[lbo-talk] Bush: 'the more corn there is, the more energythere is'

[Kevin Robert Dean]

Corn for thought:
Ethanol from corn faulted as energy waster
ITHACA, N.Y. -- Neither increases in government subsidies to corn-based ethanol fuel nor hikes in the price of petroleum can overcome what one Cornell University agricultural scientist calls a fundamental input-yield problem: It takes more energy to make ethanol from grain than the combustion of ethanol produces. 
At a time when ethanol-gasoline mixtures (gasohol) are touted as the American answer to fossil fuel shortages by corn producers, food processors and some lawmakers, Cornell's David Pimentel takes a longer range view. 

"Abusing our precious croplands to grow corn for an energy-inefficient process that yields low-grade automobile fuel amounts to unsustainable, subsidized food burning," says the Cornell professor in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. 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. His findings will be published in September, 2001 in the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Physical Sciences and Technology . 
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2001-08/cuns-efc080701.php

see also:
DOE/Argonne National Laboratory 

Ethanol Causes Pollution, Too, Argonne Scientists Say
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/1997-11/ANL-ECPT-031197.php

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---- Michael Dawson <mdawson at pdx.edu> wrote: 
> But my question is this:  Dream up the highest imaginable yield of alcohol
> from cellulose.  Then, tell me how much farmland it will take to produce the
> cellulose required to fuel 200 million maximally fuel-efficient cars.  Let's
> say you can get a 2-to-1 alcohol energy yield, and that cars could get 75
> mpg of booze.  What's that work out to in terms of farmland?
> 
>