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As a man thinks, so he is. Some people are never.
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Turn off the nav system, crumple up that MapQuest printout, and let's find out where the next random turn may take us!
 There always have been and always will be bandwagons that people jump on and off of.
Bell bottom pants, and reality TV come to mind.
For a while now, people have been jumping on the ethanol bandwaogn with gusto, ignoring that there might actually be some negative consequences to turning food supplies into fuel.
The roads to a lot of bad places are paved with good intentions.
The Texas governor's office said Friday it had asked the Environmental Protection Agency for a partial waiver on complying with new renewable-fuel standards, saying ranches and families were already hurting from "skyrocketing food costs."
We appreciate the good intentions behind the push for renewable fuels ... but this misguided mandate is significantly affecting Texans' family food bill," Perry wrote. Waiving renewable-fuel standards levels "is the best, quickest way to reduce those costs before permanent damage is done.
On Friday, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson, R-Texas, said that she is working on a letter to the EPA detailing concerns about the mandate. Twenty senators have signed the letter, according to her office.
The nation's largest livestock raisers have been also complaining about the rising costs of grain.
There's starting to be a lot more elbow room on that bandwagon.
Read the entire article at MarketWatch.com
 There's a verse from an Eagles' song titled "New Kid in Town" that's appropriate in a lot of situations.
There's talk on the street, it's there to remind you
that it doesn't really matter which side you're on.
You're walking away and they're talking behind you.
They will never forget you till somebody new comes along.
The lesson is that fame is fleeting.
Three years ago, ethanol from corn was barely on the radar. Congress passed the Energy Act of 2005 and ethanol gained respectibility as a fuel that could reduce pollution and help achieve energy independence.
Everybody jumped on the bandwagon. Commodity prices soared, affecting far more than just the price of corn which went from $1.70 per bushel at the time the bill was signed to over $4 per bushel at the peak of the frenzy.
According to DesMoinesRegister.com, the ethanol industry went from joke to hero to goat in less than three years because of several factors.
Corn-based ethanol is not, and never has been, an efficient fuel. If you pay 20% less for ethanol compared to gasoline, but get 25 to 30% less mileage performance, it's costing you more to operate your vehicle.
There has always been a question of whether the production of ethanol consumes as much, or more, energy than it delivers as a motor fuel.
Then there are the food and water issues.
Seems to me that the rush to "go green" has involved a remarkable lack of foresight by a lot of folks who ought to know better,
Amber waves of grain
It's not the panacea
Just another fad
Read the full story at DesMoinesRegister.com
 There's a lot of speculation and discussion about ethanol and how it's going to save us going around these days. Myself, I'm a bit of a skeptic and feel that turning all of U.S. corn production into ethanol wouldn't even make a dent in our fossil fuel needs, and that we'd starve ourselves in the process. I've even seen some say that cargo ships are sitting idle because no corn is available due to corn being diverted to ethanol production. And commodity prices seem to be rising fast because of the increases in demand because of this rush to be "saved" by ethanol, at least if you can believe the things you hear. There seems to be plenty of spin and wishful thinking going around, and emotion seems to drive a lot of the debate over what's true about ethanol. The volume on this is starting to get loud and make my head spin, so I thought I'd ask a friend of mine who is a Professor of Agronomy in the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences at Penn State University and has some expertise in the field whether my thoughts on the whole situation make any sense. After all, there's nothing like facts to ruin a perfectly good argument! Here's the response I got from him:
Bob,
You are correct, corn ethanol is not going to meet our transportation fuel needs. Nobody is claiming that from the ethanol industry.
The vision of the National Corn Growers Assn. is that by 2015, we will be able to produce 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol using a 15 billion bushel corn crop. Of that 5 billion will be used to produce ethanol, and 10 billion will be available to meet food feed and export needs.
During the past few years, we have produced crops in the 10-11 billion bushel range and have been creating surpluses. This year we should make close to 13 billion bushels and again will have a large surplus. In fact, the corn price has declined significantly since spring. Many commodity traders are actually worried about our capacity to store this falls crop.
There are many good things about ethanol for the ag community and the Midwest. It’s a higher value use of the crop so farmers make more money. This allows them to buy more combines, tractors etc. and pay more rent to landowners in the Midwest. The ethanol plants have revitalized the economy of many Midwest towns that were depressed before. They have also created demand for stainless steel and rail cars so those industries are benefiting as well. And they are making about 5 billion gallons of fuel that we are not buying from Venezuela, Russia, or some other dubious source. Aside from the obvious balance of trade issues, there are also long term geopolitical issues from this dependence.
Ethanol is subsidized by the government and some have issues about this. The increase in corn price due to the ethanol demand has reduced farm subsidies about the same extent, however.
So the net effect of the ethanol issue for the federal treasury has been negligible. The higher price though has stimulated corn production in other countries that could not compete with us when we were subsidized production and selling it below the cost of production.
The other issue is the effect on food prices. Corn makes up a very small part of the retail price of food so increases in price have little impact on retail food prices. Corn sells for about 7 cents a pound, even with the higher prices. A 12 oz box of corn flakes sells for about 2.20. So corn could double again in price and you probably would not notice it in your corn flakes.
Some industries, like cattle and chicken feeding are spending a lot more on corn than they used to, but they also have access to dry distiller’s grain, an economical feed that can replace some of the corn, especially for cattle.
So in the end, corn is not the complete answer to our transportation fuel issues, and corn ethanol will not likely dramatically increase food prices. Some have said it is a good first bunt. We have a lot of unused capacity to grow corn. In fact, due to low prices in the past, we have paved over, built houses, and taken ag land out of production.
Cellulosic ethanol will likely come on in a few years and eventually will be producing much more than corn ethanol. The hope is that combining corn ethanol, cellulosic, biodiesel, hybrid vehicles, higher mileage standards and other technologies we may be able to reduce our dependence on imported fuels by 30-40% by the end of the next decade or so.
If your readers are interested in an economical high performance fuel, they might want to checkout E-85, which was featured on Jay Leno's website last week.
If all this has you aching to fill up with an E-10 blend or so, stop in at the Sunoco across from Wal-Mart.
If you need anything else or some documentation or links, let me know.
Not that that settles anything, but it does give me some ammo to counter the folks who seem to think that all we have to do is turn our corn into ethanol and we'll be able to watch OPEC try to figure out ways to enjoy crude oil soup. It's never as simple as those who see a simple solution think it is.
Boon, or boondoggle
Maybe it's a bit of both
Which way ethanol?
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