Acres Of Green + Movable Type Blog: Gas Prices, Politicians, Speculators, Ethanol

So what do these four things have in common? Nothing, except for a-lot of ups and downs. This is not the time to get the giggles.

Several times in my ventures I have come across articles I have to comment on. In one of my blogs I told how ethanol was made. It is a very simple process where by you nearly boil corn mixed with water, the alcohol rises, is collected and the corn slurry is fed to animals. If you would like to read it just search for the word ethanol and look under acres of green.

In the same blog I also stated that using one energy source to produce another energy source didn't seem like the best way. Using natural gas for instance to produce ethanol, because the fuel U get isn't much better than what you had, if any.

Years ago an attempt was made to introduce ethanol as an alternate fuel. Back then cars had carburetors instead of fuel injection and they would run on this product. Well oil prices dropped, ethanol plants shut down and politicians went their separate ways and might I add, buried there heads very quickly! I believe this occurred in late 70ies early 80ies.

Today the same thing is happening again. Government mentions ethanol and millions of dollars pour into plants. Farmers think their going to make money and then??? Today we have other means of making this product. Everyone jumped into producing alcohol out of corn, now we can use other products to do this, including crop residue and several different kinds of grasses.

I read a story the other day that by doing this we would put much more pollutants in the air because all this land would have to be harvested. Well MOST of this land will be harvested anyway. It doesn't really matter for what. Modern machines are fast, fuel efficient and very productive. The end product would be ethanol and more animal feed.

Now a final word. I have studied the futures market for several years. I don't trade much but I do watch the markets for aid in selling my corn. Grain markets were recently trading at levels never before seen in the industry. Of course speculators did the bidding and commercials were doing the selling, many sold to soon and were really hurting with margin calls. Now here comes my last word.

From what I see in the charts, if gas and crude oil ever take off again we could see prices that are so high, many of us could no longer afford them. In-other-words much higher than we have already seen. Is this possible? I don't know, but I would like another option to power my vehicle!

Comments

I watched a movie the other day called "Tooth and Nail" and it basically was about all of the gasoline drying up and everyone going mad crazy. Supposedly it drove a group of people to cannibalism and they traveled around the country finding people who were shacked up in odd places to eat. I thought this was total outrageous for the simple fact that there are other forms of energy, granted none of them may be the "be all and end all" to out problems right now, but they hopefully would help people from wanting to stalk and eat other people.

Posted by: pam | September 19, 2008 11:27 AM

Well, I read your comments cautiously and I observed one thing that you are rather pessimistic. I assure that nothing is going to be happen wrong. I strongly believe on one thing that every problem brings several solutions. And fuel crisis is also a problem and now what we need is to find out exact solution.

Outsourcing Solution in BPO

Posted by: David Williams | September 20, 2008 12:49 AM

i remember that movie race to the sun (not sure of the title) they use solar or sun for running the vehicle.

by the way, there are vehicles now that can run using electricity.

Posted by: alcohol intervention | April 3, 2009 12:37 PM

Thanks much for post. It is really good read.
I love to read acresofgreen.com!

missouri teeth whitening

Posted by: SabPlathPax | June 18, 2009 05:49 PM

R5iuUq coosfewm meuouhjr tfvohnpj

Posted by: viagra hinta | July 20, 2009 06:28 AM

afqwrmdl zvuueigr jutmwqnj

Posted by: achat viagra en france | July 30, 2009 11:36 PM