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This video is an interesting look at this whole issue:(Engineering Explained - America Was Wrong About Ethanol) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-yDKeya4SU http
by dmbche 3y ago
This video is an interesting look at this whole issue:(Engineering Explained - America Was Wrong About Ethanol) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-yDKeya4SU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-yDKeya4SU
Especially his summary, where corn creates 20 percent less GHG than gasoline and ''breaks even'' after 28 years, while switchgrass creates 94% less GHG and breaks even in it's first year.
- jvanderbot 3y agoSwitchgrass farmers don't vote enough. The whole ethanol thing was just to prop up corn prices and production during election runs.
- PaulHoule 3y agoHow practical is it really? They’ve been talking about ethanol from cellulosic biomass since at least the 1970s but progress seems about as fast as fast breeder reactors.
- bluGill 3y agoThe idea looks sound, but cellulose is hard to break down. If it wasn't bacteria would have figure it out long ago (before the dinosaurs ago)
- xyzzyz 3y agoNo, that’s not right. Cellulose decomposition is easy. You are probably thinking about lignin decomposition, which is typically done by fungi, not bacteria.
- soperj 3y agoThere's a number of animals called Ruminants that do it regularly no?
- bigbillheck 3y agoThey all use bacteria.
- soperj 3y ago... why wouldn't we use those then?
- changoplatanero 3y agoAnd to make things worse, corn farmers are concentrated in Iowa which was one of the first states in the presidential primary. So they had outsized influence over who gets chosen as president and what campaign promises they have to make in order to get elected.
- sidewndr46 3y agoone of the first? Don't they literally have laws requiring them to have the first presidential primary?
- empyrrhicist 3y agoFirst caucus, which is like a primary, but worse.
- amanaplanacanal 3y agoWho do you mean by “they” here? I believe the parties themselves choose when to have their primaries.
- sseagull 3y agoYep. And the Democrats are changing the order this year. The plan is South Carolina will be first. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/democrats-vote-to-change-order-of-2024-presidential-primary https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/democrats-vote-to-chan...
- justin66 3y agoStates can choose when their primaries happen by law, and the parties can choose when and where their primaries should happen. Entertaining things happen when they differ. The Democratic party cannot force Iowa and New Hampshire to not have their primary and caucus later in the year, but they can threaten not to count their delegates if they go at the wrong time. The sobering thing is, this is not nearly the dumbest part of the American electoral system.
- hawk_ 3y agoThanks for that summary, the video doesn't say much more other than repeat these things over and over. One thing that wasn't clear is why does tilling the land release so much carbon into the atmosphere?
- toomuchtodo 3y agoTilling the soil in conventional farming creates large air pockets which fill up with oxygen, where microbes then turn carbon in the soil into CO2.
- jabl 3y agoAlso when you convert forest into farmland and cut down the trees, the root systems of the trees will, over a period of time, decompose. Annual plants have much smaller root systems.
- soperj 3y agoIt was never about GHGs, always about subsidizing corn farmers.
- pie420 3y agoAnd also reducing US reliance on foreign energy. Farmers make 10x the corn that we can eat, why not make renewable, albeit kinda dirty fuel out of it? Still better than importing arabian oil on a supertanker 10,000 miles, right?
- empyrrhicist 3y agoAt what opportunity and environmental cost? For what we spend, we get increased reliance on subsidized fuel instead of investing in renewables, all while fucking our water quality and destroying fisheries in the gulf. There are much better ways to decrease our reliance on foreign oil - starting with reducing the demand for it through better MPG standards and investing in clean energy and transportation infrastructure.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- RajT88 3y agoThis.