And, of course, use less gasoline.
What in blazes do you mean, “today’s cars”??? If a mere 5-year-old car (which is practically brand-new) does not count as one of “today’s cars” then what does?
He was pandering to the voters in Iowa and in the process handing billions of dollars to a few corporations at the expense of poor people. Was his motivation the voters or the corporations? If it was the voters then we don’t have an oligarchy, and if it was the corporation then he is a part of the problem he claims to be fighting. Either way Sanders is not the solution to our political problems.
Well, no, the Pimentel study is imperfect and somewhat out-of-date, but it really did some pretty incredible work of summing up total fossil energy inputs vs. outputs for the ethanol program. You could argue that the way it’s used is crap, but I think the study itself is rightfully considered pretty good.
The problem with the assertion that carbon emissions are lower for the ethanol lifecycle than for gasoline on a per-mile driven basis is that it’s really hard to figure out exactly what to count. The argument that ethanol is worse for carbon emissions than gasoline is taking into account land use change (if you plow up a native prairie to plant corn, you’ve likely released a considerable amount of soil carbon into the atmosphere, for example.) So how do you measure how much and in what ways land has changed because of ethanol? How do you weigh a large, one-time release of carbon into the atmosphere against ongoing carbon reductions from the ethanol produced? There’s simply no way to do that analysis that everyone will ever agree on.
You’re certainly right about that, it’s complicated, and each side will spin the facts to their own advantage, a situation not helped by the fact that both sides have their lobbyists. An interesting aspect of that one-time carbon release question is that the answer heavily depends on what form that carbon takes. Carbon flux between soil and atmosphere can be in the form of CO2 and CH4, determined in part by factors like temperature, moisture, and oxygen supply. CH4 is a more potent GHG but ultimately much less of a concern because it has a very short residency time in the atmosphere.
Anyway, the ethanol side has argued that deforestation and land use changes have little connection to ethanol production, but I have no idea how valid those arguments are. I tend to be persuaded by the fact that burning ethanol – and for that matter, carbon flux from soil – releases carbon that’s already actively in the carbon cycle. That’s a huge difference because burning fossil fuels releases carbon that’s been sequestered for hundreds of millions of years and is indisputably and fundamentally changing our climate. That’s the elephant in the room. The worst that can be said about ethanol is the accusation that it may not be an effective enough mitigation – or perhaps no mitigation at all – against the damage wrought by fossil fuels.
What do they mean rich, well-connected individuals “NOW” steer the direction of the country? When didn’t they? At its best, the system is supposed to prevent them from abusing the rest of us, and ideally the more civic minded of them will back policies that are good for the people and get their backing (e.g. FDR), but did we need to be told the powerful have power and that the influential influence?
It seems to me there are two issues. One is the effect on carbon in the atmosphere. The other is the energy used.
Burning more energy than the energy that is extracted from the ethanol is independent of the fact that the ethanol is getting a lot of energy from the Sun. The energy being used is coming from fossil fuels in order to turn the Sun’s energy into a liquid fuel that then doesn’t provide as much energy as was spent to create it. The Second Law doesn’t come into it.
However, an argument can be made that there is benefit to losing energy efficiency in that process if you are gaining less pollution and, in particular, less carbon entering the atmosphere.
Which causes a different problem, the mandated fuel efficiency standards are getting higher while they simultaneously try to force more use of a lower energy density fuel, compounding the problem. It’s hard enough to raise efficiency, now you have to do it and compensate for a worse fuel. Yay!
I’m pretty sure for CAFE purposes, fuel efficiency is calculated as miles per gallon of gasoline, not miles per arbitrary mix of gas and ethanol that you can find in a commercial station.