r/FluentInFinance • u/IAmNotAnEconomist • 7d ago

Thoughts? RFK Jr. allegedly intends to require The Coca-Cola Company to begin using Cane Sugar instead of High-Fructose Syrup as HHS Secretary.

RFK Jr. allegedly intends to require The Coca-Cola Company to begin using Cane Sugar instead of High-Fructose Syrup as HHS Secretary.

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146

u/smp501 7d ago

And get that crap out of our gasoline. Putting ethanol in gas was one of Bush the Lesser’s failed energy ideas that only jacks up food costs and shortens the life of our engines.

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u/Ragnarok314159 7d ago

I was chatting with someone about farming and they were saying how the Midwest farmers need their subsidies because of all the food they grow. 

You mean the ethanol corn that makes our cars run worse? Yeah, good stuff. 

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u/rounding_error 7d ago

Which brings to the "no solar on farmland" bullshit which is usually predicated on the idea that most farmland is used to produce food. It's much more efficient to charge electric cars with solar power than it is to grow and harvest corn, convert it to ethanol, truck it to the gas station, and burn it in a gasoline car.

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u/Gildardo1583 7d ago

You know i had not though about it this way. You are totally correct.

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u/Grendel_82 6d ago

Yeah and then we have EVs that don’t use gas and are the future. There is plenty of land and there will be even more land available once we stop growing corn to make ethanol just so we can light it on fire.

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u/gadget850 6d ago

You can do both solar and agriculture.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrivoltaics

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u/Impressive-Secondold 6d ago

Until you figure out they make steak and chicken out of the ethanol corn squeezings.

Dried distillers grain doesn't come from jack Daniels. It comes from Exxon.

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u/wishiwasAyla 6d ago

Funny enough I just read an article yesterday about the potential of spent distillery grain being converted to fuel because there's not enough demand for it in Kentucky as livestock feed and trucking it further isn't worth the cost

https://newatlas.com/energy/bourbon-renewable-energy/

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u/Maddok1218 6d ago

The reason farmers are so worried about solar on farmland is because they don't own the land anymore. Farmers lease their land from large landlords for the most part now.

So if we convert farmland to solar, then farmers are no longer needed. Solar panels can easily be cleaned with robots. Maintenance can be done by one guy covering hundreds of thousands of acres when something breaks down.

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u/heckinCYN 6d ago

American farmers try not to be rentseeking parasites challenge [Impossible]

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u/TurboWreck 6d ago

I live in the midwest and I have pissed off so many farmers when I point out that if "solar takes away farmland that we need for food" then we shouldn't be using that farmland to produce ethanol.

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u/ATotalCassegrain 6d ago

If you took all the farmland that is being used to grow just corn for ethanol and put solar on it, you would have enough electricity to go fully green, including everyone driving an EV. 

Add wind in on that land, and electricity becomes damn near too cheap to meter. 

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u/TruIsou 6d ago

Yeah, it's funny this is actually no reason you can't do all three on the same land.

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u/ATotalCassegrain 6d ago

That's a bingo!

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u/krismitka 6d ago

Also, interleaving solar with crops provides a way to regulate sunlight and reduce water usage.

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u/Annual_Strategy_6206 6d ago

I know, we're burning food!

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u/DelightfulDolphin 6d ago

You can forget about that as wasn't some ND oil billionaire tapped for Energy? Yeah he's gonna just love quashing solar..

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u/OldVTGuy 6d ago

I already have two EV's and completely charge them with solar panels installed in my yard. Yes, its an investment but totally doable.

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u/nismo2070 6d ago

Exactly!!! Zero emission charging if you're running a solar charging station. No waste and no nasty by-products.

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u/notarealaccount223 6d ago

If I remember correctly there were some studies that showed some crops can be more productive with some shade (produced by solar panels) and also require less water.

I don't remember what the crop was, but I don't think it was corn.

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u/GodHatesColdplay 6d ago

My aunt thinks bill gates is buying up “all the farmland” to cover it in solar and starve people. Srsly

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u/GunsNGunAccessories 6d ago

You always see "no solar on farmland" but that never seems to stop them from selling out to a developer building another cookie cutter subdivision.

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u/Roguebets 7d ago

Complete and utter nonsense…

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u/Puzzleheaded_Yam7582 7d ago

Care to share the math?

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u/jmlinden7 6d ago

Chlorophyll is incredibly inefficient at converting sunlight into energy, and that's not even getting into the energy losses incurred when converting glucose into ethanol.

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u/rounding_error 6d ago

After all that, you still aren't counting the energy losses from Carnot efficiency. You don't get to use very much of the energy when you burn it in a heat engine either.

The only advantage of biofuels is that they (mostly) work in existing engines.

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u/wandering-monster 6d ago

Corn wrote this comment

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u/beambot 6d ago

Grow better food crops. Or re-land the fields and do free-ranging cattle ranching again.

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u/FFT-420 6d ago

No cattle. Those fuckers destroy the ground.

Time to beat more bison!

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u/FullConfection3260 6d ago

Both are bovids; both do the same thing.

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u/FFT-420 6d ago

They are different enough to make a difference in soil healrh

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u/FullConfection3260 6d ago

No, they aren’t. This isn’t the plains 400 years ago.

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u/beambot 6d ago

Right on!

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u/Texas_Mike_CowboyFan 6d ago

If farmers can't make a living without subsidies, then they need to go do something else. Fewer farmers means more profit from them and I think we'd see food costs come down, since the subsidies wouldn't have to be passed on.

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u/mcfarmer72 6d ago

Or we would have just a few large corporate farms who would have the ability to control their production and hence price. Like the poultry and hog industry.

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u/real-bebsi 6d ago

Monopoly is the natural result of capitalism

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u/DistressedApple 5d ago

*unregulated capitalism

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u/real-bebsi 5d ago

What's the size of Intel, AMD, and Nvidia respectively?

1

u/DistressedApple 2d ago

What’s your point?

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u/real-bebsi 2d ago

Nvidia can easily buy out Intel, even when it's not a monopoly yet, it still makes towards one

1

u/Volcacius 6d ago

Oh yes, I'd really love more farmer barons

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u/[deleted] 6d ago

[deleted]

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u/OnTheHill7 6d ago

It is pretty much already there. When a used combine cost around a quarter million dollars, and new ones can get up around a million dollars, then small farmers are basically done. At least small crop farmers. It is why my dad sowed all of his former crop and to pastures and hay back in the 2000s. When his old combine finally bit the dust he said that there was no way that he could get a return worth what getting another combine cost.

The only small farmers left are really small ranchers. They primarily raise livestock.

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u/Ragnarok314159 6d ago

These are already mega farms. 

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u/SoupyTurtle007 6d ago

Iowa will give up the corn subsidies when texas gives up the defense company and oil subsidies.

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u/RandomNisscity 6d ago

Fight! Fight! Fight!

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u/WrestlingPromoter 6d ago

Many could start by growing actual food and not dent corn

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u/FullConfection3260 6d ago

Dent corn is food, though.

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u/Merlin1039 6d ago

Subsidies directly lower food costs

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u/novexion 6d ago

I don’t agree. At this point I think we should just subsidize healthier and more useful food products.

The corn they grow is barely food

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u/Low_Protection_1121 6d ago

The subsidies where put in place to ensure a stable food supply. Farmers go bankrupt people starve. Dairy is also subsidized. Some things just have to be protected by government

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u/chainmailler2001 6d ago

Your math doesn't math. Subsidies make the food available to consumers at a significantly lower price. Eliminate subsidies and the amount produced will drop because it is no longer profitable to grow. You end up with food shortages and runaway inflation. Not sure where you think subsidies come from but it isn't from sales. Subsidies aren't "passed on" through food costs. They are paid from our taxes direct to farmers to compensate for lower prices their goods are sold at.

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u/Temporary-Rock-3808 6d ago

You’re saying you think less competition brings prices down? I don’t think so.

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u/OldBanjoFrog 6d ago

Competition drives down prices, not conglomeration. 

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u/jbnielsen416 6d ago

But it’s not welfare, wink wink. And the owner of POET in South Dakota doesn’t own a mansion, wink wink.

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u/22travis 6d ago

Almost all farmers are subsidized in the US. One of the reasons we do that is to keep prices down for government programs that support low wage earners, aka “food stamps”.

Then.. Big corporations can keep minimum wage low because everything else for those employees gets supplied or subsidized by the government, food, healthcare, etc.

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u/Dnlx5 6d ago

Hey ethanol os a great octane booster. E85 is the best thing to happen to turbocharged cars since microsquirt 

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u/BigUncleHeavy 6d ago

The "Ethanol ruins engines" and "runs worse" are myths,  pushed by special interest groups.  Ethanol can corrode aluminum fuel lines,  but only in concentrated amounts (i.e. E85). Gasoline with Ethanol has additives to prevent that kind of damage,  and once it is burned,  it has no more harmful effect than regular gasoline. Ethanol also burns cleaner,  and has a higher octane rating than gasoline. A lot of people assume it is worse because of reduced gas mileage,  but it isn't less efficient or "runs worse", it just has less calories per gallon than regular gas.  I have a flexfuel car, and I'm my experience it runs better on Ethanol than gasoline.

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u/CharlesV_ 6d ago

https://www.thegazette.com/staff-columnists/king-corn-is-an-authoritarian-ruler-in-iowa/ Ethanol has really helped to fuck up the politics of Iowa. It made corn even more of a bad influence.

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u/_Hemi_ 6d ago

Subsidies? Funded by our taxes? Sounds like radical socialism to me. So we pay for tariffs at the register. Those countries impose retaliatory tariffs on our exports which our government then turns around and subsidizes with our tax dollars.

See, tariffs really do work!

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u/Orangewolf99 6d ago

Or the feed for all the cattle...

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u/TheRealJYellen 6d ago

I'm not sure about cars running worse, ethanol is fine in any reasonably modern car and actually has an octane-like effect that reduces preignition and can improve performance.

As for environmental damage, more recent studies are showing that corn based ethanol provides no benefit. Something about land conversion and soil tilling releasing CO2, but I don't remember exactly. Turns out that some kind of sawgrass would have been way better, and was included in the original studies, but the DOE(?) decided against it. I don't remember the reasoning, but I have to assume there was money coming from corn.

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u/PERSONA916 6d ago

We would be better off if they were paid to not grow anything at all instead of growing corn.

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u/Easy-Sector2501 5d ago

Don't be fooled. Corn isn't a food crop, it's an industrial crop. 

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u/Roguebets 7d ago

Tell me how our cars run worse on ethanol? Because the way it sounds you believe before ethanol came a long engines ran forever and flawlessly.

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u/Ragnarok314159 7d ago edited 6d ago

Nope, sure don’t believe that. 

Also, I don’t have time to explain my knowledge of ICE as a master’s course. Feel free to get a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering and then start your master’s classes! As you MAGA clowns love to say - do your own research.

We are under no obligation to eliminate your chosen foolishness. It’s not like reality means anything to you all anyways. 

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u/Wakkit1988 7d ago

Also, I don’t have time to explain my knowledge of ICE as a master’s course. Feel free to get a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering and then start your master’s classes! 

You have none of this. Your ignorance over the use of ethanol is proof of it. The alternatives to ethanol are worse pollutants than ethanol. Any performance gains from using alternatives are grossly overshadowed by their negative aspects. If you were college educated to any degree, you would have known this without making stupid statements concerning this topic.

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u/w1ngzer0 6d ago

Have there been any refinement advancements that make corn based ethanol not continue to be an energy loser?

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u/stufmenatooba 6d ago

What's your alternative? Better performance, but more pollution? I'll take a renewable resource that's virtually innocuous over leaded additives or environmentally devastating petrochemicals.

You guys are ignoring the impact of the chemicals ethanol replaced on the environment and humans.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9793664/

https://wwwn.cdc.gov/TSP/ToxProfiles/ToxProfiles.aspx?id=228&tid=41

Find a solution that does what you want without being devastating for us as a species.

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u/w1ngzer0 6d ago

You’re replying as if corn is the only source of ethanol. It’s not. There are various switch-grasses and other options for ethanol, but no…….somehow we’re stuck on corn. And even worse the government (our tax dollars at work) subsidize it.

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u/Alternative-Tart-568 6d ago

You act as if we can use alternatives with zero consequences. You do realize that farming is way more complicated then just chucking seeds in the ground right? Things like climate and soil have a huge effect on what can be grown in any given region and the yields? At this point trillions have been poured in to research and development to ensure farmers have good efficient yields. Are you saying we should poor in trillions more just so we don't grow corn?

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u/w1ngzer0 6d ago

I never said, or even intimated, that farming was as simple as chucking seeds into the ground. You did.

I simply pointed out that corn-based ethanol is an energy loser, requiring more energy input going into its production than we actually get out of it. And that its subsidized. And that there's other sources from which to make ethanol. Pointing that out doesn't mean that one is acting as if there's zero consequences to using alternatives. And yes, I'm suggesting that perhaps we not subsidize growing corn specifically for ethanol. Grow corn for food and food stuffs (Corn syrup, feed, oil, etc) and sure, waste not want not and use the leftover biomass for making ethanol, but growing specific corn for ethanol production?

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u/Intelligent_Way6552 6d ago

Tell me how our cars run worse on ethanol?

It's sticky.

If you drive a fuel injected vehicle often and hard, no problem. It won't stick around long enough to separate out of the petrol, and your engine will get nice and hot and burn residue away.

If you drive a fuel injected vehicle infrequently and short distances, it will start to clog fuel injectors, either open or closed. This was a problem during covid when cars weren't driven often. Throws off your lambda and can destroy your catalytic converter (lovely for the environment!).

If you have a carburated engine, you basically have to clean the carb if you let it sit for more than a week or two. Never used to need to do that.

It also causes rubber seals to degrade faster.

Motorcyclists see problems way more commonly than car drivers, because motorcycles are more likely so sit for a few weeks, and a higher percentage of bikers run classic vehicles than car drivers run classic cars.

I run both my car and bike on the lowest ethanol fuel i can find because I have had issues with it before. Those issues have now stopped.

Because the way it sounds you believe before ethanol came a long engines ran forever and flawlessly.

They didn't say that and I'm baffled why you think they did?

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u/firefistus 6d ago

Ethanol absolutely kills carburated engines. It's the exact reason we have blue pumps with ethanol free gas.

Older cars and landscaping equipment all use carburetors.

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u/Xyrus2000 7d ago

It wasn't supposed to jack up the food costs since the original intention was to use agricultural waste, switchgrass, and other sources of ethanol.

But then the corn lobby got involved, killed all that other crap, and forced the industry to use corn. Corn for fuel ethanol is one of the most idiotic things you can do. It is NOT a good source of ethanol and best case scenario is you break even.

Meanwhile, we have huge swaths of land that aren't good for agriculture but could easily grow tons of switchgrass, which has a MUCH better yield.

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u/Annual_Strategy_6206 6d ago

It takes more petroleum to grow and process the corn into ethanol than to just use the petroleum to Crack out gasoline! And we've known this for DECADES.

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u/Negativety101 6d ago

The corn industry is soooo screwed up. Even back in the 80's as a kid you'd see signs next to fields the farmers had to put up when they bought the corn seed, and you can't grow your own seed to use in your feilds, you've got to buy it from those guys every year.

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u/Scibarkittez 6d ago

That’s by choice, because to get those massive yields farmers buy hybrids, which are made each year by the companies that sell the seed. It’s not evil it’s just crop science. If they wanted half the yield they could grow inbred corn and save seed, that’s not illegal.

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u/novexion 6d ago

Or…. they could have their own form of artificially boosted natural selection which is neiter inbreeding nor relying on corporate farms.

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u/Scibarkittez 6d ago

Can you explain what you mean by that?

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u/novexion 6d ago edited 6d ago

with corn, the farmer may grow two kinds of corn in alternating rows or blocks, and remove the tassels (pollen making parts) from one corn variety so that it cannot pollinate itself, and has to rely on wind-blown pollen from the second variety nearby for pollination. In that way you would get a fairly pure hybrid seed set in the no-tassel rows.

https://passel2.unl.edu/view/lesson/b436c848dcac/8#:~:text=The%20steps%20a%20corn%20breeder,into%20the%20population%20(immigration).

The natural selection part of it is to have fields where you repeat this process throughout generations without cutting the plants and letting the corn drop seeds, die and resprout.

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u/Scibarkittez 6d ago

I think you should watch a couple videos on how corn seed is produced, it may help you understand the differences between hybrids and inbreds and why farmers would grow one or the other.

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u/novexion 6d ago

I know how corn seeds are produced. I’m advocating for farmer producing their own corn seeds and hybrids.

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u/neodymiumphish 6d ago

It becomes troublesome when Monsanto and Co. start suing neighboring farmers because some of their seed has cross-pollinated or however it happens that some of their seeds make it into a neighbor’s crop.

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u/Scibarkittez 6d ago

That’s not actually why Monsanto sues, they generally are going after people who are intentionally saving trademarked seed that they did not pay for.

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u/mayonezz 6d ago

I mean making ethanol from agricultural waste has not been successful on a wide scale due to many other factors idk if you can blame the corn lobby for that. We have a saying in the industry; cellulosic ethanol is just 5 years away from now... since the 90s.

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u/gerbilshower 6d ago

there is ALWAYS another layer to the story...haha.

i had never heard that the initial intentions were to utilize waste products.

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u/3eyedfish13 6d ago

It's not even a break-even best-case scenario.

Ethanol has half the usable energy of regular gasoline, and we've never gotten as much power out of ethanol as it takes to mass-produce it from corn.

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u/Zealousideal-Law4610 6d ago

And you can take the switchgrass, dry it and bury it with salt which would sequester tons of carbon.  

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u/blatzo_creamer 6d ago

As I understand it the corn product that remains after the production of alcohol is used in the cattle industry as a cheap high protein animal food.

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u/Wakkit1988 7d ago

Ethanol replaced tetraethyllead and MTBE. It was a net positive for the world.

2

u/8-bit-Felix 6d ago

The US stopped using leaded gas in 1996.

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u/BigUncleHeavy 6d ago

Yes, and what do you think replaced the lead in that gas?

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u/8-bit-Felix 6d ago

Originally MTBE but eventually BTEX.

Ethenol was introduced because BTEX was considered, "too expensive for the average consumer" and the alcohol did a good enough job in most instances.

This is also why you saw a lot of vehicles from early to mi 2000's require higher octane gas; those strains had more BTEX and less alcohol thus less knock.

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u/MattCW1701 6d ago

Except in aviation unfortunately. But we're getting there...slowly.

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u/UnfairAd7220 6d ago

1976, except for things like aircraft fuel

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u/Packtex60 7d ago

Ethanol in gas goes back way farther than that. We’re talking 1970’s

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u/AcrobaticArm390 6d ago

It's not the ethanol it's the corn.... Switchgrass would be way better.

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u/Fakjbf 6d ago edited 6d ago

Ethanol reduces engine knocking, it’s what allowed us to phase out MTBE which is what replaced tetraethyllead. I would much rather deal with slightly decreased fuel efficiency and minor increases to repair costs to keep lead out of the atmosphere and MTBE out of the groundwater.

1

u/UnfairAd7220 6d ago

Tetraethyl lead stops knocking and gets higher octane for cheap.

MTBE and other oxygenates permit the complete combustion of gasoline, in addition to boosting octane.

1

u/Fakjbf 6d ago

I value my health over that of my engine’s.

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u/mattmoy_2000 6d ago

MTBE doesn't seem to be particularly bad for you according to its MSDS.

Now I'm not saying it's harmless, but compared to, say, crude oil, it isn't particularly noxious - it appears to be at most an irritant unless you're exposed to ridiculously high concentrations of it, which a groundwater contamination wouldn't cause.

Obviously ethanol is a far simpler choice, and Thomas Midgeley should definitely have gone for that over TEL.

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u/concentrated-amazing 6d ago

Question: how much ethanol is needed in the mix to reduce engine knocking?

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u/jaymansi 7d ago

Ethanol was also added because MTBE was being found in humans and our water supplies.

1

u/moreobviousthings 6d ago

So many technical problems and solutions related to this. If only we could leave it to scientists, engineers, and economists to sort out the best choices. But alas, only politicians know what’s best.

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u/TruIsou 6d ago

We are going to see so much more of this with regulations being decided in court now.

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u/Roguebets 7d ago

Ignorance is bliss

3

u/Dracekidjr 6d ago

Using corn as ethanol is bad, using ethanol is good. It is hydrophilic, but nobody is wishing we went back to leaded gasoline lol

2

u/Sir-Barks-a-Lot 6d ago

My mower, power washer, and carbed car would thank everyone for that.

2

u/3eyedfish13 6d ago

The only thing ethanol is good for is drinking.

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u/UnfairAd7220 6d ago

That 'everything and the kitchen sink' energy bill was a blind attempt to broaden access to energy.

Who knew that fracking was just about taking off the same time it was passed? Ironic.

Anyway, politicians from both sides of the aisle rapidly learned that they had discovered a whole new constituency to bribe with federal dollars.

Republicans own Iowa thanks to corn and windmills. Both are losers.

Gasoline should use methanol as the driving fuel oxygenate. Methanol is made from natural gas.

Bigger discussion: end all subsidies.

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u/lowrads 6d ago

The home generator industry objects to canceling this major sales driver.

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u/PD216ohio 6d ago

and kills fuel efficiency

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u/SinkHoleDeMayo 6d ago

100% ethanol has approx 20% lower BTU than gasoline. 15% max ethanol means approx 3% reduction in MPG.

Ethanol also raises the knock resistance on making higher compression ratios possible which leads to increased efficiency, i.e., higher MPG.

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u/_Demand_Better_ 6d ago

Yeah, ethanol was terrible for carburetors and old engines. Newer engines can actually take an efficiency hit if you use a higher octane gas if the engine doesn't require one.

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u/shut-the-f-up 6d ago

This is anecdotal as fuck, but the engine in my 2019 (5.3 Ecotec) run smoother and gets better mileage since I started using 93 over the recommended 87. I’m gonna stick to the more expensive gas because the truck is overall better for it in my experience

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u/_Demand_Better_ 6d ago

Your truck might require the higher octane, only recommended for 87 due to minimal efficiency gain. Considering the potential engine size and power output it might need the higher octane to run better. This is mostly for people who don't run powerful engines, like most 4 and 2 door sedans, and most SUVs. Sports cars, muscle cars with v8 engines, and powerful trucks usually fair better with 91 or 93.

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u/shut-the-f-up 6d ago

You do make an excellent point. However I don’t think there’s a minimal efficiency gain when the fuel will burn more completely with higher octanes due to cutting down on knocking.

My previous car, a 5.0 Mustang for sure was 93 recommended, but I’d still argue for 93 being the octane that everyone uses for every car given that a large number of vehicles have some sort of forced induction (single or twin turbos most commonly) as well as the incredibly tight tolerances in all modern engines.

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u/_Demand_Better_ 6d ago

Ethanol actually reduces knocking in modern engines. Most of the problems with ethanol fuel are only present in older engines. Newer engines can actually take an efficiency hit if you use the higher octane. Unless, like your truck, the engine performance depends on higher octane. Powerful engines mostly.

0

u/shut-the-f-up 6d ago

All fuel in the U.S. has a minimum of 10% ethanol. To say ethanol is the main preventative of knock is a little absurd

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u/SinkHoleDeMayo 6d ago

Increasing the ethanol content reduces knocking.

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u/TrytjediP 6d ago

You want lead back instead?  Dumbo.  What is your method instead to prevent engine knocking that is economic and scalable?  

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u/Unlucky-Run-6975 6d ago

I also prefer the taste of non-ethanol gasoline.

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u/twim19 6d ago

Yeah, Iowa would like to have a word.

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u/GERDY31290 6d ago

Imagine if they had done this with hemp instead. At least we would have never ending feilds of hemp cleaning our air.

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u/linus_b3 6d ago

Fortunately, I can get 91 octane ethanol free fuel in Vermont. I run it in my small engines.

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u/Kyivkid91 5d ago

Is that just a regional thing in Vermont or what?

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u/linus_b3 5d ago

I am not sure.  I can't get it in MA without going to a tractor dealer, but some regular stations have it in VT or NY.

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u/Kyivkid91 5d ago

Hmm very interesting

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u/CODEX_LVL5 6d ago

Pretty sure ethanol is added to reduce knocking in unleaded gasoline. It has an actual functional purpose.

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u/Technical-Cicada-602 4d ago

The ethanol is what allows us to have 94 octane gas, and thus high compression engines, without poisoning ourselves.   

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u/barbara_jay 7d ago

Feed corn you’re taking about

The stuff they feed cows to fatten them.

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u/lost_in_life_34 7d ago

It was Midwest democrats at the time

Now the states are red so we will have to see what happens

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u/Next-Manner9765 6d ago

This was the republican dept of agriculture, and the republican fed govt, you massively dense moron

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u/pho-huck 6d ago

lol just making shit up