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A weensy-teensy example. Want more? How 'bout stopping the wars that are destroying farmers' fields in Africa. Instead of propping up prices by paying farmers not to grow, just zero out their debt and tell the banks to shove it. That would be a 'drastic' thing most people would support. Collecting rain water and piping it like oil across Alaska to where it's needed is a political issue. We can do it, but we won't in the foreseeable future. The drought doesn't have to be, but it is an issue strictly due to human failure, incompetence, malfeasance, etc. There is no technical, physical reason for anybody to go hungry. None.

...unless you consider drastic change in economic models is within field of simple politics.

Yes, it is. It just takes the will of each individual to do it.

Bullshit. Many GMO corn varieties are approved for export to the EU.

http://www.ncga.com/know-before-you-grow/

Pimentel and Patzek are well respected? Maybe in the petro and bug worlds, but in the biofuel world? Hardly. They are well known for self-referential justification of their "facts" and citing old data (again, usually their own papers from long ago). All you have to do is read this paper http://www.ncga.com/public_policy/issues/2001/etha nol/08_22_01b.htm by Michael Graboski: Research Professor, Department of Chemical Engineering, Colorado School of Mines. And that's a kind review of Pimentel/Patzek. It's #1 if you google 'Pimentel ethanol'

Keep googling and you can find more about their dislike of biodiesel and any other non-biomass biofuel. Like this one http://www.biodiesel.org/resources/pressreleases/g en/20050721_pimentel_response.pdf about biodiesel. Is the source of the rebuttal (the National Biodiesel Board) biased? Read the reasoning behind the disagreement with Pimentel/Patzek and make up your own mind.

Unfortunately, we can't use our existing pipeline infrastructure to transport ethanol: "Ethanol absorbs moisture. That's a benefit when ethanol is present in your car's fuel system, but it causes problems during pipeline transport. Pipelines contain moisture and deposits that are absorbed by ethanol, thus changing its state during transport. To this point, the volume of ethanol has not been large enough to justify change in the pipeline infrastructure that would eliminate those deposits. However, as MTBE is phased out and more ethanol is used, such improvements may occur." http://www.ncga.com/ethanol/main/economics.htm

You must be new here. Here's the most recent stuff:

Argonne Study
Story explainaing the results

This link provides dozens of sources on either side of the issue. The "sides" are David Pimentel on one side vs. Everyone Else on the other side.

Right now we can't even get breakeven with just harvesting the biofuel.

Bull. Look at http://www.ethanol.org/documents/NetEnergyBalancei ssuebrief_000.pdf#search=%22ethanol%20production%2 0efficiency%22 or http://www.ncga.com/ethanol/main/energy.htm or http://journeytoforever.org/ethanol_energy.html. Sure, there are folks who say the net energy balance is negative, but the reputable ones say positive. My guess (which I don't have the resources to prove or disprove, could anyone help?) is that the ones who say the net balance is negative have a political axe to grind.

Of course, the net energy balance of ethanol production is negative, but only when you include the sunlight input, since the amount of sunlight over a field for the whole growing season is enormous. Thermodynamics says that no process will be more than 100% efficient, after all.

Actually, it is a GROSS understatement.
http://healthandenergy.com/ethanol.htm
Pimentel, who chaired a U.S. Department of Energy panel that investigated the energetics, economics and environmental aspects of ethanol production several years ago, subsequently conducted a detailed analysis of the corn-to-car fuel process. ...
Adding up the energy costs of corn production and its conversion to ethanol, 131,000 BTUs are needed to make 1 gallon of ethanol. One gallon of ethanol has an energy value of only 77,000 BTU.

"Put another way," Pimentel says, "about 70 percent more energy is required to produce ethanol than the energy that actually is in ethanol. Every time you make 1 gallon of ethanol, there is a net energy loss of 54,000 BTU."

Ethanol from corn costs about $1.74 per gallon to produce, compared with about 95 cents to produce a gallon of gasoline.

The Ethanol industry, mainly those companies whose main business is the making and running the Ethanol plants (17 have or are being built in Nebraska alone) has a counter argument:
http://www.ncga.com/ethanol/pdfs/ShapouriEnergyBal ance2004.pdf
The net energy balance of corn ethanol adjusted for byproduct credits is 27,729 and 33,196 Btu per gallon for wet- and dry-milling,

Now, considering that gasoline supplies 125,000 Btu's per gallon, it will take between 3.5 to 4.5 gallons of Ethanol to replace each gallon of gasoline, (using PRO Ehtanol figures) IF Ethanol is to be self-sustaining. When you compute the total gallons of gasoline the US burns every year and multiply that by 4, then divide by the average US Corn yield, you'll learn that it will take 50% MORE land than the total arable land in the US. You can't grow Corn on rocks or mountian slopes, or in deserts. In fact, it is becoming difficult to grow corn here in the Platte Valley of Nebraska because the Ogalala aquifer is getting low and the Neb Nat Resource district is strictly controlling the pumping of water. You may see a LARGE drop in Corn production to do the extended drought in the Midwest. So much for Corn as a dependable fuel source.

Corn is NOT a renewable resource. It isn't even a fuel. It's a food source. Would you rather someone starve so you can drive your SUV?

Even the numbers from the National Corn Growers's Association only indicate that ethanol from corn produces only 30% more energy than goes in. That's a poor energy return. Numbers from opponents of ethanol are much worse.

The more promising idea, if it can be made to work, is "cellulosic ethanol". The idea is to develop bioengineered enzymes that can digest agricultural waste (straw, corncobs, sugar cane, wood chips, etc.) into something more useful. But so far, no process to do that is beyond the pilot plant stage.

Ethanol Sucks

W00t Ethanol
 

Here's a comparison of the USDA study and Pimental study. It outlines the different assumptions and compares the numbers.

You know, somebody else in this thread said something to the effect of "The only one who says ethanol is a net drain of energy is [this one particular guy] and his grad students, and his studies have been thoroughly debunked by the rest of the community." It made me wonder if this was the same guy. So I looked it up.

The research mentioned in the article you linke is by "Tad Patzek," who is apparently a geoengineering professor at UC Berkeley.

The guy mentioned by the other post I read (which is here) is named David Pementel and works at Cornell Univerity.

Well, I do a Google search, and lo and behold! -- it turns out they worked together on the same [debunked] study!

So pardon me if I discount your "ethanol production uses 6 times more energy than it produces" claim, mmkay?

Plastics do not have to be made from oil. Oil is just cheap, so that is what they use. Farmers are promoting plastics made from corn. I've heard of soy based plastics too, but can't find a link. Pot fans like to point out that Hemp can be turned into plastic.

Corn based plastics are generally bio-degradable, which is often an advantage.

Holy propaganda batman!

You rang?

The American coalition for ethanol is basically a lobby of Midwest corn farmers who really like their ethanol subsidies.

No. Really? Gee, I guess I've been duped.

Or more likely, I just like how their facts page is organized. :-)

Try these studies if Ethanol.org doesn't float your boat. For example, a 2004 study done by the Department of Energy (the same organization that found Ethanol to be energy negative under Pimentel 20 years earlier) found that Ethanol is at least 35% energy positive. (Report)

Even if these figures are overstated, the use of Ethanol would consolidate our oil dependence on farming equipment. The money then used to maintain the oil industry could then be diverted to replacing farm equipment with new technologies like hydrogen fuel cells or high density batteries.

Sure, here's a lot of links for you to read over :) .

Some links are by obviously biased parties (for example, NCGA is the National Corn Growers Association). Others are not. This is just a start, of course - I gathered these in about three minutes of searching. Again, if you can find a single "net negative" study done by anyone - university, corn-industry, government, environmental group, anyone really - that didn't have Pimental and his bad data involved, please let me know, because I've never found such a study.

Yes, Pimental's work has been nearly totally discredited. Here's a point by point rebuttal of his paper. The rebuttal also explains that pimental assesses the full costs of the production of biofuels to the fuel and ignores the fact that there are valuable byproducts such as corn oil and *food*. He comes up with the same horrible analysis for biodiesel, which is even more off base. Even the ethanol industry doesn't claim more than a 1.29 energy balance which means the bioethanol contains 29% more energy than the energy that was used in the processing of it. Biodiesel, even with soybeans, which are not a very efficient crop to use just for the oil, has a 3.29 energy balance. Again Pimental assigns all of the costs to the soy oil and thus the biodiesel, which is ludicrous. The co author, Tad Patzek is also the Director of the University of California Oil Consortium which this year is funded by Chevron and Phillips Petroleum. Pretty fishy for sure. I really don't understand why people still quote Pimental, but the press doesn't seem to understand he is FOS.

Just be aware that Pimentel releases this "finding" every other summer, Looking at the dates below, he's a month ahead of schedule this year.

http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/01/8.23.01/P imentel-ethanol.html

http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/03/8.14.03/P imentel-ethanol.html

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/July05/ethanol .toocostly.ssl.html

I can't speak to this newest report, but Pimental's work has been repeatedly critiqued, and one of the main compliants it that he uses out of date numbers for yield and conversion efficiency:

http://www.mda.state.mn.us/ethanol/balance.html

http://www.usda.gov/oce/oepnu/aer-814.pdf

http://journeytoforever.org/ethanol_rooster.html

http://www.ncga.com/public_policy/PDF/03_28_05Argo nneNatlLabEthanolStudy.pdf

http://www.ethanol-gec.org/corn_eth.htm

All that having been said, Pimental is right that soy and corn alone cannot replace our petroleum addiction. You can read more about this in the archives at TDIclub.com.

http://forums.tdiclub.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Board =UBB14&Number=946804&Searchpage=1&Main=941398&Word s=%2Bethanol+%2Bmoney+DrStink&topic=&Search=true#P ost946804

... ethanol is the only easy way to meet their air quality requirements.

(They used to use something else, started with an M, but it pollutes the ground water).

Don't forget to factor in all the subsidies that oil gets. By many counts, oil gets more than ethanol.