Incorrect unless you are getting all of your information from Pimentel and Patzek. Their life-cycle analysis of corn-to-ethanol is deeply flawed. The general consensus is that corn ethanol provides 25-30% more energy than it takes to produce.
25-30% more engergy!!! Wow! Hell, I do better than that just by eating at the local mexican food resturant. None of the studies that you linked are complete. Sure, they look at the energy that the farmers have to use to produce corn in fuel etc, but they don't look at other expenses like fertilizer, and pesticides, and the energy it takes to get those products into the field. They also stop their "energy equation" when the ethanol is produced, and they ignore the fact that ethanol is to unstable and cannot be brought to market by pipeline. This great source of energy has to shipped in diesel powered trucks.
From your own link:
Even dedicating all U.S. corn and soybean production to biofuels would meet only 12% of gasoline demand and 6% of diesel demand.
This is a statistic that any reasonable person should be able to read and immedietly understand that ANY ethanol production (excluding what Mr. Daniel has been up to in Lynchburg, TN) is just plain stupid.
The biggest problem with corn ethanol is that it is coupled to the food supply, not that its energy balance is negative.
"Coupled" is not the right word. Corn is the cornerstone of the American and world food supplies. Depending on the data, somewhere between 1/4, and 1/3 of the domestic corn production HAS to go to ethanol production. How screwed up is it that ethanol production has a federal mandate and public subsidy, but what goes to our dinner table does not? Most people do not understand the ripple effect that taking that much corn off the market has on prices of everything. Look at the ingredients on a Coke, you will not get far until you get to "high fructose corn syrup". Know what else that's in? Damn near everything. How do you think your steaks get that good marble to them? They sit in a feed lot and eat nothing but corn for a couple of months before they get processed. The eggs in your McMuffin are produced by chickens that have to eat several pounds of corn every day. This goes on and on, but that's not even the start.
Farmers have been paying attention to the run up in corn prices, so they are trying to cash in. Why plant cotton when corn will pay you twice the money per acre? So, cotton, and wheat, and soybean supplies go down, and that drives up the price of everything from socks, to bread, to McDonald's hamburgers.
This is the price of being green.
The alternative is drilling a bunch of oil wells that 99.99% of the population will ever even see. I just don't see why this is so f'ing hard.
All these mofos are making their coin...
