Ethanol Subsidies

[Guynemer]

Please, let's end this ****...

The Great Corn Con

Until Iowa no longer has disproportionate power over national elections, you can file this under "no ****ing way."

[Tupac Shakur]

**** Iowa. **** New Hampshire. National primary.

edit: Actually **** the national primary. Rotating regional primary, without the exemptions for Iowa and New Hampshire.

[Hauldren Collider]

**** Iowa. **** New Hampshire. National primary.

edit: Actually **** the national primary. Rotating regional primary, without the exemptions for Iowa and New Hampshire.

I like this plan. I think the Pacific coast, Alaska and Hawaii should be separate from the rest of the West, however. That might be too many regions, however.

[Tupac Shakur]

The Delaware Plan is also interesting. Hadn't heard of that one before.

[dannubis]

Last time I checked we pay hefty taxes on it...

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

The OP article alludes to but doesn't specifically make the case. In gerneral, partially oxygenated fuels such as alcohols hold inherently less BTU value then non-oxygenated hydrocarbons, thus combustion of these fuels means less energy liberated (for the same approximate chain lengths) for the same level of CO2 generated. The article make mention of the cost of producing alcohol and energy required to create a gallon of ethanol, but even discounting the production/distrbution costs the fuel itself is not as efficient as standard grades of gasoline.

Also doesn't show the deletrious affects of higher alcohol concentrations on internal comhustion engine componentry (changes in lubricity, affects to gaskets, seals soft part wear etc.).

All in all ethanol was meant for human consumption not combustion.

[MikeH]

Jersey isn't a tax haven at all...New Jersey's taxes are relatively high. You're not thinking of Delaware are you?

EDIT: Oh, do you mean the Jersey no one cares about, off the coast of france?

This is an Alby style post. Just FYI.

[Hauldren Collider]

I didn't know of an island called jersey until I wikipedia'd it, I had always assumed Jersey was a city in the UK like York and Hampshire.

[MikeH]

Yeah, you added an insult in response to something you hadn't heard of before, so it was an Alby.

[Hauldren Collider]

Alright, fair enough.

[Kuciwalker]

Dude, didn't it occur to you for even a moment that the state is named New Jersey?

[Dinner]

And, for Oerdin's benefit, let me point out that the linked article is actually an opinion piece. I doubt he'll care in this case, however, given that it's from the left-leaning New York Times and probably doesn't disagree with his own poorly-formed opinion.

I've been anti corn based ethanol for years and posted several times here that it is a complete waste as it takes more oil equivalents to grow the corn and process it into ethanol then we get back in oil equivalents using the ethanol. In short, it does nothing to make us more energy independent and is instead simply designed to funnel money to special interests while increasing corn prices by inflating demand.

[Dinner]

Agreed. The same could be said of other subsidies, in cotton for example.

By the way, it's silly to produce ethanol from corn. Sugar cane ethanol is 8 times more effective for example, so it makes sense in Brazil, but not in the US.

Yep, not surprisingly sugar cane has loads more sugar then corn does. The US would also do good to simply eliminate the sugar tariff, watch sugar prices drop in half over night, and then make ethanol out of sugar cane sugar if we simply must have ethanol. It would cost less and unlike corn based ethanol it would actually increase the energy supply.

[Traianvs]

Jersey isn't a tax haven at all...New Jersey's taxes are relatively high. You're not thinking of Delaware are you?

EDIT: Oh, do you mean the Jersey no one cares about, off the coast of france?

Over 500 billion dollars are funneled through Jersey. Quite... odd for an island inhabited by less than 100k. Get rid of it, nuke it, annihilate it.

[Tupac Shakur]

In the Democratic Party, unfortunately, Barack Obama has breathed life into the caucuses, because it was his win there that propelled him to victory over Hillary Clinton. (One of the less-remarked-upon—and less-admirable--features of the early Obama campaign was its heavy emphasis on caucuses, where Obama could rack up lots of delegates without winning that many actual votes). In the GOP, however, there is some prospect that Iowa may finally be wearing out its welcome. In 2008, John McCain basically skipped the caucuses, and went on to win the nomination nonetheless. If Mitt Romney did the same, it might send the Iowa system into the death spiral it so richly deserves.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/06/27/elections-2012-why-iowa-caucuses-shouldn-t-matter.html