Why Ethanol Would Lead To Environmental Disaster – More Info

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Why Ethanol Would Lead To Environmental Disaster – More Info

By: GARKO

The real hazard confronting humanity as we move further into the new millennium is that we could convulsely grasp for solutions in our hysteria about global warming which will muck things up even worse than they are right now.
Like believing we can replace gasoline with ethanol, the much-hyped biofuel that we make from corn.
Ethanol has been around for quite some time and nearly six billion gallons were produced in the past year just for purposes of making gasoline additives. But in the past year, the Senate has plunged America down the toilet by demanding biofuels be the energy source of the future , mandating the production of 36 billion gallons of ethanol by 2022. If you listen to Ethanol people then this is part of a revolution to replace oil addiction (with Ethanol addiction I suppose) . Midwest farmers will get rich, the air will be cleaner, the planet will be cooler, and, best of all, we can tell those greedy sheiks to kick off. As the king of ethanol hype, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, put it recently, "Everything about ethanol is good, good, good."
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. It takes some talent to be such a good spin master that you can put the American farmer growing corn as “the top of the spear on the war against terrorism as a former CIA director (James Woolsey) did but he did it! 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: Its energy density is one-third less than gasoline, which means you have to burn more of it to get the same amount of power. It also has a nasty tendency to absorb water, so it can't be transported in existing pipelines and it must be distributed by truck or rail, which is tremendously inefficient.
Nor is all ethanol created equal. Brazilian ethanol derived from sugar cane produces 8 units of energy compared to one unit of energy utilized for production which is an advantage over petroleum which is in a 5 to 1 ratio. But corn ethanol only outputs 1.3 units for every one unit consumed in the energy production process which makes it pretty much a wash and useless. "Corn ethanol is essentially a way of recycling natural gas," says Robert Rapier, an oil-industry engineer who runs the R-Squared Energy Blog.
Another lie about ethanol is that it will emancipate America from dependence upon foreign oil. Uh uh! Even if ethanol producers manage to hit the mandate of 36 billion gallons of ethanol by 2022, that will replace a paltry 1.5 million barrels of oil per day -- only seven percent of current oil needs. Even if the entire U.S. corn crop were used to make ethanol, the fuel would replace only twelve percent of current gasoline use.
Another misconception is that ethanol is green. In fact, corn production depends on huge amounts of fossil fuel -- not just the diesel needed to plow fields and transport crops, but also the vast quantities of natural gas used to produce fertilizers. Runoff from industrial-scale cornfields also silts up the Mississippi River and creates a vast dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico every summer. What's more, when corn ethanol is burned in vehicles, it is as dirty as conventional gasoline and does little to solve global warming: E85 in full use would reduce the greenhouse gas emissions by up to 15% at best and that’s nothing, while fueling the destruction of tropical forests.
Despite the serious drawbacks of ethanol, some technological visionaries believe that the fuel can be done right. "Corn ethanol is just a platform, the first step in a much larger transition we are undergoing from a hydrocarbon-based economy to a carbohydrate-based economy," says Vinod Khosla, a pioneering venture capitalist in Silicon Valley. Next-generation corn- ethanol plants, he argues, will be much more efficient and environmentally friendly. He points to a company called E3 BioFuels that just opened an ethanol plant in Mead, Nebraska. The facility runs largely on biogas made from cow manure, and feeds leftover grain back to the cows, making it a "closed-loop system" -- one that requires very few fossil fuels to create ethanol.
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.
Ok folks, sorry if I depressed you. But I am just trying to wake you up to the truth. Further on along those lines I do have good news!
WATER4GAS is offering information at a low price which car owners can use at home to build a small gizmo which infuses hydrogen into the gas/air mixture that their car runs on.
What this does is make smaller particles out of the particles that the engine uses as fuel. Therefore the engine is able to use a lot more of the gas.
With WATER4GAS you can minimumly expect to improve your MPG by thirty to fifty percent or even more. Those molecules "musta" been pretty darn huge in some engines before. But with WATER4GAS they are made usable so you can improve your MPG.
It also helps make emissions significantly cleaner.
This information has been purchased by over 9000 individuals already and the percentage of happy customers is about 99%! So how about you?

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

Entrepreneur, songwriter, activist and consumer advocate, GARKO, shows you tips on how to improve gas mileage 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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