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I just read this story at ENN.com about how Bush’s visit to Brazil is spawning some shared information on America’s ethanol production. It also goes on to explain the basics about ethanol. A pro on ethanol is that we can use it as a fuel instead of oil, but the bad thing is that it comes from corn and will be intruding on our food industry. I’m glad to see that people are so interested in alternative fuels, but I think that we shouldn’t go crazy on the ethanol.

Here is the article:
http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=12372

For some reason I am always skeptical of Bush and his motives, so I did a little more research into ethanol and sure nuff, he is just bowing to the corn lobby and doing more harm to the environment.

Ethanol as it is currently made in the US (from corn) is very inefficient and it actually uses more energy (coal generated electricity) and creates more carbon emission to produce the Ethanol then it does to just burn oil.

The reason Brazil’s experiment worked so well is because they produce their ethanol from sugar cane, which has a much higher energy yield than that ethanol produced from corn.

So, until Bush stops bowing to the corn lobbist we will again be doing more harm then good. ?remember the “clean air act” lol?

Adam

We should also remember that in the US, farms and land are not always used to their potential. The US is very irresponsible with what they can do if they put their mind to it.

I had always thought that the corn based ethanol was bad, based on the fact that we already are poor at distributing food to the world’s starving, so growing food to burn cannot be good. But hearing that the processing is so carbon fuel hungry-it suddenly makes all the more sense that this is being pushed as the way forward. Its the perfect way to dupe the masses into thinking they are doing a good thing.

I was under the impression that corn based ethanol was actually going to be worth the effort. I remember reading all the reports about making e85 (I think that was what they called it) available at the pumps and pushing for more cars to be able to use it. Since you mentioned that it wasn’t worth it that could explain why they haven’t mentioned it again. LOL

They havent mentioned it because its all about money.

Alot of big agribusinesses and corn state politicians have a lot to gain from Bush pushing this corn ethanol initiative.

I wrote a blog post about this if you wan to have a read:
http://www.neutralexistence.com/blog/2007/03/bush-environment-and-ethanol/

Thailand is going to cut oil imports by 60% over 7 years by use of sugar and cooking oil products to run cars and motorcycles, funny how ‘backward’ ‘third world’ states can do these things while the west can not

HI
Around the time that we entered the 21st century, it became clear that energy security and national security were two sides of the same geopolitical coin. For most of the succeeding six years, investors have focused on oil, natural gas, coal and uranium, the dominant sources of global energy supply, producing a huge bull market in this sector.

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Reduce Carbon

Hey friends, thats a nice thread. Thanks for sharing all your views.