Here Is What They Didn't Tell You About Ethanol

By: GARKO

The potential disaster facing us is not actually global warming but human stupidity and shortsightedness in implementing false and destructive solutions of which there are many.
One of these dead end solutions is corn-derived Ethanol which is the favorite of politicians, corporations and media.
Ethanol has been around for quite some time and nearly six billion gallons were produced in the past year just for purposes of making gasoline additives. But in the past year, the Senate has plunged America down the toilet by demanding biofuels be the energy source of the future , mandating the production of 36 billion gallons of ethanol by 2022. If you listen to Ethanol people then this is part of a revolution to replace oil addiction (with Ethanol addiction I suppose) . It is a nice utopian fantasy with happy farmers, clean air, a cool clean planet and emancipation of the US from oil addiction. As the king of ethanol hype, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, put it recently, "Everything about ethanol is good, good, good."
Three factors are driving the ethanol hype. The first is panic: Many energy experts believe that the world's oil supplies have already peaked or will peak within the next decade. The second is election-year politics. Interestingly enough, the primaries started in Iowa so all the candidates except one or two that have integrity suddenly became huge fans of Ethanol! .
The third factor stoking the ethanol frenzy is the war in Iraq, which has made energy independence a universal political slogan. Unlike coal, another heavily subsidized energy source, ethanol has the added political benefit of elevating the American farmer to national hero. It takes some talent to be such a good spin master that you can put the American farmer growing corn as “the top of the spear on the war against terrorism as a former CIA director (James Woolsey) did but he did it! So, if you love America, how can you not love ethanol?
Well, I love America but I sure as heck don’t love ethanol! There are many fundamental problems with Ethanol as a substitute for gasoline: You need to burn more of it in order to get the same amount of fuel. It also has a nasty tendency to absorb water, so it can't be transported in existing pipelines and it must be distributed by truck or rail, which is tremendously inefficient.
Besides, ethanol is tremendously variable as regards the energy production achievable from different sources of Ethanol. Brazilian ethanol derived from sugar cane produces 8 units of energy compared to one unit of energy utilized for production which is an advantage over petroleum which is in a 5 to 1 ratio. But corn ethanol only outputs 1.3 units for every one unit consumed in the energy production process which makes it pretty much a wash and useless. "Corn ethanol is essentially a way of recycling natural gas," says Robert Rapier, an oil-industry engineer who runs the R-Squared Energy Blog.
But as seen in an article in today's New York Times, residents of River Bend Farm, an Alabama suburb which is in the vicinity of a biodiesel plant, saw a black yucky slime that was polluting the Black Warrior River. The junk was 450 times more than permit levels allow and the stuff had traveled two miles from its source.
It was a unholy mix of oil and glycerin, emissions of biodiesel production. They deplete oxygen in waters super fast, killing fish. And it is just as deadly to birds as Exxon's Valdeez spill in Alaska. Alabama isn't alone in this problem. In January a businessman in Missouri was charged for a discharge that left 25,000 fish dead and wiped out the population of fat pocketbook mussels, an endangered species. Can you say... "OOOPS"???
Only a day ago, a study from the University of British Columbia predicted that a boost in corn production for ethanol will worsen what is known as the "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico, the dead zone is a location with so little oxygen that sea life literally can't breathe and dies. And today's "Des Moines Register" reports that Cargill, Inc., has been levied a $100,000 environmental fine--the biggest ever fine an Iowa biofuels plant--for multiple violations surrounding illegal discharges.
Despite the serious drawbacks of ethanol, some technological visionaries believe that the fuel can be done right. "Corn ethanol is just a platform, the first step in a much larger transition we are undergoing from a hydrocarbon-based economy to a carbohydrate-based economy," says Vinod Khosla, a pioneering venture capitalist in Silicon Valley. Next-generation corn- ethanol plants, he argues, will be much more efficient and environmentally friendly. He points to a company called E3 BioFuels that just opened an ethanol plant in Mead, Nebraska. The facility runs largely on biogas made from cow manure, and feeds leftover grain back to the cows, making it a "closed-loop system" -- one that requires very few fossil fuels to create ethanol.
In the end, the ethanol boom is another manifestation of America's blind faith that technology will solve all our problems. Thirty years ago, nuclear power was the answer. Then it was hydrogen. Biofuels may work out better, especially if mandates are coupled with tough caps on greenhouse-gas emissions.
Ok folks, sorry if I depressed you. But I am just trying to wake you up to the truth. Further on along those lines I do have good news!
WATER4GAS is sharing information at a low price which folks can use in their garage or wherever to create a small gizmo which infuses hydrogen into the fuel/air mixture that their car runs on.
What this does is make smaller particles out of the ones that the engine uses as fuel. So the engine is able to use much more of the gas.
By doing this you can reasonably expect to increase your MPG by 30-50% or significantly more. Those molecules "musta" been pretty darn huge in some engines before. But with W4G they are made consumable so you can increase your MPG.
It also helps to lower emissions significantly.
This information has been purchased by over 9000 car owners already and the percentage of happy customers is about 99%! So how about you?

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Consumer advocate, songwriter, entrepreneur and activist, GARKO, shows you tips on how to improve gas mileage by showing you how to use water for gas which is the best solution for how to save on automotive fuel cost For a list of current gas prices in your neighborhood email garko@startlingdiscoveries.info

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