There's a genetic predisposition to *some* cancers, and even if you have a particular cancer that has a genetic predisposition to it doesn't mean that *you* have a predisposition to it. Plus, there are plenty of other ways one can lose a uterus.
I don't see where my post said or implied that at all. I said that there is a difference. For instance, someone could be of the opinion that living people should be able to live but not be able to overpopulate the planet.
Do you or do you not support banning such procedures because you think the planet is overpopulated? You supported a non-lifesaving procedure for the purpose of improving quality of life, but oppose a different quality of life procedure because it will "increase the human population".
(although I wouldn't want to force it upon them).
Would you or would you not force it on this woman by banning this procedure?
Except that blind people are currently alive and them gaining the ability to see will not increase the human population
So it is your view that it's okay to override what is most important to someone -- something so important to them that they'd seriously risk their life -- for population control?
Why not just cut out a couple steps and dump birth control into the public water supply?
So, is it your view that because someone views something as so important that it's worth taking on a major risk to their life to do, that because you disagree with it (having never been in anywhere close to such a situation), it should be banned?
He's talking about the gene pool, and as far as the gene pool is concerned, there is no difference. Plus, the cause of Rokitansky syndrome is unknown. And many women who will be candidates for this apart from those with Rokitansky syndrome are those who lost their uterus for various reasons, such as cancer.
So if a woman wanted to have a child enough that she was willing to give up her sight for it, would you change your mind? What if she was willing to take on a 1 in 4 chance of *dying*? Because I wouldn't be surprised if those are her odds in this procedure.
Quality of life is quality of life, whether you agree with why it is quality of life to a person or not. There are many, many women on this planet who would disagree with you.
It's not even known whether Rokitansky syndrome is genetic, but I notice how you just assume it is. If you want to talk about "attacks against the gene pool", why aren't you arguing that the numerous childhood diseases with *known* genetic components stop getting treatment?
To blind people. Fucking get a cane. Seriously. Instead of being a bunch of selfish fuckwads demanding to see like everyone else, how about you save all the money involved in this process and just get a cane or two?
Sorry, but many surgeries are about quality of life. And it's easy to play down another person's needs, but when it's your own, suddenly it's different.
FYI: Müllerian agenesis (aka, Rokitansky Syndrome) doesn't just affect the uterus. The upper part of the vagina is also part of the Müllerian duct. The fact that this isn't the prime focus of transplants should clue you in to how important having children can be to someone.
Pregnancies while on immunosuppressants are not rare. There's a huge body of data on their effects on fetuses. There's no body of data on humans born from transplanted uteruses, of course, but the immunosuppressant side is already well covered, and at least in theory, that is the area of concern.
The risk to the patient is *very* real. Transplants are dangerous in the best of circumstances. The patient only needs to carry the transplant for 1 1/2 to 2 years (there's a period after the transplant where they monitor the organ for signs of failure, then there's at least one attempt at implantation, then the organ is removed at the time of birth) -- but there's still significnt chance of risk -- almost certainly a double-digit chance of death. But here's how I personally look at it. The rate of death during pregnancy before modern medicine was about 1.5%, and the average woman had many children (let's say 7 or so) to account for the high rate of infant and child mortality. That's a 10% chance of death per woman. Yet if women hadn't taken that risk -- sometimes accidentally, but more often, knowingly -- we, as a species, would not exist.
How many resources are wasted on curing people of blindness? How many resources are wasted on curing deafness? On fixing broken limbs? On cleft palate? On spinal deformities? On countless things that are about quality of life, not survival?
There's a variety of different ways uterine transplants can be done, and different surgeons are looking at different ones. Two major differences are whether you're dealing donors from cadavers and donors from live patients. Donor uteruses from cadavers obviously aren't doing their owner any good. Donor uteruses from live patients will be generally from surgical situations where the uterus would be removed anyway (clearly not in this situation, but in the general case...). The use of cadavers allows a lot more of the surrounding tissue to be transplanted, which makes blood vessel reconnections easier; however, organs from cadavers are more likely to have complications.
My sympathies to your GF; antiepileptics are generally pretty nasty during pregnancy to the fetus. My spouse is also epileptic, although is trying to wean herself off them. I myself follow this news closely.
The studies show surprisingly little impact to the embryo from immunosuppressant drugs. And there's already a large body of data on it; a successful pregnancy is generally considered one of the best signs that a person has adapted to a (non-uterine) transplant.
There's a HUGE glaring hole with this notion. As someone who's filed for a trademark before, trademarks are only limited within a particular field of business. So, for example, you could have a car company named Shiny, a spatula manufacturer named Shiny, a metal alloy named Shiny, whatever.
But there's only one TLD.
So, not only is this messing over individuals, but it's *really* messing over smaller businesses or businesses who came later to the game -- even if they hold a legitimate trademark on that name. I own a small software company that happens to have the same name as a larger, established trucking company. This could happen to me.
(Oh, and if your answer to anyone is, "Just pick another name"... do you have any clue how thoroughly picked through the trademark filings are? The Futurama "popplers" joke about there only being two product names in existence left untrademarked isn't that far off. Oh, and if you use a foreign word, you have to not overlap on both the foreign word *and* its translation)
(Oh, and here's what Tesla does). FYI: conventional li-ion cells (the type Tesla uses) are only mildly toxic, and the stable chemistries (like the type GM and pretty much everyone unconnected to Tesla uses) are nontoxic.
Okay, first off, to look at the impact of a Volt, we need to first break down a driving profile. For most people, and in particular most volt customers (i.e., not a random sampling of Americans, but of people who bought it because they felt it fit their lifestyle), almost all of their trips will be on electric, and a solid majority of their miles will be on electric (note that the % of miles on gasoline will be much larger than the % of trips on gasoline, since gasoline trips are long distance). Let's say that 75% of miles are electric. In practice, this number will vary widely depending on the consumer, from ~25% or so at the low end to 100% at the upper end. The gasoline miles will likely be almost entirely highway, since you'll only burn out the electricity on long trips. So let's go with the EPA 40mpg highway number for that figure.
The impact of electricity consumption varies significantly depending on where you are in the country. This study found that, for equivalent vehicles, on our current grid, an electric drivetrain averages 27% less GHGs than gasoline, an 18% increase in PM10, a 125% increase in SOx, a 31% decrease in NOx, a 93% decrease in VOCs, and a 98% decrease in CO nationwide. Now, let's look at each of the caveats here.
1) "For equivalent vehicles". Remember that the "equivalent vehicle" to a Volt is not your average US car; your average US car doesn't get 40mpg on the highway. Compared to the average US car, the numbers are much lower. 2) "On our current grid". Our grid gets cleaner every year. Most of the new capacity being added is natural gas, followed by wind. Oil, on the other hand, gets dirtier every year as we increasingly shift to syncrude, ultra-heavy, ultra-sour, deepwater, etc. 3) "Than gasoline". A gallon of gasoline burns much cleaner than a gallon of diesel in a modern engine. Yes, a gallon of diesel in a modern diesel engine burns cleaner than a gallon of gasoline in an *old* gasoline engine, but both gasoline and diesel engines have gotten cleaner, and gasoline still significantly outpaces diesel in terms of the worst emissions. A gallon of diesel burned also releases about 15% more CO2 than a gallon of gasoline, as it is denser and contains more oil. 4) "Nationwide". By shifting from tailpipes to smokestacks, emissions are largely removed from surface level in densely populated areas to high altitude in more sparsely populated areas, where it can dilute and break down far more readily. This can have a profoundly positive impact on human health. The numbers for emissions in urban areas for, again, equivalent vehicles, current grids, becomes a 31% reduction of PM10, a 81% reduction in SOx, a 90% reduction in NOx, a ~99% reduction in VOCs, and a ~100% reduction in CO.
Factoring all of these factors together yields an exceedingly positive picture for the 75% of miles that are driven on electric. In terms of air pollution effects on human health, the Volt will be the equivalent of a ~130mpg gasoline car, and of a couple hundred mpg diesel. In terms of CO2, it'll be the equivalent of a ~65mpg gasoline car and a ~75mpg diesel. As time goes on and generation/oil sources shift, these numbers will increase on their own.
What about the simple figure of "energy" consumption? Well, that's not so easy to figure.:P Power plants vary widely in terms of efficiency. Power plants operating on kinetic energy, such as hydroelectric and wind, tend to be very efficient -- wind can exceed 50% and hydro 90%. Power plants operating on thermal energy have dramatically different efficiency variations depending on how hot their working fluid is -- as low as 10% for low-termperature geothermal and nearly 60% for top-of-the-line combined cycle NG plants. Coal averages 32% in the US; nuclear is similar. Thermal plants which make use of waste heat to offset industrial, commercial, or residental heating can achieve over 90% net
I'm sorry, but you're making one of the most common mistakes in anecdotal data analysis rebuttals: attributing his quoted small sample size to that being the only data he has.
Right. He secretly has a double blind study, but was holding out on us, right?
There has been tons of tests and experiments showing ethanols caustic and destructive effects
[[Citation needed]], for E10. For higher blends, in some situations, yes. E10 has long been established as safe for cars, even by groups lobbying against E15 and E20.
I'm sorry, but statistically, *that happens*, especially with older cars. At some points, you'd have thought a witch put a hex on my '86 Olds I used to drive. There's a reason why anecdotes are not a substitute for data: they suck.
I'm sorry, but you're making one of the most common mistakes in anecdotal data analysis: attributing whatever symptoms you experience to the phenomenon that you just became aware of. This is the same reason why people think that their vaccines caused their kids to become autistic or that the wind farm a couple miles away gave them cancer.
Ethanol has its own disadvantages compared to MTBE, but overall it's clearly a net positive. I don't have time to go into each of them here, but for example, while it increases VOCs relative to MTBE, most other pollutants decline.
And the pipeline issue is increasingly obsolete, FYI -- a little bit more every year.
The problem with algal biofuel is that you can't just grow it in a field. You have two options: sterile, pure algal strains, and open-air tanks. Open-air tanks means that algal predators get in, wild algae strains get in and overtake your desired ones, etc. The amount of recoverable energy is a tiny fraction of that if you use pure strains. But pure strains means compeltely enclosed tanks. *Acres and acres* of enclosed tanks, with each acre only yielding a few tens of thousands of dollars. And you can't just enclose it with thin film; the weather would destroy it in no time. This needs to be thick plastic. And it'll photodegrade. The cheaper the type of plastic you use, in general, the faster it'll photodegrade. This makes it increasingly opaque and brittle until it's useless.
On top of all this, separating water from algae is an expensive, energy-intensive process.
Solar is even higher capital cost per acre, but it is *extremely* energy dense per acre compared to even the best biofuels -- about an order of magnitude more energy dense than enclosed-tank algae, two orders of magnitude more than corn. A streamlined EV like the Volt or Leaf uses about 250Wh/mi. A square meter of land on the surface of the Earth receives that every 15 minutes that said area is in full overhead sunlight. Even after factoring in panel losses, and the capacity factor (sun's not shining all the time, etc), that's *very* high energy density compared to 330 gallons of ethanol per acre per *year* (under 1/10th gallon per square meter per *year*) for corn and 6,000 for enclosed algae (1 1/2 gallons per square meter per *year*). Plus, fuel crops generally have absurd amounts of freshwater water consumption, something that marginal lands are already very short on, plus there's the pesticide and fertilizer issues, etc.
It's a longstanding myth that corn ethanol isn't a net positive. Studies by basically everyone except Pimental (an anti-ethanol crusader) and whatever grad students he can dig up at the moment all agree that it's at least 30% positive and growing. And whether something is "energy positive" isn't really the question anyway. The question is whether it's *liquid transportation fuels* positive. I can't shove a piece of coal or some wind in my gas tank. Liquid transportation fuels are much more valuable than other energy sources (about 5x per joule for oil vs. coal).
The real problem with corn ethanol at this point is a problem shared, to a lesser but still major extent, with other ethanol sources: it's a net *CO2* negative, by a large margin, when you factor in land-use changes (something that was neglected in earlier studies). That is, to say, you're using corn starch (and possibly the rest of the grain, depending on how good your waste recovery is) to make ethanol. To replace that foodstuff on the market (with more corn starch, or whatnot -- the demand for food isn't going to decrease just because you decide to make ethanol) requires using more land. That land wasn't sitting around doing nothing before you started farming it -- it was lying fallow and sequestering CO2. Generally doing a better job of it than your farm would even if you weren't harvesting the corn to turn its starches into something which you'll burn. And not only are you worsening the ongoing sequestration process, but the process of converting wild fields to farmed fields generally releases a lot of stored carbon, both from standing vegetation and from the soil itself.
Studies that factor in land-use changes show that even cellulosic switchgrass ethanol are CO2 negatives compared with gasoline. The only ones that are a net win are ones that utilize organic waste streams. But obviously fuel from organic waste streams isn't going to replace gasoline; there just isn't that much waste out there.
Your 74 charger would be referring to the "gasohol" movement, which was immature but just emerging back when this car was produced in 1973. There were no standard blends back then (and few filling stations); people could mix anywhere from a couple percecnt ethanol in to a majority ethanol. Your leak almost certainly had nothing to do with the ethanol; the notion that these small percents ethanol are not only damaging, but so damaging that they'd destroy a fuel pump in just a couple weeks, is just absurd.
The lower MPG claim is quite a legit one. Ethanol is a less dense fuel than gasoline, so when you buy by the gallon, you're buying less energy. But at 10-15% blend, you're not buying that much ethanol in that gallon.
Gasoline is always going to be a blend of different chemicals. No one chemical is needed, but a wide variety of different chemicals are needed to yield different properties in the fuel. It's likely that for the forseeable future gasoline will contain at least a few percent ethanol because, all "sustainability" issues aside, it's one of the best substitutes for MBTE, which causes serious groundwater contamination.
There's always transliterations, but a lot of times they're really bad. It drives me crazy that a common transliteration of the Icelandic "eth" (which *does* work on Slashdot (ð), unlike the thorn() is to simply write "d". It doesn't sound like "d". Eth is pronounced like the "Th" in "Them". At least transliterate it as "dh", people... Icelandic is hard enough for English speakers to pronounce as it is.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a genetic predisposition to *some* cancers, and even if you have a particular cancer that has a genetic predisposition to it doesn't mean that *you* have a predisposition to it. Plus, there are plenty of other ways one can lose a uterus.
Do you or do you not support banning such procedures because you think the planet is overpopulated? You supported a non-lifesaving procedure for the purpose of improving quality of life, but oppose a different quality of life procedure because it will "increase the human population".
Would you or would you not force it on this woman by banning this procedure?
So it is your view that it's okay to override what is most important to someone -- something so important to them that they'd seriously risk their life -- for population control?
Why not just cut out a couple steps and dump birth control into the public water supply?
So, is it your view that because someone views something as so important that it's worth taking on a major risk to their life to do, that because you disagree with it (having never been in anywhere close to such a situation), it should be banned?
He's talking about the gene pool, and as far as the gene pool is concerned, there is no difference. Plus, the cause of Rokitansky syndrome is unknown. And many women who will be candidates for this apart from those with Rokitansky syndrome are those who lost their uterus for various reasons, such as cancer.
The uterus will be removed after (or even during) birth so that the mother can get off immunosuppressants.
So if a woman wanted to have a child enough that she was willing to give up her sight for it, would you change your mind? What if she was willing to take on a 1 in 4 chance of *dying*? Because I wouldn't be surprised if those are her odds in this procedure.
Quality of life is quality of life, whether you agree with why it is quality of life to a person or not. There are many, many women on this planet who would disagree with you.
It's not even known whether Rokitansky syndrome is genetic, but I notice how you just assume it is. If you want to talk about "attacks against the gene pool", why aren't you arguing that the numerous childhood diseases with *known* genetic components stop getting treatment?
To blind people. Fucking get a cane. Seriously. Instead of being a bunch of selfish fuckwads demanding to see like everyone else, how about you save all the money involved in this process and just get a cane or two?
Sorry, but many surgeries are about quality of life. And it's easy to play down another person's needs, but when it's your own, suddenly it's different.
FYI: Müllerian agenesis (aka, Rokitansky Syndrome) doesn't just affect the uterus. The upper part of the vagina is also part of the Müllerian duct. The fact that this isn't the prime focus of transplants should clue you in to how important having children can be to someone.
Pregnancies while on immunosuppressants are not rare. There's a huge body of data on their effects on fetuses. There's no body of data on humans born from transplanted uteruses, of course, but the immunosuppressant side is already well covered, and at least in theory, that is the area of concern.
The risk to the patient is *very* real. Transplants are dangerous in the best of circumstances. The patient only needs to carry the transplant for 1 1/2 to 2 years (there's a period after the transplant where they monitor the organ for signs of failure, then there's at least one attempt at implantation, then the organ is removed at the time of birth) -- but there's still significnt chance of risk -- almost certainly a double-digit chance of death. But here's how I personally look at it. The rate of death during pregnancy before modern medicine was about 1.5%, and the average woman had many children (let's say 7 or so) to account for the high rate of infant and child mortality. That's a 10% chance of death per woman. Yet if women hadn't taken that risk -- sometimes accidentally, but more often, knowingly -- we, as a species, would not exist.
Right. Chiropractic adjustments will make her grow a uterus.
I take it you didn't bother to read the article?
How many resources are wasted on curing people of blindness? How many resources are wasted on curing deafness? On fixing broken limbs? On cleft palate? On spinal deformities? On countless things that are about quality of life, not survival?
There's a variety of different ways uterine transplants can be done, and different surgeons are looking at different ones. Two major differences are whether you're dealing donors from cadavers and donors from live patients. Donor uteruses from cadavers obviously aren't doing their owner any good. Donor uteruses from live patients will be generally from surgical situations where the uterus would be removed anyway (clearly not in this situation, but in the general case...). The use of cadavers allows a lot more of the surrounding tissue to be transplanted, which makes blood vessel reconnections easier; however, organs from cadavers are more likely to have complications.
My sympathies to your GF; antiepileptics are generally pretty nasty during pregnancy to the fetus. My spouse is also epileptic, although is trying to wean herself off them. I myself follow this news closely.
The studies show surprisingly little impact to the embryo from immunosuppressant drugs. And there's already a large body of data on it; a successful pregnancy is generally considered one of the best signs that a person has adapted to a (non-uterine) transplant.
There's a HUGE glaring hole with this notion. As someone who's filed for a trademark before, trademarks are only limited within a particular field of business. So, for example, you could have a car company named Shiny, a spatula manufacturer named Shiny, a metal alloy named Shiny, whatever.
But there's only one TLD.
So, not only is this messing over individuals, but it's *really* messing over smaller businesses or businesses who came later to the game -- even if they hold a legitimate trademark on that name. I own a small software company that happens to have the same name as a larger, established trucking company. This could happen to me.
(Oh, and if your answer to anyone is, "Just pick another name"... do you have any clue how thoroughly picked through the trademark filings are? The Futurama "popplers" joke about there only being two product names in existence left untrademarked isn't that far off. Oh, and if you use a foreign word, you have to not overlap on both the foreign word *and* its translation)
I found it on teh Google!
(Oh, and here's what Tesla does). FYI: conventional li-ion cells (the type Tesla uses) are only mildly toxic, and the stable chemistries (like the type GM and pretty much everyone unconnected to Tesla uses) are nontoxic.
Um.... huh?
Okay, first off, to look at the impact of a Volt, we need to first break down a driving profile. For most people, and in particular most volt customers (i.e., not a random sampling of Americans, but of people who bought it because they felt it fit their lifestyle), almost all of their trips will be on electric, and a solid majority of their miles will be on electric (note that the % of miles on gasoline will be much larger than the % of trips on gasoline, since gasoline trips are long distance). Let's say that 75% of miles are electric. In practice, this number will vary widely depending on the consumer, from ~25% or so at the low end to 100% at the upper end. The gasoline miles will likely be almost entirely highway, since you'll only burn out the electricity on long trips. So let's go with the EPA 40mpg highway number for that figure.
The impact of electricity consumption varies significantly depending on where you are in the country. This study found that, for equivalent vehicles, on our current grid, an electric drivetrain averages 27% less GHGs than gasoline, an 18% increase in PM10, a 125% increase in SOx, a 31% decrease in NOx, a 93% decrease in VOCs, and a 98% decrease in CO nationwide. Now, let's look at each of the caveats here.
1) "For equivalent vehicles". Remember that the "equivalent vehicle" to a Volt is not your average US car; your average US car doesn't get 40mpg on the highway. Compared to the average US car, the numbers are much lower.
2) "On our current grid". Our grid gets cleaner every year. Most of the new capacity being added is natural gas, followed by wind. Oil, on the other hand, gets dirtier every year as we increasingly shift to syncrude, ultra-heavy, ultra-sour, deepwater, etc.
3) "Than gasoline". A gallon of gasoline burns much cleaner than a gallon of diesel in a modern engine. Yes, a gallon of diesel in a modern diesel engine burns cleaner than a gallon of gasoline in an *old* gasoline engine, but both gasoline and diesel engines have gotten cleaner, and gasoline still significantly outpaces diesel in terms of the worst emissions. A gallon of diesel burned also releases about 15% more CO2 than a gallon of gasoline, as it is denser and contains more oil.
4) "Nationwide". By shifting from tailpipes to smokestacks, emissions are largely removed from surface level in densely populated areas to high altitude in more sparsely populated areas, where it can dilute and break down far more readily. This can have a profoundly positive impact on human health. The numbers for emissions in urban areas for, again, equivalent vehicles, current grids, becomes a 31% reduction of PM10, a 81% reduction in SOx, a 90% reduction in NOx, a ~99% reduction in VOCs, and a ~100% reduction in CO.
Factoring all of these factors together yields an exceedingly positive picture for the 75% of miles that are driven on electric. In terms of air pollution effects on human health, the Volt will be the equivalent of a ~130mpg gasoline car, and of a couple hundred mpg diesel. In terms of CO2, it'll be the equivalent of a ~65mpg gasoline car and a ~75mpg diesel. As time goes on and generation/oil sources shift, these numbers will increase on their own.
What about the simple figure of "energy" consumption? Well, that's not so easy to figure. :P Power plants vary widely in terms of efficiency. Power plants operating on kinetic energy, such as hydroelectric and wind, tend to be very efficient -- wind can exceed 50% and hydro 90%. Power plants operating on thermal energy have dramatically different efficiency variations depending on how hot their working fluid is -- as low as 10% for low-termperature geothermal and nearly 60% for top-of-the-line combined cycle NG plants. Coal averages 32% in the US; nuclear is similar. Thermal plants which make use of waste heat to offset industrial, commercial, or residental heating can achieve over 90% net
I'm sorry, but you're making one of the most common mistakes in anecdotal data analysis rebuttals: attributing his quoted small sample size to that being the only data he has.
Right. He secretly has a double blind study, but was holding out on us, right?
There has been tons of tests and experiments showing ethanols caustic and destructive effects
[[Citation needed]], for E10. For higher blends, in some situations, yes. E10 has long been established as safe for cars, even by groups lobbying against E15 and E20.
I'm sorry, but statistically, *that happens*, especially with older cars. At some points, you'd have thought a witch put a hex on my '86 Olds I used to drive. There's a reason why anecdotes are not a substitute for data: they suck.
I'm sorry, but you're making one of the most common mistakes in anecdotal data analysis: attributing whatever symptoms you experience to the phenomenon that you just became aware of. This is the same reason why people think that their vaccines caused their kids to become autistic or that the wind farm a couple miles away gave them cancer.
Ethanol has its own disadvantages compared to MTBE, but overall it's clearly a net positive. I don't have time to go into each of them here, but for example, while it increases VOCs relative to MTBE, most other pollutants decline.
And the pipeline issue is increasingly obsolete, FYI -- a little bit more every year.
The problem with algal biofuel is that you can't just grow it in a field. You have two options: sterile, pure algal strains, and open-air tanks. Open-air tanks means that algal predators get in, wild algae strains get in and overtake your desired ones, etc. The amount of recoverable energy is a tiny fraction of that if you use pure strains. But pure strains means compeltely enclosed tanks. *Acres and acres* of enclosed tanks, with each acre only yielding a few tens of thousands of dollars. And you can't just enclose it with thin film; the weather would destroy it in no time. This needs to be thick plastic. And it'll photodegrade. The cheaper the type of plastic you use, in general, the faster it'll photodegrade. This makes it increasingly opaque and brittle until it's useless.
On top of all this, separating water from algae is an expensive, energy-intensive process.
Solar is even higher capital cost per acre, but it is *extremely* energy dense per acre compared to even the best biofuels -- about an order of magnitude more energy dense than enclosed-tank algae, two orders of magnitude more than corn. A streamlined EV like the Volt or Leaf uses about 250Wh/mi. A square meter of land on the surface of the Earth receives that every 15 minutes that said area is in full overhead sunlight. Even after factoring in panel losses, and the capacity factor (sun's not shining all the time, etc), that's *very* high energy density compared to 330 gallons of ethanol per acre per *year* (under 1/10th gallon per square meter per *year*) for corn and 6,000 for enclosed algae (1 1/2 gallons per square meter per *year*). Plus, fuel crops generally have absurd amounts of freshwater water consumption, something that marginal lands are already very short on, plus there's the pesticide and fertilizer issues, etc.
It's a longstanding myth that corn ethanol isn't a net positive. Studies by basically everyone except Pimental (an anti-ethanol crusader) and whatever grad students he can dig up at the moment all agree that it's at least 30% positive and growing. And whether something is "energy positive" isn't really the question anyway. The question is whether it's *liquid transportation fuels* positive. I can't shove a piece of coal or some wind in my gas tank. Liquid transportation fuels are much more valuable than other energy sources (about 5x per joule for oil vs. coal).
The real problem with corn ethanol at this point is a problem shared, to a lesser but still major extent, with other ethanol sources: it's a net *CO2* negative, by a large margin, when you factor in land-use changes (something that was neglected in earlier studies). That is, to say, you're using corn starch (and possibly the rest of the grain, depending on how good your waste recovery is) to make ethanol. To replace that foodstuff on the market (with more corn starch, or whatnot -- the demand for food isn't going to decrease just because you decide to make ethanol) requires using more land. That land wasn't sitting around doing nothing before you started farming it -- it was lying fallow and sequestering CO2. Generally doing a better job of it than your farm would even if you weren't harvesting the corn to turn its starches into something which you'll burn. And not only are you worsening the ongoing sequestration process, but the process of converting wild fields to farmed fields generally releases a lot of stored carbon, both from standing vegetation and from the soil itself.
Studies that factor in land-use changes show that even cellulosic switchgrass ethanol are CO2 negatives compared with gasoline. The only ones that are a net win are ones that utilize organic waste streams. But obviously fuel from organic waste streams isn't going to replace gasoline; there just isn't that much waste out there.
Your 74 charger would be referring to the "gasohol" movement, which was immature but just emerging back when this car was produced in 1973. There were no standard blends back then (and few filling stations); people could mix anywhere from a couple percecnt ethanol in to a majority ethanol. Your leak almost certainly had nothing to do with the ethanol; the notion that these small percents ethanol are not only damaging, but so damaging that they'd destroy a fuel pump in just a couple weeks, is just absurd.
The lower MPG claim is quite a legit one. Ethanol is a less dense fuel than gasoline, so when you buy by the gallon, you're buying less energy. But at 10-15% blend, you're not buying that much ethanol in that gallon.
Gasoline is always going to be a blend of different chemicals. No one chemical is needed, but a wide variety of different chemicals are needed to yield different properties in the fuel. It's likely that for the forseeable future gasoline will contain at least a few percent ethanol because, all "sustainability" issues aside, it's one of the best substitutes for MBTE, which causes serious groundwater contamination.
There's always transliterations, but a lot of times they're really bad. It drives me crazy that a common transliteration of the Icelandic "eth" (which *does* work on Slashdot (ð), unlike the thorn() is to simply write "d". It doesn't sound like "d". Eth is pronounced like the "Th" in "Them". At least transliterate it as "dh", people... Icelandic is hard enough for English speakers to pronounce as it is.