Once more: Ethanol is BAD
I’ve said it over and over — ethanol is bad. It’s a lousy substitute for gasoline, and it’s nowhere near as green as people think. In fact, making it does more damage to the environment than not making it.
Slowly but surely people are catching on, as grain prices skyrocket, rainforests are destroyed, and carbon is released all in the name of this ethanol bullshit.
From a March 27 article in Time:
But several new studies show the biofuel boom is doing exactly the opposite of what its proponents intended: it’s dramatically accelerating global warming, imperiling the planet in the name of saving it. Corn ethanol, always environmentally suspect, turns out to be environmentally disastrous. Even cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass, which has been promoted by eco-activists and eco-investors as well as by President Bush as the fuel of the future, looks less green than oil-derived gasoline.
Told you so.
PS, from the same Time story:
The grain it takes to fill an SUV tank with ethanol could feed a person for a year. Harvests are being plucked to fuel our cars instead of ourselves.
and
The lesson behind the math is that on a warming planet, land is an incredibly precious commodity, and every acre used to generate fuel is an acre that can’t be used to generate the food needed to feed us or the carbon storage needed to save us.
gnomic says:
MIT study finds using crops for fuel bad for environment - http://web.mit.edu/mitei/news/newsletters/EnergyFutures_Winter2008.pdf
Bad? Crop yields fall by nearly 40% on average, but 60% in China. The global agricultural economy drops 10-12%. Ozone increases by 50%. Yes, Bad is one word you can use. Catastrophic would be another.