Just another in the long line of stupid ideas pushed by government, that will have no consequences for the people that actually push the ideas into law.

Except they will get more free face time on the networks degrading and blaming everyone except themselves.

Health and Energy

Science Daily

Grist.org

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/earth/4237539.html

....and drumroll please.....

I R Squared

(snip of above below)

“So, where did the claim that ethanol is more energy efficient originate? I believe it originates with researchers from Argonne National Laboratory, who developed a model (GREET) that is used to determine the energy inputs to turn crude oil into products (4). Since it will take some amount of energy to refine a barrel of crude oil, by definition the efficiency is less than 100% in the way they measured it. For example, if I have 1 BTU of energy, but it took .2 BTUs to turn it into a useable form, then the efficiency is 80%. This is the kind of calculation people use to show that the gasoline efficiency is less than 100%. However, ethanol is not measured in the same way. Look again at the example from the USDA paper, and lets do the equivalent calculation for ethanol. In that case, we got 98,333 BTUs out of the process, but we had to input 77,228 to get it out. In this case, comparing apples to apples, the efficiency of producing ethanol is just 21%. Again, gasoline is about 4 times higher.

OK, so Argonne originated the calculation. But are they really at fault here? Yes, they are. Not only did they promote the efficiency calculation for petroleum products with their GREET model, but they have proceeded to make apples and oranges comparisons in order to show ethanol in a positive light. They have themselves muddied the waters. Michael Wang, from Argonne, (and author of the GREET model) made a remarkable claim last September at The 15th Annual Symposium on Alcohol Fuels in San Diego (5). On his 4th slide , he claimed that it takes 0.74 MMBTU to make 1 MMBTU of ethanol, but 1.23 MMBTU to make 1 MMBTU of gasoline. That simply can’t be correct, as the calculations in the preceding paragraphs have shown.

Not only is his claim incorrect, but it is terribly irresponsible for someone from a government agency to make such a claim. I don’t know whether he is being intentionally misleading, but it certainly looks that way. Wang is also the co-author of the earlier USDA studies that I have critiqued and shown to be full of errors and misleading arguments. These people are publishing articles that bypass the peer review process designed to ferret out these kinds of blatant errors. I suspect a politically driven agenda in which they are putting out intentionally misleading information.

One of the reasons I haven’t written this up already, is that 2 weeks ago I sent an e-mail to Wang bringing this error to his attention. I immediately got an auto-reply saying that he was out of the office until March 31st. I have given him a week to reply and explain himself, but he has not done so. Therefore, at this time I must conclude that he knows the calculation is in error, but does not wish to address it. In the interim, ethanol proponents everywhere are pushing this false information in an effort to boost support for ethanol.

Look at the Minnesota Department of Agriculture claim again: "the energy yield of ethanol is (1.34/0.74) or 81 percent greater than the comparable yield for gasoline". If the energy balance was really this good for ethanol and that bad for gasoline, why would anyone ever make gasoline? Where would the economics be? Why would ethanol need subsidies to compete? It should be clear that the proponents in this case are promoting false information.”

Just another in the long line of stupid ideas pushed by government, that will have no consequences for the people that actually push the ideas into law.

If legislators were legally liable for their actions, insane legislation would halt......immediately.

Meantime, the governor of Texas and 26 U.S. senators, including GOP presidential nominee-in-waiting John McCain, have asked the Environmental Protection Agency to cut in half this year's requirement for 9 billion gallons of corn ethanol in order to ease the pressure on rising food costs.

That would be a start. But washing their hands and pretending they don't know who gave birth to the biofuel boondoggle will not suffice. Congress needs to repeal the ethanol mandates, subsidies and protective tariffs immediately. The congressmen need to admit they don't know a darned thing about energy markets, and vow to stop using billions of our precious tax dollars meddling in matters they don't understand.

Welcome to another one of John McCain's brain-dead energy solutions -- pass the buck.  And, oh yes, a god-forsaken patch of land called ANWR is a glorious national monument on par with the Grand Canyon, where we should never drill, says the nominee. Off-shore drilling? It's now an issue to be left to the states, per John -- even though it's Congress that has the power to make it happen. Let's talk about global warming instead -- that's the ticket.

energy ping

Bookmarked.

expensive boondoggle

Congress needs to kill off this BS before the end of the year.

The logic of saving gasoline by blending 10% ethanol with gasoline resulting in a fuel that on average gives the automobiles in which it is burned about 12% less gas mileage aways seemed to escape me.

Wouldn’t you think that if ethanol was going great guns, that every square inch of arable land would be planted in corn this spring? I live in a heavy corn-growing area of Indiana. (SW corner) Literally thousands of acres that I drive by every week are lying fallow. Last year this time, these huge fields had foot-high corn plants in them.

I’m not talking just a few fields, but every last one. Fields that grew wheat last year, have foot-high wheat in them. What’s going on?!

Yeah, but wind power is different.

Honest.

Trust me.

I’m from Congress and here to “halp” you.

This is an article written by someone who lives in the middle of a desert.

Now if they'd get busy out there and turn it into productive farmland we might well accept the legitimacy of their criticism.

The midwest has had heavy precip in the last month or two. It may be the fields are too wet to plant corn. “Mudding it in” always reduces yields, but it’s also getting kind of late not to start planting. Today it is 50F right now in the middle of May almost. Soil temperatures need to get to that point for good germination.

The “media” for whatever reason, has turned against any kind of ethanol production, on a dime no less. Corn ethanol may or may not make a great deal of sense - but ethanol does and requires significant expenditure to get up and running. Switchgrass and other plant materials hold promise for alternative bio and renwable fuels.

Coal is under similar attack. This is unfathomable, since it is the one key commodity it so happens the United States is well blessed with. All the radio talk shows seem to be on board.

What’s rarely brought up, there has to be a baseload supply, which is currently provided with coal, hydro-electric, and nuclear, basically.

Huge capital expenditures that keep the lights on “when you flip the lightswitch”. I swear some people just think electricity comes out of the wall, and for the alternative we can all just plop a windmill on the roof and be done with it. True enough, LEDs will work for home lighting.

But the big ticket items like air-conditioning in the summer and heating in the winter, water heaters, etc. are high-current draw, they need LOTS of power and capacity for industry and business and government.

I'm working on a plan to put a 300 foot wide, by 2 mile deep copper rods, one in California, and one in New York, thereby making the Continent one large battery. Thus we can store all this intermittent power.

Please send me a initial billion dollars to.

Esq, Right Honorable Hernado de Suzo de Rodriguez
C/O Leisler Greater Industries.
Box 111.
Guatemala City.
Guatemala.

Ethanol ping