Domestic Fuel

Homegrown American Renewable Fuel! Good stuff.

If ethanol is such a great thing, why not run 100% ? Mileage would be cut in half so there would be twice as many pit stops. Let the pit crews shine by winning more races. The fuel can man would get tired and require a replacement mid race. 43 teams requiring an extra fuel man equals 43 more jobs that can be credited to ethanol!

Ethanol is a very bad joke…thrust upon the taxpayers, to the tune of 7.7 billion a year (subsidies). A gallon of ethanol will provide two thirds of the energy compared to a gallon of gasoline. Ethanol mixes with water which is not the case with gasoline. Therefore, the transportation systems used for gasoline (i.e. pipelines and trucks) cannot be used for ethanol. Additionally, there is a lot of inefficiency in the production of ethanol. For example, corn based ethanol requires 54 percent of the energy to process the corn into ethanol and 24 percent to grow the corn required for this process. As a result, there is a return of only 30 percent or so of the energy, making this inefficient as compared to conventional gasoline (500 percent – produces 5 times the energy required to produce it).

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore reportedly has had a change of heart on ethanol, telling a conference on green energy in Europe that he only supported tax breaks for the alternative fuel to pander to farmers in his home state of Tennessee and the first-in-the-nation caucuses state of Iowa.

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2-cycle engines specifically face profound problems when ethanol fuels are run through them. 2-cycle engines rely on a fuel-oil mixture to bring lubrication to critical engine parts. Unfortunately, users across the country have found over the last year that ethanol destroys 2-cycle engines by pulling water into the fuel and preventing the oil in the fuel from bonding with metal surfaces as it is supposed to. Combine this with fuel lines and rubber parts eaten away by ethanol solvency and it spells the death knell for small equipment running on ethanol. And it can get expensive to replace these valuable pieces of equipment. In this economy, who has the extra money to do that?

As for NASCAR, they couldn’t care less, as long as the check clears…

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RL McDaniel, gasoline is an economic and national security disaster, and ethanol is far superior in comparison.

Because OPEC controls 78% of world oil reserves while we have only 3% (counting Arctic and offshore), the world oil supply and oil prices are permanently and unfixably controlled by unfriendly or hostile foreign powers. They raised the price from $10 a barrel in 1999 to $140 a barrel in 2008, a “tax increase” of hundreds of billions to the US economy, spent on luxury at our expense, repression, WMD programs, spreading pro-terror extremism, and actual terror. In 2008 we spent more money directly on OPEC oil than on our combined war efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq combined; we’re funding the enemy more than ourselves!

But what you choose to whine about is the cost of replacing some leafblowers and clunkers with old inferior materials? You whine about pro-ethanol intervention in our government, which totals (including tax breaks) less than $10 billion and benefits peaceful US agribusiness and corn farmers instead of crazed enemies? You whine about efficiency when the whole point of caring about efficiency was to minimize using environmentally, economically, and strategically disastrous fuel? Ethanol burns without smog causing smoke, breaks the oil cartel monopoly on fuel and thus prevents more economy-crashing price spikes, and doesn’t fund terror.

We transitioned from unleaded to leaded successfully; we can also transition from Enemy Fuel (a/k/a gasoline) to alcohol fuels.

A recent Wall Street Journal commentary discusses the impact of ethanol production on food prices. The percentage of corn production used for ethanol has risen from 7 percent in 2001 to nearly 40 percent in 2010.

March corn futures recently hit a 30-month high of $6.67 a bushel, up from $4 a bushel a year ago.

Since nearly 40 percent of corn production is used for animal feed, meat product prices have risen significantly. Corn also is the primary ingredient in cereals, corn chips and many other products.

“The Environmental Protection Agency has found that ethanol production has a minimal to negative impact on the environment. Even Al Gore, once an ethanol evangelist, now says his support had more to do with presidential politics in Iowa and admits the fuel provides little or no environmental gain,” the Journal reported.

As with other so-called green systems such as wind and solar, taxpayer subsidies continue to finance these negative energy systems.

Riots started in Egypt and elsewhere due to worldwide food shortages caused by natural weather conditions and the use of corn and grains for ethanol production. We are taking food out of the mouths of starving children and putting it in our gas tanks.