Wow.

That's about as much as we spend in a few days in Iraq.

The real issue with energy is this: As the economy has fallen off a cliff and oil prices have plummeted, oil production has been shutting down and investment in any new sources has dried up. It is simply unprofitable. The problem this presents is that even if there is any sort of recovery, it will be quickly snuffed out as the demand for oil increases. The supply will be less than the demand. This will push oil prices rapidly upward into the $200/bbl range.

First the trucks and shippers will curtail shipments. Shelves will become scant and in some cases bare. Quickly, unemployment will become epidemic as people are laid off due to economic contraction or because many will simply be unable to get to work. That in turn will worsen the country’s economic convulsion. Mobile America will cease to exist as we knew it because transportation via automobiles, taxis, buses, planes and other vehicular traffic will become an ever more unaffordable luxury. When people cannot get from Point A to Point B, the nation’s economic vitality will quickly wither. Sudden pauperization—loss of employment, savings and home—will follow for whole sectors of an already teetering society as surely as it did during the ravages of Fascism, which systemically took everything—from the vulnerable first, then from almost everyone else.

--Edwin Black, The Plan

http://www.planforoilcrisis.com/index.php?page=124

Biofuels are probably one of the best bets for future energy success, but not corn ethanol. The government just cant resist the opportunity to throw money at such lobbying luminaries as Cargil and ADM with out getting negative repurcussions. The shame is that the money we're wasting on the corn dead-end is not getting spent on more promising biofuel research with things like algae diesel.

Can't we just target the ethanol for consumption, instead?

Corn based ethanol is a mature technology, whereas making it from other sources is still developmental, and that's why ethanol producers rely on corn. Corn has serious problems, but it has allowed ethanol to be proven as a viable fuel. The market will be there when it becomes economically feasible to produce it from greener sources. At some point, rather than cutting off government aid, the aid should be shifted from corn to other sources, and certainly there's a good case that we've reached that point. I'm just saying that rather than cutting off biofuels altogether, we should recognize there could be a value to producing them from some sources, but they're too far from being commercially viable to get by without government money.

We have a corn-based ethanol mandate because Iowa has the first caucus in the presidential election process. Change the rules so that the order of primaries is random and you will never hear about corn-based ethanol again.

Corn ethanol is a bad bet economically, environmentally AND climactically, but in the biofuel debate, it's the only real contender.

Algal biodiesel? Dead, dead, dead. Like most biofuels, it requires so much energy inputs (read: fossil fuels) that it's not competitive with oil at any price.

Why can't the government see that liquid fuels other than natural gas are a dead end? Could it be--*gasp*--the massive lobbying machines of the agriculture and automotive industries?

The war to decide if car was supreme ruling the energy food urban and carbon policy of America really ended long ago when Levitttowen was bult far from the street car rails and when the passenger trains died -- Eisenhower building that first interstate was just a nail in the coffin...

No suprise that we seem unable to understand that Ethanol won't help, Americans are winderfuly myopic when confronted by issues that can't be solved by a mouse click

There is no question that a lack of oil will radically change everyone's lifestyle. Biofuels will only soften that, not fundamentally change it. And that's coming no matter what the "but what about the economy?" naysayers think.

Coupla comments:

Corn based ethanol is a mature technology, whereas making it from other sources is still developmental, and that's why ethanol producers rely on corn.

Ethanol production, from ANY source, is a mature technology and has been for 100's of years. We've done it with bananas, beets, sugarcane; anything with sugar in it. I agree that yeast strains can be tailored, and mass production methods scaled, but those are tuning things (and darn minor ones I might add.) Raising the capital to build a plant is more onerous.

Re: Iowa caucus: Change the rules so that the order of primaries is random..

I'd do that anyway. But farmer's don't care what they grow as long as there's a viable market for it. They Don't Care. Who cares is the ADM's and Cargills and if they say that the market goes away because of XYZ, then the farmers are gonna stop it. You should *see* the programming that goes into getting farmers to do it "the corporate way" from the reps and the extension agents.

Algal biodiesel? Dead, dead, dead.

After hanging the plastic, getting a few tanks, and running a pump (NOT a huge energy input) how is this dead? All that's needed is sunlight and a circulation pump. Click the video in the link below.

Remember, one of the goals is to achieve energy independence, which corn would allow us to do.

I'm curious why we don't seem to be hearing anything about harvesting methane releases from landfills. We certainly have a lot of landfills and if we don't harvest the methane seeping out of them, it just becomes a greenhouse gas (not to mention a potential explosion hazard). This seems like it would be a win-win, but I've only ever heard of it implemented in studies or on very local scales.

Algal biodiesel? Dead, dead, dead.

After hanging the plastic, getting a few tanks, and running a pump (NOT a huge energy input) how is this dead? All that's needed is sunlight and a circulation pump. Click the video in the link below.

There are hundreds of companies out there who claim they can make large quantities of biofuels easily and cheaply; they're all chasing after the same shrinking pool of investment dollars. On the other hand, there are none who are actually doing it.

The facts: there's not a single plant producing algal biodiesel in any kind of quantities at a competitive price. It's a great idea, but the technology's not there, and may not be for decades. Click on my sig to read Robert Rapier's take on it.

Remember, one of the goals is to achieve energy independence, which corn would allow us to do.

If we used every morsel of corn grown in this country, we'd be able to make 35 billion gallons of ethanol (2007 total harvest was 13.1 billion bushels, 1 bushel makes 2.7 gallons of ethanol).

U.S. consumption of gasoline is around 150 billion gallons a year.

So theoretically the U.S. could replace 23.5% of its gasoline use, if we stopped eating corn, feeding it to animals, or using it to sweeten our soft drinks.

And that ignores the fossil fuel inputs into ethanol production, which are extremely high.