Micro Fueler Is First Ethanol Kit for Brewing Backyard Biofuels on the Cheap

Popular Mechanics bills the Micro Fueler from E-Fuel as "the first ethanol kit for brewing backyard biofuels on the cheap" — but it's not a cheap way to produce fuel; it's a cheap way to produce moonshine:

This morning, the E-Fuel Corporation, a Silicon Valley startup, introduced the first ethanol refinery system designed for home use. The Micro Fueler, a backyard fueling station, can create pure E100 ethanol from sugar feed stock. “It’s third-grade science,” says Thomas Quinn, founder and CEO of E-Fuel. “You just mix together water, sugar and yeast, and in a few hours, you start getting ethanol.” The $9995 Micro Fueler has a can fill its own 35-gallon tank in about a week by fermenting the sugar, water and yeast internally, then separating out the water through a membrane filter.

E-Fuel representatives claim that the initial cost of the machine can be offset by up to 50 percent by federal, state and local credits, and the cost of raw sugar can be brought down to $1 or below through a system of carbon trading coupons. The Micro Fueler can produce a gallon of ethanol from about 10 gallons of sugar.

Quinn dismisses many of the preconceptions about ethanol — lower gas mileage, long-term damage to automotive fuel systems and the need for a “flex-fuel” car — as just myths. Quinn claims that the E100 from the Micro Fueler can be mixed with ordinary gasoline, or even water to a 70/30 ratio — and still maintain a high-enough octane level to provide plenty of power for ordinary vehicles.

The Micro Fueler is for sale now, with deliveries expected by the fourth quarter. Obviously, there are a lot of unknown variables — fuel prices, sugar supply and distribution, and, of course, the machine’s basic reliability — that will determine the potential success or failure of the Micro Fueler. But Quinn, who has a background in the PC business, sees the personal nature of the Micro Fueler as its main selling point. “Ethanol is really the people’s fuel,” he says. “Anybody can make it.”

If you can convince the Feds that you really are producing fuel, then the licensing process isn't too onerous. If, on the other hand, they suspect you're dodging liquor taxes...

You see, the federal excise tax on distilled spirits is $13.50 per proof gallon, or gallon of 100-proof liquor — that's $27.00 per gallon of pure ethanol.

Anyway, as the New York Times notes, sugar-based ethanol doesn’t look much cheaper than gas:

It takes 10 to 14 pounds of sugar to make a gallon of ethanol, and raw sugar sells in the United States for about 20 cents a pound, says Michael E. Salassi, a professor in the department of agricultural economics at Louisiana State University. But Mr. Quinn says that as of January this year, under the North American Free Trade Agreement, he can buy inedible sugar from Mexico for as little as 2.5 cents a pound, which puts the math in his favor. While this type of sugar has not been sold to consumers, E-Fuel says it is developing a distribution network for it.

The Clean Energy Scam

The Clean Energy Scam leads farmers to cut down rain forest for more soybean farms:

Propelled by mounting anxieties over soaring oil costs and climate change, biofuels have become the vanguard of the green-tech revolution, the trendy way for politicians and corporations to show they're serious about finding alternative sources of energy and in the process slowing global warming. The U.S. quintupled its production of ethanol — ethyl alcohol, a fuel distilled from plant matter — in the past decade, and Washington has just mandated another fivefold increase in renewable fuels over the next decade. Europe has similarly aggressive biofuel mandates and subsidies, and Brazil's filling stations no longer even offer plain gasoline. Worldwide investment in biofuels rose from $5 billion in 1995 to $38 billion in 2005 and is expected to top $100 billion by 2010, thanks to investors like Richard Branson and George Soros, GE and BP, Ford and Shell, Cargill and the Carlyle Group. Renewable fuels has become one of those motherhood-and-apple-pie catchphrases, as unobjectionable as the troops or the middle class.

But several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it's dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it. Corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous. Even cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass, which has been promoted by eco-activists and eco-investors as well as by President Bush as the fuel of the future, looks less green than oil-derived gasoline.

Meanwhile, by diverting grain and oilseed crops from dinner plates to fuel tanks, biofuels are jacking up world food prices and endangering the hungry. The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year. Harvests are being plucked to fuel our cars instead of ourselves. The U.N.'s World Food Program says it needs $500 million in additional funding and supplies, calling the rising costs for food nothing less than a global emergency. Soaring corn prices have sparked tortilla riots in Mexico City, and skyrocketing flour prices have destabilized Pakistan, which wasn't exactly tranquil when flour was affordable.

Biofuels do slightly reduce dependence on imported oil, and the ethanol boom has created rural jobs while enriching some farmers and agribusinesses. But the basic problem with most biofuels is amazingly simple, given that researchers have ignored it until now: using land to grow fuel leads to the destruction of forests, wetlands and grasslands that store enormous amounts of carbon.

First Algae Biodiesel Plant Goes Online

The First Algae Biodiesel Plant Goes Online — on April 1. Let's hope it's not an April Fool's joke:

The facility, located in Rio Hondo Texas, will produce an estimated 4.4 million gallons of algal oil and 110 million lbs. of biomass per year off a series of saltwater ponds spanning 1,100 acres. Twenty of those acres will be reserved for the experimental production of a renewable JP8 jet-fuel.
[...]
Microalgae have garnered considerable attention, since acre-by-acre microalgae can produce 30-100 times the oil yield of soybeans on marginal land and in brackish water. The biomass left-over from oil-pressing can either be fed to cattle as a protein supplement, or fermented into ethanol.

Startup Says It Can Make Ethanol for $1 a Gallon, and Without Corn

Startup Says It Can Make Ethanol for $1 a Gallon, and Without Corn:

Coskata uses existing gasification technology to convert almost any organic material into synthesis gas, which is a mix of carbon monoxide and hydrogen. Rather than fermenting that gas or using thermo-chemical catalysts to produce ethanol, Coskata pumps it into a reactor containing bacteria that consume the gas and excrete ethanol. Richard Tobey, Coskata's vice president of engineering, says the process yields 99.7 percent pure ethanol.

Gasification and bacterial conversion are common methods of producing ethanol, but biofuel experts said Coskata is the first to combine them. Doing so, they said, merges the feedstock flexibility of gasification with the relatively low cost of bacterial conversion.

Tobey said Coskata's method generates more ethanol per ton of feedstock than corn-based ethanol and requires far less water, heat and pressure. Those cost savings allow it to turn, say, two bales of hay into five gallons of ethanol for less than $1 a gallon, the company said. Corn-based ethanol costs $1.40 a gallon to produce, according to the Renewable Fuels Association.

The company plans to have its first commercial-scale plant producing up to 100,000 gallons of ethanol a year by 2011. Friedman and Greene said the timeline is realistic.

May Wu, an environmental scientist at Argonne National Laboratory, says Coskata's ethanol produces 84 percent less greenhouse gas than fossil fuel even after accounting for the energy needed to produce and transport the feedstock. It also generates 7.7 times more energy than is required to produce it. Corn ethanol typically generates 1.3 times more energy than is used producing it.

Making ethanol is one thing, but there's almost no infrastructure in place for distributing it. But the company's method solves that problem because ethanol could be made locally from whatever feedstock is available, Tobey said.

"You're not bound by location," he said. "If you're in Orange County, you can use municipal waste. If you're in the Pacific Northwest, you can use wood waste. Florida has sugar. The Midwest has corn. Each region has been blessed with the ability to grow its own biomass."

Federal Alcohol and Tobacco Excise Taxes

The various Federal Alcohol Excise Taxes aren't exactly consistent:

Product	Tax	Tax per Package
Beer	Barrel (31 gallons)	12 oz. can
Regular Rate	$18	$0.05
Reduced Rate	$7 on first 60,000 barrels for brewer who produces less than 2 million barrels. $18 per barrel after the first 60,000 barrels.	$0.02
Wine	Wine Gallon	750ml bottle
14% Alcohol or Less	$1.071	$0.21
Over 14 to 21%	$1.571	$0.31
Over 21 to 24%	$3.151	$0.62
Naturally Sparkling	$3.40	$0.67
Artificially Carbonated	$3.301	$0.65
Hard Cider	$0.2261	$0.04
(1 $0.90 credit, or for hard cider $0.056, may be available for the first 100,000 gallons removed by a small winery producing not more than 150,000 w.g. per year. Decreasing credit rates for a winery producing up to 250,000 w.g. per year.)
Distilled Spirits	Proof Gallon *	750ml Bottle
All	$13.50 less any credit for wine and flavor content.	$2.14 (at 80 proof)
* A proof gallon is a gallon of liquid that is 100 proof, or 50% alcohol. The tax is adjusted, depending on the percentage of alcohol of the product.
Tobacco Products	1000 units	Pack of 20
Small Cigarettes	$19.50	$0.39
Large Cigarettes	$40.95	$0.82
Small Cigars	$1.828	$0.04
Tobacco Products	1000 units	Each
Large Cigars	20.719% of sales price but not to exceed $48.75	$0.05 maximum
Tobacco Products	1 lb.	1 Ounce Tin or Pouch
Pipe Tobacco	$1.0969	$0.07
Chewing Tobacco	$0.195	$0.01
Snuff	$0.585	$0.04
Roll-your-own Tobacco	$1.0969	$0.07

Notice the odd categories for wine — especially carbonated — cider, etc. The tax on distilled spirits seems elegant by comparison to the rest. I wonder why tobacco companies don't market more "small cigars" in place of cigarettes...

Alcohol laws of the United States by state

The alcohol laws of the United States vary by state, of course, with some peculiar laws in some states.

Alabama:

Beer containers may not exceed 16 ounces (0.47 l).

Arkansas:

Only wine produced in-state may be sold in supermarkets.

California:

Sale or distribution of alcohol higher than 153 proof is illegal.

Kansas:

Kansas prohibited all alcohol from 1881 to 1948, and continued to prohibit on-premises sales of alcohol from 1949 to 1987. Sunday sales only have been allowed since 2005. Today, 29 counties still do not permit the on-premises sale of alcohol. 59 counties require a business to receive at least 30% of revenue from food sales to allow on-premises sale of alcohol.

Massachusetts:

No "Happy Hours" or other limited time discounts on alcoholic beverages. No fixed price open bar/all-you-can-drink (except at private functions). Only 2 drinks can be sold to an individual at any one time for on-premises consumption.

Nevada:

State law renders public intoxication legal, and explicitly prohibits any local or state law from making it a public offence.

New York:

All liquor stores must be owned by a single owner, who owns that store and lives within a certain distance of it — in effect banning chain liquor stores from the state.

Utah:

Restaurants and "Private Clubs" must buy from the State controlled store (no delivery) at retail prices. No alcohol served in restaurants without purchase of food. Only 3.2% beer available on tap.

Wisconsin:

Wisconsin permits the consumption of alcohol by minors, provided they are being supervised by parents/guardians.

Ethanol Production Consumes Six Units Of Energy To Produce Just One

Ethanol Production Consumes Six Units Of Energy To Produce Just One:

Patzek's ethanol critique began during a freshman seminar he taught in which he and his students calculated the energy balance of the biofuel. Taking into account the energy required to grow the corn and convert it into ethanol, they determined that burning the biofuel as a gasoline additive actually results in a net energy loss of 65 percent. Later, Patzek says he realized the loss is much more than that even.

"Limiting yourself to the energy balance, and within that balance, just the fossil fuel used, is just scraping the surface of the problem," he says. "Corn is not 'free energy.'"

Recently, Patzek published a fifty-page study on the subject in the journal Critical Reviews in Plant Science. This time, he factored in the myriad energy inputs required by industrial agriculture, from the amount of fuel used to produce fertilizers and corn seeds to the transportation and wastewater disposal costs. All told, he believes that the cumulative energy consumed in corn farming and ethanol production is six times greater than what the end product provides your car engine in terms of power.

Farmyard Stills Quench a Thirst for Local Spirits

Farmyard Stills Quench a Thirst for Local Spirits:

“I talked to banks, told them I wanted to make vodka on my farm here, and they said, ‘Yeah, right you are,’” recalled Mr. Fox, whose company went on to become the first distillery in Kansas since Prohibition. “Well, I had a million dollars in sales last year.”

“I’m the seventh generation to be in alcohol,” he said proudly. “Just the first to do it legally.”

On the heels of the microbrewing boom, new microdistilleries are thriving from coast to coast. And some of the latest and quirkiest entrants to the industry are in places like Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Mr. Fox’s barn.

In trying to take advantage of generations of his family’s moonshining expertise, Mr. Fox, for instance, had no business plan, no employees and about $100 in his checking account. Only his timing was rich: the national demand for high-end spirits, especially vodka, has soared over the last several years, along with the general consumer craving for products with local flair.

Meanwhile, some of the states, increasingly aware of the power of agri-business to generate tourism and tax dollars, have gradually begun loosening some of the temperance-era laws that have lingered for decades, restricting who can distill what, and where.

With its abundance of grain and fruit, the Midwest stands poised to capitalize on the confluence of trends unlike any other region and could, in time, come to rival California, currently the leader in small-scale distilling, experts said.

Small, private distilleries are opening at a rate of about 10 to 20 a year. There are about 100 across the country. Some are attached to wineries, restaurants and breweries, or, increasingly, are located on farms. Though there is no precise definition for what the industry refers to as artisanal or craft distilleries, experts say they are distinguished from mass distillers by their small scale, their use of local and often organic ingredients, and the experimental quality of some of their products, like seasonal pumpkin-infused vodka.

As a result of their individuality and regional differences, the distillers offer spirits that run the gamut in terms of quality and taste. Some are one- or two-person backyard operations; others are state-of-the-art laboratories built at great expense.

Down on The Farm

Michael Grunwald is Down on The Farm — or at least on the farm bill:

Agricultural policy is not sexy. You probably don't know the intricacies of "loan deficiency payments" or "base acreage," and you probably don't care. This was once an agrarian nation, but now there's a less than 1% chance that you're a farmer, and if you are, you're probably part time; the average farm family gets 82% of its income from nonfarm sources. We're not a people of the soil anymore, and for most of us, our eyes glaze over when we see farm statistics like the ones in that last sentence.

But farms still cover most of our land, consume most of our water and produce most of our food. If you eat, drink or pay taxes--or care about the economy, the environment or our global reputation — U.S. agricultural policy is a big deal.

It's also a horrible deal. It redistributes our taxes to millionaire farmers as well as to millionaire "farmers" like David Letterman, David Rockefeller and the owners of the Utah Jazz. It contributes to our obesity and illegal-immigration epidemics and to our water and energy shortages. It helps degrade rivers, deplete aquifers, eliminate grasslands, concentrate food-processing conglomerates and inundate our fast-food nation with high-fructose corn syrup. Our farm policy is supposed to save small farmers and small towns. Instead it fuels the expansion of industrial megafarms and the depopulation of rural America. It hurts Third World farmers, violates international trade deals and paralyzes our efforts to open foreign markets to the nonagricultural goods and services that make up the remaining 99% of our economy.

Ever since the 1980s, when a wave of foreclosures inspired those iconic Farm Aid concerts, the media's sporadic reports from farm country have tended to focus on floods, droughts and other disasters. But the farm crisis is as over as Barbara Mandrell. Farm incomes are at an all-time high. The median farmer enjoys five times the net worth of the median nonfarmer household. Crop prices have soared--thanks largely to the Federal Government's promotion of corn ethanol over more efficient renewable energies — and yet subsidies have as well.

Nevertheless, Congress is finalizing a $286 billion farm bill that will continue our basic farm policies, which means it will keep funneling money to farmers and pseudo farmers through a bewildering array of loans, price supports, subsidized insurance, disaster aid and money-for-nothing handouts that arrive when times are tough — or not tough. "What a joke," grumbles Congressman Ron Kind, a Wisconsin Democrat who led a failed bipartisan reform effort in the House. "You're eligible as long as you're breathing." Actually, that's not quite true. Since the vast majority of the cash goes to five row crops — corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton and rice — more than 60% of our farmers receive no subsidies. And a recent Government Accountability Office report identified $1.1 billion of subsidies whose recipients were no longer breathing.

Franklin Roosevelt's Administration started farm aid in response to the Dust Bowl and the Depression, calling it "a temporary solution to deal with an emergency." But in Washington, the emergency has never ended.

Ethanol, schmethanol

Everyone seems to think that ethanol is a good way to make cars greener. Everyone is wrong:

Sometimes you do things simply because you know how to. People have known how to make ethanol since the dawn of civilisation, if not before. Take some sugary liquid. Add yeast. Wait. They have also known for a thousand years how to get that ethanol out of the formerly sugary liquid and into a more or less pure form. You heat it up, catch the vapour that emanates, and cool that vapour down until it liquefies.

The result burns. And when Henry Ford was experimenting with car engines a century ago, he tried ethanol out as a fuel. But he rejected it — and for good reason. The amount of heat you get from burning a litre of ethanol is a third less than that from a litre of petrol. What is more, it absorbs water from the atmosphere. Unless it is mixed with some other fuel, such as petrol, the result is corrosion that can wreck an engine's seals in a couple of years. So why is ethanol suddenly back in fashion? That is the question many biotechnologists in America have recently asked themselves.

The obvious answer is that, being derived from plants, ethanol is “green”. The carbon dioxide produced by burning it was recently in the atmosphere. Putting that CO₂ back into the air can therefore have no adverse effect on the climate. But although that is true, the real reason ethanol has become the preferred green substitute for petrol is that people know how to make it — that, and the subsidies now available to America's maize farmers to produce the necessary feedstock. Yet such things do not stop ethanol from being a lousy fuel. To solve that, the biotechnologists argue, you need to make a better fuel that is equally green. Which is what they are trying to do.

Read the article for the technical details of which molecules are under consideration.

Biodiesel Boom heading toward Wall Street

With a push from government subsidies, there's a Biodiesel Boom heading toward Wall Street:

It's not hard to see why. Biodiesel is 30 percent more fuel-efficient than gasoline, which in turn is 30 percent more efficient than ethanol. And while most ethanol produced in the United States comes from a single feedstock — corn — biodiesel has many sources: the oil of seed plants, such as soy and canola, french-fry grease and animal fat. That means the market can weather a price increase in any one raw material. Solazyme, a South San Francisco biotech firm, has even started making biodiesel from genetically modified algae.

Better yet, biodiesel can be manufactured in large quantities today — unlike fuels such as hydrogen. Total production shot up from 25 million gallons in 2004 to 250 million last year. Nearly 100 new plants are now under construction; even Chevron has joined in, cutting the ribbon on a 20-million-gallon plant in Galveston, Texas, in May.

The biggest player in the biodiesel market is Renewable Energy Group, an offshoot of a 3,000-member Iowa farm cooperative. REG accounts for 27 percent of U.S. biodiesel production and, thanks to its relationship with the soy growers, says it can increase its total capacity to 340 million gallons by the end of 2008. The company sells branded SoyPower fuel through a nationwide network of stations, some operated by grocery giant Safeway. REG should be the first biodiesel company to hit Wall Street, having filed for an IPO in July. But REG won't be the last: Also mulling a stock offering is Seattle-based Imperium Renewables, founded three years ago by former commercial-jet pilot John Plaza. Imperium operates the largest U.S. biodiesel plant and plans to cut a production deal with Washington's canola farmers.

For all that production capacity, biodiesel is still an infant industry — it currently accounts for less than 0.5 percent of the total U.S. diesel-fuel market. So there will likely be plenty more REGs and Imperiums. "It's such an entrepreneurial success story," says Jenna Higgins, communications director at the National Biodiesel Board, a trade association. "Most of the companies out there are small businesses. There really aren't any traditional paths to success."

Take Philadelphia-based Fry-o-Diesel, founded by Yale business graduate Nadia Adawi. The startup has a patent pending on a process it developed to make fuel from trap grease, which restaurants currently pay to have hauled off. An estimated 495 million gallons of trap grease gets trashed every year. "We're working with something that's essentially a pollutant," Adawi says. "But it makes a great fuel." She is currently talking to investors and hopes to build a 3-million-gallon plant in 2008.

Adawi is in good company. The past few months have seen plenty of major corporations rush to hop on the biodiesel bandwagon. Oil giant ConocoPhillips has inked a deal with Tyson Foods to make diesel out of animal fats. In July, U.S. Steel announced that it will use a 10 percent mix of biodiesel at its plant in Gary, Ind. And Berkeley-based Clif Bar has started subsidizing employees who drive biodiesel cars.

Drivers test paying by mile instead of gas tax

Drivers test paying by mile instead of gas tax:

Beginning early next year, drivers in six states will begin testing a new way to pay for roads and transit: Commuters will be charged for the miles they drive rather than paying taxes on gasoline purchased.

Researchers from the University of Iowa Public Policy Center will install computers and satellite equipment in the vehicles of 2,700 volunteers — 450 each from Austin, Baltimore, Boise, San Diego, eastern Iowa and the Research Triangle region of North Carolina.

Over the next two years, the drivers will get sample monthly bills for the number of miles they've driven. They can compare what they now pay in gasoline taxes with what they would have paid in per-mile fees.

"We want to assess the public's attitudes and acceptance toward a system like this," says Jon Kuhl, principal investigator on the $16.5 million Road User Charge Study and chairman of the University of Iowa Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

The nation is reassessing the way it pays for roads and transit. Since 1956, the Highway Trust Fund, financed by the federal tax on gasoline, has been a primary source of money for highway projects. But the National Governors Association and other groups and planners involved in road building have concluded that this method, supplemented by state gasoline taxes, no longer is adequate.

Americans are driving cars that get better mileage, and more are driving vehicles that use fuels taxed at lower rates than gasoline, such as ethanol, or making their own fuel and not being taxed. That means gas tax revenue isn't growing nearly as fast as the number of miles driven.

In addition, the costs of road construction materials have skyrocketed because of heavy demand from India and China. Congress and many state legislatures are reluctant to increase gas taxes, especially at a time of high prices at the pump. The federal gas tax of 18.4 cents a gallon has not been increased since 1993; 24 states have not raised their gas taxes since 1997, according to the American Road & Transportation Builders Association.

That has made a mileage fee more attractive to some agencies. The University of Iowa study is funded by the Federal Highway Administration and 15 state departments of transportation.

Oregon this year finished a year-long experiment that tested a "virtual tollway" system that could eventually replace the state gas tax with a road-user fee. Volunteers drove vehicles equipped with state-installed Global Positioning System (GPS) devices and odometers that kept track of the miles they drove. When they gassed up, the drivers paid for their gas as well as 1.2 cents for each mile driven since their last fill-up; they did not pay the 24-cents-a-gallon state gas tax.

Federal, state, and local governments don't want to increase gas taxes, because they know an increase will be unpopular — so that want to institute a new tax, install GPS units in every car, and track everyone's movements? Does that seem more politically feasible?

If the government is already mandating fuel-efficiency standards and subsidizing hybrid-electric cars, why would it want to reduce gasoline taxes?

And why would you institute a static 1.2-cents-per-mile tax when the whole point of a "virtual tollway" system is dynamic pricing based on traffic? Driving down a road with no one else on it doesn't cost anyone anything — except for the pollution that comes from burning gasoline, which won't be taxed under such a system.

Let the Sun Shine In

In Let the Sun Shine In, Greg Blonger notes that "too much energy is wasted by converting it":

Sometimes the best solutions to the energy crisis are the simplest, and often they're right in front of our eyes. Consider the use of solar power to light a home. Even the most advanced photovoltaic solar panels convert just 20% of the available sunlight to electricity. The resulting direct current (DC) then must undergo conversion to alternating current (AC), losing another 20%. If that AC goes on to light an incandescent bulb, which is only 5% efficient, you end up using a fraction of 1% of the original sunlight as room light. (Even switching to compact florescent bulbs, which are 15% efficient, makes little difference in overall energy efficiency.) But if you were to simply leave sunlight as light—via proper skylights, window orientation, and louvers—nearly 80% of the light ends up as illumination.

Or take the multiple conversions required to produce alternative biofuels. The efficiency of converting sunlight into plants such as corn and switch grass and then into ethanol or biodiesel is one-tenth of 1%, or less. Algae looks like it will perform slightly better, but at these rates, why bother? The best way to convert plants to energy, frankly, is to eat them.
[...]
We could begin by siting new buildings for optimal exposure to sunlight and properly designing them to best capture daylight via skylights and windows. Though still a rarity in the U.S., such design practice has become much more common in Europe. With proper insulation, such structures also require very little energy to heat.

Similarly, we could install heat exchangers—simple, low tech devices that operate with 90% efficiency—much more widely. Office building architects, for example, increasingly use heat exchangers to help separate sources of heat and cold, thus eliminating double heating and cooling. Banks of server computers, now routinely walled off from office space, use heat exchangers to transfer the hot air they generate out of the building during summer and into the building during winter. Less-expensive versions for the home can do the same for refrigerators or stoves (why use electric energy to cool food when the outside temperature is 30 degrees Fahrenheit?) and hot water generated for showers (why lose all that heat down the drain?).

Even if you can't avoid mulitiple conversions entirely, there are ways to minimize the number of conversions. For example, we could also find more opportunities to break the DC/AC conversion cycle. Refrigerators and other appliances that operate on DC are becoming available and, with the certain arrival of economical LED lighting, which operates on DC, direct DC solar-power-to-DC-end-use shortly will become much more practical.

Alcohol Labeling

NPR notes that Alcohol Labeling is about to change:

Alcohol beverages are about to get a makeover. The Alcohol Tax and Trade Bureau has proposed a ruling that will require the alcohol industry to include detailed product information on the label — the amount of protein, sugar, calories and, of course, alcohol per serving.

Prohibition politics

In Prohibition politics, Donald J. Boudreaux notes that the popular understanding of how Prohibition ended — that the public recognized its futility, and politicians then repealed it — is a myth:

But contrary to popular belief, the 1920s witnessed virtually no sympathy for ending Prohibition. Neither citizens nor politicians concluded from the obvious failure of Prohibition that it should end.

As historian Norman Clark reports:

"Before 1930 few people called for outright repeal of the (18th) Amendment. No amendment had ever been repealed, and it was clear that few Americans were moved to political action yet by the partial successes or failures of the Eighteenth. ... The repeal movement, which since the early 1920s had been a sullen and hopeless expression of minority discontent, astounded even its most dedicated supporters when it suddenly gained political momentum."

What happened in 1930 that suddenly gave the repeal movement political muscle? The answer is the Great Depression and the ravages that it inflicted on federal income-tax revenues.

Prior to the creation in 1913 of the national income tax, about a third of Uncle Sam's annual revenue came from liquor taxes. (The bulk of Uncle Sam's revenues came from customs duties.) Not so after 1913. Especially after the income tax surprised politicians during World War I with its incredible ability to rake in tax revenue, the importance of liquor taxation fell precipitously.

By 1920, the income tax supplied two-thirds of Uncle Sam's revenues and nine times more revenue than was then supplied by liquor taxes and customs duties combined. In research that I did with University of Michigan law professor Adam Pritchard, we found that bulging income-tax revenues made it possible for Congress finally to give in to the decades-old movement for alcohol prohibition.

Before the income tax, Congress effectively ignored such calls because to prohibit alcohol sales then would have hit Congress hard in the place it guards most zealously: its purse. But once a new and much more intoxicating source of revenue was discovered, the cost to politicians of pandering to the puritans and other anti-liquor lobbies dramatically fell.

Prohibition was launched.

Despite pleas throughout the 1920s by journalist H.L. Mencken and a tiny handful of other sensible people to end Prohibition, Congress gave no hint that it would repeal this folly. Prohibition appeared to be here to stay — until income-tax revenues nose-dived in the early 1930s.

From 1930 to 1931, income-tax revenues fell by 15 percent.

In 1932 they fell another 37 percent; 1932 income-tax revenues were 46 percent lower than just two years earlier. And by 1933 they were fully 60 percent lower than in 1930.

With no end of the Depression in sight, Washington got anxious for a substitute source of revenue.

That source was liquor sales.

Jouett Shouse, president of the Association Against the Prohibition Amendment, was a powerful figure in the Democratic Party that had just nominated Franklin Roosevelt as its candidate for the White House. Shouse emphasized that ending Prohibition would boost government revenue.

And a House leader of Congress' successful attempt to propose the Prohibition-ending 21st Amendment said in 1934 that "if (anti-prohibitionists) had not had the opportunity of using that argument, that repeal meant needed revenue for our government, we would not have had repeal for at least 10 years."

There's no doubt that widespread understanding of Prohibition's futility and of its ugly, unintended side-effects made it easier for Congress to repeal the 18th Amendment. But these public sentiments were insufficient, by themselves, to end the war on alcohol.

Ending it required a gargantuan revenue shock — to the U.S. Treasury.

So don't expect drug prohibition to end anytime soon.

Political Liquor's Economic Hangover Just Beginning

Dr. Henry I. Miller says Political Liquor's Economic Hangover Just Beginning — that is, our ethanol policy is going to have all sorts of unpleasant consequences:

From pre-school to planning funerals, green is in. Very in. But green policies and decisions need to be based on more than a vague desire to save the planet. The principles of the natural sciences and economics must play an essential role — a part of policy-making that often eludes politicians. The latest examples are the federal government's efforts to reduce the United States's dependence on imported oil (now more than 60 percent) by shifting a big share of the nation's largest crop, corn, to the production of ethanol for fueling automobiles.

Good goal, bad policy. In fact, in the short- and medium-term, ethanol can do little to reduce the vast amount of oil that is imported, and the ethanol policy will have widespread and profound ripple effects on other commodity markets. Corn farmers and ethanol refiners are ecstatic about the ethanol boom, of course, and are enjoying the windfall of artificially enhanced demand. But it is already proving to be an expensive and dangerous experiment for the rest of us.

The U.S. Senate is debating new legislation that would further expand corn ethanol production. A 2005 law already mandates production of 7.5 billion gallons by 2012, about 5 percent of the projected gasoline use at that time. These biofuel goals are propped up by a generous federal subsidy — via tax credits — of 51 cents a gallon for blending ethanol into gasoline, and a tariff of 54 cents a gallon on most imported ethanol, to keep out cheap imports from Brazil. This latest bill is a prime example of the government's throwing good money after a bad idea, of ignoring science and economics in favor of politics, and of disdain for free markets.

President Bush has set a target of replacing 15 percent of domestic gasoline use with biofuels (ethanol and biodiesel) over the next 10 years, which would require almost a five-fold increase in mandatory biofuel use to about 35 billion gallons. With current technology, almost all of this biofuel would have to come from corn because there is no other feasible, proven alternative. However, it is unlikely that American farmers will be able to meet such demands: Achieving the 15 percent goal would require the entire current U.S. corn crop, which represents a whopping 40 percent of the world's corn supply. This would do more than create mere market distortions; the irresistible pressure to divert corn from food to fuel would create unprecedented turmoil.

Thus, it is no surprise that the price of corn has doubled in the past year — from $2 to $4 per bushel. We are already seeing upward pressure on food prices as the demand for ethanol boosts the demand for corn: Nationally, food prices were up 3.9 percent in April, compared to the same month a year earlier. Until the recent ethanol boom, more than 60 percent of the annual U.S. corn harvest was fed domestically to cattle, hogs and chickens, or used in food or beverages. Thousands of food items contain corn or corn byproducts. A spokesman for one of California's largest cattle ranches and feedlots noted that since the end of 2005, the company has experienced a 36 percent increase in the cost of feed, "which translates to an additional expense of $101 per head raised." Reflecting these trends, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association has demanded an end both to government subsidies for ethanol and to the import tariff on foreign ethanol.

The poultry industry is also squawking. The National Chicken Council is demanding remedies from senators who represent the big southern poultry states, and the National Turkey Federation estimates that its feed costs have gone up nearly $600 million annually.

The law of unintended consequences strikes again.

Fruity cocktails count as health food, study finds

Fruity cocktails count as health food, study finds:

Adding ethanol — the type of alcohol found in rum, vodka, tequila and other spirits — boosted the antioxidant nutrients in strawberries and blackberries, the researchers found.

Any colored fruit might be made even more healthful with the addition of a splash of alcohol, they report in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture.

Dr. Korakot Chanjirakul and colleagues at Kasetsart University in Thailand and scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture stumbled upon their finding unexpectedly.

They were exploring ways to help keep strawberries fresh during storage. Treating the berries with alcohol increased in antioxidant capacity and free radical scavenging activity, they found.

The Incredible Shrinking Engine

Researchers at MIT are designing The Incredible Shrinking Engine:

Overall, higher compression will lead to a more efficient engine and more power per stroke. But increasing the pressure too much causes the fuel to heat up and explode independently of the spark, leading to poorly timed ignition. That's knock, and it can damage the engine.

To avoid knock, engine designers must limit the extent to which the piston compresses the fuel and air in the cylinder. They also have to limit the use of turbo�charging, in which an exhaust-driven turbine compresses the air before it enters the combustion chamber, increasing the amount of oxygen in the chamber so that more fuel can be burned per stroke. Turning on a car's turbocharger will provide an added boost when the car is accelerating or climbing hills. But too much turbocharging, like too much compression, leads to knock.

An alternative way to prevent knock is to use a fuel other than gasoline; although gasoline packs a large amount of energy into a small volume, other fuels, such as ethanol, resist knock far better. But a vehicle using ethanol gets fewer miles per gallon than one using gasoline, because its fuel has a lower energy density. Cohn and his colleagues say they've found a way to use both fuels that takes advantage of each one's strengths while avoiding its weaknesses.

The MIT researchers focused on a key property of ethanol: when it vaporizes, it has a pronounced cooling effect, much like rubbing alcohol evaporating from skin. Increased turbo­charging and cylinder compression raise the temperature in the cylinder, which is why they lead to knock. But Cohn and his colleagues found that if ethanol is introduced into the combustion chamber at just the right moment through the relatively new technology of direct injection, it keeps the temperature down, preventing spontaneous combustion. Similar approaches, some of which used water to cool the cylinder, had been tried before. But the combination of direct injection and ethanol, Cohn says, had much more dramatic results.

The researchers devised a system in which gasoline would be injected into the combustion chamber by conventional means. Ethanol would be stored in its own tank or compartment and would be introduced by a separate direct-injection system. The ethanol would have to be replenished only once every few months, roughly as often as the oil is changed. A vehicle that used this approach would operate around 25 percent more efficiently than a vehicle with a conventional engine.

Moonshine As A Business

When Joseph Michalek moved from New York to North Carolina, he soon encountered the local corn whiskey, infused with fruit — a new kind of moonshine the old-timers called sissyshine.

Michalek saw the opportunity to produce Moonshine As A Business:

In 2005, he started Piedmont Distillers in Madison, north of Greensboro — the first legal distillery in the Carolinas since before Prohibition.

Michalek produces Catdaddy: Carolina Moonshine, which is being sold in more than 200 North Carolina ABC liquor stores and outlets in York County, S.C. Catdaddy is moonshiner slang for the "best of the best."

He won't divulge his startup costs or his sales, but it's now being sold in a half-dozen states. Last year Piedmont sponsored a NASCAR Nextel Cup Series race car. Michalek works with four full-time employees.

He produces Catdaddy in small batches — 300 gallons, triple-distilled in a German copper pot still. A batch yields about 1,500 bottles, which are filled, corked and packaged by hand in Madison's former train station. A 750 milliliter bottle costs $19.95.
[...]
Real moonshine comes in two "flavors" — legal and illegal. The essential difference is one is taxed and one is not.

You can go into most any liquor store and buy moonshine such as Georgia Moon Corn Whiskey, Platte Valley Corn Whiskey or Catdaddy. The federal tax on a gallon of whiskey is $15.50.

It is legal to own a still; you can buy one online for less than $800. If you want to produce any alcohol in your still, you need a federal permit. Under the alternative fuels law, you can make up to 10,000 gallons a year of ethanol, which can power engines when mixed with gasoline.

"Yes, you can have a still, but it must be permitted and you can produce spirits for fuel use only," said Art Resnick, director of public and media affairs for the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau of the U.S. Treasury Department. "Let's make this perfectly clear: It's illegal to make moonshine, which is untaxed spirits."

Even if a person wanted to make moonshine at home and pay federal taxes, it's not that simple. It requires a federal distiller's license and is cost-prohibitive for anything other than a business.

Springtime for Ethanol

Springtime for Ethanol notes that the fashionable alternative fuel "yields a third less energy than petroleum-based gasoline and still relies on a federal subsidy of 51 cents a gallon to remain competitive."

Creating Ethanol from Trash

Creating Ethanol from Trash may become economically viable via arcs of plasma:

The technology, developed originally by researchers at MIT and at Batelle Pacific Northwest National Labs (PNNL), in Richland, WA, doesn't incinerate refuse, so it doesn't produce the pollutants that have historically plagued efforts to convert waste into energy. Instead, the technology vaporizes organic materials to produce hydrogen and carbon monoxide, a mixture called synthesis gas, or syngas, that can be used to synthesize a wide variety of fuels and chemicals. The technology has been further developed and commercialized by a spinoff called Integrated Environmental Technologies (IET), also based in Richland, WA. In addition to processing municipal waste, the technology can be used to create ethanol out of agricultural biomass waste, providing a potentially less expensive way to make ethanol than current corn-based plants.

The new system makes syngas in two stages. In the first, waste is heated in a 1,200 �C chamber into which a small amount of oxygen is added--just enough to partially oxidize carbon and free hydrogen. In this stage, not all of the organic material is converted: some becomes a charcoal-like material. This char is then gasified when researchers pass it through arcs of plasma, using technology developed in the 1990s at MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center. The remaining inorganic materials, including toxic substances, are oxidized and incorporated into a pool of molten glass, made using PNNL technology. The molten glass hardens into a material that can be used for building roads or discarded as a safe material in landfills.

The next step is a catalyst-based process for converting syngas into equal parts ethanol and methanol. Ethanol is now widely used as a fuel additive, and it can also be used as a substitute for gasoline in some vehicles. Methanol is important for producing biodiesel and is currently made from methane in natural gas.

There is enough municipal and industrial waste produced in the United States for the system to replace as much as a quarter of the gasoline used in this country, says Daniel Cohn, a cofounder of IET and a senior research scientist at the Plasma Science and Fusion Center.

According to Jeff Surma, another cofounder and the CEO and president of IET, the multistage system makes it possible to produce fuels from waste at competitive costs. The economics look even better when including the fact that cities and manufacturers will pay to have waste removed, he says. This makes possible costs of between 10 and 95 cents per gallon of fuel, depending on the size of IET's system and how much it is paid to take waste. IET is currently in talks with a major Midwest utility and several municipalities interested in employing its technology, Surma says.

A colleague dubbed it the trash laser beam. (Hat tip to FuturePundit.)

MIT ethanol analysis confirms benefits of biofuels

MIT ethanol analysis confirms benefits of biofuels — sort of:

Using a technique called life cycle analysis, she looked at energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions associated with all the steps in making and using ethanol, from growing the crop to converting it into ethanol. She limited energy sources to fossil fuels. Finally, she accounted for the different energy contents of gasoline and ethanol. Pure ethanol carries 30 percent less energy per gallon, so more is needed to travel a given distance.

While most studies follow those guidelines, Groode added one more feature: She incorporated the uncertainty associated with the values of many of the inputs. Following a methodology developed by recent MIT graduate Jeremy Johnson (Ph.D. 2006), she used not just one value for each key variable (such as the amount of fertilizer required), but rather a range of values along with the probability that each of those values would occur. In a single analysis, her model runs thousands of times with varying input values, generating a range of results, some more probable than others.

Based on her "most likely" outcomes, she concluded that traveling a kilometer using ethanol does indeed consume more energy than traveling the same distance using gasoline. However, further analyses showed that several factors can easily change the outcome, rendering corn-based ethanol a "greener" fuel.

Why cellulosic ethanol will not save us

Tad Patzek, professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley, explains why cellulosic ethanol will not save us:

Today it is commonly believed that burning freshly cut plants is morally superior to burning old fossil plants. Even more curiously, some are convinced that stripping ecosystems of gigantic quantities of biomass can go on year-after-year, forever, and with no consequences.

MIT's pint-sized car engine promises high efficiency, low cost

MIT's pint-sized car engine promises high efficiency, low cost:

For decades, efforts to improve the efficiency of the conventional spark-ignition (SI) gasoline engine have been stymied by a barrier known as the "knock limit": Changes that would have made the engine far more efficient would have caused knock — spontaneous combustion that makes a metallic clanging noise and can damage the engine. Now, using sophisticated computer simulations, the MIT team has found a way to use ethanol to suppress spontaneous combustion and essentially remove the knock limit.

When the engine is working hard and knock is likely, a small amount of ethanol is directly injected into the hot combustion chamber, where it quickly vaporizes, cooling the fuel and air and making spontaneous combustion much less likely. According to a simulation developed by Bromberg, with ethanol injection the engine won't knock even when the pressure inside the cylinder is three times higher than that in a conventional SI engine. Engine tests by collaborators at Ford Motor Company produced results consistent with the model's predictions.

With knock essentially eliminated, the researchers could incorporate into their engine two operating techniques that help make today's diesel engines so efficient, but without causing the high emissions levels of diesels. First, the engine is highly turbocharged. In other words, the incoming air is compressed so that more air and fuel can fit inside the cylinder. The result: An engine of a given size can produce more power.

Second, the engine can be designed with a higher compression ratio (the ratio of the volume of the combustion chamber after compression to the volume before). The burning gases expand more in each cycle, getting more energy out of a given amount of fuel.

The combined changes could increase the power of a given-sized engine by more than a factor of two. But rather than seeking higher vehicle performance — the trend in recent decades — the researchers shrank their engine to half the size. Using well-established computer models, they determined that their small, turbocharged, high-compression-ratio engine will provide the same peak power as the full-scale SI version but will be 20 to 30 percent more fuel efficient.

The ethanol myth

In The ethanol myth, Consumer Reports shares its findings from its test of a flexible-fuel Chevy Tahoe:

When running on E85 there was no significant change in acceleration. Fuel economy, however, dropped across the board. In highway driving, gas mileage decreased from 21 to 15 mpg; in city driving, it dropped from 9 to 7 mpg.

You could expect a similar decrease in gas mileage in any current FFV. That’s because ethanol has a lower energy content than gasoline: 75,670 British thermal units per gallon instead of 115,400, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. So you have to burn more fuel to generate the same amount of energy. In addition, FFV engines are designed to run more efficiently on gasoline. E85 fuel economy could approach that of gasoline if manufacturers optimized engines for that fuel.

When we took our Tahoe to a state-certified emissions-test facility in Connecticut and had a standard emissions test performed, we found a significant decrease in smog-forming oxides of nitrogen when using E85. Ethanol, however, emits acetaldehyde, a probable carcinogen and something that standard emissions-testing equipment is not designed to measure.

How To Survive an EMP Attack

David Shenk looks at How To Survive an EMP Attack:

The nightmare scenario is this: A rogue nation like North Korea or a stateless terrorist like Bin Laden gets hold of a nuclear weapon and decides not to drive it into a large city but rather to launch it on a Scud-type missile straight into the atmosphere from a barge off the East Coast. With sufficient megatonnage and sufficient altitude, this single EMP attack could debilitate electrical and computer systems over half the United States, including the entire Eastern Seaboard. No one would be killed by the explosion itself, but tens of thousands could die quickly from electrical malfunctions in hospitals and elsewhere. And while no one can say for sure in advance, many think that the electrical grid could be disabled for months or even years. In an instant, the world's superpower could become a candle-powered 19th-century museum.

Don't try to compare this to an ordinary blackout, when an end is always in sight. You have to imagine a s t r e t c h b l a c k o u t—months or years. ATMs, computers, and cars would be parked indefinitely. Cash, bicycles, and bottled water would become the currency of the day. Bloggers would switch to pens and poster board. Families with emergency reserves of cash, food, water, medicine, etc. would be breathing a lot easier than the rest of us. Even when electricity returned, most hard drives would not: Only nonmagnetic backups (paper, CD-R, microfiche, etc.) and specially shielded hard drives would be sure to survive a massive EMP attack.

So, how to you prepare for such an attack?

Short of installing your own ethanol generator and shielding your entire house in lead, what can an individual do to prepare for an EMP or cyberattack? Less than you think. This is a case where we have to rely on the professional paranoids—the software wizards in anonymous Virginia and California office buildings who are devising defenses against all the clever electronic assaults they can imagine. Still, you can take a few precautions. Start with the same disaster kit you should already have handy for other emergencies: nonperishable food, water, flashlight, radio, batteries, medicine, cash (small bills), and so on. Now throw in a regular computer backup—ideally onto a nonmagnetic medium such as CD-R.

I'm not sure his advice is much help.

New Interview with Milton Friedman

Arnold Kling cites a passage from a New Interview with Milton Friedman:

But it's always been true that business is not a friend of a free market...

the real problem here is where do you find the support for free markets? If free markets weren't so damn efficient, they could never have survived because they have so many enemies and so few friends. People think of capitalism or free markets as something that obviously is supported by business. People think that if a business party is a party in politics, it will promote free market. But that's wrong. It will be in the self-interest of individual businesses to promote a tariff here and a tariff there, to promote the use of ethanol...

By the way, Milton Friedman is 94 years old.

The False Hope of Biofuels

In The False Hope of Biofuels, James Jordan and James Powell note that some studies show that "it takes more energy to make ethanol than one gets out of it":

But allowing a net positive energy output of 30,000 British thermal units (Btu) per gallon, it would still take four gallons of ethanol from corn to equal one gallon of gasoline. The United States has 73 million acres of corn cropland. At 350 gallons per acre, the entire U.S. corn crop would make 25.5 billion gallons, equivalent to about 6.3 billion gallons of gasoline. The United States consumes 170 billion gallons of gasoline and diesel fuel annually. Thus the entire U.S. corn crop would supply only 3.7 percent of our auto and truck transport demands. Using the entire 300 million acres of U.S. cropland for corn-based ethanol production would meet about 15 percent of the demand.

Ethanol Investing: Counterpoint

In Ethanol Investing: Counterpoint, Robert Rapier, a chemical engineer who has worked on alternative fuels, explains two common misconceptions about ethanol:

The first misconception is that ethanol has the potential to make us energy independent, or to displace significant amounts of foreign oil. The second is that Brazil’s energy independence “miracle” can be replicated in the U.S.

On the first point:

According to a 2002 USDA report on corn ethanol, “The Energy Balance of Corn Ethanol: An Update”, it takes 77,228 BTUs of fossil fuel inputs (natural gas, gasoline, and diesel) to produce 83,961 BTUs of ethanol. This gives a ratio of ethanol output/fossil fuel inputs of only 1.09.

On the second point:

The question then arises: “Just how much did widespread use of ethanol in Brazil contribute toward their energy independence?” The answer is: “Not much”. In 2005, Brazil produced 4.8 billion gallons of ethanol, or 114 million barrels. However, a barrel of ethanol contains approximately 3.5 million BTUs, and a barrel of oil contains approximately 6 million BTUs. Therefore, 114 million barrels of ethanol only displaced 67 million barrels of oil, around 10% of Brazil’s oil consumption. In other words, Brazil’s energy independence miracle was 10% ethanol and 90% domestic crude oil production. Brazil did not farm their way to energy independence.

Say It With Me: Supply and Demand

In Say It With Me: Supply and Demand, Charles Krauthammer descrbies "what the Bush search for price gougers and profiteers will find":

Demand is up. China has come from nowhere to pass Japan as the number No. 2 oil consumer in the world. China and India — between them home to eight times the U.S. population — are industrializing and gobbling huge amounts of energy.

American demand is up because we've lived in a fool's paradise since the mid-1980s. Until then, beginning with the oil shocks in 1973, Americans had changed appliances and cars and habits and achieved astonishing energy conservation. Energy use per dollar of gross domestic product was cut by 30 percent in little over a decade. Oil prices collapsed to about $10 a barrel.

Then amnesia set in, mile-per-gallon ratings disappeared from TV ads and we became "a country of a million Walter Mittys driving 75 mph in their gas-guzzling Bushwhack-Safari sport-utility roadsters with a moose head on the hood, a country whose crude oil production has dropped 32 percent in the last 25 years but which will not drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for fear of disturbing the mating habits of caribou."

I wrote that during the '96 witch hunt for price gougers. Nothing has changed. Except that since then, U.S. crude oil production has dropped an additional 12.3 percent. Which brings us to:

Supply is down. Start with supply disruptions in Nigeria, decreased production in Iraq, and the continuing loss of 5 percent of our national refining capacity because of damage from hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Add to that the mischief of idiotic new regulations. Last year's energy bill mandates arbitrary increases in blended ethanol use that so exceed current ethanol production that it is causing gasoline shortages and therefore huge price spikes.

Why don't we import the missing ethanol? Brazil makes a ton of it, and very cheaply. Answer: the Iowa caucuses. Iowa grows corn and chooses presidents. So we have a ridiculously high 54-cent ethanol tariff and ethanol shortages.

Another regulation requires specific ("boutique") gasoline blends for different cities depending on their air quality. Nice idea. But it introduces debilitating rigidities into the gasoline supply system. If Los Angeles runs short, you cannot just move supply in from Denver. You get shortages and more price spikes.

And don't get me started on the missing supply of might-have-been American crude. Arctic and outer continental shelf oil that the politicians kill year after year would have provided us by now with a critical and totally secure supply cushion in times of tight markets.

The Once and Future Carbohydrate Economy

David Morris describes The Once and Future Carbohydrate Economy — which has struggled of late against the hydrocarbon economy:

Less than 200 years ago, industrializing societies were carbohydrate economies. In 1820, Americans used two tons of vegetables for every one ton of minerals. Plants were the primary raw material in the production of dyes, chemicals, paints, inks, solvents, construction materials, even energy.

For the next 125 years, hydrocarbon and carbohydrate battled for industrial supremacy. Coal gases fueled the world’s first urban lighting systems. Coal tars ushered in the synthetic dyes industries. Cotton and wood pulp provided the world’s first plastics and synthetic textiles. In 1860, corn-derived ethanol was a best-selling industrial chemical, and as late as 1870, wood provided 70 percent of the nation’s energy.

The first plastic was a bioplastic. In the mid-19th century, a British billiard ball company determined that at the rate African elephants were being killed, the supply of ivory could soon be exhausted. The firm offered a handsome prize for a product with properties similar to ivory, yet derived from a more abundant raw material. Two New Jersey printers, John and Isaiah Hyatt, won the prize for a cotton-derived product dubbed collodion.

The history of fuel ethanol:

After World War I, car companies introduced high-compression engines. Existing fuels caused knocking, a result of uneven combustion. The industry feverishly sought an anti-knock additive. Ultimately, it narrowed the choice to two: ethanol or lead. Ethanol would require 10 percent of the gas tank. To achieve the same effect, lead needed less than 1 percent. The car companies, unsurprisingly, chose lead, and stuck to it even after outcries from the public health community about the effects of leaded gasoline.

Corn Dog

In Corn Dog, Robert Bryce explains why "The ethanol subsidy is worse than you can imagine":

The two scientists calculated all the fuel inputs for ethanol production—from the diesel fuel for the tractor planting the corn, to the fertilizer put in the field, to the energy needed at the processing plant—and found that ethanol is a net energy-loser. According to their calculations, ethanol contains about 76,000 BTUs per gallon, but producing that ethanol from corn takes about 98,000 BTUs. For comparison, a gallon of gasoline contains about 116,000 BTUs per gallon. But making that gallon of gas—from drilling the well, to transportation, through refining—requires around 22,000 BTUs.

In addition to their findings on corn, they determined that making ethanol from switch grass requires 50 percent more fossil energy than the ethanol yields, wood biomass 57 percent more, and sunflowers 118 percent more. The best yield comes from soybeans, but they, too, are a net loser, requiring 27 percent more fossil energy than the biodiesel fuel produced. In other words, more ethanol production will increase America's total energy consumption, not decrease it.

As he points out, "What frustrates critics is that there are sensible ways to reduce our motor-fuel use and bolster renewable energy—they just don't help the corn lobby."

Energy independence is a disaster in the making

Justin Fox says that energy independence is a disaster in the making:

But I'm a big believer that words count, and the words 'energy independence' are potentially disastrous ones.

To put it most starkly: We could have energy independence tomorrow if Congress simply slapped a huge tariff on energy imports (would $250 per barrel of oil do it?). Meanwhile, skyrocketing fuel prices would shift the economy into reverse, throw tens of millions of Americans out of work, and what oil and natural gas we have left under our territory would be rapidly depleted.

Yes, homegrown energy alternatives like wind, solar and ethanol would get a big boost. But the biggest boom would probably be in mining and burning coal — the dirtiest and least efficient of the hydrocarbons, but one the United States possesses in abundance. Meanwhile, the other energy-importing countries of the world would go their merry way, paying vastly lower prices for oil and natural gas and gaining a huge competitive advantage as a result.

Nobody's seriously proposing such drastic action, of course. But the scenario above ought to make clear that energy independence isn't really what we want. What we want is the most possible economic bang for our energy buck, plus freedom from the feeling that a handful of oil exporting countries hold our national interest in their hands.

Moonshine Alive, but Not Well, in Atlanta

I can hear the dueling banjos as I read this. From Moonshine Alive, but Not Well, in Atlanta:

"We were under the misconception that moonshine drinking was relatively rare these days, particularly in an urban area," Dr. Brent Morgan of the Georgia Poison Center, who led the study, said in a statement.

Morgan and colleagues started their survey after four adults showing up at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta had potentially fatal lead levels in their blood.

The patients, all of whom said they had recently drunk moonshine, had seizures, a hallmark of lead poisoning, abdominal pain, kidney problems, ulcers, and anemia.

Lead gets into moonshine when certain containers are used to make or store it. Car radiators were once notorious for producing poisonous brew.

"These four patients made us realize that perhaps lead exposure from moonshine was being overlooked in the emergency department," Morgan said.

His team surveyed 531 people in the Atlanta area, of whom 8.6 percent reported they had tasted moonshine within the past five years.

Might I recommend lead-free solder for assembling a still?