In response to my essay, “Mythbusting E85,” a blogger by the nom de blog of Engineer-Poet has called my attention to his Nov. 2006 posting, “Sustainability, energy independence and agricultural policy - What, me worry?” Unlike me, this fellow really is an engineer and I readily admit deals with the technical matters of energy policy better than I. near the top:

There are many frustrating things about our current energy non-policy. One of the worst is that we’re paying people to do ineffective or even counterproductive things in the name of “sustainability”, “energy independence” and even supporting family farming. For instance, our current production of ethanol depends on natural gas or even coal to distill the product. (”Live green, go yellow”? If something depends on burning coal, how green can it be?)

But what if we fixed that?

It won’t be easy to change. There are huge interest groups which reap benefits from the status quo. This gives the non-policy a great deal of support, whether it is productive or not. The example of corn ethanol illustrates this nicely. A bunch of people are doing well by it, including:

* Corn-belt farmers, who have a market too big to saturate.
*Agribusinesses like ADM, which reap billions in taxpayer subsidies in the name of (illusory) energy independence.
* Manufacturers and sellers of seed, fertilizer and pesticides.
* The politicians whose taxpayer-financed largesse created this bonanza, and who are in turn supported by its beneficiaries (the benefits aren’t for the taxpayer).

Contrary to mouthpieces of those interests, corn ethanol doesn’t do well at anything else; it takes nearly a gallon-equivalent of various fuels (including natural gas and diesel) to make a gallon of ethanol. By the USDA’s over-optimistic accounting, the increase is roughly 1.27:1, which is not nearly enough to make a sustainable system. …

The displaced gasoline comes mostly from some other fossil fuel, the greenhouse benefit is minuscule, and the public pays more overall for the ethanol than they would for imported oil to fill their tanks. In the long run, this is bound to collapse. But in the short run, the program thrives and grows because of the interlocking political support.

It’s a long piece, illustrated with graphs and tables. Something to think about.

A few days ago I asked the impertinent question, “What if global warming is a good thing?” which is now well on the way to becoming a meme.

Then, via Selwyn Duke’s essay, “The Temperature Also Rises,” I read this nugget from the web site of Center for Global Food Issues:

. . . a warmer planet has beneficial effects on food production. It results in longer growing seasons-more sunshine and rainfall-while summertime high temperatures change little. And a warmer planet means milder winters and fewer crop-killing frosts. . . . Infrared satellite readings show that the Earth has been getting greener since 1982, thanks apparently to increased rainfall and CO2. Worldwide, vegetative activity generally increased by 6.17 percent between 1982 and 1999-despite extended cloudiness due to the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo and other well-publicized environmental stresses. . . . When dinosaurs walked the earth (about 70 to 130 million years ago), there was from five to ten times more CO2 in the atmosphere than today. The resulting abundant plant life allowed the huge creatures to thrive. . . . Based on nearly 800 scientific observations around the world, a doubling of CO2 from present levels would improve plant productivity on average by 32 percent across species.

The masthead of the site points out that “growing more per acre leaves more land for nature.” On a not-unrelated subject, so does pumping oil rather than growing corn to make ethanol.