Corn And The Global Elite
by David Reavill
Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve had the two meetings of the Economic and Political Global Elites.
First the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. And concluding just yesterday the Bilderberg Meeting in Washington, DC.
As you may expect, both groups share much the same values. And see the same economic and political issues in the world.
This year, as is almost always the case, Climate Change was one of the Chief Issues for both the WEF and The Bilderberg Group.
Even the Royal Family got in on the Climate Change parade, when William, the future King of England spent his three-minute homily for his Grandmother, praising her efforts as a climate change champion.
While there are many dimensions to the climate change issue, perhaps the greatest of all issues is clean energy, and specifically, especially for those of us in the US, clean energy for our transportation.
And it’s at this point that we get a real divergence between the way the elites of the world view clean energy and the way that the average citizen views the current issues of energy.
And ironically food.
You see, the number one method that the US has chosen to produce cleaner energy is by using ethanol in its gasoline blends. And ethanol is produced from corn.
A major food crop.
The use of corn-based ethanol ramped up quickly in the United States. From an essentially zero starting at the turn of the century. The US became the number one producer of corn-based ethanol in just 5 years.
Today the US is the world’s largest producer of corn-based ethanol, by far. And a very rough estimate would be that corn-based ethanol supplies about 5 to 7% of the nation’s gasoline blend.
The most popular ethanol blend is 90% pure gasoline, and 10% ethanol. But that goes up and down depending on the season and varies from state to state.
To achieve this, farmers have dedicated 40% of their corn crop to growing corn exclusively for ethanol.
And it is exactly here, that climate change meets the specter of food shortages. An issue that is not even on the radar for the Global Elites.
But increasingly will concern the average citizen.
There are few things that concern a population more, that the prospect of famine. The lack of food is one of mankind’s biggest worries. The concern for their next meal is a growing anxiety for many.
From hard luck alley to the pantry of many “Preppers,” the concern for a while now has been long-term food supplies. And last week’s report by the US Department of Agriculture, highlighting the rising cost of food, and thereby potential shortage, did nothing to quell that concern.
The concern over the food supply is a rapidly rising alarm for many.
And, if heaven forbid, we should have a poor crop harvest this year, that level of concern will rise exponentially.
So why is it that we are dedicating 40% of one of our principal grain crops, Corn, to burn in our automobiles?
Yes, transportation is important, but isn’t survival more important?
It’s a very tough question.
It’s the kind of question that asks: OK we’ve developed a plan. A plan to lower global emissions.
But what if circumstances change? What if we have to reverse our plan?
Use corn to feed people, instead of power automobiles.
That’s the kind of question we need to address today. Because that may well be our reality tomorrow.
Today’s Economic News
The Biden Administration released its new mandates on Ethanol.
It requires more gas to be produced with the highest ethanol blend.
This will mean that even more of America’s corn crop will now be used as fuel.
A recent blistering report by the National Academy of Science reported that the use of corn-based ethanol is raising the price of corn by 30%. And the price of most corn alternative grains by 20%.
What’s more, the National Academy notes, that the production process of ethanol is a contributing factor in water pollution.
And that this water-borne pollution, negates any other benefit that corn-based ethanol may have.
Like many issues turned political, there is much more to this “simple” solution to greenhouse gases.
…
Speaking of unintended consequences, Oil Price dot com is reporting this morning that Russia received $6 1/3rd billion more in June oil revenue than expected.
All a result of the European and American oil sanctions.
And, finally in oil today. Saudi Arabia has just announced that they will raise their price of oil beginning today.
This as West Texas Intermediate, America’s benchmark oil is selling just a fraction under $120 per barrel.
…
There are no major US Economic Reports today.
…
In earnings leading off will be software company Get Labs. Then financial management company Coupa Software, and cooperative insurance company Health Equity.
Biden declared a national emergency around the issue of U.S. energy prices and policies. He raised ethanol levels to a year round 15% with two bigger issues – less food and higher gasoline prices. The goal is to fundamentally transform the foundation of the U.S. economy away from fossil fuels and into a new era of clean renewable energy. Biden shut down domestic energy development, cancelled pipelines, cancelled leases, retracted the ability to drill in ANWAR (Alaska), and triggered massive new regulatory approaches from the Commerce, Interior and Energy departments. The resulting increases in oil, natural gas, gasoline, electricity and energy costs overall – which became fuel on the furnace of inflation, have now created the “energy crisis” that Joe Biden is declaring a national emergency to solve.
Ethanol cannot be used in concentrations above 10 percent in small engines — like outboard boat motors, motorcycles, lawnmowers, generators or chain saws — or in any cars made before 2001. Complicating matters further, most cars on the road today still aren’t warrantied to run on gasoline with more than 10 percent ethanol.
Now thanks to this WH the middle class will see – less food as corn goes into ethanol, higher prices for gasoline and vehicles and small work appliances will be breaking down at higher rates. (CTH)
The current Corn argument is a repeat from 2005. My Senator at the time, Ben Nelson, campaigned on “Let’s replace oil fields with corn fields”. It was nonsense then and it is nonsense now.
Here is what I wrote in 2005 in response to Nelson’s campaign claims:
“A fact of chemistry that economic theory cannot change is that Ethanol supplies 76,000 BTU/gallon and gasoline supplies 120,000 BTU/gallon. In other words, it takes 1.5789 gallons of Ethanol to replace the energy in 1 gallon of gasoline. That COULD mean that 30 billion gallons of Ethanol will replace 19 billions gallons of gasoline. But, in reality, Ethanol produced from Corn replaces even less.
Basically, it takes 7 gallons of Ethanol to replace 1 gallon of gasoline. Here is how it is figured: about 58,942 BTUs must be supplied from external energy sources for each gallon of Ethanol produced. To be self-sufficient Ethanol must return that energy, leaving only 17,058 BTU/gal available as excess energy. Or, dividing 120,000 by 17,058 shows that it will take 7.0348 gallons of Ethanol to replace each gallon of gasoline. So, instead of 30 billion gallons of Ethanol replacing 19 billion gallons of gasoline, only 4.2645 billion gallons of gasoline are replaced, and it would take our ENTIRE 2005 Corn crop to do it!
…
We have a dilemma. The needed acreage, 2,704,468,826, is 440,521,005 acres more than the TOTAL land area of the USA, 2,263,947,821 acres! To make an impossible situation even worse, the additional acreage we need is 33 million more acres than the total acreage in the USA which is suitable for for agriculture!“
The future of Energy is Nuclear. Right now we should be building at least 10 Nuclear Power plants a year. We should also be investing heavy in Nuclear Fusion research so in 50 years we can replace Fission Reactors with Fusion Reactors. Solar and Wind are Unreliable. Even Hydro is unreliable due to periodic drought.
So, what is the Climate Change Hoax really about? At it’s core it’s an Insurance Bailout Scheme for Big Business and the Very Rich. The cost of Insurance for a catastrophic natural disaster would be ridiculous, so the Climate Change Hoax is about getting Governments to indemnify Big Business and the Rich against major losses. A prefect example was Hurricane Katrina. Before FEMA, Business and Individuals would have had to cover loses and that would have cost Insurance Companies Billions. The Climate change Hoax wants to put FEMA on steroids and have the “Tax Payer” pay for everything so Business doesn’t have to worry about Catastrophic Insurance. Climate Change is just more of the Too Big to Fail Mentality that protects the Very Rich.
There is no basis to remove CO2 emissions. CO2 is plant food and is much lower than it has been historically.
Ethanol reduces efficiency of transport, it contains less energy than hydrocarbon fuel.
Indeed!
https://co2coalition.org/facts/
New climate change religion is where the money goldmine for the elites is. It started as global warming, but to play it safe now cooling and/or warming is fair game.
I couldn’t agree more!
I call it Climatism. Glad somebody else recognizes it for what it is.