How many acres would you kill to drive a car?

[hunter]

The same calculation for petroleum is somewhat difficult, because the effects of global warming, etc., are diffuse and for the most part unmeasured.

But the corn ethanol calculation is very easy. Very precise records are kept of corn acreage and production. We know exactly how many acres of biological wasteland must be created to produce a given amount of corn.

Here's my very generous-to-ethanol calculation:

An acre of good cropland can produce 140 bushels of corn. (generous)

A good ethanol plant can produce 3 gallons a bushel (generous)

Thus an acre of land might produce 3 X 140 = 420 gallons of ethanol.

The average U.S. household drives about 20,000 miles a year.

Let's be very generous and say that an ethanol powered car might get 40 miles per gallon.

Therefore the average U.S. household will require 500 gallons of fuel ethanol.

So how much land must be turned into a biological wasteland to support an average family's driving habit?

500 / 420 = 1.2 acres.

Hmmmmmm, you say, that doesn't sound so bad... I'd destroy the biological diversity of 1.2 acres of land to continue driving my car...

(Keeping in mind that a more realistic number is much higher.)

This is where the big numbers bite you in the ass:

The total annual miles driven in the United States is about 3 trillion.

That's a HUGE number, 3,000,000,000,000.

Even if you divide that by a very optimistic 40 miles per gallon, you are still talking about 75 billion acres of biological wasteland created for an utterly irrational, cultish, and environmentally destructive transportation system.

If we, as a culture, simply decide that cars are stupid and a very dangerous public nuisance, than all these problems go away.

It's a very similar problem to smoking. Rather than looking for some miracle sort of cigarette that doesn't cause cancer and other health problems, it's much more sensible to simply stop smoking.

We don't need cars of the sort we drive now.

[TheWraith]

1. Actually , we do need cars, however you fuel them. Period.

I love how people keep using the impracticalities of ethanol to justify the idea that we need to end civilization as we know it, rather than just find a more practical solution.

[GliderGuider]

3. Not quite. We need some amount of transportation.

How much transportation we need and what form it should take is open to debate, but I think liquid-fueled private cars are likely to slip well down the list in the coming years. Clinging to the idea that we must have liquid-fueled private cars is one of those "non-negotiable way of life" positions that makes the search for out-of-the-box alternatives very difficult.

[hunter]

7. We do need to end civilization as we know it.

If we don't, nature will.

I don't think people yet comprehend the magnitude of our problems. The plane is running out of fuel, the weather is bad, three of the four engines are on fire, and the landing gear has jammed in the half-way position.

We have two choices: We can try for the soft landing, or we can crash hard.

Our greatest mistake as a species was that we thought we were immune from all the environmental pressures every species since life began has faced. The rule has always been that you live with what you've got, or you change, or you die.

Oil used to be easy, now it's not. There is no easy replacement for oil, so we change or we die.

I believe electric transportation systems -- light, heavy, and high-speed rail -- will be especially important to our survival as an industrial society.

Inevitably we will have a society where private automobiles are seen as expensive playthings that most people won't bother with, sort of like private planes are now. You can learn to fly, you can rent a plane, but how many people do that?

We really don't have a choice here.

[GliderGuider]

8. Aye!

:thumbsup:

[Kali]

2. I already know "cars are stupid and a very dangerous public nuisance, "

Still driving one, and I daresay there are still a hell of a lot of smokers too. So what do you suggest? How do we get around, move goods, food etc?

[The2ndWheel]

6. You could use those two thing that dangle below your waist

We could get rid of mass production, so that we don't have tons of pointless goods to move around. You could even make your own pointless goods, at least there wouldn't be tons of it.

Even though agriculture is a main problem, if done small enough, you could probably get away with getting your own food that way.

http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=83&Itemid=0

It's a bit lengthy, but a good read.

[Kali]

11. oops see post #9 - I replied to myself instead of you

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=115x94431#94460

[Dogmudgeon]

36. "Those two thing that dangle below your waist"

What do my mighty man-breasts have to do with it?

:evilgrin:

--p!

[Kali]

9. Well one of my sons did walk to town once, but a 25 mile hike on a regular

basis just isn't something I am going to do. Much less carry groceries for a week or any other supplies (and no I'm not talking useless consumer plastic here, I am talking animal feed, maintenance and repair items, things like that)

Walking/biking is well and good for the single urban dweller and I agree should be encouraged. When you start talking about families, non-urban people, agriculture, or many kinds of business/workers (thinking repair people, builders, that sort of thing) they kind of need some kind of flexible (read: individual) mechanical transportation.

edit: spelling/typos

[The2ndWheel]

18. Well, yeah, it couldn't happen in the reality of 2007

I've found that that is the major problem of any of the solutions I come up with in my head. They're just not possible unless we chage the fundamental base of our entire way of life. Such as, not living 25 miles away from something important. I walk roughly 3 miles to and from work everyday, and it takes me somewhere around an hour and a half each way. I walk slowly, and by a stream for about a mile, both of which are major reasons why I do it, but I hear what you're saying. Our society is based on distance. That's the only way we can have an economy. If everyone is specialized, that creates need. Plus we benefit from distance, since we don't have to see the 7 year olds making the shoes we wear(or whatever piece of clothing it happens to be). We don't have to see the chemicals being pumped into our water. We don't have to see what we do to non-human life(factory farming, experimentation, etc). Distance allows us to live the way we do. We no longer control our food(the government and agri-corporations do). We will lose our control of water as it becomes ever more important for a growing population. Distance also leaves us as numbers instead of living beings.

Even if you wanted to, you really can't change it at this point. To many people would die because of someone, somewhere, making an arbitrary choice and affecting millions/billions of people. We have little choice but to keep increasing the distance. We cannot allow physical reality to win. We're so far beyond limits, that if we don't defeat physical reality, it will get ugly.

[IDemo]

4. Already doing my part

I have just over 40,000 miles on the truck I bought new in '93. That adds up to only about 3k miles/year.

[Kutjara]

5. Ethanol is a dead end.

There's no way it will ever be viable to turn a significant proportion of our agricultural output over to ethanol production. It's simply not a good use of scarce resources. The current ethanol fad is a desperate attempt on the part of government and business to fool people into thinking things can go on as they have been. "Sure, Mr. Consumer, you can still buy a 350 hp musclecar or a bus-sized SUV and save the planet too! Don't fret your little head about all that confusing environment stuff; we've got it covered."

It makes me laugh to see these enormous SUVs with the "flexfuel" or "E85" badge on them. Who the hell do they think they're fooling? Yeah, buddy, you're practically a one-man Greenpeace all on your own. I can sleep easy in my bed now that I know the 10 mpg you're getting is 10 mpg of ethanol and not gas. Big hairy deal.

Meanwhile, the oil companies and car manufactureres can continue to spend virtually nothing on researching real alternatives to the internal combustion engine (except, of course, the few million they spend here and there buying up the patents to technologies that threaten the rule of King Oil).

Incidentally, hydrogen fuel cell hype is another red herring, which is precisely why Shrubbie is so firmly behind it. His handlers know the technology is about twenty years away and no threat to next quarter's earnings at Big Oil, so it does no harm to pretend. Meanwhile, real live alternatives that are feasible today are simply ignored.

[hunter]

10. And of course I made a stupid math mistake...

3 trillion miles / 40 miles per gallon = 75 billion gallons

75 billion gallons / 420 gallons per acre equals about 180 million acres, or about half of all currently cultivated land in the U.S.

Still a big number!

:blush:

[NNadir]

12. Oh well then, let's start plowing.

[hunter]

13. Wish I hadn't missed that before the edit time was up...

But then I was sorta waiting to see what happened... apparently big numbers cause everyones' eyes to glaze over.

Of course someone's sure to hold this against me for eternity, as in "Him? That hunter guy can't even do math! See! In this post he made a MISTAKE!"

Then they'll tell everyone how you can simply put solar cells on your roof and watch the electric meter run backwards which makes it obvious to anyone that we don't need nuclear power plants.

So then you ask them if they have solar cells on their own roof and they'll say, "um, ah, no, I rent."

And anyway, we don't need to plow more land under, we can feed the cows the spent mash and make methane from their poop! And hemp, don't forget hemp.

Alas, I fear Mother Nature is going to take away our car keys no matter which alternative energy fantasy we choose to believe.

[Systematic Chaos]

14. Why are you so down??

Your local Kohl's may soon have one of those brazillion solar roofs! You cast way too much asparagus around here. Take a valium!

:evilgrin:

[Strelnikov_]

15. Actually it is 1.2 Ac x 0.3 = 0.36 Ac as 70% of the food value of the corn

remains (assuming wet milling).

Not that we could grow enough corn to come close to meeting even current liquid fuel demands, as you allude to.

I can see a future where farmers process their corn, sorghum and bean crops etc. such that they harvest the liquid fuel potential, leaving the remaining 70% of the crop product to pass into the food chain. The liquid fuels obtained should be adequate to maintain an energy balance within food production, with some left over for other heavy equipment not easily electrified.

Doesn't leave much for SUV's, though.

[hunter]

16. That's a bit of misdirection I'm not willing to concede.

"Oh, we'll feed it to the cows" won't work if people can't afford to buy meat. Meat is still expensive even if the cattle or poultry feed is inexpensive. It takes a lot of energy and labor to get meat into the grocery store.

The other option, that we eat the distillery leftovers ourselves, leads us into the grim world of Soylent Green where every common food is the product of a large scale industrial chemical process...

[Strelnikov_]

17. I did note wet milling

Just because they are mostly building dry mill plants today because the accountants are in control does not mean there will not be a retrofitting to wet mill plants in the future when the economics shift.

[hunter]

20. How?

Who eats the leftovers? Or do we just dump it on the ground and call it fertilizer as a few ethanol supporters here have suggested.

So you turn the slop into food, either by running it through cows, or by some ADM style chemical process making monkey-chow pellets.

Both options are expensive in a cycle that doesn't use external inputs of fossil fuels, etc.

Say you've got a thousand acres of good farmland, some ethanol powered farm equipment, enough seed corn to plant it, and a small herd of cows or a soylent yellow style food synthesis plant.

How much ethanol can you pull out of that system if there are no external energy inputs but the sun?

It seems to me that it's not enough to support an industrial society with the resources required to maintain the machinery.

Eventually you get to a place where the machines don't work and can't be fixed, and you are doing things the Amish way, and not making any ethanol because the raw food crops are much more important. You end up with farmers in horse-pulled carts dropping food off at the railroad station.

The economists and accountants are always picking one thing out of the overall economy and examining as if nothing else changes. But you can't do that. Everything is connected to everything else and I have a difficult time imagining any sort of economy where ethanol would be an important commodity sort of fuel. I can imagine specific niches where it might prove useful, but mostly I see a whole lot of environmental destruction without any good justification for it.

I'm beginning to believe that the only reason for ethanol promotion is to carry us to some brink where we will be expected to give up many of our personal freedoms. Ethanol production seems to be a Machiavellian recipe for political destabilization throughout the Americas and not a real solution for the problems of oil depletion.

[NNadir]

22. One is always inclined to wonder why there are no ethanol farms running as closed systems.

It's remarkable isn't it?

[razzleberry]

24. that would be a finantial mistake

some fuel is more valuable than others.

the idea is to turn less money into more money,
not the other way around.

given the choice, the less expensive useable fuel
is used, and that is exactly what happens.

[NNadir]

27. Oh I see. I guess ethanol is not competitive even on the farm where it grows.

Interesting point.

So the ethanol business is a plan to raise fuel prices then?

[razzleberry]

33. your choice for drying grain would be?

Your choice of fuel for drying grain would be?


fuel..........................cost per million BTU

trash wood and stalks..........free when available
coal........................... $2
natural gas.................... $8
ethanol ....................... $26
motor gasoline................. $24
100 LL avgas .................. $33

[hunter]

34. Right there that shows what I'm talking about.

The ethanol economy doesn't work without cheap energy.

If you feed the ethanol back into a closed system you end up in a death spiral of rising costs that is unsustainable.

If you have cheap energy, there is little to be accomplished by making ethanol -- the most economical thing to do is make synthetics that are much better fuels than ethanol.

[razzleberry]

35. the accomplishment is fuel for transportation

Why do you think China is building
coal-to-liquid conversion plants?

anything is better than petroleum

[NNadir]

37. Wait a second. Coal is better than petroleum?

That's a new one.

China is building coal to liquid conversion plants because China has coal and doesn't have oil.

This is a murder/suicide though.

All fossil fuels are unacceptably dangerous because there is no permanent repository for dangerous fossil fuel waste. That said, of the the three unacceptably dangerous fossil fuels, coal is the worst, by far.

[razzleberry]

38. nobody fights a war for a coal field

consider the human suffering caused
by the desire to control an oil field

[NNadir]

39. War is hardly the largest external cost associated with any fossil fuel.

I very much doubt that oil wars, as tragic as they are, approach in an average year, the deaths associated with air pollution from coal.

An exception might be the period between 1941-1945 when a vast oil war engulfed the planet, killing tens of millions of people.

[Strelnikov_]

23. Wet milling of corn yields corn meal, corn oil

among other products, 70% of food value of feedstock remaining.

Processing of soy for biodiesel yields soy meal, 70% of food value of feedstock remaining.

Corn ethanol has an EPR of 1, therefore energy neutral. Approx. 70% of energy to produce corn ethanol required at the processing plant. Plant utilizes electricity from wind, leaving 70% of ethanol energy available for sale as a value added product to compensate for electrical energy purchase. Actually, 100% of the ethanol production would probably be sold as use of spark ignition ICE's on the farm would probably be limited. I implied an energy balance within food production, never did I imply a closed energy system.

Soy biodiesel has an EPR of 3. Beans processed and biodiesel brewed at the local farmer owned coop, quantity of BD required for member farmers operations retained, balance sold as a value added product to balance equipment, fertilizer inputs.

Now, to revisit my statement with which you took such umbrage:

Not that we could grow enough corn to come close to meeting even current liquid fuel demands, as you allude to.

I can see a future where farmers process their corn, sorghum and bean crops etc. such that they harvest the liquid fuel potential, leaving the remaining 70% of the crop product to pass into the food chain. The liquid fuels obtained should be adequate to maintain an energy balance within food production, with some left over for other heavy equipment not easily electrified.

Doesn't leave much for SUV's, though.

Now if the above makes me an ethanol promoter, a corn whiskey Machiavellian, so be it.

[hunter]

25. Yum, corn meal monkey chow...

Oh they won't market it as that, but the ingredients will look very similar to those in a cheap bag of dry dog food.

But you see your misdirection, don't you? Somewhere you've got the energy to actually make and maintain the farm equipment, wind turbines, etc., and support the society that's capable of doing those sorts of things, and that energy is not ethanol. You are not going to make tires and tractor treads on the farm out of ethanol, are you?

So what's the point of this ethanol production? There are many ways of making synthetic fuels if you have the energy resources, and ethanol seems an inefficient and very roundabout way to fuel agricultural equipment.

[Strelnikov_]

26. I see no misdirection

Your OP implied no food value from the corn used for ethanol feedstock.

I pointed out that there is food value that should be credited, as we will be growing corn whether or not part of it is processed into ethanol.

You do not agree with me or the USDA. We have a difference of opinion.

I proposed the concept that biofuels (including soy biodiesel, as rotation w/ legumes will be necessary to reduce nitrogen requirements) made from the products of conventional agricultural should at least provide an energy balance within said agricultural, with some small amount left over for other uses.

You obviously disagree, and seem determined to present my statement as stating agricultural production would be a closed energy system. We have a difference of opinion.

In the liquid fuel starved world of the future, I have no doubt that 30% of the food value of the corn crop will be processed into ethanol to recover the energy that went into producing the crop. We will not be running the interstate highway system or Disneyland on it, but it will still be done, because energy dense liquid fuels will be a premium.

You obviously do not.

[hunter]

28. You can't have your cake and eat it too.

You can't analyze ethanol production as a closed system when it suits your purposes, and as an open system when it doesn't.

If you have the energy and industrial resources to build agriculture and transportation equipment that runs on ethanol -- enough to grow the food, process it, and get it to market -- then there is no reason to use ethanol as a fuel. If you don't have those resources, then there is no way to build and maintain the agriculture and transportation equipment that runs on ethanol, and thus no reason for making ethanol.

As it is now ethanol is simply an Enron style accounting trick, a way of turning debts into something that looks like assets. We can play with ethanol now because we still have the energy and financial resources to do that. As these resources fade ethanol production will be exposed as a negative economic force rather than a positive one.

I can't make the math work that would give me any reason to support ethanol as an "alternative" fuel.

[Strelnikov_]

30. Whatever

[hunter]

32. My kids are teenagers. I'm used to it.

You can use the eyes too, I've developed a strong immunity to those.

My kids when I go off like that: :eyes:

You post some good stuff here loindelrio, see you around, okay?

[jpak]

19. Yup

:thumbsup:

[hunter]

21. Bull

:thumbsdown:

[Chemical Bill]

29. I take it you don't drive...

or eat food that was trucked, or wear clothes that were shipped. Good for you. Way to go.

Bill

[hunter]

31. Of course I do.

But my wife and I very deliberately chose a place where we didn't have to commute. I work at home, and we can see my wife's work from our house, about a mile away. Yeah, she drives, but she has good reasons for that. An electric car would serve us well for the purpose, but it wouldn't have the range to visit friends and family who live far away from public transportation hubs. We have rented cars to do travel, whenever our old cars happened to be in some untrustworthy state, but not often. I think it would be nice if we didn't have to own a car, and could simply rent one whenever we needed to.

Still, I'm following wtmusic's electric car conversion with great interest.

My own car is old, rarely used, and has spider webs and lichen growing all over it. I always have to wash the dust off the windows before I drive or I can't see through the glass. I sort of like that look, it expresses my disdain for automobiles.

I'm not patting myself on the back, however, since to some extent it's been a matter of luck, but it's been a long streak now, more than eighteen years of not commuting.

I'm more certain now than ever that ethanol can't substitute for petroleum derived fuels. It just can't, the numbers don't work out, no matter how I run them.

The end of cheap oil will necessitate a restructuring of our society, and that restructuring will probably mean the end of the personal automobiles as we know them. At best they become toys like most people use motorcycles, recreational boats, jet-skis, and private airplanes. At worst society unravels to a nightmarish place of widespread starvation and death.

I'm certainly not feeling good about that, but I think we can solve the problems in an environmentally responsible fashion, even if I don't think ethanol is a part of those solutions.