Ethanol Idea Fails Common-Sense Test
By The IntelligencerAgriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack has provided an excellent example of why government should simply stay out of telling the private sector how to conduct business.
On Monday, Vilsack suggested that the Environmental Protection Agency should increase the amount of ethanol that refiners can blend with petroleum-based gasoline. The limit now is 10 percent; Vilsack wants 15 percent.
That would be excellent news for farmers, of course. They would be able to sell lots more corn to ethanol refiners. Because they would be diverting more corn to ethanol, prices for food would increase (more).
But automobile and small engine manufacturers don't like the idea. They point out that it is entirely possible that fuel made of 15 percent ethanol could harm some engines.
An EPA spokesman has said that Vilsack's suggestion will be reviewed "based on the best available science." We hope so - but the EPA is a creature of government, too.
Never mind that Vilsack's suggestion may not be good for consumers. It apparently is enough for him that it will make him popular with farmers - and with the unrealistic "green" crowd that won't accept any argument against increased use of ethanol. We can only hope that the EPA's idea of "the best available science" includes consulting economists and engine designers instead of merely doing the politically correct thing.
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robojock
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03-11-09 11:13 PM
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Corn is a piece of the puzzle, not the answer, case closed. Another piece? Drilling in our own **** country and turning off the cash flow for the Middle East.
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robojock
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03-11-09 11:12 PM
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There’s a simple reason that ethanol is popular with politicians: money. Substituting corn ethanol for a large fraction of the gasoline we burn will mean sluicing gushers of cash from more populated states to politically powerful farm states. And a lot of that cash will wind up in the pockets of the big agribusinesses, like Archer Daniels Midland, that dominate ethanol processing—and whose fat checkbooks wield enormous influence in Washington.
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robojock
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03-11-09 11:11 PM
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The National Renewable Energy Laboratory states that, “Today, 1 Btu of fossil energy consumed in producing and delivering corn ethanol results in 1.3 Btu of usable energy in your fuel tank.” Even that modest payback may be overstated. Skeptics cite the research of Cornell Uni¬versity professor David Pimentel, who estimates that it takes approximately 1.3 gal. of oil to produce a single gallon of ethanol. If the benefits are in doubt, the costs are not. It would take 450 pounds of corn to yield enough ethanol to fill the tank of an SUV. Producing enough ethanol to replace America’s imported oil alone would require putting nearly 900 million acres under cultivation—or roughly 95 percent of the active farmland in the country. Once we’ve turned our farms into filling stations, where will the food come from?
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robojock
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03-11-09 11:11 PM
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Let’s start with the math. Corn doesn’t grow like a weed. Modern corn farming involves heavy inputs of nitrogen fertilizer (made with natural gas), applications of herbicides and other chemicals (made mostly from oil), heavy machinery (which runs on diesel) and transportation (diesel again). Converting the corn into fuel requires still more energy. The ratio of how much energy is used to make ethanol versus how much it delivers is known as the energy balance, and calculating it is surprisingly complex.
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robojock
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03-11-09 11:11 PM
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From a great Popular Science article.
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robojock
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03-11-09 11:08 PM
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David Pimental, a leading Cornell University agricultural expert, has calculated that powering the average U.S. automobile for one year on ethanol (blended with gasoline) derived from corn would require 11 acres of farmland, the same space needed to grow a year's supply of food for seven people. Adding up the energy costs of corn production and its conversion into ethanol, 131,000 BTUs are needed to make one gallon of ethanol. One gallon of ethanol has an energy value of only 77,000 BTUS. Thus, 70 percent more energy is required to produce ethanol than the energy that actually is in it. Every time you make one gallon of ethanol, there is a net energy loss of 54,000 BTUs.
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wonderwhy
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03-11-09 10:36 PM
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yea, and Blankship was named in national magazines, ie newsweek and papers all over the country for paying to get brent benjamin in the supreme court of wv so to have a buddy on the court . i know, all the benjamin loves will be on here saying how many times massey was ruled against, but not one will post the amounts of money in those.
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ConservativeKaty
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03-11-09 10:08 PM
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American farmers are what Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship calls “Greeniacs.” Liberal farmers want to profit by scaring us away from coal and other good old fossil fuels. Mr. Blankenship warns that socialism and communism will follow automotive changes as they did in Russia and China. He says, on YouTube, that if we are not careful, we will go to smaller cars, then to mass transit, and eventually to just walking as socialism and communism take over. When Greeniac Farmers start calling for collective agriculture, beware.
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ConservativeKaty
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03-11-09 10:07 PM
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We all have friends who own and restore ‘60s Muscle Cars, and their engines would prefer leaded gasoline that is no longer available. The executive editor owns a classic limited edition Corvette with an engine likely fine-tuned to rare high-octane gasoline. EPA should not allow new fuel blend changes that even possibly could harm these valuable engines. Even your lawn mower could be at risk. Danika Patrick uses 100 percent ethanol in her 650-horsepower Indy Racing car. Her engine is made by Honda. Seems this proves good engines can be made to run well on ethanol or ethanol blends – but don’t be fooled because Danika’s engine only has to go 500 miles and she gets a new one for every race.
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TruthSeeker
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03-11-09 3:29 PM
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And from what article did you get your facts, robo? I know. You copied and pasted directly from **** : // auto .howstuffworks. com/question707 .htm. The article is written by what expert? We don't know as it was done anonymously. Great work robo!
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robojock
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03-11-09 2:10 PM
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So, a half acre of corn to fuel one cross country trip. I personaly drive 4200 miles a month. I would use about one half acre of corn a month for fuel, for one car. Now imagine milions of cars. Do we have enough land for that? No, it is a non-point. As an example, to fuel one million cars, traveling 2000 miles a month, over 500,000 acres of corn would need to be harvested, for one month. this does not include the fact that there was over 7,667,066 sold in the US alone in 2006. Imagine the amount of cars on our roads, and this does not include buses and tractor trailers.
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robojock
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03-11-09 2:03 PM
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,774 miles / 20 miles per gallon = 138.7 gallons (METRIC: 4,464.2 km / 8.5 km per liter = 525.2 liters) We know that it takes 26.1 pounds of corn to make 1 gallon of ethanol, so we can now calculate how many pounds of corn we need to fuel the Camry on its trip:
138.7 gallons * 26.1 pounds = 3,620.07 total pounds of corn (METRIC: 525.2 liters * 3.13 kg = 1,642 kg) You will need to plant a little more than a half an acre of corn to produce enough ethanol to fuel your trip.
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robojock
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03-11-09 2:02 PM
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Let's assume that you drive a Toyota Camry, the best-selling car in America in 2000. We know that the Toyota Camry with automatic transmission gets 30 miles per gallon of gas on the highway. Gasoline is more efficient than ethanol. One gallon of gasoline is equal to 1.5 gallons of ethanol. This means that same Camry would only get about 20 miles to the gallon if it were running on ethanol. We also need to know how far you are traveling: Let's say from Los Angeles to New York, which is 2,774 miles (4,464.2 km), according to MapQuest****. Through research performed at Cornell University, we know that 1 acre of land can yield about 7,110 pounds (3,225 kg) of corn, which can be processed into 328 gallons (1240.61 liters) of ethanol. That is about 26.1 pounds (11.84 kg) of corn per gallon. First, we need to figure out how much fuel we will need:
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robojock
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03-11-09 2:02 PM
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From an article regarding conversion of corn to fuel, especially how much corn does it take to drive across country.
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TruthSeeker
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03-11-09 8:01 AM
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Actually you are wrong about the energy needed to produce a gallon of ethanol as studies show that it takes on average 0.6 kWh of electricity to make one gallon of ethanol. Corn on the other hand would be grown regardless of what the end use for it is so you cannot add the energy used to grow, harvest, and transport the corn. I looked up this news story and found that Vilsack only asked whether ethanol could be raised from 10% to 12 or 13%. An ethanol trade group, Growth Energy, asked the EPA for permission to boost the ethanol blend cap to 15%. Vilsack said that would be great if it could be done. So Mikey lied again. As for ethanol raising food prices, U of Illinois economics team calculated that it would not raise the price of food with oil at $50-%60 a barrel. It's the ethanol subsidy of .51 that would trigger the rise in the price of corn so we should end the end the subsidy for converting food into fuel to eliminate this risk. Don't believe me? Research it yourself.
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EllisWyatt
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03-11-09 7:01 AM
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It takes one gallon of fuel to produce one gallon of Ethanol so we break even on the use of oil and we pay more for corn. I fail to see the benefit.
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roxtar
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03-11-09 5:04 AM
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It's "affect", not "effect", but who's counting?
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TruthSeeker
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03-11-09 1:37 AM
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BTW - Your title for this one aught to be: Ethanol Idea To Be Reviewed. It has yet to be determined what common-sense has to do with anything yet.
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TruthSeeker
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03-11-09 1:34 AM
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OMG! You're a real Rethug alrighty, Mikey! You say in your opinion piece that Vilsack's suggestion will be reviewed. That should say it all but NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! You have to be snarky about the green crowd and lie about the facts. After all, it's not the Dems or the green crowd whose total goal in Congress right now is to get re-elected by winning the daily message war. Have you and this newspaper been enlisted in their aid perhaps?
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