then why not be truthful about Brazil’s success.
During the same period when you imply that ethanol was responsible for energy independence, they went from being a world laggard in offshore oil production to being a world leader (with our help by the way) and in fact increased production nine-fold. If you chart the BTU increase in Brazil from the two factors the BTU increase from increased oil production is a far steeper curve.
That chart was posted in a thread on this topic months ago.
We are now belatedly coming to grips with the fact that if we increased our offshore and onshore production by drilling in areas there was no good reason not to drill in we too could be energy independent. Certainly we would be if we increased production nine-fold.
Then too there is the factor that Brazil has a combination of land and water to produce sugar cane for ethanol.
We don’t have water in the entire arid West that would make ethanol make sense and we don’t have much land in combination with water elsewhere that makes it make sense. In addition to being bad for engines it does not transport well and does not as claimed in fact make the air cleaner. In fact oil can be burned with much less air pollution but we don’t do it because of boondoggles like ethanol being what we waste resources and tax money on.
Ethanol production also creates wasting of valuable topsoil that we don’t need.
Our ethanol boondoggle has not created an iota of energy independence and never will.
ETOH is but a small piece of the pie—I never stated it would bring energy independence. I also support domestic oil production and other means of using captured solar energy besides ETOH from corn. For the record, most corn is raised dry-land, not irrigated. ETOH has been used since the 1970s and the recent expansion has the oil competitors upset, hence the reason for vilification of farmers. ETOH in the corn belt is generated at the rate of about 400 gallons/acre plus a high protein feed for livestock, plus a great means of carbon addition to the soil left over by the stalks. It seems that urbanites have little understanding of the value of capturing solar energy by annual plants, not to mention agribusiness in general—very sad in my opinion.