Posted on 09/02/2016 5:02:02 AM PDT by Kaslin
Since it's been seven months since the Iowa caucuses and it'll be another three-plus years until that hell is fresh again, this is the best time to talk about ethanol.
Just in case you didn't know, ethanol is very popular in Iowa and other corn states, which is why most presidential candidates swear once every four years that they love ethanol so much they'd marry a jug of it if they could. If only for a moment, loyalty to this government moonshine becomes as fraught with political symbolism as a gay wedding in which both grooms refuse to wear American flag pins while declining to stand for the national anthem in support of our troops.
Thankfully, we don't have to worry about that for a little while, so let's tell the truth: Ethanol is stupid, wasteful and bad for cars (because it's corrosive and inefficient), the economy and the environment.
The main case for biofeuels is twofold. It's supposed to be better for the environment, particularly global warming, and lessen our dependence on foreign oil. The assumption was that converting plants into fuel was "carbon neutral," and since we can do that at home, every gallon of oil we replace with corn is one less we have to buy from overseas. The fact that it also lines the pockets of agribusinesses and the politicians who love them is supposed to be a total coincidence and irrelevant to this good and noble policy.
Nope.
A new study from the University of Michigan confirms what pretty much everyone knew all along. Researchers found that biofuels actually create more greenhouse gases than simply using petroleum, because plants only absorb a fraction of the carbon dioxide released by burning the fuels in the first place. Moreover, ethanol production and distribution is energy-intensive, throwing off even more greenhouse gases.
"When you look at what's actually happening on the land, you find that not enough carbon is being removed from the atmosphere to balance what's coming out of the tailpipe," University of Michigan professor John DeCicco said. "When it comes to the emissions that cause global warming, it turns out that biofuels are worse than gasoline."
A study last year by the University of Tennessee found that in the decade since the U.S. imposed the Renewable Fuel Standard -- and after $50 billion in subsidies -- corn-based ethanol "created more problems than solutions" and hampered research on other kinds of biofuels.
But even if you think, as I do, that caring for the environment means more than climate change, ethanol is a horror. Growing corn for inefficient fuel takes up farmland, raising food prices and encouraging deforestation. Science writer Matt Ridley has estimated that if all of our transport fuel came from biofuel, we would need 30 percent more land than all of the existing food-growing farmland we have today.
All of the corn we grow requires vast amounts of fertilizer, which runs into our waterways and out to the Gulf of Mexico. Every year that runoff creates a massive -- and growing -- dead zone that kills sea life in one of our most valuable fisheries. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Organization, "Habitats that would normally be teeming with life become, essentially, biological deserts." This year's dead zone will be the size of Connecticut, researchers say.
Meanwhile, in places such as Brazil, CO2-absorbing rainforests (among the biggest sources of biodiversity) are being clear-cut to make room for biofuel crops. The Nature Conservancy's Joseph Fargione estimated a few years ago that converting rainforests, peatlands, savannas or grasslands for biofuels releases 17 to 420 times more CO2 than it offsets by displacing petroleum or coal.
One hears a lot about the great jobs that ethanol creates here at home, but this is broken-window thinking. Frederic Bastiat famously explained in his essay on the broken window that it's silly to talk about the jobs created by a broken window -- you've got to hire people to replace it, right? -- unless you also take into account that the money spent on a new window could have been spent on something more productive.
Thanks to the shale oil revolution, America now has greater oil reserves than Saudi Arabia and Russia. Domestic oil production produces far more -- and far better paying -- jobs than ethanol production. Cheaper oil also cascades through the economy, creating more jobs. And we're better at producing oil in an environmentally safe way than most other countries. When we take production offline, we are in effect subsidizing foreign production.
But hey, the Iowa caucuses are important too.
Senator Pat Toomey started a campaign against ethanol. Seems to have died out. I am as passionately against ethanol as you sound to be. Also, being a prepper, it has no shelf life.
The efficiency for ethanol is HORRIBLE compared to gasoline. Even the government admits this. It will not nor would work on its own without subsidy for schemers, granaries and middleman corn whores and politicians.
Agreed. I have a ‘72 Honda 750 a ‘84 BMW R100 and a ‘97 BMW R11OORT. Supposedly the ‘97 is OK with ethanol, but I’m not chancing it. Luckily alc. Free is not hard to find here. I live in the middle of the corn belt and a good deal of my income is from farm ground that my family owns. I’m still apposed to ethanol. I know several farmers here that are all for it but won’t use it in their own vehicles.
Post 13 ; faucetman
May I add a DITTO to your thoughts?
Willing suspension of all disbelief. This non-taxing benefit results in a frigging MANDATE to put that sh!t in all our engines when there is NO mechanical benefit proven. That isn’t clothes, it isn’t tax credits or “no-taxing.” In my opinion, they aren’t “no-taxing;”
they are more likened to tax credits for behavior.
Ethanol is STILL corrosive. Adding octane doesn’t change that.
If corn prices are down might not other crops be planted that have a higher return?
The ethanol mandate has created a new industry of non ethanol fuels. True Fuel, Stihl and even Home Depot have their own versions of premixed and straight gasoline they sell in 1 quart containers for $6 or more retail.
I actually buy leaded 109 octane racing fuel by the gallon for about $9.00/gallon. It is the only alternative I can find here in NH that is within a ten mile drive. There are no other gas stations that sell non ethanol fuel around here.
For storage over the winter I put True Fuel into my multiple small engine equipment. I run them down to nothing, put just a little bit into their fuel tank. Then I restart and let them run for a few minutes to circulate the True Fuel and then shut it off. I have gone to this method after replacing two carbs.
It is very illuminating that we have to spend a buttload more money to get fuel that doesn’t have all the government mandated crap that’s put in it because of politics, isn’t it?
These studies continue not to incorporate in their numbers the fact that the corn used to produce ethanol is not depleted, but is ADDITIONALLY used as feed for livestock. So, it does double duty, and that fact is not incorporated in these studies.
To me, food resource planting should have nothing to do with energy sources other than human/animal sustenance.
Terms like “additional” and “double duty” still do not negate that fact that ethanol is BAD for conventional engines and that its use decreases the efficiency (directly, in mileage) when used as a fuel ‘additive’.
Ethanol is an inherently destructive corrosive factor on many materials from which engines and support systems are constructed. There really isn’t an argument about all this. It is all about MONEY and POLITICS.
We had a station that sold pure gasoline a few years back. Doing comparisons, I got 15% better mileage over 10%-ethanol blend. Problem was, it cost 15% more and they went out of business. There is another station around that sells it but it’s 20 miles out of my way.
Co-uses and co-products isn’t the question here. The question is whether it makes sense to mandate ethanol as an additive. NOTHING I have seen with respect to mileage, efficiency, non-harmful effects on engines - or even COST supports adding it to the “co-product” category for the sake of saying “corn is good.”
I’ve had THREE new cars/trucks from two different manufacturers. They all got O2 sensor failures DIRECTLY attributed to ethanol in the gas. I had to buy a CAN/OBD II tool to reset the crap engine alert. All O2 sensor damage from ethanol.
We used methanol in karts I used to race. After every race day was done, we'd drain the fuel tank, and then pull the fuel hose from the tank end, and fill it up with WD-40, start the engine, and run the WD-40 through the engine. Never had problems. The WD-40 lubed things up and removed any moisture from the alcohol, and also removed all vestiges of alcohol from the fuel system.
One time I failed to do it at the end of the day, the kart sat for a week, and when I pulled it apart, there was rust forming on the steel parts, and the carb was gunked with the salts left over from the alcohol evaporation.
Exactly. That's why it's so important to note that a principled conservative can take a stand against Ethanol and still win the Iowa caucuses, regardless of the voting rules.
The thirst mutilator! Now for cars!
The alcohol in ethanol attracts moisture.
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