The shocking part of that isn’t the brain dead decision process that makes them think that’s ok, nor the ignorance it takes to not switch to alternate fuel additives…it’s the fact that you can’t find the same thing in most red states. Economy over ecology is a right wing mantra.

>> ^coolhund:

I agree completely with visionep. Milkmans points are just not true or avoidable.
Theres also the point of engines not being able to run Ethanol at all. Vintage cars for example.
In the end this bio ethanol is just another farce to make money, at a very high cost to... as always... the poor.
What this guy says in the video is just not true. Even with only E10, a higher priced gasoline will still give you better mileage (up to 10%). This is happening in Germany right now. Nobody is buying this ethanol crap because it simply isnt worth it. Not to mention because of the detrimental effects on people and cars.


Yes, some older cars do not run well with an ethanol blend, and some might take that to a point where they wouldn't run at all.

You say bio ethanol is a farce to make money (aren't all businesses?) and the cost targets the poor. That makes a good soundtext-bite but I don't see how ethanol production is particularly detrimental to the poor, at least not in any way that isn't heavily outweighed by other competitors. Care to elaborate?

About mileage: yes, any blend of ethanol will give lower gas mileage than pure gasoline. The point that I would suggest is that when you burn that gallon of gasoline, it isn't coming back. At least not for a few million years. We can/will keep on burning through oil for a while, but as we do so the prices will go up.

Right now, today, the market settles out so that in Brazil the cost per unit of distance traveled may actually favor gasoline; car owners "vote" at the pump. But I'm talking about the long term, in the future. Corn, or better yet switchgrass, grows back. Not in millions of years, *next* year. We're just a few years down the line from the initial introduction of ethanol and ethanol blends as a fuel. And yet already it is making a bit of competition with big oil.

If better alternative fuels come along (hydrogen fuel cells or whatever), I'll be open to them. But at this point ethanol seems like one that actually works, and has been working, in spite of the fact that it doesn't have a fully stable infrastructure yet.

sounds similar to

http://www.algenolbiofuels.com/
http://www.technologyreview.com/business/23009/

....

and then, there is this advancement from yet another company
http://www.zymetis.com/
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/22307/
...

and, to put it all in perspective, there is this from barely two years ago!
http://www.onethread.org/arise/?p=73

"In a recent article, “The Price of Biofuels“, David Rotman predicts that “significant technological breakthroughs” will be necessary to reach a goal in the United States of producing 35 billion gallons of renewable and alternative fuel by 2030. A professor of chemical engineering and biochemistry at Caltech, Fraces Arnold, says there are formidable barriers to the development of new biofuels:

“The bottom line is that you’re going to have to make fuel cheap. We can all make a little bit of something. But you have to make a lot of it, and you have got to make it cheaply. The problem is so huge that your technology has got to scale up.”

Three major challenges cited in converting biomass to biofuel include:
a.Optimizing yield, quality, and transportation of biomass
b.Improving the process of developing sugars from biomass
c.Creating highly efficient biological pathways to convert sugars into biofuel


Professor Gregory Stephanopoulos of MIT believes that a systems approach will likely be required to solve the multidimensional issues associated with creating an inexpensive biofuel generation process; an anticipated solution is a hybrid procedure that incorporates advances in both chemistry and biology.
-------

Well, I guess they solved those problems pretty quick.

stupid education and science, making our health better by helping us be more compatible with our environment.

understanding how to identify a problem, seeing that there is a solution and then implementing the solution.... what is this country becoming? Comm-rape-ulist ChiRussia? BURY YER GUNS AND YER COMBUSTION ENGINES!! THEY TOOK YER FUEL!!! TUK ER!!! DEMOCRATS ARE RUINING EVERYTHING RABBLE RABBLE

Convincing people to purchase new alternate fuel automobiles (or horses) would take a lot of time.


No, if batteries are improved enough to make electric cars cheaper than gas cars the problem will be trying to build them fast enough.


But personal transport is not the biggest issue.


Transportation is nearly the only issue and without it our oil usage is barely a novelty. More over, ANYTHING powered by oil in a tank can be replaced with a battery, we just need to make them the cheaper alternative and we're getting close(and any oil price increases automatically bring us closer).



The investment in infrastructure related to oil goes beyond just pipelines from oil fields to refineries to automobiles. Think of where your bananas will come from? How do they get to you now?

On a diesel powered tanker that could save money running off of batteries if they worked well enough for electric cars.


How many miles do the cheap products on Walmart shelfs travel once they leave the sweat shop? Most of the products we use and eat every day depend on that oil-powered infrastructure.

And that oil power is ONLY used because it is cheaper than using batteries. The same reason cars run off gas because it is cheaper. Build a battery that makes cars cheaper, and everything bigger than cars is cheaper to run off them as well.


Even the highways those products go by to reach you, once they are taken off ship, are made from oil. How will these roads be maintained and repaved when the main component has become scarce?

If we aren't burning oil for fuel we have tens of thousands of years worth of oil for small purposes like paving highways.


It means a massive social and political changes which will take a generation to even begin to implement.


It absolutely does not. There is no social(nor political) attachment to oil at all, only to personal automobiles(and oil revenues for oil producing nations). People don't care much what powers them as long as they work. We are just a better battery away from electric cars being superior to gas driven ones in every way.

Convincing people to purchase new alternate fuel automobiles (or horses) would take a lot of time. As it stands most alternatives are still quite expensive, while household income is on a steep decline. But personal transport is not the biggest issue. It gets more complicated then that.

The investment in infrastructure related to oil goes beyond just pipelines from oil fields to refineries to automobiles. Think of where your bananas will come from? How do they get to you now? How many miles do the cheap products on Walmart shelfs travel once they leave the sweat shop? Most of the products we use and eat every day depend on that oil-powered infrastructure. Even the highways those products go by to reach you, once they are taken off ship, are made from oil. How will these roads be maintained and repaved when the main component has become scarce?

The end of oil means a lot more then just having to look closer at that electric car. It means a massive social and political changes which will take a generation to even begin to implement.



>> ^bcglorf:
>> ^notarobot:
^ Except that consumption rates will keep growing, even after the peak.

Unless some impossible breakthrough like, say, electric cars becoming economical happens. Then consumption will drop near zero. If arable land for horses was projected from usage 100 years ago we'd have had a 'crisis' of insufficient grass for horses.

>> ^blankfist:
Still, what would a bailout prove? I remember experiencing a lot of fellow industry people in the tech-industry losing everything after the dot-com bubble popped, and Congress didn't raise a finger to bail us out. And why should they? The market was unsustainable because people were throwing too much money at it without a system of monetizing it. Those who could work through that collapse, did. The industry survived even though a lot of the major companies did not.

Difference is, with the dot bomb crash, the industry wasn't a monolithic triopoly, there were thousands upon thousands of fresh upstarts that turned to dust as quickly as they rose up. If we were talking about a similar situation with the auto industry, where most of the companies/products were new and non-essential, I don't think there'd be any talk of a bailout...or a union.

Conservatives (or at least people in Republican jersies, and self-identified conservative Democrats) helped them get too big by never exercising the FTC and having them actually stave off companies from getting "too big to fail" as GM, Ford and Chrysler have.

The same group also prevented government helping these companies take a long view of the global situation -- yes Virginia, I mean environmental issues, fuel efficiency standards, and alternative fuels.

GM, Chrysler and Ford are not sustainable. I'm sorry, but let's try not to make this a party issue. This is about private companies not being able to sustain themselves, and I'm sorry if those of us against the bailout oppose your party position for labor, but that doesn't make those of us against it "republicans". That makes us against nationalizing private debt. And, if you were smart, you'd be against that too.
Economy be damned when industries are falsely propped up.


Why are Ford, GM and Chrysler not sustainable? Could it be that we have bad trade agreements, allowing companies like Hyundai to sell 500,000 cars in the US, while limiting us to 5000 in Korea?

Could it be that every other country with an auto industry gives their companies government support, including both national healthcare as well as protectionist trade policies, and government subsidies?

Could it be that in pursuit of the conservative ideal of "free trade", we're forcing our employees to try to compete with countries with no worker safety or labor laws?

Then there's this little matter about the banks not being willing to give anyone loans for anything, including cars, which makes it a tiny bit hard for these guys to sell anything.

I know you'd rather it not be a "party issue", and that's fine. I just figured I'd lay the blame at the Republican party's feet, rather than saying "conservative ideology" where it probably rightfully belongs, because I always hear that Republicans aren't conservative, and they've been the ones pushing these failed government practices since the 1980's.

But hey, if you want to take the blame for making the environment impossible for the big three to operate as a non-sweatshop employer, who am I to stop you.

If you were smart, you'd be on the side of this argument that's looking to keep people employed, and fix the big three, rather than clinging to the same ideology that got us into this mess in the first place.

You've got a good point about propping up failing businesses, and I think that there should be serious, serious strings attached to any money we loan these guys, and that we ensure these are loans to be paid back with interest, not a big gift basket, like TARP is. Problem is those pesky conservatives (or Republicans as they call themselves) have fought to keep Democrats from adding environmental restrictions and management paycuts/restructuring, while at the same time trying to insert legislation that requires the unions to agree to salaries and benefits below the foreign auto makers. I suppose that's because under their reading of the conservative ideology, telling businesses how to operate is okay if it's to put the screws to unions, but not when management is being made accountable.

These are going to be party issues, and generally speaking, blankfist, I categorize you as being a 3rd party -- neither progressive nor "Republican", the former because it's accurate, and the second because you're as frustrated with that group of howler monkeys as I am.

However, don't try to tell me that Republicans are now high-minded conservatives, because it's a little suspect that they seemed to only remember those principles on Nov 5th, 2008, and they just so happen to lead them to the conclusion that the right course of action is to filibuster everything the Democrats try to do.

I'm not even going to watch the video.

[edit: Now I have watched the video... what the hell is up with your summary: 'Peter Schiff sees the current crisis as a result of todays socialism.'? He doesn't say anything of the sort... he does say that they should be allowed to fail because they are poorly managed, but this demonising socialism as a word again even though it was never used in this context is ridiculous]

But the reason why the US (And Australian) car manufacturers are dying is because they are terribly, terribly managed. NOTHING to do with capitalism vs socialism, NOTHING.

They have had decades of the writing being on the wall that what the consumers want and need are more efficient cars the preferably don't run on petrol. What do they keep making?

Ford US: STILL the thing they're advertising most, the F150 a ridiculous tank of a vehicle... stupid, stupid vehicle for all but a narrow subset of uses.
GM US: Well, there and here in Aus, they are still pushing the even more ridiculous HUMMER A disgusting vehicle if ever there was one.

Australia?
Ford Australia: They cannot change and continue to spend millions on the big 6 cylinder Falcon...
GM Australia (Holden): Just as stupidly continue with the Commodore.

These companies have noone to blame but themselves. DO NOT blame socialism (nothing to do with it), do NOT blame capitalism (Also nothing to do with it)... it's the short sighted, bullshit for brains management.

Every man and his dog could see there was no future for big, fuel inneficient cars, but they keep building the damn things. And it was a point on Top Gear Australia, where the host was pleading with people to buy those two big sedans because if we didn't the Australian car industry would die... well, no F*CK OFF... you don't buy bad cars just to prop up an industry that didn't move with the times, THEY should have made hybrid, alternative fuel, and electric cars.

F*ck them for not moving with the times, and F*ck them for trying to get billions from the government.

>> ^spoco2:
I guess you could give them money on the huge proviso that it ONLY be used to develop and build alternative fuel/electric cars. All finances must be fully reported, cars must be available to buy in a short timeframe etc.


I think this is the wisest solution.

The concept of simply slashing at the very least 1 million jobs, not including the vast amount of jobs that rely on the US auto industry, is not something to take lightly.

The entire midwest could be tossed into a bleak nightmare world, and I wouldn't wish that on anyone. Especially since 90% of my family works either at one of the big-3, or for a supplier.

Where are these people supposed to go find work? What other industry could all these people look toward? Are we just gonna tell all these people "hey, WalMart and McDonalds are hiring!"

I'm completely torn on this. I do NOT want to subsidize these bloated and outdated giants, but I also don't want to force millions more people onto welfare, meanwhile completely throwing away our entire automotive industry for possibly our lifetimes?


Spoco is correct.

I will upvote for the discussion, not for the video.

Absolutely hate this bail out mentality. Once a company/industry gets big enough it can apparently stop caring about whether it's making sound decisions anymore as it'll just get bailed out if it's about to collapse.

The auto industry has had AMPLE time to change. AMPLE time to develop and build green cars that we actually want to buy.

But have they? No.

So... f*ck em.

I guess you could give them money on the huge proviso that it ONLY be used to develop and build alternative fuel/electric cars. All finances must be fully reported, cars must be available to buy in a short timeframe etc.

Do NOT give them money just because the do this crying 'oh, look at how many people will be out of work' crap. If you did this all the time there'd still be horse drawn cart manufacturers making carts that no one wants to buy because they keep being bailed out.

Will letting the big 3 fall lead to smaller operations with progressive ideas and technology being able to step up and shine? I'd say it opens up the doors. From what I know, the big 3 have been used as leverage by big oil to swallow up the small companies with big plans in alternative fuel.

Maybe we'll feel it in the bowels, but nothing a good case of capitalistic diarrhea won't fix. Just remember to wipe front to back.

Huh? The fact that you credit the "oil men in the White House" proves to us where your beef is. It's the governments fault we don't have alternative fuel options, right?

Who are you to say that the oil companies can't make a lot of money? The government makes more money per gallon at the pump than the oil companies who drill, refine, and transport it make. Who is making ridiculous profits?


Explain to me again how the free market doesn't dictate the price of a barrel of gasoline?


>> ^rougy:
Gas companies may not have a monopoly, but they do have a cabal.
And they can, and will, use their obscene profits to undermine any and every effort to shift our energy dollars away from their cash registers.
In the past eight years the oil companies, thanks to the oil men in the White House, have seen both their profits skyrocket and their tax burden lighten.
The free market had little or nothing to do with that.
The "fixed market" did.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Oh zinggg on the "voted 23 times against alternative fuels".

>> ^jwray:
>> ^nosro:
Great stuff, but the poster's title does not represent the views of the lecturer. The lecture is about conservatives vs. liberals, not Republicans vs. Democrats.
"What's the difference, I thought Democrats were liberal and Republicans were conservative?" you might ask. On social issues, this is mostly true. But as current events with regard to Wall Street bailouts illustrate, both parties are liberal on economic issues. They just cater to different groups.


Compared to Europe, both US parties favor more government entanglement in business, but less welfare. It's hard to place that on a liberal-conservative scale. I would prefer less government entanglement in business, but more welfare. Downsize the military-industrial complex, cut subsidies and tariffs, and promote alternative fuel with a pollution tax instead of pork barrel spending on pet projects.
QM: Cite some statistics to back up your stereotypes. I'm still waiting.


They say Europeans distrust business (e.g. GMO), and Americans distrust government (e.g. wiretapping is controversial here, but in Europe it's done regularly).

The American parties' more relaxed approach to regulation of minimum wage and "quality of life" issues like the length of the work week seems to be a big part of US parties favoring less, not more, government entanglement in business relative to European parties.

>> ^nosro:
Great stuff, but the poster's title does not represent the views of the lecturer. The lecture is about conservatives vs. liberals, not Republicans vs. Democrats.
"What's the difference, I thought Democrats were liberal and Republicans were conservative?" you might ask. On social issues, this is mostly true. But as current events with regard to Wall Street bailouts illustrate, both parties are liberal on economic issues. They just cater to different groups.



Compared to Europe, both US parties favor more government entanglement in business, but less welfare. It's hard to place that on a liberal-conservative scale. I would prefer less government entanglement in business, but more welfare. Downsize the military-industrial complex, cut subsidies and tariffs, and promote alternative fuel with a pollution tax instead of pork barrel spending on pet projects.

QM: Cite some statistics to back up your stereotypes. I'm still waiting.