But, it does not matter, as oil junkies will pay just about anything to anyone with oil. Or do nasty things to anyone perceived to be in the way of that oil. Or better yet, have someone else do the dirty business. That was the point; sorry you missed it. Sort of like Bill Mahr's saying that "When you ride alone, you ride with Bin Laden". But maybe I should have used his phrase instead.

As to the GWOT-heads...they really DON'T want to end the fighting, they want it to go on and on...after all, it's not like their children and friends are getting trashed and killed and put through the wringer in Oil War 2 or 3 or 4...If someone came along and mysteriously "solved" the oil import problem (Quark drive for cars....?), they might well kill those who developed the oil replacement idea. After all, what would we need to steal Iraq's oil for? The GWOT-heads make too much money on the sub-contracts for the war effort, derive lots of campaign funds from the war efforts, and so far have found that the fears that can be spread are good for "bidness" and have allowed them to retain power far longer than would have otherwise been the case.

As for the corn chip prices....it just shows that the expense of food is really not in the production of the crop on the farm, or at the wholesale bulk price level. Those chips cost a huge chunk of money, and whether the
price of corn was 5, 10 or 25 c/lb, its only a tiny fraction of the delivered corn based product cost.  As to what would happen if corn became more valuable in 3rd and 4th world countries...would local farmers get any of that money, or would it be stolen from them? Would the transportation costs make it too expensive to get this to a country like the US which would convert it into EtOH and DDG's. Probably. Would they be able to grow their own country's food...more likely. In the 1998-2002 time period, the U.S. dumped huge amounts of supercheap corn into 3rd world countries, throwing massive numbers of farmers off of their farms. That was not good at all. Now our corn is not supercheap, and we no longer have the need to flood world markets with it.
Like I said, I doubt that foreign governments or wealthy philanthropists are going to set up long term corn buying arrangements with U.S. farmers, who could then finally worry about having a steady income. That would be novel. The somewhat expensive corn could then be sent to wherever it was directed...I just don't see that happening. Instead, every year is another year at the agri-roulette wheel. Otherwise, EtOH has actually had the positive effect of raising crop prices at the farm level by stimulating demand. Besides, most of the food value (protein, vitamins, fiber, oil, complex starches) is retained in the DDG by product. And that stuff tends to be cheaper than the corn.....

Nb41

Where I live in NY State, electric locomotives for freight were quite the rage once the problems of transmitting electricity were solved by Mr. Tesla, and his machines were mass produced by Westinghouse and others. Niagara Falls was then used to power a lot of railroads, as were many small coal fired plants. NY, and Western NY, had lots of electric freight and passenger lines, but these were ended by the 1950's with the widespread use of cheap diesel, as well as the general demise of railroads that corresponded to the rise of highways and cars and trucks. By the 1960's, most of the rail lines in this part of the country were bankrupt, or close to it.

It's not like this is new technology. If the word came down to electrify the major railroad freight lines, it would be done. There is no shortage of labor to do this, or wire to do this, just shortage of will to do it. Especially considering where diesel prices are headed in the next few years. That, and the right financial incentives that would allow trains to compete with subsidized trucks (essentially free of charge roadways).

As to gasoline efficiency, going from the pathetic 20 mpg to 40 mpg should be easy - these cars already exist. The average of ~ 20 mpg is due to so many driving ridiculous cars and trucks designed for power, or which weigh more than 2 tons (we used to call those "tuna boats", as in 2 tons of boat). That, or switch to a Harley, which gets 60 mpg. Or change the place of residence from that blot on the countryside to a place in a city, if commuting to a city is done every day.

Going from 40 mpg to 80 or 100 mpg will be more of a challenge, although the basic idea - electric cars or plug in hybrids - seems to be in place. Manufacturers could motivate if prodded sufficiently, or if self-motivated, but even on the edge of bankruptcy, due largely to the car makers love affair with SUckV's and big trucks and muscle cars, they still have not "gotten religion". We did not win (or at least, do our share of the effort against those nasty dictatorships in Japan, Germany and Italy) WW2 with the attitude currently displayed by our government-auto company complex. I guess it boils down to the fact that gasoline is still too cheap, even at close to 90 c/liter/$3.30 per gallon. That, and the the focus on short term profits at the expense of the bigger picture/longer range view.

Nb41

Regarding electric railroads, out here in the west it would be pretty expensive to string the wires, but perhaps it would be an acceptable cost compared to the ongoing maintenance required of highways.

I think that the real elephant in the living room is that there are simply too many people. We're living beyond Earth's carrying capacity, and arguing about ethanol cars versus electric locomotives is only an interesting distraction from the underlying problem.

The US surely is an advanced society, but finding efficiency improvements is easy: as the OP notes, just switch to the tech used in the rest of the advanced world. That will surely cost a lot of efforts, but if they could do it, you can too.

Now, of course anything that replaces any substantial component of the current oil-addicted transport system will be a massive undertaking.

Among the options, however, electrifying the main trunk freight rail lines can be done with the kind of money the US federal government normally deploys on transport infrastructure in a given year and with off the shelf technology.

A big portion of the freight locomotives built in the United States in a given year are electric traction ... they just generate their electricity on board rather than pulling it from the wires.

And once started, each oil price shock will accelerate the transition from freight diesel-electrics running under the wires to freight sparkies running under the wires.

There's nothing we can do that will transfer an equivalent amount of transport from crude oil to electric traction at a net energy savings that is any easier ... which makes it the easiest first step down a road we must travel in any event.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.