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Hardy har OPEC...low demand may give U.S. drivers the last laugh!


Oh terrible-terrible-terrible. Calamity! What misfortune. Ethanol, Congress' answer to our energy woes, is struggling mightily. It seems as though corn derived ethanol, supposedly the flexible fuel of the future, is proving to be decidedly inflexible when it comes to alternative energy.
 
Maybe they should have tried Mazola oil.

And because of this foolish shortsightedness of Congress, American consumers (and the rest of the world) have been suffering under the burden from high worldwide corn prices--which has added to the cost of almost everything –including the cost of living,

And woe is Iowa, the state that will be the biggest loser in the collapse of the ethanol energy boondoggle. It seems as though the corn belt is about to get belted-- right smack in its economic nose.

Barely a year after Congress enacted an energy law meant to foster a huge national ethanol enterprise, the goals lawmakers set for that industry are in serious jeopardy. Plants that make ethanol from corn had been sprouting across the Midwest. But now, with motorists driving less in the economic downturn, these plants are shutting down virtually everyday.

And is it any surprise? Every time Congress sticks its liberal nose into the laws of the free market, it backfires every time.

Corn ethanol in a word--is a bust. And so are all the other related energy-producing  "industries" such as wood chips, switchgrasss, and crop waste. Despite the flowery predictions of Barack Obama’s inaugural speech, the U. S. is not about to become the Saudi Arabia of "soil produced" energy.

And for all the greedy investors who rushed in to build ethanol refining plants, it’s back to square one.

Only months ago, refiners in some regions were buying up as much corn ethanol as they could to blend with expensive gasoline, effectively keeping pump prices down slightly. But those were the glory days of $144/barrel oil prices; and to the chagrin of the clean fuel lobby, those days might never return.

Since last summer, oil and gasoline prices have plunged, while the price of corn, from which virtually all commercial ethanol in this country is made, has remained relatively high. And so have food prices, which initially rocketed upward after congress' fateful mandate in 2007.

The alternative energy worshippers are about to discover that ethanol will only be the first to topple from the false gods of clean fuel. From the nation's 150 ethanol entities and their 180 plants, 10 or more companies have shut down a total of 24 plants over the last three months.

Most of the nation’s largest ethanol producers have suspended production. And all of them are teetering on the brink.

But the dumbo-crats in Congress never seem to learn about the law of unintended consequences (a cousin of Murphy's law). It cannot be repealed. But predictably, this is not how it was supposed to be when Congress required that refiners blend ethanol into the country’s transportation fuel supply.

Congress, in a hapless attempt to create a demand where there was none, had mandated a doubling of corn ethanol use, to 15 billion gallons a year by 2015. But it’s turned out to be only a futile try at reducing the country’s dependence on foreign oil, and to lower the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.

Energy experts project that national gasoline consumption in 2009 and 2010 will be 6 percent or more below the 2007 level. And future ethanol production targets could represent no more than 10 percent of gasoline production.

And because congressional regulations had set a 10 percent blend limit for ethanol in most gasoline, there seems  to be no other place for ethanol production to go.

But ethanol’s downfall may be threatened on another front-- in Detroit. Automobile manufacturers say most of their cars are not designed to run on high ethanol concentrations.

Ethanol (alcohol) is a solvent-- this includes fuel lines, and all other rubber-based connectors that go under the hood. So car manufacturers despise it. And while it may burn cleaner than gasoline, the bang for the fuel buck just isn’t there. There’s no oomph compared to the power you get with gasoline.

It’s all about combustibility--this means poor mileage, poor ability to start in cold weather, engine knocks on hills, pre-ignition, and your basic displeasure from a public used to a driving tradition of 100-plus years on good ole gasoline.

But this abject failure probably will only encourage the dumbocrats to try harder the next time-- damn the economy-- full environmentalism ahead! “It’s possible we may have to look at the targets again,” said Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Translation: although we liberal do-gooders were dead-wrong, and have roiled worldwide food prices, we shall not be deterred.
 
And they’ll never learn.These coconut heads refuse to be confused by the hard economic facts of science-- refining plant-derived energy requires the expansion of fossil fuel energy to achieve the end result. It’s the scientific equivalent of chasing your tail…a zero-sum gain.

Producing these “advanced” fuels entails breaking down a tough material, cellulose, that is abundant in corn cobs, wood chips and other biological waste; then converting it to liquid fuel requires the expansion of more energy than the end product may be worth in today’s volatile markets.

While scientists have proven it can be done, the cost is still high, and solving the technological hurdles for these plant-based fuels has proven to be an exercise in futility.

But despite all evidence to the contrary, the media will continue to hang by the side of the enviro-crats in Congress, maintaining that …“Cellulosic ethanol is something that’s less than five years away.” But  five years later we’ll get to the point where it’s still five years away.

And then what?


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Place your bets: alternative energy vs. oil addiction...can anyone win?


Uh-oh, it’s back to the future time. Here we go again! President-elect Barack Obama has selected Nobel-prize winning physicist Steven Chu, as his energy secretary (er...energy czar). Chu is director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif., and is a leading advocate of reducing greenhouse gases by developing new energy sources.

 

And make careful note of that phrase..."developing new energy sources". (More on this later). 

 

The President-elect vowed to, "move beyond our oil addiction and create a new hybrid economy." The selection of Chu, a Chinese American who shared a Nobel Prize for physics in 1997, received widespread praise on Capitol Hill.

 

Obama was peacock-proud about the selection: "His appointment should send a signal to all that my administration will value science. We will make decisions based on the facts, and we understand that facts demand bold action," Obama said at a news conference in Chicago. "We must control our own destiny; America must develop new forms of energy and new ways of using it. And this is not a challenge for government alone; it's a challenge for all of us".

 

Umm hmm... once again, Obama used that ominous phrase..."develop new forms of energy".

 

And just what new forms of energy is he talking about? While Obama huffs and puffs about wind and solar, there's just one little teensey-weency fact that the science-challenged president elect hasn't mentioned: what about all the nearly 300 million vehicles currently residing in our nation’s driveways and garages, that are powered by internal combustion engines? Will we just trade 'em all in for the new-fangled hybrids of the future?

 

Last August, during his Denver convention speech, Obama was quoted: "As president, I'll invest $150 billion over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy; wind power and solar power and the next generation of bio-fuels..."

 

Thus, this brings up another vehicular conundrum--just drive by any large construction site today and witness the actual nuts and bolts of a growing economy. There will be nonstop activity: heavy trucks coming and going; cranes moving busily hoisting materials up and down; yellow front-loaders and Caterpillar bulldozers moving all about . And every worker in step, doing his own individual job as efficiently as possible.

 

So this begs the question, how could our country function without the heavy diesel vehicles that are vitally instrumental to a growing economy? Are they supposed to run on old french fry oil, which is basically how you derive biodiesel?

 

But Obama and his leftist, enviro-marxist democrats despise oil, and all its refined forms of energy, and want to tax all fossil fuels out of existence. They will permit no new drilling, and no new refineries. And what might occur if Obama has his way, and levies heavy consumer taxes on gasoline and diesel, to FORCE us into the green energy era? America must be aware of Obama's creeping socialism-- do we really want the government regulating us for everything, including what we shall drive?

 

Sales of elecric cars are plummeting in Europe. Why? Basically it’s the same reason that Americans are to find out the hard way when Obama interferes with the domestic auto market: Even in green-obsessed Europe, people still like powerful, sexy cars. 

 

Belgium is trying to force mandatory caps on European manufacturers of gasoline and diesel-powered cars, but is running into fierce opposition led by France and Germany. And not only are the ugly electric cars no fun and lack power, the bedeviling problem of their 40 mile range won't be solved until the battery can be replaced with some new breakthrough, which might not come in this century. 

 

How practical is it to talk about developing the new energy sources of the future? Ask the Chinese, who recently showed off a modern line of electric-powered buses that ran in an eight block area of Beijing to ferry passengers for the Olympics.

 

But hidden nearby in an off-limits area, there were 2 full time robots, operating to change all the dead batteries from buses that were drastically limited in their operating range.  Each high-tech swap took about eight minutes. But this could be the last charging station in China: the Chinese are now faced with the environmental problem of hundreds of non-recyclable dead battery clusters from the 'modern' buses, which now no longer operate in Beijing any more.

.

High costs, coupled with a lack of clear policy support from the central government, could limit China's one-time use of battery powered buses, trucks and cars to the Olympic weeks. Meanwhile, the country is struggling to plot a future course for an alternative vehicle industry.

 

So far, China's car buyers have shown little interest in alternative vehicles. Only 414 shoppers last year bought the only hybrid car available on the Chinese market. Feng Fei, deputy director in China for the Industrial Economy Department at the State's Development Research Center, revealed that China's alternative auto industry is in disarray. He blames a lack of clear plans for development.

 

Basically, whether you examine Europe or Asia, its the same chicken vs.egg conundrum:  does it pay to create a market that's virtually non existent for alternative energy vehicles? Or do you wait for the demand, and then take on the engineering costs to develop them? And China has 6 times more engineers than the U.S.; yet they, like the Europeans, remain 'oil-addicted.'

 

Thus, given the econo-scientific reality of all these false hopes, picture the enviro-Obamian economy after 4 years: People shunning the green cars of the future...gas lines winding around the block...men pushing cars toward gas pumps...drivers anxiously leaning out their windows looking ahead...white bags covering the nozzles...violent arguements about "next in  line"... worried driver facial expressions-- civil disorder as people suffer across America-- all waiting for the magical appearance of the "alternative energy sources of the future".

 

And magical is no exaggeration! The Democrats are the know-nothing party when it comes to the hard scientific hurdles that delay the onset of alternative energy. Mass produced electric and hydrogen cars are decades away. They remain prohibitively expensive. The battery and fuel-cell reliability problems have yet to be solved; and only hybrid vehicles with gasoline assist are practical now, yet remain expensive and unpopular. 

 

We cannot replace oil and coal, with solar or wind anytime soon. Just ask any engineer; (preferably, a republican) if you want to get the real story: We are at least fifty years from seeing alternative energy being mass produced; and right now alternatives account for just 1.5% of America's total energy BTU's produced. But coal is at 60%.

 

Obama is either dreaming or misleading. If we all understood physics a little better, we'd know you cannot take money away from drilling, and then use it to INVENT a new alternative type of energy. Once again, ask any engineer in America, or Europe, or in China.

 

Was coal invented? Oil? Nuclear? Electricity? How about the great invention of the wind?

The last great energy "breakthrough" was 160 years ago, when Drake struck oil in Pennsylvania. Ask Isaac Newton..."energy cannot be created or destroyed"...it's Newton's first law of physics. And Obama probably thinks physics is an old remedy sold at the drugstore for people who can't properly 'go'.

 

Obama might not be cognizant of it, but his "damn the fossil fuels-save the environment" energy policy will destroy economic growth, jeopardize our military security, and ruin our economy. Bulldozers and all heavy vehicles run on diesel. There will never be an all-electric freight train, or fuel cell airliner this century; nor any wind powered tanks or solar-driven fighter jets.

 

So will Obama's "jolly green-environment" spike gas prices to $6 a gallon in the next four years? The only people who would benefit would be the bicycle shops --the rest would suffer. This no-growth policy will prolong the recession, give OPEC more leverage, and put us on the road toward becoming the world's most advanced third world country. 

 

And to where will all this government environmental extremism take us? Since when did we lose faith in our free markets? They've worked for 235 years to make America great. And now, Obama and his liberal do-gooders, have decided to throw it all aside, and claim more government development of alternative energy is the answer to a problem that doesn't even exist.

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