MikePA said:
What do you call the subsidies for ethanol? These same subsidies are also the reason the cost of anything made with corn, i.e., almost every food, are going through the roof. A brilliant policy, using a food source for fuel and giving subsidies to build more plants to take even more food and turn it into fuel.
We don't need research funding or tax incentives to find more oil. We just need government to get out of the way.
Can't disagree entirely.
What do you call subsidies for ethanol from corn?
Political shell game.
Estimates differ but in general it is agreed ethanol production uses ABOUT (some say more some say less) as much petrochemicals as it offsets. It is a zero sum game. It is a sham, a hoax perpetuated by politicians catering to corn belt contributors to campaigns, corn growing voters voting their pocketbooks, and Green leaning but uninformed folks. It is a "Potemkin village", a stupid caricature of effective action, full of sound and fury signifying nothing (excuse me Will S.)
Regarding subsidizing research. I beg to differ there. Incentives to get research directed into a broad generalized area have been and can be quite effective. There are cellulose to auto fuel processes that are going without proper attention because the BIG MONEY is going into ethanol from corn for motor fuel.
Motor fuel from cellulosic feedstocks such as switch grass and such is a far better process in that it can produce more than 4 times the fuel it consumes and its fuel is superior to ethanol (more gasoline like.)
The cruelest cut of all is having all the attention and funding, Government and private, riveted to ethanol production which does absolutely nothing to move us toward less dependence on foreign oil since it takes as much oil to produce the ethanol as the ethanol replaces while better processes are available but not being fast tracked and are being left to plod along at a snail's pace when we need them ASAP.
You can't stop the rain by complaining. You can't make the price of petrochemicals go down my complaining. World wide there is a rapidly growing demand for petrochemicals not just fuel and lubricants so whether or not there are fuel charges on top of freight bills or included within freight bills is a very minor effect, in the noise as the professionals say.
Demand for petrochemicals is growing rapidly. The oil reserves are not growing and never will grow at all in the foreseeable future given the process by which oil is formed. We can explore for, and produce more oil for a while but the oil left in existence is rapidly declining. Whether we have a crisis now or a crisis later (depending on which experts you believe), oil is a dwindling resource. Sure there are price gouging and manipulation isses with OPEC and everyone else involved but one simple fact is inescapable; every day there is less oil left on the planet and eventually we will lrun low, very low.
Whenever there is a fixed quantity of a commodity and demand increases, the price goes up. So, irrespective of all the factors impacting petrofuel prices, they will trend up (maybe oscillate a bit up and down like waves on the water) but in general the water level is rising and little waves don't change the overall trend.
If you don't like the fuel prices, not to worry they will change soon and you will look back on first $3 and then $4 and then $5 and so on as the good old days of cheap fuel.
There is no practical way other than long term replacement of petrobased fuels to control spiraling fuel prices. Unfortunately as a previous poster said we don't really have a energy plan worthy of the name that is being implemented. What we have right now with corn to ethanol is a futile passion play, which goes through some of the motions of what may look to people with attention spans that barely span a sound bite, as if it were the very essence of green energy independence. It isn't. It is politicians buying votes in the early voting states (Iowa, yet another four letter word) and attracting campaign contributions from many of the involved participants.
If you want to steal tax money legally just be willing to kick back a percentage as political contributions to the bozos in Government who help perpetuate the corn to ethanol fiasco and they will vote in higher subsidies and make rules about having to add ethanol to fuel to generate a demand and on and on and on in a veritable cabal of stupidity, greed, malfeasance of office and incredible short sightedness on the part of many participants, enablers, observers, and the ignorant masses.
Pat
