Study: Fuels from corn waste not better than gas

Oops... This is awkward...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Biofuels made from the leftovers of harvested corn plants are worse than gasoline for global warming in the short term, a study shows, challenging the Obama administration's conclusions that they are a much cleaner oil alternative and will help combat climate change.

A $500,000 study paid for by the federal government and released Sunday in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Climate Change concludes that biofuels made with corn residue release 7 percent more greenhouse gases in the early years compared with conventional gasoline.

It should come as no surprise and that's $500,000 more that could have gone to do well by people, but just got wasted for less while paying off whoever scored the work on generating the research. The problem is..in searching for duplicates on this story? I found plenty written about it here. It goes back years and years...and perhaps if Uncle Obama had signed on to ATS to read our forums, he could have saved us half a million dollars to repeat the obvious.

Growing food crops to fuel transportation outside of true food surplus for all, is patently and criminally insane. That it's shown more and more to have little or no benefit, while possibly being worse? It should put the nails in the coffin of this bad idea.

"I knew this research would be contentious," said Adam Liska, the lead author and an assistant professor of biological systems engineering at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. "I'm amazed it has not come out more solidly until now."

The Environmental Protection Agency's own analysis, which assumed about half of corn residue would be removed from fields, found that fuel made from corn residue, also known as stover, would meet the standard in the energy law. That standard requires cellulosic biofuels to release 60 percent less carbon pollution than gasoline.

Source

Ahhh.. Yes... It met the standards of the EPA. Whew... I feel better now.

Wait a second here... (susicious look comes)...Aren't those the same EPA people that redefined safe radiation levels...to allow more? Aren't those the same people who have redefined arsenic and other extremely toxic substances as being safe in new levels...so reality like fixing real problems...won't have to take up their precious time? Yeah...I believe they're the same people.

Somehow, assurances from the EPA leave me about as warm and fuzzy as a forest fire entering a gasoline tank farm.

a reply to: Wrabbit2000

Growing food crops to fuel transportation outside of true food surplus for all, is patently and criminally insane.

Damn straight!

The Kronies

a reply to: greencmp

Then again, why should our manner of tending and using our crops be tied to sustaining the reproductive rates of rabbits that nibble on them?

a reply to: Wrabbit2000

It's growing corn waste and remember that many, many foods utilize what is called high fructose corn syrup, a malformed corn syrup, instead of natural sugar because it's cheaper. In that light, they're utilizing a pre-existing crop's waste to create biofuels. Problem with this scheme is that HCFS is losing popularity due to questions about health effects in the US and its usage is declining in lieu of regular old sugar as a result. According to the wiki, in 1999, Americans would consume 37.5 lbs per person of HCFS a year. In 2012, that amount had dropped to 27.1 lbs per person and is steadily declining to this day.

That's the method to their madness in this. I'm not particular down with utilizing corn either but that's because I don't think HCFS is good for the human body to boot. We really should be working on improving our food qualities back to viable nutritional levels and not encouraging farmers to grow a crop for the purpose of potentially poisoning us all.

a reply to: WhiteAlice

Except we're heavily subsidizing farmers to produce more of something to burn in our cars that actually take more fossil fuel energy to transform into ethanol and transport all over than it saves. If the reasoning is that we're "saving the environment" this is just so much feel-good pap. We're not doing this to prop up corn in the face of people eating less because the subsidy encourages farmers to expand their crops while starving markets for the corn that gets used as useful food instead of HFCS.

They took out some good farmland to grow corn for fuel. They allow, and promote, using chemicals on this corn production that makes the land unsafe for human or animal food production for many years. Se they deplete the topsoils and cause more risk for our countries sustainable food supply ability by doing this.

Corn gas sucks. It is not as efficient as regular gas was. Sure they design the cars to work with it, but after two years the efficiency isn't there anymore. Old cars didn't even start getting good gas mileage till they broke in, kind of the opposite of now. Maybe the solution is to not waste so much gas, the practice of locating work and stores far from home is what caused this mess. Also, people keep running to the store every day, that is wasting both the environment and your money. Driving to the store costs a buck for most people, that is 365 bucks a year for most people. It costs me three bucks of gas to go to the store and back. That doubles the price of a dozen eggs or a half gallon of milk. People cannot understand this.

Corn gas was one of the stupidest things that they did in this country, I have thought this way from the first I heard of it and will never change my mind about the stupidity behind this philosophy. It gives off more nitrous oxide, which is far worse than CO2

Oh dear is all I can say.

I was never under the impression that corn fuel produced less emissions, I always thought the idea was that it's party trick was that unlike oil, its renewable.

a reply to: ketsuko

Ketsuko, reread my post again. I'm not in support of propping up the corn industry due to the formation of HFCS, which is one of the primary processed corn products from that particular market. The corn subsidies are very much linked to HFCS and are associated with the rising issue of obesity within the US.

Here's an article on the subject: www.scientificamerican.com...

Basically, the utilization of corn to make biofuels is a two parter--one, it's one of the major crops grown for the production of potato chips and HFCS and two, it's utilizing the waste from this "junk food" crop. In that sense, it's not a win-win but a lose-lose.

It was still found that Biofuels are better in the long-run. Probably not something worth subsidizing though.

Also pretty sure these fuels are made from plant waste, so they're not displacing food production.