His whole argument appears to be begging the question. The only "facts" he points out is that oil will be scarce and cause chaos in 9 years. The article title sums it up nicely, for his purpose.

Ethanol has been proved by many to have differing amounts of energy costs. But using corn, some facts are unavoidable; it produces fuel, and it gives a byproduct of cattle feed.

The most realistic energy numbers indicate a 25% payoff using corn. Obviously if 4 out of 5 gallons of ethanol pay for the production that leaves 20% of ethanol produced is net production. Ethanol gets 75% of the mileage of regular gasoline. Which means it takes 1.33 gallons of ethanol to replace a gallon of gasoline. And it seems the average gallons worth of ethanol produced per acre is something close to 300 gallons. That would mean 60 gallons is net production. 60 gallons could replace 45 gallons of gasoline. With annual gasoline consumption at 117 billion gallons, that would mean it would take 146 billion gallons of ethanol. Which means we need 2.4 billion acres to produce enough net fuel to replace annual gasoline consumption (based on March of 2005's gasoline consumption). I prefer to think of it as 487 million acres using the full 300 gallons per acre at a loss, which is still 20 million more acres than we have total! All corn acreage could only produce 14.5% of total gas consumption, estimated from several place. But they are still using corn. I have seen estimates that switchgrass can produce 2000 gallons of ethanol per acre, but that would still mean we'd have to come up with 73 million acres. Not a problem in my mind.

Ethanol is not going to completely remove our oil issue. They are even requiring oil still be used in ethanol to make E85! What does that tell you? Saab made a hybrid that can run 100% ethanol using special fuel injection so cold starting is not the issue. But the main goal is to stretch our oil supply out until a solution is found. Ethanol can come from several different crops with varying amounts of efficiency. Corn just happens to be the most popular. And my personal favorite BTW. We're not going to starve if we continue to use corn. Alot of corn is going to waste in some places.

Fully electric vehicles are great and all but it requires many times better, cheaper battery technology before that will happen. The new lithium technology does look promising but the market takes time to adopt such new technologies. I do hope more people adopt a hybrid that uses a fully electric drive train but with a small generator, using gas, diesel, ethanol, or w/e works, to charge the battery pack. That breed seems to be the most promising for most people and at the same time the most efficient.