What? Al Gore would LIE to get his way?

We knew it all along but here it is from the horse’s ass…

Nobel laureate Al Gore said this weekend that tax breaks for corn-based ethanol are “not good policy” and that he only supported these subsidies in order to assist his eventual run for president.

Reuters Africa reported Monday the former Vice President made these comments while speaking to a green energy conference in Athens.

“It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for first generation ethanol,” said Gore.

According to the International Energy Industry, such subsidies totaled $7.7 billion last year. Yet Gore now thinks this was a mistake.

“The energy conversion ratios are at best very small. It’s hard once such a program is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going,” he said.

Readers are reminded that Gore was the tie-breaking vote in the Senate mandating the use of ethanol in 1994.

So why did the man media view as one of the world’s foremost environmentalists support such a program?

“One of the reasons I made that mistake is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for president.”

What a saint.

So more than ten years ago, Gore supported an expensive, “not good policy” because he thought it would help him get elected president.

Yet media don’t believe he’d misrepresent the threat of manmade global warming in order to become extremely rich.

The bigger question is whether or not this matter will get any attention here in America, or if the Gore-loving media will choose to ignore this stunning revelation.

Stay tuned.

NewsBusters

Ethanol Brought Down Flight 1549

Hey, wasn't me.

What? You say jets don’t burn ethanol? Well, Time Magazine is trying to blame Global Warming,  and they don’t burn that either.  I think there’s a better argument for ethanol.

Did global warming dump U.S. Airways flight 1549 into the Hudson River by attracting more geese to New York airports? Time Magazine says yes. Time notes a four-fold increase in airplane bird strikes since 1990, and blames global warming and destruction of wild bird habitat for the increased collisions.

Time reached the wrong conclusion. Research indicates we should blame the prosaic corn harvester-and perhaps our attempt to expand corn production for biofuels. Canada geese numbers have increased five-fold since 1970 for one overwhelming reason -farmers’ expanding use of those big corn picker-shellers. The big bright-colored harvesters now roar across the fields every autumn, picking the ears and shelling the corn kernels. With millions of tons of loose corn, some inevitably trickles to the ground, where the geese cheerfully snack it up.

Canadian researchers found the geese had switched their food supply almost entirely since 1970, from a diet of marsh plant rhizomes in winter and early spring to eating mostly corn and young grass shoots.  The marshes aren’t overgrazed, because the extra geese are feeding in fields and pastures.

Maybe a better word for what brought down flight 1549 is GREED. (follow the money)

Meanwhile, farmers have been planting still more corn, on every possible corner of the eastern seaboard, to get their share of those ethanol subsidies. Corn planting expanded about 50 percent in the mid-Atlantic States from 2002-2006, according to Virginia Tech, with comparable increases in New York and Pennsylvania.

Source

Still Think Bio-Fuel Is a Good Idea? !Updated! Video Added

Think again. Ethanol is 20 to 30 percent less efficient than gasoline, making it more expensive per highway mile. It takes 450 pounds of corn to produce the ethanol to fill one SUV tank. That’s enough corn to feed one person for a year. Plus, it takes more than one gallon of fossil fuel — oil and natural gas — to produce one gallon of ethanol. After all, corn must be grown, fertilized, harvested and trucked to ethanol producers — all of which are fuel-using activities. And it takes 1,700 gallons of water to produce one gallon of ethanol. On top of all this, if our total annual corn output were put to ethanol production, it would reduce gasoline consumption by 10 or 12 percent.

Here’s another very good explanation. I just couldn’t leave it out.

Ethanol production has driven up the prices of corn-fed livestock, such as beef, chicken and dairy products, and products made from corn, such as cereals. As a result of higher demand for corn, other grain prices, such as soybean and wheat, have risen dramatically. The U.S. position as the world’s largest grain producer and exporter means the ethanol-induced higher grain prices will have a worldwide impact on food prices.

And it leads to this.

Poverty, famine and violence are among the supposed products of global warming in the future. Yet these calamities are with us today thanks to a key element of “green” policy, biofuels. This feel-good measure is becoming a real-world disaster.

The prices of wheat and rice this year will have doubled since 2004, according to World Bank projections. Soybeans, sugar, soybean oil and corn are expected to be 56% to 79% costlier than in 2004. The bulk of the increases have come in the past year and can be attributed to the West’s push to turn these crops into fossil-fuel replacements like ethanol. Food prices will likely remain overinflated until at least 2015, the Bank says.

The result of these rising prices is that 100 million people could slip back into poverty, erasing seven years’ worth of gains, Bank President Robert Zoellick warned earlier this month. Food inflation and shortages have sparked riots from Egypt to the Philippines, and six people were killed in Haiti alone during nine days of related unrest there this month.

The Rest Here
Another example of feel good politics being put in place before all the problems are considered. And considering the ineffectiveness of ethanol as an alternative fuel, this has to be one of the biggest scams out there.

More Evidence Against Ethanol

I’ve covered some of this already. (link) But the evidence is mounting against ethanol as an alternative energy source. The benefits do not justify the costs. In fact, I don’t see any benefits at all. Except to the special interest coalition. FOLLOW THE MONEY.

Ethanol contains water that distillation cannot remove. As such, it can cause major damage to automobile engines not specifically designed to burn ethanol. The water content of ethanol also risks pipeline corrosion and thus must be shipped by truck, rail car or barge. These are far more expensive than pipelines.

Ethanol is 20 to 30 percent less efficient than gasoline, making it more expensive per highway mile. It takes 450 pounds of corn to produce the ethanol to fill one SUV tank. That’s enough corn to feed one person for a year. Plus, it takes more than one gallon of fossil fuel — oil and natural gas — to produce one gallon of ethanol. After all, corn must be grown, fertilized, harvested and trucked to ethanol producers — all of which are fuel-using activities. And it takes 1,700 gallons of water to produce one gallon of ethanol. On top of all this, if our total annual corn output were put to ethanol production, it would reduce gasoline consumption by 10 or 12 percent.

Ethanol is so costly it wouldn’t make it in a free market. That’s why Congress has enacted major ethanol subsidies, about $1.05 to $1.38 a gallon, which is no less than a tax on consumers. In fact, there’s a double tax — one in ethanol subsidies and another in handouts to corn farmers to the tune of $9.5 billion in 2005 alone.

Something else is wrong with this picture. If Congress and President Bush say we need less reliance on oil and greater use of renewable fuels, why would Congress impose a stiff tariff, 54 cents a gallon, on ethanol from Brazil? Brazilian ethanol, by the way, is produced from sugar cane and is far more energy efficient, cleaner and cheaper to produce.

Ethanol production has driven up the prices of corn-fed livestock, such as beef, chicken and dairy products, and products made from corn, such as cereals. As a result of higher demand for corn, other grain prices, such as soybean and wheat, have risen dramatically. The U.S. position as the world’s largest grain producer and exporter means the ethanol-induced higher grain prices will have a worldwide impact on food prices.

It’s easy to understand how the public, looking for cheaper gasoline, can be taken in by the call for increased ethanol usage. But politicians, corn farmers and ethanol producers know they are running a cruel hoax on the American consumer. They are in it for the money. The top leader in the ethanol hoax is Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), the country’s largest producer of ethanol. Ethanol producers and the farm lobby have pressured farm state congressmen into believing it would be political suicide if they didn’t support subsidized ethanol production. That’s the stick. Campaign contributions play the role of the carrot.

The ethanol hoax is a good example of a problem economists refer to as narrow, well-defined benefits versus widely dispersed costs. It pays the ethanol lobby to organize and collect money to grease the palms of politicians willing to do their bidding because there’s a large benefit for them — higher wages and profits. The millions of gasoline consumers, who fund the benefits through higher fuel and food prices, as well as taxes, are relatively uninformed and have little clout.

Source

Ethanol Is Not The Answer

More “greenhouse gases”, higher costs, less power and world hunger. A bad idea is getting worse.

 

“There is a right way and a wrong way to produce (ethanol),” the New York Times editorialized on Feb. 24. “Done right, ethanol could help wean the country from its dependence on foreign oil while reducing the emissions that contribute to climate change. Done wrong, ethanol could wreak havoc on the environment while increasing greenhouse gases.”

There is not, in fact, a right way to produce ethanol. But several wrong ones — spawned by congressional and presidential edicts — are already wreaking havoc on food prices and the natural environment. What we need to do is free up the ingenuity of innovators to devise a variety of approaches to biofuel production, and then permit the marketplace to decide the winners and losers.

The reality is that with current technology, almost all of this biofuel would have to come from corn because there is no other feasible, proven alternative. But because of the inefficiencies inherent in producing ethanol from corn and the relatively meager amount of energy yielded by burning ethanol, the demands on farmland would be staggering.

An analysis by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development suggested that replacing even 10% of America’s motor fuel with biofuels would require that about a third of all the nation’s cropland be devoted to oilseeds, cereals and sugar crops. Achieving the 15% goal would require the entire current U.S. corn crop, which represents a whopping 40% of the world’s corn supply.

In the short and medium term, ethanol can do little to affect oil consumption. But the diversion of grain from food to fuel exerts widespread and profound ripple effects on various commodity markets. It has already been catastrophic for the poor around the world.

The whole story.