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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tommaso who wrote (93675)	4/20/2008 6:59:29 PM
From: Box-By-The-Riviera™	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

another mal investment and headline fix. it will end sooner than later. along with all the suckers who put money into those plants.

To: Tommaso who wrote (93675)	4/20/2008 7:00:53 PM
From: stomper	Respond to of 110194

Not to mention the insane amount of water required to create a gallon of Ethanol. Extrapolations for the next ten years have it severely affecting water tables. The co-op farmers (and even the University affiliated farmers) I have spoken with here in MN think it a joke and is not sustainable.

To: Tommaso who wrote (93675)	4/21/2008 10:55:39 AM
From: Merlinson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 110194

Re: The real disgrace is the ethanol subsidy. Ethanol as a fuel is clean, high octane, and only requires a reasonably simple modification to today's gas engines. But we make it the "Monsanto Way". Start with expensive genetically modified corn seed. Add huge amounts of herbicide, pesticide and fertilizer ( which happen to be made from petroleum) and the result is a poor energy balance. There are other crops that are much more attractive and don't require prime farm land, but in the U.S., agriculture is corn and soybeans, so that's what we have. My favorite long term choice is algae. I know it sounds like pie in the sky now, but it grows extremely quickly and only needs a tiny amount of land area compared to agricultural crops. All it needs is sunlight, water, and carbon dioxide. It can be grown in the middle of the desert in ponds filled with polluted sea water if necessary. ( We would need deserts near the sea for that) Research was started in the 90's but then oil fell to $10/barrel and it was abandoned. There are no major scientific breakthroughs required, just the engineering challenge to make it economical. For me, the real disgrace is the oil subsidy. Googling "the real price of gas" yields links that show the direct subsidies to the oil companies are multiple dollars per gallon, not including externalities like wars and pollution. We tax our productivity and subsidize cheap gas to encourage waste and discourage investment in alternative energy. No other energy source can compete with those huge subsidies. It may have made some sense historically to encourage exploration and production in oil when that money went into the U.S. economy, but those days have past. Now that money goes to subsidize terrorists. Of course, I have no hope that we could ever get our government to reduce the subsidies and return the taxes to the public. I'm sure they would find better things to do with our money.

To: Tommaso who wrote (93675)	4/22/2008 2:59:25 AM
From: dybdahl	Respond to of 110194

There are other problems, too: Water. Global warming is redistributing water, and in some places water is becoming scarce for other reasons. With less water, you get less production of food. One place that could increase food production, is China, if they would start to transport water for irrigation via plastic tubes, but the farmers cannot afford it... Anyway, famine is certain at some point if world population continues to grow. Many countries still have a fertility rate above 2, and with global warming, there will be increasing pressure on redistributing the world population, reducing the incentive for governments to lower the fertility rate. USA still has a growing population... when will that change?