SiG Lady Posted April 3, 2008 Share Posted April 3, 2008 Meanwhile, where are we going and why are we in this handbasket?........ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JimmyZip Posted April 3, 2008 Share Posted April 3, 2008 We just narrowly averted an ethonal plant right in the city of Sparta, WI.The comments above re the Farm Lobby truly representing a coorporate conglomeration are right on. One "farmer" got up to speak at a public hearing, he described his 4,500 acre farm as a "family operation". I do not think that is in the 80 acre league on which my grandfather reared my thirteen aunts and uncles, nine of whom lived to adulthood. Do the math, if the spot price of corn is 2.99 ("Corn spot prices settled today at an average of $2.99 per bushel." (source http://gog2g.com/2007/07/26/the-cost-for-c...-prices-up.aspx )) and it takes a bushel and a half of corn to make a gallon of ethanol the price of straight ethanol is at least 4.49 a gallon. This does not include the cost of the water, and the heat, and also does not include the disposal or sale of waste products. A gallon of fuel is running around 3.12 here. Were it not for the subsidies, ethanol would never be produced for use as a motor fuel. A gallon of gas contains 125,000 BTU, another site Energy contents of gas and ethanol list it as: "A. 76,000 = BTU of energy in a gallon of ethanol B. 116,090 = BTU of energy in a gallon of gasoline C. .655 = 2/3 = GGE of energy in a gallon of ethanol. A / B. D. 1.53 = Gallons of ethanol with the energy of 1 gallon of gasoline. D = B / A." I am not an engineer, just an infantryman in the US Army, but surely looks as though the cost of traveling on ethanol at todays spot price is going to be about 1.53 X $4.49 or 6.86 for that same 116,000 BTU. Man that is some kind of bargain, NOT! In addition the demand for fuel use raises the cost of corn which then raises the costs of all products containing corn. In addition the corn that is diverted to fuel use is then replaced with other grains. So the price of all food products, beef, chicken, pork, milk, butter, and grains like wheat, oats, rice. Worst of all it raises the price of BEER Burning food grains in our cars is stupid, and probably immoral!! +2 Also, if the greenies really want to help they would turn 180 against ethanol! The amount of herbicides and nitrogen-rich fertilizers going into the Gulf as a result of the corn/ethanol debacle is seriously screwing-up the ecosystem of the Gulf. That doesn't even count what it is going to cost to feed people all over the world because the price of corn is going up EVERYWHERE! People in countries far and wide are feeling the effect of this thing and can anyone tell me something good about this program? I don't mind people who are doing business with the planet in mind, I just have a problem when they can't see the forrest for the trees. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChrisStock Posted April 3, 2008 Share Posted April 3, 2008 Michael Carlin, I think you nailed my concerns... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LPatterson Posted April 4, 2008 Share Posted April 4, 2008 Now that the price of crude has gone down why has the price of gasoline gone up another 14 cents in the past 4 days. $3.14 on Monday & $3.28 today just in time to head out 180 miles for this weekends match. Wonder what it will be when I come back Satuday? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Carlin Posted April 4, 2008 Share Posted April 4, 2008 Michael Carlin, I think you nailed my concerns... ChrisStock, Thanks, I heard an aother interesting discussion the other day. It seems that many beef growers are selling off their cattle fearing the cost of feeding them in a bio-fuel driven grain market. Even more telling, is the open source assertion that market prices for vegetable oils will rise even faster due to bio-diesel fuel production demands. No doubt in my mind, the long term effects of bio-fuel on the food markets are NOT going to please the average consumer, nor will they have any desirable effect on fuel prices. Just my opinion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Front Man Posted April 4, 2008 Share Posted April 4, 2008 May 2008 corn is now$6.00. Farmers aren't getting rich, they are simply handling more fiat money. FM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JD45 Posted April 4, 2008 Share Posted April 4, 2008 Does anyone know where to buy gasoline that has zero ethanol? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raz-0 Posted April 7, 2008 Share Posted April 7, 2008 Also, if the greenies really want to help they would turn 180 against ethanol! The amount of herbicides and nitrogen-rich fertilizers going into the Gulf as a result of the corn/ethanol debacle is seriously screwing-up the ecosystem of the Gulf. That doesn't even count what it is going to cost to feed people all over the world because the price of corn is going up EVERYWHERE! People in countries far and wide are feeling the effect of this thing and can anyone tell me something good about this program? I don't mind people who are doing business with the planet in mind, I just have a problem when they can't see the forrest for the trees. Yeah, but then al gore's start-up can sell you carbon credits for sequestering CO2. No, I'm not kidding, that was actually proposed as a means of generating carbon credits for his little company. Not so much in the terms of farm runoff, but by putting the same absic stuff in the water. Read between the lines and looka t the political lobbyists, and you know what it means. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Carlin Posted April 11, 2008 Share Posted April 11, 2008 (edited) I had about 800 miles of driving to do last Monday and Today. As I drive I usually alternate between the FM public radio stations and the AM station that carry political commentator such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and financial analyst Dave Ramsey. Monday's USA Today had an article that my most recent post referred to about the cost of bio-diesel. I heard today that we are importing soy bean oil, "splashing" it with a little diesel fuel to get a 51 cent per gallon subsidy and exporting it to Europe where bio-diesel use has been mandated by the governments. This means that we are subsidizing the European mandated conversion to bio-diesel. Why are we paying taxes to subsidize European bio-diesel? We, the modern western world, burn more fuel than we can convert from grain and vegetable matter (to include soy bean oil) by a factor of many times. If we converted the entire world fleet we would not have enough bio-fuel to burn and we would be starving to death as well. I am not usually much concerned with the socialists' concerns about how America is viewed. However, if I were starving in a third world country and it came to my attention that the west was burning up the world's food supplies; I would be an enemy of this nation instantly. We have succeeded in driving up the cost of corn, and rice to the point that many world-wide will be unable to afford grains to eat. If they could find them, as they are being consumed in the bio-fuel industry. We should have taken the enormous resources that our tax dollars provided to the financiers of this folly and drilled for petroleum in the Dakotas, and in Alaska. It probably borders on criminal to convert to burn food stuffs to fuel cars while people are starving. It is truly idiocy. NONE of this would have happened if it were not for the distortion of the free market that results from a subsidy. Edited April 11, 2008 by Michael Carlin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Harmon Posted May 19, 2008 Author Share Posted May 19, 2008 still not getting any better high prices and lowest quality yet. aarg! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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