Look Before You Leap

Unfortunately, doomsayers don't bother with looking. They just leap. They are convinced they see disaster ahead and it justifies anything.

Here's Al Gore, after the fact, saying "oops! sorry". But you can't undo the wasted money, the food riots, and the many who died of starvation so that America could gas up on ethanol.

From a Reuters report. I've bolded the key bits:

Former U.S. vice-president Al Gore said support for corn-based ethanol in the United States was "not a good policy", weeks before tax credits are up for renewal.

U.S. blending tax breaks for ethanol make it profitable for refiners to use the fuel even when it is more expensive than gasoline. The credits are up for renewal on Dec. 31.

Total U.S. ethanol subsidies reached $7.7 billion last year according to the International Energy Industry, which said biofuels worldwide received more subsidies than any other form of renewable energy.

"It is not a good policy to have these massive subsidies for (U.S.) first generation ethanol," said Gore, speaking at a green energy business conference in Athens sponsored by Marfin Popular Bank.

"First generation ethanol I think was a mistake. The energy conversion ratios are at best very small.

"It's hard once such a programme is put in place to deal with the lobbies that keep it going."

He explained his own support for the original programme on his presidential ambitions.

...

U.S. ethanol is made by extracting sugar from corn, an energy-intensive process. The U.S. ethanol industry will consume about 41 percent of the U.S. corn crop this year, or 15 percent of the global corn crop, according to Goldman Sachs analysts.

A food-versus-fuel debate erupted in 2008, in the wake of record food prices, where the biofuel industry was criticised for helping stoke food prices.

Gore said a range of factors had contributed to that food price crisis, including drought in Australia, but said there was no doubt biofuels have an effect.

"The size, the percentage of corn particularly, which is now being (used for) first generation ethanol definitely has an impact on food prices.

Sadly Gore is a little too smart for his own good. He is smart enough to understand some things, but not smart enough to understand the need for real experts and to work carefully through expert opinion to find knowledge applicable to the world.

The global warming crowd has created many policies that are just plain bad. Rather than focus on getting the science right and understand what policies might be appropriate when, they decided to go with fear and panic and pushed policies based on a doomsday scenario which just isn't true.