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Pastimes : The New Qualcomm - write what you like thread. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jon Koplik who wrote (7426)	3/7/2006 12:39:44 PM
From: carranza2	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 12247

Brazil is doing ethanol at a cost of about $1 a gallon, and we have farmers that are much more efficient. <rant/on>We have enough coal here to fire up all kinds of energy plants cleanly thanks to technology if the enviro moonbats veto nuclear plants. Ethanol is coming, particularly since technology has developed to the point that knocking problems on engines can be controlled. We can realistically wave goodbye to Big Oil, the Saudis, the Iranians, Iraq [eventually], Hugo Chavez, etc. We can stop exporting billions upon billions of dollars to the Mideast for use by folks who hate us and use them here. The economic boom we would have by replacing a nice sized fraction, say 30%, of imported oil would be amazing. Replace more and the boom is even bigger. The benefits--we can crank down military spending, resulting in downward pressure on the the budget deficit and therefore lower taxes; we can "fix" social security; we can spend money on much needed infrastructure;....I can go on and on. Spending hundreds of billions of dollars on oil imports is the single most stupid economic thing we do because we don't have to do it. Certainly not to the extent we do. Nice, huh? It's going to happen because it makes so much sense politically and economically. <rant/off>

To: Jon Koplik who wrote (7426)	3/7/2006 5:05:18 PM
From: Maurice Winn	Respond to of 12247

Jon, 1980s "energy balances" were always like USSR 5 Year Plans - made up to fit what was wanted rather than factual. I think it's better just to use dollars, which include all aspects of an economic activity. If ethanol is cheap enough compared with petrol/gasoline, then people will buy it. If it isn't they won't. There's no need to do an energy balance. If farmers can make a buck from it, more so than from another activity, they'll grow ethanol. If government subsidies are propping ethanol up, farmers and others would need to take account of the risk of that funding being turned off. The "energy balances" argument reminds me of the usual bleating about competitors selling "below cost", which always means the inefficient, expensive people are losing their shirts and whining about being beaten by better people doing things better for lower prices. Mqurice