Re: Expensive oil is the only way to stop gluttony

In article <IOydnVRVX8KBJB7VnZ2dnUVZ_oDinZ2d@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
somewhere@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 says...
> Blubbering Half-Wit McCain wrote:
> > In article
<05e59af9-31e8-46a7-878b-3f27e176e294@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
bvallely@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 says...
> > 
> >>.
> >>
> >>>Let's tax oil if it drops below $120. That way, the price we pay
> >>>will always be at least $120 and OPEC won't be able to put
> >>>alternative energy companies out of business at their whim. It's
> >>>a matter of national security.
> >>
> >>.
> >>An inconvenient truth:  Alternative energy sources generally don't
> >>work.
> >>
> >>Twelve years ago, I had to explain to environmentals that electric
> >>cars were just not ready for prime time.  Those vehicles had a range
> >>of about 70 miles (making any trip more than 25 miles dicey):
> >>rechargings took about 18 hours, there was virtually no place to
> >>recharge other than your garage; batteries had to be replaced every
> >>few years at a huge expense; the electric grid, (which was holding on
> >>by it's fingernails) just couldn't sup****t the massive strain a
> >>conversion to electric cars would create and (here's the funny part)
> >>when you included the pollution created by generating the additional
> >>electricity needed, electric cars were MORE polluting than the
> >>combustible engine.
> >>
> >>That didn't stop the city of Los Angeles from passing laws mandating
> >>that by 2007, 20% of all cars in the city of Angles be electric.
> >>Hundreds of millions of dollars were squandered away, because leftists
> >>wanted to control people's lives.
> >>
> >>Then, the big thing which would save the planet was ethanol.   Problem
> >>with this scam is that it takes more than a gallon of gasoline to
> >>create a gallon of ethanol.  The other minor disadvantage is that it
> >>jacks up the price of corn to insane levels and creates mass
> >>starvation around the world.
> >>
> >>It wastes oil instead of saves it, and starves thousands of children
> >>to death.  Why do we continue this scam?  Because the people of Kansas
> >>(as in "I'm as corny as....") love to have their state's main ex****t's
> >>price artificially tripled by government mandate.
> >>
> >>The next big, stupid waste of money are windmills.
> >>
> >>Windmills won't work because there's just not that many places where
> >>there's enough wind to make it viable.  The occasional breeze won't do
> >>the trick - to be economically feasible, there has to be a strong,
> >>steady, constant wind supply.  These locations are fairly rare, and
> >>usually not conveniently located.
> >> 
> > 
> > Now you're even calling T Boone Pickens himself a moron.
> > Gosh, bv, you must be really smart:
> > 
> > http://tinyurl.com/6nm2wd
> > 
> > You've really shown here how suspect the rest of your arguments are.
> 
> Well way out west in the USA they are beginning to use the lowly potato 
> for making alcohol.  It actually makes more alcohol with less energy 
> input than corn.  The potato is crushed, peel and all.  A enzyme from 
> the Oak tree is introduced to the mash to convert the starch into sugar 
> which is them fermented into alcohol.  Because of the high heat in the 
> inland Western states the starch conversion and fermentation requires 
> little in the way of heat input.
> 
> Once the alcohol has been distilled off the waste products are then 
> compressed to remove water and the remaining solids are made into 
> pellets to be use for chicken, swine, and cattle feed.
> 
> It is also re****ted that the farmers are pu****ng for the reopening  of 
> the sugar beet plants to make alcohol out of sugar beets with the waste 
> products again going to cattle feed.
> 
> It is estimated that alcohol from potatoes and sugar beets could be 
> produced in much greater quantities than corn based alcohol and not 
> impact the price of food that much as most potato yields are now used 
> for cattle feed.
> 
>   Potatoes have consistently yielded about 16.5 tons per acre in the 
> western United States.  Yields of potatoes in Europe where the weather 
> is cooler and more moist are usually around 7.5 tons per acre.
> 
> Corn yield in the United States is around 150 bushels per acre which by 
> weight is about 55lbs per bushel of shelled corn, or about 4 tons per 
> acre.  So you can see that a acre of ground can produce 4 times as much
> food by weight of potatoes compared to corn.
> 
> Here in Africa we are seeing some of the more forwarded looking 
> governments trying to introduce the lowly potato as a main staple of 
> diet.  It appears that the potato thrives in warm dry climes does not 
> need as much water as other main diet crops.  The potato is not as hard 
> on the soil as the main cereal grains such as teff, Corn, barley, wheat,

> millet, peas, beans, lentils and oil seeds.
> 
> 80% or the agriculture of the sub Sahara Africa is for local human 
> consumption and 20% mainly coffee and qat are cash crops.
> 
> The implementation of potato farming will provide much greater amounts 
> of food at much lower input of energy, (human, animal  and mechanical) 
> as well as pesticides and fertilizers than current agricultural
products.
> 
> The various sub Saharan nations are also looking at the potato as a 
> basis of a alcohol production industry with the waste by product of 
> creating alcohol going into cattle feed.
> 
> It is estimated that a switch to the potato for wide use consumption 
> could bring about massive savings of the in the familys food bill as 
> well as leave massive amounts of potatoes for other uses.   With large 
> scale alcohol production it the potato would relieve a lot of Sub 
> Saharan nations of the high cost of the im****tation of oil.
> 
> I know this is off topic.
> 
Thanks that was very interesting. We mostly just insult each other here.
In the US, corn state senators have an inordinate amount of power for the
populations they represent and they have championed biofuels even though 
the energy yield after accounting for the petroleum used to produce the
crops causes the actual gains to be somewhat suspect.