The Only Thing Worse Than Fossil Fuel Are Some Alternatives – Such As Ethanol

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The Only Thing Worse Than Fossil Fuel Are Some Alternatives – Such As Ethanol

By: GARKO

The potential disaster facing us is not actually global warming but human stupidity and shortsightedness in implementing false and destructive solutions of which there are many.
Like believing we can replace gasoline with ethanol, the much-hyped biofuel that we make from corn.
Ethanol doesn't burn cleaner than gasoline, nor is it cheaper. Our current ethanol production represents only 3.5 percent of our gasoline consumption -- yet it consumes twenty percent of the entire U.S. corn crop, causing the price of corn to double in the last two years and raising the threat of hunger in the Third World. And the increasing acreage devoted to corn for ethanol means less land for other staple crops, giving farmers in South America an incentive to carve fields out of tropical forests that help to cool the planet and stave off global warming.
Three factors are driving the ethanol hype. The first is panic: Many energy experts believe that the world's oil supplies have already peaked or will peak within the next decade. The second is election-year politics. Interestingly enough, the primaries started in Iowa so all the candidates except one or two that have integrity suddenly became huge fans of Ethanol! .
The third factor stoking the ethanol frenzy is the war in Iraq, which has made energy independence a universal political slogan. Unlike coal, another heavily subsidized energy source, ethanol has the added political benefit of elevating the American farmer to national hero. As former CIA director James Woolsey, an outspoken ethanol evangelist, puts it, "American farmers, by making the commitment to grow more corn for ethanol, are at the top of the spear on the war against terrorism." So, if you love America, how can you not love ethanol?
Well, I love America but I sure as heck don’t love ethanol! As a gasoline substitute, ethanol has big problems: You need to burn more of it in order to get the same amount of fuel. It also has properties that make it impossible to use the existing pipeline infrastructure to transport the Ethanol and it must be distributed by truck or rail, which majorly adds to the costs involved.
Besides, ethanol is tremendously variable as regards the energy production achievable from different sources of Ethanol. In Brazil, ethanol made from sugar cane has an energy balance of 8-to-1 -- that is, when you add up the fossil fuels used to irrigate, fertilize, grow, transport and refine sugar cane into ethanol, the energy output is eight times higher than the energy inputs. That's a better deal than gasoline, which has an energy balance of 5-to-1. In contrast, the energy balance of corn ethanol is only 1.3-to-1 - making it practically worthless as an energy source. "Corn ethanol is essentially a way of recycling natural gas," says Robert Rapier, an oil-industry engineer who runs the R-Squared Energy Blog.
But as seen in an article in today's New York Times, residents of River Bend Farm, an Alabama suburb lying near a biodiesel plant, noticed a black viscuous goo that was drifting in the Black Warrior River. The junk was 450 times more than permit levels allow and the stuff had drifted two miles downstream.
It was a unholy mix of oil and glycerin, emissions of biodiesel production. The muck and mire depletes oxygen in waters very rapidly, leaving dead fish behind. And the slime is equally deadly to birds as Exxon's Valdeez spill in Alaska. Alabama isn't alone in this problem. In January a Missouri businessman was charged for a leakage that left 25,000 fish dead and commited genocide on the population of fat pocketbook mussels, which is on the endangered species list. Can you say... "OOOPS"???
More recently, a study from the University of British Columbia predicted that in increase in corn production for fuel will worsen the so-called "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico, an area with so little oxygen that sea life literally suffocates. And today's "Des Moines Register" announced that Cargill, Inc., has been levied a $100,000 penalty--the biggest an Iowa biofuels plant has ever been fined--for multiple violations surrounding toxic discharges.
Thanks in large part to the ethanol craze, the price of beef, poultry and pork in the United States rose more than three percent during the first five months of this year. In some parts of the country, hog farmers now find it cheaper to fatten their animals on trail mix, french fries and chocolate bars. And since America provides two-thirds of all global corn exports, the impact is being felt around the world. In Mexico, tortilla prices have jumped sixty percent, leading to food riots. In Europe, butter prices have spiked forty percent, and pork prices in China are up twenty percent. By 2025, according to Runge and Senauer, rising food prices caused by the demand for ethanol and other biofuels could cause as many as 600 million more people to go hungry worldwide.
In the end, the ethanol boom is another manifestation of America's blind faith that technology will solve all our problems. Thirty years ago, nuclear power was the answer. Then it was hydrogen. Biofuels may work out better, especially if mandates are coupled with tough caps on greenhouse-gas emissions.
Sorry, people, if I have upset or alarmed you. It is all about confronting the truth so that effective action can be taken. And I do have good news!
WATER4GAS is offering information at a low price which consumers can use in their garage or wherever to put together a small gizmo which infuses hydrogen into the fuel/air mixture that their automobile runs on.
What this does is make smaller particles out of the ones that the system burns as fuel. So the engine is able to use considerably more of the gasoline.
With WATER4GAS you can minimumly expect to lower your gasoline consumption by 30-50% or even more. Those particles must have been pretty darn big in some engines before. But with W4G they are made consumable so you can lower your gasoline consumption.
It also helps make emissions significantly cleaner.
This package of info has been purchased by over NINE THOUSAND car owners already and happy members number about 99%! So how about you?

Article Source: http://www.find-investment-advice.com

Entrepreneur, songwriter, activist and consumer advocate, GARKO, shows you easy ways to save money on gas by showing you how to make your car run on water which is the best solution for how to save on automotive fuel cost For a list of current gasoline prices in your neighborhood email garko@startlingdiscoveries.info

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