unintended consequences

A few moments ago I heard a commercial about ethanol production. The farmer said "Its wonderful that we can plow our fields in the spring, tend our crops during the summer, harvest during the fall and convert the crops to fuel our tractors the next year"

This is a wonderful way to have your farm up on the auction block the following year.

As to produce enough corn to convert to fuel to plow the fields would require 1.5 acres per 5 gallons of ethanol. The only farm land that could produce enough fuel to run the farm and produce a profit would be huge corporate farms where million dollar harvesters could farm maga farms to keep the cost of production down.

This would cause the price of corn for food supply to skyrocket as large tracts of land are converted to fuel production so that at some point it would cause the farmer to stop growing for fuel as the profits would be greater to produce for food stocks.

This from the same folks that are opposed to huge corporate farms and say they want to save the small farmer.

Such is the way with unintended consequences

Global Warming
By Paul Mays
07/05/07

Let me start from the aspect that all existing data shows that we are indeed seeing an increase in the average global temperature. So I contend it’s a real event that May over time change the face of the globe.

But I will not make this an emotional argument as many have. Lets speak science not religion. For those that want us to live in mud huts and let nature run wild have made it a B’leaf and damn the facts of the issue.

First Fact is that we have no idea what climate is the Best, and for Who. While if you enjoy laying about the beach in Florida on an 85 deg day of perfect sun, seems like this climate is Perfect. If your living in Sub Sierra Africa an your children are dieing because no crops will grow and you can’t find more than a few ounces of water a day might think the environment is not all that great as it is. Maybe the weather of the world might change and we find that now we can grow vast corn fields in northern Canada that could produce double the food as today in the mid west. Maybe this would mean that we could produce enough food to solve world hunger and save millions.

The point is that we have no clue on what is the Best environment.

Second Fact is that as we produce more CO2, photo synthetic plants and bacteria grow faster and product more O2. This also locks atmospheric CO2 into biomass which may, I emphasize May, better solve the issue of dwindling fossil fuel supplies. The point is that we have no idea what the unintended consequences would be if we take action without fully understanding what can be wrought by such actions.

This Religious view of the environment that some have taken tends to consider Humans as separate from nature, that we are some how not taken into account as an integral part of nature.

Let’s take a look at reality on a couple of aspects.

Alternate fuel vehicles sound good right?

Let’s use ethanol we can grow it and it produces far less hydrocarbons when burned in your new ride. Its also requires we convert millions of acres of farm land into producing fuel. This causes use to reduce the amount of available land to produce food. So when the cost of your food doubles, triples and quadruples so you can drive a tiny ethanol burning car , don’t blame anyone but those that wish to save what they don’t understand.

Let’s instead build Electric cars… Great! Absolutely no pollution right? Well not exactly. You see someone has to make the batteries which require all kinds of muck be produced as byproducts which must be disposed of during the process. Then to make them run for more than a couple of miles they must be made very light weight which means massive energy to be used to produce the plastics required to keep weight down. The production of which produces a half pound of nasty stuff for each pound of final product used in your new shiny plastic car. Then after a few years the batteries will need replacing. What would you suggest we do with Billions of pounds of deadly lithium and assorted toxic waste from the Millions of vehicles that need a battery change?

I could go on about solar power , tidal power, geothermal and the like but I’ll just let your mind consider the Unintended Consequences of each. But have no doubt that when you attempt to solve a problem that you actually do not fully understand there will be many Unintended Consequences.

So just consider that when one of the Preachers of this new Environmental Religion tell you that you need to buy a carbon offset, stop driving to the corner store, turn off the AC and sweat it out and hook a hose up to a cows rear end for the methane to heat your grass hut, take a hard look and the private jets they use to go shopping in Paris with and the millions of watts of power used to light the garden paths to there multi million dollar estates.

When you see them take the buss to the next speech and downsize into a 1 bedroom bungalow then listen to what they preach. Until then go out and crank up the BBQ, Turn on the porch lights, go for a long drive in your SUV and enjoy your summer, because I bet the preachers are having a hoot.

Hydrogen?

What the miliatary gets isn't good enough for us?

www.theautochannel.com...

o and if you need more current articles

www.autobloggreen.com...

The solution is more than one. Not excluding gasoline but prolonging it's life so the better future alternatives are available someday.

[edit on 20-8-2007 by djpaec]

Good.. Now please understand I know that at some point in time we will convert to another energy source and I'm not sure which it will be, or how long it will be before market forces select the next source. My argument is that with each alternative there are Unintended Consequences and over time we will pick the lesser of evils.

As for Hydrogen it actually has the most going for it as far as I'm concerned but it has its on issues. How are you going to make it. If you generate on site you need a water source and a lot of electricity. Remember the rules .. Energy in is always less than energy out.. Hydrogen is a energy carrier its taked the energy of breaking the H2O atom and collecting the H and if you have a good system maybe storing the O for all the old folks back home. But you must use energy and that would require a major increase in consumption of coal, oil, gas, Nuke or some other energy source to preform this feat. If you do it via solar panels it would take a bunch to provide enough Hydrogen to make it feasible for the number of vehicles that head down the road.

When dealing with the scale of use its more complicated than at first glance. Truth is as of this point in mans history there is no other energy source that is competitive on many levels as black carbon sludge.

Now if you build say an extra 2000 reactors to add to our power grid the Hydrogen idea would be Perfect... I'ld buy one...