What is Digg?31 Comments
- crombenevolant, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5What we need to do is remove the porkbelly legislation that penalizes any crop except corn that is used for Ethanol production. That would opend the door to using sugar beets and sawgrass. Look at what Brazil does with their sugar cane, we could do the same with our beets.....
- Urusai, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Or, finally admit that ethanol is a stupid, stupid idea and get to work on biodiesel.
- JES63, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I hope using cellulose to make ethanol works. I am a big fan of using technology to open up alternatives. I hate that we depend on the emotionally flaky middle-east for anything. I would really love to be able to tell those nut-jobs to drink their oil and embargo the whole area until they get a grip on themselves and decide to live like civilized people.
When I first studied the Civil War, I wondered if all of the money and capital spent on that war had instead been used to develop a mechanical cotton picker, if the war would have been fought at all. Yeah it is simplistic, but I wonder how radical the powers that drove the South to war would be if they were able to make a better living without slaves than they could with them. Anyway, I digress. Its a theory.
I would really like to see a Manhattan style project to end our need to import energy from any source. I am ready to accept just about any form of energy at all as long as it is domestically produced. Ethanol, nuclear, wind, clean coal, oil shale, oil sands even ANWAR. I don't care really. Just stop getting it from Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.
And kudos to President Bush for including this in his State of the Union speech. I remember he talked about switchgrass. I still don't know what it looks like, but if it will work for ethanol, godspeed. - Mrkamikaze, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3"When I first studied the Civil War, I wondered if all of the money and capital spent on that war had instead been used to develop a mechanical cotton picker, if the war would have been fought at all. Yeah it is simplistic, but I wonder how radical the powers that drove the South to war would be if they were able to make a better living without slaves than they could with them. Anyway, I digress. Its a theory."
Obviously you didn't study the Civil War very long. How does States Rights have anything to do with picking cotton? - Blitzenn, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4What they don't tell you is that this corn is meant to be eaten. When digested, it produces the fuel. Cars will need to be redesigned with PGRV's (Personal Gas Relief Valves) installed in the seats. When questioned on this Monsanto representatives stated that it was a simple vehicle upgrade as all of the parts are off the shelf including the PGRV which can easily be home made by drilling a hole in the center of a standard Butt Plug.
What?! - DaFunk, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@poco:
C2H6O + 3 O2 → 2 CO2 + 3 H2O
Yup, that's some nasty stuff going up. :/ - HP844182, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Growing corn is not going to solve our gas problem. We need hydrogen.
That being said, our gas is 2.32 down here right now (texas). - nwshc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1How is hydrogen not as clean? If we get neuclear plants up and running, we will be able to electrolyze water and then as you know turn it into hydrogen. When we use it in fuel cells the only waste is water. I don't see how that's not clean.
- nwshc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@HP844182
Lucky bastards. 2.63 in Massachusetts. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Ethanol is SO not the answer.
i would digg your comment if it included the word corn.
still non corn is NOT the answer but does that mean abandon the idea?
how about just all the public transportation, police and service vehicles?
We dont need to replace oil for it to help greatly.
But what ever we do decide to do, we should not use a non feral crop like corn. - nwshc, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3You're retarded.
Since we burn corn and not fossil fuels, there will be no increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere since it would be used up to grow new corn, then burned, then new corn etc. It's one big cycle. Unlike gasoline where that carbon has been locked away for millons of years and is now being released. - JES63, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1MrKamikazi,
I just came to a different conclusion than you did. The North dominated the legislature and pushed through laws that did not have any cost to them or their political constituency. They were free votes. They cost the relatively politically powerless South dearly however. It would have ended their way of life by undercutting the foundation of their economy (slave based farm labor) without giving them any alternative. In a way, I don't see that there is any disagreement. The war was big enough to be about both state's rights and slavery. Actually, most wars are about more than one thing. - JES63, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Hydrogen is great for energy storage but it is really derived from electricity which comes from nuclear and coal. Don't get me wrong. I like nuclear and clean coal. But hydrogen isn't as clean as people think it is.
Non-corn and corn-based ethanol is interesting because the plants actually bind up a lot of CO2. Also, I really like the idea of sending lots of money to the rural US that would otherwise go to fund some massive marble palace out in a desert somewhere. - gl00pp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@nwshc
@HP844182
Lucky bastards. 3.19 in Seattle. REGULAR.
Everyone please post your local gas price. - oogee, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2@nwshc
"You're retarded.
Since we burn corn and not fossil fuels, there will be no increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere since it would be used up to grow new corn, then burned, then new corn etc. It's one big cycle. Unlike gasoline where that carbon has been locked away for millions of years and is now being released."
*****!
You can't say that all of the carbon dioxide will eventually return to the next corn crop. I doesn't work that way. Besides, more pollutants besides CO2 are created through combustion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_combustion_engine#Engine_pollution
CO for example, will not be part of this wonderful cycle you made up in your head.
Poco is right. If the race to a new kind of fuel leads us to a soil-straining Petroleum substitute instead of a clean fuel we're screwed. With ethanol we will keep all of the environmental problems we've got already and we'll lose our motivation to explore clean alternatives. - bjorkbjorkbjork, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1@JES63
"The beautiful thing about the market system is that the most economically feasible system will move to the front."
Slight but important correction: that's the nice thing about a *pure* market system, which we don't have. Have you heard of Archers Daniel Midland? It's just one example of the powerful organizations with a vested interest in having us continue to grow corn -- for corn syrup, animal feed, and now, fuel. They get huge subsidies for corn and channel their inefficiently-gotten profits into political power to keep the subsidies flowing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archer-Daniels-Midland_Company#Criticism_of_ADM - oogee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1why can't we use wind power in remote areas to generate electricity enough to store hydrogen? The process of making the electricity would be out of everyone's way, perhaps near a source of water that could be used for extracting and storing water.
- Mojave, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Ethanol is SO not the answer. Read this post from Tesla Motors. Note the graphic at the bottom and tell me where all those people from the midwest are going to live.
http://www.teslamotors.com/blog1/index.php?p=22&js_enabled=1 - tokachu, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3So, instead of paying $3 for a gallon of gasoline, we should pay $4-7 for a gallon of ethanol that makes car engines less efficient and drives the cost of food up?
Wow. Just wow. - Tunak, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12.56 in Kentucky
Has been between 2.56 and 2.65 this week - perkonis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Cool. I saw several of those Pioneer Ethanol signs the other day and wondered what they were up to.
- JES63, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Hydrogen is very clean at the end-user side. A huge amount of our electrical grid is powered by coal right now. That production is not as clean as it could be.
I like nuclear too. I am very encouraged by the fact that Yucca mountain is going ahead. The waste is currently being stored at the various reactor sites around the nation and that seems much more dangerous to me. Professionally managing the waste in a place geographically suited for it should allow the development of more reactors which will further reduce emissions and pollution. That would make hydrogen very clean indeed.
Ethanol, especially non-food product based ethanol, would be a wonderful addition to our energy mix. It would produce no long-lasting waste, would bind C02, and would be vitalizing to the domestic economy. - Blitzenn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1BTW - Mileage is reported at 3.4 Miles per ear of corn eatten. :0
- pen25, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0this is so funny. ethonal isnt the long term answer. nor is any bio fuels. hydrogen is ok but trust me it isnt the answer either. the answer is better mass transit. higher fuel taxes to prevent those who dont really need to drive and i dont mean 25% i mean 5 bucks a gallon. now people will talk about comercial costs. well they write that off at the end of the year or every time they do thier taxes. but like farm tax it can be bypassed if you have a valid stamp on your license and the vehicle is made to only allow certain means of fueling. any modification of the vehicle to take the fuel could be a major fine plus loss of the ability of using the tax stamp. I know i would ride my bicycle allot more or walk. make a bill requiring the funds generated by the tax be used locally on mass transit and with an oversite to it doesnt get wrongly spent.
thats how to conserve fuel and solve the long term issues surrounding the US and its fuel issues.
you could also mandate that al vehicles meet fuel mileage guidlines. and stick to it. meaning if you dont meet a 100mpg vehicle and make that vehicle be 25% of your sales by say 2010 and 50% of sales by 2015 then you wont be allowed to sale a vehicle in the US. - sparc, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Where did the article go? It does not come up for me.
- photinacook, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Once fossil fuels are burned, they become renewable fuel. This article is just an example of that. I call fossil fuels "SuperRenewable" because they can't be used until they are burned and then we can use them again and again practically forever.
Better--once Superrenewable fuel is burned, their carbon re-enters the biosphere, increasing the total carrying capacity of the Earth. Want to feed the starving in far continents? Want to help rain forests? Whales? Anything alive? Go for a drive. Research shows that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has already increased tree growth in the United States.
What? This is totally different than anything you've heard before? Then you forgot what you learned in elementary school. All life depends on plants--which turn CARBON DIOXIDE and water into sugar, and then into the rest of the plant. It's called "photosynthesis." Ah yes, you DID hear about this before. - Poco, on 10/12/2007, -7/+6...or we could just stop burning stuff in the atmosphere for fuel. That might do more to help with global warming than simply using a different fuel.
- JES63, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0The beautiful thing about the market system is that the most economically feasible system will move to the front. The thing most likely to empower alternative energy sources is expensive energy from fossil fuels.
The graphic is interesting. If it is true, ethanol won't work. With bioengineering of the various plants making more energy extractable from fewer crop acres, I think the calculation changes dramatically; and we have only now started research on the cellulose-based ethanol. It will get more efficient.
If the price of photovoltaic cells drops enough, they will become the economic best answer. Right now, they seem expensive. And they degrade over time don't they? Also, they would not work very well in large parts of the country due to cloud cover. - jer105, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0One volcano eruption releases more pollutants in to the air then all of the internal combustion engines in the history of man...so don't give me the "cars are creating global warming" speech anymore
Also, I agree that in an ideal world we would not burn fuels and would come up with a super clean cheap energy. But that's a dream world, right here right now, we have too many things using oil, coal, etc. So it should be a goal to come up with and use something better. In the interim, we use ethanol, bio diesel and what ever else we can because nothing will happen overnight - Mrkamikaze, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1And they say Bush is weak on environmental issues.
- McMultiverse, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1How many front pages is this for supernova17 over the past three days? Did I accidentally log on to Supernova17.com instead of Digg?
No digg, marked as lame.
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