My son has an excavation company with a good size fleet of Equipment and Dump Trucks. He's very concerned about the cost of diesel and hasn't yet been able to pass on all the inflated cost to his customers, but he's working on it, and it isn't pretty for anyone when cost are factored in. He'a staunch dem and drives a hybrid family car but also has diesel pick up for pulling his toy wagon and fishing boat. All commerce is effected by fuel/transportation cost so when a dozen eggs cost $12 or a loaf a bread $10 much of that is cost being past on to consumers. There are those that take advantage of increasing margins now as a way to make up for lost profit from covid.
price gouging sucks....I have an SUV for fishing but I don't drive it unless it's bringing something I need home ...feed or groceries, etc. fish...I have a good friend who's a trucker and he's just parked it until he can drive and make a profit ..hard for truckers to make a profit these days but my nephew washes dishes in Redmond and started at 22 dollars an hour....the numbers have changed.
When I grew up in the sixties most young people were anti establishment/war and I must admit it does seem flip flopped now some.
Why did they need a longer briefing? Were they going to ask any different questions? Or were they just going to ask the same question in a different way?
No I just chuck it up to the cost of catching the next fish....or casting practice...can never get enough casting practice in! That's why they call it fishing and not harvesting!
Required ethanol blending with gasoline and resulting production of corn-based ethanol in the United States has failed to meet the policy's own greenhouse gas emissions targets and negatively affects water quality, among other downsides. https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2101084119
So i read the report in full. "Despite the strong environmental tradeoffs under the RFS thus far, biofuels and bioenergy may play a key role in stabilizing atmospheric CO2 concentrations and holding global warming below 1.5 or 2 °C, particularly with continued advancements like carbon capture and storage (2, 4, 74–76) and increased productivity from perennial feedstocks grown on marginal lands (77–80). However, our findings confirm that contemporary corn ethanol production is unlikely to contribute to climate change mitigation. Given the current US dependence on this fuel, there remains an urgent need to continue the research, development, and shift toward more-advanced renewable fuels, improved transportation efficiency, and electrification (74, 81–83). I get from this that it is important and will play a "Key Role" but it cannot be the only thing we do. We need to be better. "The United States is currently at a bioenergy crossroads. The RFS specifies biofuel volumes through 2022; absent legislative action, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will determine volumes for subsequent years. If conventional biofuel volumes were to increase, it is likely that further increases in crop prices, LUC, and environmental impacts would ensue." I get from this statement that we are pretty much at the point where the EPA cannot ask for more and production is pretty much going to have to stay where it's at unless new enforcement is mandated. The report then goes on to express the overall changes to their testing and assessment modeling. "Overall, our retrospective and purpose-built integrated assessment modeling framework has several advantages over previous projections and more generalized approaches." Yes overall the projections were higher but the results still were better than not having it. Yes the ethanol from corn effects negatively water and soil but we knew that and they will continue to improve in these areas. In the end we have Tyler Lark who is fairly well renowned for his studies at University of Wisconsin saying it's not as good as we hoped but it's still good and getting better. Other notable contributors- Nathan P. Hendricks https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7301-8314 Aaron Smith https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5768-6304 Nicholas Pates https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8071-0509 Seth A. Spawn-Lee https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8821-5345 Matthew Bougie Eric G. Booth https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2191-6627 Christopher J. Kucharik https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0400-758X Good Report find.
If we just put solar panels in the same land area we grow ethonol corn we'd generate about 200x more energy. That would be roughly 433% of US energy needs. Corn ethenol the way we do it here in the US also raises the price of feed corn, which costs people over $1 billion per year. https://blogs.umass.edu/natsci397a-eross/shifting-subsidies-from-corn-ethanol-to-solar/ I'm not opposed to biofuels, but the way we do corn ethenol in the US isn't helpful. It gets in the way of much more effective solutions.
Yeah the report you posted covered the cost of corn and the effect on prices. Again they said yes it impacts it but the good outweighed the bad. Totally agree though on Solar. I also agree wholeheartedly ethanol is only a stopgap and will not be the answer in the long run. Your link to that report says it almost verbatim. Ethanol is only just one of many things we need to do. Currently four major Solar projects going on in Oregon and many more are planned. Joe is lifting the tariffs on importing solar energy componenets. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/06/business/economy/biden-solar-tariffs.html
We need more walkable communities, better mass transit, and making electric cars truly an alternative.
LOL my brother and his partner just purchased a cat wheel. Trying to train their young and rambunctious kitty to actually use it has been a pretty funny thing to watch over the past couple weeks.
