Blatant Reality

Judging from the comments posted on two of my posts about ethanol (seen here and here), I need to go a little more in depth about why I do not like the idea of growing our next source of fuel on farmland.

There are many reasons why I don’t like the idea of growing ethanol crops on farmland no matter if you are growing corn, sugar cane, beets, switch grass or any plant that requires space and water. One thing that none of the major proponents of any of these ethanol sources are confronting is the reality that in our capitalistic economy, using these crops as fuel would give farmers more incentive to plant them.

You can already see this with farmers planting the most acres of corn in 2007 since 1944. This year (2008), farmers were expected to plant less corn but thank goodness they didn’t because floods have affected a lot of the farmland devoted to this crop.

Bad for Aquifers

Underground aquifers are found all over the world and they are basically natural reservoirs. These aquifers have been tapped and are used for irrigation and the like. More farmland means more water use and this can be bad news for these aquifers. For example, one of our largest aquifers, the Ogallala, has gone down roughly 100 ft due to our use of it for irrigation. Normally, the aquifer would refill itself with rain but our withdrawal rate far outstrips the replenish rate so as of now, every year the aquifer gets lower and lower.

Now, I am not arguing that we stop using this aquifer (though I would argue that we should use it more efficiently by eliminating water subsidies for farmers) but I don’t like the idea that we could potentially increase the withdrawal rate due to increased crops being used for fuel. Freshwater is an important resource in general so I don’t like the idea of using it for creating fuel in the heavily subsidized ethanol industry.

Massive Subsidies

And thats another thing about ethanol, it is a very heavily subsidized industry. Sure the oil industry is subsidized as well, but the ethanol industry receives a subsidy almost twice as big as the oil industry. For example, Minnosota’s Department of Agriculture tries to make the argument that the oil industry gets larger subsidies. Take a look:

It is important to compare “apples to apples” when discussing fuel subsidies. According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the U.S. has spent more than $130 billion over the last three decades in subsidies to the oil industry. Add to this the amount of money that the U.S. spends to maintain a major presence in the Middle East, and you begin to see the “embedded” cost in our gasoline coming from the oil imported from this region.

 

Ethanol has received government subsidies as well. However, with the rise in today’s market price of corn, agricultural subsidies in their current form will be reduced from more than $10 billion/year to approximately $2 billion/year. Even by factoring in the current cost of the U.S. excise tax credit to gasoline blenders, which amounts to $3 billion/year, the subsidy level is greatly reduced from previous norms.

These two paragraphs try to make the argument that the subsidies to ethanol are “modest” in comparison to oil. Well if the subsidies are truly modest, I would really like to see a dictionary on how Minnesotans define modest. If one uses my definition of modest, the two paragraphs above show that the subsidies are anything but modest in comparison.

First off, they try to confuse you by saying that “the US has spent more than $130 billion over the last three decades.” Not per year people. Talk about not comparing “apples to apples.” $130 billion per three decades comes out to about $4.33 billion/year.

Now lets look at the second paragraph, keeping the $4.33 billion/year in mind. First of all, they use the phrase “will be reduced” which means the ethanol subsidy is still at $10 billion/year. I, for one, have great faith in our lobbying industry and their ability to keep subsidies coming no matter if they are needed or not so I doubt the subsidies will be disappearing anytime soon. Therefore, instead of Ethanol subsidies being “modest” in comparison, they are over two times more than oil per year!

Even if you take their approximate $5 billion/year subsidy ($2 billion + $3 billion stated about), you still get a subsidy amount that is above the oil industry’s average $4.33 billion/year. Another estimate puts the ethanol industry subsidy at $7 billion for the year 2006 so any way you look at it, subsidies for ethanol are definitely not modest.

Bad for Biodiversity

Anyways, back to the environmental aspect of ethanol production. As I have stated in the past articles linked to above, with the increase in demand for ethanol producing crops, people are going to either switch from food crops to crops that produce and/or clear more land for farmland. The latter part means that farmers might actually see that it is economically worth clearing acre upon acre of forests or prairie which, as we have heard the Greens say multiple times, is bad for the environment. By clearing these lands, farmers are hurting the biodiversity of that particular region.

One example of this can be seen in Indonesia where there is a large palm oil industry. This oil is a big component in some biofuels and Europe is helping drive Indonesia’s palm oil industry by mandating that 10% of their fuel comes from biofuels by 2020. Thanks to the central planning of Indonesia’s government, 75,000 square miles of land are set to be converted to palm oil production by 2020 (”The Really Inconvenient Truths“). The land being converted consists of forests that are being cut with the fauna (tigers, orangutans, elephants, etc.) being killed (see the book link above for more).

Now the United States wouldn’t mandate a certain number of acreage to be put under for ethanol crop production, would they? No, but with legislation that has already been passed, they really don’t have to. Instead of mandating a specific number of acreage devoted to ethanol production, the government has mandated the use of 7.5 billion gallons of ethanol by 2012 with goals of renewable fuels in general reaching 36 billion gallons by 2022. With tariffs on cheap foreign sources of ethanol (like sugarcane from Brazil) impeding importation, it looks like we will be growing our own, hence the need to cultivate more land.

Conclusion

Now, do I believe that oil is the best form of energy in the world? Of course not. Do I believe that it is something that we are going to be primarily using for a while? Yes I do. Do I believe we should relax restrictions on drilling in ANWAR and offshore? Absolutely. However, I also like the idea of alternative energy, as long as it is economically feasible and can basically stand on its own.

My problem with crop based ethanol is that it is going to give farmers the incentive to grow crops specifically for fuel instead of for food and as prices rise due to increasing demand(be it for ethanol or increasing demand for food worldwide), more and more farmers are going to get on the action. This means more land under cultivation which will end up hurting the environment more than any alternative fuel might help it. I’m no environmentalist but I do appreciate nature (conservationist) and hate to see forests get chopped down for unnecessary reasons.

So why add any extra demand on farmland for things other than growing food when there are viable fuel alternatives out there?

The Algae Alternative

At this point you are all probably wondering that since I absolutely abhor crop-based ethanol, what other feasible alternatives are there? Well there is at least one that looks pretty promising (or at least more friendly to the environment and our food supply).

Farming algae for either ethanol or biodiesel could potentially be the answer for growing renewable fuels.

Now hold on a minute, I bet your about to comment something to the affect that “Algae basically lives in water! How will using algae lesson our water usage?” Well that is a great question and I’m glad you asked it.

The great thing about algae is that it can be grown in wastewater or even saltwater. Obviously there is little demand for those two sources of water and since we are not going to be eating it, it really doesn’t matter what the water source is. This flexibility would allow us to save freshwater for our food crops and drinking water.

Another great this about algae is that these algae farms could be located next to power plants and the CO2 they produce can be used as nutrients for the algae. Therefore, instead of investing in carbon sequestration methods which basically just cost money to the power plants, they could potentially make money by selling the CO2 to the farms.

Some of you might also be thinking that algae is just as bad as farms because land will have to be used to produce this algae harvest. Well this is where I would tell you that you’re not entirely correct. The first benefit of algae is that you don’t have to use land that has agricultural value (basically it can grow anywhere as long as the temperature and nutrients are right). Another benefit is that with algae, you don’t have to grow it horizontally. What I mean by this is that you could theoretically have a skyscraper that house algae producing vats.

And do you know what the best part about algae is? It’s a whole lot more efficient at producing oil than crops. Take a look:

Companies in California, Texas and Florida are leading the effort to produce and market fuel from algae. PetroSun of Rio Hondo, Texas, began producing fuel in April 2008. The company says it can produce 4.4 million gallons of oil every year from its 1,100 acres of algae ponds – roughly 4,000 gallons per acre. In contrast, one acre of corn produces about 330 gallons of ethanol, according to industry reports.

So there you have it, more reasons why crop-based ethanol is a bad idea and an alternative that is better in every single aspect that we could focus on producing instead.

People always tend to look at the down side of Global Warming (be it man made or natural), but there are some benefits to it as well. Now, before I start going into what all the benefits are, I would like to preface it with saying that too much of anything is a bad thing. Therefore, there will come a point where too much warming will stop creating benefits and create more problems. With that being said, I don’t believe we are at that point where the world is too warm.

Also, I believe the warming we may be experiencing now is due to a natural variability (yes, I am a “skeptic”) and any of the drastic measures proposed in treaties like Kyoto or legislation like the Lieberman/Warner Act will not do anything to stop global warming.

Another thing to note is that I am by no means a climate scientist and the following is somewhat an amalgamation of several other scientists/economists/researchers ideas. Since even the best climate models have no idea exactly what the future will bring, some of the benefits listed below might not pan out but the flip side to that is there may be some unexpected benefits that we have not yet predicted.

Now, on to the list. Keep in mind the above paragraphs along with the fact that some of these benefits are only benefits if we act upon them.

1. Overall, Fewer Deaths Caused by Cold: Most people would agree that if the earth is warming, then the average temperature will be higher. This increase in temperature will lead to less deaths from cold related complications. Now before you get all up in arms saying that there will be more deaths caused by heat, you must understand that cold related deaths greatly outnumber heat related deaths each year.

    

   In Bjorn Lomborg’s book “Cool it,” he argues that an increase in temperature by just 3.6 degrees F would increase heat related deaths in Britain by about two thousand but decrease cold related deaths by twenty-thousand. Thats good news when you consider that for the 2005/2006 winter, 25,700 people died in cold related deaths which is much more than the predicted 6,000 heat related deaths in the coming years.

2. More Water Overall: If the world does warm by 3.6 degrees F, the average precipitation worldwide will increase by 7%. Now Gore would have you believe that this water is going towards places where we really don’t need water that much and away from areas that do need the precipitation. However, Lomborg would make the point that a warming world will have even less people that are water stressed. Here is a map that shows the water availability of most the world.

    

   Lomborg states that without global warming, people living in water stressed regions will increase to 3 billion (by 2100) but with global warming, the number will be at 1.7 billion, 300 million lower than today. With fresh water becoming one of the major issues in the world, this definitely sounds like a benefit.

3. Warmer Winters: When looking at the trend for when the warming is happening, one will find that the good majority of the warming is occurring during the winter. Not only will this lead to less deaths as stated above, it will also potentially lead to longer growing seasons. This of course is on the whole a good thing with increased food production being one of the benefits.

    

   However, one must take into account that this past winter was one of the coldest and most snow field winters we have had in a while so we might not be able to count on “warmer winters” in the future.

4. More CO2 = Better Growing Seasons: Another thing that people miss is the fact that more CO2 in the air will contribute to more plant life (Photosynthesis 101). Now some people tend to think that we are the reason for the increase CO2 (which we are to an extent) but there are other factors involved too. A warmer world also releases more CO2 into the atmosphere because the oceans (one of the main sources of CO2) won’t be able to hold as much dissolved CO2 in them (Chemistry 101).

    

   Already we are beginning to see this with the world becoming greener than in the past. According to Fred Singer and Dennis Avery in the book “Unstoppable Global Warming,” wheat production alone could increase by 70% with an increase of 100ppm of CO2.

    

   And while I am on this topic of CO2, there is no such thing as CO2 “pollution.” The CO2 that comes out of your car is exactly the same that we, along with (almost) every other creature on this planet, exhale. Its chemically identical. So if your car is polluting by emitting CO2, so is Al Gore and all the other greens by just breathing. “Anthropological” CO2 and “natural” CO2 are the exact same molecule.

5. Warmer Temps = More arable land: Another things that is often cited is that we will lose a lot of arable land do to global warming. What people don’t take into account is that we will also gain a lot more land to cultivate. This is good news for the folks living in the colder regions. For example Greenland is now able to support cattle for the first time in hundreds of years and it is largely contributed to global warming.

    

   If you look on a map, you will notice that there is a lot of land in the north that is fairly uninhabitable and almost completely useless in growing crops. This land in Canada and Russia will greatly benefit from a warmer climate.

Now do these benefits outweigh the negative impacts of a warming world? In my mind they do. A warmer world seems to offer more chances of opportunity which may help the world benefit as a overall. Will there be changes we will have to deal with? Sure, but the world isn’t static (never has been and never will be) so change is something that we will never be able to get rid of.

Overall, if our world does warm by a couple of degrees, there will be changes. However, one mustn’t only think about the gloom and doom aspects because there are benefits as well. Now will these benefits truly outweigh the negatives? Only time will tell but I believe that the ingenuity of man will be able to make the best out of any situation nature may deal to us.

Remember a couple years ago when everyone was all excited about the prospects of ethanol production as the newest and greatest biofuel? Well I hope everyone has wised up to the reality that ethanol fuel is probably one of the worst things we could do from both an environmental and an economic standpoint.

First, lets give you some background about ethanol. The most common version is made from corn, one of the most important grains produced in the United States. To understand how it is made, you can visit this website that explains its production and includessome graphics. Now, having to process corn to create ethanol isn’t the problem because, as you well know, we have to refine crude oil to create gasoline and such. The problem comes when you look to see just how much energy it takes to create ethanol.

According to some studies, it can takes roughly 1.29 gallons of fossil fuel to produce just 1.0 gallon of corn-based ethanol fuel. Now, when one of the main reasons to use biofuels is to decrease CO2 emissions, this figure just makes the whole process seems outrageous. Those people who think they are saving the environment by buying “Flex-Fuel” are potentially harming it more than those with regular fossil fuel cars. Ironic, isn’t it?

The sad thing is that this same study found that corn was the most efficient biofuel. For example, switch grass was found to need 1.45 gallons of fossil fuel to produce 1.0 gallon of biofuel (one study has it as better than corn) and wood biomass needed 1.57!

Nevertheless, one must also take into account another environmental impact caused by promoting biofuel production. According to basic economics, the more of some product that is demanded, the higher price that product fetches in the marketplace. With higher potential to make money, more suppliers will then enter into the market in order to supply that product.

Now, what does that mean in our case? Well what we are seeing now is that since corn prices have risen, more people are starting to produce corn. Just last year we had the largest corn harvest here in the United States. Of course some of that was due to good crop conditions but a lot had to do with an overall increase in corn production.

Now, what this means from an environmental standpoint is that farmers are going to have more incentive to plow under land to produce corn. This might be tracks of forest on their properties or just land that, at previous corn prices, wasn’t economically feasible to plow under. For you environmentalist out there, let me break down what this means for you: Less forested land and natural habitats = less biodiversity and less CO2 sequestration = very bad.

For folks like me who tend to care more about the economic side of the issue, corn ethanol still looks like a total waste of money.

One of the major things to keep in mind is that this whole corn ethanol business is very heavily subsidized. For example, in 2006, the ethanol business got $7.0 billion to produce just 4.9 billion gallons of ethanol. That comes out to being about $1.45 per gallon of ethanol. In my opinion, that is a completely outrageous amount of money for such an impractical solution to our energy needs.

More importantly, because of these subsidy, corn prices are kept at an artificially high level. A high price of any other commodity might not be too bad but since it is corn, the results can be an increase in almost all food prices. The reason for this is that the price of corn basically controls the price of every single staple we eat in America. Don’t believe me? Well let me break it down for you.

Cereal? Made from corn.
Beef? Chicken? Pork? Fed corn.
Milk? Produced by cows that have been fed corn.
Cheese? Yogurt? Made from milk that was produced by cows that have been fed corn.
Those little fruit cups you put in your kid’s lunches? I guarantee that they are made with high fructose CORN syrup.

Funny how our lives can be so dependent on the price of just one product.

Here are some statistics you can throw around:

• Global food prices have risen 83% in the past three years and ethanol productions are predicted to increase prices by another 10 - 15%.
• Last year, 27% of the corn crop went to ethanol production.
• Ethanol production was up 37% in the first quarter and could reach a record 7.7 billion gallons by the end of this year.

So why am I writing all about this? Well it is just to help you understand one of the reasons why ethanol is a bad choice that is contributing to the raising food prices worldwide. So whenever you hear a politician talk about ethanol, remember to be wary if they seem to fawning over its production. Not only is corn ethanol production wasting your tax dollars through government subsidies, it isn’t helping the environment at all.

There is a lot of talk now-a-days about how hydrogen fuel cell cars are going to be the newest and best thing of the future to help stop global warming and such. The whole idea of the this new fuel cell idea seems brilliant when you first look at it because the proposed source of hydrogen would be one of the most abundant molecules on earth (water) and the only emissions of these vehicles would be water vapor.

However, the scientists that are all up in arms about how global warming are the very ones that seem to be missing a very key fact about the whole greenhouse gas deal. Contrary to what you have learned, via the media or in school, water vapor is actually the number one greenhouse gas.

Water vapor in the troposphere is the biggest contributor to greenhouse gas warming.

Following water vapor, the next highest greenhouse gas contributor is methane with carbon dioxide a distant third.

Now, you would think that if water vapor is THE biggest contributor to greenhouse gas warming, we wouldn’t want to put any more into the environment than we already have. Yet environmentalist are constantly proclaiming hydrogen fuel cell cars as “zero-emission” vehicles.

Unlike many of the hybrid and “green” cars currently on the market, hydrogen cars offer the promise of zero emission technology, where the only byproduct from the cars is water vapor. Current fossil-fuel burning vehicles emit all sorts of pollutants such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide, ozone and microscopic particulate matter. Hybrids and other green cars address these issues to a large extent but only hydrogen cars hold the promise of zero emission of pollutants. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that fossil-fuel automobiles emit 1 ½ billion tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere each year and going to hydrogen-based transportation would all but eliminate this.

It’s weird how the EPA supports hydrogen fuel cell technology when water vapor is such a major factor in the greenhouse gas warming.

The overlaps complicate things, but it’s clear that water vapour is the single most important absorber (between 36% and 66% of the greenhouse effect), and together with clouds makes up between 66% and 85%. CO₂ alone makes up between 9 and 26%, while the O₃ and the other minor GHG absorbers consist of up to 7 and 8% of the effect, respectively. The remainders and uncertainties are associated with the overlaps which could be attributed in various ways that I’m not going to bother with here. Making some allowance (+/-5%) for the crudeness of my calculation, the maximum supportable number for the importance of water vapour alone is about 60-70% and for water plus clouds 80-90% of the present day greenhouse effect.

Man, if water vapor is such a big contributor now with us just burning fuel products, imagine how big of a contributor it will be if we intentionally make it through “zero-emission” hydrogen cars.

I know there are those of you out there that will tell me that our potential affect on the water cycle will be miniscule and you may very well be right. But if you use this argument, don’t expect me to listen to you when you start going on about how we are the cause of global warming because of our carbon emissions. If we can affect the global climate in one aspect than we can surly affect it in another.

So even after that rant, I’m going to shock you a little. I’m actually in favor of hydrogen based fuel cell technology. The reason for this is that if the fact that these cars aren’t technically “zero-emission” is recognized, then things can be done to fix it. Things such as a way to capture and condense the vapor then release it as a liquid would be just one suggestion. The potential for a virtually limitless fuel source is just too good to pass up.

Anyways, I’m not a scientist, but if you are, feel free to chip in your two sense worth/tear this article to pieces in the comment section.