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Buy Feed Corn: They're about to stop making it…

Commodities / Ethanol Jul 25, 2007 - 08:51 AM GMT

By: F_William_Engdahl

Commodities That bowl of Kellogg's Cornflakes on the breakfast table, or the portion of pasta or corn tortillas, cheese or meat on the table is going to rise in price over the coming months as sure as the sun rises in the East. Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the new world food price shock, conveniently timed to accompany our current world oil price shock.


Curiously it's ominously similar in many respects to the early 1970's when prices for oil and food both exploded by several hundred percent in a matter of months. That mid-1970's price explosion led President Nixon to ask his old pal, Arthur Burns, then Chairman of the Fed, to find a way to alter the CPI inflation data to take attention away from the rising prices. The result then was the now-commonplace publication of the absurd “core inflation” CPI numbers--sans oil and food. Stephen Roche was the young Fed economist who was assigned the statistical manipulation job by Burns.

The late American satirist, Mark Twain once quipped, “Buy land: They've stopped making it…” Today we can say almost the same about corn or all grains worldwide. The world is in the early months of the greatest sustained rise in grain prices, for all major grains including maize, wheat, rice that we have seen in three decades. Those three crops constitute almost 90% of all grains cultivated in the world.

Washington's calculated, absurd plan

What's driving this extraordinary change? Here things get pretty interesting. The Bush Administration is making a major public relations push to convince the world it has turned into a “better steward of the environment.” The problem is that many have fallen for the hype.

The center of his program, announced in his January State of the Union Address is called '20 in 10', cutting US gasoline use 20% by 2010. The official reason is to “reduce dependency on imported oil,” as well as cutting unwanted “greenhouse gas” emissions. That isn't the case, but it makes good PR. Repeat it often enough and maybe most people will believe it. Maybe they won't realize their taxpayer subsidies to grow ethanol corn instead of feed corn are also driving the price of their daily bread through the roof.

The heart of the plan is a huge, taxpayer subsidized expansion of use of bio-ethanol for transport fuel. The President's plan requires production of 35 billion gallons (about 133 billion liters) of ethanol a year by 2017. Congress already mandated with the Energy Policy Act of 2005 that corn ethanol for fuel must rise from 4 billion gallons in 2006 to 7.5 billion in 2012. To make certain it will happen, farmers and big agribusiness giants like ADM or David Rockefeller get generous taxpayer subsidies to grow corn for fuel instead of food. Currently ethanol producers get a subsidy in the US of 51 cents per gallon ethanol paid to the blender, usually an oil company that blends it with gasoline for sale.

As a result of the beautiful US Government subsidies to produce bio-ethanol fuels, and the new legislative mandate, the US refinery industry is investing big time in building new special ethanol distilleries, similar to oil refineries, except they produce ethanol fuel. The number currently under construction exceeds the total number of oil refineries built in the US over the past 25 years. When finished in the next 2-3 years the demand for corn and other grain to make ethanol for car fuel will double from present levels.

Not just USA bio-ethanol. In March Bush met with Brazil's President to sign a bilateral “Ethanol Pact” to cooperate in R&D of “next generation” bio-fuel technologies like cellulosic ethanol from wood, and joint cooperation in “stimulating” expansion of bio-fuels use in developing countries, e special ly in Central America, and creating a “bio-fuels OPEC-like” cartel market with rules that allows formation of a Western Hemisphere ethanol market.

In short, the use of farmland worldwide for bio-ethanol and other bio-fuels—burning the food product rather than using it for human or animal food—is being treated in Washington , Brazil and other major centers, including the EU, as a major new growth industry.

Phony green arguments

Bio-fuel—gasoline or fuel produced from refining food products—is being hyped as a solution to the controversial Global Warming problem. Leaving aside the faked science and the political interests behind the sudden hype about dangers of global warming, bio-fuels offer no net positive benefits over oil even under best conditions. Its advocates claim that present first generation bio-fuels “save up to 60% of carbon emission.” As well, amid rising oil prices at $75 per barrel for Brent marker grades, governments such as Brazil 's are frantic to substitute homegrown bio-fuels for imported gasoline. In Brazil today 70% of all cars have “flexi-fuel” engines able to switch from conventional gasoline to 100% bio-fuel or any mix. Bio-fuel production has become one of Brazil 's major export industries as well.

The green claims for bio-fuel as a friendly and better fuel than gasoline are at best dubious, if not outright fraudulent. Depending on who runs the tests, ethanol has little if any effect on exhaust-pipe emissions in current car models. It has significant emission, however, of some toxins including formaldehyde and acetaldehyde, a suspected neurotoxin which has been banned as carcinogenic in California .

Ethanol is not some benign substance as we are led to think from the industry propaganda. It is highly corrosive to pipelines as well as to seals and fuel systems of existing car or other gasoline engines. It requires special new gas pumps. All that conversion costs money.

But the killer-diller about ethanol is that it holds at least 30% less energy per gallon than normal gasoline, translating into a loss in fuel economy per gallon of at least 25% over gasoline for an Ethanol E-85% blend. No advocate of the ethanol boondoggle addresses the huge social cost which is beginning to hit the dining room tables across the US , Europe and the rest of the world. Food prices are exploding as corn, soybeans and all cereal grain prices are going through the roof because of the astronomical—Congress-driven—demand for corn to burn for bio-fuel.

This year the Massachusetts Institute of Technology issued a report concluding that using corn-based ethanol instead of gasoline will have no impact on greenhouse gas emissions, and would even expand fossil fuel use due to increased demand for fertilizer and irrigation to expand acreage of ethanol crops. And according to MIT “natural gas consumption is 66% of total corn ethanol production energy,” meaning huge new strains on natural gas supply, pushing prices there higher.

The idea that the world can “grow” out of oil dependency with bio-fuels is the PR hype being used to sell what is shaping up to be the mist dangerous threat to the planet's food supply since creation of patented genetically manipulated corn and crops.

US farms become bio-fuel factories

The main reason US and world grain prices are soaring in the past two years and now pre-programmed to continue rising at a major pace, is the conversion of US farmland to become de facto bio-fuel factories. In 2006 US farmland devoted to bio-fuel crops increased by 48%. None of that land was replaced for food crop cultivation. The tax subsidies make it far too profitable to produce ethanol fuel.

Since 2001 the amount of maize used to produce bio-ethanol in the USA has risen 300%, trend increasing going forward. In fact, in 2006 US maize or corn crops for bio-fuel equaled the tonnage of corn used for export. In 2007 it is estimated it will exceed the corn for export by a hefty amount. The US is the world's leading corn exporter, most going for animal feed to EU and other countries. The traditional USDA statistics on acreage planted to corn is no longer a useful metric of food prices as all marginal acreage is going for bio-fuel growing. The amount available for animal and human feed is actually declining.

Brazil and China are similarly switching from food to bio-fuels with large swatches of land.

A result of the bio-fuel revolution in agriculture is that world carryover or reserve stocks of grains have been plunging for six of the past seven years. Carryover reserve stocks of all grains fell at the end of 2006 to 57 days of consumption, the lowest level since 1972. Little wonder that world grain prices rose 100% over the past 12 months. This is just the start.

That decline in grain reserves, the measure of food security in event of drought or harvest failure—an increasingly common event in recent years—is pre-programmed to continue going as far ahead as the eye can see. Assuming modest world population increase annually of some 70 million people over the coming decade, e special ly in the Indian subcontinent and Africa, the stagnation or even decline in the tonnages of feed corn or other feed grains including rice that is harvested annually as growing amounts of bio-ethanol and other bio-fuels displaces food grain, in fact means we are just getting started on the greatest transformation of global agriculture since the introduction of the agribusiness revolution with fertilizers and mechanized farming after World War II. The difference is that this revolution is at the expense of food production. That preprograms exploding global grain prices, increased poverty and malnutrition. And the effect on gasoline import demand will be minimal.

Prof. M.A. Altieri of Berkeley University estimates that dedicating all USA corn and soybean production acreage to bio-fuels would only meet 12% of gasoline and 6% of diesel needs. He notes that though one-fifth of last year's corn harvest went to bio-ethanol, it met a mere 3% of energy needs. But the farmland is converting at a record pace. In 2006 more than 50% of Iowa and South Dakota corn went to ethanol refineries. Farmers across the Midwest , desperate for more income after years of depressed corn prices, are abandoning traditional crop rotation to grow exclusively soybeans or corn with dramatic added impact on soil erosion and needs for added chemical pesticides. In the US some 41% of all herbicides used are already applied to corn. Monsanto and other makers of glyphosate herbicides like Roundup are clearly smiling on the way to the bank.

Going global with bio-fuels

The Bush-Lula pact is just the start of a growing global rush to plant crops for bio-fuel. Huge sugarcane, palm oil and soy plantations for bio-fuel refining are taking over forests and grasslands in Brazil , Argentina , Colombia , Ecuador and Paraguay . Soy cultivation has already caused the deforestation of 21 million hectares in Brazil and 14 million ha in Argentina , with no end in sight, as world grain prices continue to rise. Soya is used for bio-diesel fuel.

China , desperate for energy sources, is a major player in bio-fuel cultivation, reducing food crop acreage there as well. In the EU most bio-diesel fuel is produced using rapeseed plants, a popular animal feed. The result? Meat prices around the globe are rising and set to continue rising as far ahead as the eye can see. The EU has a target requiring minimum bio-fuel content of 10%, a foolish demand that will set aside 18% of EU farmland to cultivate crops to be burned as bio-fuel.

Big oil is also driving the bio-fuels bandwagon. Prof. David Pimentel of Cornell University and other scientists claim that net energy output from bio-ethanol fuel is less than the fossil fuel energy used to produce the ethanol. Measuring all energy inputs to produce ethanol from production of nitrogen fertilizer to energy needed to clean the considerable waste from bio-fuel refineries, Pimintel's research showed a net energy loss of 22% for bio-fuel—they use more energy than they produce. That translates into little threat to oil demand and huge profit for clever oil giants that re-profile themselves as “green energy” producers.

So it's little wonder that ExxonMobil, Chevron and BP are all into bio-fuels. This past May, BP announced the largest ever R&D grant to a university, $500 million to the University of California-Berkeley to fund BP-dictated R&D into alternative energy including bio-fuels. Stanford's Global Climate and Energy Program got $100 million from ExxonMobil; University of California-Davis got $25 million from Chevron for its Bio-energy Research Group. Princeton University 's Carbon Mitigation Initiative takes $15 million from BP.

Lord Browne, the disgraced former CEO of BP declared in 2006, “The world needs new technologies to maintain adequate supplies of energy for the future. We believe bioscience can bring immense benefits to the energy sector.” The bio-fuel market is booming like few others today. This all is a paradise for global agribusiness industrial companies like Cargill, ADM and Monsanto, Syngenta.

All this, combined with severe weather problems in China , Australia , Ukraine and large parts of the EU growing areas this harvest season, guarantee that grain prices are set to explode further in coming months and years. Some are gleefully reporting the end of the era of “cheap food.” With disappearing food security reserves and disappearing acreage going to plant corn and grains for food, the bio-fuel transformation will impact global food prices massively in coming years.

Another agenda behind Ethanol?

Uh Huh. The dramatic embrace of bio-fuels by the Bush Administration since 2005 has clearly been the global driver for soaring grain and food prices in the past 18 months. The evidence suggests this is no accident of sloppy legislative preparation. The US Government has been researching and developing bio-fuels since the 1970's. The bio-ethanol architects did their homework we can be assured. It's increasingly clear that the same people who brought us oil price inflation are now deliberately creating parallel food price inflation. We have had a rise in average oil prices of some 300% since the end of 2000 when George W. Bush and Dick Halliburton Cheney made oil the central preoccupation of US foreign policy.

Last year, as bio-ethanol production first became a major market factor, corn prices rose by some 130% on the Chicago in 14 months. It was more than known when Congress and the Bush Administration made their heavy push for bio-ethanol in 2005 that world grain reserves had been declining at alarming levels for several years at a time when global demand, driven e special ly by growing wealth And increasing meat consumption in China, was rising.

As a result of the diversion of record acreages of US and Brazilian corn and soybeans to bio-fuel production, food reserves are literally disappearing. Global food security, according to FAO data, is at its lowest since 1972. Curiously that was just the time that Henry Kissinger and the Nixon Administration engineered, in cahoots with Cargill and ADM—the major backers of the ethanol scam today—what was called The Great Grain Robbery, sale of huge volumes of US grain to the Soviet Union in exchange for sales of record volumes of Russian oil to the West. Both oil and corn prices rose by 1975 some 300-400% as a result. Just how that worked, I treated in detail in A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics.

Today a new element has replaced USSR grain demand and harvest shortfalls. Bio-fuel demand, fed by US government subsidies is literally linking food prices to oil prices. The scale of the subsidized bio-fuel consumption has exploded so dramatically since the beginning of 2006 when the US Energy Policy Act of 2005 first began to impact crop planting decisions, not only in the USA, that there is emerging a de facto competition between people and cars for the same grains. Lester Brown recently noted, “We're looking at competition in the global market between 800 million automobiles and the world's two billion poorest people for the same commodity, the same grains. We are now in a new economic era where oil and food are interchangeable commodities because we can convert grain, sugar cane, soybeans—anything—into fuel for cars. In effect the price of oil is beginning to set the price of food.”

In the mid-1970's Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a protégé of the Rockefeller family and of its institutions stated, “Control the oil and you control entire nations; control the food and you control the people.” The same cast of characters who brought the world the Iraq war, the global scramble to control oil, who brought us patented genetically manipulated seeds and now Terminator suicide seeds, and who cry about the “problem of world over-population,” are now backing conversion of global grain production to burn as fuel at a time of declining global grain reserves. That alone should give pause for thought. As the popular saying goes, “Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.”

By F. William Engdahl
www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net

COPYRIGHT © 2007 F. William Engdahl. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

* F. William Engdahl is author of the book, Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation , about to be released by Global Research Publishing, and author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order , Pluto Press. He may be reached via his website, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net .

F. William Engdahl Archive

© 2005-2022 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.


Comments

Editors, Food and Fuel America
25 Jul 07, 09:26
Don't Blame Corn/Ethanol

The energy balance for ethanol has been proven to be positive. The overwhelming scientific evidence supports it. Check it out at http://www.eere.energy.gov/afdc/altfuel/eth_energy_bal.html

As for taking food away by using corn, Dried Distillers Grains (DDG) are a co-product of ethanol that allows the protein to be used for animal feed.

Food and Fuel America.com

http://www.foodandfuelamerica.com


Bill Kemperman
26 Jul 07, 16:46
Buy Feed Corn: They're about to stop making it…

Mr Engdahl

Excellent article . I don't believe in conspiracy theories, but I believe from FACTS most of what you shared . Does not have a happy ending . And we ,like lemmings, keep electing the very men that will bring it to pass . Sad . Ignorance will not be bliss when one works for food, fuel, and taxes alone . Then places of shelter , homes ,apartments will have to be rented , a sort of new surfdom emerging and us as the "slaves" of the rich . Whom will only get richer , while we work just to survive . Reminds me of a few science fiction movie scenarios.

Maybe those movie producers are not far off in their imaginations .

Thank you for your work in making us aware in these areas of Food and Oil

Best Regards

Bill K.


Mark W.
29 Jul 07, 14:12
energy alternatives for sustainability are there already

A far more useful energy choice solution would be either solar, wind, air engines, or water based engines.

There is no energy problem, and it can be solved without pollution, particularly for water engines in which the only waste it water once more. Air engines with no pollution or carbon either, obviously.

Some details below:

I would concur about the intention to force bio-fuel basis as a poor choice. I don't see the logic of despair because other choices are available in solar or wind power because these are based on the 'economics of abundance' from the sun and weather and are not tied down in such large scale frameworks. They are only tied into technological advance. For instance both solar and wind are getting more efficient all the while.

I'll address the wind and solar issues, first

I. Sun Power/Solar

Every year the sun pours down the equivalent of 1.5m barrels of oil of energy for every square kilometre, without pollution. The sun delivers more in one hour than the whole human race uses in the entire year. That's an economy of abundance instead of socially constructed scarcity based on very inefficient thermodynamics.

Estimates are it takes only 0.5% of the world's hot deserts ***with current technology*** called concentrated solar power (CSP) to provide the world's entire electricity needs. However, immediately after this article are three other technologies are are more efficient than that. Particularly interesting is a synthetic chlorophyll based solar.

Scientists say the global energy crisis can be solved by using the desert sun

Ashley Seager

Monday November 27, 2006

The Guardian

In the desert, just across the Mediterranean sea, is a vast source of energy that holds the promise of a carbon-free, nuclear-free electrical future for the whole of Europe, if not the world. We are not talking about the vast oil and gas deposits underneath Algeria and Libya, or uranium for nuclear plants, but something far simpler - the sun. And in vast quantities: every year it pours down the equivalent of 1.5m barrels of oil of energy for every square kilometre.

...

Two German scientists, Dr Gerhard Knies and Dr Franz Trieb, calculate that covering just 0.5% of the world's hot deserts with a technology called concentrated solar power (CSP) would provide the world's entire electricity needs, with the technology also providing desalinated water to desert regions as a valuable byproduct, as well as air conditioning for nearby cities.

rest at:

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1957692,00.html

However, after that came out, voila, technology improved once more to something like this. There are three novel technologies now that make solar even cheaper than coal/oil

http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2007/05/358874.shtml, and operatable in different climates.

1) Research scientists at Rice University have devised a new way to make solar panels out of quantum dots. They use cetyltrimethylammonium bromide instead of the standard alkylphosphonic acid compounds which makes the process safer and much cheaper.

More: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/05/070502143631.htm

2) Just two months ago researchers at a New Zealand University revealed a breakthrough in solar technology with the use of synthetic chlorophyll derived from the light-harvesting pigment plants use for photosynthesis. The green solar cells are more environmentally friendly than silicon-based cells as they are made from titanium dioxide - a plentiful, renewable and non-toxic white mineral obtained from New Zealand's [virtually free and plentiful] black sand. "The expected cost is one 10th of the price of a silicon-based solar panel, making them more attractive and accessible to home-owners." More: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070405171830.htm

3) A year ago researchers at a South African University devised a method of solar panel manufacturing using CIGS which is another substance that is cheaper and more efficient than silicon panels. ***This product is being manufactured at present and the company says the panels will be available this summer.*** More:

http://www.scienceinafrica.co.za/2004/november/energy.htm

also: link to www.int.iol.co.za

Company's website: http://www.ife-net.de/en/solar.php

In other words, solar is now more doable than ever and cheaper than oil/gas frameworks. The last one is already in production with a German manufacturer to put out "CIGS solar" right now.

II. Wind power, technology still improving rapidly, another economy of abundance waiting to be tapped

I don't trust Ausubel's figures or statement at a biofuel discussion in a UK-Guardian/Environment post, which was:

>> Another calculation revealed that to meet US energy demands for 2005 with wind power would require constant winds blowing onto wind farms covering more than 780,000 square kilometres of land, the area of Texas and Louisiana combined.

Particularly, since several years ago it was stated ONLY 5% OF KNOWN WIND SITES required to DOUBLE global energy capacity above current usage, and without pollution. It doesn't take scare tactics like Ausubel above. Wind power could generate enough electricity to support the world's energy needs several times over, according to map of global wind speeds--first of its kind. The map, compiled by researchers at Stanford University, shows wind speeds at more than 8,000 sites around the world. They found that at least 13% of those sites experience winds fast enough to power **current** wind turbines [and that is always improvable]. If turbines were set up in all these regions, they would generate 72 terawatts. ***That's more than five times world's current energy needs*** [Read that once more]...if only potentially doubled energy use is projected, then that means [only (13/5)x2] it takes ONLY 5.2% OF

THOSE SITES being used to double world energy capacities.

Merely 400 wind farms and you DOUBLE global energy capacity. That's hardly destroying anyone's countryside. That's 400 internationally. What really destroys the countryside is oil and gas, and biofuel corporate plantation dependencies.

full article from Wired News:

Map Reveals Wind Power Potential

By Amit Asaravala

02:00 AM May. 23, 2005 PT

Wind power could generate enough electricity to support the world's

energy needs several times over, according to a new map of global wind

speeds that scientists say is the first of its kind.

The map, compiled by researchers at Stanford University, shows wind

speeds at more than 8,000 sites around the world. The researchers found

that at least 13 percent of those sites experience winds fast enough to

power a modern wind turbine. If turbines were set up in all these

regions, they would generate 72 terawatts of electricity, according to

the researchers.

That's more than five times the world's energy needs, which was roughly

14 terawatts in 2002, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

The researchers readily admit that existing buildings, land rights and

other obstacles would make it impossible to set up turbines in every

single one of the identified regions. But they point out that even 20

percent of those sites could satisfy world energy consumption as it

stands today.

More importantly, the study shows that wind can be a feasible

alternative to fossil fuels, said study co-author Cristina Archer.

"There is really a lot of wind out there that can be utilized for

electricity generation," said Archer. "The 72-terawatt finding

quantifies how much wind power is available.... It's like when people

say how much oil is available on a global scale. It doesn't mean all of

it will be extracted."

If anything, the 72-terawatt figure is likely to be on the low side.

Most of the 8,199 wind-monitoring stations that contributed data to the

map are concentrated in highly developed nations. So the researchers had

to make broad and often conservative estimates for countries in Africa

and Asia, and for other regions.

"They are probably significantly underestimating the total potential,"

said Christopher Flavin, CEO of the Worldwatch Institute, an

environmental research firm.

For instance, Flavin pointed to China, which several environmental

organizations have identified as having great potential for wind power.

In contrast, the Stanford map shows only a few locations there having

the wind speeds necessary to power a wind turbine.

Of the regions that are well-marked by the map, North America and parts

of Northern Europe both have a high number of ideal spots for setting up

wind turbines. To date, Northern Europe -- and Denmark in particular --

has made the best use of that potential. Approximately 20 percent of

Denmark's energy consumption is fulfilled by wind power, according to

the Danish Wind Industry Association.

The United States, on the other hand, generates less than 1 percent of

its electricity with wind power.

Archer said it was "ironic and sad" that the United States wasn't doing

more, given the resources available.

"But it's not too late," she said. "We can still do it and I really hope

we do."

The authors' study is scheduled to appear in the Journal of Geophysical

Research -- Atmospheres later this month.

[Wired News]

To reiterate: North America and parts of Northern Europe have a high number of ideal spots for setting up wind turbines. Approximately 20% of Denmark's energy is wind power already. USA is the best place in world for wind turbines, though politically only generates 1% from wind. And if you don't think high politics is involved in this energy changeover and that the same scarcity-driven corporate monopolists are just planning on rolling over and dying, instead they just want to continue their regime by hook or crook. I suggest reading some of the following on this high politics of the energy changeover:

Edwin Black's latest book (which strangely leaves out the whole "California electric car crushing episode" of a few years back, as well as leaves out the issue of water based fuel engines that work; besides these MAJOR gatekeeping oversights on debate (which probably kept him alive), it's a good book.

Internal Combustion: How Corporations and Governments Addicted the World to Oil and Derailed the Alternatives by Edwin Black (Hardcover - Sep 5, 2006)

http://www.amazon.com

or read this:

Housman, Ellen. 2006. “Has the Non-Renewable Fuel Industry Hit the

Dimmer Switch on Solar?” Http://towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/886.

or this:

Wine, Byron. 2007. “Suppressed Gas Efficient Engines.”. In Energy

Information. Http://www.byronwine.com.

or this, the whole concern over biofuel ignores many factors that are already up and running that completely make 'biofuels' pointless:

III. Air Engines

However, if you still don't like solar or wind that's ok, there should be a multiplicy of solutions tailored to optimize particular area's

assets, instead of a one size fits all solution. And there are many choices.

The AIR CAR GOES INTO MASS PRODUCTION (via a Guy Negre's French corporation MDI (Motor Development International) allied with the Indian car manufacturer, Tata Motors. Air Car mass production started up February 2007, cars that run on compressed air, very efficient, no pollution, no real thermodynamics based dependencies either, very cheap to compress air, and it could be attached to a solar roof on the car even.)

AIR CAR, GOING INTO MASS PRODUCTION FROM FEBRUARY 2007

Here's an Air Car arrangement.

VIDEO: Frenchman Guy Negre's Air Car (additionally features an Australian rotary Wankel AIR engine, though only Negre's is going into mass production right now, 2007)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=QmqpGZv0YT4 (8:52)

Beyond Tomorrow 2005 more info: http://www.theaircar.com/

MDI (Motor Development International, Inc., located in Nice, France), on the show Beyond Tomorrow (2005). Supposedly, this program indicates they are starting to sell these commercially in 2006--in 2, 4, or 6 cylinder versions starting around $15,000.

Ideally, one tweak would be to put some solar power panels on the roof and an air compressor onboard, and the whole infrastructure of even having to stop to "refuel" (put in more compressed air) is unrequired.

Negre just signed mass production of the air car!

MDI signed an agreement with Tata Motors - NEW

An engine which uses air as fuel

Tata Motors and technology inventor, MDI of France, sign agreement

MUMBAI, 5th of February 2007

Tata Motors, in keeping with its role as the leading company in India for automotive R&D, has signed an agreement, in yet another exciting engineering and development effort, with MDI of France for application in India of MDI's path-breaking technology for engines powered by air.

The MDI Group is headed by Mr. Guy Negre, who founded the company in the 1990s in pursuit of his dream to pioneer an engine using just compressed air as fuel - which may be the ultimate environment-friendly engine yet. Besides, the engine is efficient, cost-effective, scalable, and capable of other applications like power generation.

The agreement between Tata Motors and MDI envisages Tata's supporting further development and refinement of the technology, and its application and licensing for India.

Commenting on the agreement, Mr. Guy Negre has said, "MDI has for many years been engaged in developing environment-friendly engines. MDI is happy to conclude this agreement with Tata Motors and work together with this important and experienced industrial group to develop a new and cost-saving technology for various applications for the Indian market that meets with severe regulations for environmental protection. We are continuing the development with our own business concept of licensing car manufacturers in other parts of the world where the production is located close to the markets. We have also developed this new technology

for other applications where cost competitiveness combined with respect for environmental questions has our priority."

- About MDI

MDI is a small, family-controlled company located at Carros, near Nice (Southern France) where Mr. Guy Negre and Mr. Cyril Nègre, together with their technical team, have developed a new engine technology with the purpose of economising energy and respect severe ecological requirements - at competitive costs.

- About Tata Motors

Tata Motors is India's largest automobile company, with revenues of US$ 5.5 billion in 2005-06. With over 4 million Tata vehicles plying in India, it is the leader in commercial vehicles and the second largest in passenger vehicles. It is also the world's fifth largest medium and heavy truck manufacturer and the second largest heavy bus manufacturer. Tata cars, buses and trucks are being marketed in several countries in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, and South East Asia and in Australia. Tata Motors and Fiat Auto have announced the formation of an industrial joint venture in India to manufacture passenger cars, engines and transmissions for the Indian and overseas markets. Tata Motors already distributes Fiat-branded cars in India. The company's international footprint include Tata Daewoo Commercial Vehicle Co. Ltd. in South Korea; Hispano Carrocera, a bus and coach manufacturer of Spain in which the company has a 21% stake; a joint venture with Marcopolo, the Brazil-based body-builder of buses and coaches; and a joint venture with Thonburi Automotive Assembly Plant Company of Thailand to manufacture and market pickup vehicles in Thailand. Tata Motors has research centres in India, the UK, and in its subsidiary and associate companies in South Korea and Spain.

http://www.theaircar.com/tata_agreement.html

YOU CAN CONTACT THEM AT THE WEBSITE TO LET THEM KNOW TO CONTACT YOU ABOUT MAKING YOU ONE, SO THEY CAN GAUGE THE MARKET.

VIDEO: CNN-India: Car that runs on air in India soon

http://youtube.com/watch?v=J_i3aMz7q1w (01:11)

http://www.ibnlive.com/news/car-that-runs-

on-air-in-india-soon/36806-11.html

IV. Water Engines

Denny Klein Water Car (Fox News, Florida, 2006); he demonstrated a working water fuel based engine to Congress in 2006; silence assuredly to follow... and "Rockefeller University" won't be covering it either, I bet in their calculations when 80% of the planet is basically free energy from water; many people have invented water based cars, not all of these people are still alive, and several have died violent or questionable deaths, and others are maintained as technological pariah's like the Phillipine inventor and his water based car version.

VIDEO: The next 'Stan Meyer', below. Fox News covered it of all organizations, in Florida. Denny Klein of Hydrogen Technologies,

with water car patents like Meyers actually goes to lackey Congress and demonstrated his water car to them all. Still silence:

Denny Klein of Hydrogen Technologies, Water Car & HHO water welding torch

Water Car http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wb8wIqECwGE

3 min - May 23, 2006 - (25 ratings)

A car that runs on water. I tried to e-mail the news people to get

when this ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wb8wIqECwGE (3 min)

In short, via that UK-Guardian piece, the politics of scarcity are attempting to convince you the world is still flat I would suggest.

There is a huge war on people's minds right now to keep them clientelistic to various technologies and solutions that aren't really

improvements and that keep the same power relations and power actors intact (see the Housman article above, where it's the oil companies that are sitting on the solar patents, for example). The air car, the water car, CIGS solar, and the ***tiny areas required for wind power or solar power that would easily DOUBLE current energy capacity*** (without pollution), certainly are challenging a lot of entrenched interests in the current 'raw material regimes' that make their money and political power from only forms of administered scarcity and centralized technological production that doesn't allow much material choices on the level of the consumer.

That is why Brazil's recent move to popularize the 'flex cars' are so interesting. Brazil already went independent of oil last year, it was reported. And sugar cane based ethanol has many times more 'kick' than the U.S.'s crony push toward corn ethanol replete with more subsidies to the corn industry than anything else to do with sustainability. Additionally, the U.S. slaps a huge tariff on protecting its non-efficient corn ethanol from the more efficient sugar based one from Brazil.

Though you should read Edwin Black's summary of this issue, not me. He talks about it in the book Internal Combustion, as well as concisely in this interview/talk about his book:

Author Edwin Black Launches Internal Combustion At Nova Southeast

University

40 min - Sep 13, 2006 -

New York Times Best-Selling Investigative Author reveals "How We Became

Addicted to Oil and How to Break the Addiction Right Now."

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2785279554152249422

Sustainability is doable. Though many entrenched interests have no interest in being sustainable or telling you about your current options. Many more current options is what http://commodityecology.blogspot.com/

and its 70+ lists of material option sets are about.


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