Wake up, Gov. Ritter! You’ve made Colorado a leader in death and destruction on a global scale. Your bio-fuels program, which meshes so nicely with Al Gore’s junk science, is a scourge on two levels. One, it will pollute the Earth’s biosphere in more harmful ways than petroleum based fuels. Second, it is already pricing food beyond the poor’s means. Nice going!
On the first point, Bruce Dale, Michigan State University professor of chemical engineering and materials science, as reported in Science Daily February 19, 2007, cautions about nitrous oxide emissions. According to Dale: “…producing ethanol from corn grain can release large amounts of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas that is 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide, into the environment. … Nitrous oxide was by far the dominant greenhouse gas produced, almost all of it generated at the farm level, ...”
Dale urged caution and detailed planning to mitigate this hazard, though he gave no hint about costs. Urge he must, because I just got 399,993 results from a Google search on the phrase: “make your own ethanol” and found recipes, kits for purchase, and machinery I could use to go commercial scale. Anyone can do it. So much for Dale’s careful planning. Bring on that nitrous oxide, bro!
Now, can anyone afford the grain, eh? Not for long. Not according to the Wall Street Journal article: Historic Surge In Grain Prices Roils Markets, Scott Kilman reports: “This year the prices of Illinois corn and soybeans are up 40% and 75%, respectively, from a year ago. Kansas wheat is up 70% or more. And a growing number of economists and agribusiness executives think the run-ups could last as long as a decade, raising the cost of all kinds of food.”
Kilman continues: “Not only have prices remained high, but the rally has swept up other commodities such as barley, sorghum, eggs, cheese, oats, rice, peas, sunflower and lentils. In Georgia, the nation's No. 1 poultry-producing state, slaughterhouses are charging a record wholesale price for three-pound chickens, up 15% from a year ago.”
“And Global grain stockpiles are being drawn down to their tightest levels in three decades, leaving the world vulnerable to shocks brought on by bad harvests.”, according to Kilman.
Here’s where Kilman makes Gore’s day: ‘Humanitarian groups are cautioning that their budgets for food aid won't go nearly as far as they did in the past. Roughly 200 million of the 850 million malnourished people in the world's poorest nations receive some food assistance. "My major concern is that we will lose ground against hunger," says Josette Sheeran, executive director of the United Nations' World Food Program.’
Talk about unintended consequences!
Technorati Tags: 
Food Riots Now, Ethanol/Gas Riots Later, Eh?
The Left never saw an unintended consequence realized that it could foresee.
This, from the WJS article:
Food Inflation, Riots Spark Worries for World Leaders; IMF, World Bank Push for Solutions; Turmoil in Haiti
By BOB DAVIS and DOUGLAS BELKIN
April 14, 2008; Page A1
Many policy makers at the weekend meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank agreed that the problem is severe. Among other targets, they singled out U.S. policies pushing corn-based ethanol and other biofuels as deepening the woes.
"When millions of people are going hungry, it's a crime against humanity that food should be diverted to biofuels," said India's finance minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, in an interview. Turkey's finance minister, Mehmet Simsek, said the use of food for biofuels is "appalling."
Read about it here at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120813134819111573.html?mod=rss_whats_ne...
With reason,
P.Valerius
Global Warming Tyranny
Check out this article "Chill out over global warming" by David Harsanyi, Denver Post Staff Columnist, Article Last Updated: 12/26/2006 12:31:50 PM MST at http://www.denverpost.com/harsanyi/ci_3899807. David plainly illustrates the Tyranny of Liberalism.
How much death and destruction will the Eco-Facists wreak before Liberals will have had enough of social experimentation?
With reason,
P.Valerius
ETHANOL STARVING THE POOR
Finally found it! Nestled above advertisements at the bottom of page A20 of The Gazette (Saturday; October 27, 2007; Colorado Springs), you’ll find The Associated Press article EXPERT SAYS BIOFUEL HURTING POOR NATIONS.
Gov. Ritter, listen up! Can you hear the rumbling in the bellies of millions of children? Do you see this as an opportunity to make Colorado a leader in extending government sponsored health care to the masses worldwide? Just what kind of catastrophe would it take to move you to redirect your commission on energy and your blue ribbon panel on transportation to remove constraints on extraction and use of gas and oil? Will you move to discourage agricultural subsidies? What ideas do you have besides raising taxes on Coloradoans?
Calling the practice of converting food crops into biofuel “a crime against humanity,” the expert and his recommendation is, according to the article: “Jean Ziegler, who has been the United Nations’ independent expert on the right to food since the position was established in 2000, called for a five-year moratorium on biofuel production to halt what he called a growing ‘catastrophe’ for the poor. Scientific research is progressing very quickly, he said, ‘and in five years it will be possible to make biofuel and biodiesel from agricultural waste’ rather than … food crops.”
Mr. Ziegler does not stand alone. As reported by Christi van der Westhuizen in her article AFRICA: Food for 12 Billion. So Why Did 854 Million Go Without?, GENEVA, Jun 29 Inter Press Service (IPS), "As you are suffering from over-consumption, I am suffering from under-consumption. We need to strike a balance," said Mary Wahu Kaara from the Kenya Debt Relief Network with reference to the North and the South. Her words were echoed by Hilkka Pietila, honorary president of the World Federation of United Nations Associations: "We are wasting food in the North. We are eating too much, burning grain as fuel, and growing grain to feed pigs to slaughter for ham."
In her interview with Inge Kaul, former director of UNDP's Office of Development Studies, Q&A: 'How the MDGs Could Curtail Development', BERLIN, Oct 23 (IPS), IPS European director Ramesh Jaura reveals glimpses of the budding compassionate conservative reawakening in Germany. As Ms. Jaura put it: “Some of the ways in which the millennium development goals (MDGs) are being pushed could actually limit development, says Inge Kaul, former director of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Office of Development Studies.”
“She (Ms. Kaul) says the MDGs have often been interpreted as meaning that what is to be 'delivered' to the poor is some health, some education, some water, and so on. This is a curtailment of human development, she says, because human development should be about enabling the poor to earn a living …” Ms. Kaul is now adjunct professor at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin, and advisor to various multilateral agencies.
Clearly, multinational agencies see that the poor can’t be fed by converting food crops to fuel and sustaining agricultural subsidies. We can’t enable the poor to earn a living if we can’t enable them to feed themselves. Converting food to fuel while limiting extraction of fossil fuels is, indeed, a crime against humanity!
With reason,
P.Valerius