

More ethanol coming to pumps near you
New blend will work in any vehicle built back to 2001








It basically hurts everyone… 




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RE: What About Y2K and Older Cars
By wookie1 on 3/14/2011 12:35:38 PM , Rating: 3
I think that the EPA would prefer that you junk your clunker and get a shiny new Volt. Do it for the planet!

RE: What About Y2K and Older Cars
By invidious on 3/14/2011 1:37:16 PM , Rating: 4
Nothing says eco friendly like hundred of pounds of batteries made of completely non-renewable rare earth metals. Go earth!

RE: What About Y2K and Older Cars
By spamreader1 on 3/14/2011 1:55:36 PM , Rating: 2
What about yard equipment? My brand new tiller, and both mowers (riding 1yr and push 2yr old) have warnings to not use any fuel with greater than 10% ethenol content. (all 3 are troy built, 2 with briggs motors, the other with kholer)

I also wonder about gas engine farm equipment. Wonder how the 'ol Ford 8/9N's will handle it?

RE: What About Y2K and Older Cars
By YashBudini on 3/14/2011 9:50:52 PM , Rating: 2

Which are recharged by electricity from coal. YEEHAW!

RE: What About Y2K and Older Cars
This is a common misconception.





RE: What About Y2K and Older Cars
By Azethoth on 3/14/2011 10:00:56 PM , Rating: 2
Just like other metals it is not renewable because it does not grow on trees yet, but it IS infinitely recyclable.

RE: What About Y2K and Older Cars
By MrBlastman on 3/14/2011 1:38:06 PM , Rating: 1
This is all part of our Obamanations plan. Take one for the team! (To be fair though, Ethanol started to be pushed by the Bush administration but it doesn't really matter, they're all in on it through kickbacks).

Ethanol is such a ridiculous idea. Gee, lets burn up all our food so we can put gas in our cars. Wait, lets think about this for a minute.


You don't see it? You need to look deeper.

Americans are fat. What? Yes, they're fat. Movies like Wall-E and Super Size Me say we are. So, it must be true, right?

Everyone knows that because Americans are fat, we have to buy big SUV's so our bellies don't hit the steering wheels, so we can fit our rotund kids in the back and to tow bigger boats hat have more room for our fat behinds in them. Most importantly, Americans need more SUV's so they can fit more buckets of KFC in the back!

So, those crafty goons up in Washington have it all figured out. If they switch to Ethanol, they'll save us money on gas. They'll also raise our food prices. What? Raise our food prices? Of course it will. They have to use all that land now to farm for our cars and not us. So, food that is edible will be at a premium because it has less land to be farmed on.

So, by raising food prices, they force America to fight its obesity epidemic. Don't you see it, folks? This is nationalized healthcare at work, at the gas pumps! They're already pushing it down our throats. ;) Whether we like it, or not. :P

I guess the Government needs to hire Richard Simmons as its spokesperson for Ethanol dressed up like Mr. Body (or whatever he called it back in the 70's and 80's). Buy Ethanol. Help lower gas prices. Help you lose weight.

The bottom line is, Ethanol does nothing to help. It just shifts our costs from one thing to another. So gas will cost less, food will now cost more.

RE: What About Y2K and Older Cars
By sleepeeg3 on 3/14/2011 2:33:11 PM , Rating: 5
The only benefit to ethanol is to make rich some already subsidized megafarmers in Iowa. The rest of the nation gets:
1. Worse fuel economy
2. Higher food prices
3. Hose erosion, gasket degradation and engine corrosion from the water byproduct (C2H6O + 3O2 + fire = 2CO2 + 3H2O)
4. Higher gas prices (Why? It takes more oil to grow corn than it does to produce ethnaol)
5. Increased pollution (see above)
6. Higher taxes (higher gas prices = more money in taxes collected by the states/government)

This is madness and it needs to stop.

RE: What About Y2K and Older Cars
By MrBlastman on 3/14/2011 3:10:10 PM , Rating: 4
Sheesh. Nobody on here has a sense of humor today. :)

You're right, and have eloquently explained the atrocity of Ethanol. I refuse to support such a sham, yet, through government fisting, am forced to bend over and take it at the pump. They have big fists, too, might I add. It hurts.

RE: What About Y2K and Older Cars


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Signed - yes.
Holding breath - no.

RE: What About Y2K and Older Cars
By sxr7171 on 3/14/2011 4:14:20 PM , Rating: 3
I would pay extra for real gasoline instead of this E15 shit.

RE: What About Y2K and Older Cars
By titanmiller on 3/14/2011 10:29:33 PM , Rating: 2
I refuse to believe that it takes more oil to grow corn than you get from the ethanol it produces. Lets say that you get a modest yield of 150 bushels/acre. You get an ethanol yield of 2.5 gallons per bushel. That is 375 gallons per acre. Do you expect me to believe that it takes 375 gallons of fuel to farm one acer? NOPE! And I do realize that 1 gallon of oil does not equal 1 gallon of diesel, but it is still way out of the range of numbers we are talking about.

Yields of over 200 bushels per acre are not uncommon.

RE: What About Y2K and Older Cars
By marvdmartian on 3/15/2011 8:53:20 AM , Rating: 1
Your logic is flawed, somewhat.

It's not just the amount of ethanol production from the fossil fuel used (speaking of which, you can't use ethanol to run farm machinery, which skews the whole equation even further).

It's the energy density of ethanol, versus fossil fuels. Ethanol doesn't give you the same energy per volume unit, so you need more of it to get the same amount of energy production.

The greater the ratio of ethanol to gasoline, the lower the energy production. My old work truck, which could be powered by E85 (85% ethanol, 15% gasoline), got 2/3 the fuel economy as it did with E10 gasoline (the current standard). Instead of the 15-16 mpg we got (city type driving) previously, with E10 gasoline, we suddenly plunged to 10 mpg on E85.

E15 won't give as drastic of a change in economy, but it WILL make a difference. And this doesn't even touch the fact that we continue to use land previously used for food crops for fuel production. And that just ain't right!!

RE: What About Y2K and Older Cars
By RU482 on 3/21/2011 3:54:18 PM , Rating: 2
yeah, it would be much better if we went with the Brazilian model and cut down the rain forests to make sugar for ethanol

RE: What About Y2K and Older Cars
By Zoomer on 3/15/2011 12:18:20 PM , Rating: 2
You forgot the fertilizer.

RE: What About Y2K and Older Cars
By randomly on 3/15/2011 1:14:39 PM , Rating: 5
There have been detailed studies on the energy input and output of corn ethanol. Some come up with negative energy gain, some positive, but they are all very close to 1:1 energy return.
After much controversy from Pimentels original research which showed corn ethanol was actually using more energy than it produced there were numerous studies trying to prove otherwise.
But even Argonne labs research only came up with an energy gain of 1.3, energy in to energy out. And this was only because they counted all the energy in the corn waste products that could be used for cattle feed.

This is only valid on a small scale, they admitted that large scale corn ethanol production would produce so much waste product that there would be no reasonable use for it, and again you are back to a break even.

But the break even doesn't cover the billions of dollars a year in tax payers money that goes to the corn growers (mostly to Archer Daniels Midland corporation) for Ethanol subsidies.
There is no advantage in subsidizing corn ethanol in hopes it will improve substantially. The efficiency is never going to get much better because of the intrinsic limitations of corn as an ethanol feedstock.

Corn Ethanol is never going to produce any kind of environmental help. It does more damage than benefits.

As mentioned above, the cost to consumers is not only in the price of the fuel to consumers, but the taxes they have to pay for the subsidies, the increased wear on the engines and maintenance costs, greatly increased food prices.

On top of all those wonderful things is that corn farming contributes to top soil erosion. Top soil accumulates at only about 1 inch per 500 years. Corn farming can erode away an inch in less than a decade. Destroying our farm lands for a subsidized break even biofuel project that has no hope of ever yielding positive results is just idiocy.

There are also the issues of fertilizer and pesticide runoff poisoning the water shed and making dead zones in rivers and deltas. The enormous consumption of fresh water from our limited water resources is another unmentioned burden.

Both McCain and Obama said something needed to be done about the corn ethanol subsidies during their campaigns. However the Corn ethanol lobby is so strong that not only has nothing been done about this theft from the American public, but now they've managed to increase the size of the swindle by 50% with the increase to 15% ethanol blend.

This kind of corporate abuse of the American political system is very disheartening, especially when it is so obvious yet nothing seems to be able to stop them. It does not bode well for the future of this country.

RE: What About Y2K and Older Cars
By Sivar on 3/21/2011 2:27:06 PM , Rating: 2
I really like posts based on mere facts, from all sides, rather than the author's political beliefs.

