http://www.latimes.com/news/printedi...ck=1&cset=true

"Corn farmers and ethanol refiners are ecstatic about the ethanol boom and are enjoying the windfall of artificially enhanced demand."

Is that true John?, are you ecstatic?

I'm still hoping you will break down the $1.05 cost of ethanol.

 

Corn costs, delivered in bulk, $2.80 / bushel.
( and by bulk, I mean you sign a contract for 500 million pounds )
Corn makes 2.8 gallons per bushel.
Corn costs $1.00 per gallon.

It takes just 0.41kWh of electricity to make a gallon of ethanol.
Again, at industrial prices of $0.06 / kWh...
Electricity costs $0.02 per gallon.

It takes 18,000 btu of natural gas to make a gallon of ethanol.
Again, at industrial prices of $0.65 per 100,000 btu
Natural Gas costs $0.12 per gallon.

Manufacturing cost is about $1.14 per gallon of ethanol.

Selling off the carbon dioxide for profit reduces the $1.14 cost.
Selling of the distiller's grain for livestock feed reduces the cost even more.
Even after paying for employee's and health benefits, we're down to close to $1.05 per gallon of ethanol.

It sells wholesale for about $1.89.
You, the customer can buy it now for $2.49 in the mid-west.
A year ago it was $1.99 at the pump retail.

 

Corn-Based Biofuels Spell Death for Gulf of Mexico

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2...ased-biof.html

 

I would argue that 7700 square miles is tiny.
A drop in the proverbial bucket when looking at the whole planet.

Likewise for garbage. All the garbage on earth, not just the U.S. would cover just 18 square miles a year. That's a little more than a 4x4 mile plot of land. Not that big; tiny really. If we could just get it to unihabited areas ( Nevada desert? ) where there is little wildlife also, it has little to no impact on the environment.

I'm not saying it is good, but it's not really that bad either.

The best way to help the environment is to stop being a consumer. The only way to do that is to die. Each breath exhaled is contributing CO2 to global warming.

In 1900 we had 1 billion people breathing.
Now we have 8 billion? people breathing.
That's an 800% increase in CO2 emissions not considering fossil fuel burning. At least growing corn takes CO2 out of the air.

An old proverb also says, what's good for the whole, isn't always good for the individual.
-John

 

You minimize that 7700 sq miles. In the past, perhaps it didn't exist. Now it does, and it is getting larger. If it is like many growth curves on the planet, sometime in the future it will double, and double again.

There are other dead zones in the oceans. As the planet heats up, whole ecosystems will disappear.

Those mythic Minn. mosquitoes, now just a pesty blood sucker will become a carrier of malaria, or yellow fever or dengue fever.

So, enjoy your CO2 enriched tropical paradise.

 

Interesting that you make the analogy to garbage, as not too terribly long ago I first heard about a little known fact: incredible though it may seem (and I am NOT one of those wild-eyed conspiracy theorists), there is in fact a continent-sized garbage heap floating in the Pacific Ocean, somewhere between the West Coast and Hawaii, far from most people's observation and outside all but the faintest amount of public attention. I have heard comparisons with the size of Texas, or twice the size of Texas, but whatever the actual figures, it's real and it's atrocious. This is far too crazy-sounding for me to expect anyone to take my word for it, so here are a few links to (hopefully) reputable sources.

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog...ere-reall.html
{taking a skeptical view- is this rumor really true, and verifying it with marine biologists etc. who have observed it, plus maps}

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...&type=politics
{taking a San Francisco view of the issue}

http://current.com/items/85451831_tr...cific_who_knew
{with a link to a greenpeace site showing the ocean currents that produce that particular calm spot for detritus to gather. The comments are also interesting, both because of the skeptics and the explanation about the translucence of partially submerged plastic making it difficult to photograph.}

So if, as you say, gpsman, this is really not that bad, because the only alternative you see is to stop breathing, and you take comfort in the idea of turning our last wildernesses into landfills, I wonder if you feel up to taking any round-the-world yacht races like the man in the article?

 

Leah- I'm sure you had a point, but I'm not positive what it was.

Due to the humorous links you posted, I have to assume you took the sarcastic route, and it would have helped if you added a wink and a smile to your posts like this: , this , or this .

LOL!
I read that first article and was laughing out-loud! Thanks!
It's like the daily "Onion News"... funny s---!

Quote:
"80% of all plastic at sea has come from the land."
LOL!!!!! Funny! 80%? That's it?
I guess I was wrong. I would have said 100% of the plastic was washed into the oceans from the land. I guess 20% is just born there!?

Funny stuff.
Continent sized islands of floating plastics....
If they were talking figuratively, as a metaphor, MAYBE I would have been able to keep from laughing. It sounded like they were serious though.

In a figurative way, I would say there could be, perhaps, one pound of plastic per square mile on the ocean... that is a reasonable number.

It would take 70,000 tons of plastic to put one pound floating per square mile. The surface area of the world's oceans cover 140 million sqaure miles. Oceans are pretty vast. Now we're not even talking volume. Consider the volume of the ocean water, and well, there's less plastic in the ocean right now ( in parts per trillion ) than there is plutonium in your house right now ( and there is some, trust me ).

That's scientific fact. Thanks for the fun reading though!
-John

P.S. This thread is derailed. To discuss any "garbage" or lack of it, let's start a new thread. Sorry for contributing to the derailment. This should be a place for pros / cons of ethanol.

P.P.S. Another person stated that plastic is a valuable commodity. Worth something like 10 to 50 cents a pound as scrap / salvage. I agree. If there were millions or billions of pounds floating in one place, nations, especially developing nations ( China ) would be quick to scoop up this valuable resource! In fact, nations would be fighting over who could claim it! Am I a sucker for even reading the article? Is the joke on me?

 

I believe your first quote from the Daily Galaxy was not accurate. Here is the quote as it should be:

"It is estimated that 80 per cent of plastic found at sea is washed out from the land."

I could however, make the same assumption you made, i.e. that it all was washed into the oceans from the land. But I could also assume 20% or so might have been tossed of cruise ships, sailboats, powerboats rowboats. People out for a swim just doing what we've done for thousands of years - tossing our trash. Out of sight out of mind.

That corn which is sopping up the CO2 when it is growing, as you pointed out in your post, that when it is all picked and the stubble is out there in the field, decaying returning some nutrients back to the soil (tho not so much, since corn farming is intensive and requires fertilizers), and as I mentioned out in the field decaying, it is returning that CO2 plus probably methane to the atmosphere.

So, as you well know nothing comes free. And corn-to-ethanol has a cost. Some of that cost is what it takes to make the ethanol, and some of the cost is in the price of food products which are made from, or use corn.

So you may well minimize that cost but of course, as industry never wants you to know, but which you are smart enough to apprehend, you are paying more for the corn as food-to-corn as fuel also. Save at the pump (perhaps for now) but pay more for milk and other corn dependent products.

And finally one day, you'll be hooked on the corn-as-fuel and, pretty much as the price of gasoline pushed passed that mythic 4.00/g, so will ethanol.

So welcome to the new dream world of Big Oil/Big Farma. Suckered again. I did not misspell Farma - but as I wrote earlier, you're smart enough to know that.

 

[quote=centrider;166436]


And finally one day, you'll be hooked on the corn-as-fuel and, pretty much as the price of gasoline pushed passed that mythic 4.00/g, so will ethanol.

quote]

John pointed out the cost of producing ethanol (in the plant) is very low. It (e85) sells for less than gasoline. Looking at the figures that John documented, E85 should sell much cheaper than it is at the major brand stations. It is unlikely ethanol blended (e85) gasolines would ever match the price of pure gasoline based upon what has been documented here.

Corn production and exportation has both increased in the year 2007. How does this figure into the arguements pro and con?

Ethanol production fron non-corn based substance is being researched and developed. My goodness, right here in Wisconsin, researchers have created ethanol from simple sugars that have a much greater BTU content than corn based ethanol production. Who says ethanol can't be part of the greater overall solution?

 

It is true that corn ( or any plant ) based ethanol puts some CO2 back into the atm. But that CO2 you get is "recycled" in today's time. It is not releasing CO2 stored in the earth from millions of years ago.

Second, while ethanol makes the price of fuel go down a few cents per pound, and makes the price of food go up a few cents per pound, I buy and use 100 pounds of fuel per week, and I buy and use about 10 pounds of food per week. If a large familiy ( who all needs to eat ) had 1 car, then perhaps it is possible, but still unlikely, that they would buy more food than fuel in a week.

Again, ethanol is not great, it is not our saving grace, but it's for sure not bad... and may be 'slightly' good for us all.
-John