Ethanol = One Step Forward And Two Steps Backward ... Is Progress?

Common Sense Commentary: When is "diminishing returns" hyperbole?  When our mentally challenged politicians make a LAW that "All our gasoline must have at least 9% ethanol in it"
but don't bother to require proof that it is a beneficial, economic and correct thing to do.  Just
how large a black cloud of stupidity smoke can fill two chambers of Congress?  How is it
possible for our government to turn perfectly good food like corn and soybeans, needed by a
starving world, into ethanol which requires a gallon and a half of gasoline to produce one gallon
of ethanol? It is only possible because our tax dollars subsidize it.

A Cornell University ecologist's study finds that producing ethanol and bio diesel from corn and other crops is not worth the energy. The study says that 1-1/2 gallons of gasoline is used to produce each gallon of ethanol.

Article By Susan S. Lang

Ecologist David Pimentel In terms of energy output compared with energy input for ethanol production, the study found that: corn requires 29 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced; switch grass requires 45 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced; and wood biomass requires 57 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced. In terms of energy output compared with the energy input for bio diesel production, the study found that: soybean plants requires 27 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced, and sunflower plants requires 118 percent more fossil energy than the fuel produced.

ITHACA, N.Y. -- Turning plants such as corn, soybeans and sunflowers into fuel uses much more energy than the resulting ethanol or bio diesel generates, according to a new Cornell University and University of California-Berkeley study.
"There is just no energy benefit to using plant biomass for liquid fuel," says David Pimentel, professor of ecology and agriculture at Cornell. "These strategies are not sustainable."