At last, it's about time, those who years-ago told, and wrote, the truth about Ethanol-from-corn's net energy production are finely being given their due. The broad scientific community has always realized it was an idiotic idea. (I suppose this explains why it was championed by the Bush administration.) We understand, of course, why the midwest Senators pushed it. They are not idiots, rather they were doing the best they could for their constituents. I don't blame them for that.
At present this ethanol from corn thing seems to have a rather limited lifespan -- let's hope so.
The idea of using Ethanol is not bad in itself, and from sugar cane it seems to make energy sense (at least in Brazil) and we have a huge cane producer just a few miles from Key West (hint,hint!). And also Louisanna is a significant producer in the US, and there is Puerto Rico and all the other hot-humid nations at that latitude. It would take some time to make the switch from corn to cane. Then i suppose sugar prices will go through the roof.
In the meantime should we be going long refiners and shorting corn?
P.S. A "great" idea to float by the Bush administration just occurred to me-- we'll get Dick to whisper it into Bush's ear -- Let's bring shock and awe style democracy to Cuba by bombing them and taking over their cane fields! We'd need a pretext of course. But that's easy -- Maybe either the aluminum tube thing, or African Uranium reports could be recycled. We've got the perfect prime contractor in ADM to move in after the smoke clears -- that is assuming Dick's family already has enough ADM stock to make it really worthwhile. What do you think guys? Is this a great idea, or what!
