This article is kinda old, but sorta surprised no one posted it here yet. It was kinda nostalgic, it's written by John Stossel, I remember liking the guy when I thought 20/20 was really interesting (I got over that phase rather quickly).

No I haven't double-checked his facts or sources, just read it for the hell of it.

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/column.aspx?UrlTitle=the_many_myths_of_ethanol&ns=JohnStossel&dt=05/23/2007&page=full

The Many Myths of Ethanol
By John Stossel
Wednesday, May 23, 2007

No doubt about it, if there were a Miss Energy Pageant, Miss Ethanol would win hands down. Everyone loves ethanol.

"Ramp up the availability of ethanol," says Hillary Clinton.

"Ethanol makes a lot of sense," says John McCain.

"The economics of ethanol make more and more sense," says Mitt Romney.

"We've got to get serious about ethanol," says Rudolph Giuliani.

And the media love ethanol. "60 Minutes" called it "the solution."

Clinton, Romney, Barack Obama and John Edwards not only believe ethanol is the elixir that will give us cheap energy, end our dependence on Middle East oil sheiks, and reverse global warming, they also want you and me -- as taxpayers -- to subsidize it.

When everyone in politics jumps on a bandwagon like ethanol, I start to wonder if there's something wrong with it. And there is. Except for that fact that ethanol comes from corn, nothing you're told about it is true. As the Cato Institute's energy expert Jerry Taylor said on a recent "Myths" edition of "20/20," the case for ethanol is based on a baker's dozen myths.

A simple question first. If ethanol's so good, why does it need government subsidies? Shouldn't producers be eager to make it, knowing that thrilled consumers will reward them with profits?

But consumers won't reward them, because without subsidies, ethanol would cost much more than gasoline.

The claim that using ethanol will save energy is another myth. Studies show that the amount of energy ethanol produces and the amount needed to make it are roughly the same. "It takes a lot of fossil fuels to make the fertilizer, to run the tractor, to build the silo, to get that corn to a processing plant, to run the processing plant," Taylor says.

And because ethanol degrades, it can't be moved in pipelines the way that gasoline is. So many more big, polluting trucks will be needed to haul it.

More bad news: The increased push for ethanol has already led to a sharp increase in corn growing -- which means much more land must be plowed. That means much more fertilizer, more water used on farms and more pesticides.

This makes ethanol the "solution"?

But won't it at least get us unhooked from Middle East oil? Wouldn't that be worth the other costs? Another myth. A University of Minnesota study shows that even turning all of America's corn into ethanol would meet only 12 percent of our gasoline demand. As Taylor told an energy conference last March, "For corn ethanol to completely displace gasoline consumption in this country, we would need to appropriate all cropland in the United States, turn it completely over to corn-ethanol production, and then find 20 percent more land on top of that for cultivation."

OK, but it will cut down on air pollution, right? Wrong again. Studies indicate that the standard mixture of 90 percent ethanol and 10 percent gasoline pollutes worse than gasoline.

Well, then, the ethanol champs must be right when they say it will reduce greenhouse gases and reverse global warming.

Nope. "Virtually all studies show that the greenhouse gases associated with ethanol are about the same as those associated with conventional gasoline once we examine the entire life cycle of the two fuels," Taylor says.

Surely, ethanol must be good for something. And here we finally have a fact. It is good for something -- or at least someone: corn farmers and processors of ethanol, such as Archer Daniels Midland, the big food processor known for its savvy at getting subsidies out of the taxpayers.

And it's good for vote-hungry presidential hopefuls. Iowa is a key state in the presidential-nomination sweepstakes, and we all know what they grow in Iowa. Sen. Clinton voted against ethanol 17 times until she started running for president. Coincidence?

"It's no mystery that people who want to be president support the corn ethanol program," Taylor says. "If you're not willing to sacrifice children to the corn god, you will not get out of the Iowa primary with more than one percent of the vote, Right now the closest thing we have to a state religion in the United States isn't Christianity. It's corn."

Well aside from all that, the conspiracist in me says ethanol is so loved because the oil companies still make tons of money and it LOOKS like we are doing nice things for the environment. So, it makes everyone with money and power happy.

I think its only like cleaning up a little but really not solving a long standing problem.

I'm willing to back it as a temporary fix to getting off of the foreign oil and eventually ALL oil.

But won't it at least get us unhooked from Middle East oil? Wouldn't that be worth the other costs? Another myth. A University of Minnesota study shows that even turning all of America's corn into ethanol would meet only 12 percent of our gasoline demand.Actually, 12% would almost exactly cover our Middle East oil imports.

I suspect this article has many flaws (which Thicket Tundrabog can point out).

But in any case, large-scale corporate agriculture is not the preferred future of energy.

The future is hopefully a mix of ethanol and electricity, mainly electricity.

Ethanol can only be a 10% solution: We need a 100% solution. Electricity is the only way I can see we could pull it off.

If we were to nationalize http://www.calcars.org, and mandate everyone buy a Prius, and make them all plug in hybrids. . what would that look like?

Imagine 200 million Priuses driving 10,000 miles per year at 200 watt-hours per mile. That works out to 2000 kwh per vehicle per year. Then that becomes 400 billion kwh per year, right?

To put that in perspective, in the United States in 2004:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/neic/speeches/aeo2006/caruso121205.html (page 20)
3,567 billion kwh of electricity were sold.

So you'd need more nuclear plants to go up soonish if we are to avoid brownouts.

According to http://www.allcountries.org/uscensus/967_nuclear_power_plants_number_capacity_and.html , all our 104 nuke plants in the US produced 727.9 billion KwH in 1999 @ 85.5 capacity. So assuming that rate of production, each nuke plant produces 7 billion KwH per year on average. To be able to handle the increased load of 400 billion KwH with the Prius plug-in mandate, we'd need 58 more nuclear power plants if we were to convert all cars to plug in hybrids. That's definitely doable. Why the US hasn't already done what I've suggested is puzzling.

We could even allow the former gas stations to store and pump ethanol in case someone forgot to plug their car in the night before. There, all the gas problems solved; we don't need Arab oil or Venezulan oil anymore!

Then the Arab countries could feel free to go squat on dirt floors to crap in the dark, as Fyyr has put it before :)

Why the US hasn't already done what I've suggested is puzzling.Nuclear plants are extremely expensive and time-consuming to build, and are a bureaucratic nightmare. There can be no nuclear plants if there are no companies willing to make the long haul investment to build them.

There is also rampant, irrational anti-nuclear hysteria based on Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, not to mention a perceived risk of a terrorist attacks on such facilities.

Finally, there's the issue of nuclear waste. Last I checked, we still don't have a safe, centralized repository for it, although one is in the works.

And again, if we reprocess nuclear waste, we can extract much more energy while reducing the amount (and radioactivity) of the waste. Some other countries do this already.

Well, you can't run cars off of nuclear power.... yet. Hopefully something hydrogenish will work out. I don't think Ethanol is a good solution for global warming though.

Sure we can. We have electric cars today that could handle the everyday transportation needs for many (but not all) people. They're not in mass production mostly because they don't yet make economic sense. At least we know the technology exists.

Actually, I know of a number of all electric vehicles that look and behave like gasoline ones.

Thing is, they are very very expensive. Last one I saw was 150,000 british pounds.

Do they have much range? I knew a guy with a pure plug-in electric car a few years back, it only had a range of about 40-50 miles.

Here is one announced on Gizmag.

http://www.gizmag.com/go/7446/

130 mile range extendable to 250 miles. 95mph max speed and useable charge in 10 minutes. The 10 minute charge, they say, is enough to transport 5 in the vehicle for 100 miles.

Around here, you'd likely be still 128 miles from the nearest outlet if you went 100 miles in any direction.

There is another one on gizmag and I've seen one in Discover Magazine. They are all very expensive.

So it won't get you 200 miles like a malibu on a tank of gas nor even the 400-600 you can get with hybrids, but hey. You can go at 0-60 in 10 seconds and be the first kid on your block with an electric truck.

Here is another one on Gizmag: http://www.gizmag.com/go/7486/

Its a sporty car. Same 10 minute charge claim.

This is the only electric car I need. And it's named after Tesla!

Acceleration time, 0-60 mph (0-100 km/h): approximately 4 s
Top speed: 130 mph (210 km/h)
Range: 200+ miles (322+ km) on the EPA highway cycle
Cost: $92,000 - $100,000
Release: October 2007

More info at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Roadster

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/108/255000227_c22decfa2f_b.jpg

Yes, that is another one I've heard of. I think that's the one in the Discover Magazine.

Oh, I saw one called the Zap-X yesterday.

Did an exchange rate conversion of 150.000 pounds (note the euro notation). That came out to 301,590 US dollars.

So, yea, good idea but something is lost in translation. Nobody is going to up and buy cars that cost more than most houses.

I can imagine what "filling stations" would be like if everyone had electric. You'd plug in the car and go inside the coffee shop. People would sit and chat for 10 minutes, might be kind of nice!

I imagine most of the time people would recharge at home (once we've fully switched over to electric cars, at least).

Stormhaven's article on ethanol is quite accurate. Ethanol may be part of the solution to energy dependency, but it's much more expensive than conventional oil/gas. There are numerous energy alternatives that cost less. Wind power and nuclear are the most obvious choices.

The hype about ethanol is a typical "jump on the bandwagon". Most supporters don't understand the economics.

I'm still a fan of corn based ethanol to some degree, because even a small decrease in oil consumed could help a lot both in price and security, we get *most* of our oil from safe sources - US/Mexico/Canada, and arguebly Venezuela.

Furthermore, the more investment in any technology, the better it generally gets (hell, strictly speaking our Cars today are tons more effecient then the ones during the 80's, in terms of turning gasoline into power, its just they have so much more crap that their MPG is lower)

The big problem with our ethanol craze right now is that we we are using corn though, corn is a bad ethanol, it takes lots of energy to produce, and its overall just not too effecient, as the article has stated.

If our corn lobby wasn't so powerful and we were smarter and removed the tariffs on sugarcane and used sugarcane from the caribbean and brazil. (Long term celluoistic ethanol appears to hold some promise, but I wont hold my breath for it, if it comes then great if not then well :( )

Personally I think the future is in Hybrids deisel flex fuels, at least for the next 20-25 years, long term I could see switching to more plug in hybrids. (IE a Hybrid that runs on something like 20-30% Ethanol and Deisel, but also has batteries/power system like modern hybrods)

I am quite aware that Hybrids at the moment have a large disadvantage because of cost and environomental problems cause of batteries, but I think as more people buy them and time goes on the technology will get better.

I imagine most of the time people would recharge at home (once we've fully switched over to electric cars, at least).
Right, but if you're on a longish trip, you'd need to stop and recharge.

They'd have to put plugs in park lots at work too.

Furthermore, the more investment in any technology, the better it generally gets (hell, strictly speaking our Cars today are tons more effecient then the ones during the 80's, in terms of turning gasoline into power, its just they have so much more crap that their MPG is lower).
I am not a mechanic by any means (for the most part, I'm one of those people who just take the car and blindly drop it off at the station) but I don't believe this statement is very accurate. Other than automatic fuel injection, I don't believe there have been any major advancements in the general efficiency of a combustion engine in the past few decades. I was under the impression that the fact that a V6 gets more mpg now compared to an old '60's car had more to do with the vehicle's total weight than anything else. Yes, the computers within the vehicle controlling the fuel mix do optimize the blend, but I did not believe it was such a huge difference.

Again, I could be completely off.

I'm like you, I don't know much about the engine in my car other than where to put things into it. But... I do know that I never have issues getting my car, Scion XB, onto the freeway when the onramp is up a steep hill and the traffic is fast. I remember back in the 80's and even 90's my small, good mpg cars, were really pokey going up steep hills. Now I have plenty of power and get even better mpg. Something has changed! My car before this one was good at that too (Saturn) but didn't have as good mileage.

Horsepower and torque is separate from efficiency though. My mom had a piece of crap Seabring with a 4 cylinder - 1993 model I think - and that stupid thing could barely hit 60 on the highway going downhill.

If our corn lobby wasn't so powerful and we were smarter and removed the tariffs on sugarcane and used sugarcane from the caribbean and brazil.Destroying the environment to save it? The last thing the planet needs is more agriculture. We should not be using corn, sugar cane, or palm oil as fuels.

During a transition period, perhaps someone could make a generator that could recharge the car using gasoline (or other fuels). Assuming such a generator is practical, it would help take care of the risk of being stranded without a nearby charging station. It would be inefficient and expensive, but for most people it should rarely be needed, and be used only in an emergency.

People that need to travel long distances on a regular basis would simply be the last to adopt electric cars, switching only when most of today's gas stations are set up to charge electric cars. When driving long distances you're supposed to take a break every 2 hours or so anyway, so I don't see recharging on the road being a problem.

Hmm, I was thinking of what Panamah said and have to wonder if maybe Starbuck's has some plans for the future. They are already as ubiquitous as gas stations, all they'd need to do is add plugin spots with meters in the parking lot.

Stormhaven is correct. There have been very few efficiency improvements since the 1980s for automobile fuel use. There's only so many things that can be done to get energy out of fuel. The major areas are reducing friction and heat losses, and ensuring complete combustion of fuel.

The mpg improvements are mainly due to automobile weight reductions.

This doesn't mean that there aren't opportunities for efficiency improvements. There is quite an energy loss when braking. There have been lots of attempts to store the braking energy in things like flywheels, but I don't think that there is anything commercially available.

Fuel cells are theoretically possible for efficiency improvements, but aren't practical, at least so far.

This doesn't mean that there aren't opportunities for efficiency improvements. There is quite an energy loss when braking. There have been lots of attempts to store the braking energy in things like flywheels, but I don't think that there is anything commercially available.

I thought that was what powered the hybrids like the Prius.

Regenerative braking brings fuel efficiency for stop-and-go driving much closer to that of continuous driving. The energy to be moving in the first place has to come from somewhere, though.

I thought that was what powered the hybrids like the Prius.

The Tesla uses it.

But I can't afford one.


I would also like to know about the eco-damage off all the batteries being made for these things, and where they are going after they burn out.

Are they all being recycled?

i'd take bio-diesel over ethanol anyday.

electric you say? ok, what's making the electricity? coal.
and yeah... what happens to the batteries?

hydrogen? where is the hydrogen coming from?

basically i am saying there is no pat answer. you also have to consider the full life cycle. some happy happy answers that sound great (like electricity and hydrogen) may not be so wonderful when you look further up the chain to see what was required to create it. ethanol definately falls into this category, too.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epat2p2.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_vehicle
http://www.fool.com/investing/high-growth/2007/04/20/fueling-the-debate-ethanol-vs-biodiesel.aspx
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0604600103v1?ijkey=a487c3831ae6939a9bb711a8c0e82a7 2a227fe48&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha

cellulosic ethanol could be interesting, i can't say i've looked into it much.

Our electricity doesn't have to come from coal. Again nuclear power looks like a much better option, which can then be used to either charge electric cars or produce hydrogen.

Except it is such a bummer when your nuclear plant leaks (http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/07/16/ap3918144.html).

i'd take bio-diesel over ethanol anyday.

basically i am saying there is no pat answer. you also have to consider the full life cycle. some happy happy answers that sound great (like electricity and hydrogen) may not be so wonderful when you look further up the chain to see what was required to create it.And when you look further up the chain for biodiesel, you often find clearing of virgin rain forests and destruction of habitats of endangered species for production of the fuel (e.g., palm oil, which is popular for its high yield).

Except it is such a bummer when your nuclear plant leaks (http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/07/16/ap3918144.html).About 315 gallons of water apparently spilled from a tank at one of the plant's seven reactors and entered a pipe that flushed it into the sea, said Jun Oshima, an executive at Tokyo Electric Power Co.

Officials said there was no "significant change" in the seawater near the plant, which is about 160 miles northwest of Tokyo. "The radioactivity is one-billionth of the legal limit," Oshima said of the leaked water.It sure doesn't sound like a big deal.

It's amazing how people ignore the guaranteed widespread destructive effects of technologies they're comfortable with, but when it comes to an unpopular technology, the tiniest glitch becomes a world headline.

Besides, one of the advantages of having a geographically large country is that we have a lot of choices for reactor placement. We can choose locations where natural disasters are unlikely.

Its at 1 1 billionth of the acceptable rate.

seriously I don't get the big concern when you could much easier have something like the Bhopal disaster happen.

(If some natural diasaster strikes I'm much, much more worried about a chemical plant, or something similiar breaking down then a nuclear power plant having problems.)

if we were as scared about nuclear for other things that are far more risky there are so many things that wouldn't be built heh...

i think it because people have an unnatural fear of radiation, so the smallest teensy risk is totally blown out of proportion; it can be horrible, its no more horrible then plenty of other possible things.

Besides, one of the advantages of having a geographically large country is that we have a lot of choices for reactor placement. We can choose locations where natural disasters are unlikely.
The amazing thing about water is it can go anywhere and eventually get sucked up into the atmosphere and come down as rain somewhere else. If it is released as a vapor cloud well then it goes where the wind pushes it.

I think when we have to abandon a state sized area to our first nuclear accident we might realize that trading one horribly polluting technology into one that is also horribly polluting when it has a disaster isn't a good option either.

Also, we generally don't aggregate our energy in one place, it goes close to the where it is going to be used. And last I looked, both the coasts use a lot more energy, but the West Coast is prone to earthquakes. Most of the mid-west is prone to tornados, the south is hurricanes and I'm not sure what happens in the East coast.

I think when we have to abandon a state sized area to our first nuclear accident we might realize that trading one horribly polluting technology into one that is also horribly polluting when it has a disaster isn't a good option either.

State sized area? You must be referring to Chernobyl in Russia. In the US, that can never happen. Guy I have literally known all my life, one of my best friend's father is one of the leading commercial nuke plant builders for Korea and China. I have talked to him extensively, and the level of safety equipment that must be installed in the US plants is truly mind boggling. Since we first started building them in the 60s, we overdesigned them. They were built thick enough to have a fully loaded 747 drive right into it at 300 miles an hour. The containment buildings are at least 4 feet thick of concrete and lead, and are designed to withstand everything up to a nuclear blast. 3 mile island was the worst nuclear accident our commercial plants are capable of. You couldn't make our commercial nuke plants do a Chernobyl if you took it over and tried to pull the control rods out personally, while squatting directly atop the nuclear pile.

{Edit:Here's a recent 2002 study on commerical 767's vs. nuclear plants.
http://www.nei.org/documents/eprinuclearplantstructuralstudy200212.pdf }

And last I looked, both the coasts use a lot more energy, but the West Coast is prone to earthquakes. Most of the mid-west is prone to tornados, the south is hurricanes and I'm not sure what happens in the East coast.

Ok, don't build the plants on top of a major fault line, and you should be ok. Hurricanes? Tornadoes? A class F5 tornado that just stayed on top of the plant for hours might be able to damage the tops of the cooling tower, simply because of it's height vs. shearing forces of the tornado vortex, but hurricanes can't generate the sufficient force neccessary. Remember, 747's @ 350 mph can not penetrate a US nuclear plant. Hurricanes may get to 150-175 mph. On the coast. If you're just worried stiff, build them several 100 miles inland, and run several 100 miles of electrical wire back out to the city in question.

Even if we had a nuclear beachfront plant, I have relatives in the area, so I got to survey Katrina's destruction, and Katrina couldn't take out concrete parking garages that were literally 10 feet from the beach. Granted, they were the only things left, as all the wood, and brick structures were in the Gulf somewhere, but a parking garage is not remotely as well built and designed as our nuke plants.

The only thing we need to worry about is spillage of waste en route to Yucca. And there's video somewhere of the overdesigned containers used to transport nuclear waste. They ran a train into one, threw it at 200 mph through a concrete wall, sat it in burning jet fuel for hours, and none of them ever failed.

Nuclear in the US = Overdesigned safety OCD projects. They find the most obsessive-complusive engineers in the world and turn them loose on designing nuclear containment vessels. If you don't have at least 12 redundant safety backup systems that can withstand the temperature of the Sun, and touch your doorknobs 12 times before leaving your house, your family may die!

Well you gotta remember that hurricanes can cause tornadoes and not only that, but the destructive power of a hurricane generally comes from the massive amount of water it drops on the affected area, both preceding and after the fact. While a tower can stand a direct hit from a 747, how well will it do being 3ft under fast moving flood waters or from the raised sea level?

The amazing thing about water is it can go anywhere and eventually get sucked up into the atmosphere and come down as rain somewhere else. If it is released as a vapor cloud well then it goes where the wind pushes it.Yet we pollute the water to hell and back with dangerous chemicals and no one gives a damn.I think when we have to wabandon a state sized area to our first nuclear accident we might realize that trading one horribly polluting technology into one that is also horribly polluting when it has a disaster isn't a good option either.And in the end, nothing serious happened at the Three Mile Island plant. It was successfully shut down with only trivial radiation exposure.Also, we generally don't aggregate our energy in one place, it goes close to the where it is going to be used.We have an energy grid. There's no reason to stick nuclear reactors in vulnerable areas.

Its also amazing how many reactor hours the Navy has operated (they have tons of reactors, on almost every aircraft carrier as well as a lot of the subs) without a single accident.

Yea you can say that we know of, but nuclear accidents arn't exactly the easier things to cover up (well I guess unless they dont matter, but thats sorta defeating the purpose of saying they are dangerous eh!)

And when you look further up the chain for biodiesel, ...

Well, I don't think I have read or heard anything about this technology which uses fresh first run oil.

Ever since the 70s when I saw this guy on Thats Incredible, convert a Diesel VW Rabbit to use used cooking oils to power his car across the country.

To the guy piloting his boat to China now, is using all used oil. Oil that would otherwise be discarded.

Funny about the original article, I just watched an Anderson Cooper piece on CNN on Saturday night that pretty much exposes the fallacies likewise. It was if John Stossel had produced it, with his story as the script. It did have Obama though, so it was slightly different.

Yeah... sounds like they might be covering up the how bad the nuclear reactor leak really is.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6785147,00.html
Snippet
KASHIWAZAKI, Japan (AP) - A nuclear power plant near the epicenter of a powerful earthquake suffered a slew of problems, including spilled waste drums, leaked radioactive water, fires and burst pipes, the reactor's operator said Tuesday - more than 24 hours after the tremors struck northern Japan.

The problems at the Kashiwazaki power plant and the delays in acknowledging them are likely to feed concerns about the safety of Japan's 55 nuclear reactors, which supply 30 percent of the quake-prone country's electricity and have suffered a long string of accidents and cover-ups.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said a total of 50 cases of malfunctioning and trouble had been found at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear plant since Monday's magnitude 6.6 quake, which killed at least nine people and left 13,000 homeless.

The company said they were still inspecting the plant, which shut down automatically after the quake, and further problems could emerge.

Still, TEPCO spokesman Kensuke Takeuchi called the instances discovered so far ``minor troubles'' and said they posed no threat to people or the environment.

In five of the reactors, major exhaust pipes were knocked out of place and TEPCO was investigating whether they had leaked radioactive materials, the statement said.

TEPCO also said about 100 drums containing low-level nuclear waste fell at the plant during the quake and were found a day later, some of the lids open.
...
Japan's nuclear power plants, which have suffered a string of accidents and cover-ups amid deep concerns they are vulnerable in earthquakes.

In other news:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6902574.stm

Train carrying yellow phospherous prompts evacuation of 14 villages.

World continues to brush teeth using toothpaste, clean clothes with detergents, watch fireworks, and light fires using matches without concern.

Well, I don't think I have read or heard anything about this technology which uses fresh first run oil.Indonesia is cutting down and burning pristine rain forests and planting gigantic fields of palm oil right now, for this very purpose.

http://www.walhikalsel.org/eng/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=33&Itemid=40

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6320285.stm

http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=13121&ref=rss

It goes hand in hand with all the logging going on there to supply China with cheap wood (which then sails to our shores in the form of crappy products).

If deforestation continues at its current pace, the Indonesian rain forests will be gone in about 15 years, and that entire equatorial ecosystem destroyed.

Those cars that run on used restaurant frying oil, yes there are a few here in San Francisco. But that's not what this industry as a whole has in mind.

Indonesia is cutting down and burning pristine rain forests and planting gigantic fields of palm oil right now, for this very purpose.

Who's land is it on?


If you want the rights to the use of lands, you should be prepared to buy them.

If you want the rights to the use of lands, you should be prepared to buy them.Eh? The demand for all this crap is coming from the first world countries, not Indonesia itself. If we stop demanding it, they will stop producing it.

Besides, last I checked, our guns and treasure vaults were bigger, so we get a bigger say as to how things are done.

You want to go to war with Indonesia because they are farming?

You want to go to war with Indonesia because they are farming?Not war, pressure. (It would probably be a lot cheaper and easier to bribe the Indonesians than to engage in an armed conflict with them.)

And my concern isn't that they're farming, it's what they're destroying to obtain that farm land.

http://www.greenhealthwatch.com/news/latest/latest0701/biodiesel-destructive.htmlAs well as being hopelessly inadequate given the world’s thirst for combustion engine fuels, biodiesel manufacture is responsible for massive environmental destruction, usually of rainforest, much of which also releases huge volumes of CO2 into the atmosphere. Taking palm oil, the cheapest crop suitable for biodiesel, as an example, George notes that “between 1985 and 2000, the development of oil-palm plantations in raijnforest areas was responsible for an estimated 87% of deforestation in Malaysia” (Friends of the Earth) and that, in Sumatra and Borneo, some four million hectares of forest have been converted to palm farms. A further six million hectares of rainforest are scheduled for clearance in Malaysia, and 16.5 million hectares in Indonesia. The entire region is being turned into a gigantic cauldron of palm oil to fuel, mainly, European industry and transport, with the subsequent loss of rainforest and wildlife and the eviction of thousands of native people, sometimes using torture.That's where your "green" (<img src=http://lag9.com/rolleyes.gif>) biodiesel comes from.

And my concern isn't that they're farming, it's what they're destroying to obtain that farm land.

Well, getting land(by destroying it, in your terms) to farm has always been fundamental to farming.


Using force to take someone's land is far easier than buying it. But it IS a lot easier. Something the eco's love to do.

Well, getting land(by destroying it, in your terms) to farm has always been fundamental to farming.All the more reason not to farm any more than is necessary.

Also, there are levels of destruction. Destroying a largely barren grassland is not nearly as ecologically disastrous as destroying a pristine rain forest.Using force to take someone's land is far easier than buying it. But it IS a lot easier. Something the eco's love to do.That depends on how much the force costs (in terms of time, money, resources, and repercussions), and what the asking price of the land is.

TEPCO said it had miscalculated and under-reported the amount of radiation in 1200 litres of water that had leaked from the power plant, but it said the leak was still within government safety regulations and posed no threat to the environment.
Uh huh...