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POPSObama and Iowa In this week's National Journal, the magazine's regular "Insider's Poll" asks Democratic and Republican luminaries (pollsters, strategists, and so on) which state is Obama's top pickup opportunity. Iowa ranks at the top for both groups. In the clip, James Barnes fleshes out a bit why. Note the importance of ethanol.
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POPSMcCain Calls For End To Corn Subsidies For Ethanol In comments published by the Estado de S. Paulo newspaper, McCain also said he would support Brazil's addition to the Group of Eight industrialized nations and lauded the nation's drive to find clean energy sources. White House economic advisers say corn-based ethanol is responsible for just 2 to 3 percent of the overall increase in food prices, which are up more than 40 percent this year over 2007.
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POPSBrazil's Lula Rebuffs Biofuels Critics at World Food Summit "Subsidies create dependency, break down entire production systems and provoke hunger and poverty. It is high time to do away with them,'' Lula stated. "It offends me to see fingers pointed against clean biofuels—fingers tainted with oil and coal." US corn-based ethanol is an example of a harmful type of biofuel "shot up with subsidies and shielded behind tariff barriers," Lula added. ::
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POPSOppose Climate Alarmist Gore: Sign Free Petition Worried about high food prices, Congress tries to push the biofuel industry to use nonfood crops. Chicago - America's love affair with corn-based ethanol is cooling – at least in Washington. Some legislators blame the rising use of corn as a biofuel as a key factor behind high food prices. Others want to freeze the federal mandate on biofuels production at current levels, reversing legislation passed just a few months ago that increases it through 2022. Still others are pushing to shift tax incentives away from corn-based to cellulose-based ethanol in the nearly completed farm bill. These moves represent a dramatic backlash against corn ethanol, which until a few months ago was widely viewed as a boon for both farmers and consumers. Many experts worry that Washington's new skepticism will undo important progress the US has made in replacing foreign oil with domestic energy alternatives. http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0501/p03s03-usec.html
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POPSHow Government Regulation effects oil prices at the pump
As is usually the case with government intervention into private enterprise the unexpected results are usually far worse than the original problem congress set out to solve. Doesn't anybody study history anymore? It was not that long ago that the same ideas were floating around congress during the Carter years. Anyone remember the odd even gas days and the long lines at the pumps because of the government forced oil shortages of the 70's Among other mistakes from that period, the government increased the taxes levied on domestic oil producers, as if that would somehow help. The result was “reduced domestic oil production from between 3 and 6 percent, and increased oil imports from between 8 and 16 percent.” The government also instituted price controls, which only served to create the notorious gas shortages of that era. Yes, price controls meant consumers could get cheaper gas — but only after waiting in long gas lines and only if stations didn’t run out first.
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POPSEasing the Ethanol Mandate Smart move on McCain's part. He gets to look like he's doing something to resolve the food crisis. Will EPA waive the increased ethanol production? Not a chance.
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POPSCongress Considers Cellulose Ethanol In the Cato-at-Liberty blog post "Wishful Thinking on Cellulosic Ethanol," Indur Goklany, author of the Cato book The Improving State of the World, writes: "If cellulosic ethanol proves to be as profitable as its backers hope, farmers will divert even more land and water to producing the cellulose instead of food. All this means we'll be more or less back to where we were. Food will once again be competing with fuel. And land and water will be diverted from the rest of nature to meet the human demand for fuel.
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POPSSubsidies And High Crop Prices
Dooley says the net impact is bad for the food producers he represents. "For most American farmers, they're producing commodities—they're seeing their best years ever. But for farmers that have to feed grains and corn to livestock, they're seeing very tough times.... The policy is having a significant adverse impact on a significant sector of our agriculture, while I admit it is helping some farmers." These higher costs are also seen in consumers' grocery bills, and that has made ethanol subsidies an issue in Washington. Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York this month proposed legislation that would end the 54-cent-per-gallon tariff* as a way to stop a spike in milk prices. "There are a lot more milk consumers than ethanol producers in New York. He's hearing an earful from his constituents," Griswold says of Schumer. *The federal government gives preferential treatment to domestic, corn-based ethanol in the form of a 54-cent tax on imported Brazilian ethanol.
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POPSThe Poison Arrow: Corn-Based Ethanol The government seeks policy that stimulates industry, growth, wealth creation; corn production is near, easy, and most importantly: large-scale. Can we keep trying to fuel an ever-upward curve of consumption with fragile oil replacements like food crops? So far, the answer seems a resounding no. Meanwhile, we’re turning the Pacific into a garbage dump, and hoarding seeds for “doomsday”.
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POPSHarry Reid - Looser Mr. Reid - Should the government clean up all the mercury from the compact fluorescent light bulbs? Were do these people come from?
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POPSBio Fuel Investors are Bio Fools Josh Wolfe Editor of Forbes/Wolfe Emerging Tech Report thinks bio fuel investors are bio fools and is expecting that the hype will leave investors disappointed and poorer. He is getting his subs into Nuclear Energy plays. For more info go to read his recent Nuclear Renaissance story on Forbes.com or subscribe to his newsletter for actual picks. www.forbesnewsletters.com
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POPS Ethanol Bust::Stocks,Bush, Archer Daniels Losers Ethanol is a form of alcohol indistinguishable from moonshine that's created by fermenting and distilling the starches from corn, sugar, wheat and other crops. Harvesting, crushing, fermenting and distilling corn requires 29 percent more energy than ethanol produces. Two years later, after ethanol prices tumbled to a 28-month low, VeraSun Energy Corp. of Brookings, South Dakota, halted work on a 110 million-gallon distillery in the town. Five other projects have been canceled since Oct. 1, including an Alta, Iowa, mill for BioFuel Energy Corp., which sold shares to the public for the first time in June. The stock dropped 52 percent since the offering, wiping out more than $180 million in market value. Lenders have cut off funds for mills that weren't already under construction when prices began to drop, says Ron Miller, chief executive officer at Pekin, Illinois-based Aventine. Today it's very difficult if not impossible to get financing based upon these current margins.''
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POPSThe Carbon Budget Carbon from burning things like grasses, corn based ethanol, or fuels from other plant materials does not add additional CO2 to the atmosphere since it is already part of the global surface carbon budget. Digging up fossil fuels, carbon that long ago was removed and not returned to the surface budget, and burning them does add additional CO2.
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POPSBiofuels the solution or an ecological disaster? The biggest problem with bio-fuels is that even if 20% of crops were to be used for biofuel, they would meet less than 5% of current energy needs. As the price of crops increases, grazing landwill not be used .....instead poor farmers in third word countries will burn/chop down more forests to increase available land. Land that would largely be unsuitable for farming and using it will result in destruction of the top soil.
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POPSCreating Ethanol from Trash The next step is a catalyst-based process for converting syngas into equal parts ethanol and methanol. Ethanol is now widely used as a fuel additive, and it can also be used as a substitute for gasoline in some vehicles. Methanol is important for producing biodiesel and is currently made from methane in natural gas.
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POPSWill Cellulosic Ethanol Take Off? That's good news because many experts estimate that corn-ethanol producers will run out of land, in part because of competing demand for corn-based food, limiting the total production to about 15 billion gallons of fuel. (Already, corn-ethanol plants--existing and planned, combined--have a capacity of about 11 billion gallons.) The greater productivity of cellulosic sources should eventually allow them to produce as much as 150 billion gallons of ethanol by 2050, according to a report by the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Cellulosic-ethanol companies are hopeful that they can meet this goal.
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POPSForget about corn-based ethanol, it won't help us The economics of using corn as a fuel are completely screwy. First, corn is cheap because it's subsidized, and also because its production is heavily petroleum-dependent (because of natural gas-based fertilizers, and fossil-fuel-dependent mechanization and irrigation). Then, because corn is so cheap, we decide to subsidize ethanol. That drives up the price of corn. Remember: ultimately, when the oil goes, the corn will go too. The author suggests converting all America's corn to bourbon; at least we could then all plan on dying happy. Via http://snipr.com/1n8ks
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POPSCatastrophe reinsurance buffeted by hurricanes, global warmingt Warren Buffett's AGM - A "Woodstock for capitalists", according to NPR News. In a neat closed economy, his Berkshire Hathaway investors have the opportunity to buy the products of the thousands of companies Berkshire Hathaway invest in. The guy knows how to make money, so his words on future reinsurance rates are worth hearing. As are those of his vice chairman Charlie Munger, on low energy yield ethanol from corn.
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POPSGot Corn? This is when other countries realize just how dependant THEY are on the U.S. Europe simply doesn't have the room to plant 90 million acres of corn. Other countries are eagerly placing orders for the bumper crop of U.S. corn. How funny it is that the U.S. is called the scum of the Earth...that is until we have something they want and need. This is also good for alternative plastics like PLA which are made entirely of corn and are environmentally friendly. ; )
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