Even Rolling Stone gets it

The great danger of confronting peak oil and global warming isn't that we will sit on our collective asses and do nothing while civilization collapses, but that we will plunge after "solutions" that will make our problems even worse. Like believing we can replace gasoline with ethanol, the much-hyped biofuel that we make from corn.

That's the lead-in to a July 24th article from Rolling Stone that provides the best argument against use of ethanol I have ever read. It's full of fun facts:

• Even if the entire U.S. corn crop were used to make ethanol, the fuel would replace only twelve percent of current gasoline use.
• Filling the gas tank of an SUV with pure ethanol requires more than 450 pounds of corn -- roughly enough calories to feed one person for a year.
• the energy balance of corn ethanol is only 1.3-to-1 - making it practically worthless as an energy source.
• Corn is already the most subsidized crop in America, raking in a total of $51 billion in federal handouts between 1995 and 2005 -- twice as much as wheat subsidies and four times as much as soybeans. Ethanol itself is propped up by hefty subsidies, including a fifty-one-cent-per-gallon tax allowance for refiners.

Read it and and you will see that ethanol is not the answer to our future energy needs. You will also see the problems that come from government subsidies and having elected laymen pick technological winners and losers instead of having the market decide.

HT: Mercia Rising