8 ms·

In 2012 you could feed 570 million people with the crops that go into the "green" ethanol scam: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/10/01/162127460/does-

by zqmall 5y ago

In 2012 you could feed 570 million people with the crops that go into the "green" ethanol scam: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/10/01/162127460/does-your-gas-tank-hold-enough-food-to-feed-22-people?t=1651493178943 https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2012/10/01/162127460/do... I'm not opposed to farm subsidies as part of food independence for national security, but please do not call it "green".

cryptonector 5y ago
Maybe rising corn prices is all that's needed to help bring an end to ethanol in gasoline! (Except I don't want to starve people just to fix political problems, or, really, at all.)
bjt2n3904 5y ago
I was reading the journals of Gareth Jones about his time spent in Soviet Russia and Ukraine, and find remarkable similarities to this sort of thing. The government took over, for example, the manufacture and maintenance of tractors, and also selected people nearly at random to maintain them. The one guy he interviewed said something to the extent that the tractors barely last a year before breaking. The people who designed them were incompetent, the people who used them were incompetent, and the people who maintained them were incompetent. Not that it mattered, the oil they used was basically sludge. I'm getting to the point where I'm struggling to believe Hanlon's Razor. Especially when the most extreme environmentalists seem to align with Thanos' ideas about resolution to climate issues.
- JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
  Thanos’ ideas about everything were extremely silly. A halving of population would do nothing on any time scale. A small blip easily recovered by reproduction. People deserve better writing, even in comic book movies.
  - bitwize 5y ago
    The original rationale for Thanos made a lot more sense: he simped for Death, like the concept of death was a woman in the Marvel universe. He thought half the universe's souls would make a perfect offering for her and would impress her enough to make her want to be with him. It's outrageously comic-book-y, but may as well lean into the illogic.
    - JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
      That makes much more sense, I wish they had stuck with that.
      - CapricornNoble 5y ago
        I thought they would, considering they introduced the Goddess of Death in Thor: Ragnarok, but...NOPE. Cate Blanchett delightfully hamming it up as a supervillian only lasted one film.
        bitwize 5y ago
        Death is a separate character from Hela. So the possibility is still there. They even teased it at the end of The Avengers: the Chitauri leader tells Thanos "to challenge [humans] is to court death", at which time Thanos grins eagerly. But with Earth-199999's Thanos dead, they're going to have to invoke some multiversal malarkey if they want to develop that storyline now.
  - api 5y ago
    Real life despots and fanatics are usually quite a bit crazier and less coherent than Thanos. As usual you have to tone it down to make it believable in fiction. A realistic depiction of a genocidal fanatic would be too stupid or insane to be believable. See: Pol Pot, Adolf Hitler, ISIS, Kim Jong Un, and numerous other examples. If they were rational they would not be despots and fanatics. Unfortunately charismatic lunatics command followings. Charisma bypasses the rational mind and shoots straight into the limbic system (as do fear, outrage, etc). Cult leaders are good cases too: L. Ron Hubbard, Jim Jones, Charles Manson, Keith Raniere, etc. These people would be as bad as the worst despots if they actually had power over more than a few people. Thanos' line is more rational than this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenu
- thriftwy 5y ago
  Late Soviet regime produced so much farm hardware as if it wanted to outright lay siege to the field and storm it by having greater numbers. Most of it went rotting. I remember a village school with a large yard full of half-disassembled tractors and combines. Apparently the students were supposed to learn to use all the stuff and then give the field no rest. In reality it would just rot. I don't think you should label all that people incompetent. They were mostly very practical in solving their immediate problem while having no freedom to rethink it. The system sucked and people were just trapped in it.
  - brimble 5y ago
    I didn't take incompetent as an insult, but in its straightforward, descriptive sense: the people were not competent at the jobs they were assigned to (and, presumably, weren't given sufficient help in becoming competent)
    - thriftwy 5y ago
      I have to disagree. The tractor-builders were very competent in building 100,000 new tractors each year when operating on vastly insufficient resources with apathetic workforce; and making sure these tractors could leave the factory gates on their own. In short, they did fulfill their plan. Would they be happier producing 10,000 tractors that would actually last, instead? Maybe. Would they be able to do that right away? No, but with some practice it could be done. Could they produce better tractors with the constraints that they had? I don't think so. You will undoubtedly see the same pattern all over the corporate world.
- goatlover 5y ago
  And how would you go about halving the population? Who should die?
JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
Then factor in all the havoc caused by ethanol in gas ruining seals, not working well in small engines, etc. and it’s just totally non-sensical that this fraud has been allowed to happen.
- qiskit 5y ago
  Most of "green" movement is a fraud. The majority of "green" energy comes biomass - aka cutting trees down and burning it. Would love to see the funding behind many of these green groups. I'll bet most of it comes from oil companies, governments, etc. The past 15 years, much of the anti-coal "green" movement was funded by oil companies who wanted to take out their coal competitors and replace it with "clean" natural gas. It was all about taking market share. Nothing to do with the environment.
- CraigJPerry 5y ago
  In defence of ethanol, producing it from plants and then burning it as fuel reduces greenhouse gas emissions vs extracting, refining and burning dino juice.
  - raverbashing 5y ago
    Yes but corn is one of the worse sources for alcohol production
    - CraigJPerry 5y ago
      I don’t know the story, what’s bad about it? My understanding so far is that the corn used for ethanol isn’t the kind you eat (sweetcorn) it’s a cheaper to produce and more hardy plant but consequently can only really be used for cattle feed and ethanol production. Ages ago i read something that said in the US, corn was the optimal source but in other parts of the world, sugar cane could result in a more energy efficient process for ethanol.
      - qeternity 5y ago
orangepurple 5y ago
> Only 1 percent of all corn grown in this country is eaten by humans. > The rest is No. 2 yellow field corn, which is indigestible to humans and used in animal feed, food supplements and ethanol. https://www.wired.com/2011/06/five-ethanol-myths-busted-2/ https://www.wired.com/2011/06/five-ethanol-myths-busted-2/
- sct202 5y ago
  It is digestible post processing like after nixtamalization to turn it into masa. No 2 corn is used in tortillas, snack foods and other processed corn products. That sentence is misleading, because yes straight off the cob you can't eat it. https://agcrops.osu.edu/newsletter/corn-newsletter/2016-40/taking-second-look-%E2%80%9Cfood-grade%E2%80%9D-corn-q https://agcrops.osu.edu/newsletter/corn-newsletter/2016-40/t...
  - Aperocky 5y ago
    To add to that I'm sure this country eat more tortillas than actual corn...
  - lumost 5y ago
    This also hints that our food production is more complex than you would first expect, in a true food crunch there are likely many substitute diet options which can be made by processing inedible agriculture products or repurposing fields.
  - wrycoder 5y ago
    All you have to do is dry and grind it to make cornmeal. It's quite digestible, and keeps very well, like wheat. (I've never tried eating it fresh like sweet corn, may have to add that to the bucket list.) A problem is it is lacking in free niacin, which can result in pellagra, if the diet is principally corn meal. Nixtamalization corrects that[0]. Without nixtamalization, cornmeal doesn't form a dough. You can make corn bread, but not tortillas. Corn chips, e.g. Fritos, and corn bread don't use nixtamalized corn, but they are quite digestible! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization

by zqmall 5y ago

cryptonector 5y ago

Maybe rising corn prices is all that's needed to help bring an end to ethanol in gasoline! (Except I don't want to starve people just to fix political problems, or, really, at all.)

bjt2n3904 5y ago

I was reading the journals of Gareth Jones about his time spent in Soviet Russia and Ukraine, and find remarkable similarities to this sort of thing. The government took over, for example, the manufacture and maintenance of tractors, and also selected people nearly at random to maintain them. The one guy he interviewed said something to the extent that the tractors barely last a year before breaking. The people who designed them were incompetent, the people who used them were incompetent, and the people who maintained them were incompetent. Not that it mattered, the oil they used was basically sludge. I'm getting to the point where I'm struggling to believe Hanlon's Razor. Especially when the most extreme environmentalists seem to align with Thanos' ideas about resolution to climate issues.

JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
Thanos’ ideas about everything were extremely silly. A halving of population would do nothing on any time scale. A small blip easily recovered by reproduction. People deserve better writing, even in comic book movies.
- bitwize 5y ago
  The original rationale for Thanos made a lot more sense: he simped for Death, like the concept of death was a woman in the Marvel universe. He thought half the universe's souls would make a perfect offering for her and would impress her enough to make her want to be with him. It's outrageously comic-book-y, but may as well lean into the illogic.
  - JohnJamesRambo 5y ago
    That makes much more sense, I wish they had stuck with that.
    - CapricornNoble 5y ago
      I thought they would, considering they introduced the Goddess of Death in Thor: Ragnarok, but...NOPE. Cate Blanchett delightfully hamming it up as a supervillian only lasted one film.
      - bitwize 5y ago
        Death is a separate character from Hela. So the possibility is still there. They even teased it at the end of The Avengers: the Chitauri leader tells Thanos "to challenge [humans] is to court death", at which time Thanos grins eagerly. But with Earth-199999's Thanos dead, they're going to have to invoke some multiversal malarkey if they want to develop that storyline now.
- api 5y ago
  Real life despots and fanatics are usually quite a bit crazier and less coherent than Thanos. As usual you have to tone it down to make it believable in fiction. A realistic depiction of a genocidal fanatic would be too stupid or insane to be believable. See: Pol Pot, Adolf Hitler, ISIS, Kim Jong Un, and numerous other examples. If they were rational they would not be despots and fanatics. Unfortunately charismatic lunatics command followings. Charisma bypasses the rational mind and shoots straight into the limbic system (as do fear, outrage, etc). Cult leaders are good cases too: L. Ron Hubbard, Jim Jones, Charles Manson, Keith Raniere, etc. These people would be as bad as the worst despots if they actually had power over more than a few people. Thanos' line is more rational than this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenu
thriftwy 5y ago
Late Soviet regime produced so much farm hardware as if it wanted to outright lay siege to the field and storm it by having greater numbers. Most of it went rotting. I remember a village school with a large yard full of half-disassembled tractors and combines. Apparently the students were supposed to learn to use all the stuff and then give the field no rest. In reality it would just rot. I don't think you should label all that people incompetent. They were mostly very practical in solving their immediate problem while having no freedom to rethink it. The system sucked and people were just trapped in it.
- brimble 5y ago
  I didn't take incompetent as an insult, but in its straightforward, descriptive sense: the people were not competent at the jobs they were assigned to (and, presumably, weren't given sufficient help in becoming competent)
  - thriftwy 5y ago
    I have to disagree. The tractor-builders were very competent in building 100,000 new tractors each year when operating on vastly insufficient resources with apathetic workforce; and making sure these tractors could leave the factory gates on their own. In short, they did fulfill their plan. Would they be happier producing 10,000 tractors that would actually last, instead? Maybe. Would they be able to do that right away? No, but with some practice it could be done. Could they produce better tractors with the constraints that they had? I don't think so. You will undoubtedly see the same pattern all over the corporate world.
goatlover 5y ago
And how would you go about halving the population? Who should die?

JohnJamesRambo 5y ago

Then factor in all the havoc caused by ethanol in gas ruining seals, not working well in small engines, etc. and it’s just totally non-sensical that this fraud has been allowed to happen.

qiskit 5y ago
Most of "green" movement is a fraud. The majority of "green" energy comes biomass - aka cutting trees down and burning it. Would love to see the funding behind many of these green groups. I'll bet most of it comes from oil companies, governments, etc. The past 15 years, much of the anti-coal "green" movement was funded by oil companies who wanted to take out their coal competitors and replace it with "clean" natural gas. It was all about taking market share. Nothing to do with the environment.
CraigJPerry 5y ago
In defence of ethanol, producing it from plants and then burning it as fuel reduces greenhouse gas emissions vs extracting, refining and burning dino juice.
- raverbashing 5y ago
  Yes but corn is one of the worse sources for alcohol production
  - CraigJPerry 5y ago
    I don’t know the story, what’s bad about it? My understanding so far is that the corn used for ethanol isn’t the kind you eat (sweetcorn) it’s a cheaper to produce and more hardy plant but consequently can only really be used for cattle feed and ethanol production. Ages ago i read something that said in the US, corn was the optimal source but in other parts of the world, sugar cane could result in a more energy efficient process for ethanol.
    - qeternity 5y ago

orangepurple 5y ago

> Only 1 percent of all corn grown in this country is eaten by humans. > The rest is No. 2 yellow field corn, which is indigestible to humans and used in animal feed, food supplements and ethanol. https://www.wired.com/2011/06/five-ethanol-myths-busted-2/ https://www.wired.com/2011/06/five-ethanol-myths-busted-2/

sct202 5y ago
It is digestible post processing like after nixtamalization to turn it into masa. No 2 corn is used in tortillas, snack foods and other processed corn products. That sentence is misleading, because yes straight off the cob you can't eat it. https://agcrops.osu.edu/newsletter/corn-newsletter/2016-40/taking-second-look-%E2%80%9Cfood-grade%E2%80%9D-corn-q https://agcrops.osu.edu/newsletter/corn-newsletter/2016-40/t...
- Aperocky 5y ago
  To add to that I'm sure this country eat more tortillas than actual corn...
- lumost 5y ago
  This also hints that our food production is more complex than you would first expect, in a true food crunch there are likely many substitute diet options which can be made by processing inedible agriculture products or repurposing fields.
- wrycoder 5y ago
  All you have to do is dry and grind it to make cornmeal. It's quite digestible, and keeps very well, like wheat. (I've never tried eating it fresh like sweet corn, may have to add that to the bucket list.) A problem is it is lacking in free niacin, which can result in pellagra, if the diet is principally corn meal. Nixtamalization corrects that[0]. Without nixtamalization, cornmeal doesn't form a dough. You can make corn bread, but not tortillas. Corn chips, e.g. Fritos, and corn bread don't use nixtamalized corn, but they are quite digestible! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixtamalization