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Toyota's Bill Reinert says that using ethanol is like "electing the dumbest kid in school as class president". He also calls plug-in hybrids impractical, inferring that Toyota's approach of mild hybrids is the only reasonable approach, in his mind.  (Source: Automobile Magazine)
A Toyota auto exec sounds off with some controversial opinions

Move over Bob Lutz (GM), you have competition for the most outspoken auto executive.  Toyota Motor Sales' national manager for the advanced technology group, Bill Reinert, threw his hat in the ring of the competition for the most outspoken auto executive.

Mr. Reinert let loose at a Fortune conference in Orange County.  He starts by attacking the use of corn-based ethanol in the U.S., commenting, "That's the first law of Disney at work--wishing will make it so. Using ethanol for fuel is like electing the dumbest kid in school as class president."

After giving his opinion on ethanol, he continues to attack a more popular target -- plug-in vehicles.  He complains:

As for plug-in electrics, they're just not plausible right now. Lithium-ion batteries are too expensive by at least an order of magnitude. They're not energy-dense enough. And we generate a lot of our electricity from coal. I don't think Shai [Agassi, of Better Place] is being disingenuous. I think he really believes what he's saying. I see it all the time from those Palo Alto types. They think the whole world is like a computer company, and they're always trying to recreate the dot-com economy. You see exactly the same mind-set with Tesla. It's all going to work out. It worked out with eBay. It worked out with SAP. But transportation is a different world. I mean, Shai's bragging about driving an electric RAV4 with a seventy-mile range. How many of your friends are going to buy that car?

David Shearer, a scientist and entrepreneur who's devoted most of his career to the study of renewable energy comments on Mr. Reinert, "Bill is a futurist.  He's a big thinker, and he always has the larger context in mind. He's a leading light in the energy and next-generation transportation spaces. He's superbright, but he can talk about these things in a way that people can understand."

Indeed, Mr. Reinert's opponents seem to be taking issue with the barbs and not the man himself.  Paul Scott, a founding member of Plug In America comments, "He's a likeable guy.  And he believes in his product. But I think he makes a whole lot of money working for Toyota, and he's going to do whatever they want him to do. His pushing of the fuel-cell vehicle has, I think, delayed the implementation of the plug-in hybrid at Toyota many years. And to the degree that they have delayed the implementation of plug-in cars, they have hurt society and, ultimately, may hurt the company."

Still others will likely take Mr. Reinert's analysis with less patience.  One company that certainly disagrees with Mr. Reinert is GM. GM is launching its first mass-production plug-in, the Chevy Volt, in 2011 and has a large lineup of E85 vehicles on the market.

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Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By porkpie on 7/20/2009 11:19:08 AM , Rating: 5
quote:
""That's the first law of Disney at work--wishing will make it so. Using ethanol for fuel is like electing the dumbest kid in school as class president."


QFT. Corn based ethanol is the worst idea to come along this century, so bad that even the environmentalists that originally pushed it now realize what a colossal mistake it was.

Maybe advanced methods of ethanol production will one day make sense, but the current subsidies should be stopped immediately.




RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By Motoman on 7/20/2009 11:32:08 AM , Rating: 5
Yes.

I'm not even sure that alchohol-based fuels are the way to go at all. Various biodiesels, from things like meat processing leftovers and maybe algae are better bets at this point. Especially in that they don't require dedicated crops of anything, which ultimately is the problem with ethanol.

Any fuel that requires a dedicated crop is pure fail. As for electric cars - he's on the money with regard to batteries, but even if we overcome that, my primary concern has always been the additional load on the power grid. Even if we ramped up nuclear energy all over the place, and had all the supply of "clean" energy that we wanted, I think you'd fry the grid in pretty short order once there was a substantial number of electric cars in the wild. And while it's all just time and money...just exactly how much time and money would it take to do a wholesale replacement of the national power grid?


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By knutjb on 7/20/2009 2:22:51 PM , Rating: 5
Agreed, does that make it a consensus?

Alcohol based fuels have serious issues, they are too corrosive to be pumped through current pipelines so you are left having to haul massive amounts over road, bad idea since you can't see it when it burns in the day time, or by rail which doesn't go everywhere. The actual amount of oil saved by using them is in dubious because they use somewhere between 3/4 to 3 gallons of oils to produce and deliver 1 gallon of alcohol, depending on whose numbers you use, even the best numbers don't look good. Then you have the farm lands being used for fuels instead of food, again a bad idea, last year plant based bio fuel demand went up so did food cost. A gallon of cooking oil doubled in price and has remained there, not a huge problem in western nations, a huge problem in the third world where the cost of cooking oil can be a third to a half of their food budget.

Electric cars, well look at the cities with summer brownouts or winter storms that knock down power lines from weeks to months. The grid has it's own expensive problems before it's a viable solution as environmentalist have been blocking it's expansion.

So here in the US we are sitting on the worlds largest supply of clean burning natural gas that could carry us through our energy transition period but the government refuses to go after it. It's hard to speculate what energy(s) we will end up using as none have proven themselves in the commercial market as a viable replacement for oil.

The manager from Toyota could have used a better analogy but is on the mark technically, as to him being the only big thinker in the auto industry is disingenuous. Ford has been working with electrical power providers to determine the infrastructures ability to handle wide spread viability of plug in hybrids, can you buy one yet? Why put it on the market if you can't plug it in everywhere.

So in the mean time we are moving down the path to criminalizing oil without a viable replacement determined, let alone proven viable, brilliant idea!


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By Danger D on 7/20/2009 2:27:09 PM , Rating: 4
Ethanol is moved through a pipeline in Florida already. The problem with ethanol in pipelines isn't its corrosive quality, it's the fact that it attracts water. That means it dislodges all the garbage built up in traditional oil pipelines. A dedicated ethanol pipeline has no problems.


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By knutjb on 7/20/2009 3:29:01 PM , Rating: 2
FACT you cannot pump ethanol down the same pipeline as petroleum you have to build new one out of very expensive corrosive resistant materials. Nationally that would cost? Also many cars in service cannot handle those fuels without replacing parts in the fuel system not designed for it.

http://www.enewsbuilder.net/aopl/e_article00057093...

http://blogs.edmunds.com/greencaradvisor/2009/01/l...

http://www.sae.org/technical/papers/971648


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By Danger D on 7/20/2009 4:15:54 PM , Rating: 2
I never said there were no corrosive properties in ethanol, I said the corrosive properties were not the reason it can't be transported via pipelines. Your one article addressing this in 2006 brings up the issue, but the fact remains, there is an 85-mile pipeline built by Kinder Morgan since then that is constantly pumping ethanol. So real world experience shows it's being done.


By knutjb on 7/20/2009 5:17:40 PM , Rating: 3
The pipeline you mention was built for alcohol. I was talking about current petroleum pipelines of which there are thousands miles that cannot ship alcohol.


By Keeir on 7/20/2009 4:34:03 PM , Rating: 5
Question though... if we have to build all new pipelines for the Ethanol... doesn't that negate soon of the benifits of ethanol being a "drop-in" replacement for gasoline?


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By Danger D on 7/20/09, Rating: -1
RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By porkpie on 7/20/2009 2:29:50 PM , Rating: 4
Huh? Where did you hear idiocy like this? The net energy gain from gasoline is anywhere from 100 to 1000 to 1, depending on where the oil is produced.

Ethanol is much, much, much worse. It takes huge amounts of energy to grow and harvest the corn, and even more to turn it into ethanol.


By Motoman on 7/20/2009 2:37:35 PM , Rating: 4
No kidding...at best, the energy you get from a volume of ethanol is equal to the amount of energy it took to create it. More frequently, you get less energy out than you put in.


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By Danger D on 7/20/09, Rating: -1
By ziggo on 7/20/2009 5:00:57 PM , Rating: 3
Thats some "Disney math" if I ever saw any, and the authors of a report stating such should be publicly flogged.

The only thing you prove with a ratio calculated like that is that the process is renewable, not that it is feasible or competitive.

Your energy ratio or "gain" is simply the energy produced over the energy it takes to produce. The initial energy contained within the oil does not count into the equation, only what it takes to pump it, transport it and process it. Those are the real energy costs of gasoline. Using the correct method and the numbers you supplied (which are not correct per the reports I found), one could assume that only 10% of the energy contained within the gasoline is consumed during its production, leaving you with a real ratio of 9/1

Any other measure is very misleading and only useful to those with an agenda trying to lead sheep.


By Muskrat Matt on 7/20/2009 5:55:27 PM , Rating: 4
Yeah, that's not right. The EROI was about 11:1 for gasoline in 2000, according to Oil Drum: http://netenergy.theoildrum.com/node/5500

Although, as that article shows, it was much better - 100:1 - in 1930, and the energy ratio has declined rather steeply every year since then. Oil gets harder and harder to extract (tar sands, oil shale will take a larger and larger share).


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By porkpie on 7/20/2009 7:09:38 PM , Rating: 5
The Oil Drum is a "peak oil" fanatic site. You might as well cite the National Enquirer for a story about Elvis still being alive.

The EROEI for oil extracted from deep GoM locations might be as low as 10:1, but the production costs from many MidEast fields are nothing more than a few pennies per barrel in lifting costs - better than 1:1000 ratio.

We could be doing the same thing here in the US, if the enviro nutjobs would let us. There's so much oil off the CA coastline that in places its leaking out naturally just from built up pressure. But of course using that resource is too scary for most Californians, so instead we ship our money overseas.


By Muskrat Matt on 7/21/2009 9:41:04 AM , Rating: 2
Just because you keep saying that doesn't mean it's true. Where are you getting 1:1000? Back up your statements.


By Muskrat Matt on 7/21/2009 9:41:47 AM , Rating: 3
Especially if you criticize my sources. I trust oil drum more than some anonymous person named porkpie.


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By Hacp on 7/22/2009 12:22:24 AM , Rating: 2
Who said you needed to use corn to produce ethanol? If our politicians were smart, we'd be importing our ethanol from Brazil, where its made from sugar cane.


By Pavelyoung on 7/26/2009 12:45:21 PM , Rating: 2
Thats not the point. The point is that its not a workable solution PERIOD!


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By Hiawa23 on 7/20/2009 3:12:10 PM , Rating: 5
makes more sense to me to drill, drill, drill, maybe some nuclear than the whole ethanol thing. Seems like most vehicles use gas so why aren't we trying to produce more of it cheaper instead of just jumping on the hybrid/electricity train or importing from countries that hate us?


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By superkdogg on 7/20/2009 3:57:32 PM , Rating: 3
I agree 100% with your premises but choose a different conclusion.

We need to get away from importing from those unstable nations. That is actually reason #1 to move away from gas because point of fact the US will never meet it's own fuel need and has not done so going back nearly 100 years. We just couldn't drill enough, and even if unlimited reserves from heaven were found in your yard it would be years before enough wells could be drilled to get that fuel flowing into the channels.

The other main reason to move to a source of renewable energy is that whoever does it correctly first will reap the benefits. If it was suddenly affordable to run factories and ship prodcuts, those businesses would be able to make more profits. This, on a grand scale not only puts that country in a very favorable position, but would probably have positive effects on the worldwide economy as the technology was proliferated.


By Hiawa23 on 7/21/2009 8:34:40 AM , Rating: 5
I agree 100% with your premises but choose a different conclusion.

We need to get away from importing from those unstable nations. That is actually reason #1 to move away from gas because point of fact the US will never meet it's own fuel need and has not done so going back nearly 100 years. We just couldn't drill enough, and even if unlimited reserves from heaven were found in your yard it would be years before enough wells could be drilled to get that fuel flowing into the channels.

The other main reason to move to a source of renewable energy is that whoever does it correctly first will reap the benefits. If it was suddenly affordable to run factories and ship prodcuts, those businesses would be able to make more profits. This, on a grand scale not only puts that country in a very favorable position, but would probably have positive effects on the worldwide economy as the technology was proliferated.

I agree with you in the long run but I was talking moreso from my standpoint. My Honda & Mitsubishi runs on gas. Yes, we need to move away from gas, we have needed to move away or produce more of it for decades in our own country, & although I don't believe we can produce enough to satisfy our needs, we can produce or we should have been able to produce more than we do or have over the decades for our own needs & national security. My cars aren't going to magically run on natural gas, or any other substance so for the masses atleast in the short run, there must be some way reduce the cost of fuel while getting these alternatives online, or maybe not. I don't pretend to know the answer, but say what you want about what really brought the economy down, but the wheels really started coming off when fuel prices went through the roof for everyone.


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By TomZ on 7/21/2009 2:59:14 PM , Rating: 4
quote:
We need to get away from importing from those unstable nations
Oh, you mean like Canada, which is the #1 source of oil in the US?

I'm all for moving to different energy sources than oil, but only with the caveat that it needs to cost the same or be cheaper.


By Danger D on 7/21/2009 3:12:31 PM , Rating: 2
We could completely boycott Middle Eastern oil, but it won't make a difference, because it's a world market. If we buy all of Canada's oil, someone else buys from Iran and Saudi Arabia. The only way to make a difference is to use an alternative fuel. That way we're dropping the overall demand for oil.


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By mcnabney on 7/20/2009 4:03:31 PM , Rating: 2
You are not even close about natural gas. The US already imports MOST (albeit from Canada) of its natural gas already. We have a fairly hefy amount, but when you talk natural gas you are talking about Russia and Iran - not our bestest buddies.


By knutjb on 7/20/2009 5:04:29 PM , Rating: 4
You have haven't looked at recent discoveries in the shale fields in Colorado, Shale in northern Louisiana, north Appalachian Plateau,Texas Barnett Shale, Arkansas Fayetteville Shale... There have been many new discoveries that that put our resources well above previous estimates. I watched T Boone Pickens say the US has far more gas than previously thought, more than Iran or Russia, because there are new drilling and in well processing techniques to release the gas from the shale rock. US DOE says recoverable gas supplies to last 90-100 years.

Plus it is the simplest and cheapest vehicle fuel conversions of any viable technologies. Lots of vapor tech out there with lots of potential that cannot be allowed to clutter the real discussion with "what ifs" over practical solutions that don't sound so revolutionary but WILL move us a few steps ahead of our stationary position we are stuck in now.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124104549891270585...
http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewarticle/a...
http://www.oilvoice.com/n/San_Leon_Energy_Announce...
http://oilshalegas.com/fayettevilleshale.html
http://www.bizjournals.com/denver/stories/2005/05/...
http://coloradoenergynews.com/2009/06/new-supply-p...


By MonkeyPaw on 7/20/2009 10:44:58 PM , Rating: 5
quote:
Any fuel that requires a dedicated crop is pure fail.


The other problem is what passes as "corn" today. A very high percentage of corn grown in the US can't be eaten directly by humans (or at least normal humans). The corn either must be turned into such fantastically horrible and artificial things like High Fructose Corn Syrup, or be ground up and fed to cows in high-density feed lots. The kicker of it is, cows can't eat corn (especially the stalks that they are also fed), as it gives them ulcers and would ultimately kill them. I'm not an environmentalist nut or anything, but the corn industry is ass-backwards. If it wasn't government subsidized, it wouldn't even be profitable. And what really sucks is the subsidy perpetuates the poor quality. Our nation has arguable the best and most abundant farmland in the world, yet its citizens eat more fake/processed food than ever. Even something as basic as bread is full of junk like HFCS, bleached (enriched) flour, and partially-hydrogenated oils. Food shouldn't have a shelf life of 5 months. Maybe this sad state of corn is why they want to turn it into fuel, because it's just not good for humans to eat anymore.


By iheartzoloft on 7/21/2009 11:38:22 AM , Rating: 1
quote:
...just exactly how much time and money would it take to do a wholesale replacement of the national power grid?


Not near as much as is spent on war annually.


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By bhieb on 7/20/2009 11:44:48 AM , Rating: 1
I agree 99%. The subsidies should never have been put in place, however these are legitimate businessmen that have put up a good deal of risk based on a set ROI. Even though I wholeheartedly disagree with the subsidies, I also have a problem with simply bankrupting all the plants that legitimately played by the rules and require them to stay in business.

I don't know what the solution is, but I think it would be wrong to just screw them over when their investment clearly relied on at least some subsidies. Need to find some way to make them "whole".

The purpose of subsidies is to push and idea forward out of R&D (arguably here at least WAY before it is ready), to basically guarantee some level of return to get a concept rolling. It would be a very bad precedent indeed to leave the investors hanging with a bunch of failed plants, it makes the next subsidy program that less likely to succeed.


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By Motoman on 7/20/2009 11:50:08 AM , Rating: 5
Subsidy programs are put in place to artificially create/prop up a market where one could not exist naturally.

Those who create businesses based on subsidies do so knowing that they're entering a non-sustainable business in the short term, hoping that they can make breakthroughs that make it viable in the long term.

They didn't. And it's not up to the taxpayer to give a free ride to those investors to bail out of the failed business. It's called business, and it's called risk management. People who fail in business don't automatically deserve a bailout. Current governmental bailout BS notwithstanding.


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By bhieb on 7/20/09, Rating: 0
RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By Fanon on 7/20/2009 12:22:32 PM , Rating: 5
I don't feel sorry for them at all. Any business is a risk, and building a business on a product that isn't marketable and knowingly relying on subsidies to stay afloat is a poor business decision.


By Ammohunt on 7/20/2009 2:11:16 PM , Rating: 1
Now if only Neo-Socialists like Barrack Obama understood this concept.


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By porkpie on 7/20/2009 12:28:40 PM , Rating: 3
What about the companies that are screwed over each and every year, when they have to pay their monster tax bill to fund these subsidies? Or the average joe, for that matter? Shouldn't you feel sorry for them?


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By bhieb on 7/20/2009 12:52:00 PM , Rating: 3
I do feel sorry for all taxpayers, but it is the average Joe that caused this since they elected the moron's in the first place.


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By TomZ on 7/20/2009 12:58:00 PM , Rating: 5
Nobody outside of Iowa and Nebraska elected any politicians for that purpose. We elected them to represent us, but unfortunately we "mere citizens" don't exactly have the same clout with politians as corporate money does in Washington.


By edge929 on 7/20/2009 4:23:44 PM , Rating: 4
Born/raised/live in Iowa. Since the first time I learned what ethanol was/where it came from I've been against it. Take away half of a resource and the other half will go up in price, Economics 101.

Politicians are to blame for ethanol. Scream loud enough in Washington and investors will believe you. Seeing it first hand, it was and always has been a get-rich-quick/ride-the-new-green-wave BS scheme. We only have so much land to produce crops and that land shrinks everyday.

If it makes you feel any better, 3 ethanol plants in Iowa have been closed down in the past few months.


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By MrBlastman on 7/20/2009 1:23:10 PM , Rating: 5
50% of the population has below-average intelligence. It is far easier to appeal to the dumber population than it is to the smarter as they can't see through the BS. Couple that with a few of the above average people actually buying into the tripe that is proposed (or perhaps they actually lean that way when it comes to policy making) and you can clearly see whom you should campaign to in order to win.

Hence, this is why we keep getting "maroons" elected to office.

Sad, but I fear it is true.


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By FITCamaro on 7/20/2009 2:08:01 PM , Rating: 2
I don't think that 50% of the population has below average intelligence. I think at least 50% of the population doesn't apply themselves and actually seek out answers instead of just believing what the media tells them.

I mean look at people's reaction to food scares. A single peanut has salmonella and people go crazy.

But a lack of knowledge doesn't necessarily imply a lack of intelligence.


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By Ammohunt on 7/20/09, Rating: 0
By FITCamaro on 7/20/2009 3:10:09 PM , Rating: 1
Again. Being ignorant is not the same as being inherently stupid. You can fix ignorant. You can't fix stupid.


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By Danger D on 7/20/2009 2:29:34 PM , Rating: 1
Actually, about 49.99 percent are below average, and about 49.99 percent are above average. Only about .01 are right at the average.


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By TomZ on 7/20/2009 3:07:37 PM , Rating: 2
No, see my post below.


By Danger D on 7/20/2009 3:25:07 PM , Rating: 1
True. Sorry.


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By Motley on 7/20/2009 2:38:13 PM , Rating: 2
Well we know which 50% you are in.


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By MrPoletski on 7/20/2009 2:41:35 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
I don't think that 50% of the population has below average intelligence.


think about what you just said...


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By TomZ on 7/20/2009 2:45:11 PM , Rating: 3
I think you're confusing "average" (mean) with "median"...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mean

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median

It's only correct to say that 50% of the population is above the median. You can't say the same about the average.


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By MrPoletski on 7/20/2009 3:47:04 PM , Rating: 3
If you want to be perfect world correct, sure, but in reality 50% have above and 50% below the average when you're talking about IQ, which follows a gaussian distribution (which is symmetrical about the mean), and a sample size as large as a countries population.


By Keeir on 7/20/2009 4:40:51 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
If you want to be perfect world correct, sure, but in reality 50% have above and 50% below the average when you're talking about IQ, which follows a gaussian distribution (which is symmetrical about the mean), and a sample size as large as a countries population.


Wait, reverse that thought. In -Theory- sample sizes as large as a country have a gaussian distribution. Reality can be much different.


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By Spuke on 7/20/2009 4:57:55 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
If you want to be perfect world correct, sure, but in reality 50% have above and 50% below the average when you're talking about IQ
Median and average are not the same thing, period. If you want to expand on the comment, then do so but don't muddy the definitions.


By MrPoletski on 7/21/2009 5:46:10 AM , Rating: 2
I didn't, I merely asked the poster to think about what he said.


By Machinegear on 7/20/2009 2:11:13 PM , Rating: 5
I think you are mixing up intelligence with morality. Most people are perfectly capable, however, they are more often today to be morally bankrupt and vote for people with similar values (or lack of).

Obama, Congress, your local politicians... Once you start trying to inform these people of the situation you soon realize they're not dumb at all; they know what they are doing... they're just a$$holes. The same goes to the electorate.


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By MrBlastman on 7/20/2009 2:33:01 PM , Rating: 3
You can have street-smarts and totally be lacking in book smarts. I think this is what you get a lot of in Washington - and is exactly what I heard coming from Bush's mouth AND Obama's.

Morality is nonexistent in Washington. Just look at Clinton and how he got away with cheating on his wife, never offering to step down (which he should have done). This left a great lasting impression on our youth setting a new moral standard by which many look up to.

A shame really. However, look at that jackhole in South Carolina who's a Republican cheating on his wife and not resigning, or what about Blagovevich(whatever his name is - he should have changed to to Blahblahvevich after all the talking he did).

No, they are all morally corrupt and lacking in one way or another these days it seems. It is either that or their profound assumed sense of morality (aka Bush), completely clouds their minds from thinking logically and with some semblance of thought to their decisions. (Think his stem cell policy for instance).


By Machinegear on 7/20/2009 2:54:05 PM , Rating: 3
I hear ya. It sure is a difficult time to have standards, because our elected leaders sure don't. Everyday listening to the news is just another "WTF" day.

Besides, I believe we are pretty unrealistic to even believe politicians today could be moral. We give so much money, power, and influence to these government positions that they invite corruption; even a good man elected today would succomb to wickedness.


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By TomZ on 7/20/2009 3:01:39 PM , Rating: 4
quote:
Just look at Clinton and how he got away with cheating on his wife...
I don't see why you think he should have quit his job because of his infidelity. The President's job is to run the country. If you want a moral leader, then go to church and admire your pastor or priest. Besides, your morals are not the same as mine, so how could the President be a moral leader for our whole country when our country embraces such a wide spectrum of ideals?


By porkpie on 7/20/2009 3:14:13 PM , Rating: 5
"I don't see why you think [Clinton] should have quit his job because of his infidelity"

I don't think he should have quit because he cheated on his wife. He should have quit because he committed perjury, used his position to coerce women under him into sexual relations, and lied directly to the American people.


By Reclaimer77 on 7/20/2009 3:15:21 PM , Rating: 1
quote:
I don't see why you think he should have quit his job because of his infidelity. The President's job is to run the country. If you want a moral leader, then go to church and admire your pastor or priest. Besides, your morals are not the same as mine, so how could the President be a moral leader for our whole country when our country embraces such a wide spectrum of ideals?


It's not that he had an affair with his wife. It's that he LIED UNDER OATH about it. And he was ultimately IMPEACHED because of this. Are you just ignorant to these facts or are you just stupidly excusing them because you think everyone doesn't have the same "morality"? Last time I checked we all lived under the same LEGALITY, but hey, those never did apply to Democrats either.

Nixon is reviled as the biggest scum bag on earth by 'Libs, but at least he had the decency to step down. What Clinton did was a stain on this nation.

(Tomz, still an idiot)


By TomZ on 7/20/2009 3:36:55 PM , Rating: 2
Sure, I agree with that. But you're talking about something different. The OP was talking about him cheating on his wife. You're talking about purjury. Two different things.

I guess we agree again. So if you agree with an "idiot," that makes you a...?

Maybe you should just stop being a jerk.


By MrBlastman on 7/20/2009 3:26:16 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Besides, your morals are not the same as mine


That has become quite apparent over time with posting on DT. :)

But, you can not deny that infidelity hurts families and creates a harmful image to young minds. Before you say infidelity is not bad, let me remind you that:

a. Two people are married, they promise to cherish each other and remain faithful
b. The act of "cheating" essentially is the destruction of trust between two people (unless they are swingers, and in this case you would not call it infidelity per-say unless you are going by religious texts)
c. Saying cheating is okay is essentially telling your kids that it is okay to lie to your spouse and go behind their back

How are those good examples for your kids? I don't see it.

The president is the prime example for our country that we would want people to aspire to be. Or, are you saying that we should all aspire to be liars, cheaters, backstabbers and not be accountable for our actions? That is what Clinton taught us.

He was impeached, he should have resigned.


By Reclaimer77 on 7/20/2009 3:09:36 PM , Rating: 1
quote:
It is either that or their profound assumed sense of morality (aka Bush), completely clouds their minds from thinking logically and with some semblance of thought to their decisions. (Think his stem cell policy for instance).


Huh ?

Every single breakthrough made in stem cells has been from ADULT stem cell research. Every credible expert on the subject has said adult stem cell research is the best path for moving forward. The myth that Bush hurt stem cell research by banning the practice of harvesting the unborn strictly for this practice is completely unfounded. Bush did NOT bad stem cell research you media puppet.


By MrBlastman on 7/20/2009 3:20:06 PM , Rating: 2
I am no media puppet, I can assure you. While I am against abortion in all practical sense (I'm only for it if the woman was raped or there is a birth defect), I think it is an absolute waste of a potential life if you can not use stem cells from an aborted fetus. At least make their life count for something rather than nothing at all.

Bush did force researchers to find new ways to utilize stem cells - and to be fair we have had some fascinating breakthroughs from this, so it was not all bad.


By porkpie on 7/20/2009 3:23:15 PM , Rating: 3
Sorry Reclaimer, but Bush did hurt stem cell research. He didn't cripple it as some people like to claim, but there's no doubt he slowed it down (and yes, I'm a conservative).


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By FITCamaro on 7/20/2009 3:27:57 PM , Rating: 2
I'll agree Mark Sanford let me down. Politically he's spot on. Great conservative. But he made a bad personal choice and it will cost him any future political career he could have had.

quote:
It is either that or their profound assumed sense of morality (aka Bush), completely clouds their minds from thinking logically and with some semblance of thought to their decisions. (Think his stem cell policy for instance).


What do you think Obama is spouting when he speaks? I didn't agree with Bush's stance on stem cells completely either (certain kinds of research I'm ok with, others I'm not). But on many things he represented the view of the vast majority of the people.

Even though Obama got elected, the vast majority of the country still has conservative values at heart. The vast majority of blacks in America are Christians. As are hispanics. They've just been convinced that the Democrat party is out for their best interests and they should always vote Democrat. Any one of them who looks beyond the hype though can see that the Democrat party has done more to keep the divide between blacks/hispanics and whites and keep blacks/hispanics poor than Republicans ever have.

Republicans try to tell blacks and hispanics to work their way to the top. Democrats tell them to stay at the bottom. They're victims who deserve to be taken care of. And if you still want to go to the top, we'll just put you there out of "fairness". That does nothing but create a culture of dependence and tensions among races.

Hell Barbara Boxer just got her ass handed to her recently when she tried to bring up the NAACP in a discussion about energy. Harry Alfred, head of the black chamber of commerce, expressed that he was offended for her bringing up race in a talk about energy. Like a typical liberal, when a minority disagrees with her, she completely ignores them.


By MrBlastman on 7/20/2009 3:43:09 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Republicans try to tell blacks and hispanics to work their way to the top. Democrats tell them to stay at the bottom. They're victims who deserve to be taken care of.


quote:
Any one of them who looks beyond the hype though can see that the Democrat party has done more to keep the divide between blacks/hispanics and whites and keep blacks/hispanics poor than Republicans ever have.


What do I think Obama is spouting? Pure propaganda, hype and literally hot air. He's full of crap, all the time.

You're right about the racial divide - it is still a tremendous problem in our country and while less apparent than a neon sign like it was in the 50's and 60's, it is a hidden, festering quagmire that is still continuing to divide our country. In many ways, the fact that it is more hidden today makes it worse than it was back then. Plenty of resentment is held and I fear it will take a long time for this to be overcome.


By VultureTX on 7/20/2009 6:57:17 PM , Rating: 2
Speaking of Corn
C.M. Kornbluth - The Marching Morons.
Because stupid people vote alike and wrongly.


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By HrilL on 7/20/09, Rating: -1
RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By Motoman on 7/20/2009 11:54:46 AM , Rating: 5
...you created quite a braintwister here:

quote:
Our farmers that are subsidized anyway can actually turn a profit so maybe we won't have to subsidize them anymore.


...if there was profit in it, there wouldn't be a subsidy.

Your further comments continue to be way off-base. Your last paragraph just hurts my brain.

But on top of that, the idea that it's OK to screw with the American economy, so long as it's Americans doing it, is rather preposterous. Fuel from corn screws up lots of things just within the US economy already, from higher costs of meat (cattle, pigs, etc. rely on US corn production for feed) to lower availability/higher costs of other crops (when you can make 2x money on subsidized corn for fuel, compared with 1x money on, say, wheat, beans, hay, whatever...why would you grow anything other than corn for fuel?).

Fuel from food crops has been, is, and always will be one of the stupidest things that anyone, in any country, could ever do.


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By adiposity on 7/20/2009 12:25:05 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
But on top of that, the idea that it's OK to screw with the American economy, so long as it's Americans doing it, is rather preposterous. Fuel from corn screws up lots of things just within the US economy already, from higher costs of meat (cattle, pigs, etc. rely on US corn production for feed) to lower availability/higher costs of other crops (when you can make 2x money on subsidized corn for fuel, compared with 1x money on, say, wheat, beans, hay, whatever...why would you grow anything other than corn for fuel?).


Don't forget water shortages...


By TomZ on 7/20/2009 1:08:53 PM , Rating: 3
...and jacked-up real estate values in the heartland.


By Starcub on 7/22/2009 7:27:32 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
...you created quite a braintwister here:

quote:
Our farmers that are subsidized anyway can actually turn a profit so maybe we won't have to subsidize them anymore.

...if there was profit in it, there wouldn't be a subsidy.

That's not true. Most commercial farmers make loads of money, in fact they sometimes make a profit purely from subsidies without even growing crops. The reasons for the subsidies are that food is a base commodity that everyone thinks should be cheap, the agricultural lobby is very powerfull, and subsidies enable our agricultural base to compete better in the global market place.


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By FITCamaro on 7/20/2009 12:06:32 PM , Rating: 2
Ethanol does nothing to stop farm subsidies. It has increased it.


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By Danger D on 7/20/2009 2:31:32 PM , Rating: 5
Ethanol increases the basis for corn. Once corn went above the cost of production, price supports were no longer used for most farmers.

It is a little screwy, but your net subsidy is actually less by subsidizing ethanol.


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By porkpie on 7/20/2009 2:46:20 PM , Rating: 2
Not even close. The direct subsidy for ethanol was $7B in 2006 alone, several times what we paid any year for price supports. And that doesn't even count the indirect costs of ethanol, the price we pay in lower mileage for every gallon that goes into our tanks.


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By Danger D on 7/20/2009 3:00:30 PM , Rating: 3
Crop supports dropped by $8 billion since ethanol has ramped up, according to Congressional research.

And the subsidy was about $4 billion for ethanol.


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By Danger D on 7/20/2009 3:03:53 PM , Rating: 3
And I still don't get why people don't consider me paying a farmer in the U.S., who spends his money here, better than me paying a Saudi Arabian. There's economic value. It might be too hard to see the direct benefit, but you can't deny that it exists.


By porkpie on 7/20/2009 7:16:58 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
"I still don't get why people don't consider me paying a farmer in the U.S., who spends his money here, better than me paying a Saudi Arabian"
Easy one. Because with ethanol, you wind up paying BOTH of them. The farmer directly, and the Saudi indirectly as the farmer uses so much oil to produce his corn.


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By porkpie on 7/20/2009 3:05:41 PM , Rating: 2
Ethanol subsidy in 2006 was $7B:

http://zfacts.com/p/63.html

I don't know your "$8B" figure comes from, but I strongly suspect you're lumping in ALL agricultural price supports (not just corn). These supports have been dropping for decades, as the entire program phases out.


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By Danger D on 7/20/2009 3:27:42 PM , Rating: 2
Your number counts the tariff as a subsidy added to the subsidy. But we can use that if you'd like. Ethanol's still a gain.


By Danger D on 7/20/2009 3:50:31 PM , Rating: 2
And that's hardly a "direct" subsidy, by any objective standard. The "direct" subsidy was $2.5 billion, according to your source.


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By Danger D on 7/20/2009 3:31:27 PM , Rating: 2
Wait, no it didn't. Here's the breakdown from your link:

Where did those subsidies come from:
1. 51¢ per gallon federal blenders credit for $2.5 billion = your tax dollars.
2. $0.9 billion in corn subsidies for ethanol corn = your tax dollars.
3. $3.6 billion extra paid at the pump.

That's shaky math at best. I've seen plenty of folks say we saved money at the pump. For instance: "Without the expansion of biofuel production and use in the US, Brazil and elsewhere, world oil demand would increase and so would the price. Merrill Lynch analyst Francisco Blanch told the Wall Street Journal that world oil prices would be 15% higher. At today’s record prices, that would equate to $132 per barrel of oil." http://www.gminsidenews.com/forums/f81/merrill-lyn...

So if you use that figure, ethanol's a serious winner economically.


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By porkpie on 7/20/2009 7:12:37 PM , Rating: 2
"I've seen plenty of folks say we saved money at the pump"

Those people forget that for every gallon of ethanol we buy at the pump, we burn at least 3/4 a gallon of oil to produce it. The net savings is very low (which explains why govt price supports are required in the first place)


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By Danger D on 7/22/2009 11:58:21 AM , Rating: 2
No. There's a 1.8 net energy ratio, so you gain 80 percent energy. And it's fossil fuel inputs, not oil. Much of that is natural gas, which is what powers about 70 percent of the ethanol plants today. A few plants are powered by renewable fuel, like waste wood or landfill gas. More will follow.

Where do you get your numbers? You keep criticizing mine and then spewing out stats with no documentation.


By Danger D on 7/22/2009 12:03:54 PM , Rating: 2
Although how you can dismiss the Yale Journal of Ecology as dumb is beyond me.


By The0ne on 7/20/2009 2:03:29 PM , Rating: 2
I concur. Had been against corn based ethanol. There are many many many people that disagree however and as you said, once they do get the facts in, particularly the environmental factors, they'll realize how bad an idea or rather how unfeasible it is to implement.

Plug-ins are similar but not as difficult. If you're talking about plug-in at home then that would be fine as long as it isn't/doesn't become costly but on the road? What then? The structure and support isn't even there. Then you have people that refuse to even look at one let alone listen to common sense of having a vehicle that doesn't spewing crap rather than one that does, irrelevant of the global warming issues.

I don't think we're ready for the big change. Individually one can be but as a society I don't think we are.


By Kary on 7/20/2009 2:16:42 PM , Rating: 3
Before we subsidized corn to ethanol, we were subsidizing corn production anyway. Paying for overproduction prevented famine...but what to do with the excess...hmmmm, maybe we could use it for fuel and at least have to spend LESS on subsidies.

I haven't looked at the numbers to see that we are paying less, but I do know this is a subsidy we were already paying some of at least.


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By Samus on 7/20/2009 7:14:06 PM , Rating: 1
I don't like Toyota's vehicles, they're kind of boring (especially since their idea of a sports car is the Matrix XRS with 170hp) BUT...

I agree with everything he said.

The concept of ethanol is GOOD, but the implementations have all been piss poor. If they built engines FOR it, not just to be compatible with it (like GM did) then it could yeild more power and competitive fuel economy.

However, the underlying fact is ethanol is made from food, which in my opinion is a straight up violation of human rights. What kind of world do we live in where our cars get to feed before humans do?

Plug-in hybrids, much like hydrogen, need a infrastructure first. Otherwise it'd be like buying blu-ray movies before the players were available.


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By Starcub on 7/22/2009 8:03:16 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
Plug-in hybrids, much like hydrogen, need a infrastructure first.

I don't think infrastructure is the biggest problem. I think the biggest problem would be getting the power companies to increase their capacity to meet peak demand. With most people only driving about 20 miles a day on average, recharging your car to recover lost charge would mean the equivalent of running your average clothes dryer for about an hour and a half. However, everyone who owned a plug-in vehicle would probably plug it in at around the same time: after they got home from work, or dinner.

Unfortunately, it looks like they want to use the stimulus funds to create smart grids first. Smart grids don't increase the capability of power companies to meet peak power demands, they enable them to reduce loads to more evenly distribute power output across the grid in order to avoid supplying peak demand power. In other words, they enable the power companies to reduce costs by avoiding havinging to upgrade their production capacity, and consumers, theoretically anyway, would use less power at high rate periods and more power at lower rate periods, thereby reducing their power bill.

Smart grids could help to power companies to distribute the charging of cars to balance the load better, but only across a relatively narrow ~10 hour period. Granted, this period is within the lowest demand time period right now; however, if everyone owned a plug-in electric vehicle, I think more capacity would still be needed.


RE: Toyota still hiring people with brains I see
By Samus on 7/23/2009 5:08:49 AM , Rating: 2
So getting power companies to increase capacity ISN'T considered infrastructure? sorry, but lol.


By Starcub on 7/24/2009 1:26:38 PM , Rating: 2
In the context in which you used the term (and your choice of analogy), I thought you were referring to charging stations and cable and interface standards: things we don't have yet rather than things we need more of. If we don't first get the additional capacity to drive the additional load, then 'infrastructure' isn't going to help much, and we can use the capacity now.

I'm somewhat concerned that if we give the money to power companies to build smart networks, the consumer might be inconvienienced and not see the benefits as much as they should. I can see power companies pocketing the profits and dragging their feet on expanding capacity as they have been (like the telco's did with the money they got to build high speed networks). This would negatively impact the development of alternative energy sources and electric cars.


By ggordonliddy on 7/20/2009 11:17:58 PM , Rating: 1
Hush! AL GORE DOES NOT LIE! Believe everything he says!


By HelToupee on 7/22/2009 9:25:18 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
Maybe advanced methods of ethanol production will one day make sense, but the current subsidies should be stopped immediately.


On behalf of Illinois, Iowa, and most of Indiana, I'll be telling you that you have no idea what you are talking about, and giving you the finger. Farm subsidies are the only thing keeping food affordable in this country. Subsidies also make sure that farmers are still growing crops for food, instead of dedicating everything to ethanol.

Ethanol is also taxed heavily by the government, too.

think and research before you spew stupid all over the internet.


Truth Hurts
By TomZ on 7/20/2009 11:19:40 AM , Rating: 5
The truth hurts, doesn't it Jason? This guy is right on the money. Ethanol is retarded, and other "advanced technology" vehicles fall short of the mark because they each have at least one major shortcoming, e.g., cost or distance.

Any by the way, every automaker has "ethanol ready" vehicles on the market - that would be all vehicles on the market.




RE: Truth Hurts
By Brandon Hill (blog) on 7/20/2009 11:24:04 AM , Rating: 2
quote:
Any by the way, every automaker has "ethanol ready" vehicles on the market - that would be all vehicles on the market.


The statement has been corrected to say E85


RE: Truth Hurts
By TomZ on 7/20/2009 11:29:58 AM , Rating: 5
I think that GM is doing a good job of aligning with green politics. Good thing considering who they answer to these days.

Toyota seems to better understand where the technology is at and what people want to buy, at least if you look at the context of this article.


RE: Truth Hurts
By omnicronx on 7/20/2009 12:19:20 PM , Rating: 5
Toyota is no better than the rest. While I completely agree with his statements on ethanol, everything else he has said aligns with Toyota's current line of vehicles. I just don't buy it that lithium is a bad way to go, it just seems to me that other companies are now more advanced than Toyota in the field and they are taking the defensive.

Don't get me wrong Toyota has made some great decisions, but completely ignoring other technology was the same mistake GM made 20 years ago. Hybrids were not plausible even 20 years ago either, and look where we are today, it is one of the main reasons why Toyota has become dominant.(Image is everything these days, and right now Toyota certainly has a 'green' image)

While I don't feel that plug-ins are ready for prime time, you have no idea what the world will be like 20 years from now. Good products these days require years of innovation, and if Toyota falls behind in the plug in market, they could be in trouble down the line.

The best case scenario I see is people actually adopting plug-ins which will start to put pressure on the grid, which will hopefully force the government to upgrade the power infrastructure.(hopefully to include nuclear, the way I see it if there is a potential of a major price increase in power, environmentalists will be powerless to stop the creation of new plants, as public opinion will not be on their side.)


RE: Truth Hurts
By porkpie on 7/20/2009 12:27:24 PM , Rating: 1
"completely ignoring other technology was the same mistake GM made 20 years ago"

You seem to be under the sadly incorrect impression that GM went under because it ignored hybrid technology. The facts are that the monster profit margins on GMs gas-guzzling SUVs are the only thing that kept it afloat this long.

GM went under because it sold its soul to the unions. It wasn't just the fact they were paying unskilled workers $74/hour. It was the featherbedding, the inability to fire or discipline incompetent workers, and the hundred other anti-competitive business practices the union enforced upon them. That explains why just a very few years ago, GM was selling more cars than any other company in the word. . . but they were still losing money.


RE: Truth Hurts
By omnicronx on 7/20/2009 1:03:23 PM , Rating: 2
GM workers account for no more than 10% of their revenue, (it's actually around 8-9%) while I do agree unions were a big part of it, you cannot say they were the only reason. The 74$ maximum an hour is also including benefits, that is not their hourly wage by a long shot.

Gm ignored other technologies even when they were the most advanced the the field(see EV1). You also kind of proved my point, they went for the ultra high profit SUV/Gas Guzzler market and ignored other possible ideas because all that mattered was the 'here and now'. Their cars also lacked in quality throughout the 80's and 90's which did not help them.

I'm not trying to defend the unions, I too think they are overpaid, but they were not the only reason for GM's fall from dominance. GM had always been an innovator, and the second they let others ahead in that respect is when their fall from dominance began. The Unions were surely the last blow, but they were not the catalyst.


RE: Truth Hurts
By porkpie on 7/20/2009 1:24:44 PM , Rating: 5
"GM workers account for no more than 10% of their revenue"

But GM workers account for 100% all products built by GM. When you can't fire or discipline incompetent workers, your entire product line suffers. When your union contract prevents you from replacing workers with robotic assembly, quality suffers even more.

"The 74$ maximum an hour is also including benefits"

So? It's still at least twice what an unskilled worker should be paid...even if he was working a full 8-hour day (which most of them weren't by a long shot).

"GM had always been an innovator, and the second they let others ahead [is] when their fall began"

If that's true, why did people buy more of their cars than anyone elses?


RE: Truth Hurts
By omnicronx on 7/20/09, Rating: 0
RE: Truth Hurts
By porkpie on 7/20/2009 2:28:00 PM , Rating: 4
quote:
I'm sorry but how does this differ from say Toyota or Honda?
I love easy questions. Because (a) Toyota and Honda don't have the same union contracts (they're mostly non-unionized in the first place). And even where they are, they never agreed to the monster salaries and anti-competitive job guarantees and shop practices that crippled GM.

The worst part of all was that GM was contractually barred from laying off workers it didn't need. So that meant that GM (unlike Honda and Toyota) couldn't lower production when demand fell. It had to keep churning out millions of cars, then lower the price so that people might buy them anyway. And THAT is what killed their profits.


RE: Truth Hurts
By omnicronx on 7/20/2009 4:27:21 PM , Rating: 3
quote:
I love easy questions. Because (a) Toyota and Honda don't have the same union contracts (they're mostly non-unionized in the first place). And even where they are, they never agreed to the monster salaries and anti-competitive job guarantees and shop practices that crippled GM.

I never said they were the same, I said that both Toyota and Honda are unionized thus they must abide by some of the same rules. My point is you cannot just look at what GM is paying out, but the difference between the two. That is the number where all you guys are claiming is the reason for GM's collapse, which does not make sense in the slightest (as simple math would show us). Toyota workers still make alot of money and still have huge benefits, just not as much as the likes of say GM.

Please show me some numbers where GM can possibly lose billions of dollars just because their worker wages are on average around 20% higher than Toyotas. That means if 10% of GM revenue accounts for workers, even if they were working at Toyotas levels it would still be at around 8%, which is not nearly enough to offset their massive debt. I used to agree with you until I looked at the numbers myself, and GM contracts cannot be the sole reason that the company is failing, its a nice scapegoat, but its not true.
quote:
The worst part of all was that GM was contractually barred from laying off workers it didn't need. So that meant that GM (unlike Honda and Toyota) couldn't lower production when demand fell. It had to keep churning out millions of cars, then lower the price so that people might buy them anyway. And THAT is what killed their profits.
Thank you, i've been waiting for this question. You essentially just proved my point, in order for them to end up in a situation in which they needed to vastly lay off workers to remain profitable, they must have done something wrong to get to that point? A giant loss in market share as a result of inferior products and lack of forward thinking perhaps? I really don't blame the union for asking to have a rule like that in which at the time the company had massive share lead, were raking in massive profits and at the time was one of the most successful companies in the world? Don't get me wrong it has no place in todays market, but at the time it made sense. You cannot blame the union for protecting its workers which at the time were having all of their jobs moved to Mexico.

All of this being said, I still don't believe that their higher salaries or even the inability to fire workers was the reason for their demise, I just wanted to show that if this was the case, it was just an effect of something that was already in motion.


RE: Truth Hurts
By Fanon on 7/20/2009 12:27:29 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
The best case scenario I see is people actually adopting plug-ins which will start to put pressure on the grid, which will hopefully force the government to upgrade the power infrastructure.


The real case scenario is that government will demand we use less energy to make room for plug-in vehicles. In case you haven't noticed, we've needed more energy for years, and we've simply be told "use less".


RE: Truth Hurts
By Reclaimer77 on 7/20/09, Rating: 0
RE: Truth Hurts
By TomZ on 7/20/2009 1:05:56 PM , Rating: 5
Why do you basically agree with me 100% and then call me ignorant? Is that a joke? Or are you ignorant also?


RE: Truth Hurts
By Ringold on 7/20/2009 6:54:40 PM , Rating: 2
Maybe he has a daily aggression quota to meet?


RE: Truth Hurts
By crystal clear on 7/20/2009 12:00:36 PM , Rating: 2
A case of "Junk science vs Sound science"


RE: Truth Hurts
By Motoman on 7/20/2009 12:18:34 PM , Rating: 2
Not really...it's a fact that you can make ethanol from corn. The science is fine. It's just that it's not economically or socially (maybe ethically) feasible.

Junk science would be something like zero-point energy, homeopathy, acupuncture, perpetual motion, etc.


RE: Truth Hurts
By Reclaimer77 on 7/20/2009 12:47:08 PM , Rating: 1
quote:
Not really...it's a fact that you can make ethanol from corn. The science is fine. It's just that it's not economically or socially (maybe ethically) feasible.


Ethanol is still crap compared to good old oil based gasoline though. In every measurable way. Who cares how it's made.


RE: Truth Hurts
By The0ne on 7/20/2009 2:07:58 PM , Rating: 2
Plenty of people care that's why. Keep eating your McDonalds hamburger then, I'm sure the kid that just dropped it on the floor is saying the same thing you had :)


RE: Truth Hurts
By MrPoletski on 7/20/2009 3:43:08 PM , Rating: 2
I wonder what it would taste like if you deep fried a burger in ethanol...

You'd need a pressure cooker of course;)


RE: Truth Hurts
By crystal clear on 7/20/2009 1:09:32 PM , Rating: 2
I implied this-

The terms 'junk science' and 'sound science' do not have an agreed-upon definition or significant currency within the scientific community; they are primarily terms of political debate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_science

Anyway thanks .


Brazil
By Danger D on 7/20/2009 1:11:14 PM , Rating: 3
Brazil has been running on ethanol for years. Has Toyota stopped making cars in Brazil? No.




RE: Brazil
By superflex on 7/20/2009 1:23:07 PM , Rating: 3
It's ethanol produced from sugar cane WASTE. I don't think they subsidize a waste product which was burnt or landfilled in the past.
Sugar cane has about a 9:1 energy in to energy out ratio. Corn is less than 1.


RE: Brazil
By Danger D on 7/20/2009 2:13:52 PM , Rating: 1
Corn has a 1.8 net energy ratio, and sugar cane has 8. Yes, corn is much worse than sugarcane, but it's much better than gas, which is less than 1.


RE: Brazil
By FITCamaro on 7/20/2009 2:22:48 PM , Rating: 3
Uh gasoline is a far better fuel than ethanol. Regardless of what its made of. If it wasn't, you would get better fuel economy, not worse. Even higher compression motors designed for ethanol are this way.

About all E85 is good for is cheap race gas due to the high octane rating. Fuel mileage still sucks though.


RE: Brazil
By Danger D on 7/20/2009 3:06:32 PM , Rating: 2
I'll admit you get better mpg on gas, but in an ethanol-optimized engine, its almost negligible.

I see other factors as making ethanol a better choice.


RE: Brazil
By porkpie on 7/20/2009 3:12:37 PM , Rating: 2
Again, more misinformation. Ethanol contains 30% less energy than gasoline. That's a law of physics you can't get around.

The only "ethanol optimization" you can do is slightly increase the compression ratio due to the higher octane. That might get you 2-3% of that back. It also gets you an engine that can't run on anything but ethanol...and the loss in MPG is still far from "negligible".


RE: Brazil
By Danger D on 7/20/2009 3:21:08 PM , Rating: 2
"06FEB2009 - Detroit, MI - Ricardo today revealed the development of technology that optimizes ethanol-fuelled engines to a level of performance that exceeds gasoline engine efficiency and approaches levels previously reached only by diesel engines. The technology, called Ethanol Boosted Direct Injection or EBDI, takes full advantage of ethanol’s best properties – higher octane and higher heat of vaporization – to create a truly renewable fuel scenario that is independent of the cost of oil. Work on this research project has been carried out at the Detroit Technology Campus of Ricardo Inc."


RE: Brazil
By TomZ on 7/20/2009 3:38:17 PM , Rating: 2
Let's see that move from a single-engine project in a lab to production. Then we'll start to warm up to ethanol. In the meantime, ethanol sucks.


RE: Brazil
By Danger D on 7/20/2009 3:45:43 PM , Rating: 2
Fair enough, but it's a far cry from saying it "breaks the laws of physics."


RE: Brazil
By porkpie on 7/20/2009 7:15:30 PM , Rating: 2
Danger D, your citation in no way claims the increase in efficiency comes ANYWHERE NEAR to making up the 30% difference in energy content between gas and ethanol. They just increased the compression ratio as I said (and BTW that makes for a more expensive engine, as you have to make parts to contend with higher pressures and temperatures)


RE: Brazil
By Danger D on 7/21/2009 2:34:38 PM , Rating: 1
Yes it does. It claims just that.

"... technology that optimizes ethanol-fuelled engines to a level of performance that exceeds gasoline engine efficiency and approaches levels previously reached only by diesel engines."


RE: Brazil
By Danger D on 7/21/2009 2:40:01 PM , Rating: 2
Here's another:

"Wauseon, OH: June1,2009 Time 10am -12noon ---- Horse Power Sales.net, Inc. and HP2G, LLC will officially open the first manufacturing facility for the production and assembly of their revolutionary, 110MPG, V-8, HP2g engine on June 1, 2009 in Wauseon, Ohio.

The facility will be located at 115 West Linfoot Street and will also serve as the companies’ research and development operations center.

The HP2g is a revolutionary alternative energy solution that will reduce the nation’s reliance on foreign oil, and help keep the environment clean. The engine runs on E85, (a green alcohol-based fuel) that significantly reduces green house gas emissions. In testing, HP2g has exhibited ultra-high fuel economy and outstanding horsepower upon demand. The first production vehicle to utilize the HP2g technology will be the Revenge Verde Super Car, a luxury performance super car from Revenge Designs Inc."


RE: Brazil
By Muskrat Matt on 7/20/2009 5:58:51 PM , Rating: 2
Toyota clearly doesn't plan to try this out.


RE: Brazil
By Danger D on 7/20/2009 2:14:53 PM , Rating: 2
And its from sugarcane, not sugarcane waste, or bagasse, although there are efforts to figure out how to do that form of cellulosic ethanol commercially.


RE: Brazil
By porkpie on 7/20/2009 1:26:44 PM , Rating: 1
Brazil also still is a net IMPORTER of oil and gasoline. Ethanol helps in Brazil, only because they produce so much waste sugarcane.


RE: Brazil
By Danger D on 7/20/2009 2:20:33 PM , Rating: 3
Brazil became a net EXPORTER in 2008. Your data is old.


Someone explain to me,
By Cerin218 on 7/20/2009 12:05:16 PM , Rating: 3
How it makes any sense at all to use a food supply as a fuel supply. And then justify why we keep pursuing it even though the products costs more energy and causes more pollution to produce. Alternative fuel research does make sense, but not when the results produced are as poor as ethanol. Battery is not the way to go right now either as he is right, we don't have anything small enough, dense enough, or cost effective enough. Not to mention the fact that batteries take electricity. Where does that come from? A pollution causing power plant. Reminds me a lot of carbon credits, doesn't reduce pollution, just costs more to pollute. It's great to experiment, but we need to understand the results, and to stop following concepts that don't solve the issue.




RE: Someone explain to me,
By Danger D on 7/20/09, Rating: 0
RE: Someone explain to me,
By TomZ on 7/20/2009 1:28:54 PM , Rating: 3
I don't think it is the "main driver," but it was widely reported to be responsible for a lot of the recent increases. E.g., http://money.cnn.com/2007/01/30/news/economy/corn_...


RE: Someone explain to me,
By Danger D on 7/20/2009 2:24:03 PM , Rating: 2
Widely mis-reported, as has been shown by recent analysis. For example, Wall Street Journal (which hates ethanol) said the following: "Well, corn ethanol is off the hook for rising food prices last year, if anybody other than the renewable-fuels lobby is still keeping score.

A new report by the Congressional Budget Office today says higher corn prices from U.S. corn ethanol production accounted for only 10% to 15% of the increase in food prices (as measured by the consumer price index) between April 2007 and April 2008. That was when massively increased corn consumption by the ethanol industry sparked concerns that Americans were feeding their cars at the expense of poor people.

According to the CBO report, prepared at the behest of three congressmen (only one of whom hails from a farm state), overall energy-price increases were a bigger reason food prices spiked last year."

That's 10-15% OF the rise, which was 5%. So ethanol caused your Pepsi price to increase by 0.5-0.8 percent, less than a nickel.


RE: Someone explain to me,
By porkpie on 7/20/2009 2:37:53 PM , Rating: 2
(a) That's 10-15% of food prices in general. It was responsible for more than half the rise in corn prices, for instance.
(b) a 15% rise in a single year from a single bad government program is a HUGE impact on the economy.
(c) That CBO report still concluded ethanol production was a seriously losing proposition, unless gas prices were far lower than they are today.


RE: Someone explain to me,
By Danger D on 7/20/2009 3:19:14 PM , Rating: 2
No it's 10-15% OF THE RISE.

I'll quote it: "CBO estimates that from April 2007 to April 2008, the rise in teh price of corn resulting from expanded production of ethanol contributed between 0.5 and 0.8 percentage points of the 5.1 percent increase in food prices measured by the consumer price index (CPI). Over the same period, certain other factors - for example, higher energy costs - had a greater effect on food prices than did the use of ethanol as a motor fuel."


RE: Someone explain to me,
By TomZ on 7/20/2009 2:40:56 PM , Rating: 2
I'm a Coke drinker personally, and the 2L bottles used to be around $1.00 a couple of years back. Now they are around $1.79 typically. So at least by your example, I think that Coke prices have increased more like 80% in the past two years.


RE: Someone explain to me,
By Danger D on 7/20/2009 4:22:32 PM , Rating: 2
Right, with a nickel of that from ethanol, according to the CBO.


RE: Someone explain to me,
By CigarSmokedByClinton on 7/21/2009 9:55:06 AM , Rating: 2
If the price of corn went up 5% due to ethanol, the cost of producing coke wouldn't go up 5%(ie a nickle/2L) as there are more costs involved in producing coke than the corn (HFCS) costs.

If for example corn input costs were $.30/2L of coke, the 5% increase of corn costs would only push this input cost up 1.5c, which obviously is less than a 5% increase on the entire production costs.


RE: Someone explain to me,
By Danger D on 7/22/2009 12:00:51 PM , Rating: 2
The overall price of food actually went up 5%, not corn. Of that 5%, ethanol was responsible for 0.5-0.8%.


RE: Someone explain to me,
By Ringold on 7/20/2009 7:14:45 PM , Rating: 2
The Economist recently discussed the same issue. Some of your numbers are off; corn prices went up more than 5%.

Anyway, they're rising again. Because of oil? Perhaps, perhaps not. Seems to not pass the sniff test that such a large portion of food production could be shunted to fuel production and result in only that portion of a price rise. I suspect it wont be clear for another 5+ years what happened, if not a decade or more. We're still in the middle of a global economic shock and people, be they at the CBO or universities, are confident they know what happened and the relationships between various variables? I think not. Give it time.


RE: Someone explain to me,
By Danger D on 7/21/2009 9:50:22 AM , Rating: 2
The rise in FOOD prices, not CORN prices. And if ethanol was responsible for $8 per bushel corn, why is it at $3.50 right now and why did it drop to $4 in November (before this year's crop was planted)? We're making more ethanol in the US this year than we did last year, even with some producers idled.


RE: Someone explain to me,
By Danger D on 7/21/2009 9:51:31 AM , Rating: 2
And corn prices have been falling, not rising.


RE: Someone explain to me,
By knutjb on 7/21/2009 1:17:52 PM , Rating: 2
Food, Flint sweet corn, and ethanol, Dent field corn, are two completely different products. You would NEVER eat field corn it has been engineered for livestock feed and is used for ethanol, which will cause livestock price increases as it's demand grows. Food corn prices could go up if farmers plant more field corn instead of Flint sweet.

http://www.ethanol.org/news/index.php?newsid=4
http://www2.kenyon.edu/projects/farmschool/food/co...


Absolutely right about ethanol fuel
By SirKronan on 7/20/2009 11:57:29 AM , Rating: 3
I have friends that own a dairy farm. They used to be able to feed one head of cattle at about 35 cents a day. Last year when I talked to him that figure had increased to 69 cents, virtually double. I asked him why feed had gotten more expensive. His answer? Corn fuel. With so much of it being taken to this absolute WASTE of a fuel source (and being subsidized heavily, more so than the feed market now) the supply available for regular feed has shrunk enough that the prices have almost doubled.

I think plug-in electric vehicles have a brighter future in the long run, however. Our main hurdle for that is the current grid. So much energy is wasted in densely populated areas at night because battery storage systems are only 75% efficient at storing the surplus energy not used. We're doing what we can to adapt, but it would be great if we could store that energy in people's automobiles. Right now that's such a far leap away, though, like he says.

Still, there's where we need to go. The electric engine has a lot of potential, especially if connected to a clean nuclear or hydroelectric power grid. Wind is still a risky venture, but I have seen vast improvements in the coal energy plants' cleanliness. They don't pollute nearly as much as they used to. An upgraded grid with high-efficiency centralized power production facilities makes a lot more sense to me in the long run than buying a bunch of foreign fossil fuel to burn up.




RE: Absolutely right about ethanol fuel
By FITCamaro on 7/20/2009 12:05:25 PM , Rating: 2
So what if we grow the fuel instead (algae, yard waste, other organic trash) and make diesel out of it?


RE: Absolutely right about ethanol fuel
By Motoman on 7/20/2009 12:21:50 PM , Rating: 3
Yup. I'm not convinced that the "algae-farm-in-the-desert" thing may be as much as a closed loop as they say, but it would be infinitely better than fuel-from-food.

The processing of meat-processing leftovers into fuel oil was also a really cool idea that I thought had made a really good POC plant someplace, but then it kind of went silent...so I wonder what those guys are up to anymore.


RE: Absolutely right about ethanol fuel
By MrBlastman on 7/20/2009 1:13:05 PM , Rating: 2
The flaw with the meat processing leftovers is that there is already a use for it - pet food. What would our cats and dogs eat without it?

I would definitely be curious to know more about the algae-oil process. As I understand it right now, you hold algae in a bag/tank etc., sun shines on it, it craps out oil. I would assume that you need to expend some other resource to contribute to the oil chain - i.e. it doesn't just all come from the photosynthesis - such as water or some other substance, but - I am not sure.


By Motoman on 7/20/2009 1:29:26 PM , Rating: 2
There's stuff they don't use for pet food. That stuff works just fine for biodiesel.


By alexfenway on 7/22/2009 10:57:11 PM , Rating: 2
Wait isn't the dry food made of grain?


By Danger D on 7/20/2009 1:08:07 PM , Rating: 2
Hey, don't feel any more sorry for dairy farmers. We subsidize the heck out of them.


RE: Absolutely right about ethanol fuel
By japlha on 7/20/2009 3:59:30 PM , Rating: 2
Shouldn't be feeding corn to cattle anyways.
Grass fed beef is much healthier.


By Motoman on 7/20/2009 4:15:18 PM , Rating: 2
...but much skinnier. Hence, why we feed them grain.


Responses
By Wererat on 7/20/2009 12:22:29 PM , Rating: 2
1. Ethanol has a lower energy density than gasoline and has to be kept away from water, so long-distance transport is tricky. Corn kernel-based ethanol is a losing idea.
However, locally generated ethanol based on the waste products (corn stalks, cobs - search 'cellulose ethanol') is a winning plan.

2. Trashing electric cars because we use coal is dumb. Firstly, centralized generation of electricity is more efficient than having millions of little energy converters (aka combustion chambers) driving about, so getting all worked up about coal is a 1970s-era panic. Secondly, shouldn't a futurist be able to conceive of an America running on nuclear power, free from slavery to foreign oil producers? Hmm.




RE: Responses
By walk2k on 7/20/09, Rating: 0
RE: Responses
By porkpie on 7/20/2009 12:48:17 PM , Rating: 3
I commute less than 70 miles a day and there is no way in he** I'd ever buy a car with a 70 mile range. Or one with only twice that even. I'm not going to rent a different car every time I want to take a weekend trip or visit the folks.

Oh, and you're wrong about hydrogen fuel cells also. Large scale production of hydrogen would use steam reformulation, heat dissociation, or any number of methods more efficient than direct electrolysis.

quote:
What a moron
Don't be so hard on yourself.


RE: Responses
By Motley on 7/20/2009 2:52:51 PM , Rating: 2
Perhaps you would not, but I would. But then again, I already own more than one car.


RE: Responses
By walk2k on 7/20/2009 2:55:33 PM , Rating: 3
So all your machines that create hydrogen run off farts and sunshine then? Pull your head out.

Seeing as there's none available yet the "nobody will buy these" statement rings a little hallow.. the market will decide that, WHEN they are available. I personally know many people who would buy one, these are people who commute 35-40 miles 1-way (don't forget you can charge it at work, using solar-powered carports even) Just because YOU won't buy one doesn't mean nobody will - MORON.


RE: Responses
By porkpie on 7/20/2009 3:09:11 PM , Rating: 1
"So all your machines that create hydrogen run off farts and sunshine then?"

No, but it means they don't run on ELECTRICITY. Which is what you originally tried to say.

"Just because YOU won't buy one doesn't mean nobody will "

No, but it means your original statement, that everyone who commutes less than 70 miles a day will buy one, is wrong. Sure a few might consider one, but most won't.

I'm sorry to pummel you so relentlessly, but when you can't tell a fact from shinola, you have to expect this sort of thing.


RE: Responses
By walk2k on 7/20/2009 12:45:38 PM , Rating: 2
Also, corn isn't the only way to make fuel. There are serveral other crops/plants that are many times more efficient and don't compete with food crops.


RE: Responses
By joex444 on 7/20/2009 4:00:17 PM , Rating: 2
First, we must establish what the goal of alternative fuels actually is. Is it simply to not use oil, or is it to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases?

Ethanol isn't oil, but per mile pollutes more than gasoline does. Diesel actually is cleaner than gasoline, and gets fuel efficiencies much higher than ethanol or gas. Simple fact of the matter is ethanol has a lower energy density than either of these oil-based fuels and has its own set of problems to deal with. We should abandon ethanol now, yesterday in fact. Brazil can make it work because they end up with more energy than they put in; corn is a losing situation and only has hurt food prices. Serious moral issues there. Cellulose waste won't harm the food economy, to be sure, unless farmers start planting grass instead of food.

Trashing electric cars now is a good idea. They are too early for our time, we need to improve the battery situation. Also, keep in mind that the Li supply is limited and most of it is in foreign countries (which would make Li the new oil, we're still attached to a foreign entity). Some electric cars now can be supported, but it is far from ready for mass production or commonplace ownership. I have little worry about "the grid" supporting everyone's cars in most places. I believe they draw about 10A, which is equivelant to everyone buying an air conditioner. Also, most people would charge during night when its off-peak power being used, which is not only cheaper for the consumer but more plentiful and less likely to create a brownout or rolling blackout.

We do need nuclear power, its the only clean way to make electricity. Its really not scary, and why we decided not to make any plants in the last 35 years is beyond me.

What he was talking about instead of these two energy sources was a hydrogen fuel cell. First, hydrogen is not a fuel. It is merely being exploited as a way to carry energy from point A to point B. All you do is split apart water with electricity, from nuclear plants preferably, store the H2 and O2 molecules away from each other in two separate tanks. When you hit the accelerator pedal, the car combines these two molecules, you produce water and get out a bit of an EMF. This in turn drives an electric motor. Instead of batteries, you have hydrogen / oxygen. The upside is you don't need Li, and its cheaper to produce. I believe you can get a further range on it, and it weighs less than Li battery packs which of course helps to increase the cars range. But do not believe a hydrogen fuel cell is any way to get more energy out than you put in. In fact, you are going to lose on this deal. The difference is that with nuclear plants in place you are doing it without any greenhouse gases whatsoever and this would be the greenest alternative that would be completely abundant. Ultimately, we need nuclear plants. Electric cars shouldn't really be available en masse until we have that figured out. Until then -- hybrid diesel.


Status quo
By Danger D on 7/20/2009 2:34:18 PM , Rating: 1
Toyota has figured out how to be successful under the current arrangement. Any alternative fuels will throw a wrench in the works. They would like things to remain as they are.




RE: Status quo
By TomZ on 7/20/2009 3:06:26 PM , Rating: 2
I don't interpret what he says in the same way. I think he is calling a spade a spade. He calls out ethanol for the sham that it is, and he is saying that battery technology isn't yet to the point to be able to build vehicles with widespread appeal.

I think the problem really is with the people that are in denial...

And I have to ask, you seem to have a lot of strong opinions and "facts"...but you also seem to be wrong with most of them, at least what you're stating in comments to this article. Do you work in the energy industry or something? You seem highly biased.


RE: Status quo
By Danger D on 7/20/2009 3:11:51 PM , Rating: 2
I live in a corn state and I have a lot of relatives who farm. I care a lot about this subject, so I make it a point to stay very well informed.

However, I like Daily Tech and comment about lots of stuff. Admittedly I'm more knowledgable about ethanol.

What facts are wrong, by the way?

I see ethanol as an industry with a lot of potential. I think it's gotten the shaft because it's butting heads with some powerful folks. Yes, it has Big Ag on its side, which is very powerful. But it's also going up against the Big Oil, Big Food and the automakers who have been stuck doing the same crap for years. They have a lot of pull and they fund a lot of research, and no one reports their sources.


RE: Status quo
By porkpie on 7/20/2009 3:21:58 PM , Rating: 2
" Yes, it has Big Ag on its side, which is very powerful. But it's also going up against the Big Oil"

But ethanol ISN'T going against Big Oil. It takes nearly a gallon of oil to produce a gallon of ethanol. Ethanol is almost as good for the oil companies as is direct gasoline sales.


RE: Status quo
By Danger D on 7/20/2009 3:52:27 PM , Rating: 1
1.8 net energy gain. I found the research January Yale Journal of Industrial Ecology. Peer reviewed and published in an obviously creditable publication.

http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/1216471...


RE: Status quo
By Danger D on 7/20/2009 3:15:44 PM , Rating: 2
This is my favorite topic to debate, so I'm spending way too much time here today.

On this point, we may agree: I do support dropping subsidies for ethanol (something the ethanol industry might not support).

Although I think all energy options should have their monetary support dropped.

And here we probably disagree: I think that once we pull out of the Middle East, we'll save billions every year from decreased military costs. At the same time, we'll have to pay more for our oil. Under that scenario, ethanol will be a clear winner, having only suffered about a $0.50 per gallon price increase from the dropped subsidies.

And truly, the Arabs won't care as much about hurting us if we don't care so much about securing their oil.


RE: Status quo
By Starcub on 7/22/2009 8:27:31 PM , Rating: 2
quote:
He calls out ethanol for the sham that it is, and he is saying that battery technology isn't yet to the point to be able to build vehicles with widespread appeal.

While I agree with him about ethanol, his statements on plug-in hybrid vehicles being a pipe dream are simply false. His only valid point I think was that we would be burning more coal to generate more electrictiy. However, this would have to be compared to the pollution that would have been generated by the ICE's the hybrids replaced.


Deer mR. Rienhart
By drewsup on 7/20/2009 12:08:11 PM , Rating: 2
I r very mad at korn, and is way dummer than korn too. Stop comparin me to korn!

Thank U

yur local class idiot




RE: Deer mR. Rienhart
By FITCamaro on 7/20/2009 12:55:42 PM , Rating: 2
Now in ebonics please.


RE: Deer mR. Rienhart
By MrBlastman on 7/20/2009 1:06:08 PM , Rating: 5
I gots to be real mad at the corn, brutha. Word. Dat corn is smart, G. Cut me slack, jack, you be trippin dreamin I be like the korn.

Props.


RE: Deer mR. Rienhart
By Spuke on 7/20/2009 7:06:08 PM , Rating: 2
Ethanol is the Choice for NOW
By Shinobisan on 7/20/2009 4:18:08 PM , Rating: 1
So many people easily say Ethanol is a bad choice without knowing any science. Calling names and unjustified attacks are all too easy to make.

Bill has some great reasons why an Electric car is just not feasible today. But he has no real substance against Ethanol.

The truth is that Ethanol is a great choice because, unlike Electricity, it is available for use in quantities we need right now. Today.

We can burn Ethanol in our current engines, so bringing it into the fuel supply has been easy.

We can make all the Ethanol we need AND grow our food at the same time - proven true after all the hype from 'big food' tried to take Ethanol out last year.

We can displace 10% of our oil with Ethanol - we currently are doing just that. Consider what it would take to import another 10% foreign oil. That alone would boost the price of gas up by a very large margin.

We can displace even more oil - our cars can run on 20% or more Ethanol - easily proven as fact. And with flex fuel vehicles - that cost a whole $120 more than standard - we can increase that to 85%.

AND we can do all this and remain green.
That's right, not many people have the nerve to say it, but Ethanol is green!

The oil industry funded the fake "science" of "Indirect Land Use" for the express reason to take down Ethanol (because they lost 10% of their market). Indirect land use is a farce. All actual scientific studies show that it is not true. It tries to say that for every acre of corn we plant in the US, an acre of rainforest must be cut down to grow food in Brazil. That's like saying that if you eat chinese tonight, a family in China will go hungry for a day. The two are not even connected. In fact, as Ethanol and other biofuels have experienced such tremendous growth, the deforestation rate in Brazil is at its lowest. The two are unrelated.

[sorry so long... there's just so many myths out there about Ethanol... thanks for reading!]




RE: Ethanol is the Choice for NOW
By TomZ on 7/20/2009 5:27:48 PM , Rating: 3
That's a long post - I'll just make a couple of points.

1. It's laughable to imply that increased use of corn to produce ethanol is not going to decrease food production and increase food prices. The fact of the matter is that corn-based ethanol production has increased significantly over the past decade, and each acre of corn planted for ethanol production has an opportunity cost of one acre of corn or some other crop used directly or indirectly for food production. (Unless you're arguing that corn for ethanol is only being grown on "new" farms which is even more silly.) And there is no escape from basic supply-demand dynamics that tell us that less food produced also raises its cost.

2. You also fail to mention that ethanol has a higher cost per gallon than gasoline, and that it has also has a lower energy density than gasoline. What a double whammy! These really are the primary reasons that few people would choose ethanol if it was not forced down our throats by government regulation. In other words, if the regulation were to disappear tomorrow, probably 99% of ethanol demand would also disappear.

I'm all for farmers making a living, but ethanol is a get-rich-quick scheme which pits farmers and ag-business against consumers. It uses government regulation to forcibly extract extra profit from consumers by effectively making them buy something they don't want.


RE: Ethanol is the Choice for NOW
By Muskrat Matt on 7/20/2009 6:08:51 PM , Rating: 1
1. Corn is $3.50 per bushel. There's 56 pounds of corn in a bushel. That equals 6.3 cents for a pound. It's feed corn for cows and its used for corn syrup.

Clearly there's an impact, but it's not very much. If whatever product you use had a whole pound of corn in it, prices could double and you'd only spend an extra 6.3 cents.

2. It's more expensive, but it's an alternative fuel. It makes sense that we've traditionally used the cheapest thing possible. That's kind of a "no duh". The point is that gasoline has had a lot of negative consequences for the U.S. (war, CO2 emissions, etc.) so we need to find an affordable alternative. It might not be cheaper than what we've got, but it's pretty close, all things considered.

I'd argue it pits farmers against petro-dictators, not consumers.

If you really want a free market, make all engines flex fuel. That way the consumers could actually decide at the pump if they want ethanol or gasoline. Right now most of us are stuck with 90 percent gas, regardless of what we want to use. I hope to get a flex fuel vehicle next time I buy, but options are limited on my limited budget for used cars, unfortunately.


RE: Ethanol is the Choice for NOW
By TomZ on 7/20/2009 6:38:19 PM , Rating: 3
quote:
If you really want a free market, make all engines flex fuel
The market is already free in that sense. Manufacturers are free to make their vehicles tolerant of ethanol, or not. If more people demanded that, more manufacturers would implement it.

I agree there might be some market for ethanol, as long as it cost - and was priced - lower than gasoline. If the government would stop meddling in the market, we might be able to find that equilibrium.


By whiskerwill on 7/20/2009 10:56:05 PM , Rating: 2
Since the planet has been cooling for the last 11 years, tell me again why you think CO2 emissions are a bad thing?


He's attacking CORN based ethanol
By Fraggeren on 7/20/2009 12:22:20 PM , Rating: 2
It seems most people don't know about second generation ethanol , which is made from waste and residues, it should be available next year, and is also more efficient.

Maybe the quote is taken out of context!?




RE: He's attacking CORN based ethanol
By TomZ on 7/20/2009 1:05:11 PM , Rating: 2
Does "second generation ethanol" still have the following drawbacks?

- Lower power density than gasoline
- Market made by subsidies (taxpayer dollar handouts)

If so, I'm still not interested.

But since the government mandates minimum ethanol content in all gasoline in many areas, I guess I have no choice. So much for freedom.


By Motoman on 7/20/2009 1:49:03 PM , Rating: 2
Although you already know this, I'll point out that as a requirement of physics, ethanol has a lower power density than gasoline.

Also, I think the odds for a market-driven-market for any ethonal-based fuels is as close to zero as one can get.


GM
By rvd2008 on 7/20/2009 12:07:27 PM , Rating: 2
"One company that certainly disagrees with Mr. Reinert is GM"
Volt is nothing but a green PR. It is an expensive low volume 4 seater for rich adult kids. Will solve nothing. Bob Lutz recently was very cold on Volt, and he actually in considered a farther of the damn thing. You could read how fanatics are pissed off at gm-volt.com




RE: GM
By FITCamaro on 7/20/2009 12:11:10 PM , Rating: 2
I think the Volt is a good car. But yes it does nothing to prove the viability of a plug-in lithium ion powered hybrid in the marketplace. It will largely be purchased by the wealthier middle class looking to get a vehicle and the tax credit.

If it was cheaper I'd consider one as a commuter vehicle (assuming I was in the market for a vehicle). But at $40,000, you can buy a much cheaper car that gets 30-35 mpg and spend the $15-20,000 saved on gas for the next 10 years or more.


The grain of salt
By djc208 on 7/20/2009 12:19:38 PM , Rating: 2
I really don't understand where the ethanol cool-aid comes from, but somones been drinking a lot of it. It's probably the only place it has any right to be in.

That asside:
quote:
One company that certainly disagrees with Mr. Reinert is GM. GM is launching its first mass-production plug-in, the Chevy Volt,


Mass-production is a bit of a misnomer I think. There will be an assembly line for these but like the Prius they will not be available in massive numbers or at a price point which will make lots of people cross-shop it with other cars in this size class for a few years yet. The only reason Toyota has discussed offering a plug-in Prius is because they know most of the sales the Volt will get are people who would have bought a Prius.

Everyone else will go spend the same $40K on a bigger more powerful car or truck.




RE: The grain of salt
By porkpie on 7/20/2009 12:36:21 PM , Rating: 2
"I really don't understand where the ethanol cool-aid comes from"

Simple. Dumb-a** envirowhackos originally thought it would be a good idea. They wised up long ago, but not before huge corporations like Archer Daneils realized they could make billions off it. (ADM was one of the original funders of the "grassroots" environmental groups that lobbied for ethanol mandates)

Now ethanol is just a way to turn corn directly into votes in the Iowa primary. Farmers see it as guaranteed cash, and its going to be exceedingly difficult to ever kill.


Way to Fail, Mick
By clovell on 7/20/2009 12:24:19 PM , Rating: 2
Toyota's stance has nothing to do with GM. GM has no plans to produce a PEV - NONE.

What GM is producing is a Plug-in HYBRID Electric Vehicle, with a range of ~400 miles, and less moving parts than Toyota's Synergy Drive.

Ergo, /controversy.




RE: Way to Fail, Mick
By johnsonx on 7/21/2009 11:46:17 AM , Rating: 2
hey, what do you want? It's Mick... everything the guy writes is at best sorta-kinda related to the real story.

What worries me is the article about the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing was written by Mick. If Mick says Apollo 11 landed on the moon, then maybe we didn't.