Comments on: Corn Ethanol Worse Than Gasoline, But Biomass OK

By: Joy Towles Ezell

Joy Towles Ezell — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 02:32:11 +0000

Paco,
you are on the right track. No more burning anything is the answer.
We should be maximizing the use of solar, wind where we can, geothermal, ocean current, tidal action energy…and conservation and efficiencies.

By: paco

paco — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 02:20:46 +0000

y is it that every one is still looking to converting items like oil and corn and other items into fuel. y cant we just use the solar technology we have to make things run and have power that we love so much. i may be wrong on this but every one is yelling and screaming and crying about the atmosphere and how we are killing the enviroment with pollution when we already have a great alternative to it. or maby it is the minerals it takes to make these solar converting products. and y are people not looking at the negative effects of deforestation in other parts of the world such as africa and other places this also changes the direct enviornment making / causing a big impact on the weather in other parts of the world does it not?

well i appreciate your time and effort in reading this email i really hope i get a response because it is something that has been bothering me for a long time. and i would like to share the answers with other curious people

sincerely.. a concerned dweller of this planet.

paco

By: Brainjack

Brainjack — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 00:32:07 +0000

Ecology, the last frontier.

By: Joy Towles Ezell

Joy Towles Ezell — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 18:09:09 +0000

When it comes to making fuel from biomass, he told me, “I wish that it did work. But I’m a scientist first and an agriculturalist second.”
“Total environmental and health costs of gasoline are about 71 cents per gallon, while an equivalent amount of corn-ethanol fuel costs from 72 cents to about $1.45, depending on the technology used to produce it,” said the university. Stephen Polasky, a professor in the university’s applied economics department, said that “These costs are not paid for by those who produce, sell and buy gasoline or ethanol. The public pays these costs.”
David Pimentel said that “he continues to be amazed that Congress still supports the idea of corn ethanol. He is equally dismissive of the concept of cellulosic ethanol, a substance which, in theory, can profitably produce motor fuel from switchgrass, corn stubble, or other biomass. Although promoters have been pushing cellulosic ethanol for decades – and it is now being pushed hard by the Democrats on Capitol Hill — Pimentel’s latest report estimates that the energy return on energy invested in cellulosic ethanol is minus 68 percent. (Pimentel puts the EROEI on corn ethanol at a negative 46 percent. Some of the most-widely cited reports on corn ethanol, particularly those done by the US Department of Agriculture show that corn ethanol has a slightly positive EROEI.) “It’s absolutely ridiculous,” says Pimentel. Congress and others who are promoting the idea “haven’t even done the most basic calculations about what it would mean to make cellulosic ethanol.”

Robert Bryce is the author of Gusher of Lies: The Dangerous Delusions of “Energy Independence.”