New York Times Editors Write A Mean Nasty Rotten Cruel Editorial Criticizing Biofuels.

[NNadir]

Some people - not me of course - think that the main reason that renewable energy is popular is that its trivial. These people contend that once a form of energy becomes large, it's external costs - the environmental and health and social consequences become more apparent and are open to criticism.

It was this way, as it happens, with nuclear energy, which is the most horribilistic, rottenalaciousness, form of energy there is, especially because every single man, woman and child in Europe was killed by Chernobyl - which was the greatest disaster of all time - even worse than World War II, World War I, the Crimean War and the War of the Roses combined. Basically everyone in Europe will die after Chernobyl.

Believe it or not, many people were enthusiastic about nuclear energy and were disappointed that nuclear energy proved not to be perfectalicious, just like Jesus.

Now we have the New York Times - famous for the great mushroom cloud scare during which a reporter took dictation from Scooter Libby to report the "news fit to print" saying (gasp) bad things about the greatandacious, prefectiousnessly, greatious form of energy there ever was, biofuels, that will allow us to make the planet safe for our cars.

The world’s food situation is bleak, and shortsighted policies in the United States and other wealthy countries — which are diverting crops to environmentally dubious biofuels — bear much of the blame.

According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the price of wheat is more than 80 percent higher than a year ago According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the price of wheat is more than 80 percent higher than a year ago, and corn prices are up by a quarter. Global cereal stocks have fallen to their lowest level since 1982.

As usual, the brunt is falling disproportionately on the poor. The F.A.O. estimates that the cereal import bill of the neediest countries will increase by a third for the second year in a row. Prices have gone so high that the World Food Program, which aims to feed 73 million people this year, said it might have to reduce rations...

...Yet the most important reason for the price shock is the rich world’s subsidized appetite for biofuels. In the United States, 14 percent of the corn crop was used to produce ethanol in 2006 — a share expected to reach 30 percent by 2010...

...The benefits of this strategy are dubious. A study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development suggested that — absent new technologies — the United States, Canada and the European Union would require between 30 percent and 70 percent of their current crop area if they were to replace 10 percent of their transport fuel consumption with biofuels. And two recent studies suggested that a large-scale effort across the world to grow crops for biofuels would add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere rather than reduce it.

How dare they deprioritize starving gas tanks?

Shame on them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/opinion/03mon1.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

[pocoloco]

1. Price of wheat?

1102.40 cents per bushel

[speedbird]

2. 18.4 cents per pound ....

does not seem unreasonable