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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gib Bogle who wrote (20732)	8/2/2007 7:46:53 PM
From: Elroy Jetson	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 217774

It is very evident that ethanol is too costly to be pursuing, which is why North American ethanol producers receive billions of dollars in subsidies. The fuel would not exist without handouts. Why these handouts to farmers when wild, naturally occurring switch grass can yield three times the yield of corn for ethanol? That is because elitist politics are involved. George and the neocons would have us believe the reason to the switch to ethanol is to be less dependent on foreign oil as well as cutting greenhouse gases. This is the official mantra. The subsidy is $0.51 per gallon that is paid to the blender, usually an oil company that blends it with gasoline for sale. When those 100 ethanol plants are finished the demand for corn will double and food prices will double again. As you remember in March Mr. Bush met with Brazil’s president to sign a bilateral Ethanol Pact to cooperate in R&D of next generation biofuels technologies and to stimulate expansion of biofuels’ use in developing countries, especially in Central America, and creating a fuel like OPEC cartel that would form a Western Hemisphere ethanol market. Using ethanol will not affect global warming because the physical changes do not exist. That ethanol is better than gasoline is untrue. It has little effect on exhaust-pipe emissions in current car models. It does have significant emissions of formaldehyde and acetaldehyde, a neurotoxin, which has been banned as carcinogenic in California. Ethanol is highly corrosive to pipeline seals and fuel systems of existing car or other gasoline engines. It requires special new gas pumps, so conversion is expensive. It produces 30% less energy per gallon than normal gasoline and a loss in fuel economy of at least 25% for the Ethanol-E 85% blend. The whole episode isn’t worth it. The cost of the subsidy, conversion cost, less power and mileage and exploding food prices. It is a giant boondoggle. In addition, we never hear that Brazil uses sugar not corn for manufacturing ethanol, which is a better substitute and doesn’t drive food prices up. As prices soar reserve stocks of all grains fell at the of end of 2006 to 57 days consumption – the lowest level since 1972. One fifth of last year’s corn harvest went to bio-ethanol and it met a mere 3% energy needs. In 2006, more than 50% of Iowa and South Dakota corn went to ethanol refineries. This has caused 41% of all herbicides used to be applied to corn. Monsanto is laughing all the way to the bank. A research study showed a net energy loss of 22% for biofuels. It uses more energy than it produces. The big winners are, ADM, Cargill, Monsanto and Syngenta. This whole show is to enrich these companies and increase food prices and inflation, never mind all the poor souls who will die because they cannot afford the price of food. As Henry Kissinger said, “control the oil and you control entire nations; control the food and you control the people.” In the final analysis this is what ethanol is all about. You should let your elected representative know how we are being taken and demand an end to corn ethanol production and its subsidies. Bob Chapman, The International Forecaster -- Wednesday, 1 August 2007 .