Reply #8: If you are really concerned about oil use... [View All]

You will not use Ethanol.

Why?

Because it actually uses more oil to make ethanol than it saves burning it instead of oil in your car's tank.

About a month ago the Ethanol/Corn Lobby (read here: Big Agribusiness) was apoplectic over a study released by UC Berkley and another university that confirmed this. They denounced it as ridiculous, even though this study's methodology was far more all-encompassing than the Corn Lobby's and used far more realistic production estimates.

The Corn Lobby has always promoted ethanol religiously and uses an equation to show it's benefit that excluded all oil input costs to produce the corn and ethanol in the first place, (i.e. petroleum inputs from fertilizer, diesel fuel used in the tractor and combine, diesel used to transport the raw corn and the finished ethanol, energy used to process the corn into ethanol, etc.)

In the end, it's a boondoggle than uses more energy than it saves. The only real beneficiaries of Ethanol are the big agribusiness corporations. :mad:

I would recommend James Kunstler's "The Long Emergency" for yet another POV on so-called bio-fuels.

He calls the promotion of them as proof positive of our deep denial over the fast approaching end of cheap oil and the economy that depends on it like a junkie. :-(

(Note: This was posted elswhere, but I thought it was apropo here, too.)