Climategate: Lord Monckton’s Mistake
Earlier this week, Lord Christopher Monckton of Brenchley made international headlines when he compared a group of global warming protesters who broke up a meeting of Americans for Prosperity in Copenhagen to “Hitler Youth.”
In addition to upsetting those sympathetic to the prerogative of groups of zealous young people to silence non-conforming opinions through direct action, the comment also excited criticism from history buffs, who have pointed out that the preferred Nazi instrumentality for engaging in such activities was actually the SA, or Brownshirts, not the Hitler Youth, and therefore the British noble’s comment was technically inaccurate.
Be that as it may, Lord Monckton subsequently made it clear that his harsh remark was based not merely upon the manners of the intruders, but upon their program, which he said could cost the lives of millions of poor people around the globe. Now this is certainly true. The leading slayer of people in the world today is, as it has been throughout history, poverty. Its sole antidote is economic growth. Thus any program, such as regressive carbon taxes or cap-and-trade schemes designed to prevent the development of third world countries can only be considered anti-human in the extreme.
In their crazed quest for racial purification, Hitler’s followers killed tens of millions. A global program of sacrificing human prospects in order to try achieve weather control could easily result in an even greater toll.
So there was real substance to Monckton’s remark. Yet then he went completely off the tracks. “Because of the biofuel scam,” he said, “world food prices have doubled. That is because of the global warming scare … and as a result of that, millions are dying in third world countries.”
In point of fact, world food prices have not doubled. Far from it. Corn prices last year were over $7 per bushel. Today, despite a continued increase in U.S. ethanol production, corn stands at $3.75 per bushel. The reason for this is that corn and other grain commodity prices have not been driven by ethanol production, but by oil prices, which have fallen 50% since their $140/bbl peak last year.
Beyond the commodity price, retail food prices are also strongly affected by transport and processing costs, which once again are heavily affected by the price of oil. Thus, by attacking oil prices, biofuel production has actually served not to raise consumer food costs, but to lower them.
Monckton is also incorrect in ascribing the biofuel expansion to global warming alarmists. While it is true that some biofuel advocates have attempted to use carbon emission reduction as a rationale for supporting their industry, the actual global warming militants have been anything but supportive. Rather, led by such key figures as former Environmental Defense Fund staff attorney Tim Searchinger and population control advocate David Pimentel, they have vigorously attacked the global biofuel program precisely because it is contributing to economic growth in third world countries.
More garbage from PJM. Dr. Zubin should stick to his engineering. There is not an economist in the world that would agree that removing a large quantity of a product from production would not effect the price. The fact that there are other effects on the price does not invalidate that point. He also says that the size of the market will increase incentives to produce. Not true. It is the expectation of profit. He also commits the fallacy of projecting past results into the future.(DowJones 36000 anyone). While it is true science can increase crop yields there are natural limits. You can’t grow a 100ft tall corn stalk. I am also dubious about his corn statistics as in the past farmers fed most of their corn to animals and didn’t market it.
Although I don’t want to speak for Lord Monckton, I have seen him refer to assessments made by the World Bank and OECD that ethanol production is a major driver in increase of food prices. And while the price of corn has declined in the past several years, it is still 70% higher than it was in the early part of this decade.
Robert is right on his assessment of corn ethanol, which demonstrates rare among both political right and political left critical thinking.
Here is much more to corn ethanol than lies on the surface.
First, ethanol is not just simple substitute to gasoline as biodiesel is to conventional diesel. Ethanol is serious octane number improver, and also oxygenate, which makes gasoline to combust with about 30% less of real pollutants like HC or CO.
Second, despite lover calorific value than gasoline, about 10% ethanol/gasoline blends combust faster and produces more off-gases in internal combustion engines, which almost eliminates ethanol lover calorific value penalty.
Third, most of nitrogen fertilizers used to grow corn is transferred into high-nitrogen corn proteins, which are fully recovered for cattle feed after fermentation of starch for fuel alcohol. In fact, there is huge overproduction of starch for livestock corn feed, which is largely wasted in conventional cattle fattening.
Forth, about 50 cents per gallon government subsidy substitutes for most of traditional agricultural subsidies. In addition, 10-25% increase in price of feed corn attributed to fuel ethanol demand, more than compensates for subsidy due to increased income from feed corn export (naturally, it works only for US).
Fifth, 30% more production of corn than is necessary for domestic consumption and export, is the best hedge against catastrophic harvest failure (due, for, example, year without summer when major volcanic eruption will occur).
I can go on and on, but, to be honest, I do not expect to be heard…
Like climaategate, it all depends on when one looks at things:
See chart here http://www.scribd.com/doc/1586576/USDA-corn-price-19012001
and another one here http://www.indexmundi.com/commodities/?commodity=corn&months=120
And don’t forget this article from MIT about food prices due to biofuels:
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/18173/
The author, obviously, has never sat behind a combine at harvest time. He is right that the issue is e-n-e-r-g-y. Go raise corn without fertilizer and see what your yield will be. Fertilizer comes from e-n-e-r-g-y. Just a few years ago corn was selling for about $1.76/bushel harvested on my farm. That was before $4/gallon gasoline. Corn has, in fact, gone up to a new level. When the world’s economy recovers, e-n-e-r-g-y will skyrocket regardless of what one thinks of demand and supply.
Corn is extremely hard on the land. You can grow it for a couple of years but when the nutrients are depleted your choices are dramatically reduced yields or take out the checkbook to pay your fertilizer supplier. Regardless, prices will start up and may not have much of an upper bound. Due to the recession, we currently live in a low demand period. Be thankful and stock up.
And, of course, one should simply not burn your food.
Merry Christmas to all!!
And who talks for the 90 Million dead of malaria since the banning of DDT because one scraggily bearded graduate student found one thin shelled eagles egg in Florida Bay?
Where have you all been the last 50 years? Monkton’s a saint, but he’s peeing in the wind. It’s over. And you all let it happen.
I don’t know about Lord Monkton’s statement but I think it is safe to say the ethanol legislation and mandates is a product of the “alternative energy” mantra used by Global Warming alarmists. This mantra has at its core that any use of oil based products is evil, therefore other options must be developed to end the use of the evil oil. Once this weird thinking become part of the accepted thinking a lot of bad things happen. Like Ethanol. I do not believe that it offers any advantage over oil but does offer many disadvantages – inability to be carried in pipelines, destructive to engines, requires government subsidy, and introduces equal or greater environmental damage than oil. And it does have an impact on food prices. I don’t think there is a way that significant parts of the corn crop can be used for fuel without having an upward pressure on the price for corn for other uses. Maybe the laws of supply and demand were waived in the ethanol case and I idid not hear about it.
Ethanol is a good example of how legislatures take an idea that may one day have merit, with a lot of work and private investment, and they totally destroy the idea by replacing private investment with public subsidy. Now corn farmers in Iowa pretty much dictate that ethanol will forever be part of our gasoline, because Iowa is home to Presidential primary kick off. This is lunacy of course, but it is where we are.
Having seen Lord Monkton in action, I tend to put more credence in the excellent work he is doing sound alarms about the fake science of Global Warming than the minor issues raised by this author.
RAP you should learn the difference between dynamic effects and static effects in economics, or stay out of economics discussions yourself. Further you appear to be confused on a fundamental level about the supply of a critical agricultural input – land. The supply of agricultural land is not static, and while the size of the earth is finite, the amount of land currently in production is no where near 100% of the arable land on the planet. Nor are we using all the available water, etc. To discount another false argument above I note that there are a number of plants that can be used to produce ethanol, switchgrass to name one alternative to corn – so any arguments about how “corn is hard on the land” are meaningless, because substitutes are available.
ethanol is not a viable alternative to fuel unless the input (plant material) is cheaply grown and harvested. and in the case of corn it is not. Brasil has been doing this much more effectively for decades with sugar cane.
the biggest damage to poor people and poverty is the government intrusion into these issues. This is the one biggest reason that poverty increases …the government involvement. They use victim hood and poverty to promote their agenda, the government needs poverty.
I have a lot of respect for Lord Monckton… this is a sidebar but a relevant one, I think. There is a lot of interesting work going on in the production of biofuel form algae. One I know of is at http://www.thefuelfilm.com/ Algae derived biofuel makes all kinds of sense.
Well, Thank heavens the Hopenchangen accord didn’t go the way it could have, but be advised the centralized control agenda is cranking along as always. Cloward- Piven Strategy et al. http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=6967
“No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and Virtue is preserved. On the Contrary, when People are universally ignorant, and debauched in their Manners, they will sink under their own weight without the Aid of foreign Invaders.” -Samuel Adams
As history repeats itself, let’s get our facts right.
As someone whose lifes work has been as a private meteorologist, I will take the word of one Lord Christopher Monckton any day over someone making an issue out of a non-issue. Lord Monckton is most correct in the fact that “climate change” is a fraud and that the acts of these protestors ARE REMINICENT of the acts of Nazi brownshirts. Thats plenty good enough for me.
Nice column !
A good reflection on fundamental points.
AND
I didn’t know that
In 2007, the state of Iowa alone produced more corn than the entire United States did in 1947
WOW !
five years ago a gallon of milk was 2.50, now it is 5.50. The value of a dollar has dropped dramatically which is a major factor in the rise of food prices, however, it does not explain the rise in cost entirely. Milk is a good product to look at because it is a commodity that is affected by all other commodities. I may not know much, but I do know what I pay for a gallon of milk
Diverting corn to ethanol has made the use of corn for animal feed, especially cattle and chickens, much more expensive, raising the cost of beef and chicken to the consumer significantly. Have costs doubled? Not sure but the the use of corn for ethanol has caused the price of food to go up.
IIRC, the key “hidden” aspect of ethanol is that it takes 145 gallons of water to produce one gallon of ethanol.
Does the Foundation for the defence of Democracy recieve any donations from companies which recieve ethanol subsudies? If corn based ethanol were such a great idea, why does that industry require tens of billions in subsidies as well as import duties blocking Brazilian sugar – based ethanol. Follow the subsidies and you will find the corruption.
So, your position is that corn follows the price of oil, thus, turning corn into fuel for cars does not increase the price of corn, increasing the price of oil does? OK, so lets look at that idea. Why would corn prices follow the price of oil? Does doubling the price of oil more than double the cost to make corn? Does doubling the price of oil double the selling price of ethanol?
I would say that increasing the price of oil increases the price of ethanol and that higher prices for ethanol increases demand for ethanol which increases the demand for corn and the only reason corn prices would increase due to this is if there is not enough corn to meet demand, the ethanol makers bid up the price of corn to make a profit.
Now that we have a good idea of why the price of corn rises, lets look at the impact higher priced corn has. The poorest people are really really poor. A doubling of the price of their food is devastating to them, and they will simply not be able to buy as much food as they could before, because their budgets simply would not allow it. If you cannot afford food, have no place to get free food from, cannot grow your own, and no one else has any around which you can steal, you are probably going to die. How many? I do not know, but millions? Very possibly so.
Few mistakes here as well.
1. Bio-fuel production is not limited to the US… of which your basing most of your arguments on. Bio-fuels cost taxpayers alot of money… so one could argue that while the price at the market has remained stable(in the US) that their are many hidden costs through taxes.
2.”Beyond the commodity price, retail food prices are also strongly affected by transport and processing costs, which once again are heavily affected by the price of oil. Thus, by attacking oil prices, biofuel production has actually served not to raise consumer food costs, but to lower them.”
This is kind of a myth. Bio-fuels most of all ethanol can only compete with gas when gas is in the $3+ dollars range and only in the $4+ without taxpayer money. So the argument that it lowers gas prices/transportation costs is meaningless unless gas reaches obama approved very high levels.
3.”Rather, led by such key figures as former Environmental Defense Fund staff attorney Tim Searchinger and population control advocate David Pimentel, they have vigorously attacked the global biofuel program precisely because it is contributing to economic growth in third world countries.”
This is debatable between the hardcore cultists and the “public” cultists. Your al-gore type cultists and public cultists firmly believe in bio-fuels. So from the public/propaganda view bio-fuels are very pro-”green”(red).
Bio-fuels as anyone knows are pretty damaging to the environment and should for the most part be banned because of that… however the cultists at least the PR cultists love them because they provide a great chance to make huge sums of taxpayer money and easily scam the system…
4. “This is why Monckton’s error in adopting the food vs. fuel bunk is so serious.”
Not really… your argument implies a whole lot of communism into a whole lot of free market ideals. Their is no denying that the world is “short” on food millions starve each day… Monckton isn’t arguing the government should take over food production in fact he’s arguing the government should get out of food produce(and bio-fuels) since they are the ones propping up these bio-fuel companies… so in fact you have your ideology reversed.
5. “For example, in significant part as a result of the corn ethanol boom,”
I’m sorry but are you kidding… you clearly don’t understand food production, global markets, global farming, etc, etc. Your argument is in a complete vacuum and fails to really address why corn has increased… which is because many farmers have changed to produce corn away from producing other crops… thats merely a shift in production not an expansion of production. While we can/have expanded food production in the US(and the world) that can only be done through free markets and in many places including the US better waterway systems. One need only look at CA and see the water issues going on there right now. The US is starting to reach a plateau in production… one that can be easily overcome if addressed. However the cultists are blocking many of the things that need to be done to get the water systems up and running correctly as well as a complete lack of planning by many governments.
6. “Aborting this progress in order to protect the oil cartel’s ability to impose scarcity can only do the greatest harm to the ability of humanity to keep itself fed or, even more importantly, to keep itself free.”
And the massive ignorance of this statement is well massive… corn bio-fuel will take decades to be able to compete with oil without massive taxpayer money used to offset of price… The idea that you’d even suggest that corn is a threat to oil on an energy level is a joke… sure its a huge threat on a communist/policy level because as more and more tax dollars goto it to off set the cost it will become “affordable” to the “public” but from any scientific point of view, corn will never compete with oil until we figure out a process to directly converts corn into crude oil… and then maybe.
We could be looking at a time differential, here. Lord Monckton is right that there were news reports that corn prices (futures?) went up when ethanol mixes with gasoline started to be sold, this caused shortages, and it was predicted that they’d go up further when large quantities of corn were withdrawn from the market and diverted toward ethanol production. IIRC The news articles were very unclear. Fidel Castro weighed in on this, making the one statement of his career with which I agreed, that using grain for fuel is immoral. http://www.indianexpress.com/news/castro-slams-bush-fuel-plan-in-new-editorial/27478/ The price of food has definitely gone up for me.
In my opinion, ethanol will not be viable as a gasoline alternative until we are able to use corn STALKS instead of corn KERNELS as fuel. We’re still a long way from doing that.
Corn is a renewable resource, (and increased corn production will increase carbon sequestration, again because of the corn STALKS being produced along with the kernels) however, and the United States, at least, has enormous capability to increase corn production. So, corn shortage due to new demands could well have been followed by increased corn production, followed by lower prices.
So, both Monckton and Zubrin could be right, depending on which years they are talking about. And therein lies the rub. People do not stop eating to wait out a food shortage.
Ethanol is a waste of time and is only really good fo ADM and other large AGri-Businesses. It actually lowers MPG. Now onto Lord Monktons claim about food prices increasing. Before Ethanol Mandates excess grains could be sold on the world market at basically discount prices these excesses are largely now a thing of the past. This has led to Food Price increases in third world countries. Coupled that with repressive regimes and other factors and indeed Millions have been denied easy acess to food at reasonable prices. While here in the U.S. we are insulated from much of the unintended consequences of this Millions of people have not and they are suffering as a result. ADM is making huge profits, which I have nothing against, but the methods used to obtain these profits are not compition by by rigging the system.
Lord Monkton used the U.N.’s own people to provide his talking points largely so he fend off crtics from AWG Advocates who would say he is in the pockets of big business. There is no dispute that there have been Food Riots in Africa and other poor third world regions and the reasons are large and varied but since the removal of millions of bushels of grain from the food market people are starving. Is it a coincidence?
Don’t forget that that the use of the nitrogen fertilizer to keep growing corn as opposed to rotating crops has created a very large dead zone in the gulf of mexico. Many depend on fishing the gulf for food and income.
It’s one thing to take surplus corn to fuel your tractor or fill your jug but when you industrialize it without thinking it through first the problems created are at industrial rates.
When Henry ford starting building affordable cars he feed up massive areas of farmland that was used to feed horses. Now we’re back to feeding the horses in our engines.We need this land to feed ourselves and others CHEAPLY
like someone else said: DON”T BURN YOUR FOOD
Monckton did have the guts to speak out as did another titled Englishman, Sir David Attenborough the naturalist world famous for his television programmes on wildlife. In a recent documentary for BBC’s The Warm Planet series Sir David came right out and said the problem is not too much industry but too many people. Unlike the Politically Correct Thought Police though Sir David did not blame developed nations. He identified third world nation, giving as an example Bangla Desh where 165 million people live in an area smaller than England (pop. excluding Scotland, Wales and N. Ireland, 50 million.)
30 million of these Bangla Deshis live on low lying mud banks in the Ganges delta and their homes are now at risk from storm surges without any firther rise in sea levels. The UK’s Labour government seems to think this is Britain’s problem. It is 60 years since Britain ceased to be the colonial power in that part of the world. The population of bangla Desh has increased by almost 50% in 12 years.
Working out where the problem lies is hardly rocket science.
Frankenfoods are NOT a step in the right direction.
You’re right, but you missed a couple of things.
The push to ethanol in the US isn’t driven by concern about emissions – it’s an attempt to reduce oil imports AND a little booster for the corn industry. From an emissions standpoint, it’s a red herring – and ethanol is a pretty rotten fuel for gasoline engines to boot. Build an engine to RUN on ethanol and that’s another matter.
Also, you didn’t mention trade barriers and distortions. Remove those, and we’ll have no problems feeding all those millions. Nobody is starving anywhere in the world because there’s not enough food to feed the world’s population.
There were food price spikes around the world a year or two ago. As far as I could tell, none of them were related to biofuels (despite the ernest claims from wingnuts). Take rice shortages due to drought in asia, governments worldwide manipulating supply (and demand, in the case of some middle-eastern governments who decided it was a great time to build up multi-year stockpiles of grains), zimbabwe transforming itself from an exporter to an importer of maize and wheat, and rampant worldwide speculation – compared with that, ethanol production in north america wasn’t a big deal.
My fave wild claim was that biofuels are causing deforestation in south-east asia and brazil. Yeah, right – because there was NO deforestation going on before biofuels came along. Good one.
Oh dear! Mr Zubrin!
You are really clutching at straws when you nit-pick Lord Monckton’s tiny mistake and which he later qualified anyway.
The good Lord is right 99.9% of the time and it shows the desperation of you and your ilk that race to your scribbling pad and becoming quite hysterical over a point 01% clitch.
This is the man that Al Gorgon runs away from at great speed along with many others. They prefer to act as the terribly brave Fraudhagen policeman who waited for Lord Monckton to turn his back on him before making a cowardly attack on him knocking him to the ground and rendering him unconcious for a few moments. Of course, no apology from the city police chief on the spot at the unprovoked attack. This disgusting police THUG is now a ‘greenie hero”!
#3 Al
1. First, ethanol is not just simple substitute to gasoline as biodiesel is to conventional diesel. Ethanol is serious octane number improver, and also oxygenate, which makes gasoline to combust with about 30% less of real pollutants like HC or CO.
“Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) being released by the ethanol plants include formaldehyde and acetic acid, both carcinogens.”
“Ethanol releases more nitrogen oxides, a key element of smog, and evaporates more easily than gasoline, adding other air pollutants”
2. “Second, despite lover calorific value than gasoline, about 10% ethanol/gasoline blends combust faster and produces more off-gases in internal combustion engines, which almost eliminates ethanol lover calorific value penalty.”
Except that most ethanol is shipped by trucks and trains, increasing the caloric value penalty.
“The trouble is that ethanol — which is an alcohol — can corrode and crack pipes, requiring special additives.”
3. “Third, most of nitrogen fertilizers used to grow corn is transferred into high-nitrogen corn proteins, which are fully recovered for cattle feed after fermentation of starch for fuel alcohol. In fact, there is huge overproduction of starch for livestock corn feed, which is largely wasted in conventional cattle fattening.”
Distiller’s grain can only supply up to 35% of feed for cattle, and even this brings about specialized storage and spoilage concerns. The other 65% of feed must come from traditional sources such as corn feed.
4. “Forth, about 50 cents per gallon government subsidy substitutes for most of traditional agricultural subsidies. In addition, 10-25% increase in price of feed corn attributed to fuel ethanol demand, more than compensates for subsidy due to increased income from feed corn export (naturally, it works only for US).”
If ethanol is a viable product, why would it require subsidies? Small producers and diverse locations (near corn producers) prohibit the production volume needed for more expensive pipelines resulting in higher transportation costs. Oil is used to provide the energy for oil refining; ethanol cannot provide the energy needed for distillation and transportation.
5. “Fifth, 30% more production of corn than is necessary for domestic consumption and export, is the best hedge against catastrophic harvest failure (due, for, example, year without summer when major volcanic eruption will occur).”
Such action would reduce the production of other crops such as soybeans. Ethanol production will top at roughly 10 to 15 billion gallons per year; the US imports 128 billion gallons per year and uses 150 billion gallons total. Ethanol is a regional fuel at best that will always require governemental intervention to keep production alive.
RKV
I never said anything about land. It was Dr. Zubin who claimed that technology would raise yields per acre as it did in the past with apparently no limit. You should have read his post more carefully.
To 23. Matthew
Alot of sleight of hand right there…
“The push to ethanol in the US isn’t driven by concern about emissions – it’s an attempt to reduce oil imports”
Thats a complete joke. Ethanol really has nothing to do with reducing oil imports are all. If we wanted to reduce oil imports we could you know DRILL FOR FREAKING OIL… or do coal to gas(which with the new tech that came out last year is pretty cheap… far cheaper then ethanol)
“AND a little booster for the corn industry.”
This is the correct answer combined with massive kickbacks, scams, government waste and favors.
“My fave wild claim was that biofuels are causing deforestation in south-east asia and brazil. Yeah, right – because there was NO deforestation going on before biofuels came along. Good one.”
Its a much better claim then the joke pushed that the evil meat producers/cattle farms are clear cutting the forests… propaganda is wonderful when you can throw it back in the users face… makes for great irony.
A couple of additional points. There was some claim that the price of corn rose because of fuel costs. In a free market economy price is set by demand not the cost of production. If production costs exceed price producers must reduce production to meet demand. The government’s ethanol mandate creates an imposed demand which will increase the price. In the short run of course consumers may not be able to do without a product which will cause a temporary price spike as we see frequently with gasoline.
I am a small sheep farmer in the southeast. Feed corn at the consumer level went from about $200 per ton to $300 two years ago. Fertilizer went from about $300 per ton to $650, that is more than a 100% increase, and has fallen back about 15% this year. Corn is still $280. It is my understanding that the jump in prices was due to a massive conversion to ethanol production on midwestern farms. Am I right?
What an absolute educated Idiot ! Does he think having more grain would mean the poor would get more food ?
I know that prices at the grocery store have gone up, not down. There are a number of variables which brought this about.
We are lucky to have a Lord Monckton courageously bucking the winds of collective hysteria and dare propose rational discourse as a viable alternative. The whole ethanol-from-corn industry is what happens when politicians volunteer to dispense the benefits of their expertise in agronomy, chemistry and economics to the unwashed masses. It is based on the presumption of knowing what’s good for us better than we can decide for ourselves. It’s not just plainly absurd, it’s downright un-American!
Solar energy collection was invented a long time ago. It was called “agriculture”. If properly irrigated and given adequate soil, plants will manage to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere, which is quite a feat, because there is not that much of it. A byproduct of plant growth is oxygen, because the plants use the carbon for their own structural needs and disregard the rest of the CO2 molecule, which is oxygen, of no use to them!
Should the crop, (or one of its derivatives) ever be used as fuel at some later time, the combustion will consume as much oxygen as was produced by the plant growth, and emit as much CO2 as was consumed by the very same photosynthetic process. How about the energy produced by the combustion? It’s only the restitution of the solar energy the plant used to separate the carbon from the oxygen, no more, no less.
Whether this natural cycle ever becomes harnessed into a practical industry is a matter of technology and economics, not politics. Why should we trust politicans to decide that corn and ethanol should be the right way to go about it? This is not a political problem, it’s technology, which I hope will never be a product of government.
I had never heard of Lord Monckton ever before. I’m grateful for his generous and competent contributions. I am also sorry a policeman in Copenhagen punched him in the back.
With all due respect, Dr. Zubrin, you make a number of mistakes in this piece.
1. “…by attacking oil prices, biofuel production has actually served not to raise consumer food costs, but to lower them.”
Biofuel does not “attack oil prices” – far from it. The cost of producing ethanol from corn in the U.S. is unprofitable without subsidies and a high oil price – witness the number of Ethanol refineries shutting down as the price of oil plummeted. Without a high oil price, ethanol is not profitable because of its high production costs. Yet corn, the feedstock of American ethanol refineries, relies on oil-based fertilizers, so a high oil price also raises the cost of growing the corn. It’s a non-winnable catch-22, something that was evident before the gov’t subsidies – without which few ethanol refineries would be able to operate.
Your claim that biofuel production has actually brought down the price of oil and therefore the price of food is completely at odds with the facts. The amount of ethanol produced in this country is so tiny that there is no way it could compete with oil:
“Pro-ethanol websites publicize the fact that in 2005, the production of ethanol lowered the amount of oil that was imported by 170 million gallons, thus decreasing the U.S. trade deficit by $8.7 billion [2]. When these figures are shown alone, it seems that ethanol has a drastic impact on American oil imports. When put in context, though, the numbers look negligible. In 2004, the U.S. imported over 200 billion gallons of oil [3]. This means that ethanol helped to decrease foreign oil by less than 1%. Also, the U.S. trade deficit was $611 billion in 2004, meaning that ethanol use decreased the deficit by less than 1.5% [4]. Ethanol will not eliminate the United States’ use of foreign oil, nor will it even come close to doing so. … If all the corn grown in the U.S. were used to make ethanol, there would only be a 2.4% net decrease in foreign oil use [6].
http://medialab.blogs.com/our_ethanol_debate/2007/03/ethanol_and_the.html
2. “Monckton is also incorrect in ascribing the biofuel expansion to global warming alarmists. While it is true that some biofuel advocates have attempted to use carbon emission reduction as a rationale for supporting their industry, the actual global warming militants have been anything but supportive.”
Environmentalists and many environmental organizations were all for ethanol before they were against it: “Several environmental groups that support ethanol concede that the energy savings from corn-based ethanol may be limited, but they say it will serve as a crucial bridge to more efficient sources like switchgrass, a type of prairie grass that could potentially be used to produce ethanol.” http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/25/business
/25ethanolside.html.
Just as a stopped clock is right twice a day, environmental groups are not always wrong on on everything – just mostly wrong on most things.
3. “There is no fundamental difference between the overpopulation ideologue’s contention that food shortages will be caused by the addition of more people and the anti-biofuel line that expanding alternative markets for agricultural produce will lead to starvation. Both have the same conceptual foundation, and both are equally false.”
This is not a fair comparison. Millions of people are starving around the world today and some 2 to 3 billion more people will be added to the world population in the next few decades (by about 2050). Arable land is limited, this is just a fact, and we are using all of it that is available. We need to expand our production of food dramatically over the next decades just to keep the number of starving at the current level – which is horrendous. We must aim to reduce that number. Even with all our resources going into increasing yields and improving the agricultural methods of developing nations (access to fertilizers and markets), this is a difficult challenge. We cannot afford to divert limited arable land to producing fuel when it could be producing more food.
4. “…in significant part as a result of the corn ethanol boom, American corn yields per acre are now 25% higher than what they were seven years ago, and five times higher than what they were in the late 1940s. In 2007, the dtate of Iowa alone produced more corn than the entire United States did in 1947, and nationally, corn yields are rising at a rate that will double output per acre again before the end of the next decade.”
As you point out, yields have been rising dramatically since WWII – long before biofuels ever contributed to the demand for corn. The fact is that dramatic improvements in corn yields have had little to do with biofuel production and everything to do with demand from a hungry world for more food. Demand for food will continue to drive demand for higher yielding varieties of many crops for decades to come, with or without biofuel subsidies.
@28 RAP “A couple of additional points. There was some claim that the price of corn rose because of fuel costs. In a free market economy price is set by demand not the cost of production. If production costs exceed price producers must reduce production to meet demand. The government’s ethanol mandate creates an imposed demand which will increase the price. In the short run of course consumers may not be able to do without a product which will cause a temporary price spike as we see frequently with gasoline.”
That’s utter nonsense. In general (there might be exceptions), producers of a good cannot reduce unit cost by reducing production, but rather the opposite. It is not even true that price is “set by demand.” Price is set by supply *and* demand, and there won’t be any supply if production cost exceeds price. A better way of saying this is that price will always equal or exceed production cost.
Matt O:
Acetic acid is, actually, vinegar.
Overall, E10 blends DO reduce smog-forming emissions.
Corrosive properties of alcohol are not a problem on gas stations or in cars, the exception is legacy oil product pipelines. Yes, it requires trucking in stainless steel tankers, but we are talking about fuel additive which will max at 10-15% of total volume of gasoline. BTW it is more than oil equivalent US buys from Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
Something like 20% of starch in corn-derived cattle diet is wasted. It means that no less than 20% of corn could be converted to ethanol and distiller grains without affecting cattle feed operations.
Why there is subsidy for ethanol? For same reason all subsidies are existed: governments enhance competitiveness of their LOCAL producers. Alaska subsidizes oil, Oregon – lumber, Washington – aircrafts, and US subsidizes corn.
“Ethanol production will top at roughly 10 to 15 billion gallons per year” – agree 100%.
I notice when liberals use inflated numbers no one on the left criticizes them. Lord Monckton numbers might be off but near as far off as these Climategate figures. Didn’t I just hear Al Gore say we only have 50 days left or the world is lost. Wasn’t it on the First Earth Day these same people were predicting an Ice Age was imminent? Where is the criticism of these people?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2009/dec/11/monckton-calls-activists-hitler-youth
uh, this lord is definitly an arrogant tw*t
his lordness dared to use the godwin argument, when it was obviously unindicated
and I wouldn’t give a damn of whatever he can defends, just for what he is himself
MIT also looked at the effect of increased ethanol production in the US to its impacts on Mexico, particularly corn derived food products.
My prime concerns for ‘biofuels’ of the plant variety is the small conversion ratio of incoming energy (solar) to outgoing fuel energy (fuel), corn and rapeseed typically have just over a 9% conversion rate of sunlight to liquid fuel energy (ethanol and biodiesel respectively). Algae when used for industrial systems is a recapture device utilizing a portion of the heat energy of such plants which have already used another fuel source, and while that might be a substantial amount of heat energy no system will capture more than a fraction of that, thus the post-industrial waste heat into algae based fuel will be less than was used to get it, and that the waste heat portion of such an industrial plant, only. I am all for recapture devices! When you use sunshine for that process you end up looking at a lower conversion ratio (due to day/night and seasonal cycles), although it may still be better than corn or rapeseed.
The use of human consumable crops for fuel production is nuts! Using xeno-species that are a nuisance, such as kudzu, or even waste plant material from other processes is superior as you are using a new resource to get fuel, not swapping out a known human consumable plant for one dedicated to fuel consumption, thus using up arable land. Brazil, always cited, uses a good percentage of cropland on a lower yield, all-season crop, sugar cane, to do their conversion, but the lower conversion rate for it balances out with the all-year growing, and does little better than corn per annum, plus hits croplands even harder for nutrients.
As all of these are secondary or tertiary energy sources run by solar power, the best way to get energy is directly, without intermediary stages. That requires a space-based industry to get rid of the lovely atmosphere and then beaming energy to earth via diffuse microwave systems. For this we need a space industry, even telepresence will do, plus research in the storage and transmission of electrical energy and a multi-decade and slow shift from a fuel based economy that has liquid fuels as its basis: it cannot be done quickly due to the vested cost of infrastructure that we currently have and creating a new system is a non-trivial change-over, even if it is electricity as the current system isn’t made for such amounts of transmission to cover all liquid fuels.
If you want to ‘save the Earth’ then getting industry and energy generation off of the planet should be the number one, above all others, priority. Until then cheap, low cost energy systems are preferable, but I have strong doubts that secondary and tertiary systems fit that bill. Low cost fusion, as is now being put through its demonstration paces, may be a lovely interim answer, but then folks would have to stop investing in Greenpeace and start investing in energy technology. Can’t have that, now, can we?
There are some disconnects in the article and comments. I am an animal feeder. I try to make money on the spread between the price of the feed in relation to the price of catfish. The energy policies of this country (ethanol subsidies) have raised the costs of feed to the point where making a profit feeding catfish is no longer possible. This Cinderella industry and the jobs it privides has declined over 50%.
Also the comments about land being finate, this country has over 30 million acres in CRP (Conservation Reserve Program), where farmers are paid to plant trees or just let the land lie dormant. If food was that short why would we do this?
Please let the “invisible hand” work.
Without subsidies, ethanol from corn is costlier (a less efficient use of resources) than gas.
And, if ethanol from corn did compete with gas, as others here have mentioned, you would have huge dislocations as land used for other crops would be turned to corn production.
Enough already! Remove the ethanol mandates and subsidies and let the market determine how much is made and at what price. None of us, not Robert Zubrin, not Lord Monckton, and especially not congress, have the wisdom to determine how much ethanol vs. food vs. other goods that consumers want. If alcohol ever became significantly less expensive than gasoline, the water in alcohol corrosion problem and lower energy content could be dealt with, but only if and when cost savings drive a shift from gasoline to alcohol fuels. No cost savings…no shift.
Hayek on the Price System and distributed knowledge
http://rationalargumentator.com/issue43/austrianmarketprocess.html
http://www.econlib.org/library/Essays/hykKnw1.html
I started to read this, and then remembered that Dr. Zubrin’s prescription for our fuel problems was all about compulsion based on his or someone’s superior intellect to the individual. FFVs everywhere, running less efficiently than vehicles designed for just one, but nonetheless forced into the market as our only choice. Wonderful.
So whatever he just had to say about crops and economics, I’m not sure I even care.
There is no shortage of food production. World hunger is not a production problem, but a poverty, transportation and infrastructure problem. Too much food rots en route to the people who need it.
Regardless of the particular matter in hand- Describing those with whom you disagree as “Good Gentlemen” is far more likely to get you a hearing than the current conventional description of them as ******** or worse.
<>
This is not an either/or problem. Yes poverty is an issue, but unless we all want to eat third-world diets, food production is also an issue.
“Mr. Ban laid out a full, comprehensive spectrum of measures to combat a scourge gravely exacerbated by climate change and population growth that will see two billion more mouths to feed in 2050 – 9.1 billion in all – with an overall need to grow 70 per cent more food.”
http://www0.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=32959&Cr=hunger&Cr1=
I am no UN supporter – far from it – but even the UN has to admit when there is a problem this vast. We need to grow more food, AND we need to combat poverty – because even with plenty of food, if you can’t afford to buy it you still starve.
However, contra Dr. Zubrin, gov’t subsidized biofuels are not the answer to third world poverty or even unemployment in the mid-western United States. Eventually governments will not be able to afford to continue to subsidize biofuels and when that day comes and the biofuels industry collapses, the misery will be great. Unemployment from shuttered ethanol refineries that never should have been built; hopeless poverty if not starvation for those farmers in third-world countries who literally “bet the farm” on biofuels crops.
I think his lordship was probably referring to their tactics more than the substance of their demands. These things are fine to research, but hardly deserve to be touted as a realistic alternative to fossil fuels at this point.
It’s not an either/or situation between food and ethanol.
The production of ethanol from corn uses only the starch of the corn kernel. All of the protein, minerals, and nutrients remain. One bushel of corn produces about 2.7 gallons of ethanol AND 11.4 pounds of gluten feed (20% protein) AND 3 pounds of gluten meal (60% protein) AND 1.6 pounds of corn oil.
Stop using drinking water from our aquifers to make ethanol! Filter it from rivers if you must make the the stuff, but one thing will soon become very clear, it won’t be the price of fuel that you will worry about it will be the price of drinking water! Oil has more energy, there is plenty of it, anything but oil and nuclear (fusion not fision) is a complete waste of time, money, and effort. But in the mean time, STOP USING UP OUR DRINKING WATER TO MAKE ETHANOL!
Bigfoot — Corn is still $280. It is my understanding that the jump in prices was due to a massive conversion to ethanol production on midwestern farms. Am I right?
Not entirely. A significant part is due to Chinese importing animal feed because hundreds of millions of them are now prosperous enough to eat meat several times a week. Exporting animal feed to China is one of the few ways that we have to offset some of the massive trade deficit that we have with them.
A large part of the price swings that we have seen is due to fluctuations in other products and the fact that farmers have to guess before planting what the price of commodities will be nearly a year later when they harvest. Over several years, the prices tend to stabilize and, if the past 60 years is any indication, to drop over the long term.
Several posters have pointed out that adding 10% ethanol to gasoline raises the octane. As a general rule of thumb 10% ethanol raises the octane rating to 95. That is better than 93 octane Super at most gas stations.
Those who are old enough to remember the early 1970s might recall that when the lead was removed from gasoline, the octane went down and the automakers had to lower the compression ratios of their engines in order to operate on the new, low octane unleaded regular. If a 95 octane gasoline blend with 10% ethanol replaces 87 octane unleaded regular, automakers could increase compression ratios of engines once more leading to more efficient engines that get more horsepower and more miles per gallon from the same sized engine. Oh, yeah. It also pollutes less.
Let’s see: more efficient, cleaner and powerful engines that go farther on a gallon of fuel while sending some of our fuel money to farmers in the midwestern USA instead of to mideastern despots who finance terrorists plotting to kill us and our children. Yeah, you guys are right. That sounds like a terrible idea.
Dr. Zubrin,
You make some good points, but miss what I feel is the most important argument against the “food vs. fuel” false dichotomy: Through all of agricultural history to the turn of the 20th century, over half of all farm acreage was set aside as fuel, in that case in the form of oats and hay for draft stock. That, after a century-long outlier of almost no fuel acreage, today some acreage is being re-purposed toward fuel production once again is not a travesty, but more likely a return to a normal state of agricultural production. Agriculture, once again, is becoming self-sustaining.
35. AL: “Overall, E10 blends DO reduce smog-forming emissions.”
Hardly. Consumer Reports, in their 10/06 cover story on Ethanol, pointed out that it requires 1.5 gallons of ethanol to move a car the same distance as using one gallon of gasoline. That means a car puts 1.5 times more emissions out its tailpipe by using ethanol to go the same distance. The slight NOX emission difference is more than made up by the 50% more ethanol required to go the same distance.
Gasoline is the greenest of fuels. It is highly concentrated, clean energy. It is expensive only because the enviro lobby owns Congress, and no more offshore drilling is allowed. The U.S. continental shelf holds MUCH more oil than Saudi Arabia has. But it can’t be produced because the eco-lobby own their tame pets in Congress. So gasoline prices remain artificially high. But even at current prices, gasoline is a bargain. Anyone who believes otherwise should put their car in neutral, turn off the engine, get out, and push their car about twenty miles down the road. Then tell us that gasoline isn’t a bargain.
The enviros want gas prices to go higher because in truth the governing boards of most environmental groups are paid off — yes, bribed — by companies that stand to make a fortune on ethanol. The same thing happened with the MTBE additive in California. MTBE is in all of the groundwater now, but despite widespread disgust with the shenanigans that went into its required use, it is still used everywhere in the state.
finally, if Mr Zubrin had one-tenth the guts that Lord Monckton has, he would be out on the front lines fighting the CO2=AGW scam. Instead, he criticizes Monckton by making the assumption that there was only one possible interpretation of Monckton’s words. I note that Zubrin has no criticism of the totally corrupt UN. Only of Monckton. Now why would he write an entire article about such a minor statement, when he is not worthy to comment on a better man than he is?
.
37. Marie Claude,
A guy named “Marie” calls Viscount Monckton a “twit”??
Marie is getting his panties in a bunch.
http://www.mongabay.com/images/commodities/charts/maize.html
Nice, long, windy, and … a … lie.
For the first 5 years of this decade, corn prices were stable for years at around 2.50 a bushel. Once the Ethanol lobby got going, prices tripled to about $7 a bushel – partly on futures speculation.
Nevertheless, despite expanding production by 15% in the past few years, corn prices are now about 75% higher than they were 4 years ago.
So what we have here is a whole article that relies on picking the highest recorded price for corn and comparing it to today’s price, and ignoring the data prior to that and calling that a “decline”.
It’s a good thing this guy isn’t a climate researcher.
Interesting to hear all of the different comments and all of the various ideas. By the way, in an early post it was stated that ethanol production uses 145 gallons of water for one gallon of ethanol. No, more like four to five gallons of water.
The Congressional Budget Office stated that the contribution to the rise in food prices of ethanol was a mere one half to eight tenths of one percent. Also, the cost of commodities makes up about 19% of the cost of food. Just notice that with the decline in crop prices from their highs the price of food has not declined.
Another good thing about continued use of ethanol is that more and more research is being done to use other products than corn. Algae, stover, etc. This research won’t continue if ethanol is not profitable. Also, ethanol is the only produce we have to replace gasoline at this time. It’s not perfect, but we should continue it’s use. It will eventually lead to better things.
To 54. Petra
Your logic is heavily flawed… first their is no reason to replace gas… at all. Counter to the claims of the global warming cultists ethanol is no better then gas when you look at the big picture. Ethanol is mostly a dead end research path that is a waste. Many other “growable” fuels are far and again better and are much better from a future research stand point.
Thermo — Consumer Reports, in their 10/06 cover story on Ethanol, pointed out that it requires 1.5 gallons of ethanol to move a car the same distance as using one gallon of gasoline.
If that is what they actually printed then Consumer Reports should no longer be trusted as an accurate source.
Real world results tend to see a 10% to 15% reduction in gas mileage for older cars burning E85. The newer Flex-Fuel vehicles often get the same or better mileage with E85 because of improvements in engine design and engine computer software.
One of the points that ethanol haters love to bring up is that ethanol has 30% less energy content per gallon. If all things were equal and we drove cars with 100% efficient engines, then would go 30% farther on a gallon of gasoline than on a gallon of ethanol. All things are not equal and your engine is a lot less than 100% efficient. A lot of the energy content of the gasoline you burn in your engine is used to heat up the water that is cooled by your radiator. Since ethanol burns cooler, more of it’s energy content is used to turn the wheels of your car and less is used to heat up the air that blows through your car’s radiator. There is also a certain amount of gasoline that is used strictly to cool down your engine and not for propulsion at all. One of the things that you will find if you hack into your engine computer or adjust your carburetor is that if you adjust your fuel mixture too lean, the engine will still run and you will get better mileage but your engine will overheat. The evaporation of the extra gasoline that is run through your pistons is required to absorb heat so that the engine does not run too hot.
As mentioned before, ethanol raises the octane of gasoline that it is mixed with. Higher octane allows you to run at higher compression which makes the engine more efficient. One way to increase the compression without redesigning the engine block is by adding a supercharger to force more air into the cylinders. With modern mass manufacturing methods, superchargers will not cost that much as they become as common as automatic transmissions. Superchargers will allow an SUV to get the power they need for towing a boat or trailer through the mountains from a relatively small four cylinder engine while getting significantly better mileage when just driving around town. But for the supercharger to work, the fuel has to have a high enough octane rating and ethanol provides that.
Lord Monkton was refering to the cost of foods to consumers in much of the developing world, which exceeded more than 50% of a family’s income in the middle of 2008. from September of 2008 to May of 2009 prices for corn where up 31%, for rice 74%, for wheat 130%. There were food riots in Haiti and in Egypt in 2008. Here in the U.S. we have all seen prices go up and our spending ability diminish, but for the millions trying to manange to have two meals a day the situation has become dire.
56. Mark in Texas:
” ‘Thermo — Consumer Reports, in their 10/06 cover story on Ethanol, pointed out that it requires 1.5 gallons of ethanol to move a car the same distance as using one gallon of gasoline.’
“If that is what they actually printed then Consumer Reports should no longer be trusted as an accurate source. Real world results tend to see a 10% to 15% reduction in gas mileage for older cars burning E85.”
.
Like many of your other statements, that one is based on skewed information.
Consumer Reports was comparing ethanol vs gasoline. But E85 is 85% gasoline, and 15% ethanol. Therefore, the 15% reduction in gas mileage you cite for cars using E85 is exactly in line with Consumer Reports’ findings, which compared 100% ethanol with 100% gasoline.
To the extent that ethanol is added to gasoline, mileage is reduced, and more emissions are put into the atmosphere. Ethanol is just a weak sister of the greenest fuel available: gasoline.
Maybe this will put the government mandated use of ethanol into perspective:
1. Government is force
2. Good ideas do not have to be forced on others
3. Bad ideas should not be forced on others
4. Liberty is necessary for the difference between good ideas and bad ideas to be revealed
I have to take issue with your simplistic libertarian views as outlined on the bottom of your post.
“1. Government is force.” So what? Parenting is also “force” (in that it uses force; or power.) That is why we refer to parental authority. I have the authority to make decisions for my child because I am older, have more experience, and in theory should know what’s best for him or her. Yet, I do not think we can say parental authority is bad. For a child, teaching also involves force. We require children be taught certain things so that they will succeed in the world around them. This is why education up to a certain age is compulsory (whether you home school, send your child to public school, or a private school, a certain amount of education is compulsory…that means parents must educate or have their children educated, at least up to a certain point. If not, the state will compel the parent to provide the education and compel the child to get the education.
“2. Good ideas do not have to be forced on others.” Simply put, it’s not so. I daresay 98 to 100% of people around the world oppose murder, or at least pay lip service to the idea that murder is wrong, or a bad idea. But people still desire to murder others, and occasionally threaten others, and even attempt to murder others. And at the moment that someone is acting on their desire to kill someone, it becomes necessary for someone else (often, but not always, someone with legal authority) to force them to stop. And if they persist in having the idea that murder is acceptable, we can at least evaluate their mental state and in certain cases force them to get treatment (the aim of which, in part, is corrective—to have the person understand that society at large considers murder to be a bad idea, and that planning out a murder and attempting to carry out such a plan is something which society will punish.)
I don’t really have an argument against #3 (Bad ideas should not be forced on others) because who wants to be forced to learn a bad idea?
As to #4 (Liberty is necessary for the difference between good ideas and bad ideas to be revealed) I would generally agree that I need to be free to choose which ideas are good and which are bad. However, that concept itself is an idea that is taught as a “good idea”. There have been other thinkers who argue the opposite…that good ideas only come from the Christian Bible, and that I must be forced to learn Fundimentalist Christian biblical concepts whether I like it or not; that I don’t need the “liberty” of choosing between Fundimentalist Christian and non-Fundimentalist Christian (bad) ideas…
Thank you Doctor Zubrin for clarifying Lord Monckton mistake
i also noticed his some sort of a naive claims
But God knows may be Lord never liked agriculture after all)))
USA has around 800 million acres of designated farm land and only under 300 mil is in fact cultivated
We ALL will benefit from ANY ethanol culture to be grown there:
sugar beets are excellent plant to be altered with corn. Also potatoes is excellent source for ethanol.
I really like the first comment on the discussion looks like it was made by ON DUTY OPEC INFORMATIONAL OFFICER
Dr. Zubrin is correct in his statement and market forces over the past 12 months have demonstrated his thesis. What Dr. Zubrin forgot to tell us in THIS article is that there are several other sources of ethanol feedstock besides corn. He also forgot to tell us in THIS article that there are other alcohol fuels for transportation besides ethanol. For those who don’t know, Dr. Zubrin is also a fan of methanol.
That being said, the real problem Dr. Zubrin is up against is a Saudi Petrochemical Lobby that fights off ANY potential competition to petroleum’s exclusive monopoly as a transportation fuel. Dr. Zubrin knows this and has eloquently made his case in other presentations. On THIS presentation, he merely wanted to confront a single statement by Lord Monckton and demonstrate the kind of dis-information that is being spread about bio-fuels. I think he did a fine job.
Sorry Mr Zubrin. Whenever I think Monckton’s got it wrong, I’m usually missing something.
Back in 2007 the greenies were confusing all well meaning environmentalist on bio-fuels:-
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/blog/climate/biofuels-green-dream-or-climate-change-nightmare-20070509
and they link directly to no less a commentator than that prominent environmentalist himself, Moonbat of the Guardian:-
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2007/03/27/a-lethal-solution/
That’s where talk of foodprices doubling and food riots due to biofuels came from.
Of course, we wouldn’t expect food prices to keep doubling (necessarily) every year, but it has indeed happened.
Now in the midst of a heated exchange with aggitators I think Lord Monckton might be excused for not specificying every detail of his argument.