 | Beginnings of UK “Oil Age†| The Oil Drum | And how is Saudi Arabia getting on? (or more evidence of a deteriorating situation...) |  |
Search The Oil Drum with Google
Recently on TOD:World
TOD:Local
- Streets: Utilitarian Corridors or Livable Public Space
- Summer Streets a Success!
- Plan for Hydro-Fracture Drilling for Unconventional Natural Gas in Upstate New York
TOD:Europe
- Oilwatch Monthly - November 2008
- The 2008 IEA WEO - Production Decline Rates
- The EU Strategic Energy Review: maybe not so depressing after all
TOD:Canada
- The Round-Up: October 24, 2008
- Compressed Air Energy Storage - How viable is it?
- Oil Megaproject Update (July 2008)
TOD:ANZ
Blogroll
Energy Sites
- The Coming Global Oil Crisis
- Die Off
- Dry Dipstick
- Energy Bulletin
- From the Wilderness
- Life After the Oil Crash
- Peak Oil Crisis
- Peak Oil News and Message Boards
- Powerswitch
- Rigzone
- Matthew Simmons
- Wolf at the Door
Environment & Sustainability Sites
- The Daily Green
- EcoGeek
- Eco Street
- Green Car Congress
- Green Options
- green.alltop.com
- Gristmill
- RealClimate
- Sustainablog
- Treehugger
- WorldChanging
Blogs
- The Big Picture
- Casaubon's Book
- Cleantech Blog
- Clusterf
k Nation (Jim Kunstler) - The Cost of Energy
- David Strahan
- The Energy Blog
- Entropy Production
- European Tribune
- GraphOilology
- jeffvail.net
- Mobjectivist
- Peak Energy (Australia)
- Peak Energy (USA)
- R-Squared
- Resource Insights
Finance & Economics Blogs
- Calculated Risk
- Ecological Economics
- Econbrowser
- Environmental Economics
- Infectious Greed
- The Mess That Greenspan Made
- Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis
Organizations
“What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know, it's what we know for sure that just ain't so.”
—Mark Twain
User login
Contact
- Content: editors at theoildrum dot com
- Tech support: support at theoildrum dot com
Personnel
- Editors: Prof. Goose, Heading Out, Stuart Staniford, Nate Hagens
- DrumBeat Editor: Leanan
- Contributors: ace, Engineer-Poet, Gail the Actuary, jeffvail, JoulesBurn, Khebab, Robert Rapier
- TOD:Local: Glenn
- TOD:Europe: Chris Vernon, Euan Mearns, Francois Cellier, Jerome a Paris, Luís de Sousa, Rembrandt, Rune Likvern, Ugo Bardi
- TOD:Canada: benk, Libelle
- TOD:ANZ: Big Gav, Phil Hart, aeldric
- Technician: Super G
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
GAIA Host Collective
Robert:
(Hijacking a bit here) Any comment on these 2 stories on corn-based ethanol that are being put out to farmers? Given the political clout coming into alignment here (Archer Daniels Midland, Khosla, the farm vote and the mantra of independence from ME crude oi), I read this as a steam roller for corn ethanol to the deteriment of sound energy policy and investment in advancing other alternatives, such as PHEVs.
Your juxtaposition of ethanol producers with those calling for energy independence is misleading.
What some politicians and activist groups espouse is a far cry from the reality on the ground and no one in the ethanol community is saying energy independence can be met with ethanol alone.
Ethanol and biofuels in particular, are but one important part of a total, overall solution to mitigate the liquid transportation fuel crisis that is Peak Oil.
Khosla and other proponnents such as myself who believe ethanol to be sound energy policy, have gone to great lengths to explain that corn ethanol is but one step in an ongoing drive to a more efficient and higher yielding production path.
And in the case of PHEVs, I have personally advocated the procession to Bio-PHEVs where R&D and investment monies for both technologies is warranted.
My apologies for applying too broad a brush. I meant to refer specifically to congressional policy making and funding decisions. Given the current political and fiscal environment, I doubt that their planning and funding horizons will extend much beyond the 2008 presidential election and that their thinking will be fairly shallow. Rather, I expect they will stop at the first solution appearing to fall within the boundaries of the calculus of the 2008 vote and corn-based ethanol fermentation appears to do that, irrespective of its EROEI or the potential of other solutions.
Yes, unfortunately that is one of the drawbacks of the US political system, however, there are some new elements in 07' that should affect the decision making process, namely, the transition to a Democrat run House and Senate.
Domesitc energy security is very much a non-partisan topic and coupled with a likely guest appearance in this year's State of the Union, the Dems will be also forced into substantiating their Energy Independence platform. Of course they will soon discover the reality of the situation at hand and thankfully there are dedicated people behind the scenes at NREL and similar US institutions like INL and PNWL who have the necessary expertise to show them what is actually doable.
Yes, unfortunately that is one of the drawbacks of the US political system, however, there are some new elements in 07' that should affect the decision making process, namely, the transition to a Democrat run House and Senate.
Domesitc energy security is very much a non-partisan topic and coupled with a likely guest appearance in this year's State of the Union, the Dems will be also forced into substantiating their Energy Independence platform. Of course they will soon discover the reality of the situation at hand and thankfully there are dedicated people behind the scenes at NREL and similar US institutions like INL and PNNL who have the necessary expertise to show them what is actually doable.