Quote:
Originally Posted by leahbeatle
If Michael Pollan's figures are right, (that's a half gallon of gas used to produce each bushel), those 900 million extra bushels cost us 450 million gallons of gas. Can you think of a way in which turning 900 million bushels of corn into ethanol can save us more gas than we would save by simply NOT growing that extra corn? Though I haven't run the numbers.
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Yes. Those 450 million gallons of gasoline will produce 1250 million gallons of ethanol.
If you give me $450 million today, and I give you $1.25 billion tomorrow, wouldn't you take me up on that deal?
In the "Dust to Dust" model... including all growing, harvesting, and transportation costs, the "closed loop" reality is, it takes 3 gallons of gasoline eqivalent to produce, and deliver 5 gallons of ethanol.
Ethanol is NOT free. Who ever said it was?
It will just help us make our petroleum reserves last nearly twice as long.
Plus is it renewable! 100% of the ethanol burned this year will "grow" back next year! There is no way you can make a fair comparison in this regard to crude oil. When the crude is gone, it's gone. You never get it back.