shakran

But the majority of the disputers are IN the ethanol industry. They're somewhat biased

But when you take the whole chain into account, the pollution is much more than you think at first. Ethanol plants also pollute. Even when they're legal (scores of ethanol plants have been busted for EPA reg violations) they still pollute. You have to take that, plus the pollution of the power source of the plant (coal/oil/gas/nuclear) PLUS the pollution of the ethanol transportation network into account.

That's actually the least of the concerns - the government pays farmers NOT to grow food. Food supply is not an issue. Although if we went to a pure ethanol system, studies have shown we'd have to plant every acre of land in the US, and then find an area of land half the size of the united states, and plant THAT with corn too to supply everything we'd need.



And so do alcohol powered dragsters, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea to pour everclear into your honda. That car was specifically designed to go fast using ethanol. That car's engine has a high enough compression that it REQUIRES the high octane of ethanol. But street cars don't have anywhere near that kind of compression ratio, which means higher octane gas actually reduces their performance. A lotta guys think putting 100 octane racing gas into their tank will make their Explorer go faster. In fact, it's just the opposite. The reason fast cars call for higher octane is actually to reduce the detonation potential so that the gasoline doesn't explode before the piston gets to the top of the cylinder - called predetonation, or pinging - which would wreck hell on the motor.

You can make a vehicle fast on any fuel if you design it from the ground up to use that fuel. Put another way, the 4-6-2 Mallard steam locomotive went 125 mph, but that doesn't translate into the concept that we should give up gasoline engines and go back to driving Stanley Steamers.



And biodiesel has the same issues that ethanol does. Low energy yield, especially from its primary crop (soybeans), high input for the amount of output you get, boutique fuel price hikes, and it adds one more: Biodiesel will clog fuel filters in vehicles that don't use it regularly. This was just demonstrated in Minnesota, which suspended its biodiesel mandate after truckers complained that they were destroying their fuel filters.

Gasoline might suck, but right now it's the best thing we've got. Rather than pushing for bandaid fuels that don't really work very well at all (hydrogen fits into that category btw - more on that if requested, but long story short, hydrogen as a fuel is a big load of bunk), we should be working to find a fuel that's got a higher output than gas, and that's more readilly available, if not renewable.