Monday, April 07, 2008

Whose Meal Got You Downtown?

Thanks to people like Luther Olson (Dimwit-WI), and hundreds of others just like him, the price of corn (and wheat, and soybeans, and hops) has jumped significantly in the last 12 months.

But it's not the price so much as the fact that corn used to push iron around is NOT used to feed people--nor their livestock (also used to feed people.)

Headless does the math:

Ethanol needed to fill the [SUV] tank: Let's say 28 gallons blended with 5 gallons of gasoline to make 33 gallons of E85 for the Flex-Fueled SUV.

Hence, 10 bushels of corn are needed to fill the tank of the Suburban with E85

...

560 pounds of corn are needed to fill the Suburban one time

Believe it or not, he tells us that Chapter Two of his post is even worse...and that's before he gets to the part about the "logic" of using food as fuel.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Op-Ed from one of Wisconsin's leading right-wing daily newspapers last week (The Wisconsin State Journal)

"Keep driving ethanol forward":

http://www.madison.com/archives/read.php?ref=/wsj/2008/04/03/0804030219.php

Those of us in the rest of Wisconsin can't seem to understand you kooks in the southeastern part of the state.

Anonymous said...

Even Krugman at the NYT has called for the end of ethenol. Makes a lot of sense to put our basic food staple into our gas tank. NOT.