Fun With Statistics, Fad Edition

In this edition of Fun With Statistics, we ask you to be careful of fads, especially those driven by popular passion.  We all want to be environmentally sensitive; it's simply a good thing to do.  Whether or not you agree that global warming is caused by humans, reducing pollutants and green house gases is still a noble objective.  Didn't Greenland really used to be green?  Hmm...

But how about ethanol fuel and bamboo products?  Ethanol is touted as a great replacement for petroleum-based fuel, although as we pointed out last December there is still a debate whether it is a net positive or negative from an energy output standpoint when processing energy is taken into account.  Now some people are wondering about how ethanol production will affect global warming.

A study published in the latest issue of Science finds that corn-based ethanol, a type of biofuel pushed heavily in the U.S., will nearly double the output of greenhouse-gas emissions instead of reducing them by about one-fifth by some estimates. A separate paper in Science concludes that clearing native habitats to grow crops for biofuel generally will lead to more carbon emissions.

That's on top of some of the other indirect effects.

The findings are the latest to take aim at biofuels, which have already been blamed for pushing up prices of corn and other food crops, as well as straining water supplies.

Have you noticed how popular bamboo products are?  On the surface there's a good reason.  Take bamboo t-shirts for example.

Bamboo naturally grows at a fast rate even when you don't place any fertilization, chemicals or pesticides on them. This means that there is always an ample amount of bamboo available to make the shirts. Another great thing about these are that they are antibacterial because of properties in the plant. They are also antifungal and do not hold sweat as other cotton t-shirts can. This means that you won't have to wash it as much as a cotton shirts which saves on energy.

But, as you probably suspected, there is another side of the story.  A side that isn't exactly eco-friendly.

The not so eco-friendly part and the biggest part is in the way that they are made. The t-shirts are made using the bamboo but the process is highly pollutant and harmful to the workers manufacturing the shirts. They use a hydrolysis alkalization process to soak the bamboo leaves and shoots in sodium hydroxide and carbon disulfide. It is then placed in a bleaching solution in which it goes through many phases before it is complete. All of these chemicals give off a harmful vapor that could result in health problems for the individuals working.

That doesn't sound all that great.  Bottom line: dig into a manufacturing or business fad.  Is the popularly-accepted benefit based on reality?  All reality?

Comments

[Chris]

Another problem with the ethanol fad is the food for fuel issue (ditto for bio-diesel). Much like your analogy of exerting pressure on the ballon(somethings got to give somewhere, but you don't know exactly where it will poke out on the other side). Well, the ballon is starting to poke out in the form of higher food prices. Think about how many food products are made with corn. Just about every food product that is sweet (think high fructose corn syrup), uses corn oil or corn starch is now in direct competition with ethanol fuel for their raw material . As for now, it is good business for farmers to grow corn for fuel, supported by the subsidies and increased demand for ethanol production. It will be interesting to see how the consumer reacts when they realize that using an energy source that is more expensive, less effecient(at least for now), and may or may not be better for the environment for their transportation needs is also literally driving up the cost of putting food on the table. I hope this is a fad, as all good fads come to an end. I guess the market will eventually decide the fate of this issue, I just wonder how long it will take.

[Karen Wilhelm]

Speaking of statistics and ethanol: The State Science & Technology Institute newsletter reports (http://www.ssti.org/Digest/latesttext.htm#Iowa)
Iowa Researcher Finds Limits to the Economic Impact of Ethanol
A new report by Iowa State University economist David Swenson, however, argues that even if these programs are successful at building a strong ethanol industry, the overall economic impact of this success would be smaller than predicted.

Swenson argues that many projections of the economic impact of corn ethanol suffer from improper input-output modeling and frequently overestimate the number of jobs that could be created by the industry.

Once an ethanol plant is finished, it rarely requires many workers. A 50 million-gallons-per-year (MGY) ethanol plant requires only 35 direct workers, while the more intensive 100 MGY plants still only require 46 employees. In addition, the number of full-time employees required for these plants is expected to decline as the technology becomes more advanced.

Some of the other most frequent errors made in modeling the impact of ethanol pointed out by Swenson include:

* Corn Production – Models often include the corn grown for ethanol as a new activity. In most cases, this corn is already being produced. In cases in which new corn would have to be grown, that land would have previously been used to produce other crops.
* Transportation – Many models include new jobs in transportation and trucking, under the assumption that ethanol plants will need new supply lines. Farmers, however, already use trucking companies to move their corn. In fact, by building local ethanol plants, the state may even see a reduction in the demand for transport services.
* Regional Offsets – Other industries that compete for many of the same input resources, such as hog and poultry producers, will have to pay more for resources and services. Also, the cost of corn-based feeds will increase for these industries.

The Economic Impact of Ethanol Production in Iowa is available at: http://ideas.repec.org/p/isu/genres/12865.html