Quote:
Originally Posted by owly
I am 100% dyed in the wool anti ethanol <snip>
... the fact is that the figures quoted by the pro-ethanol crowd are completely false. They are figures designed to promote their agenda. With agriculture....... with which I am heavily involved, the energy costs of production can easily be manipulated to make things look better than they in fact are. The pro-ethanol folks look at only the most obvious first tier energy costs. There are studies that look more deeply into the total energy picture, and those invariably come up with negative or close to negative figures. It makes no sense whatsoever to burn / consume fossil fuel energy to produce ethanol. <snip>
They present an entirely false and bogus "feel good" picture of the energy efficiency. Looking at it honestly, you must look at all of these things........ and more, as they all are energy costs that wouldn't be there without ethanol production. Is the energy cost of production of piece of iron that is worn out in tilling the soil NOT a energy cost of production of ethanol? Is the energy cost of operating a service truck to work on a center pivot to irrigate an ethanol crop NOT an energy cost of production? Even the energy cost of running a school bus to farms out of town must be assigned to whatever is being produced on that land. A share of EVERY energy cost associated in any way with farming that land, be it maintenance of roads & utilities, school bus, fuel and electricity to light the homes of the farmers, etc........belongs on the debit side of the equation. It's easy to gloss all this over and say....... "but they'd be growing something else........", but the fact is that they are NOT growing something else........ somebody else somewhere else is growing that "something else", and accruing that energy cost. Honesty is NOT popular where people have an agenda, but to be truly honest one has to look at the larger picture.
Howard
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I wanted to snip more for the sake of brevity but what I left in is relevant. Sorry for the long quote, folks!
Bias goes both ways of course, and I won't dwell on it. We each have our own, and that's that.
Dragging fossil fuel out of the ground also requires the consumption of energy as you obviously are aware, but unlike ethanol, eventually those resources must run out or become too expensive to deliver.
You make good points and it would probably be an interesting evening hashing this back and forth over beers and pizza. I will address one statement you made: "'But they'd be growing something else,' but the fact is they're NOT..." This country grows more food than it can consume. That's an incontrovertible fact. Pockets of hunger here and there are due to poverty, not a shortage of food. You can make the argument that growing fuel instead of food drives up the price of food for the consumer and again that's a topic for Pizza Night. It doesn't deny the fact that we have more than enough food. Even with the thousands upon thousands of acres dedicated to growing corn for ethanol, we still have more than enough food.
Knowing that, and knowing that the energy balance is positive (how positive is another Pizza Night line-item), why not grow fuel? It builds domestic jobs, keeps farmers working, reduces foreign dependence etc etc.
I don't see a downside here. The only real question is exactly how positive is the upside.