Romm – Global Warming Causing Riots In Egypt

11 Responses to Romm – Global Warming Causing Riots In Egypt

1. suyts says:

   January 31, 2011 at 12:56 pm

   Ethanol.

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   • Amino Acids in Meteorites says:

     January 31, 2011 at 3:42 pm

     Alaska.

     Reply
2. etudiant says:

   January 31, 2011 at 1:00 pm

   Subsidizing the wasting of corn to make ethanol fuel surely has nothing to do with rising food prices, does it?

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   • suyts says:

     January 31, 2011 at 1:11 pm

     lol, some say it might……… I’ve some links on my pc at the office which shows just that, if I remember, I’ll put them here.

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     • Mike Davis says:

       January 31, 2011 at 2:52 pm

       Some have been making this claim since the Biofuel thingy started! It is the large AG conglomerates that pushed this fiasco and the EPA was a willing partner in the farce!

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     • suyts says:

       January 31, 2011 at 5:02 pm

       Well, yah, the ag business people saw the opportunity and ran with it. I really wish there had been some foresight. Once the world snaps back to reality and understands we don’t have to use the more expensive cash crops for ethanol, many farmers will be stuck with production equipment that won’t pay from themselves when the prices go back down. Seems history must repeat itself…….over and over.

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3. Amino Acids in Meteorites says:

   January 31, 2011 at 3:42 pm

   Baghdad Romm

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4. suyts says:

   January 31, 2011 at 4:05 pm

   As promised, here some links I’ll post them one at a time in that they usually get held up if there are 2 or more links in a comment.

   This first link is a year old news release from the USDA, which speaks about the record yields of corn and soybean for 2009. Also, it talks about the lower production of sorghum and cotton.

   Go here, http://www.nass.usda.gov/Newsroom/2010/01_12_2010.asp

   Supply and demand says increase supply will lower prices…….right? Well, if you don’t increase demand more than you increase the supply. If we increase the demand more than the increase of supply, we’ll see a price increase. Fairly straightforward.

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5. suyts says:

   January 31, 2011 at 4:22 pm

   Second link, this is a Corn market outlook, it’s very interesting and covers a variety of topics, from world GDP to corn use in ethanol. For the visually stimulated, there are many graphs on this page that tell a great story.

   http://www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/Corn/2010baseline.htm

   “Higher grain prices and reduced demand push cattle inventories down through the start of 2011 and result in U.S. beef production declines in 2009-12…. These production adjustments combine with strengthening meat exports to reduce U.S. per capita consumption through 2012. The result is lower production at higher prices,” and “Barley supplies decrease modestly. Rising yields are expected to be offset by reduced planted acreage,..”<—–This is very worrisome to me!!!! Also, also, “Pork production in 2010 is expected to be down 2.7 percent from 2009 and to continue to decrease through 2011 in response to high feed prices.”

   What we see, through the use of corn based ethanol, is that we’ve drove the price of our meats up and exacerbated the problem by lowering production. We also see the land use of other crops and grains are being reduced. This in turn lowers supply of all others, and increases the prices.

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6. suyts says:

   January 31, 2011 at 4:40 pm

   This link is a table which compares recent yearly production(from 2003/2004) and prices of various crops that are used in similar rotations. Corn, sorghum, barley and oats. In all cases the prices of each commodity were higher than 2006/2007 and prior. In all cases, the yield per acre is up, but the planted area for all other commodities are down.

   http://www.ers.usda.gov/data/feedgrains/Table.asp?t=01

   So, what do these links show? It shows that we’ve reduces available food supply and increased the cost of the foods and other commodities. But, even more insidious, is that the ethanol blends we use are not efficient. I’m not sure how many people have done their own tests, but there are plenty of links one can Google for which shows the 20%-30% less fuel efficiency. Of course, the price of the ethanol is based upon the price of the commodity used as an additive. I used a 5% blend in my test. My Dodge Ram went from 17 mpg to 14 mpg. A simple math check, and we can see that I actually used more gasoline buying the ethanol than I did buying regular gas. We didn’t lessen our reliance on oil imports, we increased them. We raised the cost of commodities and lessened the food supply. I could almost forgive the people that did this, if it wasn’t that they were told this would, indeed, happen.

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7. Baa Humbug says:

   January 31, 2011 at 5:02 pm

   Ahaa!!!! So they agree with Monckton.

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