OK, we're not just looking for the number of questionable E85 propaganda pronouncements in this video report on Autoblog founder Jason Calacanis' Mahalo Daily. We're also interested in the quality of your dissection (i.e. what they didn't say as well as what they did). Bonus points will be awarded for avoiding jargon and (of course) sarcasm. And yes, you can point out fascinating, non-E85-oriented details gleaned from the vid (music, dress, eyebrow work, attempts to avoid staring at certain biological bits, accents, etc.). There is no prize for your punditry per se, but Frank and I will choose the commentator who's the most infotaining and post their name underneath this text, in recognition of your (yes your) service to the cause of common sense environmentalism (the emphasis here on mental). We're talking major props from TTAC's Best and Brightest, as well. Take no prisoners. (As if.)
[Thanks to minion444 for the link]
And the winner for the most infotaining post is... AKM
Well, fist off at $2.99 per gallon of E85 instead of $3.33 a gallon for regular, when you take into account the 25% reduction in fuel economy, it’s actually more expensive to run E85. With the 25% more E85 being burned vs gasoline & the new reports out, looks like it’s producing more CO2 overall than good old oil..
Where to start? Too many to mention but my favorites are the name of the gas station ‘Conserv Fuel’ which seems to suggest that you’ll end up using less rather than more when using E85. But the prize goes to the GM guy and his clever answer to the question if E85 is more expensive – to which he answers its less per gallon than regular gas thus strategically omitting that you’ll need a lot more E85 to go the same distance than you would gasoline.
At 21 seconds into the video there is a camera sweep showing at least 8 SUVs. Not a single car in sight.
I liked their little pop-up stat showing that filling an SUV with E85 uses enough corn to feed a person for a year.
Comments about better air for everyone is a little hopeful.
E85 is a joke, if anybody thinks they are saving gas or the environment, they are retarded. This common misconception reminds me something else that has many people fooled…. oh yea.. the hybrids.
I like the man-on-the-street segment in the middle where they have customers making the ridiculous sweeping statements.
“It’s cleaner, safer for the environment… for the air we breathe.” It gives incentives to chopping down rain forests.
“It’s better for everyone.” Only if you’re a corn or sugar cane farmer. If you want lower food prices, not so much.
The pop-up at 2:30 that hints that increasing food prices are bad… for “less economically developed countries.” They impact anyone who is in the market for food, which is everyone.
0:45 “You’re not running a petroleum-based fuel” you’re just running one fertilized, grown, harvested, processed, and distributed using petroleum products.
Meh.
It’s full of nice pastel colors and vague statements.
1:00: inferior price: At $2.99, and a consumption 20% higher, ethanol is actually more expensive per mile travelled
1:50: 50% of cars produced for flex-fuel by 2012. That means the pressure on production will be huge, i.e. bad for food prices, but also huge concerns regarding deforestation, as well as potentially other productions, such as paper, wood for furniture and buildings…
2:20: “I’m willing to do my part”. Ok. How do you do that? Are you sacrificing anything? Is it like lower taxes in wartime?
2:40: 33 ethanol stations in CA next year. Seems optimistic, but I’d like to find more information about that.
3:00: ethanol from other sources: not with the growing protectionism and subsidies, no. never mind that corn ethanol is expensive and inefficient…
At least, I see more and more articles in serious newspapers (The Economist, NYT, WSJ) going against the grain of ethanol…..
I love the ask-the-bloke-in-the-street-uninformative-questions strategy of this advertisement. And Veronica Belmont is just as pert as can be!
No mention to GM as to why they’d even care about E85 but for the CAFE loopholes for their SUVs.
Their emphasis for using E85 and alternative fuels should be getting the U.S. off dependence on foreign oil.
It is a matter of national security.
Yeah, we can survive without foreign oil, worst comes to worst. There’s always public transport, conservation, electric cars, bicycles, whatever.
BUT! US now turns an agricultural trade deficit, if I recall correctly. Good luck surviving without food ;)
This is what’s it’s really about – subsidizing farming so that in case of war or isolation we don’t starve to death. Better than growing crops and then burning them, I say. We should just take it for what it is – not some magic fuel, but yet another convenient way of maintaining excess agricultural capacity.
“Their emphasis for using E85 and alternative fuels should be getting the U.S. off dependence on foreign oil.
It is a matter of national security.”
Using a huge chunk of the corn crop they produce 7 billion gallons of ethanol while gas consumption is 150 billion gallons plus and there is only a slight gain(if any) in energy from the production of ethanol. Boondoggle.
Well not that grain ethanol is the best solution (there are more efficient technologies coming), but I hope everyone realizes that there is a difference between ‘food’ grade corn and ‘feed’ grade corn.
Corn ethanol isn’t responsible for higher food prices (it is just a small component), the vast majority of the increase in cost is from higher fuel costs.
I would be less worried about Corn prices and more worried about other grains (wheat, barley, canola, etc.).
E85 “a renewable resource” I didn’t know that the 15% of gas is a renewable resource!
Now with 75% more sarcasm! Just read it along with the video. Consider it color commentary.
Conserv fuel? What, couldn’t afford the extra “E” with all that government cheese?
Not running a petroleum-based fuel? What, it’s 85% ethanol and 15% rainbows? Well, I guess we *are* in California…
The only reason E85 is offered for less than gasoline is because the government subsidizes it heavily, resulting in an artificially *deflated* price. Once those gov’t subsidies go bye-bye, the ‘true’ cost of ethanol will rear its ugly head. Depending on what part of the country you’re in, and the various state subsidies, you’re either paying out the ass for any ethanol-containing fuel, or it’s costing you an arm and a leg.
GM is the largest producer of flex fuel vehicles, if only because it helps them avoid paying *gigantic* CAFE fines because their fleet fuel economy average is such total crap. It’s not an altruistic gesture on their part, it’s mere survival of the flex-est.
Oh, and a lot of those vehicles they’re selling don’t even have access to stations that sell E85 gas. So they’re burning standard petrol, same as the rest of us.
“How is your experience using this fuel pump today?” My personal life is none of your business!
Safer for the air and people? Unless you’re an asthmatic and don’t particularly care for ozone smog. And don’t forget, we’re not talking emissions here, we’re talking about *gas* — the emissions are only cleaner if you move the goalposts a bit. Not to mention the tractors that harvest the corn that goes into ethanol are probably some of the least emission-friendly vehicles on the planet. And I suppose starvation is good for your health, given the current obesity rate in the US. Using up all our potable water is good for the environment also. I’m in Atlanta, ask me why my lawn is dead.
“If this will help out a little bit.” HA! Didn’t the one chick just admit that they only reason why they’re there is that it’s cheaper? Yep, I’m always doing my part too, to make sure that instead of riding my bicycle to work and cutting down on the number of shopping trips I make, I just hop in my flex fuel Suburban and GIT R DONE!!
Three retail stations? In the whole state of California? Be still my beating heart. Third largest state, largest population, probably the largest number of vehicles registered, and they have a whopping THREE stations. E85 for everyone!
Last time I checked, the USA wasn’t a developing country, and it’s impacting our food prices plenty well the way the price of corn has been artificially inflated because of ethanol. So not only has the high price of gas raised the cost of consumer goods because of the increased costs of transportation and manufacture (plastic is made from petroleum), attempting to replace gas with ethanol has raised the cost of food as well. Thanks, GM! That $2.99 gas is worth it, especially when you factor in my reduced fuel economy! D’oh!
Based off of any cellulosic, carbon-based fuel? Someone didn’t have a pat answer ready. So instead of corn, you could just as easily use soybeans, or wheat, or some other food crop? Thanks again! Point: Yes, we could *not* use corn, but there’s no point since the government is paying for it.
SkiD666: the problem is that massive taxpayer funded subsidies are encouraging growers to plant feedstock corn where they were growing food corn, or wheat, or barley. That most certainly does impact the price of those commodities. Higher fuel prices is not the only reason food prices have increased.
It is a typical puff media piece, heavy on optimism and light on anything resembling a serious critique. I’ll give them kudos for some accurate popups, but they sure softballed the cost and environmental issues.
It does illuminate how little the average person knows about ethanol and its true environmental impact.
“but I hope everyone realizes that there is a difference between ‘food’ grade corn and ‘feed’ grade corn”
All the corn is used for food. What do you think they did with it before there was ethanol.
“The ethanol bust
How can the ethanol industry be slumping only two months after Congress passed an energy bill most experts consider a biofuels boon? The answer is runaway corn prices.”
http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/27/magazines/fortune/ethanol.fortune/index.htm?postversion=2008022811
OK, Megan wins. Good facts, good laughs. Great job!
The video was obviously a blatant puff piece, and for that I won’t defend it. Nor would I claim that biofuels are going to save America from herself.
But it is equally disingenuous to act as if corn is the only biomass that can be used to create ethanol. Even the GM rep in the video alluded to this, and to be fair, it isn’t GM’s job to figure out how to better generate ethanol, anymore than it is any automakers’ job to discover new oil reserves or create new drilling techniques.
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with running cars on alcohol. There are obvious issues related to growing corn, but these issues must be addressed whether the corn is used for fuel, backyard barbeques, tortillas or cooking oil used at your favorite restaurant. I hope that some of the folks reading this are just as agitated about all of the environmentally unfriendly high-fructose corn syrup that is bloating American waistlines as they are about the subsidized ethanol that is powering, well, just about nothing.
@Pch101
But it is equally disingenuous to act as if corn is the only biomass that can be used to create ethanol. Even the GM rep in the video alluded to this, and to be fair, it isn’t GM’s job to figure out how to better generate ethanol, anymore than it is any automakers’ job to discover new oil reserves or create new drilling techniques.
Two scenarios:
A pool table the size of Kansas, brimming with corn. Enormous combine harvesters moving along, efficiently and quickly at harvest time. Equally efficient machinery working and preparing the field during the spring and summer.
Woodland and forests. Moving in to collect the branches and detritus of that activity. Crags, gulleys, hills and long distances between collection points.
People haven’t thought it through properly. But it’s fun to watch. Oil just blew past 105,4/barrel.
The temporary relief provided by the ethanol binge will be replaced by the hangover of grim reality. Then we’ll get to work on a viable solution, albeit with a splitting headache.
SkiD666
Well not that grain ethanol is the best solution (there are more efficient technologies coming), but I hope everyone realizes that there is a difference between ‘food’ grade corn and ‘feed’ grade corn.
And I hope that you realize that that ‘feed’ grade corn is what feeds the millions of livestock this country slaughters and sells annually. A can of corn doesn’t cost much more than it did a few years ago, but check out the price of beef and chicken. There have been dozens of newspaper articles written on the increasing cost of food products that depend on corn — some of them have even been posted on this blog.
When farmers get subsidies to grow one type of crop, they ignore others, meaning that even if we switched to say, switchgrass or cane sugar or something more environmentally friendly to grow than corn (corn requires incredible amounts of water to grow successfully, and requires 30% more energy to produce than it creates), the price of corn would remain high because the supply would be lower. It also means we would continue to have less ‘food’ corn to export, because farmers would rather grow corn they can sell for ethanol. And that ‘feed’ corn’s price gets driven up artificially… it’s not like you purchase it at one price if you’re going to use it as ethanol and another if you’re going to use it as livestock feed.
Once the gov’t stops funding corn-based ethanol (and the money is starting to dry up, as we speak), the market will level itself and people will start to see the real cost of it. Yes, the increased costs of *all* consumer goods (not just food) can be traced to higher fuel costs, but don’t think ethanol will bring those down any time soon. Even if we get off the corn ethanol, something else will take its place and cause similar ripples across the economy. Displacing food production for fuel production is not a long-term solution.
The one nit to pick with Megan’s statement directly above is that with switchgrass, or anything that would be best grown on marginal land with relatively little water, there would be no competition with corn.
It’s worth noting that the amount of water used by ag is huge, at a time when the country is facing serious water shortages (see NYT Mag Oct 21, 2007 http://tinyurl.com/2r6xpl) and yet all the major candidates favor immigration policies that will boost the US population 50% by mid-century.
The problem is that a typical plant has to keep its leaves pumped up with water in order to scavenge the minuscule amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere–.038%, or thereabouts. But the same orifices on the leaves that take in CO2 let the water out so the plant must keep replenishing the supply. The plant uses on the order of 500 molecules of H2O to capture a single molecule of CO2. As a Harvard plant biologist put it to me, “If I turned the mass of my body into sunflower leaves, I’d have to drink two liters every 30 seconds.”
Clearly the contributors to this video didn’t quite grasp the full significance of the change towards E85 in the US. Sure, they got that it won’t empty your wallet (until you need to fill up again the very next day, or until government subsidies run dry, whichever comes first). Sure, it’s a ‘renewable fuel’ (as long as we can find a plentiful, cheap energy source to make it with). Sure, it’s trendy (how else do you explain the elusive availability of the product). Sure, it helps to sustain domestic employment (just look at the Soviets now to see how well that will work out). But all that misses the point.
The real advantage of agrifuel is that it will help emaciate the generally obese US population, possibly even to the point of malnutrition and disease from food and water shortages. The fuel savings from this terrific weight loss alone will be staggering. Add on top of that the fuel savings from depopulating the nation (the dead don’t drive, you see) and we have here a real miracle cure for the US oil addiction.
“Liv free or die trying”. “Conserv or die trying”. What’s the difference really? And for who think it’s preferable to liv free than to Conserv, they will, eventually, wake up and learn the true meaning of doing their part to help out the nation.
By the way, the video is now viewable here: http://tinyurl.com/2nyone