Interesting. I like ethanol production from perennial native gases and biomass. Natural gas like any other fuel has some problems in extraction also. Lots of ranches and farms are being ruined outwest by gas extraction ... by companies that own the mineral rights but not the surface ... where the farm is. No easy answers.
FC, it is a complicated issue, no doubt about it, but I truly believe that we can't afford to grow our energy the way we are doing now. As Dino says in comments after the post...there are only so many acres available on earth. If we are growing energy on an increasing portion of them, where do we grow the food? And we need to engineer cars so they run on the darned stuff if we are going to be forced to use it. My 2003 doesn't. We have to put more dry gas in per tank than I ever imagined before they started raising the percentage. Besides my poor car, my personal involvement in this is (besides grocery prices, which are set to spike dramatically) feeding the cows. Corn is an important part of their diet. Grain bill has gone from around eight hundred dollars just a couple years ago to sixteen hundred. (And at that we have cut usage and quality a lot.) Guess what the price of milk, which we do not get to set, has done in that same time frame. If we must burn ethanol and we must grow the ingredients on traditional food-producing crop land, then at least the government should let it pay its own way. Everybody whines about farm subsidies. Well, ethanol is absurdly subsidized too. There, off my soap box now.
Interesting.
ReplyDeleteI like ethanol production from perennial native gases and biomass.
Natural gas like any other fuel has some problems in extraction also.
Lots of ranches and farms are being ruined outwest by gas extraction ... by companies that own the mineral rights but not the surface ... where the farm is.
No easy answers.
FC, it is a complicated issue, no doubt about it, but I truly believe that we can't afford to grow our energy the way we are doing now. As Dino says in comments after the post...there are only so many acres available on earth. If we are growing energy on an increasing portion of them, where do we grow the food?
ReplyDeleteAnd we need to engineer cars so they run on the darned stuff if we are going to be forced to use it. My 2003 doesn't. We have to put more dry gas in per tank than I ever imagined before they started raising the percentage.
Besides my poor car, my personal involvement in this is (besides grocery prices, which are set to spike dramatically) feeding the cows. Corn is an important part of their diet. Grain bill has gone from around eight hundred dollars just a couple years ago to sixteen hundred. (And at that we have cut usage and quality a lot.) Guess what the price of milk, which we do not get to set, has done in that same time frame. If we must burn ethanol and we must grow the ingredients on traditional food-producing crop land, then at least the government should let it pay its own way. Everybody whines about farm subsidies. Well, ethanol is absurdly subsidized too. There, off my soap box now.
That is way I feel about using corn to burn in a heating stove.
ReplyDeleteLinda
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