Secrets of the City

Thanks, Jason. I was thinking this should have its own post, too.

don’t normally post a topic on my own stuff, but people seem to want to chat about it

whatever…you’re on the verge of becoming stevemarsh jr.

lol grote. Maybe everyone said what they wanted to say in the other thread– and this will be the dumbest post I’ve ever written. Oh well.

Well, just to keep the ball rolling, why don’t I tackle the Mexican tortilla story.

It was widely reported that the cost of tortillas in Mexico had risen sharply (which is true), and that U.S. ethanol production was to blame (which is…well, you decide). What was not so widely reported:

* White corn is the principal ingredient in tortillas. Ethanol plants use yellow corn.
* In 2006, Mexico experienced a 47.2 million bushel reduction in corn yields due to a drought.
* Mexico requires an import license to bring in corn from the United States, the Mexican government was slow in responding to requests to import more white corn as domestic supplies dwindled. As white corn supplies declined, the price went up.

I don’t eat eggs anyway.

By the way, Courtney is mad at you for throwing those two eggs in the sink during the segment. She felt it was wasteful.

The Lindstrom egg riots will dwarf the Mexican tortilla riots.

This Washington Post article, by UMN ecologists, pretty much sums things up. Sorry, you need an account.

If you aren’t registered with the WaPo, Tillman’s op-ed can be read here. It really is the straight talk on ethanol, imho.

JeffK: that same piece has appeared in both local dailies, as well as other pubs around the region. The U of M PR machine is working overtime, pitching this op/ed.

They are doing a damn good job. I oughta know.

I’m just saying that unless we continue to invest in the infrastructure for E85 now (i.e., more pumps), the “fuel of the future” won’t have much of a future in Minnesota. Cellulosic ethanol is a great thing, and I hope it comes sooner rather than later. But before we, er “put all our eggs” in the cellulosic basket, we should keep investing in a cleaner-burning alternative fuel that works in 140,000 vehicles on Minneosta roads right now.

Wouldn’t $4/bushel prices entice farmers to grow less white corn and more yellow?

It’s that payoff that has prompted America’s farmers to plant 15% more corn this year than last year. That comes at the expense of other crops like soy, and other staples.

Not to mention a 15% increase in corn also means a 15% increase in the use of fertilizers and herbicides like atrazine, which has been linked to the hermaphroditic frogs with extra limbs that made Minnesota famous.

Price increase or not, eggs are still shockingly cheap.

I think this kinda sums it up, though (from that article).

If every one of the 70 million acres on which corn was grown in 2006 was used for ethanol, the amount produced would displace only 12 percent of the U.S. gasoline market. Moreover, the “new” (non-fossil) energy gained would be very small — just 2.4 percent of the market. Car tune-ups and proper tire air pressure would save more energy.

I think this kinda sums it up, though (from that article).

If every one of the 70 million acres on which corn was grown in 2006 was used for ethanol, the amount produced would displace only 12 percent of the U.S. gasoline market. Moreover, the “new” (non-fossil) energy gained would be very small — just 2.4 percent of the market. Car tune-ups and proper tire air pressure would save more energy.

Also keep in mind that regular ol’ prairie grasses — you know, the ones that were displaced to make way for corn fields way back in the day — are far more efficient sources of energy than corn.

I eat at least 2 eggs ev’ry day, and my coat is nice and shiny.

The IREE (Initiative for Renewable Energy and the Environment at the U of M) is funding a lot of research into alternative biofuels and non-food plants that can be converted into ethanol. Switchgrass is a big one, and they’re looking into poplar trees, prairie plants, etc.

Prairie biomass, produced using a high-diversity mixture of perennial prairie plant species, has the potential to provide a renewable biofuel while greatly reducing the high energy and agrichemical inputs needed for corn and soybeans. This could make prairie biofuels both more efficient producers of net energy per acre and provide significant environmental benefits relative to use of corn and soybeans as biofuels. Moreover, prairie biofuel can be produced on degraded and abandoned farmland, thus preserving prime farmland for food crops.

(IREE rocks, not only because my dad is the director.)

Have prices on egg beaters also gone up? If so i’m rioting

Okay, you win. Show me a place where I can fill my (hypothetical) flex fuel vehicle with E85 made from that superior switchgrass or prairie grass. I don’t want to use any fuel made from that nasty old corn.

How ’bout that hydrogen car? Is it ready at the showroom yet? No?

IREE really does do great work in not only research, but with public engagement as well. With Farm Bill in the works in Washington, there are plenty of PR machines working overtime, including that of the Corn Growers Association, but the best thing we all can do is learn the facts.

It’s time to be willing to start making sacrifices. I can see how cellulose biofuels may be a *small* piece of the puzzle, but right now the message is, “look, it’s ok to drive your Ford F-350 40 miles to work every day, because you can put ethanol in it!” We need to start having the milage requirements that other countries have – which are pretty much unilaterally double ours. We need to put a real effort into renewable sources such as wind and solar, which don’t add stress to our already stressed-out agricultural system. And we need to put a real investment into using that renewable power in vehicles via electricity or hydrogen. My concern isn’t that cellulose biofuels are not useful, but that they’re a distraction, they’re monopolizing debate and research effort and preventing us from taking the real steps that need to happen.

Tom, I agree, the IREE rocks. I like the U, too. I just want to make sure that before we change trains on the Ethanol Express, we look down to make sure the new train has its wheels on the tracks and is ready to roll.

My fear is that with$4 or $5 corn, that train gets going so fast that some won’t notice when the track runs out. Looking ahead to reality of cellulose may prevent a bursting bubble and an economic disaster.

I think it is revealing that, here in the heart of bio-fuel country, Minnesota farmers are only planting 8% more corn, half of the national average, and 80% of CRP acres were re-upped in Minnesota this year.

$0.33 more for a dozen eggs? STF what!!

JeffK: You and I (and the ALAMN) agree on many points. However, I don’t see the success and growth of the biofuel industry as a “distraction.”

This isn’t a “winner take all” issue. I don’t think that money invested in biofuels is “wasted” or off-track, any more than I think money invested in solar, wind, hydrogen, etc. is wasted. We need to go many different directions at once, which looks unorganized and unfocused, but it’s really a good idea. Call it “silver buckshot” rather than waiting for a “silver bullet.”

Personally, I drive a small car. Some Minnesotans choose to drive big trucks and SUVs. I wish they wouldn’t, but since they do, and we have this cleaner fuel many can use, I want to educate them and encourage them to “green their ride” with E85. If we want to see “real steps” taken, than we need to support lawmakers who share our concerns and our values.

How much money is spent subsidizing ethanol? Where would we be with hydrogen and electric cars if the same was spent there? And jeffk how do you get to decide what people should be making sacrafices for? Is it just your causes or can I start making everyone sacrafice for my causes too?

It’s time to be willing to start making sacrifices.

I’ve already committed to start driving my honda up to Ely on weekends and not my corvette. How’s that?

Mazz that isn’t sacrafice enough, I hope you are buying energy credits to offset your environment wrecking behavior. Now I’m off to fly in my private jet to stump for energy conservation….

My fear is that with$4 or $5 corn, that train gets going so fast that some won’t notice when the track runs out. Looking ahead to reality of cellulose may prevent a bursting bubble and an economic disaster.

I think it is revealing that, here in the heart of bio-fuel country, Minnesota farmers are only planting 8% more corn, half of the national average, and 80% of CRP acres were re-upped in Minnesota this year.

Well said, Tom.

Maz: good for you. Really, I’m not being sarcastic.

tublecane: I’m not king. I’m not deciding for anyone. I’m making an assertion that if we don’t follow my suggestions, or something close to them – which are not uniquely mine but are shared by a large number of reasonable, forward-thinking people – bad things will happen.

Crap, maybe I should get some hens for the yard.

I wonder if Minneapolis code allows that?

I will grant that current corn-based ethanol is good thing only in the sense that it is (hopefully) preceeding improved biofuels and other renewable energy sources – and hopefully not preventing other renewable energy sources.

But yeah, I think the general gist of what we hope will happen is the same.

JeffK: I don’t want to sidetrack this on the whole global warming debate (it is still a debate, your conclusions are not fact). It would be pointless on this site anyway.

I’d personally like energy independence but only so we could take our dependency off of oil rich countries, not for environmental reasons. I just don’t like the implication that we all need to sacrafice, or that it should be forced upon us.

All you need for a few chickens is the permission of your neighbors.

It’s time to be willing to start making sacrifices.

ummm…you first.

Maz has a corvette. you know what they say about guys with ‘vette’s, dontcha. heh.

Why not alchohol from sugar beets? This is several times more efficient than corn ethanol.

We’re cool, I know.

“Why not alchohol from sugar beets? This is several times more efficient than corn ethanol.”

Excellent question. Last fall, American Crystal had farmers plow under 8% of the sugar beet harvest. Turns out, they aren’t cost effective enough to have their own ethanol plants, and the process is different enough from that of corn that they just can’t be dropped off at any ethanol plant.

Here’s the thing with renewable energy: right now it’s like high definition television, or DVD players when they first came out, or any new technology that requires a massive changeover. It’s absurdly expensive to buy a high definition television, just like DVD players were absurdly expensive when they first hit the market. But now you can get a DVD player for fifty bucks. Renewable energy right now is expensive and inefficient to produce…but the only way to get better at making it is to keep making it.

Renewable energy, wherever it comes from, has to be the future. We don’t have a choice. We are going to run out of fossil fuels and it’s going to happen sooner as opposed to later. And like that DVD player, it’s going to be expensive at first, but before you know it, it’ll be the industry standard.

Me, I raise my own chickens for eggs in my MPLS backyard. 5 little bastards.

And Tom, you can’t bring up atrazine or any negatives of ethanol here. I did along while back and was assured by Bob that I was silly, and there was no problem — oh, yeah, and corn production would not be increasing.

Instead, take advice from an anonymous MNspeaker from Minneapolis with chickens in his yard.

not only because my dad is the director

Is he also a client?

Good points, Josie. Speaking of price, E85 is selling for $2.03 a gallon at the Coon Rapids Holiday.

My dad grows yellow corn.

I think Josie makes a great point. We don’t know how all this is going to shake out. There will be bumps and hiccups and issues along the way. Real issues, worth exploring. And who knows if corn-based ethanol is the answer. I think it’s an answer in the now, it’s not a long-term answer. But it’s all we have now, so it makes sense to go after it. Plus, I’m totally prepared to be proven wrong if Ethanol turns out to be a long-term answer.

I just don’t like the implication that we all need to sacrafice, or that it should be forced upon us

That’s fascinating that you don’t like it. How much does it matter? You and I both know that if 50 scientists came to your door and spend 3 years teaching you about global warming and took you all around the world to show you exactly what’s going on, you’d still be a smug denier.

Reality doesn’t care much what you like or don’t like, or what you deny or don’t deny. We all need to sacrafice.

right now it’s like high definition television, or DVD players when they first came out, or any new technology that requires a massive changeover. It’s absurdly expensive to buy a high definition television, just like DVD players were absurdly expensive when they first hit the market. But now you can get a DVD player for fifty bucks.

Why, that would imply the existence of the (gasp!) free market! Wayne’s not gonna like this,

I wish the market was a little more free for E85, Maz. I can’t link to this week’s Wall Street Journal story, but from what I have heard from secondhand souces, it outlines the many obstacles oil companies (which own or control many major service station chains) have put up to keep E85 out.

There is no doubt many Minnesota drivers want this alternative fuel — see last news brief here — but we got a long way to go. Case in point: Mankato, Minn. has three times the number of E85 stations open to the public than the entire state of California.

I kid Wayne to hide my obvious late onset homosexual cravings for that hot twink bod of his.

Slurrrrrrrrrrrp!

I’d eat Wayne with a spoon!

yeah, ranty, you can do it, although contrary to the response directly after yours, it requires a bit more than permission from the neighbors. There’s a permit, fees,suprise inspections, written approval from your neighbors, ect . . . sort of a pain.

I’ll also pretend I never saw that last comment.

oh, and bob, you can dismiss me by saying I’m an anonymous poster — boy has that one been played out — but you have never acknowledged that you were completely wrong in your assessment.

Makes taking the advice of anonymous poster fairly akin to taking the advice of a lobbyist.

Spaceman: You’re right, I was wrong on corn acres planted — nobody anticipated these prices. Score one for the guy with the chickens.

As much as I like Bob and most of what the ALA does, all the shilling for ethanol rubs me the wrong way.

Plus, is “conservation” still a bad word in this country?
Maybe we could just restructure the way we live to, oh, I don’t know, require less driving in general?

No? Ok, sorry. Have fun with that future you’re building.

yay for chickens

Chickens are hysterically cute.

We like you too, wayne.

I also shill for asthma, healthy houses and other lung related items, but its smoking bans and ethanol — two issues much in the news — that I seem to get asked about a lot.

also pretty dumb

just like a lot of girls!

wakka wakka mysogyny ):

What about the killer new strain of TB, huh, huh? How do you answer that, lunger!

Is he also a client?

My family is going flex-fuel on newly purchased vehicles. And wind power from Xcel.

Be afraid. Be very afraid, max. Drug-resistant TB is serious stuff.

Here’s some history on TB in Minnesota:

When ALAMN was founded in 1903, tuberculosis was the great scourge of our state. More people died from TB than from any other disease–one out of ten Minnesotans. They wasted away by the thousands, and died in agony. ALAMN lead the fight against TB, providing mobile x-ray units that traveled around the state screening for TB and providing education on prevention and treatment. Today, that early battle has come full circle, as TB stages a comeback, especially among immigrants from countries where TB incidence can be 30 times higher than in the U.S. The faces are different, but the fear and the suffering are the same.

i think i have TB — or the bird flu — one of the two.

Chicken’s scare the holy hell outta me…especially the cocks…

/rim shot

ayyyyyyyyyyyeeee

that was bad, was it not?

pretty bad, yes.

although it would have had an extra lesbian dimension if a different mnspeaker had posted it.

Maz is not a lesbian. He’s just a lover of lesbians.

no, not him.

Maz is not a lesbian. He’s just a lover of lesbians.

Hey, we DO have something in common. Except that creeps me out a little.

On the corner couch of the Kitty Kat Club, I told Max about my past life as a thespian. Strictly in confidence, of course…

BTW, erica was there, too. She’s as smart, nice and sassy in person as she sounds online.

You’re welcome.

Awww, thanks, Bob.

My only thought is… all that corn likker and I have to drive to Wisconsin to buy Everclear…?

How many times do people have to be told to get it through their thick skulls?

BIO-FUELS DERIVED FROM THE FOOD SUPPLY ARE A BAD, BAD, BAD, BAD IDEA.

I’m a huuuuuuge proponent of biofuels, but I wish people would quit being so idiotic here in MN and get off the teat of corn ethanol. I know farmers love it, I know big agribusiness loves it, but they love it for the WRONG REASONS.

“I’m a huuuuuuge proponent of biofuels…”

And yet you don’t know what they are made of, and why.

Looks like ethanol didn’t kill Easter after all. The smoking ban did (at least in Madison). Sorry, ethanol.

Darn Derusha, your ethanol/eggs story dogs me everywhere I go. I was looking at a newspaper in upstate New York that called me about a local Health House project and I saw this!

BTW folks, Jason’s story was picked up on the websites of all CBS owned and operated stations nationwide — he’s too modest to mention, but I’m not…

Another advocate of cellulosic ethanol is interviewed in the Strib under the headline “Biologist predicts ethanol from grass in this decade.”

In that spirit, I’ll predect that not only will my right wrist completely heal, I will be in the starting rotation for the Twins before the end of the season.

In the Q & A that follows, biologist Lynd says the following:

“Right now, the biggest barrier to forward motion is technology.”

He really means the technology doesn’t exist. Like saying, “I could walk across that river on a bridge — if there were a bridge.”

“At $50 a dry metric ton, you can get a lot a biomass for that around the country.”

So, how do you affordably move tons of biomass from the fields to the cellulosic ethanol plants (which don’t exist) and use the technology that hasn’t been invented yet?

Not to be outdone, Strib scribe Meyers asks the loaded question: “…can grass overcome the corn lobby?”

Easy. Just energize the grass lobby, and the vast network of prarire grass farmers, commercial switchgrass operations, the the Federation of Woodchip Retailers.