Study: modern ethanol plants are A-OK for this one land use issue
Conflicting study overload. That's the only way to explain all the messages that we're getting regarding biofuels recently. They speed up global warming. Ethanol is no better than gasoline. You know what I mean. Here's another one, courtesy of the totally non-biased Illinois Corn Growers Association. The findings this time are that "a modern ethanol plant does not meaningfully change farmland use, neither the amount of land farmed nor the mix of crops planted (e.g., corn, soybeans)." Apparently, the ICGA felt the need to counter the "often cited" link between building new ethanol plants and shifting more land to cornfields. I didn't know that was a troubling rumor, but Dr. Steffen Mueller from the Energy Resources Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago looked at data from one plant for three years and came to the "no impact" conclusion. You can find the full study here if you really need to read it yourself.
[Source: Illinois Corn Growers Association]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
gorr 2:58PM (2/28/2009)
The martians are still studying at our expences how a car move forward and how beef stomachs are fed, it's big-oil that mandated this new natural ressources trading. One oil fields pump more oil in one minute then one field of corn give ethanol in one year. One green algae farm give as much oil and butanol in one day as a corn field in a year for 50x less cost. One gallon of water if re-circulated, make a car move forward for years without cost and no pollution and 50% more power.
I told you before. Humanity have been killed by these martians 5 times since 85 billions years ago. Their corpses were powered by water battery with re-circulations and they promised to dying humans that they were dead for eternity. Since then they clone any human feelings with their voices from the dead and speak your name because they consider that they are dead too. Only jesus and nostradamus have said that humans are immortals, just changing corpses when the old corpse is dead without losing memory contrary to normal humans that are immortal too but are not aware of it and conform to martians dreams and philosophy that everuthing is without energy. They were killing souls too put in these robot-corpses by hacking their circuitrys with contradicted messages and spy-bot, virus, worms, etc. Many robot-corpse peoples received orders, too, to kill humans on the sight and if not they were attached vith software virus and general pain and these robots were unnable to leave the corpse because it was power by an almost eternal battery like the one from genepax.
Anyway most peoples are back on earth, trying to get heal by jesus, st-pierre, nostradamus and me. The same leaders of this past robot-corpses eternal dead philosophy took power of earth on 11 sept 2001 with false security crisis. Normal humans are so near death in their mind that they worship, finance, conform and agree to bush and gang.
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gorr 3:20PM (2/28/2009)
http://www.greencarcongress.com/2009/02/arb-chairman-ch.html#more
Rain 2:22AM (3/01/2009)
If We could get cars to run on doo-doo then transportation problems would be a memory.
Right now the best I can do is keep my driving down to 50 miles a week(average).
The savings are quickly adding up and by the time the BEV's finally hit the resale lots,I should have a tidy down payment.
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Carney 9:58PM (3/01/2009)
Actually, rain, auto fuel CAN be made from "doo doo"!
Methanol, which is a clean-burning, excellent auto fuel, can be made from any biomass without exception, right now, with no need for further research. That includes human sewage, animal waste from farms, trash, weeds like kudzu and water hyacinths, bulky bothersome waste like rice bran, and otherwise environmentally problematic stuff like the "black liquor" produced in paper mills.
And transitioning to use it is relatively easy. "Flex fuel" technology enabling cars to run on methanol or gasoline with equal ease in any mix (or none) has existed for 20 years. Modern flex fuel cars can also use ethanol, and millions of those are on the road today.
This makes the transition easier than with with any other alternative fuel. With alcohols like methanol and ethanol, if you can't find a fuel station with your alternative fuel, you can in a pinch always fill up on gasoline like everyone else and just keep on going. Liquid natural gas, compressed natural gas, compressed air, propane, diesel, vegetable oil, hydrogen, none of them can make that claim, and thus all require a relatively complete refueling infrastructure to be in place before buying one of those cars is practical, which means it will probably never happen.
But with alcohol the path forward is simple. Only 3% of cars on the road are flex fuel right now, but it's only a $100 expense for automakers to include this capability, which can be in any car of any size, shape, cost, or purpose. So Congress should just mandate that this be a standard feature in all new cars, like seat belts. Every year about 10% of our total auto fleet is sold new, so in just a few years there'd be enough of a market to make alcohol pumps become a common sight at gas stations, like diesel is now. Factor in the inevitable comeback of high gas prices (kept high if the government is wise by a tariff on foreign oil) and the move away from petroleum to clean burning alcohol is complete.
And a lot of it will come from our toilets. Hooray!
Rain 11:10PM (3/01/2009)
Agreed.
Flarb 12:49AM (3/10/2009)
Wow, gorr dude! You're freakin' me out! My car sucks gas too! Send us the martian plans quickly! I knew that bush feller was up to somethin'
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RaoulZ 9:54PM (3/27/2009)
Carney, nice post. Methanol is a valuable fuel source and so much of it slips through our fingers every day because we don't pay enough attention to efficiency.
As for ethanol, the prospects of providing enough ethanol biofuel to ween off of gasoline just got a lot better. Scientists recently created new enzymes that could quickly and efficiently turn plant cellulose into forms suitable for fermentation. If this pans out, agricultural waste like corn stalks could be turned into biofuel in an economical fashion. If you want to read more, I posted the story and some commentary at my blog, http://raoulzappacosta.wordpress.com/
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