Food corn is any corn or corn byproduct that is fed to animals. Humans are in the animal kingdom.
A corn based ingredient in a lot of foods is CORN SYRUP. It's found in a lot of our foods as a sweetener.
I would guess that the cost of corn syrup has increased over the last few years as compared to 5 years ago.
So humans eat a lot of corn products. When you eat your morning cereal you are eating a corn product as they use corn syrup to sweeten the cereal
Any food that's sweetened more than likely has corn syrup added into the mix.
And remember this. We feed corn to our cattle to help fatten them up. They don't get enough carbohydrates from grass so we have to feed them corn to get them ready for market. I took Animal Science at Purdue University during my Pre Veterinary Medicine training. I would never have taken Animal Science on my own but Veterinarians have to have this knowledge about the food that we feed our livestock.
So I know what the farmers feed to their live stock. Also being in an Agricultural Fraternity at Purdue I lived with 70 of the largest farm owners in the State and lived with several other Vet students in the frat house. I ate breakfast and dinner ever day with these guys and I learned a great deal about how farms work. AGR is the cream of the crop in Agriculture. Our frat brothers became the dean of agriculture at Purdue and one was the US Secretary of Agriculture for many years. Ever heard of Earl Butts? Rest in peace my friend.
Anyway you and I both eat a lot of beef, pork and chicken unless you belong to PETA and don't eat meat.All those animals are feed corn to help fatten them up for the market. So when the price of corn goes up the price of chicken feed goes up. The farmers cost goes up and they have to charge more for their products. The price of beef will rise as will the price of chicken.
Ethanol is made from the starch or carbohydrates found in the corn kernel not the oil. So if they take the oil out we still loose the starches to ethanol production and those are lost.
If you take all the oil and starches out of the corn kernel all you have left is the fiber and while that's good for some things it will not put meat on a cow or chicken. Only Carbs and protein will do that.
Now a cow has four chambers in it's rumen. So the bacteria inside the cow can break down some of that fiber and utilize it. But it's lost most of it's nutritional value in the fermentation process when it's made into Ethanol.
We would be better off using SWITCH Grass to make ethanol than using corn. Switch grass can be harvested two or three times a growing season and it can grow on less fertile lands.
Ethanol used in gas at a concentration of less than 10% is OK by me. But when you use E 85 then you are putting a lot more ethanol into the gas. 85% ethanol and 15% gasoline from fossil fuels.
Do you know how many atoms of oxygen are on the ethanol molecule? =oh added to the carbon chain makes it an alcohol.
The US Agricultural program of paying farmers to not use land is a good thing. Land has to rest. Also the land that's not tilled can be use by the wildlife. Quail and pheasants as well as rabbits can use this idle land to reproduce their numbers. By not tilling the grassy areas along the ditches and creeks we give wildlife a protective corridor to live in. And by leaving grassy areas and small woody scrubs along the edges of the ditches we prevent the lost of top soil. Erosion is lessened and that helps stop the silting in of the ditches, creeks and rivers. It slows down the eutrophication process as well.
I heard the CEO of the oil company say that it would take ten years. Now you are talking about drilling off the coast right? I want to make sure that we are on the same page here and comparing apples to apples. I am talking about ten years to drill offshore. I'll stand by my ten year statement and I guess we will just have to agree to disagree on this one. I guess it depends on who we talk to. I have heard the 10 year time period for many years now.
Anyway I guess congress could rewrite the entire Clean Air Act which BTW was first put into law under Richard Nixon's Administration. Nixon was in office when the USEPA became part of the Executive Branch of the Federal Government.
Drilling for more oil is not going to lower the gas prices. I read on a web site about a giant oil field that's in the Northern Part of the Midwest. There are suppose to be billions of barrels of oil in this area. Why don't we drill here in Kansas or South Dakota and use that oil?
The oil companies have permits to drill in 68 MILLION acres of US Ground and are not using the permitted land to drill. Why? 68 Million acres is a lot of ground to explore. Why would they not utilize all that land? Why did they seek the permits if they were not going to use it?
Are they hording the oil that they already have just to make the price of oil go higher?
It's not like this has not been done in the past with other commodities like Diamonds. Why do you think that diamond ring costs so much? It's only a rock? But the De Beers Diamond Company hoards their diamonds and keeps the supply of Diamond low. This makes the Price higher. It's the same business model that I think the Oil Companies are using. Then they can blame their lack of drilling on Congress.
Well Congress is telling them to drill it or lose it. I think that is a wise choice by our congress. Congress is calling their bluff. If they don't start drilling on the 68 million acres they already have permits for they will loose those permits and they will be sold to someone else that will really use them
Even if we find oil that will last us another 100 years or so what will we do when our consumption of oil grows even faster. China is growing and they have a huge population. India also has a huge human population and they too are growing more modern. All the world is using more cars and trucks and burning more and more oil. It won't take very long to use up the new oil
What I think we need to do is look at our long term future not just the short term future. We need to develop energy sources that won't run out.
We can put more research in to solar panels. Just the other night I was watching NOVA and they did a show on solar panels. They are using Nano technology to build better and more efficient solar panels. These have microscopic raised volcano shaped structures that are capped with gold and they capture more sunlight and convert that into more electricity. These new solar panels are 3 x more efficient that the older panels. If these could be put on the market and sold in volumes they could help provide the USA with more electricity to power our homes, cars and factories.
This electrical power could be used to spit the water molecule and make Oxygen and Hydrogen gas. These gases can be put into containers and shipped around the area.
Fuel cells can be use to make electricity to run our railroads,trucks, and passenger vehicles for 300 miles.
Honda Motor Company already has a fuel cell car in production and in use in California. They also have developed solar powered hydrogen fueling stations. Jamie Curtis (Actress from True Lies with Arnold Governor of California and actor) already has leased one of the new Honda Fuel Cell cars. She and a few other lucky folks will be driving around California and not using a drop of oil or gasoline to run her new fuel cell powered car.
The Military's of the world are now using Fuel Cell Technology to power their submarines. Submarines that are so quiet that even the US Navy can't find them in the ocean.
One Chinese fuel cell powered submarine surfaced in sight of the USS KITTY HAWK air craft carrier and our Navy didn't know it was there until it surfaced well within torpedo range of our Carrier. These new subs are a serious threat to our navy and our oil supply routes.
Germany almost cut off Britain from it's supplies during WWII. It the Germans has fuel cell powered Submarines that can travel 600 miles and stay under water for a month at a time they would have won WWII. Britain would have been isolated and the US troop transport ships would have been sunk before they ever delivered our troops and supplies to Britain.
The only reason we won the battle of the Atlantic was because the German Submarines ran on batteries and diesel engines that forced the subs to come to the surface at night to charge their batteries. This allowed our new radar to find the subs on the surface and to destroy them. But if the subs would have been able to stay under the water for 30 days the war outcome would have been much different. And I must throw in the ENIGMA coding machines and the fact that we captured one of these and were reading Hitlers messages to the wolfpaks. So we knew where they were and what they were ordered to do as soon as Hitlers Chief of the Sub fleet issued his orders to the wolfpaks.
My point is this. With Fuel Cell Technology the world won't need oil to drive our economy anymore. We can use the sunlight and fuel cells and to it a lot cheaper than using oil.
Bush's policy was to maintain the status quo for the last 8 years. He and Cheney are getting the last drops of money out of the oil industry before we switch to alternative and much cheaper energy resource that will be renewable energy.
The best thing about using fuel cells is that they use water to run and produce water as their byproduct. Fuel cells are the way to go.
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[QUOTE=roadrunner;333447]Moose what is food corn? Humans basically do not eat corn we feed it to livestock. When you produce ethanol you only lose a portion of the corn for feed stock. E]
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Re: Offshore drilling = lower prices? Maybe, maybe not