Energy Bill
oday, Bush signed the new energy bill into law.
“Today, we make a major step with the Energy Independence and Security Act,” the president said after signing the bill at the Department of Energy. “We make a major step toward reducing our dependence on oil, confronting global climate change, expanding production of renewable fuels and giving future generations a nation that is stronger, cleaner and more secure.”
All in all, it’s not a bad bill, although I think we’re really screwing ourselves by getting into too much biofuel production. We don’t have enough room to grow corn for fuel and food to eat. I really think that cutting out those subsidies to solar, wind, and other renewable resources is a bad plan. We desperately need to work on raising the efficiency of energy production with those methods. No one thing can replace our oil use by itself, but a combination of methods, with reliance on wind, solar, etc, just might be able to, without causing too much of a problem.
And, as a mood-lightener: Death By Knitting! — Ms. Williams, 52 years old, was done in by a small package bearing an unfamiliar return address. When she saw it in her mailbox, she knew she had met her maker. Inside was a pair of black and orange socks, just her size.
(Photo credit: FuelingTheWorld.com.)
December 19th, 2007 at 7:00 pm
I approve of the bill calling for an incandescent light phase-out beginning in five years. Compact fluorescents are so much better by far.
JavaElemental Reply:
December 19th, 2007 at 7:37 pm
I agree with it in principle, but man, I hate fluorescent lighting. Ah well.
Dragon of Life Reply:
December 19th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
Why? I mean, I personally swapped out to CFLs for my table lights years ago and didn’t notice any difference in light quality.
JavaElemental Reply:
December 23rd, 2007 at 3:00 am
Something about the kind of light they make bothers my eyes. I usually get the “natural light” blue incandescents right now, and that works great. I wish I could afford the LED lights — I like those.
December 20th, 2007 at 12:17 am
Theres just no good solutions, especially in Michigan.
If those bills get passed, (and they should)this could also cause several companies who use huge amounts of energy, and whose cost would increase exponentially, becuase “Green Energy” is costlier, and less efficient, to relocate to other places where energy costs are lower.
This is especially bad in Michigan, where there are too few jobs already.
The alternative to passing the bill however, is worse.
JavaElemental Reply:
December 23rd, 2007 at 3:02 am
I think that we’ve put off “solving” the energy problem for so long that now, there aren’t going to be any easy or painless answers for anyone. We’re going to have to suck it up and deal with costs in the short term, so we don’t have to suffer more in the long term.
December 22nd, 2007 at 2:35 am
Growing corn for ethanol is at best a break even process because of all the oil used just to grow the corn. Great review of this is here:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/earth/4237539.html?series=46
here is a taste of the article:
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory states that, “Today, 1 Btu of fossil energy consumed in producing and delivering corn ethanol results in 1.3 Btu of usable energy in your fuel tank.” Even that modest payback may be overstated. Skeptics cite the research of Cornell University professor David Pimentel, who estimates that it takes approximately 1.3 gal. of oil to produce a single gallon of ethanol.
If the benefits are in doubt, the costs are not. It would take 450 pounds of corn to yield enough ethanol to fill the tank of an SUV. Producing enough ethanol to replace America’s imported oil alone would require putting nearly 900 million acres under cultivation—or roughly 95 percent of the active farmland in the country. Once we’ve turned our farms into filling stations, where will the food come from?
There’s a simple reason that ethanol is popular with politicians: money. Substituting corn ethanol for a large fraction of the gasoline we burn will mean sluicing gushers of cash from more populated states to politically powerful farm states. And a lot of that cash will wind up in the pockets of the big agribusinesses, like Archer Daniels Midland, that dominate ethanol processing—and whose fat checkbooks wield enormous influence in Washington.
JavaElemental Reply:
December 23rd, 2007 at 3:04 am
Ethanol sounded great when it was first “introduced” to the public a few years ago, but it’s nothing but problems on top of problems. It drives up food prices, there isn’t enough room, it’s not as clean-burning as they claim it is . . . the list goes on and on. It’s not the end-all, be-all, and it seems like vast chunks of the population either don’t want to understand that, or can’t.
January 25th, 2008 at 12:04 am
While corn is not the best for biofuel read about the benefits of hemp. Truly do the research and you will find that hemp which is not for smoking and getting high as the thc is so low you would have to smoke a telephone poll to get high.
In Canada they regulate the THC in their Hemp and are doing very well with the product. It truly is an industrius little plant with so much potential that it is crazy that we are ignorning it. It can regrow in a short amount of time burns better and makes more fuel than corn.
Our own government subsidized hemp production during war time and put out a movie Hemp for Victory showing farmers how to grow it. In earlier times our government required farmers to grow it. Its roots also go into the ground about a foot which here in Southern California used to be grown to prevent mudslides. It does not contribute to global warming and can totally replace our dependence on oil and trees for paper.
There have already been cars that have been run off of hemp fuel and it truly is a viable and better crop than corn for fuel. hempcar.org
It can grow from the deserts to the mountains. Its one of the few viable plants that can grow quickly and again and again without depleting the soil and does not harm the enviornment.
do the research learn the facts before you jump to a conclusion saying that biofuels are a waste of time. Also be conscience of who is paying for the studies to be done. As it has been proven that tobacco and alcohol fund studies to discount the benefits of hemp. SO just be cautious and do the research.
I would love to hear any comments.
JavaElemental Reply:
January 26th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
Hi! Welcome to the site!
I’m going on memory here, so feel free to tell me I’m full of it, but I believe that much of the problem with growing any kind of plant for biofuel production has to do with the amount of room used to grow the plant — room which could be used to grow food. Also, I think there are input/output considerations for biofuels — how much energy is used to grow the product versus how much is gotten out of the product. I know that for corn, the input/output ratio isn’t too hot, but also that it varies between types of crops. For example, they’re testing a new kind of plant — I can’t remember the name, but I wrote about it recently, which has a much better input/output ratio than corn, and also can be grown in very arid areas, where you don’t usually grow food crops.
I think the main problem with hemp here in the States is that it’s gotten so connected to marijuana that a lot of people think it’s one and the same, and no one wants to fund hemp for fear of being seen as “pro-drug”. I know, I think it’s stupid, too.
There’s a place for biofuels in the new, green energy portfolio, but like I said, I just don’t think biofuels are going to be the big fix-it. I think it’s going to take a combination of methods, and I’m sad to see that more time and money aren’t being put into advancing these other technologies.