Most if not all corn used for bio fuels is not fit for human consumption. That corn is primarily used for feeding feed lot cattle and fattening them up for slaughter. The left over corn waste is often what's used for Bio Fuel.

And if we stopped demanding our grocery stores stock foods from California and South America and elsewhere and we only ate seasonaly and locally trucks wouldn't have to travel as far and fuel consumption would ease. But it ain't gonna happen.

Just sitting around waiting for the next ice age.

In Mexico, people can't afford to buy corn anymore, corn they would normally eat, because it's too expensive, as most of it's going for fuel.

And yes, I eat locally, mostly, and organic, and free range, and all of that. It's one of the greatest things about living on the drive, is that option is there.

FDA's recent estimation is that the increase in biofuels is contributing to about 2-3% of the drastic food inflation of late. Conversely, the USA is consuming something like a million fewer barrels of oil a day.

I'm hurting due to the food crisis too, but we've all got some bullet-biting to do for living for so long in an industrial society. That said: unless we get some hardcore solar power up in this bitch, we're all gonna start seeing some major famines going on here.

My solution: stop driving car, stop paying gross fuel prices!

I like the wind farms, myself.

I love that term. It's like, some time ago, this dialogue happened:

TEACHER: "What do you want to be when you grow up?"
CHILD: "A farmer!"
TEACHER: "And what would you like to farm?"
CHILD: "Wind!"

I agree. The wind farms do pose a slight risk to flying creatures (bird, mammal, and otherwise), but they leave the ground where they stand still able to hold vegetation. This can be used for small free range style farm land, for goats and the like, or left with slightly more bush, to help soak up the heat from the sun, and remove carbon-dioxide from the air.

Studies in the UK showed that while installing wind turbines do cause some initial bird/bat deaths, they quickly learn not to go near them.

Also, what's worse: smog or a few diced seagulls?

What's funny, is that I was on a long roadtrip last summer and I was randomly getting ~10% better gas mileage from fillup too fillup. Turns out that the many of the flyover states don't have requirements on using the 10% ethanol that I was used to in Washington, sometimes having both 10% ethanol and non-ethanol fuel at the same gas station. Each time I was unwittingly filling up with non-ethanol, my gas mileage went up. Each time I filled up with 10% ethanol, my gas mileage dropped back down to 'normal'. Sure, the gas with ethanol costs less per gallon, but the cost per mile isn't any different than from 100% fuel.

And don't point to Brazil's ethanol situation; they make their ethanol out of sugar, which produces gobs more energy than the corn ethanol used in North America. There are so many better things the corn could be used for than ethanol, it's ridiculous.

Food isn't fuel.

Technically, considering that for evey calorie of food energy produced by modern agribusiness, hundreds of calories of fossil-fuels are required, this isn't actually true.

You can draw quite a simple equivalence that shows food to be, in fact, oil. And quite a lot of oil at that.

I think you're arguing something other than what I'm arguing:

My argument is that food for people shouldn't be made into fuel.

You seem to be arguing: "Fuel is food", which is often true, and not the argument I was making. Do I misunderstand you?

Nope, not at all!
I was just (cheekily, I admit) using your fairly open ended statement to pick up on a weird fact concerning both food and fuel and their equivalencies. As it turns out, I agree with your (expanded) statement, and you seem to agree with mine, so it's all good.

If you want to keep going though I'm -pretty- sure I can get to a Soylent Green reference within 2 more comments.

Naw, we're in agreement; I'm good.

Have you seen this?

Food "shouldn't" be engine fuel, is what you're saying, yes?

Well, yeah. It's definitely the case that food is being used as fuel, and that's not something that I think is good for long-term stability.

Y'know, electric cars would be great, if it wasn't for the fact that a) more electric cars = more power plants need to be built to accommodate the new demands; and b) most of the electricity that they need is produced from coal-burning power plants. We haven't reduced pollution, so much as just shifted it from one place to another.

As far as generating power, I think we need to re-examine the supply and distribution of power. At this point, we buy electricity from a company that produces it by one means or another (hydro, nuclear, etc.), but this relationship is all one-way: from supplier to consumer. One idea that I think is a neat one is one where all houses are built with the ability to produce their own electricty via solar-power; that way, they offset what they need to buy from the electric company, and if they have a surplus of power (e.g.: batteries continue to store and collect power while people are at work, vacation, etc.), that surplus can be sold back to the electric company to be redistributed to the larger grid. I don't know how you'd work out the details, such as determining fair prices either way and all the other details - I'll leave that to brains better suited for that kind of work than mine.

My two bits. You might find this interesting, too (http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/16-06/ff_heresies_intro). I've only just started to read the articles, but I'm hoping that there might be something valid to some of these ideas. That's just because I'm closet Wired fan, though.

We haven't reduced pollution, so much as just shifted it from one place to another.

Which is good, because you can control one point-source a whole lot better than a million roving ones.

As far as generating power, I think we need to re-examine the supply and distribution of power...

Also a good idea, and it takes load off the infrastructure, but the power companies can't effectively measure offsets that small (even at the meter, since it's actually possible for power you generate back into the grid to cause more problems than it solves), as they're lost in the error noise of real power distribution data. They're working on that, though, and while it's not the end-all solution, it's one more thing that helps.

Regrettably, solar panels haven't reached the break-even point yet, unless you subsidize them (they're closing in on it, but you can still almost beat them with a good Stirling engine, and it's because power is still pretty cheap). I'm for more nukes, especially the new liquid sodium ones.

I'm fueled by bourbon, does that count?

Actually, I had a beer in my personal tank when I wrote my original comments. I love my job: not only are they completely food-obsessed here (meetings are just an excuse to order in on the company dime), but once a month a staff social is held in the largest board room, complete with more food, and alcohol.

At this point, I'm thinking small scale when it comes to a person's home generating any kind of power. Solar panels, mini wind turbines (heck, I wonder if there's some way to take advantage of all the water that leaves a house as another means of generating power) - it's all good. In order for any of this to actually happen, though, power companies and people need to re-think what power is, how it's generated and distributed, and I think that means finding a new paradigm. We're thinking (in my opinion) on too big a scale; each person's house has the potential to produce at least some power.

Here's a thought or two: what if communities were to band together and sell their power as a group, like a co-op? Or maybe community 'a' could sell any self-generated surplus power to community 'b' if they need it?

It's actually illegal to be electrically self-sufficient in Vancouver. I used to live in a building that had been built to be so. It was fine at first, then the government realized they weren't making any money off that block and came and cracked down.

Edited at 2008-06-29 05:56 pm (UTC)

What?? Please, tell me more - where/when, etc. This seems too ridiculous, even for Vancouver.

Global warming and peak oil are a total scam and a myth.