I need a change of pace, so I’m taking some time off to write about stupid stuff. Literally.
One of the dumbest ideas ever invented was carbon removal. Let’s show how stupid carbon removal is.
It takes energy to remove carbon through technological means. Since all expenditures of energy involve the inefficient use of energy resources, you have to output additional carbon in order to remove carbon. You can’t, for example, use fossil or bio fuels to provide the energy to remove carbon because you’ll emit more carbon than you are removing. You’d emit less carbon by doing nothing (hint, hint).
So you have to use so-called green energy, like wind or solar. The problem, of course, is that these technologies are not carbon neutral. You have to emit carbon in order to make those technologies to power the technologies to remove carbon. But, unlike the above, this can actually remove more carbon than it adds.
The problem, of course, is that this energy is better put to other uses. It’s better to power homes and businesses with “green” energy because that fully prevents direct carbon emission. Thus, it is a net negative transaction to use carbon emitting power to power homes and businesses while you use green energy to remove carbon.
So, while it may seem like “green” technologies can remove more carbon than they add, this is only possible if “green” technologies supply so much power that there is no need for carbon-based power generation at all. This is clearly never going to happen. And even if it were, it would be better to invest resources in that first than in carbon removal technologies.
So what are we left with? The only green technology left: nuclear power. Nuclear power is realistically the only technology that has the potential to eliminate carbon emissions with enough power left over to remove carbon.
Environmentalists hate nuclear. Nuclear would solve all their carbon emission goals, so of course they hate it and oppose it. Moreover, the United States regulatory agency has obstructed and discouraged expansion of nuclear power. The only thing that could possibly be used to efficiently remove carbon is the one thing that they will never do.
Honestly, the only “technology” that has a chance of removing carbon is found in nature: plants and animals. As carbon goes up, plants grow bigger (thus containing more carbon). “But wait,” you say, “if plants and animals are growing better, why would we want to remove carbon?” Well, that’s why carbon removal technologies are stupid.
Just like it is better to put “green” energy to sensible use by powering homes and businesses, it is better to capture all that extra carbon into things we can use, like food and resources. Using them to remove carbon—e.g. by burying them under the ground—instead of making useful materials is ultimately harmful and stupid. It’s better to harvest trees for lumber to use for building homes and businesses than it is to harvest lumber only to bury it under the ground.
Sensible people would and do understand this, which is why no one is interested in stupid technologies.
Carbon removal makes absolutely no sense at all without there first being a massive excess in available resources. Any resources spent on carbon removal are resources not spent on something with actual utility. Short of achieving energy post-scarcity, it’s not clear that carbon removal could ever be net-positive, even in theory.
It’s like converting perfectly useful food corn into ethanol with exorbitant energy loses and opportunity cost. No one would ever think to do something that stupid…..umm, errr….maybe they should join Sisyphus for a practical demonstration.
Good writeup.
It’s worth mentioning that the Paris climate accord crediting mechanism is designed to do exactly this, except even worse. A Ponzi scheme to shovel “carbon credit” money into China, from Europe, so Europe can say they decreased emissions (China is the world’s largest polluter by far, on many levels…in real pollution, not “carbon”, and has no obligation whatsoever). Then the imbecilic world leaders praise China for its great environmental policies (much like the WHO praised them for their fantastic handling of covid).
Also…
Off topic, but since we’re handing out truth bombs (hope this image works):
Oh for sure. I wrote this as if it was merely stupid. It is definitely stupid. That’s what I wanted to highlight. But it’s not only stupid. There is clearly an intentionally harmful motivation behind it. After all, if the stated goals were actually important, and not virtual signaling, we’d have nuclear power everywhere.
It always comes down to “follow the money.”
Very much agreed.
Scene in Landman.
Very well done explanation of the folly of “wind energy” here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmbZwxEnAFc
Trigger warning Billy Bob has a bit of a mouth on him (lots of expletives in the above video).
I’d forgotten, but after watching it again thought I should post a bit of a warning.
Wallstreet journal mentioned something interesting this week, and I hope you don’t mind, Derek, if I post it on this thread about environmental stupidity as this things are tangentially related in a fashion.
Nationwide, WSJ said that business office properties are only 62 percent occupied now. It basically happened during covid when people started working from home. Cascading consequences are much like a miniature scale (miniature scale per building, massive scale taken as a whole) of when a military installation closes and all the businesses around it have to close up shop.
To add a fly to the ointment, large financial investors like Blackstone bought up the buildings because they thought they were getting a great deal. Now, they are sitting on those properties and won’t make concessions necessary to attract new renters. So those areas area slowly dilapidating (even if and when they get crime under control, which has also been a factor since 2021).
Related note: Most people don’t know that major investment institutions like Blackstone have indirect partnerships with large financial institutions like Meryl Lynch.
Meryl Lynch has historically had a good reputation, so many investors trust them with their money. They (and I’m sure they aren’t the only ones) are incentivized to buy large chunks of Blackstone (and others) using the retirement accounts of their customers.
The next fly in the ointment: Investors are limited, yearly, on the number of shares they are allowed to sell from Blackstone (and again, I am certain they aren’t the only company that does this). Much like global “free trade”, owning shares in this company comes at a cost…and that cost is hidden in the fine print because investors trusted their financial institution with their savings, and that financial institution is tied to a lot of perverse incentives to work for larger interests that don’t help the small investor. It might take 10 years or more, once one decides to sell, to sell all of the shares.
Furthermore, the ROI is extremely low for those ML bought shares (especially compared to the alternatives), and the cost extremely high. It is extremely predatory. The large financial institutions do not work for the customer, they work for the institutions they put their investor’s money into to tie it up in perpetuity and make it inaccessible, as inflation eats it away. (I am reminded of the Big Short…and on that note, because the bankers suffered no consequences but quite the contrary, were largely rewarded for their derivative scams, the derivative market has never been more alive than it is now).
BTW, large financial institutions also incentivize publications like the Wall Street Journal, which is why every day they scream something about tariffs, rather than offering some considered perspective on cost to gains.
Liberals sometimes cite WSJ articles and claim they are “conservative”, when they do not have our nation’s longterm interest in mind but rather the short term interest of their financial backers who have a short term interest in their personal ROI that will be impacted by any change to the status quo.
[/rant]
Do whatever you like. I’ve been taking some time off, but will return on Monday.
“It’s like converting perfectly useful food corn into ethanol …”
That’s not exactly what happens. They grow better producing nasty GMO animal feed corn varieties that aren’t anything like the hybrid sweet corn that you buy to eat at a store. And after that corn is fermented and the alcohol is removed the Dried Distillers Grain (DDG) is sold back to farmers who feed it to their cattle, being more protein-dense than unprocessed corn.
Yes, it is field corn, which makes up 99% of the food production of corn. Sweet corn is irrelevant to this discussion.
“It’s like converting perfectly useful food corn into ethanol …”
But, you didn’t quote the whole sentence:
“[Carbon removal is] like converting perfectly useful food corn into ethanol with exorbitant energy loses and opportunity cost.”
You missed the point. I’m describing the economic concept of opportunity cost.
The type of corn they grow isn’t relevant, it’s the decision of how to use the farmland that matters. Growing corn for fuel prevents them from using the crops for something else that makes a more efficient use of resources. That’s the point of the OP. It costs more energy to produce ethanol than it does to put the farmland to better use. It’s the cost of the opportunity lost that matters.
Let’s use a simple example. Let’s say that you have a piece of farmland. You have two choices of crops. One of them produces 2x the amount of energy (or, if you prefer, dollar investment) that goes into producing it, while another produces 4x the inputs. The difference between the two options is the opportunity cost that you lose by choosing the more inefficient product. You still have an absolute gain (return on investment), but you have a relative loss compared to the superior choice. No rational actor would incentivize a product that outputs one-third of the net caloric output per acre compared to another product in the name of “green energy.” It’s stupid. Completely stupid.
Of course, field corn is food, and the starchy carbohydrates that produce ethanol is a food source. Fermentation removes about 66% of the energy of corn (some of which becomes alcohol) that could be used to feed animals that can digest it (e.g. cows). Moreover, drying the spent grain requires an additional expenditure of energy, significantly reducing the efficiency of the process. This also distorts the price of feed.
Each step of the ethanol production is an inefficient process that is inferior to virtually every other kind of energy production method.
And let’s not forget that many ethanol fuel plants require electricity from fossil fuel plants. So instead of taking electricity and delivering it directly to end users to minimize efficiency losses, we take that electricity and use it to make other forms of energy. Just like electric cars, this process maximizes energy losses.
The energy balance of corn ethanol is atrocious:
And that’s assuming that the official figures are not straight lies, since most “science” is a lie. I wouldn’t be surprised if the energy balance of corn ethanol is actually a net-loss even ignoring the opportunity cost.
Interestingly, since the energy balance of corn ethanol is ~1.3, that means that pretty much the only reason corn ethanol isn’t a negative is because of the energy in distillers grains. The actually ethanol portion of the calculation is not positive at all! There is no point to making the ethanol if the only benefit is the distillers grain. Without considering the byproduct, corn ethanol has no net benefit. It should be obvious that you don’t need corn ethanol to produce animal feed. Or, put another way, the energy balance of straight feed corn is higher than that feed corn used to produce ethanol.
The proof really lies in the fact that the government had to pay subsidies to produce corn ethanol because otherwise it wouldn’t have made economic sense. If the ethanol mandate in gasoline was eliminated, the industry would die it has no legitimate purpose. If corn ethanol is so great, remove the requirement for it and see what the market says is more efficient. We all know what the result would be.
Even the most optimistic calculations of energy balance assert that gasoline and ethanol are about equal. But this isn’t good enough since the land required to grow corn for ethanol could be used for something else instead. That’s an opportunity cost.
Oh, and don’t forget when Biden cancelled the pipeline that would have increased the energy efficiency of oil production. That’s an opportunity cost too.
Roughly 40% of the corn crop in America goes to produce ethanol. 24% of crop land goes to producing corn, which means that almost 10% of U.S. cropland is needlessly wasted. I’m sure that makes corn farmers (and those who benefit from that industry) happy, but it doesn’t benefit anyone else.
You seem to be arguing with a strawman again. I’m not a big fan of using corn to produce ethanol. I was just noting that the oil industry’s propaganda that politicians are going to steal a buttered ear of sweet corn off your plate to make ethanol, is not a reflection of the true reality of the artificial market for corn ethanol in the USA. It is a far more complex issue than those who try to simplify it down to talking points for the ignorant masses, will acknowledge.
The majority of the US ethanol market was created politically, in part to combat the petroleum industry’s willingness to poison us all with tetraethyllead (TEL) or methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) rather than to use competing ethanol as their gasoline’s antiknock additive and oxygenate.
The oil industry has pumped billions of dollars into “research” over the decades to propagandize the public against all alternatives to whatever their current business model is at that time. Today most “facts” regarding the environmental impacts of various technologies are just somebody’s paid propaganda, against a competitor whom they oppose, comparing “apples to oranges” best-case to worst-case scenarios to push an agenda.
Many farmers don’t keep livestock to feed substandard or spoiling grain to, but (unlike grain mills) the ethanol distilleries will still buy their failed product on the spot. You did not mention that. Nor would I expect you to try to mention every factor in such a convoluted debate swirling around top-down government policy. Heck, much of the corn-ethanol industry evolved as a response to artificial market restrictions on imported sugar and ethanol from places like Brazil that have a climate more suited to growing sugarcane.
Nor did you delve into the energy inputs and & ecological impacts spared by not having to further catalytically crack and refine gasoline from crude oil that is alleviated by adding ethanol to lower-octane gasolines that would otherwise need to be further refined. Nor did we even scratch the surface of the fossil fuels versus renewables debate.
My point was just that your “food” comment sounded a bit like oil industry propaganda peddled to scare obese Americans by demonizing ethanol as starving “Pedro”, conveniently living far off in some third world country, of his non-GMO corn tortilla, when that’s not how free markets function. Even though the ethanol market is not free and is in fact regulated and almost entirely created by regulations. Yet the government won’t let the corn-ethanol industry sell their pure ethanol to people for drinking, at today’s spot price of $1.77 per gallon. A drinkable 100-proof corn whiskey could probably be produced for half that cost.
My point being that the whole ethanol market was and is artificially manipulated into its current form, and most all of the supposed “facts” and figures Surrounding “energy balance” are equally manipulated and bogus. (propaganda) Furthermore, the energy losses incurred at every step of fuel production are obviously to be expected by folks educated in engineering, so, listing all the many losses for just one fuel, ethanol, while not giving an equally exhaustive list of energy expenditures possible in gasoline production, does not make your argument, it merely obscures it in far too many useless words.
Henry ford chose the fossil fuel, gasoline, over ethanol, to fuel his cars, mainly because gasoline was far cheaper at that time. Yet today pure “renewable” corn-derived ethanol is considerably cheaper than gasoline is (artificially) priced at the pump.
All your facts and figures and charts and graphs don’t prove that oxygenating our gasoline with ethanol (to lower pollution) will starve Pedro or his livestock of food. Nor do I care that producing ethanol is a more laborious process than just burning crude oil (or old tires) for heat, like “Pedro” sometimes does. I have access to all the same information you do on this issue. Why argue it?
My point was just that the old, “They’re wasting food and starving Pedro” argument, is oil industry propaganda, designed to pull at people’s heart strings, and misses the point that the causes of human starvation are usually local. I’m not starving Pedro’s kids by buying standard E-10 gasoline for my vehicle. If Pedro is starving, it is most likely because his own nation is poorly governed. I live in a nation where for propaganda/political reasons childhood obesity was classified as a form of malnutrition. Your Big-Oil “Ethanol will steal our children’s food” arguments are wasted on me.
“You seem to be arguing with a strawman again.”
I’m not arguing against—or attempting to refute—anyone’s position, only addressing the fact that converting corn to ethanol is stupid. It’s objectively stupid, regardless of whether or not you or anyone else are a fan of it. When factoring opportunity cost, it is net negative. It has no benefit. It ultimately costs more than it provides.
Let’s go over your points:
“substandard or spoiling grain”
The United States produces too much corn. If the ethanol mandate were ended, the amount produced would decline significantly.
Even salvaging substandard or spoiling grain is not worth the opportunity cost. If it wasn’t for the ethanol mandate, nobody would do it because it doesn’t make economic sense.
It’s *entirely* driven by government regulations.
“Heck, much of the corn-ethanol industry evolved as a response to artificial market restrictions on imported sugar and ethanol from places like Brazil that have a climate more suited to growing sugarcane.”
Well, duh. It’s *entirely* driven by government regulations. It’s 100% artificial demand. The market would never voluntarily choose corn ethanol, because it is stupid.
“My point was just that your “food” comment sounded a bit like oil industry propaganda”
I’m literally from corn-growing farmland. I know that field corn is not human food, but it’s still food, and in terms of opportunity costs it is the like you were converting human food to make gasoline.
I was using a simile in the OP, a figure of speech, to expose this reality.
“Nor did you delve into the energy inputs and & ecological impacts spared…”
The stupidity of converting corn into ethanol means that it’s net-negative for the environment too.
…Surrounding “energy balance” are equally manipulated and bogus.
Right, which means that the propaganda about how great corn ethanol is is almost certainly overhyped. I don’t actually believe that corn ethanol has a 1.3 energy balance, I believe it is less than 1: it takes more energy to produce ethanol that is extracted by end users.
Yet the government won’t let the corn-ethanol industry sell their pure ethanol to people for drinking, at today’s spot price of $1.77 per gallon.
It’s *entirely* driven by government regulations. Both parties are responsible too, especially the protectionist Republicans who control every branch that could do something about it.
Furthermore, the energy losses incurred at every step of fuel production are obviously to be expected by folks educated in engineering, so, listing all the many losses for just one fuel, ethanol, while not giving an equally exhaustive list of energy expenditures possible in gasoline production, does not make your argument, it merely obscures it in far too many useless words.
I don’t think you understand just how much energy is contained in fossil fuels.
Yet today pure “renewable” corn-derived ethanol is considerably cheaper than gasoline is (artificially) priced at the pump.
You’re not comparing apples and oranges. Oil and gas are highly taxed and subject to different market forces. If government regulations didn’t exist for either (i.e. all else equal), ethanol production would disappear.
Your Big-Oil “Ethanol will steal our children’s food” arguments are wasted on me.
You don’t understand opportunity cost. That’s fine. I won’t waste time explaining it again.
Corn ethanol production is stupid all on its own without respect to any other source of energy. It’s probably even stupider than hydrogen fuel cell technology, which is itself incredibly stupid. That’s quite the achievement.
Yet the government won’t let the corn-ethanol industry sell their pure ethanol to people for drinking, at today’s spot price of $1.77 per gallon.
Speaking of which, the spot price for gasoline is currently $2.05 per gallon. But ethanol contains only ~70% the energy contained in gasoline (which is another reason it is stupid), which means that ethanol would have to cost $1.43 per gallon just to be competitive as a fuel.
We’ve had decades of just throwing money away. How many thousands of dollars have individuals and families thrown away because some government officials decided that they needed to subsidize corn farmers in the name of “green” energy?
How many hours of our lives have been wasted by trips to the gas pump due to needing to fill up more frequently? Think of all the fuel wasted from that!
Without an ethanol mandate, our fuel would be 100% gasoline and the corn farmers would be forced to grow something more useful, or else starve.
Saw this post and thought I’d share, though it isn’t about the environment and it is the furthest thing from stupid. The importance of showing affection in front of the children.
(I’d say not just affection, but kindness toward one’s spouse and so forth)
https://x.com/OldHollowTree/status/1919731417954533810
Scoffers might object (I’m sure they have their reasons), but one thing is for sure…the world is a better place when spouses are kind to each other. Not just for the children but for everyone else. On second thought, it is related to environmental pollution. Just like throwing trash everywhere, contempt is contagious. So is kindness and consideration (cleanliness is a type of consideration).
Had a nice young couple over yesterday and they were holding hands and smiling, watching us. We have an empty nest now, but it is obvious we love each other very much. They just had a baby I was rocking while we talked (nothing better than a new baby, two hours of absolute bliss). We have our digital frame on the shelf with revolving photos of us through the years. It has been quite a life.
Here! Here!
Thank you. 🙂
It was a little surreal because I remember us doing the same thing (watching older couples, way back when).
I specifically remember Mike calling me from a coffee shop he and the boys would ride their bikes too every Saturday, when they were very young. He said he had just seen an older couple riding their bikes there together, and envisioned us doing that some day. This was almost 20 years ago now.
And…hey, we’re there (although now we need to move to a place we can bike, and also I have to be in the back and yell if traffic is on the right or left because Mike can’t move his neck much. Were just scootering around Boulder pretty recently and tried out this technique. LOL
About two feet of snow so far between this morning and yesterday. Seems to have let up for now (we were projected to get 3 feet this week).
It is May.
In the 1970s they spoke of the impending ice age.
Then it was global warming.
Now it is (non-falsifiable) “climate change”
From up here, 1970s got it right.
I have a lady in my bible study group who grew up in Canada and she says her home town is about 5 degrees colder now during winter.
Time will tell, but now the climate ideologues can never be wrong. Because weather is constantly changing anyway.
[/rant from a snowed in person, this spring day]
More snow? Climate change.
Less snow? Climate change.
Gets warmer? Climate change.
Gets colder? Climate change.
Stays the same? Well, it didn’t do that before. Climate change.
It’s unlikely to matter anyway, because if and when the north and south pole flip and the earth’s axis tilts ~90 degrees, the climate zones are all going to change anyway…
…assuming you survive the water inundation. Best to live as close to the new equator (the black line above and the white line below) as possible:
Some of us are about to figure out why tropical plants have been found deep under the ice at the (current) poles…. and why large mammals were flash frozen with their most recent meal still undigested (that’s not so easy to do!).
For those of us on the coasts, your cause of death will be, ironically, natural causes.
Yikes.
Electrical induction caused by solar wind intrusion though a “hole” concentrated on the Gibraltar Strait on a calm day with no space weather recently took out power to Portugal, France, and Spain. “Yikes” indeed.
They blamed it on “extreme heat”….in April…. with highs around 80. Uh huh.
In other “unrelated” news, the earth is behaving strangely.
Here is where I found this. And here is Ethical Skeptic’s comment from a year ago:
On Twitter, Ethical Skeptic said this: “The first of a series of ‘shudders,’ as predicted.”
If I were you, I’d move to a spot in Tennessee at least 2,000 feet in elevation, ideally near running water and a cave for shelter. My hope is to to do that myself within 5-7 years.
I remember faintly the “blizzard of 1977” in New York State.
Power was knocked out for about a week (Lake Placid / Adirondack Mts of New York State) in my area. We didnt even get the worst of it. Western New York State (Buffalo area) really got it bad…..and they are used to “lake effect snow” off Erie
People froze to death in their cars only yards from a house in some cases.
There were all kinds of theories at the time. Some thought it was The Soviets using the “secret” technology of Tesla. Lake Erie did freeze fully during that storm, as did Lake Champlain (closer to me) between New York and Vermont.
Many thought it was that we were going into an “ice age” and because of all the “fossil fuels” that we were using, and we were doomed. The only way it could be changed was: switch to wind and solar power NOW or there was going to be mass starvation, food wars, and the like.
However, there was some “indian” / Native American lore from the Mohawk tribe (which was the Nation in my area before it was called “New York State”)
Which stated “A long time ago, just after the late harvest…in the time before Hiawatha (at least 500 years before the 1970s). There was a deep winter. The summer never came. There was no harvest for that next season. There was suffering, and death. Rival tribes and nations were too weak to even fight each other for the little food that they may have had (referring to the Algonquin). There was tears, loss, and reflection after the cold left. There was no answer to be had, we gave thanks that there was a new cycle and new chance after this time when it was the year of only winter”
So was it global warming that caused this? Doubtful. Those natives should not been burning wood to keep warm for centuries. How dare them!