perunapower Wrote:I like it Owl 69/70/75. Too bad it's too intelligent. It'll never make it, not with our government's stupidity. We should start making amends with Cuba and quit shooting ourselves in the feet with corn ethanol.

Isnt sugar cane the best at making ethanol?....Lots of swampland in the US that is not good for crops other than rice or gators.

Fo Shizzle Wrote:Isnt sugar cane the best at making ethanol?....Lots of swampland in the US that is not good for crops other than rice or gators.

You forgot the main thing, CRAWFISH!

perunapower Wrote:I like it Owl 69/70/75. Too bad it's too intelligent. It'll never make it, not with our government's stupidity. We should start making amends with Cuba and quit shooting ourselves in the feet with corn ethanol.

Thanks.

The sad thing is that the political mistakes are being made on both sides of the aisle, so no matter who wins the election I don't see the problem being resolved.

Rebel Wrote:

Fo Shizzle Wrote:Isnt sugar cane the best at making ethanol?....Lots of swampland in the US that is not good for crops other than rice or gators.

You forgot the main thing, CRAWFISH!

Yep...I does like me some catfizzles and craw-tothe-f-tothe-izzles

I'm paying about $3.44 per gallon now in Orlando after rebates. It's awesome.

I've vacationed in S. Fl for many many years. There is this huge sugarcane making panacea south of Lake Okochobee, West of Miami, and East of Naples. I think we ought to look there. That could become the Saudi Arabia of ethanol.

Here's an interesting solution to the higher food prices that corn ethanol has made.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/06/16...hanol.html

http://chemicallygreen.com/kudzu-ethanol/

We might can use kudzu which the South is a perfect climate for growing and it's everywhere.

There are any number of alternatives that are better than corn. Corn is actually just about the WORST source for ethanol. It's the most inefficient source, requiring one gallon of gasoline/diesel/ethanol for every two gallons of ethanol produced. Use of corn for ethanol has had major impacts on world food prices. Of course, considering that we import oil from the developing world and we export food to the developing world, maybe corn ethanol is just part of the rumored northern hemisphere conspiracy to keep the south down (see the Gnomes of Zurich, etc.).

The one problem with any alternative to corn at this point is that we are so far down the line with corn that shifting to something else would require some infrastructure modifications, and that would add some time (I'd put the over/under at 2 years) to the horizon for obtaining significant benefit. Of course, given that the numbers make it highly unlikely that we can EVER get there on corn alone, that's probably a price worth paying. I'd guess that opening trade with Cuba, and making ethanol out of Cuban sugar cane, would be the quickest way to change our ethanol source.

In addition to subsidizing corn ethanol and placing a tariff on imported sugar cane ethanol, we are also currently providing a price support for domestic sugar farmers. If we shot for getting to 44% or more ethanol in our gasoline supply, there would be plenty of demand that we could end the corn ethanol subsidy without harming the corn farmers, we could eliminate the imported ethanol tariff, and we could use domestic sugar cane for ethanol and eliminate the need for a sugar price subsidy. So we have three separate government actions to accomplish something that the free market could do by itself if we structured the incentives correctly.

So why did we pick corn?
Our government's uncanny ability to pick losers whenever they try to pick winners?
The number of electoral votes, most of them fairly closely contested, represented by the corn belt states?
The amounts spent by large agri-businesses to lobby for things that play to their own special interests, like corn ethanol and reinstating the estate tax?
Something else?
All of the above?