Would Bush's ethanol solution force us to choose between fueling vehicles and feeding humans?

Question

It's been calculated that Australia's entire wheat exports would be needed to meet 10 or 12 pc of our fuel requirements - and Australia would have to import grain for low crop years. So could ethanol, requiring energy to produce, be an answer to climate change?

Answer 1

it already has

Answer 2

It's so funny, when people talk about "ethanol" it's like it is some miracle and how petrol is the horrible thing.

Both have their good sides and their bad sides.

First off, the end product, ethanol, is the same from corn as it is from petroleum oil, it's still ethanol.

The difference is the raw material used to produce it and how long it takes that raw material to renew itself.

In this case, corn ethanol is the clear winner.

However the starchy corn needed and the amount of it leaves little growing land for anything else. I guess it's grits for all!

Just an odd thought, does anyone else think it's funny that prohibition happened right around the boom of car manufacturing?

Perhaps it was a way to keep the white lightning out of the fuel tanks and the oil companies rolling in dough, I mean we can't have Joe Schmoe making his fuel now can we!

Answer 3

The use of ethanol is intended to provide an alternative energy source, not to convert all vehicles from petroleum to ethanol.

In fact a large number of vehicles would be impractical and some could be impossible to convert to ethanol.

The ethanol solution works best when combined with other energy solutions, all of which have been proposed.  One obvious answer is the hybrid vehicle, combining stored electricity and fuel for energy.  Another is to look for other alternative fuels, such as hydrogen.

It is also possible to develop vehicles that are more fuel-economical and it is also possible to find other ways to reduce vehicle usage.  

Mr. Bush feels--and I agree with him--that we need to address the energy problem with several solutions, including increasing available petroleum resources.  And, of course conservation, both to increase energy resources and to combat climate change, if use of energy indeed is contributing to climate change--something I am awaiting convincing evidence of.

Your question is interesting.  Whose calculations are you citing?

Answer 4

Yes...feed the cars, not the kids!  FU-EL!  FU-EL!

Answer 5

Yes, No, Maybe.

WTF does GWB have to do with corn or ethanol ?

Could you in the future, go buy a clue before you ask a question ?

Answer 6

Not if the ethanol is made from switch grass.  The latest field test indicate it can produce up to 540% of the energy consumed in making it.

Answer 7

Yes and is because the countries involved have a sistem called capitalism, witch allows a free market of goods, now we can see a brutal impact because the market is starting to assimilate it, the raise of the prices of "grains" for example, allows to more sellers enter to the market, the marginal ones, for example in a place were was too expensive produce grains now is not, and leaves an important income, those are called the new marginal sellers.

In this answer I explain better the subject, http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

Answer 8

Yes, but this isn't some new quandary proposed to organisms. Those unable to pay inflated price will have their lifespans considerably shortened and evolution will take its place, ensuring only the strongest survive.

You should do further research by reading On The Origins of Species by Charles Darwin.

Answer 9

The good news is that Bush does not control the energy policy of Australia. B's energy policy is tied up in wealth redistribution. Not environmental stewardship.

Answer 10

Anything that produces CO2 is a contributor to the atmospheric CO2 surplus and its heat retention property. India is now undergoing crop failure due to rats in a place where people are already starving.

Answer 11

I originally worried about this too.

But recently I have seen several articles indicating that researchers have learned how to efficiently produce ethanol from biomass such as the cobs and stalks of corn rather than the grain itself, and from other biomass that is waste product of other plants. If this is true (I always need to take things with a grain of salt) our concerns are  unnecessary.

So let us hope this is true.

Answer 12

it has nothing to do with bush  it has to do with the idiots who drive the automobiles to make up their minds and take action about using oil, corn  etc. and making the auto industry to make a fuel efficient  vehicle, not in 10 years or 20, but now!

Answer 13

What exactly does Pres. Bush's ethanol solution (what ever that is) have to do with Australian wheat production.  The last time I looked, Australians were free to make their own decisions as to what to grow on their land, and on where to sell it.

Answer 14

If the program is to use wheat to make ethanol, it is bound to fail, the best agricultural crop for ethanol is sugar cane, but sugar cane can not be grown in Australia, except maybe in the north.

but the real problem is that, to produce more sugar from sugar cane, much of the rain forest of Brazil and south east Asia will be destroyed.

Answer 15

This is not Bush's ethanol solution.  It would be wonderful if this stupid idea would go away in eleven months, but half of America thinks it's the holy grail of energy.

Answer 16

Yes, the idiot politicians are diverting 1/5th of our corn production into nearly useless biofuels...

Every time the government does anything like this we  pay for it, bigtime but stupid people keep demanding that the government do more.

Answer 17

It is doing so right now.  Corn prices have doubled, soybeans have been displaced by corn, and other crops are in shortage too.  It is hitting things you wouldn't think about, as shown by a quote from my mail this morning:

"And that's not mentioning the cost of cereals. A poor harvest here and massive amounts of grain land being ploughed up for biofuel in North America has seen cereal prices shoot up.

As a result animal feed has gone up by a third, and I have heard one dealer predicting the £4 pint by the end of the year because of a shortage of barley. Already the major brewers are telling wholesalers to prepare for a 25 per cent hike in bottled beer prices by March."

As I have said many times before, the US ethanol scheme is a farm price-support program, not an energy program.  It is "successful" beyond the wildest dreams of the people who pushed for it, and that very success is going to force it to be stopped.