Is ethanol being smeared for profits?

evince

evince

Truthmatters
http://www.foodpricetruth.org/


Smear Campaign Against Ethanol

Remember when the Union of Concerned Scientists uncovered the Exxon campaign to inject doubt into climate science? Remember how the Tobacco industry hired consultants to raise doubts about the health effects of smoking to paralyze government action?
Well, it turns out there is a coordinated effort underway to smear ethanol, and this time it's not just the oil companies who are on the attack. The new ringleader is the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), the lobbying arm of junk food giants like Kraft and General Mills, who are profiting nicely from the "food crisis" by raising retail food prices by more than they need to.

In fact, Kellogg directly credits "recent price increases" for their operating profit growth, not once but twice in a recent press release!

To learn more about the "smear campaign" being waged by the Grocery Manufacturers Association and their member companies, read the Roll Call article that started it all.

And maybe someone should be asking what the connection is between higher food prices and higher corporate profits.
 
Desh said:
http://www.foodpricetruth.org/


Smear Campaign Against Ethanol

Remember when the Union of Concerned Scientists uncovered the Exxon campaign to inject doubt into climate science? Remember how the Tobacco industry hired consultants to raise doubts about the health effects of smoking to paralyze government action?
Well, it turns out there is a coordinated effort underway to smear ethanol, and this time it's not just the oil companies who are on the attack. The new ringleader is the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA), the lobbying arm of junk food giants like Kraft and General Mills, who are profiting nicely from the "food crisis" by raising retail food prices by more than they need to.

In fact, Kellogg directly credits "recent price increases" for their operating profit growth, not once but twice in a recent press release!

To learn more about the "smear campaign" being waged by the Grocery Manufacturers Association and their member companies, read the Roll Call article that started it all.

And maybe someone should be asking what the connection is between higher food prices and higher corporate profits.
Click to expand...
I do not see how the food industry would benefit from smearing ethanol. Seems to me they'd be supporting ethanol - especially using cereal grains as the source of choice. If we are using cereal grains for food instead of fuel, the food crisis goes away.

Not that I disbelieve there is a deliberate and concentrated effort to smear efforts at using ethanol as an alternate fuel source. That a smear campaign exists is quite obvious. But I just do not see how the food industry would be involved in that.

They'd more likely throw their weight behind the insistence on subsidizing corn ethanol when the figures already show corn to be about the worst possible biomatter source we could choose.
 
Watermark said:
I'm part of the smear campaign against Ethanol.

It's a dumb idea that costs more gas than it produces.
Click to expand...

That's not true. It's a great idea and done correctly is a net plus. You just have to select the right material to manufacture the ethanol with. That's not corn. Corn makes sense to start with in that it has a huge political lobby and it's this political lobby right now that is critical for developing the ethanol infrastructure. Once that infrastructure is built then it can be sustained by more efficient materials, such as, saw grass, milo and sugar beets which all have greater yields of ethanol per pound of biomass then corn and do not consume as much energy to harvest as corn nor do you have the ethical issue of using food for fuel.

So if you think of corn based ethanol only in economic terms it doesn't make sense at all. But when you add the political element it makes a hell of a lot of sense, to begin with.
 
Mottleydude said:
That's not true. It's a great idea and done correctly is a net plus. You just have to select the right material to manufacture the ethanol with. That's not corn. Corn makes sense to start with in that it has a huge political lobby and it's this political lobby right now that is critical for developing the ethanol infrastructure. Once that infrastructure is built then it can be sustained by more efficient materials, such as, saw grass, milo and sugar beets which all have greater yields of ethanol per pound of biomass then corn and do not consume as much energy to harvest as corn nor do you have the ethical issue of using food for fuel.

So if you think of corn based ethanol only in economic terms it doesn't make sense at all. But when you add the political element it makes a hell of a lot of sense, to begin with.
Click to expand...
I disagree with that evaluation.

The engineering problems with using corn as biomass for ethanol are readily apparent, and I believe we agree what they are.

But there are also political/infrastructure problems with setting up corn as a biomass, and using political mean and government subsidies to push the idea. The problem is, when it comes to the idea of ethanol as a sustainable, renewable fuel source, it sets up that idea for failure. We already have many critics of ethanol for fuel, and are using many genuine provable facts about the current production of ethanol to support the argument. But they are, in the process, (and successfully I might add) criticizing the entire idea of ethanol as an alternate fuel. By setting up corn for failure, they (mistakenly or by design) set up ethanol itself for failure.

The food crisis, the fact that there is a net energy loss in terms of fossil fuels to produce corn ethanol, the expense both to consumers in pump price and to the tax payer in the form of subsidies have all stacked up to show ethanol to be a failed idea. Of course, it is NOT a failed idea because we went about it all wrong. But the opponents of ethanol for fuel (and you can guess who they are, and who they have in their collective pockets) are pushing hard to make it seem to be a failed idea.

We need to dump corn as a biomass source for fuel immediately, dump the subsidy programs to sustain corn ethanol immediately, admit to the failure OF CORN, and push for other sources - preferably cellulosic sources. Then concentrate any government subsidies on one-time payments for development of infrastructure instead of subsidizing both the crop and the product. Those kinds of subsidies never end once they are allowed to get established.
 
Yep neither does a large country in South America consider Ethanol an alt energy. Smear campaign sustained.
 
Corn Ethonal is Political Energy and is not getting dumped anytime soon.
These fools dump solar subsidies and stick with the billions of gallons of corn ethonal subsidies. Why???
Cause it's alternative Political energy the midwest farmers are taking their turn at the money bags and they like it. Who could blame them.
 
that is the one for sure positive thing about corn ethanol, it is keeping some money here instead of sending it overseas.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top