Cellulosic Biofuel Finally Ready For the Road 355
wdebruij writes "After years of research, promises, and plenty of discussion here, biofuel from inedible greens such as switchgrass — and even from corn cobs — may finally be getting economically viable. Two enzyme producers, Novozyme and Genencor, have both announced that they can now produce fuel at prices competitive with current corn and petrol-based methods. This is particularly good news in the wake of another report that food-based biofuels could cause hunger."
Late to the party? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is particularly good news in the wake of another report that food-based biofuels could cause hunger."
They JUST figured this out!!!????
This is the problem with the green lords... they don't think ahead of the unintended consequences!
I've HATED Corn based ethanol for YEARS... Everyone would point to some country in South America (Brazil?) about how good Ethanol was and the amount of fuel created etc... But that was end of process SUGAR CANE! NOT a major food source!
Glad someone is finally waking up.
Re:Late to the party? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sugar cane is even MORE vital. It's a major potable alcohol source (rum). Definitely not something we need to waste in cars.
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In case you haven't figured it out, the market in the U.S. is rather stupid and [over-]reactionary. The moment something bad happens in the middle east, fuel prices surge. The moment demand on corn based ethanol is even discussed, the price on corn related commodities shoots up creating all sorts of problems with supply.
We haven't had an active invisible hand in the U.S. for decades while we have farmers getting paid for not producing and all manner of nonsense like that.
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Seriously, what is rapeseed? Please tell me it's not a typo. If there's a rapeseed, I've GOT to plant some somewhere.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapeseed [wikipedia.org]
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rapeseed is also known as "canola."
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Re:Late to the party? (Score:4, Interesting)
It helps that 90% of Brazil is in sugarcane's growing area, and that when Brazil needs more farmland, they just burn down more forest. The Problem is that the majority of Brazil's soil is actually quite poor and loses it's sustainability as arable soil after 2-3 seasons (which is why they keep burning more and more forest). Unchecked, yes, Brazil will have no problem feeding their population... for now. In 20, 30, 40 years Brazil is going to start running out of forest to burn for more farmland and you will see prices begin to skyrocket when the soil becomes as fertile as north africa's.
Re:Late to the party? (Score:5, Interesting)
The Problem is that the majority of Brazil's soil is actually quite poor and loses it's sustainability as arable soil after 2-3 seasons (which is why they keep burning more and more forest).
Well the answer there is "terra preta do indios", or "black earth of the Indians"
Terra petra is fantastically fertile, the Brazilians actually mine this earth for use as potting soil, which is amazing considering most of it's age is measured in millennia not years! Also growing sugarcane doesn't necessarily deplete the soil if the cane field is burned [wikipedia.org] and the char left on the ground, some varieties are even nitrogen fixing. [wikipedia.org]
Additionally converting biomass to char produces distillates that are useful as fuel [scientificamerican.com] creating a win-win situation.
Re:Late to the party? (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you happen to miss how in the early 80's or so several popular products switched to using corn syrup as a sweetener?
That's because of our sugar tariffs keeping cheap foreign sugar out, not because Brazil burning sugar made it that much more expensive.
http://www.accidentalhedonist.com/index.php/2006/01/24/tariffs_and_subsidies_the_literal_cost_o [accidentalhedonist.com]
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The people who were most strongly pushing corn-based ethanol were corn farmers and farm-state politicians, for whom an increase in the price of corn was most definitely not an unintended consequence.
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And if you would have paid attention, almost no "green-lords" (not sure who falls under that definition, but I'm going to assume the usual suspects of WWF, Sierra Club and other environmental organizations of the same ilk) ever endorsed the use of corn kernels as a source for biofuel. Almost everyone saw that coming. The only ones who uniformly didn't see it coming (or at least didn't care) were the corn producers and their lobbies.
If you even think for one second that the environmental lobbies somehow have
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This is particularly good news in the wake of another report that food-based biofuels could cause hunger."
They JUST figured this out!!!????
This is the problem with the green lords... they don't think ahead of the unintended consequences!
I've HATED Corn based ethanol for YEARS... Everyone would point to some country in South America (Brazil?) about how good Ethanol was and the amount of fuel created etc... But that was end of process SUGAR CANE! NOT a major food source!
Glad someone is finally waking up.
Speaking of waking up, when have reported "shortages" in other products and industries related to creating fuel have been due to actual supply and demand issues and NOT from greed and corruption?
We're not paying $2.50/gallon because that's an accurate reflection of how much oil is left on this planet and that's a fair price.
Re:Late to the party? (Score:5, Insightful)
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I would argue just the opposite.
The best way for 3rd world/developing countries to make the transition to a developed nation is through agriculture.
The US, with an extremely keen interest on controlling food prices and availability has heavily subsidized farmers across the US. So much so, that it has distorted the global market and significantly limited the introduction of new agricultural markets. By reducing the amount of corn that the US exports, we would actually create a financial advantage for investm
Re:Late to the party? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know which rock you (and the mods who modded you up) have been living under for the past few years but this has already happened. Ethanol induced food shortages were front page news in 2008 when oil prices skyrocketed and ethanol production increased. I know it's easy to forget these things when they doesn't affect you but the billions of people world wide who went hungry (and the many who died) definitely haven't forgotten. This all occurred very quickly in response to a rather small increase in ethanol production.
Here are a few articles I found for your reference...
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/23/earlyshow/main4036816.shtml [cbsnews.com]
http://www.boston.com/news/world/europe/articles/2008/06/04/un_warns_of_food_shortage_and_unrest/?page=full3 [boston.com]
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/article678698.ece [theglobeandmail.com]
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There is a fallacy hidden in there: that world hunger is due to not producing enough food.
Here's the production of the top four biggest US corn producing states, as of 2006, in thousands of bushels [corn.org]:
Total: 6,773,050 thousand bushels
A blog comment [autoblog.com] cites 134,400 calories per bushel (couldn't find a better source for this). So the total calories produce from all the corn above is:
6,773,050 * 1000 * 134,400 = 910,298,592,000,000 calories
On a 2000 calorie / d
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By that theory you should hate beef too, because it takes a lot more than a pound of corn to create a pound of beef. Furthermore the varieties of corn sold for feed are not normally sold for human consumption.
So by buying beef you are diverting corn production from human food into animal feed, which reduces the net food available.
In any case, environmentalists aren't the ones behind corn based ethanol. It's agribusiness.
Water (Score:2, Interesting)
Has anyone done anything about the huge water requirements of ethanol production? In Chester, South Carolina there have been voices screaming about the proposed ethanol plant. One side is desperate for the jobs, the other side is desperate to protect the Catawba River.
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Farming of any sourt uses a substantial amount of water, plants grown for Ethanol conversion are no exception.
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Finally! (Score:2, Funny)
Biofuels (Score:5, Interesting)
The main issue with biofuels isn't really food or cost. It's about land use, energy efficiency and sustainability. Brazil is usually given as a great example, but they have only 8 million cars, which use a maximum of 25 percent biofuel, the rest is still gasoline or diesel. And Brazil is one of the countries that is deforesting the fastest in the world. The US has 250 million cars. There's not enough land left in the world to clear to make enough biofuels for that.
http://www.selfdestructivebastards.com/2010/01/biofuels.html [selfdestru...stards.com]
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It is my understanding that much of that deforestation is illegal. The land gets cleared for ranching/farming, is exhausted rinse repeat. The Brazilian government has only recently started enforcing the law more strictly. That isn't to say that Ethanol production doesn't play a role, just that other factors weigh in heavily in so far as deforestation is concerned.
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It's the government that reclassified 200 million hectares, though, as I mention in the article. That's for sucarcane. They are also clearing the rainforest to grow soy. The carbon emissions released from cutting down all these trees can exceed the gains versus fossil fuels by as much as several hundred times, as I quote.
Re:Biofuels (Score:5, Informative)
The standard gasoline blend (i.e. what you get if you buy "normal" gasoline) is 20-25% ethanol in Brazil, but there is also pure ethanol available, and >80% of new cars are able to use either the E25 or E100 fuel. Some details here [wikipedia.org].
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Okay, fair enough, but these new models were only introduced a few years ago and are a tiny percentage of total national fleet. And my whole point is that if they do switch everything to using pure ethanol, that's just going to make the problem that much worse. Now, imagine trying that in the US with 250 million cars. We'd need to be farming on Mars!
Re:Biofuels (Score:5, Interesting)
When a study [pnas.org] shows that switchgrass produces 540% more renewable than nonrenewable energy consumed, yeah, I'd say it's a little about efficiency.
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That's when you convert farmland. Do the same calculations when you convert natural habitat, such as forest or wetlands, to grow this stuff. Again, you're going to be behind with respect to carbon emissions, probably by an order of magnitude, and you also destroyed more of the natural environment and threatened more species.
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I don't disagree that the system is shit and that clearly ethanol is really only slightly better than fossil fuels (and even that's arguable). The solution is to get energy elsewhere, but we can't always jump from point A to point H right away. Point B may not be great but if it's an improvement over A then why not? Switchgrass may still suck, but it's a lot better than using corn and half a loaf is better than none.
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Why not conserve and use less? We can drive less, build more rail, add more transit, build walkable communities, etc. There's lots we can do besides finding new stuff to put in our cars.
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Solution:
Forget the idea that there is a silver bullet for this werewolf (saw wolfman this weekend). We should aim for cars that can run on multiple sources of fuel and have multiple ways of creating that fuel. If it is electricity, use nuclear AND coal AND wind AND geo AND AND AND. If it is Bio, let's use as many sources as we can.
__
i find it odd that people think that biofuels could cause a food shortage. There's plenty of food and plenty of land to make more food. We might have to rethink how we use
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That's true, there's no silver bullet. We need alternative energy, but it can never replace fossil fuels. So we need a combination of conservation, efficiency, alternative energy, and a reduction in consumption. Btw, you're wrong about the cows, read this:
http://www.selfdestructivebastards.com/2010/01/review-vegetarian-myth.html [selfdestru...stards.com]
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So, someone writes a book to make themselves feel better about turning their back on being vegetarian (because she did it wrong) and suddenly the Gulf of Mexico is clear of nitrates. Got it.
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By nitrates, you're referring to fertilizer, I assume? There is no fertilizer required for cows raised on pasture.
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It is not a good solution to simply not use the technology just because some countries won't look out for the interests of it's own people. If it becomes bad enough that the world notices, then remove the economic incentive to starve
Duckweed Perhaps (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been following the biofuels industry pretty closely. How about Duckweed? Like algae it does not compete with cropland, it grows fast and unlike algae, it is easy to harvest (just skim off the top rather than concentrating water). Also easier to deal with "weeds" (algae ponds get contaminated by other species and this is hard to control). Duckweed is mostly cellulose and so fits into a feedstream amenable to the fermentation described by the article.
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The main issue with biofuels isn't really food or cost. It's about land use, energy efficiency and sustainability. Brazil is usually given as a great example, but they have only 8 million cars, which use a maximum of 25 percent biofuel, the rest is still gasoline or diesel.
You've got very wrong information here. Just 8 million cars in Brazil? The article said 8 million cars running on ethanol, not 8 million cars overall. There are almost 28 million cars running now. 25% is the amount of ethanol in the gas sold here. 85% of the current Brazilian car production is comprised of flex-fuel cars, that run on ethanol, gas or any mixture of them.
And Brazil is one of the countries that is deforesting the fastest in the world.
That's right, but most of the deforestation is done for wood and to open land to cattle, not agriculture. The Amazon land is not good for ag
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Yes, sorry, mixed up the number a bit. Still, it's nothing compared to the 250 million in the US. And if all 28 million were switched to ethanol instead of 8 million that would require a lot more biofuel. Then there's China and India which are building cars like crazy.
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Biofuels dont cause hunger (Score:3, Insightful)
Poor market management, lack of planning or agricultural investment and war cause famine, not biofuels. Zimbabwe is host to some of Africa's best ariable land and yet there are thousands who are starving. If the people hadn't let all the farms fall into disrepair after the revolution they would have so much food they could be exporting to other regions.
There is enough farmland available to grow enough food for all the world. Better prices for biofuel stock might drive up prices short term, but will lead to greater investment and supply long term.
Re:Biofuels dont cause hunger (Score:5, Insightful)
Better prices for biofuel stock might drive up prices short term, but will lead to greater investment and supply long term.
Ah yes, the inevitable claim that magic market pixies will fix everything.
The fact is that world food production -- never mind potential production -- is already more than adequate to feed everyone. Market economics alone, however, is inadequate to distribute the food. People aren't starving because there isn't enough food, they're starving because they can't afford to buy food. There's no profit to be had in giving food to people who can't pay for it, so they go without.
I wish free market ideologues would figure out that the market is very good at doing things that are profitable, but not everything worth doing is profitable. The market is amoral and devoid of compassion. That's not necessarily a bad thing by itself, but it becomes so when we surrender every ethical obligation to the test of profitability.
Re:Biofuels dont cause hunger (Score:4, Insightful)
People aren't starving because they can't buy food, there is plenty of food aid in the world, hell the US spends billions subsidizing US wheat producers so they can export it as US AID, the problem isn't production or even money, starvation is ALWAYS the result of political issues mostly dealing with war. Somalia doesn't starve because of no money, they starve because droughts dry up local production and food can't be imported because it's not safe to do so, not because they can't pay for it. This has been true of almost every famine in the 20th century.
Don't blame the economy for food shortages because the western governments are more than happy to hand out billions of tons of wheat and other staples just to get rid of it. It's one of the prime benefits of the wheat subsidies in the US is that the federal government buys all the surplus then gives it away to those that need it worldwide. I don't like the subsidy on principle and many nations complain about it (Australia is the biggest complainer) but the mostly unknown fact of the US wheat subsidies is that the excess production is purchased by the Federal government at market rates then given away as US food aid. It costs the US citizen a couple bucks a year and feeds millions. Eliminate of the subsidy would likely lead to less food aid but nothing is certain.
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False alternative. Generally, people starve because of tyrants starving them, either deliberately or because allowing the poor to get food is less important to the tyrant than whatever his goals are. Very few people are so incompetent that they couldn't get enough food to survive in the absence of a vile government.
Food is very cheap in comparison to the value of a person's labor. The number of cap
Who's the real 40,000 Ton Metallic Monster? (Score:3, Interesting)
Due to the currency trade, it costs about 1 million dollars (adjusted) for them to buy a tractor to farm their lands. Is that unreachable? No. Is it ridiculously overpriced? Yes. Do multiple families have to pull together in order to purchase a single tractor? Obviously.
Once the people have a tractor, and something breaks on it, they have to hire help, a
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Don't forget to add in that you can probably multiply that by a factor of 10 or more if people were to go on a vegetarian diet. It would also reduce greenhouse gas emissions, diseases related to saturated fat and cholesterol, and not least animal suffering.
Yet for some reason the typical American diet consists of red meat and high fructose corn syrup.
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Because that is cheap.
Check the price of a good meat replacement like quorn vs the the price of ground beef.
Nothing about the fuel itself... (Score:5, Informative)
I see speculation on the cost of the fuel, but nothing whatsoever on the performance of it. This makes my suspicion meter go into alarm mode...
Though, to be fair, ethanol suffers from the same issue.
Looking at the 2010 Town and Country [fueleconomy.gov] (a similar vehicle to my own Flex-Fuel van), I see these ratings:
E85 - 17mpg
Gas - 24mpg
Adjusted into dollars-per-hundred-miles, using these prices [fuelgaugereport.com], that's something like:
E85 - $14.13 ($2.403/g)
Gas - $10.87 ($2.610/g)
So even though the price at the pump is less, I'd be a fool to run E85 in even a new vehicle of this class.
Unless this new fuel is better than E85, I can't see how getting it down to a comparable price at the pump is doing us any favors. Now if it is somehow better than E85, then that would be some good news. Alas, the story is mute on this topic.
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Unless this new fuel is better than E85, I can't see how getting it down to a comparable price at the pump is doing us any favors. Now if it is somehow better than E85, then that would be some good news. Alas, the story is mute on this topic.
It's ethanol, and will have all the same properties as everyone else's ethanol. Perhaps they'll be able to get the price low enough to make up for the difference in energy density once they start using plants with a better yield than corn?
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I read an interesting article about how ethanol really can be similar to gas, parituclar in an engine designed for gas. http://www.radford.edu/wkovarik/papers/fuel.htm [radford.edu]
It seems as if ethanol is actually a good fuel when an engine is tuned properly. It is used for racing already, most motorsports use pure ethanol as it has a higher octane rating which allows the production of more horsepower. If you tune and gear an engine properly you should easily be able to get similar mileage. The problem with flex fue
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The other reason to use ethanol is that, IIRC, it has less energy than octane. Ethanol is used in high power (racing) applications for a few reasons, including some related to this. In addition to pre-ignition resistance, the cooler temperature prevents the head and exhaust valves from heating up (throwing off tight clearances as well as increasing pre-igition), is less dangerous in the event of a catastrophe (although the flames are harder to see), blocks and stress parts can be lightened considerably (no
Re:Nothing about the fuel itself... (Score:4, Informative)
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I will really enjoy watching these oil rich assholes seal their own fate. They've had decades to develop actual functioning economies, but instead they're all rich on the fat revenues oil generates and have done nothing to diversify their economies away from oil (with the
Doesn't anyone realize that (Score:2, Insightful)
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Increase the cost of fuel to represent diving's true cost (instead of subsidising private vehicle ownership with property and other taxes), and you will see a sudden and sharp decline in miles driven. Sure people will wine, but sometimes you just need to rip off the band-aid.
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Increase the cost of fuel to represent diving's true cost ... and you will see a sudden and sharp decline in miles driven.
No you won't. A 10% rise in the price of gas only means something like a 1% reduction in traffic the short run (and about 3% in the long run). Shuffling the taxes is fine, but that's not a "sudden and sharp decline" or going to deliver you a "fewer cars on the road" agenda very quickly.
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Market Fail (Score:2)
The market cannot answer your question.
Did you ask, "How can I increase short term profit for my shareholder?"
If you asked a different question, please try again.
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Baka! I'm pretty sure he meant that we should focus on mass transit instead of individual transit.
Regarding massive land use changes (Score:4, Interesting)
What about algae farms on the ocean? Seaweed farms? Who says the biomass has to come from corn or any other land based crop? The farms could be right next to the data centers [slashdot.org].
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Do you want to harvest existing algae -- the basis of most marine food chains -- or fertilize to create new algae, with possible downstream consequences?
If you think runoff from land-based farms is bad... the ocean is *all* runoff. If farming the oceans is done, it needs to be approached very slowly and carefully.
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The amount of algae growth required for powering America's fleet of vehicles would cover every ocean and kill every single fish on the planet.
Land-based farms require pumping water, maintenance, energy, etc. If you build them in the desert, you suffer horrendous water losses. If you build them near the ocean, you encroach on livable and arable land.
This conclusion is supported by.... what? Do you have a verifiable source of data that will support this claim? Something other than a link to a website that says...
Studies have shown the amount of algae growth required for powering America's fleet of vehicles would cover every ocean and kill every single fish on the planet.
What studies? Who preformed them? What methods did they use? How did they qualify the data? etc.. I'll happily read any data source you reply with but don't expect me to do the legwork to support your position.
Step in the Right Direction (Score:2)
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Livestock. In fact, the raise in corn prices caused a spike in beef, poultry and pork prices, and also forced many dairies out of business.
Almost there! (Score:3, Funny)
Try New Texaco Green, It's People!
Corn ethanol is wrong (Score:2)
I bet if you took any field currently used to grow corn for ethanol, you could find another crop to grow on that field for ethanol use such that it produced more energy at the other end (i.e. after you subtract the amount of energy required in the production process).
Switchgrass and other types of biofuel are being suppressed because the big bio-tech firms like Monsanto dont profit from those (seed sales, chemical sales etc)
Although to be fair I have no idea how hard it is to take factories that turn corn i
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I guess we have to keep the hope alive in order to make the population believe that it will be business as usual in the future and avoid some type of revolution as oil runs out.
The idea is to make people believe that we will find a way to replace oil while maintaining the present sale price in our highly dependent oil dependent economy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peak_oil [wikipedia.org]
Re:First (cheap gas?) (Score:4, Insightful)
Hey - are you paying for gas? Then its reasonable. When its unreasonable, you DON'T pay for gas. Thats the way it works.
If you haven't stopped driving your car because you couldn't afford fuel prices - then you really don't have much to complain about. Cars are a luxury item, if you live in the kind of town where driving a car is necessary to get to work, you also live in a town that has a transit system that can get you within walking distance.
Re:First (cheap gas?) (Score:5, Informative)
Re:First (cheap gas?) (Score:5, Interesting)
If you aren't satisfied with the current setup, then your children have something in common with crack babies: they were born of parents who couldn't afford parenthood.
The writing was on the wall long ago, much before anyone who is a child today was born. Oil will end. If you bet that oil prices wouldn't start rising until after your children were grown up, you bet wrong.
Not having adequate living conditions in locations served by mass transit and not having mass transit in places with adequate living conditions only means too many people like you chose to disregard the inevitable future.
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that's pure bullshit, you need to get out more. Just as example, in my area buses only go on routes that include train station, to go more than five miles straight east or west using public transport is impossible, unless you count riding 30 miles in to large midwestern city, getting on another train, and riding 30 miles out again, and arriving at work in the afternoon in time to leave again. gawd, "every city in the world is just like mine"....
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Try living in most parts of Southern California without a car and see how far you go.
Not everywhere has the transport systems that cities like New York, Chicago and DC have.
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Managed to go through LA, San Fran, Salt Lake City, and a handful of other cities using nothing but municipal transit.
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Re:First (cheap gas?) (Score:5, Informative)
Having used the mass transit in the Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York/Newark areas, I dare say that you either got very luck with where you were going in the LA area, or you never left the downtown area. In a week in Chicago, I was able to get almost everywhere except for the Navy Pier and the Museum of Science & Technology via mass transit, and over a week in New York/Newark, I only rode in a car when going out to rural areas not reached by New Jersey's trains. Even when reaching a relatively rural area on Long Island, it took only about 30 minutes from Penn Station. Compare this to the local bus for me (closest train station is several miles and runs perpendicular to the route I would need to take): In the center of the main population mass of Orange County, the path from the closest bus stop to work runs just under eight miles, and takes just over an hour. This is one bus going straight down one street, no turns.
All of the rail systems in the LA/Orange County area combine for just under 600 miles of track to provide for around 5000 square miles of land. Chicago has 600 miles of track providing for around a thousand square miles, and New York has more than 900 miles of track for only a few hundred square miles of land. It's going to take a lot of billions to get anywhere close to those.
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Or you live in an area where 1/3rd of the people live 5+ miles from city limits.
Or an area where it gets -10 before windchill during the winter on a warm day, and becomes quite deadly for anyone not young and healthy to walk more than a couple blocks.
Ooo, or how about the general populace is so ignorant and deserving of the title redneck that a handful of people end up in the ER every month from beer bottle concussions thrown from muddy trucks doing anything from 30-75mph in town, just because they were wal
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I live in one of the best transit systems in the us - right outside of chicago - and I still don't have a train that takes me remotely close to my work. Trust me, I'd take one in a heartbeat over using my car, but it's simply not realistic.
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I will assume that you've spent your life in a place where public transit is readily available, which is great for you. In places like New York, Washington, DC, London, Paris, and many functioning cities, you're right. Having a car is not necessary and a luxury.
I work in Detroit. I do not live in Detroit... Because it's Detroit. I rely on my car because public transit has been noticeably absent in this region. I also do not live within walking distance of work because if I did, I could not find groceri
"When it's unreasonable, you DON'T pay for gas." (Score:2)
"When it's unreasonable, you DON'T pay for gas."
I guess that same argument works for kidney dialysis, too, right? The people who aren't paying for it because they can't afford the prices are doing it out of choice... not because they live where they can afford to live, and work where there's a job available.
-- Terry
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Re:First (cheap gas?) (Score:5, Informative)
your gas price IS quite reasonable!
here in italy you currently pay about 1.3 euros/liter
considering 1 euros about 1.33 dollar and 1 liter about 1/3.8 gallon
so its about 2 dollar for 1/3.8 gallon or about than 7.5 dollar/gallon
and it has gone higher...
Re:First (cheap gas?) (Score:4, Insightful)
your gas price IS quite reasonable ... or about than 7.5 dollar/gallon
You're not paying $7.50 for gas, you're paying $2 for gas and $5.50 for socialism (by the gallon).
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the car stopped being seen as an object by the majority and was now seen as a service
(that was in France, should have specified, sorry)
The US has basically always had "free" petrol. Whereas every other country has always taxed it to compensate for the huge amount of damage cars/vehicles make to infrastructure and environment.
It was presumably a political choice since pretty much all other alternatives have long since vanished or been marginalized in the US.
America basically gets free gas (Score:3, Informative)
Whereas every other country has always taxed it to compensate for the huge amount of damage cars/vehicles make to infrastructure and environment.
Actually, it's worse than that, and it isn't just damage, it's economics. Oil is paid for in dollars. US dollars. You want oil? You buy US dollars first.
See the trick? America gets paid for Saudi oil before the Saudis do. It gives the US a huge advantage economically. The US gets to export a significant proportion of it's inflation to the rest of the world and gets real value for it. Print a trillion dollars here, the price of oil goes up, everybody buys those fresh new bills cos they still need oil. Oil pu
Re:First (cheap gas?) (Score:5, Informative)
First post!
And since this stuff is finally going to be hitting the road, when will my gas prices become reasonable (for the US) again? I'm tired of $2.96 a gallon and only getting 300 miles out of it.
Poor bastard ! Here in Australia on cheap petrol day we can get ours for $1.22/lt which works out to over $4.60 per Gallon.
Check out this [aaireland.ie] page to see how good you have it.
Re:First (cheap gas?) (Score:5, Insightful)
Americans have always been incredibly spoiled by their gas prices, which are still far below what pretty much every other country has to pay to fill up (as much as half the price). I say deal with it and count yourself lucky that it's not higher. Cheaper prices are just going to encourage more waste at this point; the casual driving era is becoming a relic of the past, and this isn't necessarily a bad thing (especially for the fattest nation on earth).
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Spoiled by low gas prices, yeah, while we are forced oversized, underpowered, inefficient engines, and screwed over by having diesel powered cars basically legislated away. If most of my fellow Americans knew that the best American cars *aren't sold in America* maybe things would change.
Example: Ford Fusion Hybrid: overpriced, overcomplicated, in global comparisons not very efficient. Give me a Ford Mondeo TDCI instead, it gets 50-60% better economy out of a simpler design and has every feature the Fusion
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this is the side effect of being CO2 obessed. you can't turn off the energy tap, so you have to source it some other way then fossil fuels. i've been saying the cure will be worse then the desease for a long time now...
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I think the problem is that people expect a single decisive solution to a complex planet-wide problem.
Let me save everyone time and effort: unless we develop fusion-based power production, there isn't going to be one.
However, in the context of a world where squeezing the last bit of energy from dwindling resources is important, biofuels do have a role... as yet another technology that allows us to recycle what would otherwise be waste. Solar, geothermal, wind, and tide power... NONE of the above is THE solu
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INSANITY!!! You fool! You'll kill us all!
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Well, it's certain that filling their tanks with Arabs hasn't upset them at all in the last hundred years.
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Re:Ethanol is BAD for engines! (Score:4, Insightful)
Even in the 10% mixture we are currently seeing, ethanol in engines meant for gasoline is bad! It causes all manner of problems in the long term.
Running pure ethanol will simply require a complete change in the engine to work well. Has there been much discussion of that? I fear there hasn't been any.
Citation? Every report in the last 15-20 years has said the exact opposite. In fact, all current production vehicles are designed specifically for 10% mixtures, and many new vehicles are designed for E85 right out of the factory. What sort of engine re-design do you contemplate that hasn't already been done? The problems reported years ago were due to material incompatibility (no longer an issue at all) and lack of lubricity (also no longer a problem).