Comments on The Morning News

The more it becomes apparent that biofuels are a global catastrophe, the more embarrassed I am for ever supporting them. "Biodiesel: No War Required", I would repeat, but now it looks like biodiesel and ethanol are going to be the prime motivators of war in the 21st Century. People in Haiti and Bangladesh are eating sugared mud.

Thanks for the Sonics' Clip! I can skip my morning coffee. Nice to see Sean Kemp.

@fnarf, the sad thing is due to the lobbying and way our government is set up, breadbasket and midwest states will continue to push for biofuel subsidies and grain production subsidies. This just goes to show you though that the state often makes decisions that seem good but have a slew of unintended consequences.

Oil $117 a barrel?! Wasn't it just, like, yesterday that $100 was this spectacular, cataclysmic milestone that we were bracing for?

Of course, oil and food prices and famine and biofuels are all connected, as Paul Krugman pointed out in a recent outstanding column. But now I want to mention a new Krugman column that plays on these latest headlines regarding commodities prices:
Running Out of Planet to Exploit

Nice to know that Krugman still maintains his common sense and clarity of mind, and only when the topic is Barack Obama does he go insane.

The biofuels debacle is deeply depressing, because someday soon we're going to have to start growing our fuel, and inevitably that's going to crowd out space that could be growing food. What's the alternative? Solar isn't looking like an answer yet.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Obama's town hall in Reading, PA Sunday:

If elected in November, Mr. Obama said he would:
...
• Increase federal funds for building roads, bridges and rail lines, as well as stressing mass transit so people don't have to drive cars to get to work.

My mother attended this town hall yesterday, and she said when Obama made this point, he mentioned light rail by name.

Obama has also spoken out in favor of congestion pricing and using inter-city rail as a way to revitalize the economies of places like Scranton, PA.

Yeah, the dude's still attached to biofuels, but let's face it, he's got enough common sense and nimbleness of mind to pivot on that one--not unlike how one Fnarf has been able to do (see @1).

Food prices going up is so much more of a complex issue than a simple food->fuels diversion. To continue to parrot an incorrect simplification serves no one. On the same posting, it is noted that the price of crude is now $117/bbl!!! This is a much greater driver of food price increases than biofuels. How come biofuels face the brunt of the explaning? What about the drought in Australia? The Westernizing diets of 3,000,000,000 people? Hedge fund speculation in agricultural commodities? These all contribute, yet the boogeyman of the day, biofuels, is the one that is always called out.

tsm is right - we will have to start growing our fuel, but s/he is wrong that it will crowd out space for food - algae can grow in the desert, on brownfield land, on your roof, in the ocean. Biofuels will be the answer and Fnarf, you'll be back singing their praises.

There are other Fnarfs?

The Economist had an interesting sidebar on oil prices (amid some excellent coverage of the food crisis). Oil is only at a record if you adjust for the CPI, but in many ways consumer prices are a poor way to judge inflation; purchasing power is more apropos. "Back in 1981, the annual average income within the Group of Seven countries would have been enough to buy only 318 barrels of oil. To set back Western consumers by the equivalent today, Deutsche Bank calculates, the price of oil would have to rise to $134 a barrel."

Other measures: Americans spend 6.6% of their disposable incomes on energy today, compared to 8% in 1980, which suggests a record price of $145.

Quit yer bitchin'; oil is cheap.

I thought algae needed tons of water, which makes it not sustainable, esp. at current consumption levels. What we really need is to look at the waste we produce now - food waste, McD fry-grease, shit - and figure out how to get energy from that. Plus local, local, local! food sources. I love me some rice, but how much longer will I be able to wallow in my first world privilege?

Is there going to be a public soylent green showing anytime soon? I mean, WWCHD?

asteria - algae farms would actually use less water for a given yield of oil than soybeans or other terrestrial crops. Plus they can be grown in wastewater or salty water.

Also, Artie Lange returned to The Howard Stern Show.

Local food is frequently far more energy-intensive than food from far away. Lamb from New Zealand uses much less water, less grain, and less energy than local lamb EVEN AFTER COUNTING THE JET FUEL that brought it here. It takes less energy to fly fresh flowers from Africa or South America than it does to grow them in the US.

A Hersey Hawkins sighting!

Fuck all the energy crisis talk, from :31 to :39 that Supersonic Yeti thing is the epitome of P-U-M-P-E-D!

"'Rulan' said sect members are reconsidering whether girls under 18 should have sex with adult men.

"Many of us perhaps were not even aware of such a law," he said. "And we do reconsider, yes. We teach our children to abide the law."

either he is one ignorant motherfucker or disingenuous. i may vomit.

The thing is we're subsidizing the most inefficient forms of biofuels. Algae, Switchgrass, and Sugar Cane biofuels all are better - but they don't have a massive lobby and subsidies like Corn does.

And oil is only cheap for a mythical middle. The cold hard fact is that 90 percent of Americans suffered a 4 percent drop in salaries (earnings minus inflations) and an even larger drop in household wealth, over the last eight years, Fnarf.

Only the ultra-rich did well. The rich got by. Everyone else got screwed - and we live in one of the cheapest energy markets in the USA.

@14,

Totally off topic, but I love how he says that they teach their children to follow the law. Because clearly those slutty thirteen-year-old girls were breaking the law by seducing completely innocent old men.

i wish rent were a little lower. that, or ppl need to start keeping their places up a little better, or owners need to be willing to accept less.

"Mein Opa, das bin ich."

boyd main (Slog's resident apologist on Slo) @7:

Food prices going up is so much more of a complex issue than a simple food->fuels diversion. To continue to parrot an incorrect simplification serves no one.

I'm not sure what's the grosser oversimplification: to say that biofuels are entirely to blame for the recent run-up in food prices, or to say that biofuels are entirely blameless.

I'm sure boyd just loved Time magazine's recent cover story on biofuels, The Clean Energy Scam.

I meant @19: boyd main (Slog's resident biofuels apologist). Oh well.

Cressona, I'm not ignoring the real effects of current biofuels on food prices, I'm simply putting that effect into the context of a complex set of drivers. One factor of many. Sorry, but I'm not the strawman apologist you want me to be.

I read the Time article - it was mostly spot on. Corn to ethanol is a stupid pork barrel (corn bushel?) boondoggle and it is rightly hit hard in that report. But, although the criticism was largely just, it was quite a disappointing read in not putting forth anything less than curt lip service to any real solutions or alternatives.

It's very easy to say "X is bad". It's a little harder to say "as a solution to an earth-critical problem, X is bad, but Y and Z look more promising. Furthermore the apparent ill effects of X can also be attributed in much greater part to A B C and D"

If you think food prices are bad now, think about what they're going to be like when there is no alternative to oil @ 400$/bbl.