It has been reported that the actual making of ethanol creates more carbon dioxide than the production of gasoline from petroleum which could be a real hit to the environmentally friendly aspect of running on gasohol, except here in the United States of America refineries are now producing gasoline with no carbon dioxide being released into the air because they now trap all of the CO2 and pump it underground after they compress it into a liquid so it would get out more petroleum oil from the porous grounds of Canada. I see no reason why this process could not also be used for the distilleries which will make our ethanol. And perhaps this increase of liquid CO2 to pump into the ground of Canada and possibly off the coast of the Atlantic Ocean which could lower the cost of our petroleum based fuels. I would like to mention that I find it odd that the production of ethanol is dirtier than the production of gasoline when the very reason today’s gasoline is cleaner than the fuel of the 1980s is that we are now adding a 10% ethanol mixture to the gasoline.
It has been brought up that the United States of America converting its corn crops into fuel rather than food will starve the rest of the world, but I would like to point out that the Corn product used for making the ethanol will probably be a “cow corn,” which is edible but not very tasty, and is specifically designed to grow very quickly in the northern climates like Vermont which has a shorter growing period and the plant is designed to be more nutritious for the cows who eat the entire plant and not just the ears. How will this prevent the world from starving, some might ask, and I think the answer is that this type of corn will probably be grown in northern farms where farmers already grew the plant to feed to their cows in the winter time and who now no longer have any cows, and it will probably be grown in areas where sweet grass is already growing so no or very little land which is now being used for “food corn” will be lost to the production of fuel.
Lately it has been told to me by a local farmer that the price for a bushel of corn has rose from $2 to $4 so for this reason many farmers in this area are now growing corn to catch some of this money, so I will guess that the price of food corn will rise the same price. I think some people will have a conniption over this rise in food costs for the poor of the world, but the way I see it is they have no problem charging us $100. + for a barrel of oil so why should I care if we charge them the same for a bushel of corn?
Last edited by Rallem; 05/08/08 09:43 PM.
