Re: OT: Inflation in the US

On Sun, 20 Jan 2008 09:13:02 -0800, John Smith
<assemblywizard@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

default wrote:
On Thu, 17 Jan 2008 19:15:38 -0500, krw <krw@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Food is incredibly cheap in the US.

That is changing rapidly right now. Double whammy lots of corporate
aid to Archer Daniel Midlands to make ethanol will take corn from the
feeds to animals and it is in 90% of packaged food now.

The double whammy comes in when it costs more to mine fertilizer,
transport feeds and chemicals, then transport the product to market
and keep it fresh with refrigeration.

Cheap food is something we will be looking back on in 6 months or
less.

In the 70's I briefly worked for the ag chem division of occidental
petroleum corp. Urea came from one of the handful of ammonia reactors
in Russia. Phosphates, sulfer and other import fertilizers came on
large ships into the port of stockton from various other countries.

Now with the BAD trend to run food through our gas tanks--someone is
going to get mighty hungry! I am afraid there IS doom and gloom down
that road ...

Hydrogen cars make me laugh also, there are NO hydrogen wells! And, the
cost of burning fossil fuels to generate electricity to make hydrogen
is a lossy practice. Claims of efficient hydrogen fuel cells "just
around the corner" abound--but then so do rumors of perpetual motion and
zero point energy.

I am afraid it is difficult to draw pretty pictures and fool me ... if
only ponds and fletcher had come through ...

Regards,
JS

I was rolling around laughing to the Pretzel's "Hydrogen Future"
speech. I wonder if he actually believed that stuff and who the hell
is his science advisor? "Most plentiful fuel in the universe"

Today it is ethanol. Now if they could actually turn cellulose into
alcohol that might change things. So far, except for saying it had
been done in a laboratory, there's no such thing as a cellulose
fermenter and no economically viable process out there.

Why take a food crop if your intent is to produce fuel? The logical
way would be to determine what crop would yield the most alcohol for
the least expenditure of resources, that will grow on the land
available. Is corn that crop?

If cellulose could be made to work, why all the hype about using the
corn stalks? Why not just use waste wood, leaves, bark, paper, and
cotton?

I'm guessing that it would serve us better in the short and long term
to increase efficiency in the way we use fuel, instead of trying to
sustain our wasteful habits.

I guess it all boils down to what lobbyists find attractive.
--
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: battery pulsing gizmo
    ... from wasting.....an awful lot of hard earned corn. ... the same as wood, fuel oil, natural gas, and cheaper then electricity. ... like instead of making feeds out of the stuff we could eat ... the food chain than a wild salmon normally diets on. ...
    (rec.motorcycles.tech)
  • Fidel Castros Concerns about Food vs. Biofuel Widely Covered
    ... danger posed to humanity by using food crops such as soybeans and corn ... fuel production. ... that large-scale production of ethanol as a fuel would jeopardize food ...
    (soc.culture.cuba)
  • Re: Benazir Bhutto - the reality.
    ... And we haven't even begun to reach our maximum food output. ... food crop...but that is the same as corn being grown for fuel. ... What does the Lemon grass do to the soil? ... I had never heard of turning Lemon grass into fuel until you posted it. ...
    (soc.culture.scottish)
  • Re: battery pulsing gizmo
    ... I read an article recently where they estimated the petroleum cost of fertilizers, transport, distillation etc to make 10 gal of ethanol from corn was I think about 8 gal. ... Do this freaking idiots expect us to believe we needed 24,000 gals of gas to bring those crops in? ... The initial price of the furnace is MO high, but the operating costs are about the same as wood, fuel oil, natural gas, and cheaper then electricity. ... like instead of making feeds out of the stuff we could eat less meat and get use the resulting surplus of things like corn stalks for a feed stock. ...
    (rec.motorcycles.tech)
  • Re: HFCS and cane sugar
    ... Use the corn for food. ... Use the corn STALKS for making fuel. ... If you use the corn for food instead of fuel, you need to plant double the ... If the land is not available, you still run intot he same ...
    (rec.food.cooking)