Ethanol is worth it only if it’s part of a nation wide strategy to make ALL cars totally flex fuel compliant for all alcohol based fuels incl. methanol with no subsidizing by govt… Let the free market including waste disposal be the foundation for alcohol based fuels as a part of our mix for personal transportation. A hybrid whose motor can run on any alcohol, propane or gasoline would be a great oil price gouging deterrent. Ethanol alone is a political and practical usage blunder as many have stated, and only practical as part of a mix in strategy; but not with gasoline. I wouldn’t mind a car that only gets 20 mpg on pure methanol but cost only a buck a gallon for that alcohol based fuel for example…totally feasible.
Whitey, the question is could we ever do anything about global warming in the first place. There does not exist in the scientific community any consensus that we can. It’s generally accepted now that the cycle we’re moving through is a normal warming period caused by forces far greater than us, solar system activity and even forces within the galaxie the power of which we can’t even begin to comprehend. These all cause warming and cooling cycles far beyond anything wr’e measuring, and have since the birth of the galaxy.
I’ll be the first to say that the EPA did a lot of necessary and truely overdue things. Prior to the EPA the smog over major cities was so thick you could almost butter bread with it, and many streams, rivers, and even harbors were so polluted wildlife was dying. But we’re beyond that now. This global warming scenerio is, frankly, politics.
The ethanol idea is all politics, another farm subsidy program IMHO, but it isn’t being driven by the global warming scare. It’s being driven by the idea of freeing ourselves from reliance on foreign oil sources by using a renewable resource.
Doc’s commenst about the new ethanol plants are interesting, but to its credit the agricultural community has developed markets for virtually all their products and byproducts. Creating enough ethanol from agricultural products to begin to have an impact would require expansion of agricultiral production. The algea idea sounds interesting, but can we farm that? If not, do we then impact the oceanic ecosystem?
Sorry, but I’m not buying the ethanol idea.
Ethanol is ~35% oxygen by weight and that O has no fuel value since we already have an abundance of O in the intake air. That’s the main reason why there’s less MPG.
Thanks for the post. I want to use it as a platform to reply that corn farmers should be able to produce all the ethanol that they can use in their tractors and leave the rest of us alone.
Dieselhol has some problems but with some work may be the answer.
Did you know that in Iowa you can buy gasoline with either 10% ethanol or none?