Quote:
Originally Posted by Diesel_Dave
The subject involves three other topics:
1) Politics
2) Fuel prices
3) Food prices
...and you're wondering why it's polarizing?
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I guess that's pretty much it. Politics is another word for Lies, so thanks to lies about an imagined threat to our food supply we get to make no progress at all.
Well, that stinks. Any way past this deadlock?
As stated at the top of this post, I didn't start this thread to discuss the relative merits of ethanol itself - there are
plenty of those threads already and it is pretty clear that citing available data can only lead us a finite way toward homogenizing our opinions. This topic isn't one I care about for personal superiority, to say "I'M RIGHT AND YOU'RE WRONG NYEAH!" - my motivation is to see progress occur in how humans use the world.
Petroleum appears to be a finite resource, and the best time to ready ourselves is before we absolutely must. There are also hundreds of millions of cars already in peoples' driveways that need a liquid fuel and similar amounts of people who cannot be counted-upon to simply discard their vehicle for want of a new fuel source when the era of petroleum necessarily ends itself nor can the systems of commerce and lifestyle established over the past century be expected to simply end without incident when we face petroleum's end.
So if we're going to rely on a new fuel, and ethanol is unacceptable to many - then what fuel is suggested and what means of production is suggested that poses less perceived threat than ethanol production?
If ethanol was made from an inedible plant, would this still be a point of contention? SH2 grade corns aren't even table edible (shriveled appearance when ripe, very chewy, not tasty) and barely useful for starch because they lack many of the enzymes that produce starches from the early sugars in the kernels. For the most part, SH2 are only useful to make DDG/DDS for the derivatives market and the byproduct of DDG manufacture from SH2 stock happens to be a flammable liquid useable in many automotive engines. Is this still robbing food from your table? If so, how do you figure?