, I’m just talking about plug-in hybrids. With a decent battery, the back and forth to work would be entirely off the grid without dipping into the car’s fuel tank. This means that the car can be powered by wind, solar, nuclear, geothermal, tides, coal, etc.
I expect our greatest strides in reducing our dependence on oil will come in static production for the grid, rather than cars. That is, until we achieve a hydrogen economy and cold fusion. I, for one, can’t wait for my very own Mr. Fusion.
There are several errors in the article.
The author is conflating field corn with corn suitable for human consumption. Field corn is mainly used as livestock feed.
He ignored the fact that in the 90’s grain prices went into the cellar and that in 2007 the price in corn jumped due to projections of a bad crop.
I’m certainly not sold on ethanol as a viable alternative energy source but those two errors were huge.
I thought that the main appeal of ethanol was not a mythical cleanliness or efficiency, but that it would replace *imported* oil — i.e., this was about foreign policy and energy independence.
Now, the reality of any of that appeal may be challenged, but I do believe the reason for the resurgence of interest in ethanol fuels was more due to trying to wean from oil imports from the Middle East (even though, yes, in reality, the US imports most of its oil from Canada, Mexico, and Venezuela).
Yeah, that First Law of Thermodynamics, it’s a bugger.
Field corn is used to make corn flakes, corn meal, and just about every corn-related item you eat other than sweet corn (fresh, canned or frozen) and popcorn.
Use as livestock feed doesn’t make it dispensible. Guess what most of the livestock are for?
El Cid wrote–
I thought that the main appeal of ethanol was not a mythical cleanliness or efficiency, but that it would replace *imported* oil — i.e., this was about foreign policy and energy independence.
No, it is about business investment. With subsidies and write-offs, it is a can’t lose investment for those with lots of money. Two ethanol refinery startups in my area, initial investors have already taken their profit and left, secondary (small investors) left holding the debt. Oh, and not a drop of ethanol produced. Turns out there is already a surplus.
Indeed, our industrialized food supply depends on field corn to a mind-boggling extent, in all sorts of places you would never guess.
Soy diesel, OTOH, I think is a much clearer case where there is a huge potential.
Convert the US trucking industry to soy diesel and you have put a major dent in oil needs.
Things will only get worse with all the subsidies from this new farm bill.
El Cid has it at least partially right. Alaska drilling, west coast refinery laws -> expensive Californian gas–they may not make complete sense economically, but they are a valid strategy when attempting to increase the energy independence of the nation. Throw in corn ethanol and Iraq, and someone up there’s trying to implement a Plan.
Hm. I wonder why we’re not using hyper-greasy algae to make diesel fuel. Put it in some kind of semi-sealed system where it churns around under the sunlight and you pump more CO2 into it; filter out some of the algae and press it to get oil, which you then refine into diesel. Wait for more algae to grow, filter, repeat. Is this system unworkable in principle? You don’t even need to build it somewhere where there’s rain; you could build it in the middle of the desert and stick a tap on the end of it.
On a more general note, yes, ethanol does act in some ways as a reassurance to people that they won’t have to change their consumption-crazy lifestyle. Then again, without some form of large-scale easily-transportable energy source, getting rid of your “consumption-crazy lifestyle” essentially means becoming a subsistence farmer. Oh, and running quite a good chance of dying. It’s a little creepy how quickly “Americans consume too much” shades into weird-ass fantasies about local produce and partying like it’s 1599.
In any case, it’s silly to assume that biofuels of some sort aren’t going to be part of the solution, if any exists, which carries us through the bottleneck as cheap oil draws to an end. That, nuclear power (why, oh why, did we cancel the IFR?) or mountains of coal transformed into dirty oil via Fischer-Tropsch or some similar process. And, of course, conservation–we get to decide if we want to make cutbacks now, which will make them very uncomfortable, or if we want to have them made for us later, which will make them much worse. Probably some depressing combination of all three options.
Steve LaBonne wrote —
Indeed, our industrialized food supply depends on field corn to a mind-boggling extent, in all sorts of places you would never guess.
Oh, I can guess. Places that make profit off subsidies, price controls, and tax write-offs.
I wrote —
Oh, I can guess. Places that make profit off subsidies, price controls, and tax write-offs.
Excuse me, I mean price supports. Critical difference.
For another investigation into the corn industry, there’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan. There’s the history of commodity corn; the incredible amount of corn-based products that are used elsewhere, both in other foods and in non-food applications; the vast chemical industry involved in processing corn into substances that will go into other foods and be used in other industries, and so on. Corn is… incredibly pervasive.
The book is fascinating, and a bit disturbing, in the level of detail it has about where food comes from, and what happens to it, that most people simply don’t know about or think about.
Look at the big picture, people– you’re subsidizing a much larger waste of corn by feeding it to animals when you could easily be vegetarians in the first place. For all the batting about of words like “reason” and “logic” on skeptic and atheist boards, it’s amazing to see how the vast majority of you are still ultimately controlled by selfish greed. There’s really no way to justify your way out of it– but bringing it up is often just as fruitless as explaining evolution to a fundamentalist. Why is this?
@#7
“I think that what we really need is a convenient engine or fuel cell that runs on cellulose or other carbohydrates directly. Just shovel in the grass clippings, and away you go.”
That would be a horse. ;-)
Of course, that doesn’t solve the problem of inefficient fuel conversion.
El Cid wrote–
I thought that the main appeal of ethanol was not a mythical cleanliness or efficiency, but that it would replace *imported* oil — i.e., this was about foreign policy and energy independence.
No, it is about business investment. With subsidies and write-offs, it is a can’t lose investment for those with lots of money. Two ethanol refinery startups in my area, initial investors have already taken their profit and left, secondary (small investors) left holding the debt. Oh, and not a drop of ethanol produced. Turns out there is already a surplus.
Posted by: Tully Bascomb | August 1, 2007 03:50 PM
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Oh, good lord, do I have to spell it all out every single friggin’ time????
Yes, I understand the self-interested money interests behind it. I could just as easily write my own essays about such motivations and how upper-class, financial, or industry interests brought about all sorts of policies.
I was talking about the PR — the public relations, propagandandistic selling points behind the ethanol push.
Like, as in, IF people aimed to justify increasing the use of ethanol as a vehicle fuel in the USA, what do they SAY to justify it?
For 5 seconds can people not assume that everyone is not automatically more stupid, less worldly, and less cynical than they? Good god.
Anyone notice that bourbon prices have gone up? No that’s a real alcohol problem.
PZ is just trying to make sure he never is allowed to step foot into Iowa ever again. Them’s fightin’ words just a little south of him….
I used to use the line that “ethanol isn’t an energy production technology, it’s a corn disposal technology”. Now that it’s gotten to the point where it’s actually cutting into grain that would have been sold as food or livestock feed, though, I can’t even say that!
I think at the very least we need to talk about diversifying our energy portfolio. Sooner or later the world is going to settle on a single solution for fueling cars – whether that’ll be hydrogen fuel cells, biodiesel, ethanol-friendly hybrids or what remains to be seen. The worst case scenario would be the one where the US spends millions zeroing in on a target that turns out to be exactly the wrong one. That’s the kind of strategy that’s made our telecoms systems (especially cellular) the envy of absolutely nobody in the world.
Yeah, what Owlmirror (#20) said. Seriously fascinating book!
Corn is the most subsidized grain produced simply because it is the most overproduced grain commodity. It’s use as feed for livestock stems (at least in part) from this chronic overproduction.
I’m not sure about swine, but I know that ruminants aren’t built to use “hot” feed like corn as a main food source; they evolved as grass eaters. In fact, feedlots need to provide a minimal amount of silage for the cattle they are feeding corn to just so they won’t get *too* sick while in the feedlot.
Too many people still believe that beef cattle are fed corn just to “finish” them, (this was generally true up until about the late 1960’s) but the truth is, they are force-fed a corn-heavy diet from the time they are weaned until the time they are slaughtered. Because of this, the steers are in a perpetually sub-optimal state of health and this (along with the crowding and living knee-deep in their own waste) is why the use of antibiotics is so prevalent in the CAFO (confined animal feeding operation) factory farm industry.
Now hold on there. The majority of corn products in American diets can be easily removed. High fructose corn syrup could be lifted right out. Corn Flakes and other similar products are hardly a staple of our diets.
It also would probably be better if we did eat less meat and raised fewer livestock.
You are probably confusing gasoline with hydrogen fuel cells here. Gasoline is indeed an energy source in the sense that we must invest less energy into acquiring it than is released when it is burned. Some other actor (long-ago natural processes) did the work to store that energy; we just collect it. Contrast with hydrogen, which requires us to invest more energy into separating it from the compounds in which it is found than it returns in use.
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I’ve been arguing with people for a couple of years about ethanol. Every time I see one of those happy-happy newspaper articles about ethanol I just sigh.
Worse are the people who talk about hydrogen. You ask them “But where is the hydrogen going to come from? And what will it cost?” and they say “You just get it from water! Most of the earth’s surface is covered with water!”
I also get annoyed when people talk about bio-diesel. Some clown runs his car on french-fry oil waste from a fast food restaurant, and he gets an entire page in the paper.
Argh.
The truth is, EVERY form of alternate energy will have a very high cost, both to the consumer and to the environment. Heck, if we suddenly had TOTALLY FREE energy, we’d probably destroy the ecosystem in less than 50 years.
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Global Warming is the biggest political boondoggle of all time.
Please be careful when talking about ethanol to not confuse ethanol as a fuel source vs. corn ethanol as a fuel source. Corn ethanol is a dead end. The numbers I have seen have said nearly 2/3 of the landmass of the United States would have to be devoted to corn production to match the current gasoline consumption in that country.
A more likely viable source of fuel ethanol would be waste biomass: the chaff and unused ends of crops and food garbage. The problem with this is that currently, extracting ethanol from those sources is more energy intensive than burning the ethanol. Some groups are researching ways to break down the cellulose using bacteria, instead of applying heat, but I haven’t heard of any successes.
As for the livestock thing mentioned above, remember that some places are not capable of producing crops other than the simple grasses that cows eat.
I’ve been seeing this more and more lately. Come on, people! Corn-based ethanol is a bridging technology, and there’s more involved than just fermenting corn kernels into ethanol.
For example, one of the fields out at the Ag research station where I have my own research corn planted are being developed for really high biomass – corn can also be used for cellulosic ethanol you know.
I however, do get annoyed by all this talk of corn as if it was the future of ethanol. (by the way, it does give an energy profit, so far. check my interview with Dan Kammen from UC Berkeley. http://www.inoculatedmind.com/?p=84) There’s the obvious cellulosic ethanol from switchgrass, but next on the horizon is Miscanthus, being developed at the university of Illinois. Look it up!
Also, I get annoyed at how the third world is being used and abused in discussions over crops and subsidies over here in the USA. Corn subsidies drive down prices, and allow US farmers to undercut the farmers in their own countries – thus preventing people over there from being able to profitably grow their own corn because ours is cheaper. There has been a lot of discussion about how subsidies (especially corn) need to go in order to help people in those other countries.
Now enters ethanol, and all of a sudden, bringing the price of corn higher again with a higher demand caused by corn ethanol, is also supposed to be bad for people overseas? You can’t have it both ways. In either case, lower or higher prices are being portrayed as being bad for people in other countries. This inconsistency annoys me. It seems to me that higher corn prices over here making people starve elsewhere ignores the fact that higher prices over here mean more people being able to make a living farming over there.
Oh Hank, Biodiesel is not some clown in his garage brewing it up from french-fry oil. Most is made on a commercial scale, and there are some experimental processes being researched on turning cellulose into diesel-like compounds that can be burned in current engines. (Such as is being conducted at UW-Madison)
One thing I notice is that many people are paying attention to the politics and the big companies interested in ethanol, and not the technologies that are on the horizon, being worked on in labs all around the country. Unfortunately, the anti-ethanol frenzy may slow the acceptance of biofuels, which does us all a dis-service.
Does anyone notice how the ethanol “skeptic” in the article is an oil-industry engineer?
I’m now sorta worrying about this programme for biofuel involving ethanol from whey. Any comments?
Phoenician, it ocurd to me that the cons of biofuel outwhey the pros.
Over here the picture is different. Ethanol is seen as one of the many inroads to replace gasoline. And AFAIK not as an incomplete replacement as a temporary measure, reportedly it produces a total net so it is endurable. (A conclusion from several different reports, I think.)
In any case, the ethanol is to be used as a consistent energy carrier, but the sources can vary. Currently it is mainly imported on small scales ready-made from Brazil, as the local sugar sources (mainly sugar beets) are too expensive.
The future full scale resource is presumed to be cellulose (mainly trees), and there is a lot of work going into this. Of course, the paper industry already produces some coincidental fuel substitutes as byproducts. But it is limited amounts since most goes back to give energy to the process. (A modern paper plant process is a net energy producer.)
But what one wants to find here is bioconversion of cellulose to sugars which goes into normal alcohol production. Some fungus are evidently masters at recycling wood. We’ll see if they can get the processes fast enough (i.e. cheap enough) – as I understand it promising work is under way.
The result could be that much of vehicle use would be covered, with remaining sources being biogas from recycling plants et cetera. Apparently it is feasible to cover vehicle need without supplements from oil industry, at least some report that result from their projections.
But then we have a lot of fairly productive land, especially for forestry.
Over here the picture is different. Ethanol is seen as one of the many inroads to replace gasoline. And AFAIK not as an incomplete replacement as a temporary measure, reportedly it produces a total net so it is endurable. (A conclusion from several different reports, I think.)
In any case, the ethanol is to be used as a consistent energy carrier, but the sources can vary. Currently it is mainly imported on small scales ready-made from Brazil, as the local sugar sources (mainly sugar beets) are too expensive.
The future full scale resource is presumed to be cellulose (mainly trees), and there is a lot of work going into this. Of course, the paper industry already produces some coincidental fuel substitutes as byproducts. But it is limited amounts since most goes back to give energy to the process. (A modern paper plant process is a net energy producer.)
But what one wants to find here is bioconversion of cellulose to sugars which goes into normal alcohol production. Some fungus are evidently masters at recycling wood. We’ll see if they can get the processes fast enough (i.e. cheap enough) – as I understand it promising work is under way.
The result could be that much of vehicle use would be covered, with remaining sources being biogas from recycling plants et cetera. Apparently it is feasible to cover vehicle need without supplements from oil industry, at least some report that result from their projections.
But then we have a lot of fairly productive land, especially for forestry.
The most interesting point I’ve seen in all of this is, what happens if demand for ethanol increases to a point where it’s more profitable for a third world farmer to grow fuel for rich countries than to grow food for local consumers? There are places where the average family can’t afford to spend nearly as much money on food as the average American spends on gas, so if it comes down to a bidding war between a commuter and a starving family, it’s pretty clear who will win.
I don’t have any numbers at my fingertips, but I have to wonder exactly how many square feet of arable land I need to feed myself versus how much my car needs to eat over the course of a month. I’m guessing that my car has a much bigger appetite than I do. Take that differential and multiply it by the number of cars on the road and you have yourself a problem that could easily distort food markets the world over.
Phoenician, it ocurd to me that the cons of biofuel outwhey the pros.
You really had to work at that, didn’t you?
Jesus, Rapture me now!
…you could easily be vegetarians in the first place. For all the batting about of words like “reason” and “logic” on skeptic and atheist boards, it’s amazing to see how the vast majority of you are still ultimately controlled by selfish greed. There’s really no way to justify your way out of it– but bringing it up is often just as fruitless as explaining evolution to a fundamentalist. Why is this?
It’s quite simple. Reason and evidence can be easily ignored when it conflicts with cherised beliefs and practices. Currently, all of front-runners in the Democratic party support ethanol, as the road to the nomination runs through Iowa. I suspect the overwhelming percentage of readers here will support the nominee of the Democratic party, and that we won’t hear much lamentation on the nominee’s rejection of the science demonstrating the waste of ethanol and ethanol subsidies.
It would be interesting to see what would happen to support for ethanol, if instead of the current primary schedule, the parties adopted a plan to hold 4 “super” primaries, each comprised of about 1/4 of the voting population, spaced about one month apart. The states of each primary block could be grouped geographically, or not. With each presidential cycle, the groups of states would rotate in order of voting, to avoid entrenching any particular group of states, as in the case now.
I think we’re seeing justifiable and expected variance here….
ethanol from corn is *expensive* compared to that from sugar-cane…. but the US isn’t a great place to grow cane, so what to do, what to do….
wind is great but *temperamental* and relatively low efficiency – especially when you take the build, maintenance, and nimby into account
solar is good & getting better, but still no good for anything except partial solutions in fixed locales (and like wind – is dependent on a changeable environment)
Having said all that (and somewhat off topic)…. My wife and I are planning to build our next house. we propose to roof it completely with solar tile… and if possible, we’ll sheath the walls in solar tile, also. we’ll put small wind turbines in the yard if possible, to drive pumps & what-not.
I’d like to use this energy to also provide filtering/conditioning of rainwater – and possibly desalination (depending on where we build – either lakeside or seaside!)
Our aim isn’t complete energy independence – but a significant net reduction, and occasionally a surplus (like I said – these are mostly dependent on conditions)
I’d also like to build using much more ‘energy conscious’ structures – so eliminate the stick built in favor of ‘foam-core’ built – using plant-based cellulosic foamed ‘plastics’ (huge r-values and incredible structural strength)
If all this works – we’ll use what we learn to build similar homes for others (a new career for my early retirement!).
If you liked the analysis on ethanol, Robert Rapier has lots more at his R-Squared blog. The majority of the main page is relevant to the issue right now.
Tony, check out Earthships… your future house sounds much like them.
As nation, we should be planning not for ways to find a gasoline substitute but instead for a new transportation model. At best, much smaller cars with much smaller engines operating with a smaller range and slower speeds relative to what we are used too. There is no good substitute for gasoline. When it becomes too expensive we need to have a transportation system and economy that uses much less energy.
See http://trinifar.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/high-carbon-economy/ for a look at the scale of the problem.
Oh, and just before seeing this post by PZ I read in the NYT,
We need to something to give our reps enough of a backbone to pass harsh CAFE standards. Nobody should be driving a personal vehicle that gets less than 40 miles per gallon. It’s only our love of speed and acceleration that prevents better cars from appearing in dealerships.
Look at what Porsche and Lexus are doing with their high-end hybrids; they only get 24 mpg at best. Absolutely criminal.
Inoculated Mind,
Thank you for making a series of points which I was about to try and make myself (and doing it better).
“The most interesting point I’ve seen in all of this is, what happens if demand for ethanol increases to a point where it’s more profitable for a third world farmer to grow fuel for rich countries than to grow food for local consumers? There are places where the average family can’t afford to spend nearly as much money on food as the average American spends on gas, so if it comes down to a bidding war between a commuter and a starving family, it’s pretty clear who will win.”
The great majority of the people at risk of malnutrition in the world today are peasant farmers. Higher food prices are likely to be a net benefit to them.
Innovations like the one mentioned in the linked article give me hope for the future of biofuels. Leave the land for food production, and put your coastlines to work.
http://www.pinktentacle.com/2007/03/seaweed-as-biofuel/
Ethanol does have its uses. If you ever accidentally, swallow some ethylene glycol(antifreeze), the first thing you should do is ingest some ethanol(drinking alcohol). Then see a doctor.
Inoculated Mind,
Good points, all, but WRT crop prices (high or low) hurting people in impoverished nations, I think you actually can have it both ways. Subsidies can drive down crop prices, which puts farmers from other countries at a competitive disadvantage.
On the other hand, increased demand for crops due to ethanol should drive up crop prices, which may help farmers in other countries (unless our subsidies are still keeping our crop prices below their crop prices, in which case those farmers will still be undersold since relative cost largely determines competitive outcomes) but will probably hurt the average citizens of impoverished nations due to higher grocery prices.
Of course, someone will be hurt no matter what happens to the market, but it still may be worth considering. I’m honestly not sure how important any of those issues are to discussions of ag subsidies or ethanol. But that’s my simplified take on them, anyway.
‘Green’ Fuel May Damage The Bay
Ethanol Study Has Dire Prediction for The Chesapeake
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/16/AR2007071601845.html
Oops.
I just woke up, so forgive my sloppy reasoning. When I said “unless our subsidies are still keeping our crop prices below their crop prices,” I should have simply said “gives us a competitive advantage” since we’re all basically dealing with the same prices. Oh well. Bring on the criticism.
This is a tough one for me… My family owns a modest farm in Illinois and I get some $ from the corn crop. Yet, I know that ethanol from corn is a net loser.
Hmmmm. Short term personal profit vs. save-the-planet two-shoes goodiness.
Like I said — it’s a tough call.
Quoth Inoculated Mind:
And that makes him wrong, even though he’s actually more bullish on it than Dr. David Pimentel? Great ad-hominem there.
I’m going to take credit for something here: Robert Rapier is now blogging in no small part because of me. He was doing searches for stuff related to ethanol and my (old) blog kept popping up; when he wrote me about covering certain subjects, I told him that I had no expertise and little interest but he should feel free to scratch his own itch (the rest is history). I have nothing to do with the oil industry, and I’m viciously down on the fuel ethanol industry from its origins as an “independence” program through today. Robert has everything to do with the oil industry, and he just wrote that the future of transportation is electric (which was no surprise to anyone who has followed his musings).
I think you owe the man an apology.
you’re subsidizing a much larger waste of corn by feeding it to animals when you could easily be vegetarians in the first place.
Sure, as long as you abandon any climate that has winters.
“Sure, as long as you abandon any climate that has winters.”
I may be misunderstanding your point, but I think dry, canned, and frozen goods pretty much take care of that problem.
may be misunderstanding your point, but I think dry, canned, and frozen goods pretty much take care of that problem.
1) The amount of energy required to process these foods
3) The lack of nutrients from the processing.
3) The extra nutritional requirements for actually surviving cold weather.
4) The extra energy required to transport suitable foods from more clement climes.
Carex: You forgot pickles, and smoked products.
I like to think positive about these things.
Graculus,
1) The amount of energy required to process these foods
This is in danger of veering off topic, so I’ll be brief, but suggesting that it’s more efficient to raise, process, and transport meat products than to process and store the components of a largely grain- and legume-based diet is a pretty far-out claim. There are certainly exceptions (like, if someone in Alaska really wants a fresh mango in January), but consuming higher trophic level products will be much less efficient, on average, than consuming lower trophic level products. And transportation and processing should be no less efficient.
2) The lack of nutrients from the processing.
What’s your basis for that? No doubt some products lose nutritional value after long storage (and many canned goods are filled with way too much sodium), but are you really suggesting that such nutrient losses make a meatless (or reduced meat) diet untenable?
3) The extra nutritional requirements for actually surviving cold weather.
Survival? I wasn’t talking about the Inuit. I was responding to your claim that a lack of meat consumption would require abandoning any place with a (presumably cold) winter.
4) The extra energy required to transport suitable foods from more clement climes.
Again, consider the wonders of food storage. And (with the exception of the Inuit) meat transportation will be no less wasteful than grain/vegetable transportation. Of course, things change if you compare locally grown meat to imported vegetables, but in that case, why not compare locally-grown varieties of both?
Check out the Omnivore’s Dilemma or similar books if you really want to take a good, hard look at this.
Also, this article is excellent, if you can access it. The values calculated are for Sweden, but they still give one a good idea of the relative efficiencies of different foods (on a per kilogram basis, notably):
Carlsson-Kanyama A, Ekstrˆm MP and Shanahan H. 2003. Food and life cycle energy inputs: Consequences of diet and ways to increase efficiency, Ecological Economics, 44: 293-307.
Anyway, sorry for derailing the discussion. Back to ethanol.
I will read the RS article on ethanol, after I read the article about GnR…
I have the nagging concern that there is a conflation going on here. Are the subsidies for ethanol production for ethanol to be used as a replacement fuel or an additive. If, I am recalling this properly, it is the second. Ethanol is added to gasoline as an oxygenate to allow for cleaner burning, and reduced carbon monoxide emissions. This is what the current ethanol subsidy is intended to support. If one is to do a cost/benefit analysis, the benefit to human health needs to be quantified.
One of the other things to note also, is that corn used for cellosic ethanol production undercuts the dairy silage supply.
Mike
Anyway, sorry for derailing the discussion. Back to ethanol
Well, it is about energy and agriculture….
Anyways, there’s a bit of goalpost moving here: a meatless (or reduced meat) diet…. – A reduced meat diet isn’t vegetarian and many meatless diets are not considered vegetarian by other vegetarians (eg, diets that allow dairy, eggs, honey or sugar, not to mention “vegetarian’ diets that allow fish and shellfish). So which “vegetarian” is it?
You’ve also constructed a rather pretty strawman that a non-vegetarian diet consists entirely of meat.
I was responding to your claim that a lack of meat consumption would require abandoning any place with a (presumably cold) winter.
Well, I admit to being a bit glib about your “one size fits all” approach to the human genome and the Earth’s climate. Winter was a pretty big hump for our ancestors, and they knew how to dry beans too. Traditionally vegetarian societies are rarely animal product free and are confined to more reasonable climes for a reason. With modern technology you can do it.. but is it necessarily more energy efficient?
Here’s another area where I see a problem: And transportation and processing should be no less efficient.
I don’t see that as necessarily true. Most vegetable matter has to be processed before we can use it as food with any sort of efficiency, if in fact, we could eat it at all. This is not true of animal products, which are pretty much immediately available with no processing.
I’m not saying that you are wrong, I’m saying that you haven’t given me any reason to think that you are right, because the information is incomplete. Not ALL factors have been considered. I think that when they are the difference in colder climates narrows far more than you realize.
You’ve also constructed a rather pretty strawman that a non-vegetarian diet consists entirely of meat.
Where did I do that? Just to be perfectly clear, the crux of my argument was that the meat components of an omnivorous diet are less efficient to produce, on average, than the non-meat components.
Anyways, there’s a bit of goalpost moving here: a meatless (or reduced meat) diet…. – A reduced meat diet isn’t vegetarian and many meatless diets are not considered vegetarian by other vegetarians (eg, diets that allow dairy, eggs, honey or sugar, not to mention “vegetarian’ diets that allow fish and shellfish). So which “vegetarian” is it?
Fair enough. I should have omitted that bit about ‘reduced meat’ to keep things simple. And I’ve been using vegetarian in the typical sense (i.e. lacto-ovo vegetarian, though the same arguments also apply to most other versions).
Winter was a pretty big hump for our ancestors, and they knew how to dry beans too. Traditionally vegetarian societies are rarely animal product free and are confined to more reasonable climes for a reason.
Very true, but we’re not talking about our ancestors. They could neither transport nor amass the quantities of food we can. Our ancestors also had little incentive to eat more vegetables, aside from the fact that vegetable protein may have been more readily available/easily obtainable than animal protein (in northern climes, as you point out, this generally wasn’t the case, so there was a roughly positive correlation between latitude and proportion of diet derived from animals). Still, we obviously have better tools nowadays for handling such obstacles.
I’m not saying that you are wrong, I’m saying that you haven’t given me any reason to think that you are right, because the information is incomplete.
Fair enough. The paper I cited in my last post (Carlsson-Kanyama et al. 2003) contains a table of the per kilogram life-cycle energy input of 150 food items (the study was done in Sweden, which is certainly a northern country). Naturally, they had to make a few simplifying assumptions, but the calculations seem thorough. In their own words: “The system boundaries in the study included farm production with production of farm inputs, drying of crops, processing, storage and transportation up to the retailer. They also included storage, preparation and cooking in households. The system boundaries excluded production of capital goods such as machinery and buildings, packaging material, waste treatment, transportation from the retailer to the consumer, and dishwashing. The economic value of products and byproducts was the basis for allocation of energy use during processes with multiple outputs. The energy use was calculated as process energy with no inclusion of production and delivery energy, conversion and transmission losses. Only commercial energy inputs were considered, e.g., inputs derived from electricity, fuel, oil, and gasoline. Energy inputs from the sun or from human labor were not considered.”
That all seems reasonable to me, but you be the judge. Here’s a very compressed version of their main table.
-meat products generally ranged from 20-40 MJ/kg
-milk ~5 MJ/kg
-cheese ~60 MJ/kg
-legumes 5-8 MJ/kg if from Sweden, 10-20 MJ/kg if canned and shipped overseas
-fruit from Europe (apples, cherries, oranges) 3-10 MJ/kg
-overseas fruit 12-20 (apples and bananas), or 115 for fresh tropical fruit shipped via plane
-vegetables generally from 5-18 MJ/kg (except greenhouse vegetables, which were remarkably high)
-cereal grains 3-9 MJ/kg
-bread: 10-20 MJ/kg
Their conclusions were that, generally, greenhouse-grown produce, meat, and much of produce shipped from overseas is less energy efficient than most grains, legumes, fruits, and vegetables. There are certainly exceptions to this (e.g. some meats tend to be much more efficient than others, and some non-meat foods are far less efficient than some meats), but the overall average is pretty clearly in favor of not-meat. Plus they didn’t really discuss land use, fresh water consumption, or the typical nutritional benefits of vegetarian diets, which would further bolster the efficiency advantage of non-animal products.
So in summary, a vegetarian diet won’t necessarily be more efficient than a non-vegetarian diet, but it will be on average (due to the meat components of the non-veg diet, all else being approximately equal). Should everyone drop meat from their diets? I don’t know, but it’s something to consider, even in northern European countries.
Also, glad we can have a civil discussion about this.
One thing that has always bugged me in the popular versions of these debates is the conflation of the need to replace petroleum because it is being depleted and the need to do so because carbon and sulfur oxides are pollutants / greenhouse gases.