Business Week: 5 Reasons Ethanol is a Major Scam
Where's the Logic?
1. The primary job of the EPA is to protect our environment. Yet using ethanol actually creates more smog than using regular gas, and the EPA's own attorneys had to admit that fact in a court case.
2. Independent studies on ethanol, such as those written by Tad Patzek of Berkeley and David Pimentel of Cornell, show that ethanol is a net energy loser. Other studies suggest there is a small net energy gain from it.
3. All fuels laced with ethanol reduce the vehicle's fuel efficiency, and the E85 blend drops gas mileage between 30% and 40%, depending on whether you use the EPA's fuel mileage standards or those of the Dept. of Energy.
4. Forget what biofuels have done to the price of foodstuffs worldwide over the past three years; the science seems to suggest that using ethanol increases global warming emissions over the use of straight gasoline. Just these issues should have kept ethanol from being brought back for its fourth run in American history.
5. Don't let anybody mislead you: The new push to get a 15% ethanol mandate out of Washington is simply to restore profitability to a failed industry. Only this time around those promoting more ethanol in our gas say there's no scientific proof that adding more ethanol will damage vehicles or small gas-powered engines. With that statement they've gone from shilling the public to outright falsehoods, because ethanol-laced gasoline is already destroying engines across the country in ever larger numbers.
~Ed Wallace writing in BusinessWeek
2. Independent studies on ethanol, such as those written by Tad Patzek of Berkeley and David Pimentel of Cornell, show that ethanol is a net energy loser. Other studies suggest there is a small net energy gain from it.
3. All fuels laced with ethanol reduce the vehicle's fuel efficiency, and the E85 blend drops gas mileage between 30% and 40%, depending on whether you use the EPA's fuel mileage standards or those of the Dept. of Energy.
4. Forget what biofuels have done to the price of foodstuffs worldwide over the past three years; the science seems to suggest that using ethanol increases global warming emissions over the use of straight gasoline. Just these issues should have kept ethanol from being brought back for its fourth run in American history.
5. Don't let anybody mislead you: The new push to get a 15% ethanol mandate out of Washington is simply to restore profitability to a failed industry. Only this time around those promoting more ethanol in our gas say there's no scientific proof that adding more ethanol will damage vehicles or small gas-powered engines. With that statement they've gone from shilling the public to outright falsehoods, because ethanol-laced gasoline is already destroying engines across the country in ever larger numbers.
~Ed Wallace writing in BusinessWeek
13 Comments:
Hate the stuff on several fronts. Up here in cold country we constantly have to put dry gas in all the vehicles. Grain for the cows has gone up a ridiculous amount per ton...not to mention the cost of groceries.
The real reason the federal gov't pushes corn ethanol is that Iowa has the first presidential primary. Change that and positions on ethanol become reasonable.
JCarroll
I think you need to look at ethanol as a bridge to electric cars. If we're not going to drill for more oil, then we need something to carry us until electric cars (powered by coal and nuclear) become viable.
When gas goes back up to $5+ per gallon, which it will with this government in charge, then we need to quickly adapt to less foreign oil. Ethanol, although a bad economic model, is a quick national security bridge for the interim.
We need to start lessening our dependence on both OPEC and ethanol. The evironment and the economy would both be better off with the use of natural gas to power vehicles. The Obama group in power is going to make a hyper-inflation situation inevitable. Farmers that get out of corn and into other crops will do well when commodity prices soar.
"Ethanol, although a bad economic model, is a quick national security bridge for the interim."
If you understood what it means to be a bad economic model you would know why ethanol is a bridge to nowhere.
This comment has been removed by the author.
Have Any of you even checked out who Ed Wallace is?
5 unambiguous statements. All false. If you don't think so, Try to find One Supporting Document for Any of Them (other than Patzek and Pimental's foolishness that relied on old, old, old data, and Still came to a wrong conclusion.)
Today, each gallon of ethanol produced delivers one third or more energy than is used to produce and this positive energy balance is constantly increasing with new technologies. According to the Congressional Research Service, ethanol produced from corn provides 67 percent more energy than is used during production compared to a net energy loss of 19 percent in the production of gasoline. Over the last 20 years, the amount of energy needed to produce ethanol from corn has significantly decreased because of improved farming techniques, more efficient use of fertilizers and pesticides, higher-yielding crops, and more energy-efficient conversion technology.
The studies Wallace refers to are not “truly independent.” The 2005 study by David Pimentel, an insect ecologist at Cornell, and Tad Patzek, a former oil company employee who is now director of the University of California Oil Consortium, has been thoroughly discredited by the scientific community and a growing body of government and academic research. Peer-reviewed studiesover the past 12 years find exactly the opposite of Patzek and Pimentel's findings. More than 40 percent of the references listed in the 2005 report were from the 1980s and 1990s, and it failed to meet internationally accepted standards for conducting life cycle studies.
This comment has been removed by the author.
"Environmentalism is about attacking capitalism, not about saving the environment."
Your tongue had to be in your cheek, writing this just to "stir the pot". Otherwise, it would be an incredibly irresponsible, as well as a profoundly ignorant, statement.
This comment has been removed by the author.
5 unambiguous statements. All false. If you don't think so, Try to find One Supporting Document for Any of Them"...
What's wrong Rufus, can't you access Google?
From USAToday dated July of '06:
Study: Ethanol won't solve energy problems
From Slate dated July 19, 2005: The ethanol subsidy is worse than you can imagine
From Consumer Affairs dated April 9, 2008: Ethanol-Blended Fuel Blamed for Boaters' Problems
From Tree Hugger dated April of '09: So Thirsty: Corn Ethanol Uses Up to 300% More Water than Previously Thought
What an incredibly socialist statement by marko: "Your tongue had to be in your cheek, writing this just to "stir the pot". Otherwise, it would be an incredibly irresponsible, as well as a profoundly ignorant, statement"...
Thank you Michael Berliner: The fundamental goal of environmentalism is not clean air and clean water; rather, it is the demolition of technological/industrial civilization. Environmentalism's goal is not the advancement of human health, human happiness, and human life; rather, it is a subhuman world where "nature" is worshipped like the totem of some primitive religion.
This comment has been removed by the author.
Post a Comment
<< Home