Ethanol Fuel & You
Why I Hate Michael Stephens: he isn’t here to help me drink my precious ethanol.
:. As most of you know (because not everyone can be a moron), there is only a finite amount of gasoline and fossil fuels left on this planet; so we must start looking for alternatives… renewable alternatives… that don’t harm the atmosphere… and are cheap… and transportable… …am I missing anything?
Ethanol, somehow, became a focus with regards to new liquid fuels. Ethanol is a type of alcohol (the type we drink to get drunk) and it can be burned in a similar fashion to gasoline. Actually, many gas stations that you or I would visit today provides gas that contains up to 10% Ethanol in it. Nice thing about Ethanol is that it can be made from many different things: sugar cane, bagasse, miscanthus, sugar beet, sorghum, grain sorghum, switchgrass, barley, hemp, kenaf, potatoes, sweet potatoes, cassava, sunflower, fruit, molasses, corn, stover, grain, wheat, straw, cotton, and the list goes on.
Watch this video about ‘How Ethanol Is Made.’
But there are some REALLY big problems with Ethanol and it is starting to show in business and the economy.
1) Instead of eating our food… we’re turning it into liquid fuel. This is driving food prices up and making it more difficult for the average person to simply survive. NYTimes.com Article: Fuel Choices, Food Crises and Finger-Pointing by Andrew Martin.
2) Gasoline generates about 125,000 BTUs per gallon. Ethanol generates about 76,000 BTUs per gallon. Ethanol produces 60.8% of the power of gasoline (source). This means we will need more fuel to accomplish the same task which means we have to produce even more Ethanol. It is not a perfect, straight substitute. You need roughly 1.6 gallons of ethanol to equal the power of 1 gallon of gasoline.
3) Although this is said to change, but right now it takes more energy to produce the Ethanol than what you get in return. So there is a net energy loss in the manufacturing process. WTF is that?! People support this?
4) If we were to seriously try and eliminate our use of liquid fossil fuels, think about how much land we would need in order to grow and manufacture enough fuel for everyone who wants it. The ecological footprint would be enormous; much larger than any westerner is making right now.
5) For some, ethanol is suppose to be a way to escape the CO2 pollution from fossil fuels. When burned, ethanol produces 21% less CO2 than gasoline. When ethanol is produced, it creates a large amount of CO2. So there is little to no benefit to the environment by using ethanol.
So… we don’t need food and we definitely don’t need rationalization. We need fear of running out of gas and burning up the Ozone layer. We don’t need public education of ethanol fuel and just completely screw the idea of a small ecological footprint.
The poor who cannot afford food will die. More land will be used (and will increase with population) in order to make a liquid fuel. The atmosphere will still be slowly dying.
Fuck these uneducated, overambitious, cocky, NGO “environmentalists” who have terrorized the globe and bullied the world into thinking than ethanol is some magical cure. If anything, ethanol will make more problems than… well, it won’t actually be solving anything… let’s just leave it in our drinks and escape this terrifying, NGO created world.
We do need to find some sort of easily transportable energy/fuel source, but ethanol is not it.
Some Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=59R-NqykoXs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBg8CY4bEqI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v245bQk6q0o
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/may2006/tc20060519_225336.htm
If you want more information, Google it.
