I liked this paragraph of that page.
"Less than three-tenths of one percent of total US corn exports went to the 25 poorest countries in 1996. More US corn goes to make alcoholic beverages in the US than is exported to feed the hungry in the world's 25 most undernourished countries combined."

Also, a huge byproduct of ethanol production is cattle feed. It's called dry distillers grain,DDG. When fed to cattle there is less toxic byproduct produced from the cattle. Lower phosphate manure. I have yet to see any study include these facts.

The comments about the price of wheat climbing because of corn going to ethanol. The corn usage is just a small part of a very big puzzle causing prices to explode. Because of the lower dallar and world population increase, in the last year exports are up 33%. Feed usage is up 6.3% and ethanol usage is up 40 %. The last 3 trading days soybeans are upover a dallar because ofasian contries buying soybean oil. Corn and wheat have to go up as they are all basicly bidding for our acres.

As said by others, it is simply not ready for prime time. There is BILLIONS of dollars being invested, we do not need more $$$ thrown at research, we need to give scientist time to decide if this product can be made viable, so far there is progress, but it is not there yet.

Bottom line there is only so much energy in plant material, oil has more energy per cubic foot of material, so oil is a better energy source. As long as that situation maintains itself oil will always be a better fuel, but if the ethanol products can get "good enough" it will gain more and more support.

However right now most of us are spending a truck load of money on ethanol production, there is a huge tax credit for its production, so even if you never bought a drop from a pump, you paid for a lot of its production.

Personally, I believe this will be a non-issue and these dollars will be proven to have been wasted. A much more cost effective solution is to build massive electricity production from wind farms, hydro-electric, nuke power, geo-thermal, and the like, which will make electricity a very low cost alternative, which will lead to a shift from oil to electricity in almost every application imaginable. Granted, not in the marine world, but if autos are electric, and no oil is being used for heating or furnace fuel, the demand for oil will drop like a rock, then the price of gasoline will too, and none of us will be buying ethanol at higher prices than gasoline.

But only time will tell, if there is major break throughs that will help ethanol skip a couple steps from raw material to finished product, possibly with genetically altered plants, then ethanol might actually become a lower cost alternative, but even the most optimistic solutions there are 5 to 10 years away.

I am with you on this one. I think some guys argue for the sake of arguing. They are shallow or don't no all the facts.

That would be the stupid thing to do.

why do you think this... not bashing.. just loking to hear an educated opinion against doing so.... can you provide one?

We have several billion $ a year to waste on space exploration, but we don't have a billion $ to develope and produce 2(two) types of fuel, Ethanol and Bio-Diesel. Wich have proven themselves. We would rather **** all over are countryside and shoreline.

I understand the enviromental argument, I don't agree with it, but I understand the emotional arguments that are its underpinnings...

Is this where you are coming from?

The reason I ask is simply, let China build 30 refineries and we simply shift from being dependent on OPEC nations to being dependent on OPEC AND China.

The only economic solution is significantly more supply, but reason must prevail. We can not get more energy from a pound of corn that there is in it, it can not be done. Oil has more energy per cubic foot of volume. A LOT more.

Bio-fuels, while promising, have serious limits. Hopefully we can get around them, but there is already billions being invested in research on this. More money is not an answer. Throwing dollars wildly at a problem never solved the problem, it just wasted dollars.

As to satellite and space research, if we do not stay in front in that arena we will find ourselves at the mercy of someone with the ability to shoot down our satellites... not a fun place to be. I am no fan of government in the roll that private industry should occupy, but in space, government probably is the natural choice for serious research.

Think about the profit if someone can come up with a cost effective bio-fuels program. You think our market is not investing there?????

Two reasons. The evironmental impact and it is only a temporary fix to are oil crisis. Drilling for oil is like shooting diaria all over your back yard. I don't think many people really no or have seen what drilling ops and refineries do to the area around them. These oil companies claim to be clean, but they're really not. Then again, none of us live there. So lets tear it up.

Some of us have seen refineries and drilling ops, some here even work on them...... please do not imply ignorance where there is none.....

the anti-oil extremist are simply cutting off their nose to spite their own face... oil companies generally clean up after themselves today... 20 years ago was different, but now it is not then...

Bottom line, let China build 30 refineries and we will be just as much beholding to them as we are OPEC now. So it may come down to feel good about some place 99.99% of the world will never see not having a refinery and then feel horrible later with gasoline price that wrecks our economy, or we can feel a little pain knowing that frozen wasteland has an oil well on it but we are moving towards energy independence...

We need to drill in ANWAR, and build100 nuke plants too... over supplying the market is the answer for shortages of such a important part of our economy...

I think I mentioned this several times. We do not need corn for enthanol. You can produce it from algae, weeds or any plant material. It's all around us, no special crops needed. It should'nt impact are food production.

agreed, but the issues is the sugar content... algae has less sugar than corn, so it takes more to make the ethanol...

it also means the fixed cost is higher because you have more volume of product necessary to create the finished product.

Until we get serious about genetically altered plants, so they have large amounts of sugar and yeast growing in the plant together, so a simply production process can start the reaction to create ethanol, we will not have cost effective ethanol. The math simply does not work.

It is always easy to point to someone else and say "you should do more" but we are literally up against the laws of mathematics on this.

So we go back to the issue, enviromental gains, or economic gains... unfortunately we have to make a choice....

I understand your point. I have worded that strongly. Are oil companies are reasonably clean until someone screws up. It is still only a temporary fix. Nuclear energy is great, but we have to bury it's waste in special containers. Out of sight, out of mind. Let are kids or their kids deal with it.

only other option is starve our economy while the rest of the world races past... we would have ended much of mankinds problems we know of in the world were it not for over regulation of our economy.... we seem to want to slow our economy to the absolute slowest point we can, and pray no one will catch up....

no one LIKES nuke power, but we ALL like turning on the lights...

Forget about E85 fuel for a while. What about Bio-Diesel. Plant oils are a lot easier to produce than plant alcohol. You could get free fuel in back of your local restaurant in the form of waste cooking oil. You could fill up your Diesel powered Cigarette for practically pennies on the dollar. I like the test on the diesel powered Nortech in Powerboat. Mr. Teague is experimenting with diesels as well.

Bio-Diesel could be another thread.

I come from a family of gear heads, engineers and biologist. I am stuck in the middle.
It's interesting to hear what knowledge and views we have. Thats how we learn.

Or we could race past the rest of the world with cleaner, better burning fuel. Come on! You mean to tell me we can send people to the moon and outer space but we can't find a clean alternative to fossil fuel.