Posted on 07/08/2008 7:15:41 AM PDT by cassy.kane
I frequently travel through West Texas, eastern New Mexico, and the Oklahoma Panhandle and almost every time I am on an interstate in one of these three areas, I pass a caravan of tractor trailer rigs carrying blades for wind turbines. Wind turbines, which are popping up across the windswept southern plains or the elevated areas of eastern New Mexico, are roughly one hundred feet tall with three blades, each of which are approximately fifty feet long. Moreover, the construction of more of these “environmentally friendly” beasts is constantly pushed by those who believe one above ground oil rig would ruin their view of pristine nature.
In much of these same areas, particularly the Oklahoma Panhandle and West Texas, corn has emerged as a far more prominent crop than it was a decade ago because it is another form of alternative energy: ethanol. The chief purpose of ethanol, not unlike wind energy, is to save the planet by being a cleaner burning fuel for the internal combustion engines in our vehicles. But there is a catch. Just as the individual parts of the wind turbines have to be transported by vehicles that are dependent upon petroleum-derived fuels that cause pollution, it takes 1.3 gallons of gasoline to produce one gallon of ethanol.
Moreover, that one gallon of ethanol that is produced through the burning of 1.3 gallons of gasoline contains one third less energy than a gallon of gasoline, according to Iain Murray, senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. This means that by the time you burn 1.3 gallons of ethanol, which is what it takes to equal the energy of a gallon of gasoline, you have actually already burned 1.73 gallons of gasoline simply to produce the cleaner burning 1.3 gallons of ethanol that “replaced” it.
(Excerpt) Read more at humanevents.com ...
That's allright ... we'll make it up in volume.
< /sarcasm>
Not to mention that ethanol will tear up your lawn mower engine.
http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20080624/NEWS/156280343
Energy=Prosperity.....that is the simple rule of our economic system. Without cheap, reliable sources of energy, we are back to 40 acres and a mule. NO economy as big as ours can be competitive without enough electricity, natural gas, and gasoline available at a reasonable price.
One need to look no further than our airline and auto industries. If oil was $20 a bbl, does anyone believe this industries would be nearing bankruptcy?
The physics behind ethanol are insane. Even if it was energy positive, there is literally not enough corn in this country to produce the amount we’d need to offset gasoline.
You’re absolutely right and even if we manage to switch to some other fuel source we’ll still be using more energy in the future rather than less. That is assuming the democrats don’t manage to destroy our economy.
Something needs to be done. We can’t go around saying this won’t work and that wo’t work without suggesting what might work.
We’re already saying what WILL work:
Increase supply of oil by drilling domestically.
Increase energy production in general by building more nukes.
The dhimmirats’ solution is to tax the oil companies and “invest” this in pie-in-the-sky “alternative energy” projects that aren’t feasible in the short term, and in most cases, even in the long term.
There are other opinions.
Ramirez is always on target with his incisive political commentary.
Yes....
Unions
Like what?
It don’t take 1.3 gallons of gasoline to make 1 gallon of ethanol. Anybody can guess why?
You don’t use gasoline to make ethanol. The energy used to make ethanol is diesel to operate farm equipment and to transport the corn and ethanol by truck or railroad and natural gas/propane to dry the corn or for use in the ethanol plants. Plus some electricity is used for motors and lights and such.
This year our riding lawnmower wasn’t running right so I started to fool around with it and I realized the gasoline wasn’t coming out of the fuel line enough. The inside of the fuel line was clogging up because the inside rubber was coming off of it. That I blame on Ethanol.
On the other hand I didn’t have much problems starting any of the lawn equipment this year after the long winter. Usually even after draining the gas tanks before storage they seem hard to start but not this year so I can’t blame Ethanol for that.
A distinction without a difference. The point is that corn-ethanol production is a net energy sink.
A distinction without a difference
There is a big difference. About all our Natural Gas is produced here in North America not imported from the Mideast. Electricity is ditto as well. That leaves diesel. Now I have tried to find the percent of diesel used in this country for farming. I saw the figure one time and it was a surprisingly low figure, maybe even less than 1%.
So what is important about the amount of diesel used in farming. If we can establish a base amount before the current ethanol boom and see what is the increase in farm need of diesel then subtract the normal growth of demand that there would be without ethanol we would see how much diesel demand is caused by ethanol production.
We then take that figure and compare it to the amount of ethanol produced. To be fair the ethanol would be adjusted for the fact that it has less btu per gallon than diesel. The result would be hard proof if ethanol is increasing or decreasing our demand for foreign oil.
Maybe some other Freepers can find the raw data needed to calculate the actual petroleum use of ethanol production. All I have seen so far is questionable studies that don’t know that gasoline isn’t a major supplier of ethanol production energy.
My cottage, the neighbor's cottage, my friends' cottages....
You may suggest anything you would like to suggest, but until you suggest something based in reality, you could just as well spend your time watching the clouds, and both will have about identical productivity.
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