Biofuel Future Threatened By Severe Weather

New York Times:

The record storms and floods that swept through the Midwest last month struck at the heart of America's corn region, drowning fields and dashing hopes of a bumper crop.

They also brought into sharp relief a new economic hazard. As America grows more reliant on corn for its fuel supply, it is becoming vulnerable to the many hazards that can damage crops, ranging from droughts to plagues to storms.

Read the whole story: New York Times

Comments

[Meatball1]

What Is Up With Gas Prices?
Posted by Thomas Paine on Sunday, June 01, 2008 12:55:52 AM
People are stupid! I manage a local hardware store and I would like to tell you of a stupid man that is typical of our uninformed population.

It is spring in Our Great Nation. I come to work, and I notice that three huge heaters have been delivered to my store. They are a "special order" from a customer. I wonder for a few days why someone would order almost $700 worth of heaters at the very end of May.

Today, the customer came in and I found out. He is very liberal and told us all about how Saudi Arabia is about to cut the United States off of our oil supplly. He said that he will be prepaired for this and recommended that we all do the same thing. (Winters in Minnesota are cold!)

Seems that he gets his information from www.themoonismadeofgreencheese.org . First, most of our oil comes from Canada and Mexico. Second, we have about a 60 year supply of oil in reserve in the United States. Third, (hold on to your hats)... the heaters that he bought were Kerosene heaters!

Please, may God help us.

http://www.djgoski.com

or

http://stupidhead.blogtownhall.com

[williamina]

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aXJVtfxd0bWM

[airduds]

FPL is trying to put (I think the number is nine) windmills on property it owns adjacent to the St. Lucie Nuclear Plant on south Hutchinson Island in Florida.

Locals are fighting it like crazy.

I genuinely don't understand it for a number of reasons, but the main one is that now they have a view of a dual unit nuke with accompanying transmission towers and support structures. How could windmills make it worse?

[nanotubz]

I think it might have to do with the 100-150 mph winds they can experience during a hurricane. Won't want to be down wind when those blades break up.

[research]

That's why rural and offshore are better locations for wind turbines.

cool exploding turbine video:
http://gizmodo.com/360117/exploding-wind-turbine-video-is-destruction-delicious

[research]

Populated areas might want to use microturbines:

http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200703/200703190005.html

[research]

Biodfuels should only be made from waste.

Solar and wind can power the world faster then any other power source, sustainable forever, and less then 4T$ for the entire planet.

See my profile for details and links.

For instance, 20 Nukes worth of wind were installed last year worldwide, up 30% from 2006.

[leduck]

4 trillion is a lot of money
i'm not sure anyone is going to want to pay for it
the u.s. is broke

windmills will not power heavy industry

this is a mojor transition to something different
and less prosperous

we will be forced to make do with less

[research]

Why don't you read my profile and the links and get back to me when you know something.

4 trillion is the approximate estimate for the cost of the Middle east wars, just for the USA.

Of source windmills are already powering heavy industry.

The us is not broke: tax the rich.

[mergina]

The effects of this flood are DRAMATICALLY BEING BLOWN OUT OF PROPORTION by speculators and such, to drive up the price of corn. There is no doubt that there is a 10 mile swath of useless farmland out of oh, say 300 in places like Iowa alone, but the truth about how much this will effect corn production is a lie. Greed rules the day once again.

[nomoredead]

This is exactly what went through my mind, mergina. Millions of acres of corn and tons of it stored or the ability to import some yet a few weeks of rain has destroyed the chances of ethanol. Give me a break. What happened to that big rice shortage and rationing of it a month ago ? Future traders.

[darthdarcy]

Hemp the #1 Bio-Fuel renews itself every 4 months so why not grow that..?

10 tons of bio mass per acre and 380 gallons of ethanol type gasoline per acre and you can grow more rows per acres than corn and it eats CO2 like made and spits out oxygen...

You get bio-diesel from the seeds and cellulose fuel from the huge stalks 12-15 ft as well as even feed for livestock and cloth and other highly valuable materials and it;s not the stuff you smoke to get high so why not have hemp growing everywhere and we can also refine it locally in every state of the union..which would also be a national security asset and also lower the effect of storms in the gulf region or coastal regions where most of our refineries are..

[seawolf77]

Great post. Sugar based ethanol works well too. Way better than corn, which you have to make into sugar first, and I don't care how sweet the corn is, it don't have more sugar than sugar. Hemp is a no brainer and should immediately be legalized. Cotton clothes for which it was scacrificed is no longer the product it once was in an energy starved world. We are going to want clothes that last 6 times longer i.e made from hemp. And while you're at it legalize marijuama. We're all gonna need to be high with the storm headed our way.

[BDuPont]

Whatever happened to the saying that if you're stuck with lemons, make lemonade?

Wouldn't it make more sense to extract power directly from the culprit, i.e. the oscillations in the global weather itself, rather than spew more crap into the atmosphere, thereby guaranteeing more bad weather in the long run?

And wouldn't this point to wind and solar?

[larry278]

Off thread: will the ethanol refiners face a shakeup if & when somebody decides to become a 21st century JDR & starts buying etanol refinerys, enlarging some, closing others to create one big ethanol refineing & distribution co, a la Rocky's Standard Oil? The existing technology for refining ethanol may present a problem in combing the smaller plants into much larger refinerys but somebody is bound to try it. The smaller ethanol plants dotted among corn fields could become obsolete & too costly to make real money.

[KillTheMessenger]

???? What a stupid headline. Biofuels never had a future. They have a past, though. It's called agricultural subsidy and biofuels just give governments around the world more ways to funnel taxpayer money to some of their essential voter groups.

[leduck]

that's exactly what i was going to say without all the detail


what biofuel future?

[RememberTheAlamo]

Hi All,

Check out AmericanSolutions.com . . . they are pushing an alternative to biofuels.

Looking to any and all solutions!

[leduck]

alternatives to biofuels already?


that was short

[dadw5boys]

See the uncrease here:

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/2007-05-02-corn-cover-usat_N.htm

[dadw5boys]

They planted almost 20% more corn this year over last and the flood has taken 8% of the corn only along the flood plain.

Well there is still a 12% INCREASE over last years planting.

The hype is running up the price of corn products.

[Photofarm]

Your numbers are wrong, 2007 had more corn acres planted than 2008.