The Oil Wars Beget Water Wars
We have Nattered before on the drought and impending water wars.
Hat tip to Jon Markman at MSN... from the WSJ Ethanol's Water Shortage:
"Heavily subsidized and absurdly inefficient, corn-based ethanol has already driven up food prices.
But the Senate's plan to increase production to 36 billion gallons by 2022, from less than 7 billion today, will place even greater pressure on farm-belt aquifers.
Ethanol plants consume roughly four gallons of water to produce each gallon of fuel, but that's only a fraction of ethanol's total water habit.
Cornell ecology professor David Pimentel says that when you count the water needed to grow the corn, one gallon of ethanol requires a staggering 1,700 gallons of H2O."
The Nattering One muses...
in Europe they use Propane or CNG (Compressed Natural Gas), the cost is about 1/3 of Petrol. CNG here costs under $1 per gallon if pumped from home.
CNG is mainly comprised of Methane, which can be squeezed out of waste, garbage or manure.
Why did the Detroit automakers stop production of CNG dual fuel autos and ramp up E85 ethanol and hybrid production?
Answer: We wouldn't want to promote a clean burning readily abundant fuel source that costs 1/3 of the going rate, and cuts our dependence on foreign oil, would we?
Hat tip to Jon Markman at MSN... from the WSJ Ethanol's Water Shortage:
"Heavily subsidized and absurdly inefficient, corn-based ethanol has already driven up food prices.
But the Senate's plan to increase production to 36 billion gallons by 2022, from less than 7 billion today, will place even greater pressure on farm-belt aquifers.
Ethanol plants consume roughly four gallons of water to produce each gallon of fuel, but that's only a fraction of ethanol's total water habit.
Cornell ecology professor David Pimentel says that when you count the water needed to grow the corn, one gallon of ethanol requires a staggering 1,700 gallons of H2O."
The Nattering One muses...
in Europe they use Propane or CNG (Compressed Natural Gas), the cost is about 1/3 of Petrol. CNG here costs under $1 per gallon if pumped from home.
CNG is mainly comprised of Methane, which can be squeezed out of waste, garbage or manure.
Why did the Detroit automakers stop production of CNG dual fuel autos and ramp up E85 ethanol and hybrid production?
Answer: We wouldn't want to promote a clean burning readily abundant fuel source that costs 1/3 of the going rate, and cuts our dependence on foreign oil, would we?
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