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Up front, I don't know that much about E85. This article was interesting as the author seems well-informed (does not necessarily mean he is correct). I do know Brazil has success with biofuels.

Corn causes more soil erosion in the United States than any other crop,” he said. “Corn uses more nitrogen fertilizer than any other single crop, and it’s the prime cause of the dead zone down in the Gulf of Mexico

Explicitly or otherwise, the article seems to assert the Bush Administration is looking at Ethanol as a convient and political escape from our energy problem - I would not disagree.

Anyway, it's a good read.

MSNBC Story (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12934470/)

Ugh. This has not been a good day for opinions on the future of our fuel needs. This morning I woke up to an NPR story on oil shale, an enormous quantity of which exists right here in the US. The figure quoted was something like 800 billion barrels of oil nationally, and something like 1.6 trillion barrels worldwide. (Compare that to Saudi Arabia's estimated crude reserve of 262 billion barrels according to a table on wikipedia, the largest national crude reserves known on the planet.) Furthermore, mining and processing oil shale is profitable as long as crude sits at or above $40 a barrel (again, quoted from wikipedia).

What worries me is the possibility that we will end up punting on the renewables and start in on new large-scale fossil projects. That might defer Peak Oil, which is fine economically, but also defers our answer to the enormous environmental concerns that stem from carbon dioxide emissions. In that scenario we win short-term but lose miserably in the long term.

It all comes back to conservation. The only sure way to buy time is to use less, because the final solution is looking as far away as ever.

There's been a ton of news articles trying to debunk the cost effectiveness of ethanol. Many focus solely on corn, which is admittedly one of the least cost-effective crops for ethanol and it's still cheaper than gasoline. I believe it's currently pegged at something like $1.60/gal for pure ethanol?

At any rate, I agree with brick that I would still far rather see the focus remain on how to produce renewable fuels effectively rather than allow a purely economic comparison be made, otherwise we'll continue to scrape tar from Canada and boil shale and convert goal to gasoline, potentially driving us into CO2 oblivion in the mean time.

Hi Chuck:

___Whenever you see David Pimental’s name, you have to throw the article in the garbage. He is so far behind the times his work is utter non-sense. As for the jist of the article, Ethanol doesn’t stand a chance to supply our total needs if it is produced from Corn straight up. Once we get Bio-mass breakdown via Cellulosic means, then we have enough land, crop, and waste streams of all types to supply our transportation needs with an Ethanol based fuel.

___John, I have discussed this many times but Ethanol has to be energy positive or it would not cost just $1.50 - $1.75 to make it from scratch using corn. What is so hard about this fact that most of these people cannot comprehend? Secondly, could you come up with a 2 page FAQ about your plants current capabilities in terms of dollar’s and cents as well as where are you shipping all of this Ethanol to? The darn stuff is already beyond $3.30 per and it is still climbing a few cents a day! Someone must need it bad because that price is nuts! The Domestics are heading down the wrong road if they think Ethanol is going to be their savior because at $3.33 + applicable taxes even with the $0.50 credit, it costs far more then gasoline on the demand side and the FE from it is maybe 2/3 at best. I hope you own a piece of the Ethanol plant you are employed at because there is going to be a hell of a bonus this Christmas if you do ;)

___About posting into a VBulletin forum … If you are going to post a 2 pager, do it in Word first! Never from a form box in a php based forum. Try it sometime, you will like it and have a record of the same long after the post is buried where you cannot find it.

___Good Luck

___Wayne

___About posting into a VBulletin forum … If you are going to post a 2 pager, do it in Word first! Never from a form box in a php based forum. Try it sometime, you will like it and have a record of the same long after the post is buried where you cannot find it.


Side note: If I hit "submit reply" and it doesn't go immediately, I usually take that as a sign that I have been timed out. Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V into notepad, back out to refresh, and if the post hasn't appeard I just paste it back in. I haven't lost any work since I learned the signs of impending vBulletin doom.