The American Spectator

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Escape From Desiderata

7.24.08 @ 12:01AM

(Page 5 of 6)

Great article....We here in Arizona have been debating this for some time, and this is the best written article I've seen on this subject.

"Indefensible Biofuels" [see below--Ed.] is another great article on why we should not be supporting any of this garbage.
-- Jon
Tucson, Arizona

FOSSIL FIENDS
Re: William Yeatman & Marlo Lewis's Indefensible Biofuels:

Biofuels: Green genocide.
-- Reid Bogie
Waterbury, Connecticut

"Indefensible Biofuels" by Yeatman and Lewis is on the mark. I have a better idea. Russia has a conifer forest the size of the United States. They should start to cut down the forest to turn the wood into methanol, which is like ethanol. The forest is so huge, they could only cut down tiny parts of it before it grows back. Russia could make vast quantities of methanol for export or for internal use, supplanting oil, without affecting the food supply. It also would employ many people.
-- Nikitas
Pittsfield, Massachusetts

I'll say it again. Water, our most precious resource. Growing and refining corn uses a whopping amount.

Production in the U.S. erodes soil about 12 times faster than the soil can be reformed, and irrigating corn mines groundwater 25 percent faster than the natural recharge rate of ground water . It takes 26 gallons of water to grow one ear of corn, or 1cubic meter / 16 lbs. The cornbelt aquifer has only so much water left and once it's pumped dry, that's it.

Depending on rainwater led to the Dustbowl. Water rights are set in stone, human usage gets top priority, followed by other needs. Experts, please put this into your equation and give it a good hard look.
-- Russel Ready

Your Messrs. Yeatman and Lewis ably unmasked the fraud that is ethanol. What they neglected to state is the energy balance of ethanol production, namely:

1) you need diesel-driven tilling machines to prepare the land;
2) you need petroleum- derived fertilizers and the diesel-driven machines to place them;
3) you need diesel-driven harvesting machines to gather the corn;
4) you need diesel-driven trucks to transport the corn to the processing factory;
5) you need electric power from oil-fired or gas-fired power plants and oil or gas directly to heat and process corn into ethanol;
6) you need diesel-driven trucks to supply ethanol to the mixing stations where ethanol is mixed with gasoline;
7) and finally, you need diesel-driven trucks to deliver the ethanol-gasoline mix to your gas station.

I neglect here several other operations in this cycle that consume petroleum and natural gas. The energy balance of ethanol production is negative when compared with pure gasoline, and not only that -- it increases our need for imported petroleum. When combined with tax giveaways and subsidies the ethanol mandate is a scheme of incomparable ignorance, stupidity, and in effect absolutely criminal in intent. And I should add to this sorry idea the additional carbon dioxide produced in all these operations that contributes to the famous globaloney warming.
-- Marc Jeric
Las Vegas, Nevada

PODIUM DISGRACE
Re: Lisa Fabrizio's Sports Heroes?:

While Ms. Fabrizio is free to feel any way that she wants about Smith and Carlos, I think that judging them now for their actions then is a bit too much of the perfect vision of 20/20 hindsight. The late 1960s was a time of great social upheaval, and the "Black Power" movement was a pushback against the idea that blacks should continue to patiently wait for America to honor her commitments "with all deliberate speed." Think of it this way, 1968 was a decade after the landmark Brown ruling, yet schools were still segregated and Jim Crow laws were still being enforced in much of the South; for example, the schools in my North Carolina county were not totally integrated until the early 1970s. Their protest, from all I have ever read was to draw attention to the fact that despite all of America's promises, and in the face of a Supreme Court ruling, blacks were still being treated as second class citizens.

As for this statement, "Are Smith and Carlos to be commended for speaking out against what they perceived to be injustice? Yes, but to treat them as heroes without an acknowledgement of the harm done by members of the Black Power movement to racial harmony in this country is intellectually dishonest. Most of these groups intentionally fomented a climate of racial hatred and cultural separation that sadly still exists today; even in sports," I agree to a certain extent. But is it fair to them to have the problems created by the "Black Power" movement dumped solely at their doorsteps? I fail to see where two athletes raising gloved fists in 1968 helped to foment a climate of racial hatred and cultural separation, no matter how much others want to see it that way.
-- Eric Edwards
Walnut Cove, North Carolina

I remember watching this travesty live on the television when I was 11 years old.

Letter to the Editor

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