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Gold/Mining/Energy : Big Dog's Boom Boom Room -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: elmatador who wrote (67946)	7/24/2006 12:35:05 PM
From: ChanceIs	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 206093

>>>The next oil -beyond the one we are taken today- is always more expensive, comes from more troublesome places and gets harder to take out of the ground.<<< You will get no argument with me about that. I object to ethanol being painted as a panacea. There is a serious energy imbalance. Consumption of net BTUs has to drop or western civilization is over. There needs to be big change and Joe Six Pack seems to think that life will remain the same once the scientists get the wrinkles out of ethanol. Joe will be shocked.

To: elmatador who wrote (67946)	7/24/2006 12:46:30 PM
From: Think4Yourself	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 206093

Guess who will in the end win? The farming industry is the winner and Joe 6 pack is the loser. A bushel of corn can produce up to 2.5-3 gallons of ethanol before you subtract out all of the energy to plant, grow, fertilize, water, cut, transport, and process it. We have 1.5 billion bushels of surplus corn right now, so that's 4.5 billion gallons (theoretical maximum) if it is all converted. If I remember correctly there are 45 gallons in a barrel so that's 100 million barrels. Wow, that sounds like a lot! Let's compare that to what we are consuming now, just for fun. raymondjamesecm.com "U.S. finished motor gasoline demand was down 0.5% from last week to 9.6 MMBbls per day. We note that absolute demand continues to remain above the five-year high." If the corn was 100% converted, and we ignore all of the energy involved in the corn/ethanol cycle, and we ignore the fact that ethanol has only a fraction of the energy gasoline has, the entire nation's surplus will satisfy our needs for about 11 days. Add in all of the above and it's more like 3-4 days, and we use a lot of NG (making fertilizer and the ethanol), a lot of water (watering all those crops and processing the ethanol) in the process. At least the locusts will be happy unless we also poison the earth and air with insecticides. We also deplete the water tables across the country where it is necessary to pump up water to water the crops. hmmm, 4 days out of 365 is 1.01%. ALL of the surplus corn will meet about ONE PERCENT of our gasoline needs. Doesn't it sound a bit strange that there is so much hoopla and excitement over ONE PERCENT? That will really make a dent in our dependence on foreign oil imports! The folks in the middle east who understand basic math are laughing their arses off. When you start talking about other biomass it's even more of a joke. You need sugar to make ethanol, not fiber. The whole ethanol concept is being pushed by the farming states as a way to get more money. It won't work, no matter how "efficient" the process becomes. If we could produce 50 billion bushels a year of surplus corn, or they come up with a corn that has 50 times the sugar content, that would be a different story. Neither looks likely in this century. Don't even get me started on how many tax dollars are being wasted on this idea!