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I'm surprised and happy to see this in the Times. It's a good idea to avoid ethanol gas, on principle if for no other reason. Processing edible food to burn in

• swah 12y ago
  In Brazil, the amount of mandatory ethanol in gas was raised to 27%, to stimulate ethanol producers.
  • guscost 12y ago
    If the rumors are true, that mix could also eat through an otherwise reasonably efficient four-cylinder in record time, which would be a shame.
    • sigzero 12y ago
      Not to mention motorcycles...yeesh.
  • dataker 12y ago
    Brazil uses sugar cane, so the process is more efficient than in the US
    • swah 12y ago
      What about the environmental impact comparting to the US method?
      • superflit 12y ago
        It is drastic. My sister worked in one of the farms... The crop is not good? It went spoiled? Well light this matches and watch it burn.. yes literally The cities nearby suffer a lot with respiratory problems specially kids. But you will not see that on News the companies pay a lot to "promote" their eco images
        • dataker 12y ago
          They actually burn it to avoid harm to the workers and use its ash to fertilize their land. However, mechanization has reduced the need to burn fields and pollution has gradually been decreased.
      • dataker 12y ago
        It has similar issues, such as using fertilizers and water usage. At the same time, one of the main issues is deforestation in the Amazon and field burning before harvest. Still, it probably still makes sense to use it. For example, its energy balance(ethanol/energy for its production) is ~8-10 whereas in the US is ~1-2.
• pedalpete 12y ago
  I've always wondered about this argument in an environment suffering from an obesity epidemic, often blamed on another corn product, high-fructose corn syrup. Having lived in many different countries, the cost of food in the US is incredibly low. I assume (and have heard) this is mostly a result of subsidies to farmers. All the while, US exports of 'corn based products', which I assume is also corn, has continued to grow http://www.fas.usda.gov/data/us-exports-corn-based-products-continue-climb http://www.fas.usda.gov/data/us-exports-corn-based-products-....
  • guscost 12y ago
    This is an important point, American farm output is strongly manipulated by other subsidies and regulations. But I don't think there's any reason to believe that rising domestic corn prices would not have an effect on the larger domestic and foreign food markets, or that the effect would be good.
  • eastbayjake 12y ago
    I'm hopeful that normalized relations with Cuba will be the end of our crazy corn subsidies. If you want to make ethanol, sugarcane is 7x more energy efficient in producing ethanol compared to corn, and you can produce twice as much ethanol from an acre of sugarcane as an acre of corn[1]. And if you want to sweeten food and beverages, the same energy efficiency applies to cane sugar harvesting: you can get more sugar with less harvesting energy per acre of sugarcane than corn. (Although there's little science supporting cane sugar being healthier than high-fructose corn syrup.) It seems like the Cuba detente has broken a constituent stalemate in Congress: a small group of Florida sugarcane farmers corner the market on US cane sugar and no one has wanted to normalize relations and import sugarcane from Cuba because of those farmers' political clout, even though our countries' comparative advantage should dictate growing sugarcane in poor, developing Cuba and exporting it for food and ethanol use in the US.[2] There's been a gentlemen's agreement among senators that props up these farm subsidies because no one wants to rock the boat and jeopardize their own state's subsidies, but California is pushing back as our farmers get hammered by drought and Florida now has little to lose for opposing Midwestern farmers' lucrative corn subsidies. [1] https://biowesleyan.wordpress.com/first-generation-biofuels/ethanol/case-study-brazil/sugarcane-vs-corn-based-ethanol/ https://biowesleyan.wordpress.com/first-generation-biofuels/... [2] http://fcir.org/2012/09/09/in-sugar-price-supports-sour-tastes-for-consumers/ http://fcir.org/2012/09/09/in-sugar-price-supports-sour-tast...
• soylentcola 12y ago
  Not to mention that it's essentially impossible to find non-ethanol fuel nearby to put in my motorcycle. It's not exactly the best thing for carbureted engines. I understand that I'm in the minority and I wouldn't expect an otherwise sensible policy to change on behalf of people who commute on motorcycles and scooters but I wouldn't complain if it became easier to avoid.
  • kevin_thibedeau 12y ago
    Not good for plastic gas tanks either.
    • lutorm 12y ago
      Since ethanol has been a part of fuel for many decades, the vast majority of auto parts today are fine with ethanol. There are exceptions, like the Ducati gas tanks, but by and large ethanol is not a problem in any fuel-injected vehicle.
      • kevin_thibedeau 12y ago
        Triumph has had the same problem with their plastic tanks and have somehow managed to avoid a recall like Ducati did. It doesn't help that European vehicles aren't designed to account for an alien fuel.
      • modoc 12y ago
        As the owner of 3 ducatis, a snow blower, and a generator... when ethanol gas sits around for a while it does awful awful things:( Fuel stabilizers help a little, but the only way to REALLY make things work is to either run the engines at LEAST once a week all year, or to fully drain everything, and then deal with another sort of hassle when you need the generator running immediately.. While my car runs the ethenolized gas okay, it kills me knowing that I'm losing HP/efficiency just due to corn subsidies:(
        • maxerickson 12y ago
• joezydeco 12y ago
  How much petroleum is used to produce ethanol, from seed to harvest to processing? The answer seems to vary depending on which side of the ethanol/no-ethanol fence you ask. It's hard to find real numbers.
  • deleted 12y ago
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  • cmurf 12y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_energy_balance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_energy_balance
    • joezydeco 12y ago
      That's the term I've been looking for. Thanks.
• lutorm 12y ago
  The majority of corn produced in the United States is used for cattle feed (and the rest for things like HFCS.) If you think it's crazy to burn edible food in a car, it's about as crazy to use it to fuel cow metabolism. You could feed way more people if you ate the corn, but as it turns out, U.S. industrial corn production is pretty much for anything but eating.
  • analog31 12y ago
    Not to mention the greenhouse footprint of cattle farming. You can't really feed more people -- at least in the US -- because we already consume food in quantities that are arguably toxic. But you could turn the corn fields over to other kinds of crops. Disclaimer: I eat meat, maybe 1/4 to 1/2 pound a week.
    • ArkyBeagle 12y ago
      It's hard to say what the footprint of cattle farming really is. Each side ( and oh boy are there sides ) cherry picks their own figures. I know that in Texas, the biggest reason people let family land that could be used for cow-farming go is taxation - there are Land Trusts that allow you to keep nominal control of the land while agreeing never to use it productively again, to get a tax abatement. Also, the lyrics to James McMurty's "South Dakota" from the new record are really interesting on this subject. I mean - we call noodging "eat your vegetables". I like vegetables just fine, but I like meat, too. I doubt the results of any of the analyses since anybody who gets paid to do the work will probably be biased by who pays them. And the biggest receivers of any sort of subsidy - precious California water included - are veggie farmers. Using acres of Western Kansas for grazing seems pretty low-impact relative to that.
      • Inception 12y ago
        >>It's hard to say what the footprint of cattle farming really is. It is hard to say for certain, but we can get a pretty good idea based on the inputs required to raise cattle. Water, grain, antibiotics, petroleum based fuels to plant, harvest and transport the grain, petroleum based fertilizers to aid in growing the grain, and herbicides and pesticides to kill unwanted organisms (I'm sure I missed something). Not to mention a few of the by-products such as manure and chemical run-off, methane emissions, and soil erosion (from conventional agriculture practices). The above describes a CAFO, which is where the majority of beef comes from. Managed intensive rotational grazing would be my preferred alternative, but there still wouldn't be enough land available to keep up with our consumption. >>And the biggest receivers of any sort of subsidy - precious California water included - are veggie farmers. Can you please site some of the sources that you are using to determine that vegetable farmers are receiving more subsidies than any other industry? I assume you meant "the biggest receivers of any sort of Agriculture subsidy", but I still don't think that is right.
• D_Alex 12y ago
  > It's a good idea to avoid ethanol gas, on principle if for no other reason. Processing edible food to burn in your car (with all the implied market consequences) is kinda crazy. OTOH, ten years ago, the prices for farm products were so low that farmers in countries with no farm subsidies could not make ends meet. The biofuel industry has at least had the benefit of making the lot of farmers in such countries - who by the way were among the poorest people in these countries - a bit less dismal.
  • guscost 12y ago
    That sounds like an argument for rolling back the farm subsidies, not adding more laws to balance them out.
  • fennecfoxen 12y ago
    Are there more poor people in the world who are farmers who benefit from this, or are there more poor people who purchase food who will suffer or starve?
    • yason 12y ago
      Hunger has never been a problem of production in particular but of distribution. For decades, there's been plenty of food for everyone on this planet; it just hasn't been distributed, by politics or by markets, evenly and probably won't be in any time soon. It doesn't necessarily mean growing vegetation to produce ethanol fuel is a good thing but not doing so wouldn't make things effectively better either. On the other hand, at least the process is renewable unlike fossil fuels. On the other hand, it would make sense to grow this biofuel only in places where the environment is optimal for the most aggressively ethanol-producing plants. The bigger problem is the demand for fuel. You could build cities where you don't need millions of people to consume fuel in order to merely get by their ordinary days moving between work, shopping groceries, and home. Unfortunately, those cities don't seem to be built until fuel prices get high enough that it's cheaper to abandon suburbia and rebuild the city based on walking and public transit.
      • 12y ago
• sliverstorm 12y ago
  There are uses for (some) ethanol in gasoline. It boosts octane and decreases CO production (smog) by increasing fuel oxygenation, for starters. Oxygenated fuel is fuel with extra oxygen that is released during combustion. Nitromethane is an especially dramatic example: The oxygen content of nitromethane enables it to burn with much less atmospheric oxygen... The amount of air required to burn 1 kg (2.2 lb) of gasoline is 14.7 kg (32 lb), but only 1.7 kg (3.7 lb) of air is required for 1 kg of nitromethane
• shard972 12y ago
  > It's a good idea to avoid ethanol gas, on principle if for no other reason. Then why on earth is the Australian government making us put this shit in our cars unless we want to buy 100% premium fuel.
  • sjwright 12y ago
    Mate, many of our servos sell straight 91 RON fuel. Check your local Caltex, United or 7-Eleven. http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/2224794 http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/2224794
  • eru 12y ago
    I blame it on the people voting for the Australian governments.
  • shirro 12y ago
    Only the sugar cane growing states and the politicians bought by the cane sugar industry. You can buy fuel with ethanol in the other states at shitty "discount" outlets but many people avoid it. The major outlets generally don't sell it. It has lower energy density so you aren't getting better value, and while every modern car here is designed to run it in theory hardly any manufacturers recommend it.
  • deleted 12y ago
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