Corn Ethanol Isn't the Answer

[ProudDad]

The egregious give-away called "the Farm Bill" was just passed by the House. Among the major beneficiaries of this warped bill are ADM, Cargil and the rest of the ethanol mafia..

This is bad. Call your Senators and kill this if we can...

http://www.coopamerica.org/pubs/caq/articles/Summer2007cornethanol.cfm

"While corn-based ethanol has been touted as a way to solve the climate crisis, it simply isn’t a major improvement over gasoline when it comes to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions.

"In the US today, about 95 percent of our ethanol is derived from corn kernels. Because corn is such an energy-intensive plant to grow, and because the methods to process corn into ethanol are also energy intensive, it takes seven barrels of oil to produce eight barrels of corn ethanol, from field to processing plant, according to research by the traditionally right-leaning Cato Institute. So when you factor in production, ethanol curbs climate-changing vehicle emissions by a mere 12 percent over gasoline, according to a 2006 University of Minnesota study by Jason Hill and David Tilman. (With blends like E85—85 percent ethanol, 15 percent gas—that emissions reduction plummets to 2 percent.) And that’s only if the corn is grown on existing fields. Converting wildlife preserves to cropland to grow more ethanol would result in a net greenhouse gas release that would exacerbate global warming and negate any benefit, Hill told the University of Minnesota’s alumni magazine.

"An earlier study published in BioScience in 2005 concurs with Hill and Tilman’s findings. The researchers looked at the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, cropland area requirements, and other environmental consequences of growing corn and sugarcane to produce fuel ethanol, and found that “the environmental impacts far exceed any value in developing this energy resource on a large scale.”

Not to mention the artificial rise in food prices as a result of this short-sighted wrong-headed response to Climate Change...

Decentralized, Solar electric and electric cars. The technology is already HERE it just needs the kind of subsidies that oil, coal and nuclear get... the best way is to TAKE the subsidies from oil, coal and nuclear and give it to Solar Electric...

[SCantiGOP]

1. I agree

Ethanol legislation is more about farm subsidies and the fact that Iowa has the first primary. It is probably a net energy user and it is already causing food prices to go up as the cost of corn increases.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

2. corn ethanol is the answer...

if you're a corn farmer and you've got too much corn but you want to keep getting subsidies.