we as humans are here for the long run, if a cleaner environment is what we are striving for, and that is one way to prolong are existence, im for it with a little less mpg,hp.etc..... ill take it. especially when you purchase citgo gas, a nice little portion of that goes to hugo chavez down in venezuela. that guy has 80 treaties with iran, (one of them being if one country is at war then your at war with both countries) ill take less mpg/hp if thats really the case. im tired of opec,the middle east, and all ther other BS regarding oil. they have a strangle hold on us with this issue. threaten them they cut production. im over it. ill take a electric powered truck at this point. my modo- (if you can place a man on the moon and back, we should be able to solve this)

 

welfare for the agriculture industry. no benefit to the environment, and no future as an energy source.


consider this; the USA consumes roughly 20 million barrels of oil per day, and imports about 3/4 of that.

you want to replace that with a technology where production is measured in gallons per acre, from a feedstock that takes months to grow.

there's not even enough land to make this idea work. not without turning your entire country into a plantation and killing every other living thing in the process.

you also have to move tonnes and tonnes of corn to ethanol plants which will have to be built all over the place, and after you've extracted a few joules of energy, figure out what to do with mountains and mountains of left-over crap before it decomposes and chokes every living thing in the rivers

the ethanol is hard to move around too. it can't go thru existing pipelines. it has to be moved on trucks just like your corn. that's why studies show the ethanol additive isn't even any good for the environment. the gas might be cleaner, but once you factor in all the damage done by the govenrment funded ethanol industry it's not worth it. one step forward, 3 steps back. it's a scam to sell corn.

ethanol trucks tipping over on the highway, more fertilizers and chemicals getting into the rivers, more fuel and oil based fertilizers used in farming.

cheaper and easier to use existing refineries to blend cleaner gas

 

So in the name of honesty, my name on other forums is IAFarmer, which gives you my slant.

As for land, there is no problem there. Corn yields are rapidly rising while using less resources to produce a bushel. Other methods that are more efficient, and less land intensive, are currently very close to fruition. As for the mountains of leftover crap, it can be used to power the plant creating the ethanol, or an electricity plant. It is currently being done here in Iowa.

Ethanol trucks tipping is not a valid argument. What happens when a gasoline truck tips, or a train derails full of oil? What happens when an oil tanker runs aground?

You can't change a refinery anymore due to the rabid so-called enviromentalists out there. Ethanol is still in it's infancy, however, it has a future.

 

If I Comprehended The Program That I Saw About Two Months Ago On This Subject, They Were Also Going To Be Using Two Types Of Grass, Both Which Grow Abundintly In The Midwest.....

 

switchgrass??? i think

 

Not to mention that in the Central San Joaquin Valley, CA, there is a high salinity problem in the soil due to a high water table with no drainage available. THis is bad for all crops EXCEPT.......grass. There is an Argentine variety of grass that is essentially switch grass that pull the excess moisture and salts out of the soil, refreshing irrigation water and putting ground that is otherwise worthless back into production.

 

how many gallons of ethanol can you grow on an acre of land?
how much arable land do you have available?
how much fuel do you need to replace imported energy?

last time i checked there was a problem but i'll let you do the math since you're the expert



ethanol cannot be moved thru existing pipelines and gasoline and other petroleum based pipelines can. it's about infrastructure. you dn't hear about gasoline trucks tipping that much because 99% of the way it's moved thru pipelines and tankers with veyr little risk.

once you throw a fleet of trucks into the equation everything changes and accidents happen.

the argument for ethanol is mediocre if not flat-out dishonest. it fits well with the imagined lib/con dichotomy that a few "rabid environmentalists" are holding the energy industry by the *****

 

websthes I have seen you aurgue against ethonal from the begining of time I have seen your name on here to the point that it seems you are almost dead set against any possible means to get us away from using foriegn oil, that says one thing to me and anyone that reads it you have a vested interest in the oil industry, but unlike CA55F100 you don't admit to it. I have stated this before in these aurguments Oil has a 100+ year head start on getting the techniques down, and I think you will find that promoting crops grown by american farmers will cut down on "farm welfare" not increase it. As stated corn is the current choice for making ethonal, but there is many, many research projects currently going on to increase use of other materials such as corn stalks and cobs, wheat stubble, bean stubble, and switch grass (which BTW is also bieng used to produce electricity to fire these plants instead of coal in some places and produce electricity for surronding town too). When you figure the TRUE energy balance on a gallon of gasoline and figure it like you figure the energy balance on a gallon of ethonal you will find out that gas if it is the only thing you take out of the oil (just like you try and do when figuring the energy balance of ethonal) is actually almost 2 times the amount of energy you can get out of that gallon of gas (and I have heard that it is actually pushing 3 times as much depending on where they get the electricity to run the refinary) There is so much more to it than what the oil industry publishes as to not even be funny, and infact how many threads are on FTE whinning about the profits of the oil industry?
The thing is we need to get away from foriegn oil and cut back to the point that we can depend just on domestic oil production at most and let OPEC eat thier oil, yes they will still sell it but if we weren't buying on the world market I gaurentee you they wouldn't make nearly as much money nor could they sell it for $60+/barrel, which would help out third world countries too due to not having to compete with the US on global oil purchases.
Now with that bieng said I do NOT think ethonal is the cure all, not by a long shot, nor do I think hybrids, biodiesel, electric cars, hydrogen cars or even things that haven't been thought of yet are the answer but I do think that each and every one of them has to be a part of the total answer that will in the end get us off any dependence on foriegn oil and anyone that speaks so harshly about one of the elements of the answer has not even looked into the problem or has a agenda or a vested interest in keeping things as they are which is not good for this country or the world as a whole.

 

Ummm, doesn't Canada have tanker trucks full of gasoline on the Highway? Last time I checked, our gas stations still had tankers dropping off loads. No pipes leading to stations directly from the refinery are seen here. Speaking of Canada, your country is looking at pullling oil out of shale. Do you know how inefficient that process is???

At this time, US farmers produce about 360 gallons of ethanol per acre. US Corn acres alone this year are 80 million, or 28,800,000,000 gallons of ethanol produced. Now, there are still corn piles from last year sitting here in Central Iowa, where we have 5 plants within 50 miles of my town. So, there is no corn shortage at this time, and E85 is used here probably more than anywhere.


Ethanol will not fully elimnate the use of oil, which I think you are trying to say I am reporting. This is not true and I have not represented it that way. HOWEVER, it greatly reduces our dependence on oil from those who want to see us burn.

I had no intention of bringing this up, however, I am curious. Why are you so against agricultural subsidies when the socialistic goverment of Canada controls everything in your country?

By the way, lose the Ag subsidies and ethanol would still be viable.

 

refinable oil has a shelf life left, and the experts say by 2080 or so, it will be gone. that will put me at 103 yrs old. by 2040 america will have 400 million in the census. other countries will have a massive increase in pop to. other alternatives should not be and really cant afford to be a long way down the road. if goverments conspire to get rich by taking this all the way to the end, and then have another alternative method, i couldnt even imagine what the environment would look like.

 

There are many many crops that can be utilized for making biofuels. Corn is big right now because it is abundant. But as has been stated, the answers to the foreign oil problem are many, but biofuels are the low tech answer. It is doable now. All it takes it consumers to be alert to the benefits and the political will to put together the infrastructure to get it done. I think a ten year moratorium on taxing biofuels would be the perfect incentive. We could kick the hell out of OPEC in the market place and impoverish the people who want us dead.

 

Tom, the consumer reports test is bogus. By which I mean it wasn't really a test at all. CR carefully picked the flex fueler that got the worst mileage on ethanol. Some of the Fords and Chryslers the gov't tested only lost 5-10 % on fuel economy. Could it be that CR really had no intention of doing a mileage test, but rather a hatchet piece on ethanol ? My question would be why is it that the chevys do so badly on the switch. Are their computers calibrated differantly ? It seems the chevys have a programming problem. CR could have mentioned the other makes, but for some reason chose not to. Why ? Are they just shilling for the oil industry ? Now to have a little fun, do some math with CR's numbers. You'll find the tahoe used less BTUs to travel a mile when burning corn juice than on gasoline. So who is really more efficient here ? Now there are some who claim we have an infrastructure problem with ethanol, because it can't go through our existing pipeline network. Well, just who is saying that ? The owners of the pipelines, it turns out. So I did a little looking, and in Michigan, at least, the pipelines are owned by a consortium of oil companies. It can't go through because they won't let it. Thatsd the reason, and the only reason. The pipes won't notice or care about the differance. If there is a water concern, the companies should quit pumping water through the pipes. Water in the pipes you ask ? Yeah, water. Instead of sending a 'pig' between loads of fuel, they take the cheap way out and send a slug of water through between batches of fuel. The one, the only, reason ethanol isn't catching on like wildfire is that the API doesn't want to share its monopoly on the transportastion fuel market. Its all about the money. DF, on the work computer

 

Go to this govt. website and do a comparison side by side and it will show you the difference in cost between E85 and gasoline. Don't go just to the Chevy but try some others also. You can adjust for the price of fuel and city/highway % in mileage.

http://www.fueleconomy.gov/

 

I didn't catch the details, but Calif has an initiative on the ballot right now to promote ethanol production. The oil companies have put up seventy million to try to defeat it. I think that says it in a nutshell. They said that is the most money ever spent on an initiative. Jut heard that on the radio.

 

All this talk of ethonal yet no talk of Biodiesel. Never mind the fact that the diesel engine was never designed for petroleum diesel. Or that it is made from by products, in other words waste.