NOVATOWNHALL

Recently I read an article on oil imports and domestic ethanol production that piqued my curiosity. The article appearing in Popular Mechanics, discussed the impact on U.S. oil imports by the increases in domestic ethanol production. What I found was that ethanol may not be providing sufficient energy dependence relief to justify what it is costing us.

According to the Renewable Fuels Association, 2007 ethanol production was 6.5 billion gallons, up from 4.8 in 2006. A barrel of crude oil, according to our DOE, yields 20 gallons of motor fuel. Looking at oil imports over this same period, 2007 U.S. oil imports were 4.9 billion barrels, down from 5.003 billion the previous year. Eureka ! Ethanol is working !

But is it ? The American Coalition for Ethanol puts it this way,”Ethanol comprises about 3.5% of total annual U.S. gasoline consumption “. The cost of this 3.5% savings is 23% of our national corn crop, and 13% of our soybean harvest. The GAO estimates that by 2012, 30% of our domestic corn crop will be used for ethanol production. What does this mean to us ? Higher food prices, we are all feeling this, and will continue to feel this for the foreseeable future. Yes, high fuel prices are an impact, but for me, I fill up my tank every 10-12 days. I have to fill up my family of four three times a day. Forget this ethanol experiment, roll these corn and soybean crops back into the food supply, rollback food prices, I will come out ahead, and very likely so will you.

Biofuels have been touted as the answer to climate change owing to the decreased CO2 emissions. This is true on the consumer end, but again, we are not being told the complete story. Ethanol proponents fail to factor in the environmental impact of production, and most importantly, clearing the land for corn production. Some studies have shown that clearing grassland can release 93 times the amount of greenhouse grasses saved by the fuel produced from the crops grown on that land.

A recent report published by P.J. Crutzen of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany, and colleagues concluded that environmental impact studies have underestimated the amount of nitrogen oxide, a greenhouse gas, released by the use of nitrogen fertilizers. If this study is correct, ethanol made from nitrogen fertilized corn will produce more greenhouse gas than the equivalent amount of gasoline.

“People are getting smarter. People are beginning to see that the damage ensuing from producing agrofuels by far outweighs any possible benefits,” says Tad W. Patzek, a professor of geoengineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and a prominent biofuels sceptic.

Yes, we need to be smarter, we need to declare this Iowa Experiment as a complete failure. We need to undo the methanol mandates of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, and we need to do it now.

“Rushing to turn food crops… into fuel for cars, without first examining the impact on global hunger, is a recipe for disaster,” the UN rapporteur on food said in his report to the UN General Assembly. “Agrofuel production is unacceptable if it brings greater hunger and water scarcity to the poor in developing countries,” the report says. The report concluded with calling for a five-year moratorium on biofuel production while new biofuel technology is under development.

This is one of those very rare occasions where I happen to agree with the U.N. .

If it says “Made in China” and includes fur, you might want to check your moral compass before purchasing.

Lest we go too far falling all over ourselves to welcome China into the first world, here’s a news item on the area where culture and economics intersect. Cheap ain’t always worth the price (and everything that PETA investigates is not misguided).

Not for the squeamish. Seriously.

Don’t click to read the rest unless you have a solid existential position vis a vis pure evil.

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Tom Mabe, we are not worthy ….

Dan posted the following comment under the post Words of the Sage:

One thing that we cannot overlook, in the rush to a global economy, we forget about our standard of living. Many feel that a global economy will not work in the absence of a more balanced global standard of living.

Will a global economy reduce the standard of living we have become accustomed ? We will know the answer to this experiment in due time.

I thought the concern wide-spread enough that it deserved a a full-blown post in response.

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[After you read the following, you can find more on this topic at this post, a week later]

This is what “blight” looks like from the house across the street, and this is how it is allowed to happen. (click on photos for larger images)

For all of you who don’t have firsthand familiarity with the illegal alien problem in Northern Virginia, let me share a true-life story which might help paint the picture of what has been happening here in Sterling for the past five to seven years. In sum, I believe segments of our government at every level are at war with the legal residents of our nation, an economic war conducted on behalf of powerful business interests, a war that most citizens don’t even realize has already been declared on them.

I am going to relate this tale about Sterling to demonstrate what has gone wrong at the micro level - because the macro-level issues have been so thoroughly politicized that most people who are not on the front lines can’t make heads or tails of the controversy. Facts about border security and what the federal government is or isn’t doing are remote and opaque. Facts about what is happening at the neighborhood level are much easier to grasp.

In most American communities, where the rubber hits the road on the illegal immigration problem lies in the actions of three local government functions: Public safety, business licensing and zoning enforcement. We have covered the first two in substantial depth on this blog over the years (check here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.) We’ve touched on zoning, but it is time to probe a little further.

When we turn over this particular log, as most Sterling residents know and which was amply testified to at the May 14 community meeting, the reality is not pretty. Both the Sheriff’s Office and the Zoning Administration division received abysmally low grades from local residents.

This was no major surprise to me.

From my personal experience with filing zoning violation complaints in Loudoun County for the past two-plus years, I believe the Zoning Administration division of the Department of Building and Development is worse than ineffective. From my vantage point, I believe this particular section of the county government is, like Robert Mugabe’s Ministry of Justice, “part of the problem.”

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Sorry for the bleg but I am desperate:

My (day job) company is considering a Web software purchase which is a content management system that runs on Microsoft Server, and I need to get some information on Web site hosting companies. There are many Web sites that tout themselves as “Web hosting review” sites but a tiny bit of digging reveals the vast majority are simply advertising outlets that reprint each company’s promotional literature.

There is a special place in Hell for the guy who started that trend, believe you me.

The very few sites that actually do seem to be trying to provide reviews or compilations of customer ratings are either really outdated or - judging by other “reviews” for software and such that I happen to know about - don’t seem to have much going on between the ears, so I am not taking their word for anything.

The basic specs for the potential host would be dedicated (co-located) server, very powerful machine to pull the gargantuan pile of ore which is Microsoft software, and MS SQL Server. Backups and such, obviously. If anyone knows of any place on the Web or elsewhere where there are actual reviews or test center results for any hosting companies, that info would be greatly appreciated.

This is the question the parents and community around St. James Catholic School in Falls Church are presently dealing with. There is a petition among local residents who want to stop the Hilton from developing this project.

Someone with an interest in the issue e-mailed me with the following:

The parents are concerned that with the development being built so close, during the initial construction phase, it’s going to be very loud and disruptive for the kids in class, and potentially there’s going to be a lot of dust and other stuff that could affect air quality in the immediate area.

On a long-term basis, they’re concerned about increased traffic around the school (with all the attendant risks to pedestrians), and the possibility of the hotel attracting prostitution and drugs.

Here are some recent news stories on the controversy:

Video 1 on St James Catholic School
Video 2 on St James Catholic School
Video 3 on St James Catholic School

More news stories and the petition at Too Conservative.

With all the recent news about how gosh darned exotic China really is, I don’t know that anyone needs further convincing, but here ya go anyway (cat lovers may not want to click on the link):

“When we went inside, we saw about 70 cats being kept in cages stacked one on top of the other in two tiny rooms.

“Disease spreads quickly among them and they die slowly in agony and distress. The government won’t even do the cats the kindness of giving them lethal injections when they become sick. They just wait for them to die.

“It is the abandoned pets that suffer the most and die the soonest. They relied so much on their owners that they can’t cope with the new environment…”

The killing of the six stray cats at the kindergarten - where staff at a Beijing cigarette factory leave their children - is the most striking illustration of the city-wide fear of cats.

A teacher at the nursery said: “We did it out of love for the children. We were worried the cats might harm them. These six cats had been hanging around the kindergarten looking for food.

“So three male teachers put out plates of tuna in cages for bait, trapped the cats and then beat them to death with sticks…”

You have to hand it to the Chinese that they so resolutely allow any tinch of humanitarian scruples to slide right off their backs.

And, frankly, who can blame them. When the powers that be decide “We need to get rid of a WHOLE BUNCH of cats before the Olympics,” (5 months away), if you quibble over logistics you might never get anything accomplished. You could easily end up with animal lovers hemming and hawing about animal rights and basic human decency until the whole program is nibbled to death by ducks.

The fact that the round up will be accomplished in a fashion that most civilized societies would view as, well, harsh, is not going to interfere with the round up actually occurring. In China, they get things done.